Description
There is a global fever that has yet to break, one which combines perceived and real elements of (geo)political marginalisation of those who conceive themselves as the natural holders of power, but who have been denied their inheritance due to shadowy forces who are actually ‘pulling the strings’. From Hungary to UK to the USA, there is a growing chorus of voices who are convinced that we are ruled by extra-terrestrial reptilian overlords whose technological prowess and social engineering lies at the root of their/our subjugation. In this structuration, transnational corporations, mainstream media organisations, and political parties (left, right, and centre) are all implicated, being tools in a planetary subjugation of Homo sapiens in service of the recondite designs of the Hidden Masters. In this paper, we explore two artefacts of 1980s popular culture – namely NBC’s television series V (1984-1985) and John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) – that we contend incepted, via visual cues, geopolitical codes, and somatic markers, a latent worldview that has found purchase in the current era via those audiences who engaged with such fare. Moreover, we argue that subsequent generations (Millennial, Z, etc,) – either through inherited knowledges, social media leakages, real-world experiences, or other means of engagement – have found meaning-making in such conspiratorial thinking given its capacity to explain their own troubled position in a time of peak liberalism and, in turn, allows such thinking to influence their political culture.
