They Live! is one of my favorite movies. It's campy, has some great lines, and one of the best fight scenes ever! (It's about 8 minutes long, and features Rowdy Roddy Piper, a WWF wrestler from the '80's) Besides that, the movie is a window that allows us see ourselves and society from a different viewpoint.
You see, it's not just a low budget Hollywood sci-fi flick--it's much more than that. Anyone who has studied Edward Bernays and "public relations" and has also seen the movie probably knows what I am getting at. But for those that haven't, here's the breakdown for you:
Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, and the father of public relations. He developed strategies using the information on psychoanalysis provided to him by Freud and other such as Wilfred Trotter, to manipulate the "herd" into thinking and acting certain ways. Do you really think you have free will? Not really--and let me tell you why. Everything you do, everything you say, and everything you think is a product of something else. For example, does anyone really think women want to wear high heels when they are the most uncomfortable form of footwear in the modern world? No, but society had dictated that women look sexier in high heeled shoes, so women--trained to please men in a patriarchal society--wear them anyway. I could go on and on about this, but you should be getting the idea by now.
'They Live!' illustrates the facts I just mentioned. Society uses propaganda through advertising, television, the educational system, religion, and media outlets to manipulate our brains to think a certain way. In the movie, a drifter discovers sunglasses which shows the world in its true colors. Certain individuals disguised as 'people' are actually aliens, and TV and advertising is all subliminal messages telling humans to submit, obey, and act in certain ways. This is done so that aliens can control, manipulate and use humanity to their own ends, and maintain order at the same time so that humanity doesn't start a revolution against them. See the pattern? Does it feel familiar? It should. Everything you do, from brushing your teeth (coconut oil works better) to ordering fast food (which isn't food at all) has been dictated to you by the society you live in. And the society you live in is ruled over by individuals that need and desire to maintain control over you.
Is this how you really want to live???
Watch how Edward Bernays created the means to manipulate the minds of the masses in the video "Century of the Self"
Watch the movie here.
