THEY LIVE! (Part II)

The messages take place on these products: buy, sleep, watch TV, do not question, etc. I believe that the media is an important tool for manipulation, we can learn the truth from the media but not the pure, the whole truth. You can manage people secretly with the media, and you can shape people’s opinions, and values when they are not aware of that. Adorno and Horkheimer revealed the nature of mass media in their The Dialects of the Enlightenment, highlighting that mass media are involved in the reign of capitalism as a “mike” for the governments.

When you try to create a new cultural object, you can make people think they should buy this with the media. Furthermore, you can create people who always think about shopping / consuming not questioning the system and their thoughts are the same. 

You can form one type of community in which all people are the same. According to Adorno and Horkheimer, mass media art, politics, religion, philosophy, and commerce harmoniously and most time not only mixes these cultural areas but also create a common reduces it to a situation, to a commercial form. Even the music that appeals to our hearts is commercial. Only shopping values become important, everything else started to lose its matter.

For critical theorists, capitalist modernity threatened to bring about the death of the individual and the culture industry as a new form of domination was creating a one-dimensional society. This model of society parallels the practices of modernity analyzed by Foucault. Foucault's, individual death in the modern period in a post-humanist framework with the metaphor as an object produced by modern technologies emphasized the reduction. Likewise, according to critical theory objectification of the individual is a production style of cultural industries, bureaucracies, and social control of the capitalist system.

In the twentieth-century mass media reached deeper into society and made mass audiences alienated and isolated from their cultural roots. Theodore Adorno argued that “mass-produced cultural products of low quality replaced high culture and traditional folk culture”.

After that, when Nada examines magazines, he raises his head and sees a person in a different form and he started to analyze people, and whether their forms are different or not. He saw some people in different forms when he explained that to people, a lady in a different form snitched Nada. Nada started to kill people in different forms and he finds a woman who goes through her car, he forces her to her house and he wanted her to put on glasses, but she did not do this also, she throws Nada out the window before she reports him to the police. Later on, he finds Frank. Nada forces Frank to put on sight glasses but Frank does not want to put them on. I believe that it is a symbol of not wanting to become aware of it. Moreover, we will learn that people in different forms are from another galaxy so they are aliens. I think it is a symbol of self–alienation. According to Critical Theory, It is understood that the enlightenment was lost in myth, with scientific developments. While dominating nature and other people, the person who thinks that he is progressing claims to be alienated. 

However, Nada succeeded Frank put on the sight glasses and they started to search for other people like them who can see the real world and they found it. In the shelter, people talk about “how can we fight with “them” ?”. People fight with aliens with guns and violence. 

Since the movie is from 1988 left-wing Hollywood, I associated many issues with the Frankfurt School but there is a differentiation here: According to Theodor W. Adorno, a thinking person cannot be aggressive but in the film, there are lots of people who always use violence, maybe because they have no other choice. 

To be continued...

References

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Zhen, L. (2016). Relationship Between Mass Media and Mass Culture: Frankfurt School and Cultural Studies School. Canadian Social Science, 12(1), 23–28. https://doi.org/10.3968/8097

Sophie Fiennes (Director). (2012). The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology [Documentary]. 

Slater, P. (1998). Origin and Sigıifance of the Frankfurt School A Marxist Perspective (1st ed.). Kabalcı.