Saturday, December 14, 2019

The Revenge of the Illusionists at the Whim of the Deluded



By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com 
“Our impulses are being redirected. We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep… The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves…, to others…, we are focused only on our own gain. Please understand they are safe as long as they are not discovered. That is their primary method of survival: To keep us asleep, keep us selfish, keep us sedated.”
– “They Live” (1988), John Carpenter, Universal Pictures, Release date: November 4, 1988

John Carpenter’s cult classic film “They Live” foreshadowed our current time in so many ways. The story told of disguised freaks appearing human while consolidating control over the upper echelons of society. To do this, they lulled the masses to sleep via advertising and materialism. The electronic media acted as a hypnotist’s watch on lethargic plebeians as they were cajoled into a dreamlike state, treated like puppets, and surveilled – by flying drones no less.
Given our current circumstances today the movie would be considered non-fiction; except with the truth-tellers on the still-free internet acting as the good guy media hackers distributing the sunglasses in the film that allowed the freaks to be seen in all their loathsome hideousness.
In “They Live”, the media hackers and sunglasses allowed the public to see behind the curtain, so to speak, which is a phrase taken from another film, “The Wizard of Oz”. It was when Dorothy and friends could see the wizard after a curtain fell and revealing him to be just a man operating technological buttons, levers, and a microphone in order to cast illusions upon the inhabitants of Oz.
And here’s the point of these cinematic parables:  The grotesque freaks from “They Live” and the wizard from the “Wizard of Oz” knew what they were doing as they purposefully deceived the citizens in their respective worlds; and the deceiving con artists did this so as to consolidate power and maintain control over whom they perceived to be dupes.
Sound familiar?



2 comments:

TSE said...

Great movie - fit for our times.

legal stranger said...

Yes, they live among us.