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For millennia we have been afraid of the unknown, the foreign, and unfamiliar. We’ve all asked the question: what’s out there? That explains why tales of monsters antagonizing the hero, life forms on other planets, and creatures hiding in the dark are so appealing to us. Even in our earliest works of fiction, we told stories of mythological beasts with grotesque and abhorrent qualities. These unusual characteristics often represent our deepest fears and it is to be expected that we would rather avoid them at all costs. In other words, it’s the uncertainty and potential threat that causes us distress.
Beyond presenting fantastic settings, science fiction manages to configure ideas that could not be told in a different framework. It builds realities that translate human situations into metaphors. The Thing is a film of this genre that elegantly articulates the fears of the time when it was produced. This tale of an amorphous alien represents the unease that was held for Soviet infiltration of American soil during the Cold War. That anxiety is materialized as an alien impostor. In this way, anti-communist paranoia in the West is embodied by an amoral and voracious living being.
John Carpenter’s The Thing is a 1982 horror film starring Kurt Russell. In it, a group of American scientists are stationed in Antarctica, separated by miles of ice and snow from any glimmer of civilization. After a violent incident, they are attacked by an unknown entity. It attacks its victims, assimilates their physical appearance at a genetic level, and tries to blend in and go unnoticed, virtually copying itself in every organism it invades. Thus, it inexorably takes out the members of the team one by one. As time passes by and despair takes hold, the characters must hunt it down and stop the threat that the thing represents to humanity. Above all, it is an effective, terrifying, and ingenious motion picture.
The possibility of mutually assured destruction began a few years after World War II ended, when the Soviet Union began to produce atomic weapons at an alarming rate. The American public felt anxious. This widespread angst was cemented even more in instances where both parties were close to full-on attacking each other, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the US Able Archer 83 military exercises. As a consequence, the Eastern and Western Bloc accused each other of suspicious or threatening behavior frequently and these issues persisted even years later. Furtive or not, tensions between the United States and the USSR rose in waves, and the possibility of a planned attack was in everyone’s mouth until the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
In The Thing, the monster initially hides in the dark. However, little by little, it begins to manifest itself spontaneously and in greater outbursts of violence. And just as human warmth is scarce amidst the chaos, so too is sanity fading. The characters are suspicious of each other; while some retain their temper, the rest act irrationally. Similarly, given its uncertain nature and its tendency to infiltrate, the thing not only usurps the physical appearance of the scientists but also destroys their interpersonal ties. With their only social contact during the confinement cut down, a struggle between emotions and reason begins.
The hostility between the characters is based on their fear of the unknown. Throughout the film, the monster manages to break the bonds of brotherhood. After all, the identities of their fellow friends are being taken away from them. Not knowing who to trust, the conflict escalates. The alien induces them into a state of paranoia, deteriorating their peaceful reality. As R.J. MacReady, the main character, says: “Trust is a tough thing to come by these days.” Fear turns men into beasts.
It’s no coincidence that we never see the alien’s true appearance. It is an entity without a fixed body that perfectly imitates the living beings it assaults. It absorbs them and assimilates them. It seems to have no sense of identity: it’s just a casing that covers an impassive desire to spread. “The chameleon strikes in the dark,“ says one of the characters. Its relentless and cruel manifestation invites us to think of something versatile that can take on new forms as required. In that case, what if we translate the nature of the thing into real-life circumstances?
We should talk about the Capgras delusion. Individuals with this psychological condition believe that one or more acquaintances they live with are identical impostors. This replacement delirium is very present in fiction. But in this case, the Hollywood productions that deal with subtext concerning mass hysteria and the potential “communist threat” that stalked the United States during the Cold War also resemble this exact theme. One of the most recognizable illustrations seems to be Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In this 1956 film, an alien race seeks to replace the inhabitants of a small town with pod people: identical copies, but devoid of any emotion or feeling. This dehumanization element turns out to be the fundamental issue around which these films orbit.
There’s another motion picture that deals with this warlike paranoia: Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, a political satire without the whole systematic body replacement trope. An additional example might be a film project Carpenter himself directed six years after The Thing: They Live. Although this movie also deals with the issue of mistrust, it is approached from a different angle, as it functions as a critique of contemporary capitalism. However, in essence, the film works on the same principles: what if ordinary people were pretending to be something (or someone) they are not?
The possibility that Soviet ideology could be inoculated in all spheres of everyday life was frightening. Likewise, the thought that American notions of prosperity might be shattered by a silent foreign force (who stalked neighborhoods and chased families) suggested a hideous mental landscape. For these reasons, the most conservative sectors of the American population spawned initiatives that promoted McCarthyism and various manifestations of aversion to anything vaguely communist. This also encouraged the presence of the so-called Red Scare in popular culture, reinforcing the conceptions that were held about the Eastern Bloc. From a people who brought with them a flourishing concept of life dating back to the 1950s, this reaction was to be expected. And something similar was happening on the other side of the pond, where anything that represented the slightest hint of Western culture was demonized.
Whether it is a deliberate subtext or not, John Carpenter’s The Thing works as a paradigm of how science fiction is capable of materializing our social insecurities. Such fears always take monstrous or aberrant forms. This is why it is not unreasonable to consider that, in a post-9/11 context, a film of similar construction could propose beasts that metaphorically embody terrorist groups, whose actions still represent a threat to world peace today. If the film had been produced in World War II, the thing could have represented the gradual introduction of Nazi ideology into the American psyche. Hence, the formula can be repeated in any similar situation.
This appropriation of allegorical grounds has been made before. For example, when H. G. Wells published his novel War of the Worlds in 1898, the hidden meaning of the alien invasion that he recounted in his book was likely a direct reference to the savage European colonialism of the time. Similarly, 107 years later, in 2005, Steven Spielberg presented in theatres his homonymous adaptation of the original story. Refreshed by incredible CGI, the movie also included a very current message, only this time it did not refer to Europeans attacking distant lands. This time, Spielberg may have sought to convey the desolation that warfare had caused during the 21st century. Even the film’s screenwriter, David Koepp, has commented on this approach. Undoubtedly, the anachronistic saying attributed to the Romans of “barbarians at the gates“ gives room to be shaped at will. Some have communists at the gates. Others, European imperialists, and shape-shifting aliens.
The thing comes from outer space. We’re not used to fighting it. It just seeks to deceive us and to reproduce itself endlessly, just as the Soviet Union was thought to do. With an organism of this kind on the loose, how do you know who’s who? It’s a question without solid answers. It’s an ambiguous issue.
In reality, we don’t care where what intimidates us comes from. It may come from the other side of the world, from across the street, or even from the unfathomable void that surrounds our planet. We don’t care. For us, in simple words, it’s from somewhere else. Just as we vilify the neighbor who does not respect the serenity of our home, we can tell stories of sinister interstellar beings. Or Homeric epics with monstrous creatures in them. It’s just as easy.
Crystallizing antagonism is simple. However, the tales we create are also capable of bringing us together as a society. While we work this out, we can enjoy excellent films, which help us to understand our deepest fears and delight us with images that will remain etched in our minds. And one of them is John Carpenter’s The Thing. After all, if our goal is to fraternize, why not do so while enjoying good movies?
