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Popular Culture Review
corruption and amorality in government. Authoritarian order is not to be trusted
at any level, in any form. The President’s comments to the media, after he has
been saved, reflect a total disregard for those who helped to set him free. He is
just as bad as those who held him hostage. Captives living within prison walls
see no more greed, corruption, and selfishness than those who live on the outside.
Evil is omnipresent.
Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing features a more physical
construction of the dark side, although here it seems especially graphically evil
because its presence kills, imitates, and assimilates existing forms of life,
resulting in a world where no one can be trusted. Beings taken over by this
malevolent force, which came to Earth with the long-ago crash of an alien
spaceship, look and act just like everyone else. They appear to be normal, but
within there is another being: a rampant, steaming, oozing infection. Mankind is
being dehumanized; people taken over are no longer concerned about anyone
else. The goals of these creatures are strictly self-centered. They may display a
familiar, friendly demeanor, but underneath (like unbridled capitalists of the
Reagan era), they seek to compete for survival, dominance and control, even to
the level of destroying all others. The setting here is a metaphor for the world we
really live in. Evil prevails within and without. Who is your friend? Who is your
enemy? How do you know?
Prince o f Darkness (1987) features a direct confrontation with evil in the
form of the Devil himself, which is in the shape of a green liquid, buried eons
earlier by the father of Satan. This “Prince of Darkness” is of extraterrestrial
ancestry, but from a humanlike race. It was a decision by the disciples of Christ
that this physical presence would be hidden away, and that the force of evil would
forever be portrayed, not as a tangible reality, but as a spiritual darkness, existing
within the hearts of men. The existence of an actual anti-god, with the power to
direct human minds toward darkness instead of toward light, is presented as the
mirror image of the God of popular religions. The Catholic Church here has
perpetrated nothing less than a lie. Robert Cumbow , in his Order in the Universe
(2000), describes Prince o f Darkness as Carpenter’s definitive film, one which
brings together his basic themes, including the genuine existence of the Devil and
“possession by the Devil as an explanation for evil, and an assertion that evil is an
objective, absolute reality abroad in the world” (Cumbow 149).
They Live (1988) combines the importation of evil from aliens with blunt
and potent social commentary. When John Nada (Roddy Piper) searches for
work, he finds little help from a bureaucratic unemployment office, but manages
to find himself a job in construction. A coworker introduces him to some citizens
of “Justiceville,” a community located in makeshift housing. He is advised that
“the name of the game is make it through life. Only everyone’s out for
themselves and looking to do you in” (They Live). When Nada comes upon a box
of sunglasses and tries on a pair, he is able to decipher the subliminal messages on