A few weeks into NYC’s shelter-in-place order, John Carpenter’s 1982 tour de force, The Thing, felt just apropos enough to enjoy. Considering that I now start my mornings with the soothing monotone of Amy Goodman—“Coming to you from New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic”—the more obvious choice was just a little too on the nose.
After metabolizing early March’s hyperarousal, which gave way to adrenalized panic, which gave way to a syncopation of fury and emptiness, the last two or three weeks have been slightly calmer, if not better. I spend most of my life waiting for the worst to happen, so acclimating to this new flavor of dread—firing and furlough, plague and privation, the four charging in like a polycule of apocalyptic ponies—feels natural, if uncomfortable. Hurry up and wait, a regular in my personal lexicon, has acquired a scintillating new frisson, but the bones remain the same. Plummeting this and skyrocketing that, improvised morgues and cannibalized social services—it’s all an intensification of before, sure, but how different is it, really? The expression “chickens coming home to roost” (itself a fragment of an older, more ghoulish adage) reminds me of one of the first things I learned when entrusted with my dad’s underfed flock of Rhode Island Reds at 6 years old: When animals aren’t given enough to eat, they start eating each other.
I love The Thing, which I’ve already written about at length. Watching it with Jade for her first viewing reinforced my tender feelings for both the movie and my girlfriend. Observing her skepticism disintegrate into enthusiastic disgust was so fun I almost forgot about the world outside the apartment. I think it was my favorite scene that hooked her, that bone-chilling moment when the Americans have chased Bennings out into the snow only to discover he isn’t Bennings anymore, no, he’s been assimilated by the Thing, and then he turns, hands morphed into lobstrosities, to suck that primeval howl from the black arctic night and it’s just SO GOOD.
That’s The Thing’s magic, a spell that only binds better as it ages: It starts out plodding and almost hokey, lulling you into a sense of security, confusing you with too many characters, timelines, rumors. When true chaos kicks in, you’re already off-balance, and by then, it’s too late. The concoction can convert almost anyone. Carpenter’s slow burn strikes again!
Watching The Thing in New York City in the spring of 2020 is to draw comparisons (sorry to be that guy). Like lots of us do at the beginning of a horror movie, Jade tried to predict which of the Americans was going to die, a process usually informed by the genre’s well-trod racist tropes. But as Jade eventually learned, every character in The Thing is doomed, including the Thing itself. There is no Final Girl, no designated survivor, only a few men—hardly friends, let alone trauma-bond buddies, even after weeks of being stalked by an alien predator at the ends of the earth—waiting for the fire to go out and the cold to claim them.
For this group of terrified humans, stranded on an ice-locked research station, it’s hurry up and wait, together but alone, unable to trust the bodies of those they live with. As the slow massacre unwinds, they start getting up to some familiar hijinks: They lock former companions out of buildings and into isolation. They binge-drink in private. They scream at computer screens. They break up the danger of being indoors with excursions outside, a place of parallel danger. In earth tones and long-johns, hair shaggy or bicked, they look like me and a lot of people I know right now, plus or minus a few flamethrowers.
Paranoia and mistrust set the stage for power struggle. Everyone, including the audience, is groomed for the hero’s journey and looking for a leader, and two candidates emerge: lone wolf MacReady, played by Kurt Russell, and politician Childs, played by Keith David. Other than these binary stars, I find The Thing’s large assortment of mostly white men in snow jackets and cable-knit hard to tell apart. From the movie’s opening scene, in which the arrival of a mysterious Norwegian helicopter pursuing a sled dog ends in gunfire and death, the American research station exists in either a state of panic or tense foreboding; precious little time is dedicated to introductions, to calm stage-setting.
Like the other characters, including Russell, we only get Childs in bits and pieces, though The Thing is considered to be one of his breakout roles (he later went on to star in Carpenter’s They Live). I wouldn’t exactly call David a character actor, but his resume kind of reads that way. With his Burgess Meredith-style work ethic, he has—to date—roles in over hundreds of films (he was in the bad Crash!) and TV shows, plus a couple dozen video games, none of which is to mention his stage work. Like Malcolm McDowell, David’s patchwork career comes together in a mighty quilt of bit parts and voice-overs bridging more substantial roles in mainstream hits, indie favorites, anime classics, nu westerns, action thrillers, Disney flicks, and lots of sci fi. He’s a guy that’ll been everywhere and seems to be willing to do just about everything, and as a result has the sort of culty vibe The Thing itself has garnered over the years.
Though Russell is the ostensible lead, neither his MacReady nor David’s Childs seems like they’re entirely angling for control. Sure, both are natural leaders, the kind of guys who get authoritative when they’re scared. Childs is more organized in his efforts to lead—you don’t see him hitting the bottle or resisting coronation like MacReady does—but whether organizing or delegating, seizing control or receding, neither can consistently grasp the reins, in large part because they’re leery of the leadership they sometimes seem to want.
This isn’t because no one else is trustworthy, but because the burden of taking care of everyone else is a tall order in the depths of discord. It’s a strange dynamic for this kind of movie: Not one, but two people ambivalently trying to manage a snowballing disaster. Everybody wants control, but few want—or can tolerate—the responsibility that comes with it.
It’s a distinction I was reminded of while reading Daemonum X’s newsletter this week. “D/s + the axis of control” is about BDSM power exchange, and the intricacies and challenges of “co-creating” a D/s relationship. Daemonum X challenges misconceptions about dominance and submission, including, I think, the idea that power resides in any single person in a healthy D/s dynamic. There is a type of person—one usually ignorant about the lifestyle—who believes that submission is inherently weak, demeaning, or temporary, or who alternatively think that it’s the sub/bottom who actually who has the most control in a D/s partnership, since they’re the ones dictating the limits of what’s done during play. But to use Daemonum X’s language, D/s relationships are a “co-creation,” a pursuit of mutuality, and it’s only through true mutuality can you have an honest ceding of power, an actual exchange, rather than a power vacuum (which usually leads to power grabs).
These misconceptions are how we have “dominants” who are more attracted to the idea of controlling another person than they are interested in mutuality, and to the many responsibilities that come along in a healthy D/s dynamic. If you follow me in social media, you know I’ll occasionally rant about that kind of player, who I advise you avoid like the—ahem—plague.
It’s one thing to be a hero in a horror film, and another to be a hero in reality. Both MacReady and Childs want to save themselves and the men with them or, failing that, the world beyond their research station, but in the cold realism of this movie, made even colder by the fantastic plot upon which it depends, even the brave guys fear the cost of heroism, the fascist implications of total control; when MacReady kills someone who is later revealed to have not been assimilated by the Thing, Childs sneers: “Then Clark was human, huh? Which makes you a murderer, don't it?”
Even the ones trying to do the right thing are afraid, sometimes afraid enough to do the wrong thing. While MacReady appears to be driven more by self-interest than Childs, and while I find Childs to be the more sympathetic and reassuring among the two leaders, I don’t know that there are any villains in The Thing, because there aren’t any heroes.
David tweets at @k8bushofficial.
Thank you for the shout out! Now I need to watch this movie ;)