Alien parasites and perestroika

By Will Ross

Few things are more fertile to distrust than paranoia, and few eras were less paranoid than the Cold War. In the face of literal annihilation, both East and West responded with fervent political condemnations. Never before in history was so much of the world delineated as ‘us’, and the rest as ‘them’. By the time the Berlin Wall came down and globalization kicked into high gear, distrust was shared equally among all.
Few films illustrate this change better than Howard Hawks and Edward Nyby’s The Thing from Another World (1950) and John Carpenter’s remake, The Thing (1982). The two films straddle opposite ends of the Cold War, each with their own perspectives on how fear germinates and how we respond to it. Though their plots differ, they share a similar premise: a group of men are stationed in a polar research station and discover the wreckage of an alien spacecraft. After bringing an inert creature into their camp, it breaks loose and begins terrorizing the remote station. Besides survival, the men face the risk of the alien multiplying and conquering Earth.
Another World’s creature is humanoid, but irreconcilably different from human beings: it is a plant. As such, it cannot be reasoned with, fully empathized with, or regarded as an equal. Its objective is to incubate seedlings that will grow more creatures; their hostility and seeming invincibility makes them a clear threat to the world. Carpenter’s Thing differentiates itself from its predecessor starting with its truncated title: The threat’s not truly “from another world”, but at least partly within: the alien is a shape shifter that assimilates and mimics its victims, then deforms into a grotesque monster when attacking. As a result, more time in The Thing is spent in fear of fellow men than real monsters, and there is as much risk of the men killing each other as the thing doing it.
What is the thing, though? In the original film, it is a clear allegory for communism and its incompatibility with western ideals. Intellectuals, too, are lambasted. A scientist who nurtures the seeds and insists on communicating with the alien race in the interest of knowledge is dismissed as a well-meaning fool, and the men set out to burn the creature to death. The characters of Carpenter’s film know there is a threat, but cannot distinguish it from themselves, aren’t even sure that those infected by the thing are aware of it. Whose head will turn into a killer spider next? There seems to be no way to tell. Those men grapple with the question of how to circumvent an impossible paradox: the only way to avoid being killed is for everyone to die. The Thing from Another World lacks this paradox. Instead, its response is a more comforting “Kill Communism with fire!”
Granted, it’s not reassuring to exchange political zealotry for despondent nihilism. The 1982 Thing doesn’t promise that paranoia will bring security. But for all its pro-survival posturing, the 1950 film’s militaristic conclusion, a broadcast that pleads, “Watch the skies! Keep looking! Keep watching the skies!” is far less empathetic than the end of its 1982 sibling, wherein two people face freezing to death. They sit and watch, and each studies the other and wonders how to live — or die — together.