The Monster That Isn't There
By Cpl Ferro
What we are dealing with, is an entirely new principle of
life. This is proven by the Thing's capacity of perfectly imitating not
merely bodies, but minds as well. A perfect copy of a mind, is necessarily
the same mind, for if two identical sets of extensions or processes exist,
only different in terms of their location, then there is not sufficient
reason for one to be one place and not another, leading to irrationality.
Thus, if the imitation is perfect, it really is the imitated person. Their
body may have been digested and reformed anew, but their mind remains /the
same mind/ necessarily. With reference to the film, taken as if it were a
documentary record of a real chain of events, this essay will explain in
principle how it can do this, intelligibly, rather than deferring to
mysticism or fanciful story-telling. In so doing, it will scientifically
prove that John Carpenter’s The Thing is the best monster movie of all
time.
There's another way of looking at this that may make it
easier to grasp. Think of it in terms of free will. The Thing's problem, is
not merely to imitate what its victim might do, but to imitate what he
would do, sufficiently to fool people who actually know that person,
profoundly. And what a person would do, is a function of their nature, as
a freely willed soul. For the Thing to settle for anything less would place
it on the level of a Bodysnatcher (Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, 1978)
where eventually suspicions would arise due to subtle mistakes in character
(as when the Chinese man exclaims fearfully, "That not my wife!").
Women, especially, would be more likely to notice this in the long run,
slowly getting a "vibe" about the person which, when correlated
with knowledge of the creature being loose, could expose it. So if the
imitation is perfect, it is because the victim is not dead.
If he's not dead, what is he? The answer is he's possessed.
That's the principle of life that we're dealing with: a life form that
possesses the souls of other life forms [1]. I’m dead serious about this.
Now, what does it really mean? To understand this, we have to understand
Satanic possession in general. That Carpenter understands and appreciates
this notion of possession, is apparent in the other two films in his
Apocalyptic Trilogy, namely Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness.
So what is it? It's the infiltration of a Satanic spirit into the mind,
which takes on a life of its own, by making use of the mind. In this way,
it can affect things. But it starts off being all in the head, so to speak.
Satanic Possession
Cognitive Dissonance
Metamorphosis
Where Does It Go?
Reproduction
The Blair Question
The Final-Scene Identity Question
Conclusion
Footnotes
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