ENG 388 - 800 - 2010

Alex Bissell
Amy Shore
ENG 388 - 800
12/17/10

Watch the Skies!: Cultural Sources of Paranoia in The Thing

Paranoia is an obvious and easily exploitable well for horror films to draw from, though most make use primarily of surface-level sources; scares that rely on line-of-sight tricks and mere mise-en-scène fall into this category. For a level of fear that truly transcends the screen, however, the horror must derive from somewhere deeper. The most memorably terrifying films are the ones that pick at fears prevalent in contemporary culture and twist them to play on preexistent paranoia. Film theorist Thomas Sobchack says that the genre film is, “bound by a strict set of conventions, tacitly agreed upon by filmmaker and audience” (Sobchack 105). If this is so, then it is important not only to analyze the film on its own diegetic merits, but also upon the characteristics of the culture that gave rise to its conventions. Two films ripe for this type of analysis are the 50s horror film The Thing From Another World! and its 80s counterpart The Thing. A discussion along these lines hinges around the history of the Cold War, which was particularly active during both of the periods these movies were produced in. However, in order to fully grasp the scope of these films, specifically the 80s incarnation, it must also have recourse to the history of the AIDS virus beginning in the same decade. In order to build the proper contextual framework to work with, the analysis will proceed chronologically, beginning with Howard Hawks’ 1951 original.

	The period of time leading up to the release of The Thing From Another World!  is notably filled with Cold War paranoia. 1951 was the same year Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy proclaimed, “We as a nation must not be blind to the evil which confronts us; we must not underestimate its powers and we must not be guilty of failing to take adequate steps to defend ourselves” (Sandbrook 61). During that same decade, a different Senator McCarthy maintained a similar line of discourse, but instead of defense from “evils” without, his focus was on defense from those within. The “evil” which both men were railing against was, of course, communism. McCarthyism, named for Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin, pertains to the era beginning with his election in 1950 and ending with his censure in 1954 (Fried vii). However, anti-communist sentiment was very much present, and prominent, prior to 1950, at least since the conclusion of the Second World War. In the 40s, anti-communism was helmed by The House Un-American Activities Committee, formed in 1938, which made use of methods like legislative probes and loyalty oath campaigns to uncover communism (Lieberman 27). These forces were, however, given voice and visible form in the embodiment of Joseph McCarthy. His discourse was noteworthy for its paranoiac undertones, insisting on searching for, and finding, communism everywhere. Towards the end of his reign he pronounced that, “coexistence with Communists is neither possible nor honorable nor desirable. Our long-term objective must be the eradication of Communism from the face of the earth" (Eisler 119). These words are especially relevant to this discussion as they find great resonance with both incarnations of The Thing, as shall be demonstrated shortly.

	In addition to self-induced paranoia, more tangible international events related to communism took place before and contemporaneous to the release of The Thing From Another World! Just a year prior, war had been declared on North Korea by the U.S. in the spirit of the United States policy of “containment of communism.” This policy was based on the belief that any advancement in the name of communism anywhere in the world was the result of some master plan from within the Soviet Union (Neal 82). The ramifications of this declaration were that the United States began seeing the seeds of communism, real or imagined, everywhere it looked and was obliged to root them out. The history of U.S. intervention in Latin American politics is evidence of this. From the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala to the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, the C.I.A. was very busy during this period knocking over governments if they so much as breathed the word “socialist” (Gleijeses 350). A member of the National Security Council went so far as to say, of Guatemala, that it represented, “in miniature all of the social cleavages, tensions, and dilemmas of modern Western society under attack by the Communist virus” (Cullather 35, emphasis mine). A more direct parallel to the themes of both films discussed here would be difficult to discover. A virus, remember, is self-replicating, emotionless, and difficult to suppress, which leads this investigation to the film itself, and its clear parallels with anti-communist paranoia.

	The Thing From Another World! contains several overt references to Russian paranoia, but it also presents subtler allusions that require deeper investigation. The film centers around a United States Air Force crew that travels to a remote scientific research base in the arctic after receiving a message about a mysterious downed aircraft of unknown origin. Upon hearing this, the protagonist Captain Hendry remarks, “Could be Russians, they’re all over the pole like flies.” Upon arrival at the base they learn that a strange object has crashed 48 miles due East, and that it has upset magnetometer readings in such a way as to suggest a mass of 20,000 tons. Captain Hendry says to the leading scientist Dr. Carrington, “20,000 tons of steel is an awful lot of metal for an airplane,” to which Carrington replies, “It is for the sort of airplane we know.” The implication here is clearly that the downed object is an experimental Russian craft. This is the last direct reference to the Soviets until about twenty minutes in, when newsman Ned Scott says, referring to Hendry’s refusal to let him transmit his story, “Even the Russians aren’t that bad!” As stated, however, that is not the end of the film’s allusion to anti-communist paranoia, it also exists on a deeper level in the diegesis. The alien organism that the crew discovers frozen in the ice is a sentient being made entirely of plant matter, which reproduces itself rapidly in the form of seeds spread from its hands. Dr. Carrington remarks, admiringly, that, “Its development was not handicapped by emotional or sexual factors,” much like a virus. The scientists and servicemen quickly realize that if this thing were to escape the arctic it would quickly populate the world and supplant human beings as the dominant species. They are obliged to take measures to contain it; not just to prevent it from spreading further, but to eradicate it outright. The Thing From Another World! ends with the protagonist successfully destroying the alien life-form, however, it concludes on an ominous note. Ned Scott warns listening reporters, and the viewing public, “Every one of you listening to my voice, tell the world. Tell this to everybody wherever they are: Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.” The virus has been contained, but paranoia continues, much like the outlook for the Cold War at the time.

	Three decades later, The Thing was revived for a new generation. Many aspects of the social and political atmosphere had changed, while others remained much the same. The early 80s marked the beginning of a new period of activity in the Cold War, known as the “Second Cold War.” The root cause of this renewed hostility is usually given as the invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S.S.R. in 1979, combined with President Jimmy Carter’s exasperation of tensions by focusing on promoting Western-defined human rights in the Eastern Bloc (Phillips 184). Thus the international aura of suspicion and mistrust remained as strong as it had been in the early 50s. However, the days of McCarthyism and blacklisting were over, at least the overt elements, the House Un-American Activities Committee having been disbanded in 1975 (Manning 287). The United States even formed alliances with overtly communist nations, such as China, or maintained relations with those leaning in a socialist direction, like Norway (Njølstad 171). Even so, this did not mean that paranoia had come to an end, far from it. This increased proximity to communism, imagined or otherwise, made for an unsettled atmosphere in the U.S. Ronald Reagan, elected President in ‘81, frequently iterated in his speeches, “Communism is a single, world-wide force dedicated to the destruction of our free-enterprise system and the creation of a World Socialist State. Communism is not a political party, it is a quasi-military conspiracy against our government” (Kengor 27). Still, all of this does not account for the full extent of the paranoia represented in The Thing, for another, wholly new, factor had come into play beginning in the 80s.

	A major source of paranoia in the early 80s, besides anti-communism, was the spread of AIDS. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus is estimated to have jumped the boundary between humans and apes sometime between 1900 and the 1960s; however, it did not become known to Western science until the 1970s (Grmek x). The nature of the virus is that it attacks white blood cells, slowly spreading through the body and lowering its defenses. Jonathan Mann, Director of the United Nations AIDS program, has stated that “available data suggest that the current pandemic started in the mid- to late 1970s. By 1980, HIV had spread to at least five continents (North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Australia)” (Finkel 38). It was originally identified in the late ‘70s as Gay Related Immunodeficiency and was first documented as such in cases from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Thus it became known as the “gay plague,” and the only other group known to display similar symptoms were victims in Africa. So its association with homosexuals and people of African descent was cemented (Prono 3). The Soviets realized what a gold mine of paranoia and potential propaganda the disease was, and in 1992 the KGB admitted to the development of Operation INFEKTION. This was a covert campaign to plant and encourage rumors that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus was engineered by the United States government (Boghardt 8). Thus, an atmosphere of unease settled in over suspicions engendered by both the virus itself, and by human sources as well. It is into this political and social environment that The Thing was released in 1982.

	John Carpenter’s The Thing is a thoroughly paranoiac film, and the sources it draws from for its paranoia are both the recent resurgence of the Cold War and general apprehension regarding the newly-emergent AIDS pandemic. It begins by tracking a pair of Norwegians in a helicopter as they pursue a sled-dog across the Antarctic tundra, shooting at it and attempting to kill it with thermite bombs. The reason for their actions is that the animal is, in fact, an alien life-form mimicking a dog. In this incarnation of The Thing, the monster is composed of cells that invade and then imitate the host’s tissue, replicating until they completely subsume their victim and become indistinguishable from them. Thus, the Norwegians are attempting to stop the virus-like creature from spreading, as it will quickly populate the Earth if it escapes Antarctica. In fact, one of the scientists in the film estimates that it will take approximately three years for the thing to replace every living thing on the planet. However, the Norwegians are not successful; quite the contrary, their botched attempts to contain the creature lead it directly into the American camp where they die before they can explain their actions. That scientists from Norway should be responsible for introducing the virus to Americans is no surprise, given the film’s Cold War inspirations. As previously stated, Norway was one of the United States’ allies who were leaning in a socialist direction at the time. Thus, much like the Norwegians in the film, they would have been viewed with suspicion, as a possible inlet for communism into Western society. The virus also, however, draws from a very real virus which was just breaking into popular consciousness in the West at the time. Just like the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, its filmic counterpart attacks the host body’s cells, is easily spread, and is difficult to detect. However, the parallels to The Thing do not stop there. Note first that the cast of The Thing is entirely male, not a single female appears throughout the entire film, and neither are there any references to a female love interest at any point. This is highly unusual for a horror, as Carol Clover discusses in Men, Women, and Chainsaws one of the most important tropes of horror is the “final girl” (Clover 35). Furthermore, one of the central films that she investigates is John Carpenter’s previous film, Halloween. So, why have an all-male cast? As discussed, one of the earliest associations with the virus was the male homosexual, and it is no coincidence that the victims in the film are all men. Secondly, recall that HIV’s other stereotypical victims were individuals of African origin; not surprisingly, there are two cast members of such lineage in the film. Most telling of all is the movie’s finale. All of the characters have been killed except for the white American protagonist, the only person the audience knows for sure is not a replicant, and an African American who disappeared mysteriously earlier in the narrative. He gives the doubtful explanation that he got lost in the snowstorm, but whether he has in fact been infected or not is left ambiguous. Much like white America’s attitude to people of African-descent who were seen as the carriers of this mysterious new disease called AIDS. This open-ended conclusion mirrors the ambiguity which Western culture saw in its future, with no end to AIDS or the Cold War in sight.

	The Thing, both the 1951 version and its 1982 counterpart, draw on a deep cultural well of paranoia. Both incarnations coincided with a major resurgence in Cold War tensions. Both reference the U.S. policy of containment, in which communism, the monster, must not be allowed to gain a foothold anywhere in the world or else it will reproduce and spread unstoppably. Just like a virus, as a member of the National Security Council put it, subverting and infecting everything it comes into contact with. Therefore, it was not just to be contained, but rooted out and eradicated from the Earth, to paraphrase Senator Joseph McCarthy. And all this mirrors not just communism, but the proliferation of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which provides so potent a source of fear for John Carpenter’s interpretation of The Thing. Both of these films are successful in their attempts to frighten precisely because they dip into these preexistent sources of paranoia.

Works Cited

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Sobchack, Thomas. "Genre Film." Film Genre Reader. Comp. Barry Grant. Austin: University of Texas, 1986. Print.