Why John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’ Will Never Die
Earlier today I was driving on the stretch of I-5 that runs between Tacoma and Olympia, a stretch of road that I affectionately refer to as ‘The Corridor of Death,’ when John Carpenter’s film They Live popped into my mind. This psychic visitation by They Live is not as rare as some might assume. I actually find myself thinking quite often about the movie, particularly when I’m crawling through traffic on the highway or doing some other similar, joyless task necessitated by modern life.
Yes, the movie is from 1988, which makes it quite old in many people’s minds, but nearly all of the books and movies that I find myself thinking about are over 20 years old. I don’t know why that is, really. To my view, all the best writers are dead, the golden age of dramatic cinema was in the 70s, and the golden age of fun movies was the 80s. These estimations don’t only apply to the films and books I read as a kid. Most of my movie nights are spent combing the catacombs for old flicks that I’ve never seen. Most modern movies strike me as intolerably formulaic and dull. It’s quite possible that I’m a pretentious asshole, though I’ll let others determine the truth of that statement for me.
Before I go on, let me say this to anyone that might not have seen They Live: The movie stars Rowdy Roddy Piper of professional wrestling fame, and within the film there is an entertaining, needlessly drawn-out fight scene in which Piper body slams, forearm blasts, and elbow drops his way into cinematic immorality. If that little tidbit excites you, then I urge you to stop reading this article right now and go watch the movie. You won’t be disappointed.
On a side note: I recently watched some old footage of Rowdy Roddy Piper. The guy really was/is a comic genius. When I was a kid, I was too absorbed in the testosterone and high drama of the WWF to understand how funny it was…but now, I can appreciate Piper for the great performer that he is. Embedded below is my proof of that claim.
So, what is it about “They Live” that I love so much and that causes the film to come so frequently to my mind? Briefly, the movie is about a rootless guy called Nada who finds a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see America for what it really is: a socially stratified slave camp in which aliens run the upper crust of society (not much of a stretch, I know). He then picks up his shotgun and goes on a crusade to take the aliens down and reveal the true nature of the world to the rest of its sleepwalking inhabitants.
The idea isn’t new, of course. It’s really just a variation on a theme that goes back at least as far as Plato’s cave, and almost certainly much further back than that. The idea apparently appeals to something deep-seated in the human psyche, and if the success of “The Matrix” is any indication, something that has only become more powerfully rooted in the modern zeitgeist.
Perhaps the appeal isn’t too hard to understand. On the subtlest level, the idea that there is more to reality than what we can say implies at least the possibility that there is something beyond death, which is obviously appealing when one considers that humans are biologically designed to pursue survival at all costs, while cognitively capable of understanding that such an aim is impossible to maintain forever. But, it also appeals to something much simpler and more overt.
The thing is, even if the other reality beyond the pale of our perceptions is one full of carnivorous machines or hostile aliens, in many ways it beats the hell out of modern life. The idea of running around brandishing a shotgun, possessing proof that the rules of society are so malicious and inhuman that we are morally justified in completely disregarding them, almost certainly appeals to every modern person’s long-neglected Id.
Yea, every day in such a world would be spent fearing for one’s life, but there would also be excitement, tests of endurance and wiles, and mandatory exercise! Terrifying, yes, but in many ways it beats the prospect of spending 40 years in an office cubicle watching yourself age inexorably in the reflection of your computer monitor.
Beyond the prospect of daily adventure and lawlessness, such a life would also provide one with a clear purpose. In They Live, Nada stopped wondering what his purpose in life was the moment that he put on those sunglasses and saw ill-intentioned aliens all around him. From that point on, his purpose was clear: shoot as many of them as possible and reveal the truth to the rest of the world. That’s a panacea for every existential crisis in the repertoire.
All of those things probably explain why They Live pops into my mind at such moments as those spent sitting in slow-moving traffic, wondering what the hell the point of my life is. If I were fortunate enough to discover that the world was full of stuck-up, pompous aliens bent on keeping the good people of the world down, I most certainly wouldn’t be struck as often by nihilistic anxiety, which also means I probably wouldn’t feel the need to write blog posts such as this….which leads me to the question of why I felt the need to write about all of this in the first place. That’s a question probably best left unanswered.
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‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper confesses: ‘They Live’ was a documentary (twitchy.com)
