April 13th, 2025The aliens among us
by Jeff Glorfeld
A movie made 37 years ago explains the crazy world of 2025.
The US filmmaker John Carpenter could rightly be called a cult artist. His movies always attract a ready audience of knowledgeable fans, and are usually moderately successful, but it isn’t likely you’ll see him on a red carpet during awards season, nor is he a frequent guest on the chat-show circuit.
One of Carpenter’s best-known films is The Thing, made in 1982, a creature feature about a shape-shifting alien doing battle with the human occupants of a research facility in Antarctica.
It was a remake of a 1951 production, The Thing From Another World, which itself was adapted from the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell. The 1951 movie was made at a time when the US was in the grip of one of its periodic internal wars, as conservative politicians ginned up a “Red Menace” to instil fear in the populace.
According to opportunistic politicians such as muck-raking Republican senator Joe McCarthy, The Reds – communists – were living among us, undetected, biding their time until their Soviet masters told them to strike, with the aim of destroying the American way of life.
The alien in the story, The Thing, had the ability to kill people and then perfectly mimic them, allowing it to infiltrate the human community and eventually take it over. As analogies go, it isn’t subtle but it is effective.
One Carpenter film that is mentioned surprisingly often lately in these bruised and bewildered United States – surprisingly because when it came out in 1988 it was not especially well received – is They Live.
Carpenter fans who love this movie will concede that it’s not without some glaring flaws, but what makes it noteworthy today is its central theme. Now, before we go any further, SPOILER ALERT: here comes the big reveal.
They Live came out 37 years ago, so if you were planning to rent the DVD or stream it on Netflix this weekend, sorry. The central plot of the movie is this: Aliens have invaded our planet Earth – or at the very least the US part of it – and taken control. But it was a bloodless conquest, done by stealth.
These aliens have the ability to appear perfectly human and now live and work among us. How? Doesn’t matter, something to do with technology.
More importantly, the aliens have co-opted key humans into their takeover, by giving them access to vast wealth and power. Again, the analogy isn’t deep.
When Carpenter made They Live – he was the film’s director, co-wrote the soundtrack, and wrote the screenplay, based on a 1963 short story by Ray Nelson – the US was being ruled by a conservative government fronted by actor Ronald Reagan.
At the time, in an interview, Carpenter called the aliens in his movie “free enterprisers from outer space” who are “exploiting Earth as if it’s a third-world planet. I began watching TV again. I quickly realised that everything we see is designed to sell us something.
The only thing they want to do is take our money.” It doesn’t take a background in literature or cinema studies to see the similarities between Carpenter’s outlook in They Live and the world we live in today – the world of Trump’s USA in particular.
The aliens remain hidden but their human partners, the ones who have betrayed their fellow earthlings in exchange for bigger yachts, more and better holiday homes, and larger tax loopholes, are fully revealed.
In Trump 2.0, along with the accumulation of stupefying wealth is the demolition of almost 250 years of democratic governance and the rule of law, replaced by a mutant hyper-capitalist oligarchy run by fanatics and ideologues.
Most upsetting is that so many people who have not been invited to join the alien invasion party and reap the rewards have been so thoroughly deluded by the traitorous humans that they stupidly go along with the desecration and destruction.
It’s like the chook helping out the farmer by sharpening the axe. They live, but so do we. As the Neil Young song goes, keep on rockin’ in the free world.
After many happy years living and working in St Kilda and Wheatsheaf, Jeff and Carol Glorfeld decided to retire to the motherland, California. What a great idea (said in a sarcastic tone of voice). We’ve kept our Aussie passports up to date and our eyes open for cheap airfares home. Meanwhile, we stay busy.
Jeff has a radio show, the Down Under Hour, music from Australia, on KKRN 88.5FM, streaming at KKRN.org. Have a listen.
