Conquest through conformity

They Live, a 1988 sci-fi, thriller film is ever relevant to the contemporary world of contemptuous consumerism, political unfreedom, widening inequality and de-humanising relations. 

George is a migrant looking for work, which is denied at the job opportunity centre which denotes the unemployment in the market. However, he finds a work at a construction sector and finds residence at a migrant community slum. He discovers a sunglass that reveals the true reality of the material world. The billboards promoting tourism and lavish lifestyle are advertising life of indulgence and consumerism. The conforming habits that we are forced into through advertisement inflict us with commodity fetishism that we need to consume, more. More and more till our minds are numbed and dumbed by the senseless consumption.  This fuels the market and the companies’ profit.

Ursula Huws comments on the technology’s role in enhancing consumerism in Labor in the Global Digital Economy (2014),

The internet is thus constituted as a vast virtual shopping mall, with its users bombarded with a constant stream of advertising, preying on their most personal vulnerabilities. So accustomed are most of us to these ever present advertising messages that it is easy to forget how deeply damaging they are. From early childhood, most people are now told, hundreds of times a day, that they are fat, ugly, undesirable, vile smelling, laughably old fashioned, endowed with breasts or penises that are the wrong size or of the wrong degree of firmness, that they are never likely to be popular unless they purchase whatever commodity is on offer to provide the magic fix for this problem.

When George sees through the sunglasses, the illusion is removed. He goes on to wake even the others from the dream. But, the powerful forces are not easy to defeat. His attempts to tell his friend to wear the sunglasses fail because the media has portrayed George as terrorist who has killed many innocents in the bank. As Frank, his friend says that the golden rules are made by the people who have gold; they control everything, media, perception, information, knowledge and even morality that doesn’t allow the powerless to speak. The rule breakers are portrayed as the disruptors. 

The students of the JNU face similar suppression when the Administration has declined their admission in the proceeding semester. The students have engaged in questioning the administration over the issues of fund cuts, seeking its accountability, and arbitrary fashion of decision-making. The administration has academically suspended the students for voicing the concerns of the weak. 

 

 

The movie presents this as creatures coming from outside or other dimension and that the distinction between the first and third worlds have collapsed. However, it is not some external force or aliens from other dimensions that have enslaved the earth, rather a system, very real created by the profit for rich.  The events of the films are real and persist to occur. In the movie, the shootout at the bank is known to the world; however, the demolition at the slums of the workers is unknown. The exploitation at the hands of the powerful is considered and accepted as almost natural by the people themselves. This has made the system powerful. The people cant resist because they are embedded into the dull rhythms of work that doesn’t allow to unionise and garner intellect; and provides the only escape or relief through consumption in malls.

Conformity and obedience are the moral tools to maintain the status quo. Path to truth is revolutionary and revolutions face intense opposition. But, the people will realize their goal and succeed.