[Creation date: Unknown, found in the OWS Anarchives, transcribed by Jez 2012.MAY.15]

Lessons from Movie History: the Men In Black (release date 1997.JUL.2)

Introduction

In the days before the whole world changed, when Tall Towers still stood in the Nation of Money, the Earth was an intergalactic savoir.  And New York City, was one of its major hubs!  

It stood as a refuge for all those “aliens” without a planet, all the kind and wonderful people who have no home.  Everyone was invited to come, COME! Come be a part of the Nation of Money!

And those aliens came.  Not the “aliens” who get stopped by those officers of The Law at the borders between the nation of money.  No!  These were Real Aliens, people who could not claim to be a part of OUR home, the Home of the Human Race’s, which would willingly accept and tolerate these outsiders out of the kindness of their hearts.

But not everybody knew it at the time…in fact, this dude Detective Lowry finds out only after he is racing down the street trying to catch up with a white guy, not for any violent reasons it seems, maybe a thief or something, but the other 2 cracker cops can’t hack it, being a little pudgy around the midsection, but this black guy, Lowry, he is lean, ripped, and clever too, even while he’s running after him down the street!  he says, “Freeze!  I said FREEZE! …freeze means stop you idiot!”  Hahaha, well he’s chasing this guy down the street when the guy jumps up, jumps OFF of! the top of an overpass to a road 50 feet below!

AND Lowry keeps chasing!  He jumps off the bridge, onto a moving tour bus passing below, and then just gets up, dusts himself off, and says, “In New York, it just be raining black people.”  The tourists all snap their cameras in delight…

Lowry catches the back of a New York Post delivery van and catches up to the thief cracker.  The guy almost pulls a strange gun on him that evaporates when Lowry knocks it to the ground.   The cracker runs off and Lowry loses sight of him…until he leaps out of the bushes and crawls up the side of the Guggenheim!  Lowry’s starting to see his self-consciousness now, but gets all worked up and shoots a hole through the doors.  He races up the elliptical stairwell, spiralling wider and wider until he arrives at the roof door where he catches the ”thief”.  

PostCrypt

After the matter, no one questioned why he had run after the suspect.  No one questioned why he decided to break into the Guggenheim to go catch him.  Mostly, the superior officers just laughed at him as he tried to explain what had happened to him, that aliens existed.  I guess they just don’t care why the guy eventually jumped off the building, or bother to take an autopsy on the body’s eyes.  

-Nah, don’t worry about it- you’ll say, -the people probably just flashy-thinged them.  This is just how cops ARE.-

Why does it seem like people just accept that every time a cop does something illegal in a movie, he’s actually justified in enforcing The Law.  Maybe because in most cop movies and TV shows, the Cops are the Heroes…

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Humans don’t need to know - people are dumb panicky dangerous animals!…Imagine what you’ll know tmoro (cf. K’s speech on human reality)

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Lowry gets an opportunity at the modern man’s dream: to never exist anywhere, Ever! - As K says,”it’s only worth it, if you’re strong enough!”

N.B. NYPD is the COOOLEST out of all the recruits from our nations Armed Forces…yes, the NYPD is more badass than all of them.  Does it seem at all strange that it’s a black guy who is the NYPD’s recruit?

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It’s a fuckin airport!  The Earth is a fucking intergalactic airport!  People just want to see our World!  But shush we don’t want anything to do with them…   MIB is the Earth’s “customs” police.  Who knows what kind of extortion they do at our borders?  No one watches the Men in Black…except at the movies, of course!  Everything they do there is exciting, makes us feel like we’re part of the ones in the know, also doesn’t mention all of the bureacratic handiwork that most governments and extortion rings exist on.

The MIB do not report to the government (They ask too many questions…oh really?  well, wouldn’t you know it!)  They own a few patents on items that we confiscated from out-of-state visitors: Velcro, microwave ovens, liposuction…

WARNING: Universal Translator — the MIB not supposed to have this!  In part because English is looked upon as a language so disgusting that it’s an infectious disease.  But it kind of makes you proud, doesn’t it?

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The MIB Promise

We make sure to put ALL OF THE LEGAL ALIENS UNDER SURVEILLANCE!  24 hours a day!  We promise!

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MIB Policy/Mantra

Give up all of your identifying features, Do everything that we tell you, and then and only THEN: we will let you to be the most powerful person in the entire world. You are No longer part of the system.  You are above the system.  Over.  Beyond it. We are Them.  We are They.  We are the Men In Black.

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And wouldn’t you know it, the black guy looks better than the old white fart in the MIB suit!

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Resident alien cards in the Future:

The MIB don’t feel weird about interrupting the birth of a couple’s child to question the man about why he is leaving his designated area.

The MIB control the past and the future - they regularly erase our memories to keep us from possessing our own knowledge. They keep us in a perpetual present by preventing our acknowledgement that aliens exist, humans are not the greatest thing in the univere, and thereby fundamentally altering the present order of the planet.  They are the Status Quo Police (SQP).  

The greatest danger to the Earth, at this moment, is the Bugs.  Not the Archillians who will ultimately threaten this planet.  They infest and live off the dead and dying flesh of whatever place they inhabit.  Definitely strange.  Perhaps even too strange…don’t they also call those kinds of things capitalists?

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The pretty young coroner, who has just received two alien bodies, expresses an attraction to Lowry.  She says, “You have pretty eyes,” while they dig their hands into the stomach cavity of one of the alien-looking humans.  ”Well, thank you ma’am,” J says.  They look deeper into the cavity…and turn to look into each other’s eyes.  ”Have we met before?” she interrupts her explanation of the strange alien body, “I’m having one of the strangest feelings of deja vu.” “Yeah me too,” Lowry replies.  They stare briefly at each other, but they quickly jump back to the strange bodies. (J and the coroner have actually met before…she raced through his life just before he left the Force, and the MIB erased all their memories.)

She continues exploring the dead body with her hand.  Noticing the discomfort of J, she turns and asks, “Is this freaking you out?”  ”No!  Naw, girl you…” J stumbles through his words…[apparently this girls likes to get FREAKY]  ”You know what I like to do when it’s really late?” she asks suggestively.  ”Uh, no what?” J stammers…

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Would you stop that, it’s going to give her brain cancer or something.

It never hurt her before.

How many times have you done that to her?

Eh, a couple.

Have you ever flashy-thinged me?  

No.

Hey, how many times have you flashy-thinged me?

And no one will ever know for sure…

[musical interlude]

Agent K zooms into the backyard of his wife’s house using some pre-modern version of Google Street View.  They say, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…” but K hasn’t really lost her yet…though he has lost himself.

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We do not discharge our weapons in view of the public!

There’s an alien battle cruiser reader to blow up the planet, We don’t have time for this cover up bull!

There is always an alien battle cruiser, or intergalactic plague, or whatever, ready to wipe out life on this miserable little planet and the only reason these people get on with their happy little lives is because they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT.  (And They aim to keep it that way.)

The MIB come out as the Galaxy Defenders (returning the galaxy of extreme subatomic energy to the Archillians [cute little creatures that walk around nicely in human bodies], and murdering the Bug and his 78 million brothers and sisters (commies…).   

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UNDERSTANDING RELATI7VITY

Even after the Archillians are ready to destroy all of humanity because they happened to lose an EXPENSIVE & POWERFUL object on the Earth.  They hold the entire human race hostage to get the MIB to return the galaxy to them and prevent the Bugs from attacking them.  So who are the most threatening people here?  The Archillians, by my estimation.  Also, see the following notes on MIB time units:

• galactic standard week = 1 hr
• centuarian day = 37 hrs
• a galaxy that is millions and millions of stars can be the size of a marble or small jewel

the aliens play marbles with our galaxy among millions of others (this is a great moment: where it is hinted at that the little travails we have, the things that we humans fret about, all have very little meaning from the far side of space-time, in the view of DEEP HISTORY.)  (This need not be a dismal point at all times; we may utilize this perspective to our advantage!  Receive those great Ills as but little ones, or Better…receive them as great Boons!)

yyyyyyyYYYWHY DON”T THE DYSTOPIAS ever take place in a real location?!!!

Why was Men In Black a success?  It was a Utopian History!  It played loose with reality!  It was New York in an alternate universe (that wasn’t actually different)!  It could have been real.  It might as well have been.  Except that because it was a movie, every thing seems more clever, more exciting, and violence is always a little less disturbing.  Many of the most traumatic aspects of life seem easier to take, being projected larger than life actually is, and we so small and mundane.  

Other recent examples of utopian history?

- the Matrix (kind of)

- et al.?