How Rowdy Roddy Piper’s 1988 cult films can help explain the rise of Donald Trump
In the year 1988, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, one of my favorite professional wrestlers, made two films. One of them, They Live, has garnered a deserved reputation as one of the most underrated films of the 1980's. The other, Hell Comes to Frogtown, is a bizarre Mad Max ripoff most famous for a dance scene with a very dirty joke involving talking, mutant frogs. They’re two crazy cult-classics, and both of them grapple with ideologies that have directly lead to the rise of Donald Trump and the Alt-right.
They Live was directed by John Carpenter and stars Piper as John Nada, a drifter, who discovers a box of magic sunglasses that allow him to literally see the world through new eyes. When wearing the glasses, Nada discovers that most of the elites in the United States have been replaced by aliens who control our population through subliminal messages sent out through the mass media. When his sunglasses are on, advertisements, billboards and even news broadcasts are replaced by words like “obey” and “consume.” He’s able to see the real message behind the propaganda.
It’s a paranoid thriller in which Nada, aided by his friend Frank (Keith David), a construction worker, fights back against the rigged system that’s taken over America. They are aided by one of the few human members left in the media, Holly Thompson (Meg Foster), who only comes around to the deception of the aliens after being held hostage first.
Together they fight back, violently, against the alien invaders. They endeavor to kill as many of the aliens as possible, and destroy the satellite dishes that beam out their propaganda. It’s a film about the struggle for survival against a tyrannical elite who have taken over the world.
They Live is filled with themes and ideas that Trump has used to appeal to the masses during this election: The system is rigged. Aliens, illegal or otherwise, have infiltrated our country. The media is complicit in the government’s deception of the people. Everything you think is real is a lie. Even the idea that global warming is a foreign plot is incorporated into its world. It’s as if the film wrote Trump’s paranoid playbook.
Trump has indeed fashioned himself as the John Nada of the masses this year. Only he, he says, can tackle the corruption of Washington. He will show you the truth behind the curtain, and reveal the corruption that has plagued the country. With the magic sunglasses of Wikileaks, he will deliver you the truth behind the propaganda, the message beneath the message.
If They Live is the source of Trump’s paranoid ideology, the giant, talking frogs of Hell Comes to Frogtown represent the twisted worldview of the Alt-right. The Alt-right is a loosely organized group of anti-politically-correct activists that has brought together internet trolls, racists, right-wing shock jocks, and bigots in a giant toxic stew of meme-generating filth. They also happen to be some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters.
If you use Twitter or Facebook you’ve likely encountered members of the Alt-right brigade. They envision a world in which nothing is offensive, where chauvinism and misogyny is cool, and the government stays out of people’s lives. They call themselves “Deplorabes,” post memes depicting Hillary Clinton in prison stripes, bemoan the wussification of America, and love Nazis. And I mean they LOVE Nazis. Any chance they get to use imagery of swastikas, gas chambers, Nazi uniforms, or Hitler is one quickly taken.
Perhaps the Alt-right’s favorite meme subject though, is Pepe the Frog. First created in 2005 as part of a comic by artist Matt Furie called Boys Club, Pepe was initially a harmless symbol. It wasn’t until 2015 that it began to turn racist. Members of the Alt-right began to use Pepe as a symbol for White Power ideology. They’d depict the frog in Nazi uniforms, or engaged in explicitly racist activities.
Pepe’s association as a symbol of hate has become so widespread that you can find many Trump supporters and Alt-right members on Twitter with a frog emoji as part of their bio or handle, signifying that they are part of the racist movement. Donald Trump Jr. has retweeted a Pepe meme, and even Trump’s new slogan, in which he promises to “Drain the Swamp” that is Washington D.C. has been linked to Pepe.
Which brings us back to Hell Comes to Frogtown. The world of Hell Comes to Frogtown represents the dark side that many see in Trump’s ideology and actions. It is a world in which people were careless with Nuclear weapons and caused an apocalypse. It takes place in a United States with barely any government, where people are free to have whatever guns or rocket launchers they desire. All notions of political correctness have flown out the window.
When Sam Hell, played by Piper, is recruited by the rag-tag remnants of authority to stage a rescue operation, he’s paired up with a blonde scientist/nurse named Spangle (Sandahl Bergman), who wants him to “breed” with the fertile women they’re out to rescue. Humanity needs to rebuild its numbers after the nuclear war and can only do that by breeding healthy men with healthy women.
The Trumpian ideal is personified in Hell Comes to Frogtown by Commander Toty (Brian Frank), the leader of Frogtown’s mutants. He shares Trump’s fondness for sitting on large, throne like chairs. He rules over a gang of heavily armed thugs, and cares only about amassing wealth, power, and beautiful women. While he is an adversary to Sam Hell, it’s only because the government has put them at odds with each other, and because they both covet the same coterie of beautiful girls. In truth, they share many of the same goals in life.
In Hell Comes to Frogtown’s most famous scene, Toty commands a captured Nurse Spangle to dance for him or die. The dance he desires is the “Dance of the Three Snakes,” which he refuses to elaborate upon. Sandahl Bergman’s Spangle, unsure of what this dance is, begins to gyrate and twirl before Toty as he cheers her on, staring lasciviously. Finally Toty proclaims, “you have aroused the three snakes!” and the dance ends.
Could there be a more Trumpian image than a Pepe the Frog lookalike sitting in his throne chair, getting aroused while a buxom blonde dances for him at gunpoint?
In Frogtown, women have no agency, or voice, and are merely sex objects to entertain a bunch of mutants. Guns are plentiful, machismo is everywhere, and bars seem to be the biggest businesses in existence. One can’t help but think that this is the fantasy of some men who crave a Trumped-up America.
Like Frogtown, They Live is similarly filled with a blunt masculinity. The people have become sheep and have to be woken from their slumber, often violently. “Outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us, from birth to death, are our owners! Our owners!” rants a street preacher in the film. “They have us. They control us! They are our masters! Wake up! They’re all about you! All around you!”
Even John Nada’s friend Frank doesn’t believe him at first when he tells him that aliens have taken over the planet. John has to beat some sense into Frank before he realizes the deception that’s all around him. It’s no simple beating either. It’s one of the longest fight scenes in the history of cinema.
Roddy Piper carries himself with a pure Trumpian swagger in both films. He’s a rebel, a man without the same societal bounds as others. He’s hyper-virile, utterly masculine, and even crude. When Piper holds up a bank in They Live he famously declares “ I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m all out of bubble gum.” One could easily see Trump delivering a similar line at one of his rallies.
The noted philosopher Slavoj Zizek analyzed They Live in his Pervert’s Guide to Ideology and said of its magic sunglasses that “when you put the glasses on you see dictatorship in democracy. It’s the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.” It’s an idea Trump has seized strongly upon in his campaign. The democracy that you see before you in the United States is just a front. You really have no control, Trump says. The system is rigged, and the leaders have already been chosen.
Such an ideology is useful in a fictional film where one is fighting aliens, but downright dangerous when applied in the real world. Telling masses of people that there is no room for peaceful change and that the system is irreparably broken, even if true, does not tend to lead to good or peaceful results. Moreover, Trump’s political opponents are not alien invaders, but other human beings, who happen to have differing opinions than him.
It would be easy to dismiss all of this by saying there’s no way Trump could have been influenced by either movie, but both films, and particularly They Live, have infiltrated popular culture to such a point that it would have been hard for him to avoid their influence.
Shepard Fairey, the man who created the most popular political poster of the 21st century, the Obama “Hope” image, was incredibly influenced by They Live. His breakout piece of art, in fact, was an image of professional wrestler Andre the Giant with the word “Obey” beneath him. It’s inspired directly by Piper’s film.
It is impossible to be a part of the American political landscape today and to not have been influenced, in at least some small way, by a Roddy Piper film. Imagery from the film has even influenced political posters about Trump this year.
Then there’s the personal connection between Piper and Trump. Both men had long associations with the WWE. Trump was apparently also a fan of Piper’s and before his untimely death, Piper suggested that Trump run for political office.
Much of what Trump does as a politician draws from tactics used by professional wrestlers. Trump sneers, he preens, he interrupts his opponents. He resorts to personal put-downs, and gets crowds on his side by praising the city he’s in, or name-checking a local hero. Wrestlers call this getting “cheap pops” and Trump is a master of it. Not to mention the fact that one of the biggest donors to the Donald Trump Foundation was Vince McMahon and the WWE.
Whatever you think of Trump, he’s brought a different sort of character to the American political stage. He’s unguarded, and doesn’t care if what he says offends people. He curses, insults, and prods his opponents. He’s an entertainer to the core, and like the best wrestlers know how to work a crowd, Trump is a master of playing with emotions.
It would be absurd to think that Donald Trump becoming President would lead to the world depicted in Hell Comes to Frogtown, but that world does represent the worst of his ideology boiled down to its core. The main character, Sam Hell, lives a sort of Alt-right dream life. He’s a man of the road, heavily armed, tied down by no wife or corporate gig, who travels around sleeping with any beautiful girls he can find. His antagonist is the small, remaining shred of government left standing, and by the end of the film, he’s vanquished them, free to live a completely libertarian, and libertine existence.
I never thought Hell Comes to Frogtown and They Live would become relevant lenses through which to examine a political ideology, but the Presidential run of Donald Trump has sadly made it logical to do so. Trump has galvanized a certain side of society that sees a world like Frogtown’s as something to be admired because they feel the same sense of living in a rigged society as John Nada.
The question is, is it better to be free no matter what the cost? The world of They Live is unquestionably nightmarish, but so is the government-free world of Hell Comes to Frogtown. Neither is a place you’d really want to reside, and Trump seems incapable of finding a happy medium between the two, at least in the eyes of many Americans.
Both They Live and Hell Comes to Frogtown were designed to be escapist fantasies, but they also reflect a deep disappointment with the world and politics of the 1980’s. They come from the same era as many of the voters who have now embraced Donald Trump. The truth of their future dissatisfaction was spelled out in both movies.
What’s most bizarre about the whole connection is that They Live is a film that looked at the Reagan era and found it wanting, while Hell Comes to Frogtown nominally showed the horrors that could be brought on by nuclear war. Neither of them were bastions of conservative ideology or thought. But that’s the real rub, isn’t it? Donald Trump isn’t truly a conservative.
Trump pays lip service to issues like abortion, religion, fiscal responsibility, and the military, but they’ve never been the true heart of his campaign. Trump has always been more concerned with liberty, and liberation. He wants to build a wall around America, we wants to lock up the “corrupt” elite, and “make America great again.” He doesn’t want to preserve the system, he wants to burn it to the ground.
It should be noted that neither John Nada nor Sam Hell ever make their America particularly great again in their films. Nada dies destroying the alien signal, leaving the rest of humanity behind to fight an inevitable struggle against technologically superior aliens, and Sam Hell, though he rescues the women he’s after and escapes from Frogtown, still lives in a desolate nuclear wasteland. Battles won, wars far from over.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Trump, Nada, and Hell though is that while the latter two were drifters, homeless wanderers living on the fringes of society, Trump has lived a millionaire or billionaire lifestyle since he was born. He’s not the every-man, or the American rebel. He has been an active part of the ruling class and profited from it for his entire life.
One wonders who Trump would find looking back at him if he put on John Nada’s magic glasses and stared into a mirror. Would he even be human? Or would he, like so many populists before him, be selling something less than the truth when he says he’s with the little man?
Like Piper’s films, Trump is entertaining, at times revolting, and also a little scary. When asked about They Live last year, director John Carpenter told Yahoo Movies that “you have to understand something: It’s a documentary. It’s not science fiction.” With the rise of Donald Trump, his statement is truer now than ever.
We live in a world where 80’s fantasy has become today’s reality. It’s tempting to give in to it, to see the world through Trump’s fun-house mirror lenses. But John Nada offers an apt warning to those who’d become too addicted to seeing life in such a manner. “Don’t wear them glasses too long,” he says. “Starts to feel like a knife turnin’ in your skull.”
