Dear Readers,
I’ve been coping with a small scale family medical emergency over the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I have not been able to focus on making them pay as much as I would like. I’ll be back in full effect shortly. In the meantime, please enjoy this especially fine post from last year. I sure had fun making it. I sure hope you enjoy watching or reading it. Though this one is more visually-oriented than most.
Let’s make them pay.
Somehow I missed the metaphorical quality of the famous fight scene in They Live until now.
If you’ve never seen They Live, it is a fantastic allegorical horror movie from the 1980s by John Carpenter. Carpenter directed some of the greatest horror films of all time including the original Halloween and The Thing - also Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China - a trifecta of some of Kurt Russell’s best flicks.
They Live stars Rowdy Roddy Piper as a down-on-his-luck working man named “Nada” trying to make it in Ronald Reagan’s America. He finds a magical pair of sunglasses that reveal all of the subconscious messages our society gives us. He puts them on and sees billboards that say “obey,” “consume,” “do not question authority,” and one of my favorites, “elect candidate.” He can also see that certain people, mostly the wealthy and members of the ruling class, are aliens. They have scary alien makeup. But he can only see this with the glasses on.
Later in the movie, he tries to get his best buddy Frank, played by the legendary character actor Keith David, to put on the glasses. But Frank won’t do it. He’s too stubborn. They get into this amazing knock-down drag-out fight in an alley in LA.
The first time I watched this melee I thought it was just an extended gag. This fight seriously goes on for like 6 plus minutes. I thought, well, you’ve got a pro wrestler starring in this movie so he needed a big fight scene. And on some level, sure that’s true. But this fight - it’s still going on here - is a metaphor.
They’re fighting because Nada wants his buddy to put these glasses on so he can have his eyes opened too. All he wants is for his buddy to put these stupid things on his face for a minute, but his buddy is too aggro and stubborn. He’s like “Back off weirdo, don’t make me do stuff!” And they just start whaling on each other. They absolutely beat the crap out of one another - and they’re supposed to be buddies!
But as I said, this is a metaphor. Because sometimes you absolutely have to beat someone over the head to see what they don’t want to see.
People are the same way when you challenge their most closely-held assumptions about life. If I were to try and make you question some core belief that you have internalized since childhood, you’re going to feel like pushing back, Keith David-style. The more sacred that assumption is, the harder you are likely to fight my challenge of it. It could be something simple like questioning the good intentions of US foreign policy or the righteousness of the Democratic Party or the sanctity of the Second Amendment.
If a belief is being challenged that goes all the way back to when you were shaping your identity it’s possible to trigger an identity crisis in a person. Inside that person is saying “If this thing I have believed all of my life is wrong, what else about my life is a lie?” People don’t like feeling that way. It is unpleasant. You feel shook. Hashtag shook squad. It can trigger a fight or flight response - and some will most certainly fight back. Hard.
Now I don’t think of myself as a highly confrontational person by nature. My style, if I was Rowdy Roddy Piper’s character, might be to walk Keith David down the street - maybe after dinner, right down an east-west street at sundown. When the sun is bright and directly in your eyes, just burning your retinas. Then I’d pull out those sunglasses and say, hey, borrow mine. And when he’s ready for it, when he sees that you’re helping and trusts you, he puts on those glasses without a fight.
But that’s not nearly as cinematic.
And some people are still gonna fight. Out of pride or belligerence, or stubbornness, or fear of change. It is our responsibility to understand where that aggression comes from and try to avoid triggering a fight or flight response in our brothers and sisters. I know that you may have had your eyes opened - but not everyone is at the same place in their journey. Sometimes you need to make friends with Keith David first. Earn his trust. Then slip those sunglasses on when he’s least expecting it. Then he looks good - and you look good too. No bruises or lead pipe injuries necessary.
Seriously though, check out They Live- what a flick.
Why People Resist Class Consciousness