My thoughts? This Celtic Rebel guy is about 30 some-odd years late. He has almost completely missed the postmodern movement of the 20th century, which so happens to be in its death throes as we speak. Many consider 9/11 the fatal blow.
His use of
They Live as a metaphor for our life and times is *at best* nearly laughable. But he made some interesting attempts at it. The only problem is that he's rehashing old ideas that are falling out of use because they've already done their work and it's not working anymore.
Postmodernism was chiefly concerned with dismantling and otherwise undoing what was regarded as Universal Truth. Its main weapon was irony and self-awareness (i.e. metafiction, metafilm, etc.). It used this irony and awareness as a means to "play" with established norms, which they viewed as overbearing and controlling. It took what the modernists did with truth-seeking and went further. The modernists railed against established institutions and norms after the Great Wars and believed that the truth was out there somewhere; it's just hidden beneath the influences of the powers that be. Key modernist figures include the likes of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and the Dadaists. Have a look at their stuff and then consider their opinions on war, religion, and politics.
Postmodernism, however, took the modernist idea further by stating:
Universal Truth? There's no such thing. They looked at humanity as beings of fragmentation, isolation, independence, and crisis, much of this based on this idea that Truth was controlled. However, through such means as deconstructionism---as revealed and demonstrated through the arts---the postmodernists believed that the idea of a Universal Truth was impossible because of the complex and unstable nature of humanity. It looked at Grand Narratives as false and therefore dismantled them via localized narratives. This is where much of feminist, LGBT, postcolonial, and otherwise marginal art came from, this idea of fighting against those who would control society and therefore what is "true" and "real."
But as I suggested, the peak of postmodern theory occurred sometime in the '70s, but the art continued to develop for the rest of the 20th century, near the end of which we began to see art produced that would reject postmodernism on the basis of it being insincere. You see, if everything is metaphor and has underlying and playful meaning, it isn't concerned about the truth. It's more concerned about disproof or dismantling falsity. Irony is insincere, and people are growing tired of it. Some claim it's even dead.
So I don't understand why Celtic Rebel would use an example such as
They Live when there is a wealth of better made literature, film, visual art, etc., from which he could have derived his ideas for "we are ignorant to the truth."
But that's not his only problem.
I reject his arguments also because his sources are ridiculous. He uses, or otherwise believes/values:
- Faulty generalizations (we're all sheeple!)
- Neurolinguistic programming
- Subliminal messages
- Fluoride/vaccination paranoia
- The 9/11 Truth movement
- Freudism (which has pretty much been left behind in the 20th century)
- and I'm sure a few other things I have forgotten about already
Further, he views Lucas' work from an occultist/ufologist/divination perspective when the single most obvious sourcing for
Star Wars is Joseph Campbell's monomyth (Lucas is open about this). This means that Lucas's story is essentially a story that has been told countless times throughout history (so the theory goes; there are, at least, patterns on the macro side of things).
And finally, he makes reference to a perpetual system that cannot be controlled or changed by future users. This is more bullocks that the postmodernists have had a fun time with, mainly through what they call poststructuralism, a rejection of structuralist beliefs. Structuralism viewed human aspects such as language, meaning, social patterns, etc., as established unchanging structures (i.e. systems). However, poststructuralist thought suggests that this is impossible because of the complex and often chaotic nature of humanity and the universe. Human societies do not operate within a closed system.
This is a lot to put into a nutshell, but there you have it.
TLDR;
Our buddy Celtic Rebel is late to the game; the postmodernists beat him to it and did so alongside movements in art that accomplished much, much more than he could ever hope to.
Furthermore, postmodernism is pretty much dead, which means irony could possibly become uncool before we know it.
If he really wanted to be leading-edge and profound, he should have taken a more sincere approach. He should have just served us the straight goods instead of a silly interpretation of what's essentially a terrible film.
(With apologies to John Carpenter, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and a black guy who may or may not be Carl Weathers.)
Fight Club *would* have been a better example, as it is a great postmodern satire. Chuck Palahniuk's other work as a writer is typically in the same vein. The film adaptation was well done. It even had metafilm bits, the most famous being the first clip Eden posted. Another one was the bit they did of Tyler working as a film projectionist. Anyway, the book was written in 1996. The '80s and '90s produced several decent postmodern novels, and so Palahniuk was writing in the midst of that.
I wouldn't say Celtic Rebel ripped off
Fight Club philosophy; more accurately, he's trying to be a postmodernist a few years too late. Besides, I see more of Don DeLillo in this. You should read DeLillo if only for his commentary on consumerist society. Start with
White Noise (1985).