JК
Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 131 из 359"Whaddye think yes doin' there, boyo?" at such geopolitical burglars as North Korea) was still quite respectable, and many Americans undoubtedly saw the idea in even stronger terms: the United States not just as policeman, but as the gunslinger of the free world, the Texas Ranger who had pushed his way into the brawling saloon of Asian/European politics in 1941 and who had cleaned house in a mere three and a half years.
So that moment comes in The Thing when Cornthwaite faces the creature-and is slammed roughly aside. It is a purely political moment, and audiences applauded the creature's destruction fervently when it came moments later. In the confrontation between Cornthwaite and the hulking Arness, there is a subtext which suggests Chamberlain and Hitler; in the destruction of the creature moments later by Tobey and his soldiers, audiences may have seen (and applauded) the quick, nononsense destruction of their favorite geopolitical villain- North Korea perhaps; more likely the dastardly Russians, who had so quickly replaced Hitler as the man in the black hat.
If all this seems much too heavy a cargo for a modest little fright flick like The Thing to bear, please remind yourself that a man's point of view is shaped by the events he experiences, and that a man's politics are shaped by his point of view. I am only suggesting that, given the political temper of the times and the cataclysmic world events which had occurred only a few years before, the viewpoint of this movie is almost preordained. What do you do with a blood-drinking carrot from outer space? Simple. Cut him if he stands and shoot him if he runs.
And if you're an Appeasing Scientist like Robert Cornthwaite (with a yellow streak up your back as wide as the no-passing line on a highway, that subtext whispers), you simply get bulldozed under.
Carlos Clarens points out how remarkably the creature of this film resembles Universal's Frankenstein monster from twenty years before, but there is really nothing so remarkable about it, surely; this particular card from the Tarot should be familiar to us by now, and if it's not, the title helpfully informs us that we're again dealing with the Thing Without a Name. It perhaps strikes more modern viewers as strange that a creature intelligent enough to conquer space should be presented in the film as an out-and-out monster (as opposed, let us say, to the saucerians in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers , who speak English with a moderate warble but with the grammatical poise of an Oxford don; Hawks's Thing can only grunt like a pig getting its back scratched with a wire brush). One wonders why he came to Earth at all.
So that moment comes in The Thing when Cornthwaite faces the creature-and is slammed roughly aside. It is a purely political moment, and audiences applauded the creature's destruction fervently when it came moments later. In the confrontation between Cornthwaite and the hulking Arness, there is a subtext which suggests Chamberlain and Hitler; in the destruction of the creature moments later by Tobey and his soldiers, audiences may have seen (and applauded) the quick, nononsense destruction of their favorite geopolitical villain- North Korea perhaps; more likely the dastardly Russians, who had so quickly replaced Hitler as the man in the black hat.
If all this seems much too heavy a cargo for a modest little fright flick like The Thing to bear, please remind yourself that a man's point of view is shaped by the events he experiences, and that a man's politics are shaped by his point of view. I am only suggesting that, given the political temper of the times and the cataclysmic world events which had occurred only a few years before, the viewpoint of this movie is almost preordained. What do you do with a blood-drinking carrot from outer space? Simple. Cut him if he stands and shoot him if he runs.
And if you're an Appeasing Scientist like Robert Cornthwaite (with a yellow streak up your back as wide as the no-passing line on a highway, that subtext whispers), you simply get bulldozed under.
Carlos Clarens points out how remarkably the creature of this film resembles Universal's Frankenstein monster from twenty years before, but there is really nothing so remarkable about it, surely; this particular card from the Tarot should be familiar to us by now, and if it's not, the title helpfully informs us that we're again dealing with the Thing Without a Name. It perhaps strikes more modern viewers as strange that a creature intelligent enough to conquer space should be presented in the film as an out-and-out monster (as opposed, let us say, to the saucerians in Earth vs. the Flying Saucers , who speak English with a moderate warble but with the grammatical poise of an Oxford don; Hawks's Thing can only grunt like a pig getting its back scratched with a wire brush). One wonders why he came to Earth at all.