So I immediately knew what I was going to choose for my favorite monster, John Carpenter's The Thing. Both the name of the movie it starred in, and the colloquial name for the monster itself, The Thing is a perfect example of a number of the Cohen's theses. What I'll focus on here is how it matches well in Cohen's third thesis, the monster as harbinger of category crisis. To understand the context of this post, it's important to know that The Thing is able to imitate perfectly humans, but when it is revealed, it usually turns into some manner of monstrous horror and attacks the humans. It's a really great example of practical special effects from the 80s, and is an all around awesome horror film.
As the thing moves about the space of this film, it inherently acts in violation of how mankind understands biology, or honestly, sensible biological structures. Throughout the film it exhibits properties and elements of highly disparate different organisms, like spider legs that sprout from a decapitated head, or piles of tentacles that writhe about with seemingly no real purpose. At one point it creates a set of jaws in the middle of a persons chest. Such a mouth would have little purpose, especially since a giant tentacle erupts out of that space a moment later. What becomes clear is that the Thing can't be categorized in any sensible way like any organism on earth, because from one moment to the next it appears to be an arthropod, mammal, or a pile of every animal thrown into a blender and dumped on the floor with a pile of tentacles thrown in.
Secondly, because of how unknowable The Thing is, it defies any sort of categorization. The Thing behavior too is enigmatic in the extreme. Both the viewer of the film and the audience has no real clue as to how The Thing is attacking its victims and taking their bodies. Furthermore, the viewer never knows who or what is currently being inhabited by (or simply is) the thing. Really, it's never learned if the hosts of The Thing even are aware of their own status.
In one sense, The Thing defies categorization because it's physical anatomy is utterly mystifying, even when the viewer is allowed to observe it fully. But it also cannot be categorized because we simply do not know anything useful about it, many times because it escapes before the characters in the film are able to capture it in order to study it.
Overall The Thing is an awesome movie, and would be a great film to watch during this class. It's not for the faint of heart though, as it's pretty disgusting, despite the old special effects. But it has an awesome atmosphere, and has a really perfect example of a classic monster.
As the thing moves about the space of this film, it inherently acts in violation of how mankind understands biology, or honestly, sensible biological structures. Throughout the film it exhibits properties and elements of highly disparate different organisms, like spider legs that sprout from a decapitated head, or piles of tentacles that writhe about with seemingly no real purpose. At one point it creates a set of jaws in the middle of a persons chest. Such a mouth would have little purpose, especially since a giant tentacle erupts out of that space a moment later. What becomes clear is that the Thing can't be categorized in any sensible way like any organism on earth, because from one moment to the next it appears to be an arthropod, mammal, or a pile of every animal thrown into a blender and dumped on the floor with a pile of tentacles thrown in.
Secondly, because of how unknowable The Thing is, it defies any sort of categorization. The Thing behavior too is enigmatic in the extreme. Both the viewer of the film and the audience has no real clue as to how The Thing is attacking its victims and taking their bodies. Furthermore, the viewer never knows who or what is currently being inhabited by (or simply is) the thing. Really, it's never learned if the hosts of The Thing even are aware of their own status.
In one sense, The Thing defies categorization because it's physical anatomy is utterly mystifying, even when the viewer is allowed to observe it fully. But it also cannot be categorized because we simply do not know anything useful about it, many times because it escapes before the characters in the film are able to capture it in order to study it.
Overall The Thing is an awesome movie, and would be a great film to watch during this class. It's not for the faint of heart though, as it's pretty disgusting, despite the old special effects. But it has an awesome atmosphere, and has a really perfect example of a classic monster.
Hi Tom,
ReplyDeleteI agree completely! Carpenter's film is such a great example of Cohen's theses. In some sense, the thing is an embodiment of the concept of monstrocity itself. It is as if Carpenter thought to himself, "hmm... the monster is a category crisis, so how can I represent category crisis itself?" Nice reflections.