He shows that ideology penetrates into us so well that we naturally see through it. Carpenter’s brilliant idea, instead, is precisely to internalise ideology in our regular vision. One might be tempted to imagine ideology as glasses we’re unconsciously wearing and the process of emancipation as the act of putting them off. There are a few features of Carpenter’s representation of ideology that are particularly interesting. Still, as an artist, he does a great job at conveying a strong message in a symbolic way. John Carpenter himself described They live as “ partially a political statement” but mostly “just an action film.” He’s a filmmaker, so he takes a few artistic liberties that make his depiction of ideology allegorical and at times not very accurate. Shutting down the transmission system means getting rid of the propaganda and unmasking the alien parasites: to show everyone their real appearances. After a good deal of shooting and yelling, they manage to infiltrate the coven, where alien yuppies meet to organise their propaganda and then transmit it from an antenna. They join an underground resistance group made up of people who tried the sunglasses on.
He looks at advertisements, he sees “Obey.” He flips through magazines in a shop and reads “Do not question authority” and “Consume.” Dollars read “This is your God.” Nada is seeing through the deception, right into the real message of everything.įrom that moment, Nada and Frank have no other choice but to get into action. Walking around the streets of LA, Nada decides to put on the sunglasses – they give him black and white vision and a headache. A strange writing on the wall says “They live, we sleep.” But he is disappointed when, instead of explosives and subversive material, he just finds a box of sunglasses.
After the police brutally raid the church one night, Nada decides to go take a look. Pretty soon, he starts to realise that some folks in the shantytown are involved in suspicious activities and regularly meet in a nearby church. He settles in a shantytown with a man he befriends, construction worker Frank. Roddy Piper, credited in the film as “Nada” (nothing, the universal subject), is a drifter who comes to Los Angeles in search of a job.
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