Code and Canon
“Give me a line from some literary work,” Prandtl said, turning to me.
“Shakespeare?”
“Whatever you like.”
“You maintain that his plays are nothing but coded messages?”
“Depends what you mean by a coded message. But let’s give it a try, shall we?”
I tried to think, but nothing came to me except Othello’s “Excellent Wretch!” That seemed a bit brief and inappropriate.
“I’ve got it!” I announced with sudden inspiration. ‘My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound: Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?’
“Fine.”
Prandtl had hardly typed this out when the tape began to move from the slot, a paper snake. He gently handed the end of it to me, and I waited patiently while the printout emerged. The vibration of the machine suddenly stopped and the rest of the tape came out blank. I read:
“BAS TARD MATT HEWS VAR LET MATT HEWS SCUM WOULD BASH THAT FLAP EAR ASS WITH PLEA SURE GREAT THAT MATT HEWS BAS”
“What’s this?” I asked, perplexed. Prandtl gave a knowing nod.
“Shakespeare evidently harbored a grudge against someone by the name of Matthews and chose to put this in code when he wrote those lines.”
“What? You mean he deliberately used that beautiful scene to disguise a lot of foul language directed at some Matthews?”
“Who says he did it deliberately? A code is a code, regardless of the author’s intention.”
“Let’s see something,” I said, and typed the decoded text into the machine myself. The tape moved again, spiraling onto the floor. Prandtl smiled but said nothing.
“IF ONLY SHE’D GIVE ME TRA LA LA LA TRA LA LA LA IF ONLY TRA LA LA SHE’D GIVE ME LA LA, TRA LA LA AND GIVE ME TRA LA LA HA HA HA TRA LA LA” went the letters of the printout.
“Now what do you make of it?”
“We have moved deeper into the seventeenth-century Englishman’s psyche.”
—Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
This tale of a lonely wanderer has become a narrative of interpretation (one that both begs and systematically deranges the interpretive impulse, like mine in this book). The world of the film, while still “analog,” nevertheless possesses a source code: They Live is The Matrix for an era of fax machines and fisticuffs. As many will have discovered in college English seminars, subjecting a given text to such scorched-earth interpretive vigor as the Hoffman lenses have brought to these billboards and magazines is to debunk the mystique of textual authority per se—and frequently to smuggle in an anti-historical, canon-smashing glee, not precisely what the professor intended. From a sophomoric perspective, if this stuff’s all just symbols, why bother? We don’t need no education / we don’t need no thought control. If language is a virus, take a cure.