Examining the Psychology in John Carpenter's "The Thing

[CreedNoir]

**Contains Spoilers**

Director John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing tells the story of twelve American researchers holed up in an Antarctic outpost. Winter is quickly approaching in the southern hemisphere, bringing temperatures well below zero to a climate barely tolerable to begin with. These men have spent some time weathering the maddening stress of an extreme environment with no significant contact with the outside world; before the true terror of the film takes root, they are already at each other’s throats. Their only solace seems to be the warming of the bones—and deadening of the minds—through the consumption of hard liquor.

All of these phenomena have their precedent in psychological and historical literature. Many who live in regions with little exposure to sunlight are prone to seasonal affective disorder, a condition marked by depression, social withdrawal, and anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. So too are isolated populations vulnerable to hysteria, unable to contain dangerous emotions; the Salem Witch Trials, in which trust gave way to the suspicion that any given person might be in league with Satan, are perhaps the best known example of this. Finally, peoples of the Arctic Circle are famous for turning to drink to cope with frozen climes. Alcohol warms nothing, but simply blunts the nerves that register the cold. An inebriated brain is also far quicker to behave in an unnecessarily aggressive manner than its sober counterpart.

But the story has not yet begun.

Moving ahead very quickly, a seemingly harmless canine is welcomed into the base; after a series of grotesque discoveries, the camp’s doctors determine that a malevolent extraterrestrial presence with the ability to shape-shift into any organism it consumes has infiltrated their ranks in the guise of this innocuous dog. Corralled into a pen with actual huskies, the creature begins to show its true face in what turns into an animal bloodbath. Witnessing this, the nature of the alien menace becomes clear to the crew: this beast can imitate the look and behavior of any living thing—including the researchers themselves. Any one or more persons on the base could indeed be but a murderous approximation; though survival hinges on the cooperation of the group, no individual can be trusted.

Dr. Blair, who conducted the autopsy of one Thing—not entirely human, not entirely otherwise—was the first to realize the nature of the threat. When questioning Clark about how a strange dog might have made its way into the camp unnoticed, the look on his face betrays the gears moving within his head.

“What the hell are you looking at me like that for?” Clark asks indignantly, sensing Blair’s suspicion.

“I don’t know. It’s… nothing. Probably nothing,” a pensive Blair replies. Sitting alone in close quarters with what might not really be Clark after all, Blair decides not to agitate what could, in fact, be a monster.

Though tense, this is the last of any vaguely polite conversations the crew will have.


If you're interested in reading more about paranoia in "The Thing" then check out the rest of the article.

[AlexSivier]

If you haven't read "Who goes there?" that The Thing is based on, then you really should.
It is a fantastic story and is much closer to Carpenter's film than the ambulatory carrot of the 50s film.
Really spooky, claustrophobic and paranoid.

[Sculpt]

Originally Posted by AlexSivier

If you haven't read "Who goes there?" that The Thing is based on, then you really should.
It is a fantastic story and is much closer to Carpenter's film than the ambulatory carrot of the 50s film.
Really spooky, claustrophobic and paranoid.

Yes, absolutely! Fans of The Thing would really enjoy reading the short story "Who Goes There?", on which the The Thing 82 film was more closely based (where the 1952 version was not).