Still from They Live (1988). Note the book behind the hero: On ESP by Edgar Cayce, which you can read for free online here. All stills and film © Universal Pictures. Reproduced under Fair Use. Image Source: IMDB.
On this blog, I have written about poverty and homelessness, the destruction of the middle classes, and how conspiracy theories provide dramatic and supernatural explanations for growing social inequality.
In 1988, horror film director John Carpenter made a film which tackled all these ideas. It was entitled They Live. Carpenter intended his film to be an attack on the Reagan era and 1980s' conspicuous consumption. The film suggests something prevalent in Millennial conspiracists' circles, namely, that the establishment élites are pawns of alien overlords who conceal their true appearance and feed off the energy of the impoverished common people. This is a metaphor for social alienation, racism, and socio-economic distress. But the film raises an additional question as to why They Live presented a story which many netizens now believe to be literally true.
In Carpenter's film, a construction worker named John Nada gets a pair of special sunglasses which dissolves illusions to reveal psychic truths around him. Glitzy ads are filled with subliminal messages intended to enslave citizens. The sunglasses also reveal that some wealthy people are malevolent aliens who are concealing their monstrous appearance.
This paranoid story updates older tales of rich and powerful people who were vampires and demons. The dehumanization of the alien interlopers overlaps with anti-Semitic folklore. I have presented an original argument on this blog that the new anti-Semitism constitutes a narrative combination of 1940s' racial theories with 1940s' and early 1950s' atomic and sci-fi tropes. The irony is that in the scientific technocracy, fiction - not fact - is king.
Images Source: IMDB.
Carpenter's film was based on a short story from 1963, entitled, "Eight O'Clock in the Morning," by Ray Nelson. The story is important enough to have been reprinted several times, most recently by Oxford University Press in 1998 in the Young Oxford Book of Aliens.
They Live has recently become popular again because conspiracy theorists like David Icke and David Wilcock insist that this film literally depicts our reality. To their audiences, conspiracists' fabulist constructions may resonate and it is hard to know why.
The medium is the message: people may be absorbing a sense of alien domination subliminally by means of the use of technology. Some problems in the human-techno experience - especially addiction and delusion - may have arisen because they were intentionally embedded in the medium's usage from the beginning. Earlier this year, one of Facebook's original designers, Sean Parker, publicly admitted that this was true of the social media platform.
That seems completely paranoid, but political insanity has evidently increased alongside the widespread adoption of technology. Current politics is more like a virtual reality game or Reality TV show than a catalogue of world affairs. Physically speaking, mass sensory experiences in virtual environments might be genuine sensations and perceptions, albeit not revelations of real world truths. The experience may be valid, but not literally unveiling the invading alien. It may be indicative of a deliberately-implanted message about the invading alien.
Image Source: US Patent US6506148B2 Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors / Collective Evolution. This patent has been extensively discussed on the Internet. See related sites and comments here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Perhaps this is an option only for the ultra-paranoid: the masses may be programmed to believe conspiracy theories about space wars, aliens, reptilian royals, financiers participating in human sacrifices, murderous authoritarian politicians, Masonic governments, secret society think tanks, Hollywood pedovores, and Illuminati-run NGOs and corporations. Whether sects (and aliens!) exist or not are separate questions to how the masses perceive these questions.
In the latter case, it is possible that governmental and tech authorities are nominally anti-conspiracist but may in fact sponsor conspiracy theories. Masked as the supposed guardians of decency and rationalism, they could set off mass paranoia as an excuse to entrench their own authority.
An image from a 1985 patent application, granted in 1988, is familiar now as realized technology; this virtual reality helmet was conceived as a mood altering device. Image Source: US Patent Grant, US4777937A, Mood altering device.
Virtual reality headsets are devices analogous to the magical sunglasses in They Live. Patents running back decades confirm serious research into screen display subliminals (unseen strobes, colours, vibrations, videos, and messages run behind the main TV or computer display which the user consciously sees); electromagnetic transmissions through screens lead to mind control and changes in memory and perception; mood alteration; and intentionally-created addictions to virtual environments, especially video games.
Therefore, we are not so far from a point where staring at the computer screen all day, much less wearing an immersive virtual reality headset, could alter public perceptions with intentionally embedded nonsensical delusions. Wild goose chases, rabbit holes, and confusion disperse mass energies and prevent violent revolution. Consider the following patents; plans from the 1980s are now bearing fruit:
In other words, patents indicate that screen displays and computers could well manipulate users subliminally and unconsciously. The experience would lead to a legitimate feeling of being manipulated, psychologically disturbed, invaded, and watched, or to a more general sense of disillusionment about the system. If technology leaves the user unsettled, much less potentially overwhelmed by subliminals and creeping tech addiction, then it is easy to project upon that disturbed sensibility a fear of traditional gods, demons, or aliens, the latter of which are gods and demons dressed up in scientific clothing.
TV FLICKER RATE HYPNOTISES YOU (17 March 2016). Video Source: Youtube.
This conviction would discredit the masses in terms of psychological health, and justify crackdowns, leading to suppression of wacky or unwanted (aka subliminally implanted) information; monitoring of online behaviour; increased censorship; and other types of social control implemented by governments and 'responsible' tech giants.
But again, these latter actors could have planted the seeds for mass manias in the first place. If this point is read through Carpenter's cinematic story, then the aliens do not exist and never did. For the main character, John Nada, the sunglasses are his real problem.
The sunglasses make the aliens real enough to render the story's hero insane, homicidal, and suicidal. Immersion in virtual reality isolates and discredits the troubled individual, who self-identifies to those around him as an economically-challenged non-conformist, thereby marking himself ready for deletion, because he sees things which are not there.
Scientists Want to Turn Consciousness On and Off Like a Light Switch (20 September 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
A virtual reality (VR) headset as prosthetic which the user can wear and remove is deceptive because it implies the user is in control. But at least it draws a line between the virtual reality game and the real world. We would be much better off if we looked at the desktop computer, smartphone, tablet, and 24-hour news channel as VR headsets. Every time you turn them on and interact with the ocean of information, political news, and infotainment, you are being sucked into a virtual reality game no less seductive and disturbing than the virtual reality video games reviewed below. The difference is that in the gaming context, the game is safely packaged as entertaining fiction. But daily news, whether from a mainstream or alternative source, insists that it depicts factual reality. This is misleading. News is mediated information, presented through mediated tools, perceived by the mediated brain.
Home Sweet Home Game Official Trailer 2017 (29 June 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
Elevator VR Scary Horror Google Cardboard 3D SBS Virtual Reality Video (31 July 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
Proof that the technologically-mediated presentation of 'news facts' can be counter- or anti-factual lies in crazy analyses of current news stories. Bogeymen can be built in to divert a professional or amateur researcher into Wonderland. Notice the demonization of political figures and the increasingly unhinged ways people are responding to news information.
I am not saying that news presentations are deliberate psyops. However, it is within the current technological capability of almost any group, including the MSM, to orchestrate real-seeming, grand delusions. Patents indicate that it is possible. These patents inspire paranoia about paranoia, and an attempt to find the wizard behind the curtain. They show that it is increasingly difficult for everybody, regardless of political persuasion, to distinguish fact from fiction.
It's not the fictional Pennywise that you need to worry about. It's the real Pennywise politician, and your corresponding inability to distinguish - in the virtual and bleeding-real spheres - whether that public figure is a real monster or the hyped victim of an orchestrated disinformation campaign.
Transference by Ubisoft (see my previous blog post on Ubisoft here); the game was launched on 18 September 2018: Transference: Launch Trailer | Ubisoft [NA] (18 September 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Transference: Elijah Wood Wants to Get In Your Mind | News | Ubisoft [NA] (27 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
ELIJAH WOODS VR HORROR GAME - TRANSFERENCE VR GAMEPLAY (17 September 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
TOP 10 BEST VR GAMES - 2018 (3 May 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Escape Pennywise VR Google Cardboard 3D SBS Virtual Reality Video (1 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
TOP 5: Best VR Headset 2018 (9 May 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
StarVR One - The New King Of High End Virtual Reality - MRTV StarVR One Hands-On Review (30 August 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Image Source: pinterest.
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