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riffraff

I wonder how many people familiar with OBEY iconography variations[0] or OBEY Clothing actually watched They Live.

It's a pretty corny movie, but it's quite good.

And regarding warnings, I can't help but feel Idiocracy is also one we're not paying attention to.

[0] I own a t-shirt with futurama's hypnotoad, and I love it

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Obey Clothing was founded by Shepard Fairey, most notably known for his Obama Hope poster in 2008.

Shepard often cites They Live as inspiration for his art, with his Andre the Giant Has A Posse campaign starting in 1989.

As an aside - one of my favorite works of his is Greetings From Iraq[0], from 2005. It satirizes a classic Yellowstone National Park postcard from the 1930s[1], in a criticism of the Iraq War.

[0]https://www.icaboston.org/sites/default/files/styles/origina...

[1]https://www.discovernw.org/mm5/graphics/00000001/DYNW_PLU106...

I know that Shepard Fairey is familiar with They Live, my (abstract) question is how many people familiar with him know of the movie.

I did finally see it for the first time last year, and I think it could use a modern remake. The best parts were the messages he saw while wearing glasses, and everything else was just okay for me.

In particular I found the ~15 minute one-on-one fight scene to be tedious after five minutes, and the pacing seemed really uneven, like it felt like they really took their time for the first hour, and then tried to shove all the rest of the plot into the last thirty minutes.

Clever idea and some great imagery with the messages, though. I'm glad I saw it for that.

At first I didn’t like the fighting scene. Then I realized that the protagonist said many times that he would never renounce fighting these aliens. That scene, though seemingly corny, is exactly the proof he would do anything. I think that’s’ brilliant!

Regarding Idiocracy, I think it gets more than enough attention. It's a funny movie, and a lot of its satirical barbs land, but its basic premise is a eugenicist lie that would cause a lot of damage if people took it too seriously. Moreover, even as social critique, it is rapidly becoming dated; broad-brush anti-intellectualism is certainly a problem, but it's not the problem - the political events of the past half-decade have reaffirmed that it's just one of a variety of types of toxic irrationality.

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