Lots of people think that the government knows too much that we don't and that they take serious measures to hide it from us. Case in point: the Roswell incident. Hardcore believers in this alien crash-landing use it as Exhibit A in their arguments that you can't trust the government about anything. Exhibit B? Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing. There are plenty of films about journalists and ordinary citizens trying to uncover government conspiracies, but Men in Black flips the idea on its head.
Lies and deceit are the stock and trade of the Men in Black, and these guys have got the market cornered. Their job is to hide the facts that extraterrestrials exist, they live on Earth, and most of them live in Manhattan because anywhere else in the world would feel too weird. If by chance someone does find out, the Men in Black will use a neuralyzer on them to erase their memories and replace those truthful memories with false new ones.
We've all been told that lying is wrong, but is it possible that MiB's particular set of lies has benefits for humanity? Does that even matter? The U.S. government has covert operations going on all over the world that by their very nature, have to be, well…covert in order to be effective. And they're probably a lot more boring than hiding alien invasions.
Questions about Lies and Deceit
- Kay says the agency needs to lie to people because "a person is smart" but "people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals." Do you think that justifies what the Men in Black are doing?
- Is there an honest character in the film? If not, why do you think such a character is absent from the film?
- Which character or characters other than the Men in Black lie?
Chew on This
Men in Black's attempt to hide the truth is totally unnecessary, since we'll never be able to determine the truth about the universe anyway. Seriously, who'd have thought our galaxy was the cat's eye of an extraterrestrial marble?
MiB spoofs the idea that our memories are real; in truth, they're always distorted by what we want to believe.