In recent years I’ve been struck by how much John Carpenter’s 1988 movie They Live seems to be more and more relevant as the years pass by (e.g. we posted this They Live inspired Pepsi satire just last week). The power of corporations continues to grow, from the ‘too big to fail’ mantra that now puts their welfare above ours, to the Citizens United decision that allowed unfettered financial backing of politicians by the mega-wealthy, creating the ideal environment for plutocracy.
It seems I’m not the only one to have noticed this though, as the short film below about the relevance of They Live also focuses on how it applies in the modern day. As John Carpenter himself points out in the film:
[In the 1980s] there was a great deal of obsession with greed and making a lot of money, and some of the values that I grew up with had been pushed aside. So I decided to scream out in the middle of the night and make a statement about that.
And They Live is partially a political statement. It’s partially a tract on the world that we live in today…and as a matter of fact, right now it’s even more true than it was then.
