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Popular Culture Review
point seems to be that even intelligent, humanoid creatures can be capable of
savagery and coldness beyond what we consider humanity.
In the final analysis, The Thing from Another World, reinforces the
original story’s contention that the American hero can defeat even the most
advanced alien intelligence based on intuition and ingenuity. “. . . the Thing
could just as well be an escaped wild animal; all that’s needed to contain and
restrain it is clear thinking and prompt action” (Strick 23). The larger application
is that America will prevail against the Communist threat from Russia and Red
China no matter what weapons or implacable will they demonstrate. However,
the alien’s inability to imitate life forms and its apparent lack of understanding
of its enemy and weapons make it fairly easy to defeat, far more so than the
insidious alien of the original story.
In the years leading up to 1982, America was undergoing another crisis,
one of confidence. The Jimmy Carter administration had presided over a series
of crises—major gas price hikes, uncontrolled inflation, accompanying
economic difficulties leading to an unprecedented prime rate of 20% killing the
housing market, and ultimately, the worst one, the Iran Hostage Crisis. Carter
actually delivered an address to the nation, identifying a crisis of confidence, a
malaise that had fallen over America. Of all, the hostage crisis undermined
confidence the most. Carter’s nemesis was the Ayatollah Khomeini, a grim,
implacable enemy who refused in any way to deal with the “great Satan,” the
United States. In desperation, Carter authorized a military rescue mission to
liberate the hostages. It failed miserably and may have been one of the most
direct reasons for Ronald Reagan defeating Carter in the 1980 Presidential
election (Remini 289-292). Other critics have linked the Vietnam War to the
film, notably Brooks Landon in chapter two of The Aesthetics o f Ambivalence:
Rethinking Science Fiction Film in the Age o f Electronic Reproduction. He
points out the shape-shifting quality of the North Vietnamese who could strike
through a peasant, woman, or child, who were strapped with explosives (Landon
40-41).
During the first years of the Reagan Presidency, the country continued
to suffer a severe recession, a painful economic phenomenon affecting nearly
the entire population in ways, arguably, that the Cold War had not. Although,
like Eisenhower before him, Reagan had resolved the international crisis of the
Iran hostages, the mood of the country was generally sour, and Reagan, later to
become one of the most popular Presidents, had a low approval rating (Remini
292). Following the lead of two other iconic movies with radical political
messages for their times, Night o f the Living Dead, 1968, (during the Viet Nam
War), in which the hero is killed at the end, and Jaws, 1975, (the earlier gas
crisis and the subsequent economic pinch), in which the shark represents a force
almost too powerful for human beings, The Thing presented an extremely
negative view of the times. In fact so much so that it was a box office failure,
with audiences preferring the sunny picture of aliens presented in Spielburg’s
ET9perhaps inspired by the mood of optimism that Reagan in imitation of FDR