Grade: B+

[I]n order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment.

—G. K. Chesterton, “The Vote and the House”

I think that the degree to which the film appears xenopho-
bic depends rather heavily on one’s relationship with the rest
of the culture. For many of us film lovers in urban areas, the
extremist tendencies of middle America are not only fright-
ening but deeply distasteful, something to which we would
prefer to close our eyes. After Waco, after the stand-offs in
Montana, after Oklahoma City, after the Unabomber, the
disenfranchised of America appear to coastal sophisticates as
a gun-happy, Bible-thumping, multi-pronged terror, pro-
tective of its racial purity and distrustful of outsiders. And
in such a context, Piper’s stabs at comic book bravura might
remind us of our worst fears. However, if one holds an image
of poor Americans as people betrayed by their own country
and prone to extreme responses, then They Live becomes a
different film, the one modern action epic with a genuinely
proletarian hero . . . Most films are “ideologically incoher-
ent,” as are most people. The coherence usually comes in
bursts, singular impulses and ideas. They Live is a film made
out of sadness and anger, both of which it sustains right
up to its mordant final shot. And now, in 1999, it’s a film
whose contexts—societal, political and cinematic—have
disappeared. Which makes it even more precious and vital
than ever.

—Kent Jones, Turin Film Festival catalogue, 1999

Chaplin has always seen the proletarian under the guise of the poor man: hence the broadly human force of his representations but also their political ambiguity. This is quite evident in this admirable film, Modern Times, in which he repeatedly approaches the proletarian theme, but never endorses it politically. What he presents us with is the proletarian still blind and mystified, defined by the immediate character of his needs, and his total alienation at the hands of his masters (the employers and police).

—Roland Barthes, “The Poor and the Proletariat”

Pink Floyd, Animals (Columbia, 1977) This has its share of obvious moments. But I can only assume that those who accuse this band of repetitious cynicism are stuck in such a cynical rut themselves that a piece of well-constructed political program music—how did we used to say it?—puts them uptight. Lyrical, ugly, and rousing, all in the right places. B+

—Robert Christgau, Rock Albums of the ’70s

 

 

 

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