How does the film "The Thing" represent a fear of women and it's regenerative powers from Julia Kristeva's article, "Powers of Horror"?
Julia Kristeva writes in her article, "Powers of Horror", in a section -Fear of Women--Fear of Procreation- about the fear of women and how men fear this "power". She says, "It is this power, a dreaded one, that patrilineal filiation has the burden of subduing" (77). Her idea that men fear this "power" that women can procreate.
"The thing" in the film is representation of a woman's presence. The film has a group of men that are stranded in the middle of a frozen tundra and are being attacked by "the thing". "The thing" is a monster that replicates a person from within and is slowly taking over the men.
The men are going insane knowing that "the thing" could be anyone and they do not know who is effected by it. The "thing" replicates from within the body it has taken over, just like a women has children. The women gets pregnant and creates child, yet another human.
How does this relate to men's reactions to their fear of procreation?
Kristeva speaks of ritual impurity and the power of pollution. These are things that men do to prevent the cycle of procreations. The mental idea of men is, "if a woman undergoing her period touches fire, food cooked on that fire makes her ill and threatens her with death" (78). This mentality is that if you hurt the woman then she will subside, get hurt, and die.
This is strongly seen in the film "The Thing". There are flame torches that the men are using in the film. It is used to kill "the thing" every time it is seen attacking one of the men. The mens fear of it taking over makes them kill it where ever it is noticed even if it is part of one of the men. They light "the thing" on fire and watch it die. This gives them a feeling of resolution of it procreating with another member of the group. This all represents the fear of women and their ability to procreate that Kristeva speaks of.
You bring up an interesting concept that I hadn't thought of when you say that "this gives them a feeling of resolution of it procreating with another member of the group." Specifically the idea of The Thing "procreating WITH another member of the group." I had always seen The Thing as essentially procreating asexually and independent of the men in the camp. However, in light of your words, I now have to consider what the entity being overtaken by The Thing contributes to this procreative process. That is, the organism, whether a Husky or a Man, contributes the outward form to the new Thing, while The Thing maintains the complex and mysterious interior of the new Thing. Given this information, then, one could argue that this is a fantastic representation of the patriarchal society's greatest fear: being taken over by the feminine. This instance, though, is even more dangerous than the fear of society being taken over, for the masculine is physically taken over by the feminine, threatening not only patriarchal society, but the constituent parts of it as well.
ReplyDeletei like what you said about fire. i believe it is used to cleanse the defiled.
ReplyDeletei also believe it is fun to light stuff on fire. just sayin.
Fire is used for cooking, which begs the question, if you cooked The Thing, what would it taste like? With all of those lifeforms absorbed over thousands of years, it probably tastes like chicken.
ReplyDeleteIt also begs the question, in prehistory, who invented fire? In a hunter-gatherer society, it was probably women, because they had the opportunity to sit and rub dry sticks together until something happened. The men probably came back from hunting and thought the women were witches.