Paranoia and Loss of Identity: John Carpenter's The Thing

Paranoia and Loss of Identity: John Carpenter's The Thing

In the midst of a horror explosion of the film industry in the eighties with the likes of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween leading up today with the popularity of remakes of The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Hitcher, one film still holds up to this day handling issues such as paranoia, and identity or a lack thereof. John Carpernter’s The Thing weaves these together along with paralleling one of the biggest issues of the eighties. The Thing is more than a film that deals with twelve men fighting off a being from another planet. Carpenter tackles what is core to The Thing and what came out from that film.
The Thing, made in 1982, tells the story of twelve men stationed at an Antarctic research station. They soon come under attack from a being that will take you over and imitate you perfectly. Soon, they realize that they do not know who is still human and who isn’t. A lack of trust soon turns into a paranoia nightmare where Fuchs, played by Joel Polis, suggests to MacReady, played by Kurt Russell that, “everyone should cook their own meals and only eat out of a can.”
It is apparent that what is one of the central themes of The Thing is how identity is addressed. One of the scenes in the film shows the remaining members of the research team huddled around a fire outside bundled up which only their faces are shown. With the lighting being the fire, it is difficult to tell who is who in this scene. And soon, each one of the men soon realizes that they cannot tell who is who either. The theme addressed in this film can be found in other films addressing this issue such as Don Siegel’s 1952 sci-fi film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of the same name and in Abel Ferrara’s 1993 film Body Snatchers In those three films, aliens have come to earth and start taking over people’s bodies. The aliens kill the original while creating a perfect copy devoid of emotion. One of the underlying parallels that Invasion of the Body Snatchers of the fifties makes is the Communist Crusade by Sen. McCarthy. Like The Thing, the characters soon realize that they cannot trust one another and tell who is real or a copy. What draws this feeling together is Ennio Morricone’s score which is devoid of any high or low tones, but a series of bass beats and underlying music.
Another aspect in the film that Carperenter plays on is the notion of paranoia and its effect in his film. One of the earlier scenes in the film shows most of the men hanging around one another having a good time. Once the scene involving the Norwegians is played out then the tone of the film changes. Carpenter lack of lighting shadows the camp now as a snow storm is approaching. The mood is now more tense as they try to figure out why the Norwegian went insane. As the film goes on, it’s apparent that this camaraderie has now desisted turning into a struggle to find some sort of trust. A scene in the movie involves the character Blair, played by Wilford Brimley. Blair has torn up the camp after finding out what would happen to the outside world if this thing came into contact with the populated world. Blair is put into a shack and Blair says, “I don’t know who to trust.“ MacReady replies, “Trust is a hard thing to come by. Just trust in the lord.“ This line suggesting that the only one that anyone can trust is from a theological standpoint. One of the biggest scenes in the film involve MacReady where he is cut off from one of the men who thinks he has turned into one of these things. He forces his way back in and the rest of the men surround him. It is this kind of paranoia that drives The Thing.
Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers used the McCarthy hearings as a parallel to the film, The Thing makes a parallel to another issue that dominated the eighties and that was AIDS. AIDS was a fresh disease that was baffling the health and science community. The disease infected all kinds of people to the point that no one could tell who had the disease and who didn’t. With AIDS and The Thing, a lack of identity, paranoia, and blood was what these two things had in common. In The Thing, one of the tests that was determined to be effective in seeing who was human or not was to draw blood and poke it with a hot implement. Like AIDS, a blood test was the only thing that could be done to see who had the disease and who did not have the disease.
John Carpenter’s
The Thing will continue to stand the test of time in the horror/sci-fi genre for dealing with these issues.