"Men in Black"
PG, 98 minutes, 1997
Columbia Pictures

This is the science fiction comedy-drama starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith.
"Men in Black" merges special effects including space aliens into a man-on-the-street
kind of plot without looking cheap. We have no complaints about the acting or the
editing, but the script is bourgeois propaganda.

It opens with a scene of the INS catching a smuggler of people across
the u.$. border from Mexico. Men in Black arrive on the scene to take one prisoner 
and release the other Mexicans after welcoming them to the united $tates. Dismissing 
the INS cops, the Men in Black tell the INS cops to go about their business "protecting 
us from the dangerous aliens."

However, the INS is really clueless about what the real threats to Earth
are. Next we find that the New York Police Department is similarly clueless. Only the
Men in Black know what is really going on on Earth--namely that 1500 aliens from other
planets live on Earth, mostly in Manhattan.

"Men in Black" is the art imitating life of the conspiracy theory oriented bourgeoisie--
the wannabe intergalactic capitalists. Here we have the super-elite saving the Earth on a 
daily basis from threats far beyond the comprehension of the panicky, slow-witted 
Earthlings--including the INS, NYPD, the military etc.

So it is in "Men in Black"'s strategy for diverting some possibly class conscious proletarians
that the super-elite is willing to admit that its underlings really are
useless and petty, not to mention fat and offensive in the case of much of the New York
Police force for instance. Without such admissions, "Men in Black" would be much 
less useful as propaganda for the aspiring intergalactic bourgeoisie.

The Men in Black consider themselves "above the system,"
and indeed they are in this movie fantasy of the aspiring intergalactic bourgeoisie
which long ago went beyond petty national conflicts like that seen at the Mexican border.
The Men in Black want their rule to appear "neutral" and beneficial to humyn-kind,
as if it were possible for a state to be class-neutral.

When the first space aliens landed, the then merely internationalist bourgeoisie agreed
to take in "creatures without a planet" as refugees and to construct a whole veil
for their presence to keep ordinary humyns from knowing about them. In this way,
the internationalist bourgeoisie took the step to becoming intergalactic, while
retaining control of inter-galactic trade and immigration, the crossing
of the cancer-sticks known as Marlboros across borders for instance.
(The idea that superior species would actually seek to bring
Marlboros back to their home planets is actually the false self-flattery
of the backward Earth-bound bourgeoisie, but in movie propaganda,
images are everything.) The inter-galactic
bourgeoisie also gets the patents to a number of devices in exchange for keeping
things orderly and allowing Earth to be used as a refuge without most of the exploited
people's knowing. So we learn that the super-elite is willing to admit
anything about its underlings and the current state of the planet--as long
as the super-elite retains control of the real borders and trade that counts.

When it comes to depicting Amerikkkans, the super-elite sees a herd of passive
sheep better left to "go about their lives." New inductee
Will Smith who becomes "Agent J," asks why the Men in Black do not alert the
whole earth to the space alien presence. "People are smart" says Will Smith, but
Agent K says, "individual people are smart," but as groups "people are panicky,
and you know it." For this reason, Men in Black serve as the interface with the 
rest of the universe's species, without ever informing the rest of the Earth 
about the problem and opportunity. Clearly the Men in Black are afraid of having their
elite status overthrown when they refer to the potential "panic" of the people: this
is not surprising given the Men in Black's monopoly on intergalactic trade and
continued defense of property rights in patents obtained from that intergalactic trade.

Some aspects of the movie are quite realistic. For example, the Men in Black
admit that the Earth's existence comes under threat repeatedly with only a small
elite knowing all the details. Racing around in cars, getting in fights, the
Men in Black often seem short-handed and overstretched. However, if they were
not short-handed and overstretched and almost overmatched, the Men in Black would
not be super-elite, would they? This is a clue that we are getting propaganda
about the rulers--that they work hard. In real life, what actually happened was 
that the "Men in Black" sat around at desks whipping up their
tabloids like the Sun, National Examiner etc. and manipulating other people to
do their dirty work. The true part of their picture is that the capitalist class knows it must
risk the Earth's existence again and again or give up its elite status.

Also realistic is the depiction of the Arkellian energy monopoly. When the Arkellians
lose one of their marbles, they threaten the Earth with destruction in one hour.
They fire a warning shot and are prepared to wipe out all Earth beings. What is realistic about this
is that it nicely sums up what the United $tates does in the Middle East--so we count
this as an honest sort of projection of the ruling class's own flaws onto 
rulers of future species.

As usual though, and in contrast with the sympathetic treatment of the Arkellian position,
the wannabe intergalactic bourgeoisie (WIB for short), the elite that really knew
what happened in the Kennedy assassination for instance, this elite also projects its own
flaws onto other species in order to justify attacking them. Completely inaccurate but 
typical for the bourgeoisie is the depiction of cockroaches.

The true hero of the story is a cockroach trying to bring an energy source
to his people, after taking it by force from a species that is 
hoarding all the energy in marble-type containers. This advanced
cockroach who includes 70 million cockroaches in his own family
made an unauthorized landing on earth in order to obtain an energy source. Forced to admit
that cockroaches care more about their families than humyns do, the script-writers
did allow that their supposed villains become upset whenever the smallest cockroach--even
from another planet--gets squashed.

To defame these beings of higher consciousness, the WIB
cooks up stories of individual atrocities by the super-cockroaches--eating humyns
and living in their skin for instance. When the super-cockroach tries to escape
Earth with the newly obtained energy source, he supposedly took a beautiful humyn
womyn with him for a "snack" on the flight home. It's such
perfect propaganda that appeals to backward patriarchal impulses in men, 
that instead of opening their minds and learning from and making deals with superior species,
men are supposed to protect their beautiful wimmin. The propaganda screams at us "where would
we be" if red-blooded men did not protect their wimmin, "so you better get on board 
with our monopoly on intergalactic immigration and trade." Liberation of wimmin in this
movie is the false kind, with a token allowed into the Men in Black super-military
at the end of the movie after she blasts a creature of superior consciousness in combat.

Here is a species that can speak various languages instantly, fly space ships from distant galaxies,
shoot advanced weapons  we can only dream of and
use a universe of energy contained in a marble--
and the WIB wants us to believe that the super-cockroach has not learned
to synthesize tofu and that it would actually need to eat a humyn on the way back to
its galaxy for food? That may fly in an imperialist country like the united $tates
full of bought off bourgeois people ready to buy any excuse for capitalism
and war-mongering--even without the use of memory-zapping devices--but
we are sure most of the people in this world won't be taken in. All of this is not 
much different than the stories that the pre-galactic bourgeoisie told  us about communists 
in order to justify capitalist profit-first, survival-rights-second ideology. The directors
of "Men in Black" are just scamming us in order to justify the rulers' future rights in 
intergalactic patents and border control. However, we are confident the capitalist system
won't be in use by other more advanced species, so thankfully, this is a work of 
science-fiction after all.

Tommy Lee Jones is the epitome of the colorless super-bureaucrat saving
the Earth but never losing his cool and Will Smith did another great job acting
in an idiosyncratic role. The role that Tommy Lee Jones plays so well is necessary
as an exaggerated depiction of the rulers, but Will Smith's talents are wasted
on the tension involved in trying to integrate him into the super-elite. Far better
would be for a politically unaware, bumbling but talented Will Smith to stumble 
onto the dark secret of the Men in Black-- that they allow humyns to be 
butchered by aliens and risked in inter-galactic warfare,
all so Men in Black can keep their profit-system in tact. If that scenario
would be too happy and G-rated, the film's director
could allow both Agent J and Agent K to partake in substantially trippy benefits from
the Men in Black's rule with the tension being that Will Smith still feels occasional 
twangs of sympathy with other species that others in the Men in Black do not.