The OBEY sign from They Live
By: Neel Dozome
Tags: Design, Technology, Typography, Visual Design, Film

The OBEY sign from They Live

The COVID-5G tower conspiracy theory and the typography in John Carpenter’s movie

It a testament to the seriousness of the COVID crisis that both Facebook and Youtube have banned conspiracy theorist David Icke, despite his immense popularity. For platforms like Facebook and Youtube engagement (the depth and time an average user spends viewing their content) means more advertising $$$. Mark Zuckerberg, in particular, has stated that Facebook should not fact-check politician’s claims. While this is seemingly in the service of free speech, there is slight conflict of interest here. Fake, outlandish clickbait and outright lying is a far better source for revenue than boring facts. Our brains are hard-wired to engage more with nonsense, than we do with real information — the same way junk food tastes better than a salad. Google’s Youtube is equally guilty of preferring popular content over social purpose. The platforms, as a consequence, are awash with all kinds of false information, xenophobia and hate speech. The only God here is money.

David Icke had almost a million Youtube subscribers, and his videos discussing various conspiracy theories, it is estimated, cross over 30 million views across social media. His last video, about getting kicked off Facebook, had received 120,000 thousand hits, before Google pulled the plug on him, too. Icke’s theory fell afoul of new rules which specifically disallow content that claims the virus does not exist or offers false, medically unsubstantiated advice about the virus.

Icke is responsible, along with other odd-balls and cranks, for spreading the idea that coronavirus symptoms were somehow caused by radiation from 5G telecommunication towers. In the UK, Icke’s home country, there have been over 77 arson attacks on phone tower masts and counting. This theory is now spreading in the United States and other parts of the world.

Icke, probably the world’s premier conspiracy theorist, is no stranger to controversy. His book, The Truth Shall Set You Free, was even recommended by Pulitzer-winning author, Alice Walker in The New York Times.

The problem, however, is that Icke cites The Protocols of the Elders of Zion repeatedly through his work and with approval. Unfortunately, no matter how amusing or even insightful Icke’s conspiracy-mongering can be, The Elders of the Protocol of Zion is the primary text of anti-semitism. Much more important is that it is a completely fraudulent, forged document. Its principal purpose is the targeted defamation of Jews in order to prejudice public opinion against them. From Russia to Germany, this “book” has helped fan the flames that have led to murders, pogroms and genocide. In fact, The Protocols is the prescribed textbook of anti-semitic feeling. It has inspired everyone, from Adolf Hitler to the grass-root skin-head on his way to his local synagogue with a petrol bomb in hand.

Icke’s ban, along with his work, is generally discussed in the context of free speech and its limits. However, the matter, as we will see in this essay, is much more complex than a simple disagreement over what kind of material should be allowed to be circulated in the public domain.

The vulgarisation of high art

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is plagiarised from an earlier work by a French writer named Maurice Joly. The best book on this subject is a graphic novel by Will Eisner.

© Will Eisner

Maurice Joly was a 19th century lawyer and polemist who was particularly angry with the government of Napoleon III. Despite a ban on publications critical of the monarch, Joly liked to write exactly those kinds of pamphlets. While a monarchist and a conservative, Joly felt Napoleon III was a tyrant who was not respecting the limits placed on his powers by the French constitution of that time. Most of his books, put out by subversive editors, were destroyed. In a review of Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes:

The story of the “Protocols” is rendered even stranger by the labyrinthine history of plagiarisms and hoaxes that went into its making, and it is this astounding back story that Eco fictionalizes. One of the plagiarized sources is an 1864 French political pamphlet, satirizing Napoleon III, entitled “Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.” The author, Maurice Joly, who spent 15 months in jail for his efforts, attacks the legitimacy of the emperor by showing plotters in hell undermining a rightful regime. Roughly two-fifths of the “Protocols” so closely parrots Joly’s wording that there is little doubt of the borrowing. Joly, in turn, had plagiarized a popular novel by Eugène Sue, “The Mysteries of a People,” which presented the schemers as Jesuits. These sources are predated by a late-18th-­century best seller, “Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism,” by the French cleric Augustin Barruel, who charged that behind the French Revolution lurked a conspiracy of Freemasons.

In other words, conspiracy theory is not a new phenomenon. The idea of who is conspiring has changed over time: Jesuits, Freemasons, Jews or lizard-people aliens, depending on the political goals of the writer.

Joly’s narrative of a conspiracy targeting Napoleon III’s administration was gutted and filleted by Russian propagandists, and then deployed at the Jewish community. The point here is the vulgarisation of intellectual criticism. Joly was trying to hold the government of his day to account, and promote a just society. Instead, his work helped motivate pogroms and genocide.

The medium is cable television

Similary, Icke’s ideas about an alien-lizard race invading and living amongst humans as their rules is hardly original. To my mind, the plot seems a straight lift from the John Carpenter film, They Live. In fact, Icke has spoken in glowing terms about the film.

Obviously, when I first saw They Live as a teenager, all I saw was a fun action-movie. Proceedings involved a large Caucasian male. He had a blonde mullet, wore a pair of prominent shades and a lumberjack shirt. He proceeded to blow out the brains of the alien-monsters with a pump-action shotgun. Moreover, I had found my beloved Duke Nukem 3D’s source for the line:

“here to kickass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of bubble gum.”

However, almost a decade later, I discovered, to my considerable delight that Slavoj Zizek uses They Live as a principal text to explore the concept of ideology and how it shapes politics and culture in his documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Ideology is an important concept in this documentary because the subject is, literally, the concept of ideology (look carefully, it’s in the title).

Zizek summarises the plot of They Live and explain his theory of ideology (directed by Sophie Fiennes)

Those interested in political theory that describes how elites use ideology to justify social inequality can consult Thomas Piketty’s latest book:

The signage typefaces in They Live: A background

As Toshi Omagari puts it: “They Live is among the best films that use typography for storytelling.”

Many films, particularly of the socialist realism genre, attempt to educate us about the silly but effective tricks elites use to con masses. These movies can be boring as hell. Where Carpenter succeeds, and the empanelled writers of Pravda failed, is the inventive trick he uses to talk about what Karl Marx would call: “class consciousness”. When the magic sunglasses are worn, the signal broadcast by the aliens ceases to have effect. This not just reveals the aliens, who in this world are ordinarily camouflaged by the broadcast and walk freely amongst humans without being noticed, but the propaganda they use to keep humans blinded and compliant.

With the sunglasses on, money is now seen to be simply a piece of paper that says: “THIS IS YOUR GOD” Similarly, signage and billboards issue other commands. A set of directions states: “NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT”. A sign that you would normally expect to say “job vacancy” says “ CONSUME”. The most iconic of these commands is now is the “OBEY” advert in a magazine.

John Carpenter’s signature typeface for credit titles in his movie is Albertus. Rumsey Taylor’s linked article refers to an amazing coincidence. There is a road in London that has a sign that says “John Carpenter Street”. It is in Albertus because that is the official typeface of the City of London council. As the article puts it:

“John Carpenter was a 14th century figure and has no connection with the director, and the films precede the Albertus branding of the Corporation.”

A curious story emerges from the message boards and comments on articles discussing the typefaces in which the commands are printed.

STAY ASLEEP and THIS IS YOUR GOD is set in Tempo. CONSUME is set in Twentieth Century as is NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT (but in an ultrabold font).

But what of OBEY?

OBEY is the now the most famous of all of They Live’s alien command advertising and signage. The sign is now ubiquitous on the clothing of skateboarding teenagers in city squares around the planet.

They Live: a brilliant piece of print art from Roughtrade Books

OBEY is seen widely principally because the sign has been expropriated into a clothing brand by street artist Shepard Fairey. OBEY clothing claims to be “manufacturing dissent” (a wink, scholars trained in Critical Theory 101 will recognise, to Noam Chomsky). Fairey is also responsible for disseminating the “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker and logo into the streetscape which is also seen in many places.

Artists like Fairey are “subvertisers” — artists who are interested in hijacking the messaging idioms and platforms of mainstream advertising, and conducting media experiments, to transmit political ideas. One of the most creative examples is “Led by Donkeys”, a group of British subvertisers who regularly punk their government.

Toshi Omagari’s article remains inconclusive on the exact typeface used to make the OBEY sign. Commenters have suggested that Classroom JNL by Jeff Levine is a good fit. However, Levine only released the typeface in 2009. They Live was made in 1988. A commentator, Florian Hardwig, offers the most plausible solution, quoting Levine:

“A set of old die-cut cardboard letters and numbers used by teachers directly on bulletin boards or for tracing was the inspiration for Classroom JNL. In turn, these letters take their cue from typefaces such as Franklin and earlier wood type designs.”

So, this clears up the mystery.

The prop makers of They Live, film school graduates, must have used a fairly standard and commonly available set of film school stencils to make the OBEY sign — the same ones Jeff Levine used to make his typeface. It is easy to forget, in the age of computers, that typefaces can be hand-drawn or made from stencils.

Propaganda and technology

To offer an attractive service to advertisers, Google and Facebook build up a psychological profile of their users. In order to do so, they collect giant amounts of data about each individual. Apart from the damage done to an individual, by stealing their attention and focus, this would not be a wide social problem. However, this psychometric profile has become of utmost interest to a very specific kind of major advertiser: political strategists.

Elections tend to be decided by thin edges. Political parties are mostly firmly established in certain heartlands. What decides an election are “bell weather” places: places which where a floating population of voters can shift the overall result. Political strategists are always on the lookout to unlock issues that can motivate people to vote (or, in Southern America, prevent people from voting). This is why they advertise heavily. But, as Brexit and Donald Trump’s successful run to be elected to the White House show us, a very new kind of vote-bank has been created: the conspiracy theorist.

The psychometric data that Facebook has collected allows special interest groups to identify, for instance, people who believe (because of the tabloids) that Europe wants to prevent the English from having bananas with curves. They have weaponised this group into a vote-bank.

Social Media and Big Data’s neat tricks have facilitated dangerous ideas to influence policy. This includes preventing children from being vaccinated and inoculation or climate change denial. We are seeing a serious deterioration of political rights and basic freedoms. In America, women are on the cusp of losing a once constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy and maternal healthcare (including, but not restricted to, family planning and abortion), while the British have lost their freedom to work and settle in Europe. Conspiracy theory was once a harmless, somewhat niche activity. An almost genteel pastime. This group, the tin-foil hat wearers, were a kind of helpless people who belonged to a Philip K. Dick milieu, and spent their time fixated on things like cryptozoology and crop-circles made by aliens.

Before a professor at the notoriously puritan St. Xavier’s Mumbai filed a successful petition asking for a legal ban, there was actually nudity to be found on late-night TV in India. One of these programs for which I would stay awake was on TV6 Mockba — a Moscow-channel that would broadcast Playboy’s Red Shoe diaries starring David Duchovny (dubbed over in thick Russian). I had no idea when the broadcast would begin or if it would happen at all. So, often I ended up switching channels to Star Movies (beamed up from Singapore). Sandwiched between Shaw Brothers kung fu movies, They Live seemed to be on late-night loop.

That most ultra of ultra conservative-capitalist businesses, the Rupert Murdoch media conglomerate was broadcasting a film about how broadcasting and the media use technologies of mass hypnosis so that the conservative-capitalist-media axis can dominate and rule. Some humble, low-level Murdoch cassette jockey was using his corporate gig to broadcast John Carpenter’s message to the freethinkers and prospective delinquents of Asia. Our man, a mole embedded deep within the structures of enemy’s bureaucracy, was getting out a message to us.

Icke will not be the last false advertiser who guts and fillets powerful political criticism — whether of Maurice Joly or John Carpenter — for his own political message. That is why Slavoj Zizek argues that ideology can never be beaten, it can only be changed.