Extra Credit-Dawn of the Dead

            For as long as I can remember (which may not be that long—my memory is not that great), I have had a HUGE fear of zombies.

            I do not know what it is about them—potentially it is the body horror that is the most terrifying aspect. With modern zombie films, as well as the immensely popular Walking Dead, there is always the inclusion of zombies ripping into someone’s leg or arm or neck, pulling arteries out like strings. The idea of hoards of the undead surrounding and eating people is terrifying and grotesque, which my adolescent brain always brought into personalized, dream-morphed graphics. All of these personal influences are why watching Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978) was incredibly important for both film analysis and personal catharsis.

            Comparing nightmare to story, the personal to what is depicted on the screen, there is a tension there about the lack of unity within the groups of survivors, at least within Dawn of the Dead. When you are in a nightmare, the presence of family, concern for your parents, pets, friends, and belongings is a priority; uncertainty about your world is the main source of fear. I would say in Dawn of the Dead, though it is the second installment of George Romero’s zombie series, there is already an acceptance of these losses. The characters come on to the screens without backgrounds. Yeah, we know Francine is pregnant, which is initially a huge tension and then later just a character aspect, but these characters pop up without a background.

            In many ways, there is a development of sympathy for the living dead, especially in the moment where Francine is looking through the store-front window, making a connection, whether or not real or imagined, to the zombie on the other side who sits down and looks back at her. We get as much background for the zombies than we do for Francine, Stephen, Peter, or Roger, all characterized by what they wear: Peter and Roger wearing military outfits—are part of the military; Stephen wears his aviation outfit—helicopter pilot, zombies in basketball uniforms, garbage men jumpsuits. Everyone is his or her job; everyone ends up in the mall because, “It’s what they know”.

            Besides the main characters, a sense of community can be found in shots elsewhere. In the very beginning with the SWAT raid of the housing tenement, we have people who are protecting their deceased-reanimated loved ones. This one scene is one of the more emotionally charged, not only because of the idea of families eating one another, the obvious social inequality that leaves these individuals stranded, or prejudiced onslaught, but the attempts to protect family members is shown to be problematic. Evidence of this can be found in the scene where a man eats his wife while she tries to embrace him.

          

Further on, we have the military and those living in the country finding fun in their survival, transferring the usual types of hunting of non-human animals to hunting the “slow” and “dumb” zombies. There is a community here, somehow found through the creative sport. I can not tell if this is an argument for finding creativity in darker times, or that those who are well-prepared are going to be able to withstand anything, but whatever reason, people have found an acceptable community.

            Even though Dawn of the Dead is obviously a commentary on consumerism (everyone is in a mall, for Pete’s sake), the real threat posed by a “zombie apocalypse” or apocalypse of any kind is the rearrangement of values regarding friends and family. Those who cannot get over the undead being their loved ones end up being food, those who can find it a game can survive, and those who are in the middle somewhere, like the protagonists, are more like the zombies.

            I am still really afraid of zombies, but I think I understand it a bit more now. This is incredibly obvious, but horror films are not only ways of communicating anxieties but also allow you to observe how they manifest in yourself (at least for me in the case of zombies, but you probably wont catch me watching the next big zombie film for a long, long time).

                   

Sources: 

 Chaw, Walter. "Dawn of the Dead." Film Freak Central. 18 Mar. 2004. Web. (Image)

Dawn of the Dead. Dir. George A. Romero. Perf. David Emge, Ken Foree, Scott Reiniger, and Gaylen Ross. United Film Distribution Company, 1978. DVD. 

Extra Credit - True Stories and Dumb Teens

The 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre was probably my least favorite movie growing up. Any time a movie says it’s based on a true story I have to do a mile of digging to see exactly what they mean by that. The fact the horror movies love to use this line is a real bother. The true story aspect always seems to make everything a little more real and a lot scarier. Who is to say that people didn’t actually get massacred by a guy wearing a human flesh mask and wielding a chainsaw? Well that would be history. What about this horror movies makes this scenario so plausible though? Why do we believe as a society in general that a groups of teens can be so easily killed by a single masked man, or an old forest dwelling woman, or a mask wearing mother? Teens are just nature’s scapegoat.

            Slasher flicks are obsessed with killing of droves of young people. To the point where it is actually considered comedy by most. Take the movie Tucker and Dale vs Evil where a couple of country bumpkins are confused for serial killers by teens in the woods, and the country boys are confused as to why the teens keep killing themselves. It is a hilarious motion picture and definitely not the first or the last horror movie spoof out there. When these movies were first coming out the motion picture audience probably had no way to discern if the teens were bad or good at getting killed they were probably just as scared as the rest of us are the first time we see a horror film. After we grow accustomed to seeing these types of films we become more accustomed to the plot devices that have been used in horror films forever.

            The issue then lies when we watch decades of horror films and then go back to the originals and laugh at them because of their predictability and goofiness. That used to be cutting edge horror man. Those older films created the person walking up the stairs to check it out. Or the nosy trespassing teenagers who wander into houses only to be slaughtered like docile little cows. We can call these things out and giggle about them. Then we can make spoof movies where all these old suspense ploys can really be diced apart with a knife.

            Back to the original thought on true stories, is that really something that makes films scarier? It is possible that a real life Chainsaw massacre may have happened but does it bother us more if someone is making a movie based on the true story which just means something we all know, that there is evil out there. Or is it that knowing people could come up with these scary movies all in their own heads and then walk around with the rest of us. Just plotting. 

Extra Credit Response

Lesson Not Learned: Quit It With the Re-Animating, Already

            The re-animation of a corpse is an idea of something likely stemming from the very human fear of death. The concept that we can come back in some way is appealing, and also stands as a great image of horror. If someone goes down, are they going to be the same when they get back up? Though Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985, Empire) draws heavy parallels with Frankenstein (Whale, Universal, 1931) through its mad-scientist Henry | Herbert comparisons and their objective of death back to life, the film also heavily relates to zombie films—particularly Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).

            One aspect of the various re-animations that these two films share is the marked quality of these various peoples’ returns to movement after death. In both movies, nobody really is who they were when they went down. In Dawn of the Dead, the people that die after being bit by other re-animated souls come back to bite others, themselves. This allows for some poignant remarks concerning what humans do to each other, both in life and in death. They damage both emotionally and physically—they eat each other. If you come back, you’re a husk of what you were. Meanwhile, in Re-Animator, when you come back, you’re pissed. Cats will claw at your back and try to eat your face; people will come back and try to strangle you to death. In this, it almost seems more to suggest that it’s death itself that comes back to life, trying to drag more life down into its depths.

            Where further comparisons between the films come into play is particularly with the faults of the characters in not really seeing the danger they’re facing. In Dawn of the Dead, often after barely escaping certain death, its characters would run around, hooting and hollering, refusing to check the area for more threats, only finding out where they were once it was too late. It’s this distinction between recognizing a threat and then ignoring it in the next scene that is a simple source for frustration from its viewers. Where Re-Animator draws some clear parallels here is through Herbert (and Dan) seeming to learn, time and time again, just how dangerous anything is when it’s brought back to life. Herbert, without Dan’s help, likely could have died from the attack by Dan’s cat after he brought him back. From there, the pair decided to bring back a grown man, failing completely to restrain him in any capacity whatsoever. What follows is Dan’s girlfriend’s father is killed, and Herbert and Dan nearly die themselves. And even this seemed to fail to teach Herbert, in particular, the lesson he needed to. Perhaps thinking that the separation of Dr. Hill’s head from the rest of his body would leave him too disabled to do anything similar to the previous experiments gone wrong, but his failure to make any sort of defensive preparation against unpredictable results makes his ultimate demise his own fault. Perhaps it’s commentary on the guaranteed havoc caused by playing god, or perhaps it’s shedding light on simple human disregard for death and an egotistical failure of inevitable human error. However it’s interpreted, human ignorance is an easy thing to see in the world, and mistakes come from that in life as much as it does in cinema.

          The comparisons between Re-Animator and Dawn of the Dead through their different methods of handling the return to life from death are interesting ones to note in discussions on death and the repercussions that follow. The idea of reversing the process of death, particularly in these two films, seems to be given a rather pessimistic view on the outcomes. People get bitten and die, only to return and eat more of the living. People die of natural causes and return to rabidly murder anyone nearby. The living characters don’t learn from their mistakes, and don’t learn more about the danger of the dead who have come back. Maybe they’re telling us just how unavoidable death is, even under the prospect of the potential for that end to be turned back. 

Bloody Extra: The Thing

The End? The Thing (Universal, Carpenter, 1982)

To start, I have to make the expected comparison to 1958’s The Blob (Paramount, Yeaworth) in the way both films involve one-ness, consumption, absorption, and ruddy-jellied-everything in each of their narratives. They are readily alike in titular twinning: the indiscriminate blob and thing. The monsters themselves are formless in different ways: one morphs, takes on different appendages, different presences altogether; the other grows, takes in bodies and makes those bodies to become as it is and appear as it does. 

To the question of inspiration/homage, the films are loosely connected, at least in premise. Each extraterrestrial terror arrives at earth by falling/flying in from outer space. And at its end, the Blob is flown and thrown into remote arctic ice, supposedly contained, although the film ends with a question mark. This is not to suggest they are the same monster, only to note that with the amount of remakes/sequels/prequels amassed by each we might be able to assume that they were feeding off each other in some way.

While the parallel (and the punning) is likely overdone, the comparison does benefit the conversation of infection v. absorption. Is the experience of fear different in each case? How does being taken over compare to being taken in? The concept of contagion, as it appears in The Thing, is more menacing because it is inner. Secret interiority seems a threat to commonality because it can’t be readily known and subsequently protected against. The point made about our being inhuman and not even knowing it— flesh-persons, flesh-monsters, where is the difference?—makes even that commonality suspicious. It suddenly more urgent that we try to know who’s who, and equally disturbing that we can’t know completely.

With respect to the scene mentioned in class of Doc in his isolated bunker, the unavoidable focus was on the noose, hanging clean and unused in the center of the frame. There is something else to note here: when he comes to the window, light from the flare washes his face in the red we would expect to see were he to be writhing and drenched in blood like any other metamorphosis we’d seen up to this point. Visually, he looks the same aside from this hint. Behaviorally, though, his unusually composed demeanor and repetition of please-just-let-me-out (human parroting or almost like following alien code?) lead us to suspect that he has already been changed. I think that thin film of color is a further indication that something isn’t right.

There is a discussion to be had here about audience intuition as well—how attention is captured, fed, exploited; how the film hands us certain clues as well as false starts, and where our participation exists in that. Even when confused about characters, blood types, and so on, there are points where we have a better inclination, I think, to what happens unseen. We think we know, we often think we’re onto something... it’s interesting to consider how we sense certain things, how we can be wrong, and whether the alternative is worse.

Response 5: Rosemary's Baby

“How she grows her own things”: Possession and Entrapment in Rosemary’s Baby

Growth, germination, gestation, and waiting are all obvious themes in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Also mentioned in class was the idea of woman as container, as gestation machine, which raises questions of agency on all parts of the spectrum, starting specifically with impregnation. Near the beginning of the film, after Terry’s suicide, she is described in the following way: “she seemed so happy, and full of ——” but the dialogue is cut off. We know she was not full of life, and now we see that she’s been disposed of. We can later hear Minnie and Roman shouting through the walls about “starting from scratch,” that is, starting the process of life all over. The pun here should point straight to the scene where we see Rosemary’s skin drug raw by the devil’s fingernails. It should also bring to mind abrasion as a method of germination, taking the case off the seed to speed up what nature would do anyway—since, as Rosemary says, “we’re fertile alright.”

Womb imagery is everywhere in this film, particularly in the scene where Terry’s charm is shed from pink fetal tissue (paper), and later kept in a rosy metal box in a drawer out of sight (where the mold can grow, since it flourishes in the dark). Womb-commentary abounds as well, especially in relation to this object. On receiving the charm, we hear the lines “I can’t accept,” “you already have,” “if you took it you ought to wear it,” and so on. All imply a certain responsibility, despite a certain lack of agency. They can be read with an anti-abortion sentiment (also discussed in class) as in you-did-it-so-you-better-keep-it.

This same insistence is repeated later regarding the role Rosemary is expected to play: “aren’t you his mother?” “just be a mother to your baby,” “...supposing you had the baby and lost it, wouldn’t that be the same?” She is encouraged to look at the child as something that can be mass- and re-produced, just as Rosemary herself has been looked at as a replaceable/disposable host. She is an object, and tossed around as such. That “pretty holder or charm or whatever it is” acts as a microcosm of the woman herself: pretty mother or host or whatever she is (whatever, not even whoever).

In her compromised identity, Rosemary is even pseudo-fetal herself when in the phone booth (another container) outside the doctor’s office. In calling to the outside world she’s been cut off from, the phone cord acts umbilical lifeline in trying to reach some kind of help. As she’s become more infantile throughout the film, her entrapment is especially significant here in it being the scene just before the delivery.

Whichever body she is, at whatever time, it is always filled and always attended to. Rosemary is nearly never alone, and always with life inside her. As an audience we are always immediately next to her (no depth of field), and our being tethered to her says something about our own entrapment in the film. Do we belong to anyone specifically? Are we “delivered” out some cinematic canal at the end of the film? We are certainly cut off from her as she decides to care for her baby—and we never see the demon child, it is in no way ours.

Response 3: Cat People

“I am a little world made cunningly”: Animation of the Nerves in Cat People

In response to the question of the role Irena’s art, by falling in line with the film’s psychoanalytic focus, we can explain Irena’s creation as related to repressed impulses. As in any creative act, Irena’s sketching is an exercise in constraint, in release, and control. We see that clearly in the ripped drawings and crumpled paper (a typical painting of the frustrated creator),  

and her navigating how to take hold of her craft. She often makes a point of framing her art as something professional, as would have been encouraged by her economic environment.

Irena’s outward insistence on not being an artist exists literally (i.e. when she says it) and subterraneously (e.g. in the ways that she retracts her own control). In human form, when pawing at a caged bird and accidentally killing it, she later explains that “it died of fright when I tried to take it into my hand.” This is easily a metaphor for repression and control, and a free-floating anxiety in relation to her own agency. Throughout the film, Irena grapples with what she can and cannot touch, what she can create, and how she can exercise control—this regarding permission, and not capacity. Even while specific power dynamics are offered in every scene, it can be argued that Irena censors herself as much as anyone else tries to. Her dance between mastery and surrender is internal.

To play on those grossly reduced gender types, the female presence and struggle are often internal, they are inner, they are void. This is played up in the film between the main co-stars: we have drawing for her and drafting for him. Oliver plays the engineer, the level-headed breadwinner. His is a business that is technical, measured, and careful. And despite her protests that she is simply a designer, not an artist, Irena’s art is a venture that is contrastingly impractical, fantastic, and unrestrained. Both characters’ professions meddle in prediction and creation, though one seems involved in some darker magic (noting here, too, the woman ever being the proverbial “dark continent”).

This same dark spread is seen specifically during the dream scene in which Irena’s head (the locus of the mind) is lit up in a sea of black. As we move into another level of consciousness with(in) her, the scene becomes wholly animated; it is the only fully illustrated part of the film itself. Cats are seen clawing toward the camera and out to the edges of the frame, a nod perhaps to a Rorschach inkblot in its movement and shape. We can also assume the illustration is hers, if only present in some psychical/suppressed dream. (And yet we’re there to see it.)

The display and diagnosis of nervousness in this film is a precarious one. There is honesty in the portrayal of psychological trauma, and of its dismissal, but the way that it’s brushed off throughout the film—excuse the awful pun—gets on my nerves. Irena’s amplified role of the romantic woman, as a keeper of a curse, her constant anxiety about her part/position in her population makes her a fractured and fractal person—none of which is acknowledged nor cared for until the very end of the narrative. The last-ditch redemption in the final scene, that “she never lied to us,”—that she was all these parts, at some point, truthfully—what is that line supposed to do? Is this an assurance? an entreaty? an absolution? It’s further complicated, I think, by John Donne’s postscript, in that Irena has been all these parts in her own world, “—and now both parts must die.”

Extra Credit: Hitchcock and Pisanthanakun & Wongpoom

Alfred Hitchcock is known for his twisted stories and shocking endings. Banjong Pisanthanankun and Parkpoom Wongpoom are two thai movie directors that also hold equally famous titles. Hitchcocks’s 1960 Psycho was a visually thrilling with its play on vertical and horizontals pacing and reveals. This play on camera panning and dimensional movement is also very clearly seen throughout Pisanthanankun and Wongpoom 2004 film Shutter. There are obvious differences in directing styles and voyeurism capturing because of the western and eastern influences, but the last revealing shots are both equally impactful and wicked.

Throughout the film many of Hitchock’s shots are mostly horizontal panning of the camera or bodies moving across the screen in a restively horizontal fashion. In the reveling scene of Psycho, there was a quick pan from a close-up shot of the lightbulb swinging from the ceiling to Lila’s reacting face to a wide shot of Norman dresses running into the cellar dressed as his mother. The swinging light emphasizes the vertical shot: Norman’s full height is accentuated with his raised arm while clutching the big kitchen knife, as his body takes up the entirety of the center of the shot. The vertical shots usually followed the gaze of the characters’ and this shot expertly shows Lila feeling terror and the sharpness of the violin screeching raises the hairs of the audience. The sudden change of close-up to full-body shots also are jarring and highlight the twisted ending.

In Pisanthanankun and Wongpoom’s Shutter, the last reveiling scene is unraveled in a similar way: a horizontal shots circle Tong as he is shouting out to our ghost-protagonist Natre. These are up-close and fully show Tong’s facial expressions, like Lila’s in Psycho. After a few of mid-shots of Tong pacing around his apartment and snapping Polaroid’s, we see a series of close-up shots of faces as a flashbacks before the reveal, ending on a close-up of his face. Then there is a sudden shift to a close-up of a full body polaroid picture of Tong with Natri sitting on his shoulders. This ending is a lot more built-up and elaborate than that of Psycho’s but similar fashion in which the two films used vertical and horizontals to build suspense are both great and shudder-worthy.

Later, Fiends...erm, Friends

From one class to another...

be careful out there...

and THANK YOU. 

That isn't déjà vu, you've seen it before: "The Cabin in the Woods" - an epitome of postmoder horror. (Extra Credit Post)

            More often than not, horror films come under fire for being guilty of producing the same conventions and tropes over and over again. In a way that reinvents these archetypes of the genre, postmodern horror movies such as The Cabin in the Woods include characters that accurately portray the rules and regulations of horror movies, to the self-referential point of the film acknowledging its generic lineage.  White males sitting behind a desk construct the story of the film as they transform formerly unconventional characters into common horror movie tropes, including the slut, the athlete, the fool, the scholar, and the virgin.

            It’s hard to miss the strong sense of reflexivity in the film, as it starts with the title.  Five friends go out for a fun weekend at a cabin in the woods and encounter more than they bargained for, sound familiar? The desolate cabin is a long-standing “terrible place” in horror films, where Carol Clover notes in her essay Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film, is “the place where the victims often meet their fate” (Clover).  Several past horror films have used this convention to set up the terror, including Cabin Fever, Evil Dead, Friday the 13^th, and Secret Window.  The Cabin in the Woods uses this trope to set up its initial reflexivity and expands on it, using the “terrible place” to manifest the expected rules and perceptions of the horror film genre.  

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

            The film begins with a point of attack that swiftly delivers on the ready-made audience perceptions horror films typically deliver on.  Sitterson and Hadley are the two white males running the show in a manner that accurately captures how the film industry most likely comes up with a vast majority of its projects.  In a room filled with other (mostly white) people, they crowd around a white board saturated with ideas scribbled on it that could deliver the biggest scare and most frightening fate to the protagonists.  Ideas include “Sexy Witches”, “Mummy”, “Giant Snake”, and, the one that wins its chance in the spotlight, “Zombie-Redneck-Torture-Family”.  By indulging its audience in a plethora of ideas commonly conceptualized in horror films, The Cabin in the Woods readily admits to the genre’s basic stock. 

            Another way in which the film blatantly exposes itself is through its characters.  The five friends, Dana, Kurt, Holden, Marty, and Jules, start out as characters that could stand out in terms of their (un)conventionality, but instead are swiftly robbed of any characteristics that make them unique to the genre and instantly morphed into their chosen archetype.  Jules, who is established as scholarly and in a committed relationship with Kurt at the beginning, gets a dye job, goes blonde, and instantly has no problem making herself a direct subject of the male gaze in a strip tease like dance and make-out session with a mounted wolf’s head.  She later meets her demise while her and Kurt hook up in the woods, playing to the common theme in horror films where “Sex = Death”.    

It is later revealed that the white men behind the desk, exposing the ways in which they literally transform her into the object of desire, had tampered with her dye job.  The same fate lies in store for the other characters.  Kurt drinks a beer that slowly turns him into the aggressive, proud, and manly-man athlete and Dana fulfills multiple tropes of “the final girl” archetype that place her in line of being the most accurate “virgin” the engineers can get their hands on.  The film cleverly plays to each convention of the genre as it knowingly puts on display the tropes that have a common occurrence throughout it.  The only character directly unaffected by the influence of the engineers is Marty; his toking has spared him, which arguably places the movie as an advocate for weed culture (but, sadly, that’s another topic for another time).

Starting with the title of the film, which acknowledges the reoccurring “terrible” place the movie plays off of, to Sigourney Weaver’s character, who ultimately controls the entire project and is appropriately named, “The Director”, the film completely encompasses all generic tropes and regulations of horror movies and exploits them in order to cleverly create an unexpected scare in the postmodern horror genre. 

Dawn of the Bread (extra credit)

As many zombie films are, Dawn of the Dead comes with a deeper meaning than what meets the bloodshot eye. Consumerism is the clear message in this film and it shows itself in many forms. Through all of the examples, however, the underlying theme is the attempt to live "normally".
Beginning at the start of the film, one can get an idea of what this film is trying to say. Francine and Stephen are seen at the TV station where everyone is scrambling to keep the news running. Everyone begins yelling to stay on the air so that they don't lose any viewers, and it becomes clear that their main priority is not to survive and fix this zombie outbreak. Rather, it is to continue making money and providing for the consumers of their program. This same concept is brought up later in the film as the characters have established a comfortable place in the mall and they tune in to the only TV station that is still in operation. Not only are they striving for a normal life again, but so are the people that are running the show. In the middle of a zombie apocalypse, where people are losing the fight for their lives everyday, the last thing that most of us would be trying to do is broadcast a TV show. But the comment on our society is suggesting that we have such an innate need to feel normal, that we go to great lengths to get it.
Looking back at the beginning of the film again, we see more signs of striving for normalcy in the scenes where the military is going through the apartment building. Even though there are zombies living in the basement of the building, the rest of the tenants are still staying there as well. This is there way of trying to keep the status quo in a time of peril. They don't know what to do about the outbreak, so they just push their problems to the basement and continue to try and live normally.
Of course the most obvious sign of consumerism comes in the form of the zombies themselves. From the literal consuming of flesh, to the blatant quotes saying that they are "drawn to the mall for some reason", the zombies represent the purest form of consumerism. There are countless times when the other characters say things that allude to the fact that the zombies have an innate sense to gravitate toward the mall. And just like the infection that spreads the zombie outbreak, the acts associated with consumerism are contagious like a disease. But the flesh eaters are not the only consumers drawn to the mall. Peter, Francine, Stephen, and Roger all see that the mall is very useful, or perhaps they too are drawn there by an unseen force. In addition, the biker gang also finds their way to the mall eventually, whether it was on purpose or by accident. These people are still consumers at heart even though they still have their lives. Their actions of striving for normalcy are brought out in their use of establishing the mall space as their home and ultimately, trying to live like they would in the absence of the epidemic. In doing so, they are consuming in a way much more relevant to society than the zombies actions, and therefore, bring the real message of consumerism to the audience.

The Thing: Thoughts on Morality and Humanity (Extra Response)

Cierra Larson
Extra Response: Addison and The Thing

The Thing: Thoughts on Mortality and Humanity
    Addison says that, “[The Thing] eradicates the distinction between humans and animals by reminding humans of their mortality and showing them that they can easily be ‘blended’ with other animals” (159). It’s true that being blended with other animals takes away one’s humanity, because the Thing doesn’t care what species its victims are; it will take over the body of a human or a dog, and it isn’t affected by humans’ superior mental capacity. However, Addison says that the Thing reminds humans of their mortality, which erases the difference between being human and being animal; however, isn’t the major difference between humans and animals the fact that humans know that they’re going to die? Animals live life off of instinct and senses, while humans have the capacity to feel and think critically. Animals instinctively avoid death, but they do not consciously know that they’re going to die. The Thing does remind humans of their mortality, because it reminds them how fragile their lives are, and how easily their bodies could be influenced by the power of the Thing, but this reminder of their mortality is not what blurs the line between them and animals. The Thing “blends” humans with animals and each other, thus it takes away both humans’ humanity and individuality.
    Addison notes that the Thing forces the characters to reckon with important questions, such as, “Is there a difference between humans and aliens imitating humans?” (159). The Thing can perfectly imitate human behavior--so much that the characters cannot tell who has been taken over. The only way they can test each other’s humanity is through the blood test. My question is: do the characters being taken over know they’ve been taken over? Does their soul “die” when the Thing takes them over, or do they remain conscious of their own thoughts and memories? If the characters keep their old memories, does it even matter if they’re taken over by the Thing? They remain the same person, but with the ability and desire to take over others’ bodies. If the Thing were to completely take over the world, I don’t think the world would be any worse; it would only be full of slimy, oozing things who presumably don’t need food or water to survive. It might end up improving the environment.
    Addison notes that the characters’ concern with who is human and who is not is kind of ironic, because “being human” means caring about one another and working together as a team, but the characters never do this. They’re dysfunctional from the start, and don’t seem to particularly like each other. This is the reason the film is so scary: the human / nonhuman characters bear similarities to one another, and even the human characters have a lack of humanity. They’re all more concerned with survival than with trying to make connections with one another. I wonder if this is a concern that only Americans and other individualistic cultures have; in the U.S., expressions such as “follow your dreams,” and “express yourself,” are common. Everyone is taught to work hard for personal success and gain. Everyone is taught that they are a unique individual whose talents will help contribute to the world. In contrast, other cultures depend on one another much more, especially for survival in third-world countries. I feel like cultures such as these would not be as freaked out about the idea of the Thing, because the idea of becoming one amalgamated organism isn’t that far from their everyday goals. However, these cultures would probably also be better at fighting against the Thing, because they would display more unity and more care for one another. Addison notes that the characters in The Thing “narcissistic, unwilling to put anyone else’s needs or desires above their own” (161).
    Something I noticed about the film was a paranoia similar that of to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s impossible to tell who’s been taken over by an unknown life form, which causes suspicion and paranoia among the characters. However, Snatchers is different in its use of love/humanity. Miles claims that his love for Becky is the only thing worth having, since the Pod People cannot feel emotions. However, every sentiment of love that Miles expresses for Becky seems forced, fake, and rehearsed. The fear in Snatchers is that love will die and humans will be replicated through asexual reproduction, which draws a strange parallel to The Thing, because its characters seem a little asexual to begin with, as Addison also notes in her essay. There are no female characters in the film, and the male characters display no homosexual feelings towards one another. Yet the characters still fight against the Thing, possibly for their own individuality. This actually seems more plausible to me than Miles’ assertion that he’s fighting for love in Snatchers; survival for one’s own behalf is more likely.

Response #5 - The Thing

Adam O'Rourke

The Thing - Sight, Sound and Knowledge

Our viewing of John Carpenter’s The Thing was also my first viewing, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think this film has aged incredibly well; the visuals, sounds, and plot all feel great, even by today’s standards. In particular I enjoyed the practical effects used to produce the monstrous ‘thing(s)’. In their true form, they are gooey, slimy, malformed imitations of those they have taken over. Their liquidy exteriors reminds me chiefly of Alien, with dripping unknown fluids everywhere. The effect is quite unsettling, and one that I don’t think can be reproduced even with modern digital effects. In the modern context I didn’t find this movie to be particularly scary, but it excels at the grotesque and disgusting- I think mostly to due to the appearance of these monsters. Frankly I’m surprised this didn’t win any awards for the effects work.

I also really enjoyed the sound and music. The sounds the monsters produce heavily aid visuals to create disgust and fear in the audience. One instance of this that struck me most clearly is when Bennings(?) is being taken over and is outside kneeling in the snow. The camera comes up behind him(it) slowly and when his head turns he lets out a piercing and unearthly moan. This combines with the visuals of its undisguised hands and rising music from an organ, to create what I think is the scariest sequence of this whole movie. In the scene when Mac has everyone on the couch, one of them turns and eats one of the other guys. Mac is frantically trying to get his flamethrower to work, and once he finally does ignite the monster it lets out a strange, creepy, distorted noise that makes it sound like it’s underwater. The effect is, again, quite unsettling.

To touch on the music a bit more, I think it is used incredibly well to situate this movie at the crossroads of the horror, sci-fi, and western genres. The main theme of the film, that reappears in various forms throughout, is built around a low, slightly off canter, heartbeat-esque, synth beat. For me, the synth puts me in the sci-fi mindset, and the beat feels securely positioned in the horror genre. This is then joined by strings and organ that further increase the tension and suspense. I can’t quite put my finger on what elements link it the western genre, but I can definitely feel it’s there; the composer Ennio Morricone has done countless westerns afterall. Listening to some of Morricone’s other work, I found this theme very similar in its movements to the track Neve from his recent work on The Hateful Eight.

Another aspect of the film I would like to touch on is the notion of knowing. Throughout the film, both the characters onscreen, and we the viewers, are not given all the information as to what is going on. A lot happens offscreen. The chameleon-like nature of the monsters make it very hard to tell who is still human and who has been turned. Chiefly this dynamic serves to create the film’s suspense and mystery. Why were those Norwegians trying so hard to kill that dog? Who could have broken into the blood locker? We’re constantly unsure of who is who, and this creates an unsettling paranoia in both the audience and the characters. The characters lack of knowledge is also compounded by their unfamiliarity with one another. These relationship dynamics here are those of coworkers, not friends. Because no one is really very close, the paranoia is heightened, and no one can be trusted. There are many moments when the characters even doubt their own status, seen most clearly when Mac is testing the blood of the remaining characters. They all show signs of relief when it’s proved they have not been inhabited by the thing. I think this is also meant incite some questions in the viewer about their own existence. How do I know I’m human? How do I know I’m real? I think leaving the audience with such dark and nihilistic questions work to enhance the horror.