This month’s guilty pleasures both encourage America’s paranoid tendencies. Both movies describe in a more or less serious fashion (Carpenter will be Carpenter), a society where free will is jeopardized by the government and/or secretive organizations driven by profit and power.
To escape this threat, according to the theory presented here, individuals must live on the margins of society and have no personal attachments (loved ones are either dead or absent), indeed, have no attachments of any sort. Only through utter detachment can one penetrate the conspiracy which in Pakula’s film, The Parallex View, involves the assassination of liberals. Viewers might wonder how on earth these conspirators manage to get away with the large-scale recruitment of killers and all these assassinations. You’ll have to watch to the end to find out.
Conspiracy comes from an altogether different source in They Live, which tells the story of an unemployed man who professes a strong belief in the American way, i.e., freedom. His particular brand of paranoia is the result of a pair of unusual sunglasses, which allows him to spot aliens. He uncovers the aliens’ plot to control society using subliminal messages posted on every street corner.
Both films reveal the cost we must pay for free thought, and the process reveals how painful and spectacular reality can be. Only the paranoid need apply.

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
July 2005 issue