Warning: Major spoilers ahead (get over it, the movie is 24 years old).
Watching They Live is a conflicting experience. It is an odd combination of eye-opening messages with lackluster acting, powerful social commentary with 1950′s B-movie special effects and gripping satire with odd punchlines. Constantly making viewers oscillate between "Wow, that was genius!" to "Wow, that was corny!", it is difficult to properly evaluate the movie from a cinematographic point of view. However, from a "message" point of the view, They Live is gold. Based on Ray Nelson's short story Eight O'Clock in the Morning, the movie is one of those rare subversive stories that forces viewers to question their world and their surroundings. Because, despite the fact that the movie is about ghoulish aliens, it communicates truths to the viewers that are only alluded to in mainstream movies. In fact, looking deeper into the storyline, one might realize that there's probably more "science" than "fiction" in the story of They Live ... especially when one has "truth-seeing sunglasses".
The hero of the movie, played by WWF wrestler Rowdy Roddy Pipper, is a drifter that is apparently nameless. In the short story and the movie's credits, he is referred to as Nada, which means 'nothing' in Spanish. While this nameless nothing is broke and homeless, he still manages to expose the alien's hidden rule of the world. How did he accomplish that? With the only thing he'd ever need: The Truth. Oh, and also guns. He used a lot of guns. Most importantly, despite the fact that Nada was tempted several times to shut up in exchange for "generous compensation", he kept his integrity and never agreed to sell out to the aliens. Now, that's a role model. To top it off, he says the best things ever.
Are the aliens in the movie an imaginative way to portray the world's elite, those who secretly run the world, those we call the Illuminati? Let's revisit this cult classic and see how it describes the hidden rule of the elite.
The Premise
Right from the beginning, as we see Nada walking around Los Angeles with his backpack, the movie sets a particular mood: Something is not quite right. While Nada appears to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, the city is not happy and it is not too kind to happy-go-lucky kind of guys. Quite the contrary, there is a sense of impending doom in the air: Poverty is rampant, helicopters fly around the city and street preachers speak of soulless beings ruling the world.

As we follow Nada's aimless drifting across the city, the camera often focuses on people gazing blankly at television screens, mindlessly absorbing the vapid messages it communicates. Regular Joes appear to truly enjoy their television shows ... until an obscure organization hacks the airwaves to broadcast subversive messages about the hidden rulers of the world.

The Average Joes who watch this pirated TV broadcast all get a massive headache - the raw truth is indeed too much for most people to bear. One such viewer switches the channel after telling the guy on TV: "Blow it out your ass". Just like today, most people do not want to hear about this kind of stuff ... they just want to go back to their mindless TV viewing.
Nada realizes that the street preacher and the man on television are connected through a local church. When he sneaks into the church, he discovers that it is actually the headquarters of an underground organization.


Determined to learn more, Nada re-enters the church and finds a few interesting things.

Seeing the Truth
While the sunglasses found by Nada appear on the surface to be worthless, they actually provide him with the greatest gift of all: The Truth. When Nada first puts on the sunglasses, the experience is shocking.


Nada's most shocking discovery concerns people around him.

When the aliens realize that Nada can see through their disguise, they immediately alert the authorities saying "I've got one that can see". Being able to "see" is obviously frowned upon by the aliens - they do not like to be exposed. Nada quickly becomes a social pariah and aliens start closing in on him. Confronted with this situation, Nada says profound and timeless words: "I don't like this ooooooooone bit".

The concept of truth-seeing sunglasses is an interesting way to illustrate the importance of knowledge in one's world perception. Two people can be looking at the exact same thing yet perceive two very different realities, depending on the level of information and awareness possessed by each person. Nada's sunglasses can therefore represent one's knowledge of the truth, which allows a clear perception of reality.
Looking for Others Who Know the Truth
Upon learning the shocking truth about the world, Nada feels the need to share this vital information with his friend Frank Armitage. Nada however quickly realizes some people do not want to hear about it. In fact, many actually get angry and offended at the simple mention of something that alludes to it. When Nada asks Frank to put on his sunglasses so he can see what he sees, Frank firmly refuses and calls him a "crazy motha...". Nada replies with another classic line "Either you put these sunglasses on or start eating that trash can".
Then ensues one of the longest one-on-one fight scene I ever seen (eight minutes of punching and kicking), a scene that is dragged out for so long that it becomes utterly absurd and even comical. While the scene maybe appear ridiculous, it says something about the difficulty of making regular, average people wake up from their blissful ignorance.


"Most of us just sell out right away". It is rather easy to make a correlation between the movie and actual politicians and celebrities we've seen in previous articles on this site who readily sell out to the Illuminati in exchange for wealth, power and celebrity.The meeting doesn't last long, however, as police barge in the place and start shooting everyone there. They are designated a "terrorist organization" by the elite. Nada and Frank manage to escape and accidentally find themselves behind enemy lines, in the alien's underground base.
Behind Enemy Lines
While exploring the aliens' underground base, Nada and Frank stumble upon a party thrown by the aliens for human collaborators to thank them for their "partnership". Although humans will never be considered equals to the aliens, those who sell out to them get monetary benefits ... much like those who are not part of today's elite who nevertheless sell out to push the elite's New World Order Agenda.


The Disinformation Agent

During Nada's rush towards the roof of the network's building, Holly appears again, claiming that she wants to help him. However, she is simply trying to kill him before the mission is accomplished. She is therefore another human that sold out to the aliens being used to disrupt non-corrupted humans attempting to liberate themselves and others.
Taking Down the Aliens
Here's the biggest spoiler of them all: Nada manages to take down the aliens' transmitter and saves humanity. This heroic move gets him killed, however, as a policeman inside a helicopter shoots him dead. Nada therefore becomes the quintessential hero, sacrificing his life for the good of humanity - a martyr for human freedom from soulless rulers.


Although They Live is usually described as "a science-fiction movie that criticizes consumer culture", the scope of its message actually goes way beyond the usual "consumerism is bad" lecture. They Live can indeed be interpreted as a treatise on the thorough and systematic conditioning of human experience in order for a hidden elite to covertly control, manipulate and exploit the masses. In the movie, the rulers are portrayed as a completely different race that perceives humans as inferior - something that can easily be correlated to the attitudes about the bloodlines of the Illuminati. The presence of these strong messages in the movie is one of the reasons They Live became somewhat of a cult-classic, despite the fact that it was panned by movie critics. As the years go by, the movie's message is becoming increasingly relevant ... and freakishly realistic.
Many of those who seek the truth about the world realize that it's reins are held by an un-elected elite, one that is essentially hidden from the public eye. As the movie's promotional poster says: "You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they're people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong." Working behind the scenes, this secretive elite constantly works towards the creation of a global system that would serve its interests: a New World Order, ruled by one world government. As a human collaborator says in the movie to justify his selling-out: "There ain't no countries anymore. No more good guys. They're running the whole show. They own everything. The whole goddamn planet!" To facilitate the rulers' work, the masses are kept in the dark and are distracted with the fake puppet show that is politics and the "no independent thought" programming that is mass media. Apathy, ignorance and indifference are the elite's best friends.
Despite its unimpressive special effects and odd dialogue, They Live manages to describe the world elite's motives and strategy in a way that can be understood by all. And that is no simple task. However, in order to fully understand the movie's message, one must be wearing truth-seeing sunglasses. Do you have yours on?
....to the extent of self-destruction, a blinded beast of contractile moral decadence, devoid of genuine felling, just battery fluid. Oil for the machine.
'Tis strange how these folks are becoming much more explicitly noticeable in our society these days, the quickening, she does so move in mysterious ways.
I think this little underground howl from 1994 is an equally eloquent expression of the modern day epidemic that is ponerogenesis, and the next stage must be warning people of the incubation period for any potential victim, when succoming to tranmarginal inhibition.
When the resolve is weak, and the panic-stricken mind doesn't know who to believe, because it it only just realising that it hardly ever even thinks, it just waits for stimulus, like a bug on a branch.
[Link]
Liar, By Henry Rollins/Rollins Band