A Comparative Study of John Carpenter's "The Thing" and Howard Hawks' "The Thing from Another World"

The director John Carpenter entitled his 1982 remake of Howard Hawks 1951 "The Thing from Another World" simply "The Thing." Carpenter's new, shortened title significantly eliminates the alien origin of the protean monster that terrorizes the human characters of the film. This suggests that what is so frightening about Carpenter's Thing is not that it is an alienbut that it is formless and nameless. Most horror films force the viewer to confront some concrete horror, from a thing that goes 'bump' in the night to a blood-sucking vampire. Hawks' concrete version of horror threatens truth and the American way of life by attempting to infiltrate human society. However, Carpenter's more subtle rendering of the socially destabilizing force of "The Thing" compels the viewer to confront the ultimate horror of all-namely the formless and undefined nature of his or her own identity. Hawks' Thing, in contrast, is merely a being that provides a focus of hatred for the human race to unite against and ultimately triumph.Essentially, Carpenter's creature dwells perpetually in Lacan's mirror stage of infant development, whereby the infant, in a search for a stable self in an unfamiliar world, mimics other persons. The unstable identity o


If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. It'll fight if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open. This illustrates not simply the need for men in white hats to triumph over darkness and the unknown and alien, but also the fact that these heroes represent the ultimate authority of men in white coats, or the security of scientific understanding and research combined with military prowess, both of which has the ability to provide stable and lasting answers as to what constitutes identity. Ultimately, the being from another planet is no match for the secure identities of the intrepid scientists and military leaders. The sight of a more powerful ideal always creates a sense of rage and hostility within the formless Thing, as it seeks out more powerful beings to 'become. The Thing strikes people who are alone, so when you see someone again, you cannot be sure if you are seeing the Thing or the actual person. The characters, because of this security thus get along much better in Hawks' version, seem more likeable and kind as they rally together against the extraterrestrial being from another plane. "The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a gestalt of the infant's emerging perceptions of selfhood, but because the image of a unified body does not correspond with the underdeveloped infant's physical vulnerability and weakness, this imago is established as an Ideal-I toward which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or her life. "Trust is a tough thing to come by these days," says one of the still-human characters, the helicopter pilot MacReady, whose identity has not been subsumed by the Thing as the alien takes upon the image of every human person it kills. Hawks film suggests that a threat of destabilized identity can be easily solved. As astutely observed by another character, the creature is so horrifying, not just because of its existence but what it does to the stable homeostasis of identity and relationships that existed before the group of characters came into contact with the Thing. But if people remain together, then the question of who is the Thing now is answered. First, the Thing is uncertain as to what creatures dominate the new planet, hence it takes upon the guise of a dog, because of the dog's perceived power to attack, bite, run, and rip things apart. Alone, the question of 'who am I' in relation to a vast sea of people becomes much more challenging.