One of the most lucid expressions of how the media and the market replace the polis is John Carpenter’s They Live (1988). In the film we witness the awakening of an itinerant worker named John Nada, who having just arrived in L.A. looking for a job, happens upon a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see that reality is a facade and that the world is being controlled by an alien species that shows itself when seen through the glasses. As if this were not enough, he also discovers that advertising is riddled with subliminal messages such as OBEY, CONSUME, MARRY AND REPRODUCE, SUBMIT. Upon encountering the small resistance that opposes the status quo, Nada learns that all television networks broadcast a continuous signal designed to induce conformity in the population. The rebels’ signal, which manages to get on the air only intermittently, declares:
They are turning our atmosphere into their atmosphere. The earth is just another developing planet, theirThird World. We are like a natural resource to them. Deplete the planet, move on to another.1
They Live presents a planetary maquila (8.20), which is maintained mainly through the fictions sold by the media. In a promotional interview Carpenter explained that “the premise of the film is that the ‘Reagan revolution’ is run by aliens from another galaxy, free enterprisers from outer space who have taken over the world, and are exploiting the Earth as if it’s a third world planet.” Through a narrative device as simple as a pair of sunglasses, Carpenter reveals the terrible place of neoliberalism (8.8, 8.11, 8.14) that lurks behind advertising and the media.
Leave a Reply