The Metamorphoses of the Monster: Images of the Thing in Film and Popular Literature

Authors

  • André Cabral de Almeida Cardoso Universidade Federal Fluminense

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17851/2317-2096.23.3.99-112

Keywords:

identity, fluidity, film, monstrosity, utopia

Abstract

In the 2010 short story “The Things”, Peter Watts offers a version of John Carpenter’s film The Thing, written from the point of view of the monster. It is one of the latest links in a chain of creation and adaptation that starts in 1938 with John W. Campbell’s story “Who Goes There?”. The shifts this story has gone through point to equivalent shifts in our conceptions of subjectivity, our fears and our desires. Perhaps most striking among these shifts is the one that turns Campbell’s creature from an object of indescribable horror into an incarnation of utopian desire, a being who seeks to bring communion to fragmented and isolated human beings. What has changed to make the possibility of being absorbed by the alien cease to be the feared extinction of the self, and become a fantasy of integration and full communication? The creature in “The Things” offers a life in perpetual flux that erases the boundaries of the self. The aim of this paper is to discuss how the changing story of the Thing may shed some light on the transformations undergone by the modern ideal of the self and its connection to the body as the locus of utopian desire. Part of this story is the spectacular explosion of the body in film images and the projection of its interior onto the surface. The transformation of the Thing into a cinematic image marks an essential point in the alterations that the notion of subjectivity has been undergoing in the contemporary world.

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Author Biography

André Cabral de Almeida Cardoso, Universidade Federal Fluminense

Professor Adjunto. Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras Modernas, Instituto de Letras, Universidade Federal Fluminense.

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Published

2013-12-31

How to Cite

Cardoso, A. C. de A. (2013). The Metamorphoses of the Monster: Images of the Thing in Film and Popular Literature. Aletria: Revista De Estudos De Literatura, 23(3), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.17851/2317-2096.23.3.99-112

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 3 (2013): Intermidialidade

Section

Dossiê - Intermidialidade - Parte III

License

Copyright (c) 2013 André Cabral de Almeida Cardoso (Autor)

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