Designing a Visual and Cultural Awakening, via John Carpenter’s Anti-Capitalist Cult Classic
A new book from Craig Oldham based on a prop in ‘They Live’ brilliantly brings the film and its politics to life
By Emily Gosling
OBEY. BUY. DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY. Black and white, block capital text — bleak reminders of the domineering capitalist doctrine that lurks behind billboards and magazines — are at the heart of John Carpenter’s 1988 cult classic They Live. The film is a text laden with this sort of graphic ephemera, once you spot it — pieces that drives the plot as much as wrestler-turned-actor “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s hammy-leaning dialogue.
As anyone who’s seen it will know, there’s one piece of printed matter in particular that lies at the heart of the film, which is part schlocky sci-fi alien invasion, part searing critique of 1980s inequality, unemployment, fragile masculinity, and Reaganomics. That piece is a magazine, or to be more accurate, a whole rack of magazines. Once our central character, John Nada, has found a pair of sunglasses that let him see the subliminal messages of advertising and media in stark monochrome, glossy magazines full of glamor and promises start to show their true colors — which are not colors at all, but black and white…
