Journal of Popular Film and Television

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Cinema's Darkest Vision: Looking into the Void in

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)

Heather Addison

To cite this article: Heather Addison (2013) Cinema's Darkest Vision: Looking into the Void in
John Carpenter's The�Thing (1982), Journal of Popular Film and Television, 41:3, 154-166, DOI:
10.1080/01956051.2012.755488

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2012.755488

Published online: 02 Sep 2013.

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Figure 1. Blair confronts the horror of the Thing as he performs an autopsy on its apparently dead remains. (Color figure available online.)

I N ALL OF CINEMA
HISTORY, perhaps there has
never been a more unfortunate
release date than the one suffered by
director John Carpenter’s The Thing,
an apocalyptic horror film about a hos-
tile alien with the ability to absorb and
imitate any organism it encounters. The
Thing reached theaters in June 1982,
just two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s
blockbuster E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
Carpenter recalls the moment:
So E.T. came out ahead of us and it
was this huge, sensational hit. And
its message was the exact opposite of
The Thing. As Steven said at the time,
‘I thought that the audience needed an
uplifting cry.’ And boy was he right. . . .
Our film was just absolutely the end of
the world and was centered on the loss
of humanity. . . . What I could perceive
before The Thing was released was that
the audience was not interested. (qtd.
in Boulenger 171)
Critics lined up to denigrate the film,
especially its excessive violence and
bleak perspective. Vincent Canby of The
New York Times called The Thing a “vir-
tually storyless feature composed of lots
of laboratory-concocted special effects,
with the actors used merely as props to
be hacked, slashed, disemboweled, and
decapitated,” and Desmond Ryan of The
Philadelphia Inquirer sneered, “This is
a monster movie of incredible ferocity
and graphic gore that asks no more than
utter passivity and a strong stomach. A
walk through a slaughterhouse has as
much point.” Invoking a direct com-
parison with E.T., Linda Gross of The
Los Angeles Times declared, “Instead
of providing us with love, wonder, and
delight, The Thing is bereft, despairing,
and nihilistic. It is also overpowered by
Rob Bottin’s visceral and vicious spe-
cial makeup effects.”
Ironically, though the gore and para-
noia it offers elicited derision when it
was initially released, The Thing has
gradually earned the admiration of
horror film fans, critics, and scholars.
(Blade Runner, another dark science
fiction film, was released on the same
day as The Thing in 1982 and suffered a
similar fate at the box office, though its
critical recuperation proceeded rapidly;
within a decade, it was acclaimed as a
cult favorite.) In 1997, Anne Billson, in
a short volume on The Thing published
by the British Film Institute, praised
the film for preserving her “faith in the
movies” and referred to it as “one of the
greatest horror movies of all time” (12–
13). She glibly attributed The Thing’s
poor reception among 1982 critics to a
“generation gap”: they were simply too
old to appreciate a cutting-edge film. In
a 2004 essay for The Cinema of John
Carpenter: The Technique of Terror, Ian
Conrich points out that the “apocalyptic
all-consuming threat posed by Carpen-
ter’s indiscernible Thing” simply could
not compete with the friendly E.T. (97),
and he calls attention to the film’s stay-
ing power, especially on the Internet:
“The films of Carpenter . . . have been
extended over an astonishing number of
fan sites. . . . The Thing, in particular,
appears precious to many fans” (103).
It regularly appears in “best of” lists.
On the Internet Movie Database, The
Thing is ranked as the fifth best horror
film ever.1 In a recent compilation of the
“Top 50 Scariest Movies of All Time,”
BostonGlobe.com gives John Carpen-
ter’s The Thing the number one spot,
offering this rationale: “What makes

Abstract: The aim of this essay is to account for the uneven critical trajectory of John Carpenter’s
1982 film The Thing—the hostility that it faced in the early 1980s and the growing fascination it has
engendered in subsequent decades.
Keywords: apocalyptic vision, John Carpenter, deconstruction, horror, The Thing
154
 Cinema’s Darkest Vision:
Looking into the Void in John Carpenter’s
The Thing (1982)
By Heather Addison
this the top fright fest? Could it be the
fear of complete isolation in the face of
disaster? Or the invisible enemy in sub-
zero temperatures? How about the ter-
rifying feeling of not knowing which of
your supposed friends are who they say
they are, and not a shape-shifting alien?
Yeah, all those things.”2
The Thing originated as a short story
called “Who Goes There?” written by
John W. Campbell. It was published in
Astounding Science Fiction in 1938,
under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.
Ironically, though
the gore and
paranoia it offers
elicited derision
when it was
initially released,
The Thing has
gradually earned
the admiration of
horror film fans,
critics, and scholars.
In Campbell’s tale, thirty-seven men
stationed in the Antarctic find an alien
with red eyes and worm-like blue hair
frozen in ancient ice. It awakens and
wreaks havoc on their camp by imi-
tating humans and undermining trust
between team members. Yet there is
a clear, upbeat ending: the men devise
a clever blood test that allows them to
“out” those among them who have be-
come Things, and they also prevent
the Thing from completing work on
an anti-gravity machine that would al-
low it to reach civilization. More than
a decade later, director Christian Nyby
and producer Howard Hawks released
a film adaptation of Campbell’s story,
The Thing from Another World (1951).
(Though Nyby directed, Hawks is usu-
ally credited with creative control of
the film.) In this version, the alien that
breaks out of the ice has a humanoid
appearance and is played by a guy in a
monster suit (James Arness). Scientists
determine that the Thing is an “intellec-
tual carrot” that needs human blood to
nourish seeds that will mature into more
creatures. It does not have the ability to
imitate humans, however, and when the
men—and two women—stationed in
the Antarctic camp band together, they
hatch a successful plan to electrocute it.
Director John Carpenter, who pro-
duced three popular horror films during
the period from 1978–1981 (Halloween,
The Fog, and Escape from New York),
155
Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
DOI: 10.1080/01956051.2012.755488
had always admired Hawks’s mov-
ies, especially The Thing from Another
World. When Universal acquired the
rights to Campbell’s story and turned
to Carpenter as a potential director, he
eagerly accepted the project. Though
he appreciated the 1950s film adapta-
tion, he was also intrigued by the no-
tion of a creature that could imitate
any organism it encountered, so he and
screenwriter Bill Lancaster decided to
hew much more closely to the original
story. Their film presents a Thing that
can absorb and mimic living beings. It
is identifiable only during moments of
transformation, when it morphs, twists,
shakes, and erupts, oozing mysterious
fluids. In addition to its emphasis on
carnage, the 1982 film has a much more
ominous ending than either of the first
two versions, leaving viewers outside a
burning, abandoned camp with two lone
survivors, either or both of whom may
be aliens.
The Thing has experienced an un-
even critical trajectory, from hostility in
the early 1980s to growing fascination
in subsequent decades. Both reactions
derive from the film’s darkness: The
Thing is arguably one of the grimmest
motion pictures ever made. It is apoca-
lyptic, but it is also much gloomier than
other “end-of the-world” films because
of the scope and depth of its destructive
vision. It presents a complete disinte-
gration of the status quo, prompting us
156 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
Cinema scholars
have argued
that horror films
are inherently
conservative in
their reinforcement
of dominant
ideology, but
The Thing
“conserves”
nothing.
to “look into the void.” It provides no
reassurance or foundation for belief,
attacking or undermining nearly every-
thing that we may find comforting about
our system(s) of meaning: the body and
its strength, the quality or condition of
being human, relationships and the trust
they require, American individualism,
masculinity (and gender roles), and
our need for closure or clarity. Cinema
scholars have argued that horror films
are inherently conservative in their re-
inforcement of dominant ideology, but
The Thing “conserves” nothing. It de-
constructs human existence, reducing it
to an irresolvable uncertainty. Therein
lies the explanation for the film’s initial
failure and its later recognition as one of
the most frightening motion pictures of
all time.
Out of Sync with the
Reagan Era
The Thing’s release in the wake of
E.T. helps to account for its lackluster
performance at the box office, but it is
not the full explanation for the film’s
marginalization in 1982. Nor is the fact
that, as Anne Billson argues, critics
were too old to appreciate an innovative,
gory, visceral film experience. Politics
and culture were shifting in the 1980s,
and The Thing was out of sync with the
changes. In the 1970s, the era of Viet-
nam and Watergate, anti-government
sentiment, paranoia, and conspiracy
theories abounded. In Hollywood, there
was a cycle of popular conspiracy films,
including The Conversation (1974), The
Parallax View (1974), Three Days of
the Condor (1975), and All the Presi-
dent’s Men (1976). It was a time “when
the dominant ideology almost disinte-
grated” (Wood, qtd. in Jeffords 15). In
his analysis of that period, Decade of
Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and
the Making of Eighties America, histo-
rian Philip Jenkins argues that there was
a “sense of imminent apocalypse” (16).
This atmosphere might seem well
suited to a film like The Thing, which
brought both creeping paranoia and an
apocalyptic vision to the screen. Yet the
seeds of its repudiation were sown in
the mid-1970s, when the national mood
reached a nadir, “bringing with it a
much deeper pessimism about the state
of America and its future, and a growing
rejection of recent liberal orthodoxies”
(Jenkins 4). That nascent willingness to
reject the liberalism of the 1960s and
early 1970s set the stage for the “revolu-
tion” orchestrated by Ronald Reagan. A
former movie star and Republican gov- tion of that hard body, not for a return to
ernor of California, Reagan swept into the Carter soft body but for a rearticu-
the president’s office in 1980, promising lation of masculine strength and power
to bring a sense of national pride back through internal, personal, and family-
to a country that had lost faith in its oriented values” (13). Heavily muscled
strength and power not only as a result male characters such as Rambo (played
of Vietnam and Watergate but also its by Sylvester Stallone) became icons of
inability to rescue fifty-two Americans the 1980s. Instead of operating as lone
held hostage by Iran for over a year. heroes in a thoroughly corrupt system
As John Carpenter noted, Steven (e.g., 1970s icon Dirty Harry Callahan,
Spielberg felt that Americans were hun- played by Clint Eastwood), the heroes
gry for an “uplifting cry” and responded of 1980s films wrestled with a bureau-
with E.T. The Reagan administration cracy that had lost touch with those it
foregrounded masculinity. Reagan him- served (Jeffords 19), holding out hope
self was presented as a distinctively that the system could be made whole
masculine leader with strong family and responsive through the removal of a
values and an advocate for smaller and few “bad apples.”
more trustworthy government institu- Essentially, The Thing was the wrong
tions. According to Susan Jeffords in kind of film for the era of Reagan-
Hard Bodies, her oft-cited analysis of style masculinity and optimism. Spiel-
mainstream American cinema in the berg’s blockbuster E.T. sidesteps the
1980s, “The [early] Reagan years of- issue of masculinity altogether and of-
fered the image of a ‘hard body’ to con- fers a warmhearted, inspiring tale of a
trast directly to the ‘soft bodies’ of the benevolent, childlike alien. The Thing
[Jimmy] Carter years, [while] the late presents a model of masculinity incom-
1980s and early 1990s saw a reevalua- patible with the “Reagan revolution”:
 Cinema’s Darkest Vision 157
Figure 2. The deadly (homoerotic?) embrace of the Thing. (Color figure available online.)
MacReady, the helicopter pilot protago-
The Thing’s nist of the film played by Kurt Russell,
is a solitary hero who must deal with a
deconstruction system that has been thoroughly com-
promised (corrupted) by the alien. He is
of the ways in allowed none of the triumph that might
enable audiences to experience “per-
which humans sonal power” through his strength, and
reassure his muscular body is not emphasized
visually, so it does not function as a
themselves of symbol of “national power” as Rambo’s
hard body does in First Blood and its se-
their existence quels (1982–1988).3 And, echoing ear-
lier films of the 1970s that flirted with
is the raison-d’être the implications of the disintegration of
for its designation the system, The Thing confronts exis-
tential threats and predicts apocalyptic
as one of the outcomes: it is not only possible that
all will be lost, but also probable. Thus,
“scariest” films The Thing undermines the politics and
ideology of 1980s America. This para-
ever produced. noid framework, along with the film’s
eschewing of the “hard body” mascu-
linity present in many popular motion
pictures of the period, provides at least a
partial explanation for the uninterested,
disparaging reception that The Thing re-
ceived when it was initially released.
However, time and critical distance
may allow us to understand and even
appreciate the dark vision of nightmares
that are too proximate and raw for us
to accept when we first awaken. The
unrelenting nihilism of The Thing was
ill suited to the early 1980s, but once
that cultural moment had passed, view-
ers began to reevaluate the film and its
treatment of fundamental human fears.
It relentlessly exposes the fragility of
our bodies, our identities, our relation-
ships, and our system(s) of meaning.
The Thing’s deconstruction of the ways
in which humans reassure themselves of
their existence is the raison-d’être for
its designation as one of the “scariest”
films ever produced.
158 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
The Body
The Thing’s first major assault on our
state of being involves the human body,
which is injured, infected, imitated, and
deformed. John Kenneth Muir argues
that “the frailty of the flesh is the is-
sue at the core of The Thing. . . . [It] re-
minds us that we human beings are but
vulnerable packages inside vulnerable
sheathing” (103–04). Even before the
alien arrives, the twelve men at National
Science Institute Station 4 must struggle
to survive. The extreme weather con-
ditions of the Antarctic require special
protections: thick coats, gloves, masks,
temperature-controlled shelters, and
generators that provide constant heat. It
is a triumph of ingenuity that these men
can live in subzero conditions, and yet
their existence—dependent on a com-
plex network of resources that can con-
tinually shield them from the realities
of their harsh environment—is tenuous.
Any disruption of the delicate balance
that they have established could threaten
their well-being. That disruption is, of
course, the shape-shifting alien that in-
vades their quarters.
The vulnerability of the human body
is quickly established in the first scene
of the film, in which the alien comes
dashing into camp disguised as a dog.
It is hotly pursued by a Norwegian he-
licopter, whose occupants seem bent
on murdering it. They behave franti-
cally, inadvertently blowing up their
vehicle and shooting at the men of Sta-
tion 4, who are forced to kill the survi-
vor to defuse the situation. Bennings
(Peter Maloney), who is injured in the
gunfire, must have his leg sewn up by
Doc Copper (Richard Dysart). The doc-
tor verbally minimizes the seriousness
of the wound, telling the victim, “Aw,
come on. Four stitches. Barely grazed
you,” but the film underscores Ben-
nings’s suffering. There is a close shot
of the wound as it is being pulled and
stretched during the stitching process,
and he groans loudly. In the next shot,
a close-up of Bennings’s face as he ob-
serves the procedure, he exclaims again
and his body jerks upward, almost in-
voluntarily. This physical distress soon
emerges as a motif of the movie, and the
images that present it become increas-
ingly abhorrent as the alien’s influence
spreads.
Once among them, the dog circulates
quietly, searching for victims. The work
of assimilation proceeds invisibly, unde-
tected. A disease metaphor is difficult to
resist: the creature essentially functions
as an infection, silently invading victims
who can do little to resist their deadly
fate. Given the context in which this
film was made—during the early stages
of the AIDS epidemic—it is tempting
to draw a parallel between the alien and
the spread of HIV. If such a connection
exists, it was probably not planned; Car-
penter claims that he first read about
AIDS when they were already shooting
The Thing (“Feature Commentary”).
And the infection presented by the film
is arguably much more deadly than
AIDS: it spreads with exponential speed
and kills immediately. About halfway
through the film, the catastrophic po-
tential of the situation is made explicit
when Blair (Wilford Brimley), a biolo-
gist, looks at a computer simulation of
an alien takeover at the cellular level.
The demonstration shows a spiky, or-
ange “invader” cell entering a round,
blue canine cell, highlighting the inher-
ent violence and “otherness” of the as-
similation process. Then, the computer
spews out a projection: “If intruder or-
ganism reaches civilized areas, entire
world population infected 27,000 hours
from first contact.” Blair sits back in his
seat. He now understands that an apoca-
lypse may be imminent. This realization
pushes him to the edge of madness, and
he becomes determined to prevent any-
one—or anything—from communicat-
ing with the outside world or leaving the
camp.
Meanwhile, the physical horror of
the Thing’s presence is made manifest
with a series of increasingly gory en-
counters. The Thing represents a peak
in a cycle of “body horror” films that
emerged in the 1970s and early 1980s
(Conrich 96), including Shivers (a.k.a.
They Came from Within, 1975), Rabid
(1977), The Brood (1979), Alien (1979),
and Scanners (1981), all of which of-
fer extreme body distortions, including
parasites spread through sexual contact;
infectious, bloodthirsty zombies; alien
babies bursting out of human stomachs;
and pulsing, exploding veins. Yet none
of these can match the hideous ferocity
of the Thing, which compounds its inva-
sive power with a series of spectacularly
disgusting metamorphoses.
The first of these takes place in the
dog pen, where the newest canine is
finally sent after he has been free to
roam the compound. Alone with the
other dogs for the first time, the Thing
starts growling; then, its face bursts
open and snakelike appendages emerge
from its body, reaching out and ensnar-
ing nearby animals. MacReady (Kurt
Russell) hears the ruckus and pulls an
alarm. The other crew members arrive
to find a writhing, screeching, dog-like
mass. Misshapen arms sprout sponta-
neously and pull the top section of the
creature up through the ceiling. Then
the remaining part splits and an open-
mouthed tentacle quickly forms and
rushes at Childs (Keith David), one of
the men. Responding quickly, he man-
ages to blast it with a flamethrower an
instant before it reaches him, but a slow
tracking shot presents the disturbed and
disbelieving expressions of the crew as
they gape at the burning remains, well
aware that part of the monstrosity has
escaped and is now at large. This is the
moment in which they realize that they
are in a fight for their lives against an
enemy that can attack and disfigure liv-
ing flesh in unprecedented ways.
The horror of this perverted “dog
thing” is amplified by the following
scene, which begins with a snapping
noise as Blair conducts an autopsy on
the charred but still oozing carcass. Be-
hind him, fellow scientist Fuchs (Joe
Polis) flinches, while other crew mem-
bers stand at the margins of the room,
silently observing. Blair pauses before
inserting the scalpel, as if gathering his
nerve. “Oh my God!” he exclaims as
he slices the Thing open, exposing an
amalgamation of bones and twisted fa-
cial features beneath the outer layer of
tissue (see Figure 1). He then groans
and cries, “Son of a bitch!” Finally, in a
close-up reaction shot, he frowns grimly
and slowly bows his head, overcome
by the horror. He says nothing; words

are inadequate to express the mon-
strousness of the Thing. Other than the
initial shots of the men around Blair,
this scene focuses on Blair’s reactions
to the Thing. His disgust is significant
because, of all the crew, he is probably
the one most familiar with bodies and
their pathologies. Yet even a presum-
ably experienced scientist like himself
is ill-equipped to handle this situation.
His demonstration of disgust reinforces
the degree of perversion—and the grave
menace—represented by the Thing.
The disgust reactions manifested by
Blair and the other men are a distanc-
ing mechanism, a desperate attempt
for these humans to protect themselves
from this monstrous alien organism
and the specter of death that it brings.
Psychologists have long theorized that
humans seek to deny their mortality be-
cause of the irresolvable angst it brings.
Working from Ernest Becker’s 1973
book, The Denial of Death, psycholo-
gists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski,
and Sheldon Solomon developed Ter-
ror Management Theory in the 1980s,
which suggests that all humans continu-
ally seek buffers against the ephemeral-
ity of existence.4 One important buffer
involves minimizing our physicality,
our connection with mortal animals.
Disgust can be defined as “an important
emotional response that enables hu-
mans to elevate themselves above other
animals and thus defend against death”
(Goldenberg and Pyszczynski 429). It is
typically characterized by facial expres-
sions and related behaviors that signify
revulsion: crinkled eyes, an open mouth,
bared teeth, silence, turning one’s body
away, and so on, and it is elicited by
evidence that reminds humans of their
physical nature, such as blood, feces, or
other body products. The continual—
and often extreme—disgust reactions
displayed by characters in The Thing
are motivated by their desire to separate
themselves from the gruesome alien, to
deny the possibility that their bodies may
be absorbed or ingested by it. But such
reactions provide only temporary relief
from the brutal, inexorable process that
has begun. To the alien, humans are sim-
ply tissue to be assimilated; it is not con-
cerned with their identities as individu-
Cinema’s Darkest Vision 159
The continual—and
often extreme—
disgust reactions
displayed by
characters in
The Thing are
motivated by their
desire to separate
themselves from
the gruesome
alien, to deny
the possibility
that their bodies
may be absorbed
or ingested by it.
als in a system of meaning. Confronted
by their physical vulnerability, the men
become increasingly frantic and terri-
fied, especially as they realize the full
implications of the threat to their status
as human beings.
Humanity
The Thing’s imitative ability allows
it to blur the line between humans and
the animal world, calling the human-
ity of the crew into question. Carpenter
himself has claimed that humanity is at
the center of this film: “What we were
saying in The Thing is not about an epi-
demic of some sort. . . . The Thing has
to do essentially—even though there is
this extra-terrestrial virus—with losing
your humanity and losing humanness”
(qtd. in Boulenger 135–36). If we define
humanity as “the quality or condition of
being human,” it is progressively desta-
bilized by the Thing. First, it eradicates
the distinction between humans and ani-
mals by reminding humans of their mor-
tality and showing them that they can
easily be “blended” with other animals.
The Things that the men confront over
the course the film are a concatenation
of organisms: humans, dogs, plants, and
other, often unidentifiable, creatures.
The alien also undermines the notion
of “humanity” by creating a negative,
or non-human, category that threatens
to overwhelm humans, destroying their
identities and their culture.
Arguing for a social theory of the
horror genre in a 1988 essay, Stephen
Prince highlights the chaos and fear
that result when systems of order and
meaning are breached in horror films.
He points to the loss of humanity in The
Thing as an exemplar of this dynamic:
“[The Thing’s] very existence chal-
lenges the ontology separating human
from nonhuman, solid from liquid, ed-
ible from inedible. It threatens to erase
the distinctions and, in doing so, to erase
the bounded human world” (126). He
refers to the Thing as the “negative cate-
gory, the shadow area, the taboo” (128):
it represents the internal contradictions
that can threaten social order and tear it
apart. In this case, it forces the men to
confront essential questions: What does
it mean to be human? Is there a differ-
ence between humans and aliens imitat-
ing humans? Childs, one of the crew,
asks the other men: “So, how do we
know who’s human? If I was an imita-
tion, a perfect imitation, how would you
know if it was really me?” Carpenter
claims that he and other members of the
cast and crew wrestled with the question
of the characters’ awareness of their as-
similation: “We [the actors and crew]
had big discussions about whether you
would know you were the Thing if you
got imitated” (“Feature Commentary”).
They couldn’t reach any definitive con-
clusions. For the characters in the film,
the implications of that aporia are ter-
rifying. If the Thing perfectly imitates
the organisms it takes over, maybe the
organisms themselves would not real-
ize what had happened. It is the ultimate
horror—not knowing if one is still hu-
man, or even what it truly means to be
human.
The film does offer the characters
some ontological reassurance, but it
160 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
is based on a biological conception of
humanity: the notion that humans share
common tissue. After Blair goes on a
rampage and destroys all the camp ve-
hicles and all means of communication
with the outside world, the men con-
sider how they might bring the Thing
into the open so they can kill it. If it can
mimic humans, is there still hope for
some kind of test that can distinguish
between aliens and humans? Interest-
ingly, no interpersonal or psychological
approach (such as an interview or ob-
servation procedure) is considered; in-
stead, the men turn to medical science.
Doc Copper says he’s been thinking
about a blood serum test. He proposes
mixing each person’s blood with uncon-
taminated whole blood that they have
in storage; he expects that non-human
blood will cause some kind of “reac-
tion.” The doctor’s proposal presumes
that all human blood is similar and can
be distinguished from the invasive alien
or “other” blood, an assumption that
emphasizes the fundamental connection
between humans. Importantly, however,
this unity is based on a physiological
characteristic; it is not dependent on any
philosophical convictions or emotional
bonds that the men share.
Before they can conduct the blood
testing, however, someone dumps all the
Figure 3. A castrating female? The Thing performs a sudden, double amputation.
(Color figure available online.)
If it can mimic
humans, is there
still hope
for some kind
of test that can
distinguish between
aliens and humans?
uncontaminated blood, prompting the
men’s paranoia to reach a fever pitch.
Finally, MacReady has an idea: when
the head of one of their infected com-
rades, Norris, breaks off, grows spidery
legs, and tries to run away, Mac realizes
that each part of a Thing is a whole. He
theorizes that dipping a hot needle into
blood from a Thing should cause it to
try to escape: “You see, when a man
bleeds, it’s just tissue, but blood from
one of those Things . . . will try and sur-
vive.” In a gruesome sequence, this test
does “out” a Thing among the remain-
ing crew members and clears all the oth-
ers, allowing a temporary regrouping
of the humans, each now assured that
his teammates are human. But the “hu-
manity” that they share is based only on
biology, not on behavior or thought or
spirituality.
Thus, this film suggests that human-
ity can be reduced to shared tissue, that
the complex systems of meaning and
connection that humans have devel-
oped are irrelevant in distinguishing
between human beings and monstrous
aliens. According to Robert Cumbow,
“Unlike the Hawks-Nyby film [1951],
which departed dramatically from the
Campbell story, Carpenter’s film is less
interested in its characters’ response
to their situation than in the growing
indistinguishability of the monstrous
from the human” (112). The Thing mini-
mizes the distinction between men and
“creatureliness,” a distinction that hu-
mans, according to Terror Management
Theory, strive to maintain as a defense
against their physical nature and inevi-
table death. Thus the blood test’s value
is double-edged: it tells us who is hu-
man and who is not, but it also suggests
that humans have no more in common
with one another than other, “lower”
animals. And the advantage provided
by the test is a fleeting one—the Thing
soon regains the upper hand, relent-
lessly overcoming the men’s attempts to
isolate and destroy it.

Relationships
The men’s efforts to contain the Thing
are undermined by their lack of unity. If
forming close relationships can be con-
sidered a part of the “quality or condi-
tion of being human,” it is an aspect of
humanity that the men do not manifest.
Despite the harsh environment and the
limited space, the occupants of the camp
maintain their distance from one another,
even before the alien cultivates their dis-
trust. As characters, they operate as ci-
phers, revealing little about themselves,
and they seem uninterested in anything
more than functional cohabitation. Nei-
ther MacReady nor the other men men-
tion their personal pasts or demonstrate
ongoing friendships with one another.
When we are introduced to MacReady
in a series of shots that recalls the pre-
sentation of Rick Blaine (Humphrey
Bogart) in Casablanca (1941), we see
a close-up of a hand grabbing some ice
cubes, dumping them into a glass, and
pouring a generous serving of alcohol.
He is alone, playing Chess Wizard on a
computer. Instead of having a game with
one of the other men, he opts for a digi-
tal opponent, and even that relationship
is rocky. When the female computer
voice (Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter’s
wife at the time) informs him that he
has been checkmated, he cries, “Cheat-
ing bitch!” and dumps his drink into the
machine’s innards. Unlike Rick Blaine,
MacReady has no close connections to
anyone, male or female. And the other
characters are afforded even fewer dis-
tinctive features than MacReady. This
may make it easier for them to dispense
with one another—and for the viewers
to register little sympathy when they do.
As Desmond Ryan of The Philadelphia
Inquirer noted, “Only Kurt Russell is
allowed to make a slight mark as an al-
coholic pilot. Without knowing or much
caring who the men are, one sits glumly
through The Thing as they are knocked
off. They might as well be bowling
pins.”
The other men do seem more willing
to interact with one another, however.
They bunk together in the main build-
ing (unlike MacReady, who has a sepa-
rate cabin). They play ping pong, watch
game show episodes that have been re-
Cinema’s Darkest Vision 161
In his analysis of
The Thing,
John Kenneth
Muir registers his
surprise that men
who live in such
cramped quarters
and depend on
each other for
survival do not
develop
fraternal bonds.
corded on videotape, and smoke dope.
But their close dwelling does not lead
to strong bonds or even the homoerotic
longing one might expect in an isolated,
all-male environment. “The men in The
Thing are curiously asexual beings,”
notes Anne Billson. “There’s not the
slightest hint of physical intimacy or
unrequited homosexual relationship”
(37). The men’s detachment from one
another makes them strangely—almost
bitterly—narcissistic, unwilling to put
anyone else’s needs or desires above
their own. Early in the film, after Ben-
nings has been shot by the dog-chasing
Norwegian and is trying to get some
sleep, he yells at Nauls (T. K. Carter),
the cook, to turn down the loud music
he’s playing in the kitchen. Nauls roller
skates up to his boom box, reaches out,
and then jerks his hand away, leaving
the music volume unchanged. He isn’t
actively trying to harm Bennings but is
unwilling to accommodate his (reason-
able) request. After all, what does Nauls
care? The other man isn’t a friend; he is
simply another person working at the re-
search station. In general, no friendships
are evident, although there is a point
at which Garry (Donald Moffat), the
leader of the group, protests when the
men prepare to destroy Bennings, who
has just been attacked and partially as-
similated by the Thing. “Bennings is my
friend,” he tells MacReady. “I’ve known
him for ten years.” This is a strange—or
at least, an unexpected—assertion, as
Garry has neither spoken to nor inter-
acted with Bennings up to this point, so
there has been no demonstration of their
“friendship.” MacReady shrugs matter-
of-factly. “We’ve got to burn the rest of
him.” Garry protests no further.
In his analysis of The Thing, John
Kenneth Muir registers his surprise that
men who live in such cramped quarters
and depend on each other for survival
do not develop fraternal bonds. Instead
of team members with close connec-
tions, the film “features a collection
of autonomous, angry, unpleasant and
self-interested individuals, as chilly as
the stark Antarctican landscape they
inhabit” (Muir 107). This lack of con-
nection is especially pronounced if we
compare Carpenter’s film to earlier ver-
sions of the story. In Campbell’s original
tale, the thirty-seven-member male crew
is able to come together, identify all the
“Things,” and destroy an escape vehicle
that one of the aliens had been building.
The 1951 adaptation by Howard Hawks
features a main character who has close
connections to the people around him
(including a female romantic interest),
unlike the protagonist of Carpenter’s
film: “Whereas Captain Hendry (Ken-
neth Tobey) in . . . The Thing from An-
other World functioned as part of a team
and depended on the contributions of
others, MacReady is always alone as a
prospective leader during the ensuing
chaos” (Williams 122).
Muir attributes the emotional iso-
lation of the men in The Thing to the
“interpersonal implosion” of the 1980s
brought on by the AIDS epidemic, when
people did not know who might be in-
fected with a terminal disease (107)—
although, as I noted earlier, Carpenter
may not have been aware of the exis-
tence of AIDS until the film was already
in production. In a 1990 book, Robert
Cumbow argues that “the creature is a
metaphor for the already deteriorated
condition of human interaction: decep-
tion, dishonesty, distrust” (115). What
is striking about Carpenter’s film, how-
ever, is that the absence of human bonds
162 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
This is the
fatal flaw of the
characters in
The Thing:
they allow
themselves to
become isolated
from one another
and the Thing
picks them off
one by one.
is already evident before the Thing’s ar-
rival. The men’s interpersonal isolation
is amplified by the Thing’s invasion but
not caused by it. Thus the film presents
a diegesis or story world of cold isola-
tion in which humans do not form strong
relationships with one another. This iso-
lation may indeed be a product of the
zeitgeist of the 1980s, though we must
remember that the film received a luke-
warm reception when it was released.
Perhaps audiences found its chilly ren-
dering of human relationships disturb-
ing because it was too painfully reflec-
tive of the social reality of the period.
The Thing is also an indictment of the
dark potential of individualism, a prin-
ciple or ideal that has traditionally been
prized in the United States. Many Amer-
ican writers have explored our country’s
celebration of the rights of the individ-
ual, and its connection with our western
frontier.5 Like the pioneers of the nine-
teenth century, the men in Carpenter’s
film live outside the limits of civiliza-
tion as they attempt to survive in harsh
conditions. And, like the romanticized
gunslingers of western lore, they are
loners, unfettered by close connections
to other humans. They prefer to depend
solely on their own strength to survive.
In the Old West, however, individual-
ism was continually tempered by the
formation of communal bonds, because
settlers recognized that they needed one
another to exist. This is the fatal flaw
of the characters in The Thing: they al-
low themselves to become isolated from
one another and the Thing picks them
off one by one. The film argues that un-
limited individualism is destructive and
may lead to humanity perishing from
the earth.
Interestingly, the Thing itself is a con-
tradictory being that represents both the
ultimate expression of individualism
and the denial of (human) individual-
ity. Each tiny part is a whole, with the
will, and presumably the right, to sur-
vive. Even the cells of the creature are
separate organisms trying to stay alive.
This mode of being is an incredibly ef-
fective one for the alien, which is vir-
tually invincible. But the film makes
it clear that the alien’s unbridled indi-
vidualism is not compatible with hu-
man life: if every part of every Thing
survives, humanity will be subsumed
and destroyed. Humans will be taken
over and their individuality—their ex-
istence as separate beings, bounded by
bodies, each expressing a distinctive set
of characteristics—will be lost. Once
the alien has ingested them, they are no
more than a series of cells working in
concert to “mimic” their original bod-
ies and behaviors. They become part of
the alien “collective”: the Thing literally
travels the universe and “collects” (imi-
tates) other life forms. Thus the creature
threatens the characters’ independence,
undermining their “fragile egos and . . .
their sense of individual manhood”
(Billson 64). It is ironic, given that the
characters are poorly differentiated as
individuals (we know nothing of their
backgrounds or relationships), that the
brutal fight in which they must engage
is one to defend their supposed unique-
ness as persons. The shorthand that Car-
penter uses to establish these characters
may be a device of genre filmmaking,
but it also suggests that the battle for
the men’s individuality is over before
the alien arrives. When the alien ingests
them, nothing special or distinctive is
destroyed. This morbid perspective im-
plies that the deterioration of humanity
is well underway before the Thing takes
up residence in the camp.
Gender
If The Thing highlights the destruc-
tive possibilities of social isolation or
unfettered individualism, it does so
in a masculine world notably absent
of females, a world that is strikingly
dysfunctional. As Gary Arnold of The
Washington Post noted, “The . . . cama-
raderie that paid off for the characters in
Hawks’ version is virtually useless now,
since the men must constantly suspect
each other. There’s also no occasion
for romantic byplay, since the outcasts
have become all-male.” Carpenter has
claimed, rather proudly, that the film
had “zero women,” even on set, “ex-
cept for a pregnant woman who went
home,” though he acknowledges that
he has been criticized for the lack of fe-
males (“Feature Commentary”). In ad-
dition to following Campbell’s original
story, which has only male characters,
Carpenter alleges that he avoided hiring
females because he wanted to eliminate
the distraction of romantic relationships,
both on set and on screen. Other mem-
bers of the cast and crew have celebrated
the (virtually) all-male experience that
the production afforded. According to
Joe Polis, who played Fuchs, “I mean,
you had like sixty little boys with heli-
copters and flamethrowers and guns and
a monster and we’re up in the Arctic [the
film was actually shot in Stewart, Brit-
ish Columbia], and I mean, it was a gas,
man. It was like going out and playing
cops and robbers when you were a kid”
(qtd. in Terror Takes Shape). Here, Polis
describes a “boys with toys” club that
does not admit women.
But is the film devoid of a female
presence? A review of the credits shows
that Carpenter exaggerates (or has a
faulty memory): a small number of
women did participate in preproduc-
tion, shooting, and postproduction of
The Thing. And Anne Billson points out
that although there is a “sweeping ex-
clusion” of women, females are not en-
tirely absent from the film (29). When
MacReady plays computer chess, the
voice of the machine is feminine. This
female personality is quickly elimi-
nated, however; MacReady refers to her
as “bitch” when she checkmates him

and short-circuits the computer by pour-
ing his drink into it, hinting at his (and
the film’s) animosity toward women,
especially the ones who outmaneuver
men. Billson also offers an intriguing
interpretation of the film that registers
the alien itself as female: “One fanciful
if rather diverting reading of The Thing
is of the monster as the eternal female.
Viewed in this context, the entire film
becomes the story of man’s desperate
attempts to preserve the beleaguered
masculine identity that is constantly
under siege from predatory woman, the
female gender being a breed apart, con-
sidered as somehow not quite human”
(37). For evidence of the creature’s
gender, Billson cites the scene in which
Doc Copper gets his arms chopped off
by the Thing when he tries to give CPR
to Norris and the man’s chest suddenly
turns into a gruesome maw (see Figure
3). “It’s a classic image . . . of the cas-
trating vagina dentata, another instance
of the Thing’s femaleness cutting one
of the men down to size” (73). When
Norris’s head breaks off and becomes a
smaller Thing with spidery legs that at-
tempts to scuttle away, Billson also sees
femaleness in the disturbing image that
is created: “The spider is nearly always
presented as predatory and malevolent,
and often as female” (75). Masculinity
is vulnerable in the face of this powerful
female entity. Though other scholars do
not claim that the Thing is female, they
acknowledge the danger to manhood
that it represents. Ian Conrich argues
that the creature “threatens masculin-
ity itself by taking over the male body,
penetrating its very being” (122). This
subversion of masculinity also endan-
gers patriarchy, which depends on the
centrality and power of men.
That the film should engage with gen-
der politics is not surprising, given the
period in which it was produced. Philip
Jenkins argues that shifting gender roles
may have been the most important fac-
tor shaping society in the 1970s: “Of the
multiple revolutions in progress by the
early 1970s, perhaps the most sweeping
involved gender roles and traditional
notions of masculinity” (19). Women
agitated for equal rights, demanding
greater respect and a larger role in pub-
lic life, while men, in response, demon-
Cinema’s Darkest Vision 163
strated more vulnerability and emotion
than they had in previous decades.6
The 1980s, under Reagan, was a more
conservative period. Susan Jeffords has
highlighted the construction of mascu-
linity during the Reagan years, arguing
that it first foregrounded “hard bodies”
and then celebrated sensitive family
men.7 It is possible to read The Thing
as a backlash against the feminism of
the 1960s and 1970s, a film that either
marginalizes women or presents them
as horrific femme fatales (in the form of
Things that consume and absorb men).
Yet there is also ample evidence that it
deconstructs Reagan-era masculinity.
In either reading, however, The Thing
offers little hope for male–female rela-
tionships or a model of masculinity that
allows men to survive.
Most commentators agree that the
film has no female presence and analyze
it in those terms. Even Billson, who ar-
gues that creature is female, acknowl-
edges the virtual absence of women:
“The sweeping exclusion of women
enables Lancaster [the screenwriter]
and Carpenter to concentrate on the
mounting paranoia of the characters un-
muddied by sexual politics and phallic
pecking orders” (37). Without women,
masculinity—by default—is dominant.
Yet the structural failure of that sover-
eignty is an indictment of patriarchy, a
criticism of the reactionary masculin-
ity of the Reagan era. In the absence of
women, the social fabric disintegrates.
The men in The Thing are islands unto
themselves, even in circumstances that
should force them to form close connec-
tions with one another. When they face a
hostile outside force, their already weak
bonds, which ought to be strengthened
as they confront an alien “other,” only
degrade further. Thus the film repudi-
ates masculinity—suggesting that, un-
checked, it can be a lethal force and, at
best, is an aspect of identity that only
accelerates the men’s demise.
The creature itself, rather than repre-
senting a female presence, can be read
as a threatening hypermasculine form
that illustrates the harmful nature of
traditional manhood. In his analysis of
the popular appeal of Carpenter’s horror
film, Ian Conrich describes the “death
matches” fans like to imagine between
The creature
itself, rather than
representing a
female presence,
can be read as
a threatening
hypermasculine
form that
illustrates the
harmful nature
of traditional
manhood.
iconic movie monsters such as Jason
Voorhees (from the Friday the 13th
series), Leatherface (from The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre series), Michael
Myers (from the Halloween series), and
the Thing. He argues that these matches
“share many similarities with American
wrestling, the popular arena of excess
and the carnivalesque, in which fear-
some, humongous or hyper-masculine
forms have been pitted against one an-
other” (101). The Thing is arguably a
hypermasculine form whose relentless
destructiveness highlights the incom-
patibility of masculinity with social
bonds: the creature is incredibly strong,
lives only for itself, and quickly elimi-
nates any threats to its survival. If it sur-
vives and flourishes, everything around
it must die. This apocalyptic model of
masculinity does not jibe with Reagan-
era rhetoric, which suggested that the
United States could be “saved” by fore-
grounding and celebrating the courage
and importance of men.
And if the creature in Carpenter’s
film is male, it not only presents a dam-
aging model of heterosexual masculin-
ity: it also forecloses the possibility of
meaningful homosexual relationships
by suggesting that any such interaction
is toxic. The only “sexual encounters”
164 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television
or hints of homoeroticism presented by
the film are in the scenes in which the
Thing tries to absorb one of the men.
According to a 1982 review in the L.A.
Times, “In the 1951 film, the ‘thing’ it-
self was asexual. In this version so are
the human characters. Their only car-
nal encounter occurs when the ‘thing’
entwines with them and symbolically
rapes them. It even rips off their clothes
when it overtakes them. The ‘thing’ . . .
possesses an oddly malevolent sexual
quality.” The only chance the male char-
acters have for intimate contact is when
they are being violated and ingested.
About halfway through the film, Win-
dows, one of the crew members, looks
for Bennings, who seems to have dis-
appeared. In the storage room where
Bennings was last seen, Windows finds
small pools of bright red ooze. Hearing
a small noise, he turns, and in a shad-
owy, private corner of the room, he sees
Bennings’s body encircled by tentacles
as the Thing holds him in a horrifying
embrace (see Figure 2). Windows and
the rest of the crew immediately chase
down and burn Bennings, repudiating
the “Thing” he has become and the per-
verted sexual experience that led to his
transformation.
The film therefore rejects homosexu-
ality, either precluding it completely
(there are no moments of homoerotic
longing between the men, even though
they have been cooped up together for
months) or presenting it in a form that
is so debased (coupling with a hostile
alien intent on destroying humanity)
that it demands immediate elimination.
This disavowal of homosexuality may
seem to harmonize with the glorifica-
tion of traditional male heterosexuality
in the Reagan era; yet, it is a disavowal
that admits no promising or healthy al-
ternative. The characters in The Thing
have no way to connect with others or
defend themselves. There are no women
available for heterosexual relationships,
and the only homosexual encounters
that the film allows lead to self-immola-
tion. Even close friendships seem out of
bounds; the film presents little evidence
of male bonding. All that remains is a
destructive model of masculinity that
forces the men to act alone and, inevi-
tably, to die.
Closure
In the end, the men at National Sci-
ence Institute Station 4 are left with
nothing: their heterosexual masculinity
cannot save them, homosexuality (in
any encounter with the Thing) equals
death, and their humanity is in doubt.
For viewers, what lingers is the sin-
ister impasse that concludes the film.
The final crew members, Nauls, Garry,
Childs, and MacReady, realize that they
probably won’t survive. Mac tells them,
“Whether we make it or not, we can’t
let that Thing freeze again. . . . We’re
not getting out of here alive, but neither
is that Thing.” The alien has destroyed
the generator and plunged the camp into
frigid darkness. Now a horrific con-
glomeration of human and dog parts, it
preys on the humans one by one as they
place sticks of dynamite in strategic
locations, hoping to blow up the camp
and annihilate the monster. MacReady,
who emerges as the sole survivor of
this last-ditch effort, yells “Fuck you!”
as he desperately chucks explosives at
it. The series of huge blasts that follow
suggest that MacReady—and human-
ity—have been successful. The Thing,
instead of freezing, has been inciner-
ated, and Mac, though doomed, has a
few hours of life before the temperature
in the camp will drop enough for him to
die. He sits down, alone and victorious,
preparing to take a slug from a bottle of
whiskey, when someone walks into the
background of the frame. It is Childs,
who disappeared earlier. They stare at
one another for a long moment. “Where
were you, Childs?” Mac demands.
There is no satisfactory answer. Childs
has been out of Mac’s sight and may be
a Thing; the same is true of Mac, both
from Childs’s and the viewers’ perspec-
tives (previously, some crew members
were revealed as Things without their
transformations having been presented
on screen). Neither these characters nor
the viewers know whether the Thing
has been eliminated or is poised to at-
tack humanity when rescuers arrive in
the spring. The final two men (if they
are men) eye one another dubiously, the
remains of the camp smoldering in the
darkness behind them as they confront
the indeterminacy of the situation.
Carpenter has claimed that it was this
equivocal ending that alienated viewers:
“I realized we were doomed because I
had forgotten one of the obvious rules:
The audience hates uncertainty” (qtd.
in Boulenger 173). According to Anne
Billson, The Thing has “the sort of am-
biguous ending [that is] more in keeping
with an art film than with a horror movie .
. . . The ending of The Thing is not a
commercial, crowd-pleasing finale, but
the daring pays off. By denying the
viewer[s] a sense of closure, Carpenter
has ensured that the story will live on”
(89). In other words, the film’s deliber-
ate rejection of finality may have been
a factor in its lackluster box-office per-
formance, but it is also arguably a key
ingredient in The Thing’s long-term rep-
utation as a horror movie that cultivates
dread through its continual subversion
of certitude, trust, and belief.
Conclusion
Released in the early Reagan years
in the wake of E.T., John Carpenter’s
nihilistic film sputtered and sank be-
cause its harsh story world did not
mesh with the cultural moment. But in
the spirit of the indomitable creature it
forged, The Thing refused to perish, and
it has invited audiences to appreciate
its relentlessly dark vision. The film’s
fierce sense of paranoia, an echo of the
1970s, was incompatible with the 1980s
yet now seems apt for the surveillance
culture of the twenty-first century. The
Thing presents the ultimate body horror;
neither the viewers nor the characters
know who is human and who is not. The
men stationed in the Arctic face absolute
isolation: they are sequestered as a group
(stuck in their frozen outpost), alienated
from one another (anyone could be an
enemy), and detached from their own
identities as individuals (they may not
know if the alien has taken them over).
The film treats both homosexuality and
traditional masculinity as destructive
diseases, capable of destroying human-
ity. The Thing questions everything,
handily subverting our foundations of
meaning (humanity, gender, individu-
alism, and so on). It forces us to look
into an existential void in which we are

human but not human, neither male nor
female, subject to dying while becom-
ing part of an immortal cell line that has
absorbed our very being.
Perhaps the scholar who has gotten
closest to summarizing The Thing’s at-
tractions as a horror movie is Stephen
Prince, who in 1988 argued that the film
“elicits horror and anxiety” by under-
mining “established social classifica-
tions” (122). The alien has a formless-
ness that cannot be contained by human
systems of signification. Its ambigu-
ous status as a “thing” and its cultiva-
tion of that same ambiguity among the
members of the Antarctic research team
causes chaos. What Prince does not
recognize, however, is that the dissolu-
tion of social order has already begun
before the Thing’s arrival. Carpenter’s
film is chilling because it presents an
utterly bleak vision of human society
as isolationist, laced with paranoia, and
subject to rapid disintegration. In those
terms, it is hard to imagine a motion pic-
ture that is more frightening—or more
fascinating.
In its stark vision of human evanes-
cence, Carpenter’s film stands alone
among adaptations of Campbell’s origi-
nal story, helping to explain why it has
earned its reputation as a spectacularly
sinister horror film. Campbell’s tale,
though dark, allows the all-male crew a
definitive victory over its insidious en-
emy. The 1951 Hawks version includes
women (and romance) and close team-
work that enables the crew to triumph
over an easily identifiable alien. More
recently, The Thing, a 2011 prequel di-
rected by Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr.,
presents the story of the Norwegian
crew that first discovers the Thing fro-
zen in the ice. This film shifts onto less
threatening ground. It features an Amer-
ican woman as a team member, break-
ing up the gender monoculture of the
1982 movie, and an alien that constantly
“outs” itself, never taking full advan-
tage of its imitative abilities to foster the
rampant mistrust and paranoia that are
so central to Carpenter’s adaptation.
Of course, even Carpenter’s version
is not entirely dark. Its disavowal of de-
structive masculinity is arguably a femi-
nist stance: in the absence of (effective,
vibrant) women, the film suggests, men
Cinema’s Darkest Vision 165
[I]n the spirit of
the indomitable
creature it forged,
The Thing
refused to perish,
and it has invited
audiences to
appreciate its
relentlessly
dark vision.
cannot survive. And the men do demon-
strate admirable heroism, despite their
isolation from the world and from each
other: they are willing to die to prevent
the Thing from reaching civilization.
Yet what is memorable about Carpen-
ter’s version of The Thing is its nearly
unrelenting assault on all that makes us
who we are. It reveals the tenuousness
of our bodies, our identities, and our
social bonds, forcing us to confront our
deepest fears about human frailty. None
of the other adaptations of the original
story—and perhaps few other horror
movies—can claim to offer such an all-
encompassing apocalyptic vision. In
Carpenter’s film, we don’t just lose the
world, we lose ourselves.
NOTES
1. See www.imdb.com. The fifth-place
ranking was accurate as of January 23, 2012.
2. The list is not dated, but the most recent
film it cites is from 2010, so it must have
been compiled in 2010 or later. I accessed
the list at www.boston.com on December 28,
2011.
3. See Jeffords for a discussion of “per-
sonal power” and “national power” in films
of the 1980s ( 27–28).
4. See Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solo-
mon for a full explanation of their theory.
5. In particular, see Frederick Jackson
Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the
Frontier in American History,” first pub-
lished in 1893 in the Proceedings of the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin. It was later
incorporated in Turner’s 1921 book, The
Frontier in American History.
6. See Bly for a history of models of mas-
culinity in the United States.
7. See Jeffords for a complete discussion
of her argument.
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Heather Addison is an Associate Professor
of Film Studies at Western Michigan Uni-
versity. Her primary research area is Hol-
lywood’s relationship to American culture,
though she has recently begun writing fea-
ture-length screenplays. Her books include
Hollywood and the Rise of Physical Culture
(Routledge, 2003) and Motherhood Miscon-
ceived, a collection of essays co-edited with
Elaine Roth and Mary Kate Goodwin-Kelly
(SUNY Press, 2009).