Revenge of the Horseman

“4,320,000,000 years of human reckoning—constitute a single day of Brahma, a single kalpa…Such a day begins with creation or evolution (sristi), the emanation of a universe out of divine, transcendent, unmanifested Substance, and terminates with dissolution and re-absorption (pralaya), mergence back into the Absolute. The world spheres together with all the beings contained in them disappear at the end of the day of Brahma, and during the ensuing night persist.”

                                 —Heinrich Zimmer, from Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization

In his final psychological work, Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung wrote, “The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes…the total psychic equilibrium…The dream compensates for the deficiencies of their [people’s] personalities, and at the same time it warns them of the dangers in their present course. If the warnings of the dream are disregarded, real accidents may take their place” (p.34). Jung’s observations concerning the symbolic significance in dreams seems uncannily descriptive of Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, which was written almost fifty years prior to Man and His Symbols. Conjointly, Carl Jung’s Fabian policy to heed the symbolic and metaphorical elements contained within dreams as a forewarning also permeates its pages. These prescient symbols often have multiple meanings to the conscious and subconscious lives of the characters encapsulated in Petersburg, and are often escalated into a subjectified state of personal interpretation. Intermixed amongst this the phantasmagorical fogs, the glazed regality of ornamentation, the pulsating flashes of wisplike lights, and the cyclical spatiotemporality of fluctuating spheres, Petersburg is a novel imbued with imagistic potency. The power of this hypnogogic state trumpets its clarion call within the dreams of three of the novel’s main characters: the dreams of Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, his son Nikolai, and Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin. It is within these characters’ minds (and their incessant pursuits of ‘cerebral play’) that Bely attempts to evoke and infuse the five senses into attaining a state of textual Nirvana. The result is a world in constant flux between the extremities of chaos and order and the pursuant subjugation to interchangeable symbolism, dimensional paradox, and temporal displacement.

Within the hazy labyrinthine gray matter of St. Petersburg, Bely first introduces the reader to Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, a gentleman “of venerable stock” (p.3), a prominent senator, and “head of a Government Institution” (p.5). Apollon is predisposed to the clarity that only logic, reason, and structure can provide and is prone to episodic lapses into ‘cerebral play’ whenever stressed by discord of daily life: “Proportionality and symmetry soothed the senator’s nerves, which had been irritated both by the irregularity of his domestic life and by the futile rotation of our [Russia’s] wheel of state” (p.10). In such moments, Apollon would escape the harsh realities of a chaotic Russia: “by an act of his will, [Apollon] shifted the center of his consciousness” (p.19

Exhibiting a somewhat psychological addiction to this ‘shifted center of consciousness’, Apollon seeks out the conditions necessary to facilitate his cerebral play. As the senator prepares for bed, he anticipates his entrance into this twilight realm and “would pull up the blanket in order to embark upon a journey, for sleep is a journey” (p.93). Arriving at his dream-state destination, Apollon would deconstruct the ornamentations and excesses of the tactile and corporeal into their basic geometrical states and occlude reality altogether: “Ableukhov’s eyes saw bright patches and dots of light, and iridescent dancing spots with spinning centers. They obscured the boundaries of the spaces. Thus one space swarmed in the other space” (p.93). As Apollon continues his spiraling descent into sleep, he becomes aware that “the bubbling vortex suddenly formed into a corridor stretching off into an immeasurable expanse. What was most surprising was that the corridor was an endless continuation of his head…he…was not Apollon Apollonovich, but something lodged in the brain, looking out from there…With the opening up of the sinciput [the forepart of the skull], something could run along the corridor until it plunged into the abyss” (p.93). The narrator further details that this intangible, fragmentary world the senator has entered was his ‘second space’.

It is here that Apollon dreams of fragmentary, foreboding events and false awakenings. Furthermore, it is also here that the reader is introduced to the first of three momentous dreams that appears in Petersburg and interwreathes itself amongst later ones by Apollon’s son, Nikolai, and the mustachioed Dudkin. Almost from the start of his arrival into this ‘second space’, Apollon finds himself “in armor, like a little knight” (p.94), which parallels the imagery of the Ableukhov “coat of arms: a unicorn goring a knight” (p.9). This idiosyncratic familial crest is a rarity amongst such noble emblems and unicorn lore, although it appears repeatedly throughout Petersburg.

During the masquerade ball, a mock battle is re-enacted for the entertainment of the guests; here, the reader is confronted yet again with the imagery from the Ableukhov coat-of-arms as well as the allusion to Apollon as ‘a little knight’: “Cutting across the ballroom was the wizened little figure of a knight…From among the maskers and Capuchins a one-horned being hurled itself upon the little knight” (p.112); however, in this instance, these icons of chivalry (the knight) and purity (the unicorn) are being lampooned rather than revered and, as the reader will discover, Petersburg is rife with symbols possessing multiple meanings and/or antithetical extremes …the Ableukhov coat-of-arms being no exception. To a lesser extent, the silvery specter of Apollon as a knight is echoed in the antiquated weaponry adorning the Ableukhov estate: “On the walls glittered a display of antique weapons: a Lithuanian helmet glittered beneath a rusty green shield: the hilt of a knight’s sword sparkled” (p. 33). Though, much like the masquerade ball’s lampoonery of medieval legends, these weapons of war are simply trophies now—parodies of their former power--stripped of their totemic virility while collecting dust.

The symbolism in Apollon’s dream isn’t solely ironic or paradoxical, but ominous as well. As the senator continues his slumber, he hears the repetitious tapping sound, “Tk-tk…tk-tk-tk…” (p.94), which, as the reader will later discover in the novel, is an allusion to the explosive device encapsulated in a sardine tin, being harbored obliviously by Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov (Apollon’s son), and meant to assassinate the senator himself. The bomb is also the symbolic crux unifying Petersburg’s three main characters in the waking world: Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin (bearer of the bomb), Nikolai (keeper of bomb), and Apollon (the bomb’s target). However, during Nikolai’s dream he transmogrifies from the explosive’s custodian into the makeshift armament itself: “Nikolai Apollonovich was an old Turanian bomb” (p.166); Of course, at this juncture, Bely—in his grandiloquent, circumlocutory manner—has identified the word ‘bomb’ with that of a ‘Turanian’ or Mongol. This syntactical identification and interchangeability between the two words is echoed elsewhere in the novel.

Most notably, the Mongol invader is emblematic of the Ableukhovs’ ancestral origins, ‘the Kirghiz-Kaisak Horde’ which—as the reference notes contained in the back of book explain—“were descendants of the Mongols who had once dominated Russia” (p.298). This fact also represents a great father-son irony in Petersburg: Apollon’s shame and/or embarrassment his family’s ancestral origin manifests itself as disgust toward the Mongol menace, while Nikolai desires to explore and embrace his Asian heritage. Apollon’s disgust for the Mongol manifests itself during his dream, “The clatter was the clicking of the tongue of some worthless Mongol with a face he had already seen…it was Nikolai Apollonovich” (p.94). It should also be mentioned that Bely’s use of the word ‘clatter’ to describe the Mongol, is later used during Alexander Ivanovich’s delirious dreamlike state: “A weightily sonorous clatter swept across the bridge to the Islands. The Bronze Horseman flew on” (p.210). The Bronze Horseman, of course, is the domineering bronze statue of Peter the Great located in Petersburg’s Senate Square and from Aleksandr Pushkin’s phantasmagorical poem titled The Bronze Horseman.

However, In Petersburg, Bely bestows upon the bronze statue of the Russian tsar a symbolism, which is closely entwined with that of the Mongol invader’s: the dissolution of Russia. In Bely’s eloquent, mellifluous style, the symbolic fusion between these two seemingly disparate visages—that of a Russian tsar notorious for his Westernized attitudes and the lowly Mongol barbarian bent on wreaking his Asian brand of chaos across the fatherland—materialize and intermingle in the mind of Dudkin. Lost deep in thought and during his own brand of cerebral play, Alexander Ivanovich envisions the, “The metallic Horseman had galloped hither, when he had flung his steed upon the Finnish granite, Russia was divided in two. Divided in two as well were the destinies of the fatherland” (p.64).  This vision is an obvious reference to St. Petersburg’s Western influence clashing with Russian tradition. The imagery of the mysterious Mongol invader takes this clash a step further by raising it to revolutionary heights: “Alexander Ivanovich had preached burning the libraries, universities, museums, and summoning the Mongols” (p.203). The Mongol as a chaotic, uncontrollable, and unknown element materializes during Dudkin’s fever-ridden nightmare. Ironically, Alexander Ivanovich summons forth the phobias surrounding and effigies of the Eastern-Asian stereotype, which was assumed be an accurate depiction by a majority of Russians during the late 19^th and early 20^th century—especially, since “Japan had just proved victorious in a war that Russia was supposed to have won” (p.xii)—then symbolically intertwines Russian revolutionary with Mongol invader.

This Russian disgust for all things Asian, is embodied  in the character of Apollon whose dreams continue to be plagued by the Mongol: “according to his [Apollon’s] calculations the Mongol…was stealing toward him…pulling his consciousness out through the blue sincipital breach: into that which lies beyond. Something scandalous had taken place” (p.95). The senator’s nightmarish ominations of ever-looming scandal are catalyzed by the Mongol invader whom, as I have previously mentioned, Apollon has associated with his son. This omen serves a dual symbolism in the novel, both concerning Nikolai: that of Apollon’s son’s cupidity and stupidity concerning Sofia Petrovna and the red domino, and  that of his son’s witless harboring of the sardine tin with the ‘horrible contents’. Obviously, the senator is unaware of the latter of two until the final chapter of the novel, but as I’ve already discussed, Carl Jung  that serves as an omen of his to liquidate Apollon himself. To the reader, it should become quite apparent that Bely has masterfully intertwined the characters (and ensuing dreams) of Apollon, Nikolai, and Dudkin, while methodically and melodically interlacing prescience with symbolism with the supernatural with societal scandal.

The image of the Mongol appears in Nikolai’s dream as well; however, the symbolic significance of this Asiatic invader has transmuted its meaning from that of threat to that of heredity. After the masquerade ball where he has discovered that the package delivered by Dudkin is actually housing the ‘horrible contents’ of a bomb, Nikolai Apollonovich falls under the spell of sleep—albeit, on top of the sardine-tin-encased explosive—and dreams of his ancestors: “His Kirghiz-Kaisak ancestors had maintained relations with the Tibetan lamas. They swarmed in the Ablai-Ukhov blood in goodly number. Was that not the reason why he had a tender feeling for Buddhism? Heredity told. In the sclerotic veins heredity throbbed in millions of corpuscles” (p.165). Nikolai’s embracement of his Eastern Asian heritage is the antithetical extreme of his father’s disgust over the Mongol scourge; thereby, infusing the Mongol otherness with interchangeable significance between the father’s and son’s perceptions of the self and their progenitors.

As Nikolai’s dream progresses, the mythic imagery of the mystic Orient materializes once again. This time, in the form of “sharp-beaked, golden, winged miniature dragons” (p.165); these miniaturized draconic imps are echoed later in Petersburg. After Dudkin has awakened from his dream, the peasant Styopka remarks to him, “You’ll drink yourself silly until you start seeing a Green Dragon” (p.215). In the reference notes following the novel, the ‘Green Dragon’ is explained, “In the context of this passage…the expression also takes on apocalyptic overtones (the Dragon of Revelation 12 who threatens the ‘woman clothed in the sun…)…which Bely emphasizes by capitalizing the words” (p.347). Again, the image of the dragon appears later in Nikolai’s dream: “The Ancient Dragon was to feed on tainted blood, and consume everything in flame” (p.166). Much like the father-son duality of double-meaning pervading the term ‘Mongol’, the dragon embodies both the infernal facet of apocalyptic leviathan and the antidotical formula to purge the Western influence and purify the Mongol bloodline.

While subconsciously incarnated in the body of an ‘age-old Turanian’ Mongol, Nikolai is illuminated by peering through the ageless, omniscient lens of enlightenment: “He was nirvanic man. And by Nirvana he understood Nothingness” (Bely, p.165-166). In Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Heinrich Zimmer further elaborates on the concept of Nirvana, “which is beyond all concepts and forms…beyond all earthly and celestial forms… beyond limiting, qualifying attributes and characteristics, has become…Buddha out of Nirvana, the anonymous void” (p.200). Zimmer’s association of Nirvanic enlightenment with the ‘void’ is paralleled countless times throughout Petersburg; not to mention, all three significant dreams in the novel embrace, acknowledge or accept this nothingness of the endless void. Although Apollon’s somnolent encounter with the Nirvanic is similar to Nikolai’s, “he hung suspended over a timeless void” (p.93), the senator stops short from referring to his twilight enlightenment as anything beyond logical: “Apollon Apollonovich always saw two spaces: one, material…the other, not exactly spiritual” (p.93).

Conversely, Dudkin’s encounter with the void—though still enlightening—is anything but pleasant, “Had he at that moment been able to stand aside and take a look at himself he would no doubt have been horrified: he would have seen himself clutching at his stomach and straining his throat as he bellowed into the void in front of him” (p.207). Furthermore, Alexander Ivanovich’s entanglement with the abyssal nothingness is transmogrified into living shadow; thereby, imparting a sinister meaning into the void’s vivification. The therapeutic ‘two spaces’ of Apollon’s dream metamorphosed into a living entity in Dudkin’s and given a name, Mr. Shishnarfne, “who was growing ever more subtile. A man of all three dimensions had entered the room. He had…become a contour (or, two-dimensional), had become a thin layer of soot…this black soot had suddenly smouldered away into ash…And there was no contour” (p.207). Here, the Nirvanic nothingness of the void has now transmuted from enlightenment into something sinister in the dark of Dudkin’s room.

Not only is Mr. Shishnarfne a dual-dimensional living shadow, but he’s also the harbinger of yet another of Bely’s paradigmatic shifts in symbolic interpretation and antithetical duality; at this juncture, the void of enlightenment from previous interpretations has been twisted into the abyssal void of deviltry and revelation. As Dudkin lucidly dreams his conversation with Shishnarfne, Alexander Ivanovich soon realizes the pitch-black has diabolical intentions: “’Shishnarfne—Shish-nar-fne…’ From his vocal apparatus came the reply: ‘You summoned me…Here I am…’ Enfranshsish had come for his soul” (p.208). The idea of a shadow representative of the devil or demons is nothing new. In the book, Dictionary of Symbols, the following line is given under the entry for ‘shadow’: “As the antithesis of light, the Devil was himself a shadow” (p.181). With this in mind, it seems Bely was drawing from symbolic sources of shadow as devil during Dudkin’s nightmare.

A demonic manifestation is but the first of Alexander Ivanovich’s visitors riddling his fever-ridden dream; the Bronze Horseman himself pays a visit. The statue of Peter the Great is symbolic in many senses, but before I delve into the manifold meanings, let’s consult the Dictionary of Symbols once again for the metal ‘bronze’: “An alloy of copper and tin…symbolizing force, power and hardness, sacred to the lame Hephaestus, who in Greek mythology, fashioned from it the bronze giant Talos” (p.30). Beyond the patinated luster of St. Petersburg itself, the elemental components of bronze appeared previously in Petersburg; in particular, both appeared in the Likhutin house in the shape of Sofia Petrovna’s ‘phoo-phoo’ box. As the notations in the back of the novel point out, Angel-Peri’s copper collection box “was tin only a few paragraphs earlier. We [the editors] cannot decide whether this…is a careless slip on Bely’s part, or whether he deliberately pokes fun at the inconsistencies so common in many of the long Russian nineteenth-century novels” (p.318); I say it is neither. Considering that both copper and tin comprise the bronze alloy, I believe this to be an omen of future events. Furthermore, the fact that the box is meant for guests to deposit coinage every time they utter a vulgarity—or, if you will, pay for their sins—suggests another indication that the ‘phoo-phoo’ box can be paralleled to that of the visage of the Bronze Horseman in Dudkin’s dream sequence.

The narrator also refers to the Bronze Horseman as “The Metallic Guest” (p.214), which, when looking at the notes of the back of the novel, “alludes to both [Pushkin’s] “The Bronze Horseman”  and to The Stone Guest” (p.347) Further notations reveal that Pushkin’s play, The Stone Guest was about “the Stone Commendatore, that emblem of retribution and doom, of the Don Juan legend. A huge stone funerary figure of the man the Don has killed, he leaves his grave at the Don’s defiant challenge and drags him down to Hell” (p.336). This suggests that the Bronze Horseman is the embodiment of the grim reaper and has taken his duties to cull the dead. However, the Bronze Horseman—as a symbolic manifestation of the Grim Reaper—has not come to collect Dudkin’s soul, but rather to bestow his phantasmagorical powers and duties onto Alexander Ivanovich himself. This transference of otherworldly powers is indicated after Dudkin awakes from his dream: “He felt a coppery sensation in his mouth” (p.215).

Yet another signifier that Dudkin is now the possessor of the grim reaper’s duties, not only resides in Alexander Ivanovich’s “business which brooks no postponement” (p.215)—the liquidation of Lippanchenko—but also in his choice of weapon to commit the murderous act: a pair of scissors. Bearing in mind that the Grim Reaper carries around a scythe to harvest the dead to the afterlife, and that scythe and scissors have a common “pseudoetymological association with Latin scindere (to cut or cut with)” (www.dictionary.com), it becomes more apparent to the reader that the Bronze Horseman has become the Grim Reaper has become Alexander Ivanovich Dudkin. I would also like to make mention of the fact that, according to the Dictionary of Symbols, the entry for ‘sickle/scythe’ notes, “The curved sickle was a lunar harvest symbol of the agricultural-god Chronos (in Roman myth, Saturn)… sometimes personified as Father Time or the Grim Reaper” (p.182). With this in mind, it would appear that Bely has deftly interwoven several meanings and symbols into the guise of the Bronze Horseman and supplanted them into that of Dudkin.

Taking all of this into account, let’s take another look at the Grim Reaper’s symbolic origin in the Greek myth of Chronos—or his Roman counterpart, Saturn—and how he fits into the symbolic equation of Petersburg. The child-devouring Titan appears several times throughout the novel; most notably, during Nikolai’s dream: “his [Nikolai’s] father was Saturn. The circle of time had come full turn. The kingdom of Saturn had returned” (p167); here, Bely has masterfully suffused Apollon Apollonovich with the god of time. Although, it would appear that Apollon—named after Apollo, the oracular god of Greek myth and charioteer of the Sun—would much rather be likened to Zeus—Chronos’ son, Apollo’s father, and king of the Olympian pantheon. During his forays into cerebral play, the senator muses that he “was like Zeus: out of his head flowed goddesses and genii” (p.20). Bely has masterfully blurred the lines between perception and self-perception; in this case, Nikolai’s choice of linking Apollon to the aged Saturn, and the senator’s observations of himself not as the dethroned, tyrannical Titan but as Zeus. Furthermore, Bely has also entwined the antagonistic father-son relationship between Nikolai and Apollon with that of the hostile father-son relationship between Zeus and Chronos.

While on the subject of Saturn, the Titan’s planetary equivalent and namesake, is also mentioned several times throughout Petersburg: “We feel the seething of Saturn’s masses in the spine. The stars of constellations eat their way into the brain” (p.262). Yet again, Bely has interconnected and exchanged symbolic meanings; thereby, linking the fates of his characters with the stars. Saturn is not the only celestial body inhabiting the night sky that’s enumerated in the novel. Ironically, during Dudkin’s liquidation of Lippanchenko—the mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Apollon Apollonovich, the revolutionary loses consciousness and falls into his fateful/fatal abyss, “His consciousness expanded. The monstrous periphery of consciousness sucked the planets into itself, and sensed them as organs detached one from the other. The sun swam in dilations of the heart; and the spine grew incandescent from the touch of Saturn’s masses: a volcano opened up in his stomach” (pp.263-264). Lippanchenko’s body symbolically exchanges identifiability with the cosmic body of the universe.

Considering this symbolic exchange between the human body and the universal one and since I started this examination into Petersburg by quoting Jung, I’d now like to exchange one Carl for another and quote the astronomer and astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, from his book Cosmos: “There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him—until…he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another…It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men…These profound and lovely images are, I like to imagine, a kind of premonition of modern astronomical ideas” (p.214). Sagan’s remarks are significant to Bely’s Petersburg not only because the noted cosmologist mentions the gods, premonitions, dreams, and the universe in one fell swoop, but because he references the cyclical, fluctuating nature of everything encapsulated within the cosmos. Likewise, I find this to be Andrei Bely’s overarching theme and commentary on the state of early 20^th-century Russian society and beyond: the cycles of discord and order are universal, infinite, and unavoidable.  Petersburg is but a city in Russia is but a country on a continent on a planet orbiting a star that is but one of billions of stars in the spiraling arms of a galaxy that is but one of billions of galaxies comprising the universe that —over many hundreds of billions of years of expansion and contraction—is annihilated then re-animated from nothingness, which starts the process all over again; thus, making Petersburg a work of illumination that reaches far beyond its 293 pages.

 

Bibliography

Bely, Andrei. Petersburg. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.

Dictionary.com | Free Online Dictionary for English Definitions. 1 Apr. 2011. <www.dictionary.com>.

Jung, C. G., and Marie-Luise Von Franz. Man and His Symbols. New York: Dell Pub., 1968.

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Ballantine, 1985.

Tresidder, Jack. The Dictionary of Symbols. London: Watkins, 2008.

Zimmer, Heinrich Robert, and Joseph Campbell. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. [New York]: Pantheon, 1946.

A Darker Side of Science 

Though differing in mass and size, both Godzilla, Tokyo’s favorite colossal lizard, and the doubly-dentigerous xenomorphs in Alien are monsters cut from the same miscreant mold in many other respects. With that in mind, even though these twain terrorizers of the cinema screen were created from divergent cultures both share the common traits of science gone astray and technology run amok in their inceptions and subsequent storylines . These two ‘horriferous’ abominations also arose as reactionary anamneses in the aftermath of 20^th-century wars—in the case of Godzilla, WWII, and that of Alien, the Cold War. As a result, both films share a similar nightmarish vision concerning the meaning of ‘monster’, while the fears behind their inceptions are quite noticeably different. However, neither the otherworldly Alien humanoid/biomechanoid nor the subterranean Godzilla transmogrified by the atom is constrained by the restrained logic and lofty reasoning that the scientific method so heavily relies upon. If anything, both silver-screen classics point a disapproving finger towards science; that is, when science is out of a scientist’s hands.

The term ‘monster’ itself seems like a cinch to ascertain a definition. Who hasn’t been afraid at some point in their lives of what might lurk in the depths of the dark (for myself, it was the Sleestaks from The Land of the Lost and Bigfoot…but that’s the subject matter for an entirely separate paper). A quick Google search for the word ‘monster’ and its definition will result in myriad options. So, let’s take a look at a few. Merriam-webster.com defines the ‘monster’ as “an animal or plant of abnormal form or structure” and as “a threatening force.”  Dictionary.com defines ‘monster’ as “a legendary animal combining features of animal and human form or having the forms of various animals in combination” and “any animal or human grotesquely deviating from the normal shape, behavior, or character.”  With such descriptions in mind, it’s a no-brainer that Alien and Godzilla are infested with the monster scourge. Both beasts grotesquely deviate from acceptable, contemporary—albeit earth-bound—norms; furthermore, both monsters are a combination of human, animal, and myth.

In the case of Godzilla, the creature is partially-dinosaur and partially-dragon/sea serpent from Japanese myth and legend. In the audio commentary of the film’s DVD, Ed Godziszewski, publisher and editor of Japanese Giants magazine, notes that Godzilla was a combination of “a Tyrannosaurus, an Iguanodon, and…a Stegosaurus.” In the film, the element of sea monster from Japanese legend and lore is addressed when news reporter Hagewara questions the village elder of Odo Island—the location of Godzilla’s initial wrath. He explains to Hagewara that Godzilla is “the name of a monster that lives in the sea. It will come from the ocean to feed on humankind to survive.”  Steve Ryfle, author of Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star and commentator on the Godzilla DVD adds, “Many movies featured an island or an isolated place where the monsters began as a legend.” Ed Godziszewski also denotes, “The fact that Godzilla’s first appearance occurs during a fierce…further reinforces the idea that the monster is more than just an animal,”

In keeping with this element of myth, the phantasmagorical association of a fire-breathing dragon is evident in Godzilla even to those unfamiliar with the hirsute Japanese variety. Moreover, although the sub-aquatic monster’s hydrogen-bomb exhalations are scientifically explained in the film as a result from nuclear testing in the Pacific and the ensuing exposure to massive amounts of radiation, Godziszewski argues that the inhabitants of Odo island “are cut off from modern society and their customs and lifestyle are still rooted…when people believed in legends. This gives Godzilla a sense of the supernatural and even though we’ll get a scientific explanation for the creature’s appearance later on, it’s really only a theory.” He also adds that “we never really know if the monster [Godzilla] is a legendary beast or a nuclear mutant or both…the creature has a mythical dimension here.”

And what about the sleek specimen from the xenomorphic species found in Alien? Just because it’s extra-terrestrial in origin doesn’t mean it’s absolved of earthly ‘monster’ myths and meanings. The combination of human being and beast is apparent; however, what isn’t as clear is just which animal or animals comprise the beastly half. The anatomical construction of the extra-terrestrial in Alien leaves little room for refutation that there’s a humanoid element thrown into the mix—one head, two arms, an upright torso, bipedalism, opposable thumbs, and a pectoral girdle will do that—but the beast in ‘Star Beast’ (Alien’s original running title) is much harder to pinpoint. This general obfuscation is touched upon in the book Monster Theory where we find editor and contributing writer, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, verbalizing this confusion by stating that the monster in Alien defies “every natural law of evolution; by turns bivalve, crustacean, reptilian, and humanoid…It sheds its skin like a snake, its carapace like an arthropod. It deposits its young into other species like a wasp” (p.6). Perhaps, director Ridley Scott can shed some light on the subject.

Scott mentions in the audio-commentary accompanying the Alien DVD that he envisioned the downed alien spacecraft as “a biological or biomechanoid carrier of lethal eggs inside of which are the small creatures that, actually, fundamentally integrate—in a very aggressive way—into any society or any person.” The Alien director further elaborates that he was inspired by footage from an Oxford Scientific documentary: “They [Oxford Scientific] watched a slice of bark…and there’s a grub underneath the bark…across the top of the bark is crawling an insect [ichneumon wasp] which…feels the grub is there…It…produces a needle from…between its legs and drills through the bark and bull’s-eyes right into the grub and lays its seed…what comes out of the union between the grub and that particular insect, does that become a version of both? And that’s what we basically went along with.”

Ridley Scott expounds on this concept by explaining, “If you [the Alien] land on a human being, you’ll have a resemblance to a human being. If it's dropped on an ostrich, it would look like an ostrich.”  In other words, before the facehugger’s parasitoid impregnation of the host, the victim’s genetic makeup is somehow assimilated into the xenomorph’s composition; thereby, peripherally mimicking the host body. So, what can we gather from these two descriptions? Well, for starters, we can ascertain that the bestial half of the alien species in the film is a cryptic mixture of:

·         metamorphotic insectoid: egg→facehugger→chestburster/warrior/queen

·         mimetic parasitoid: facehugger→host/chestburster hybrid

·         cybernetic organism: biomechanoid

Scott’s use of the word ‘biomechanoid’  rather than ‘xenomorph’—as the species is referred to in sources outside of the film—suggests an even stronger reverence for Alien artist/designer H.R. Giger’s work; namely, his “Biomechanoid” series, which was released prior to his work on the film in the early 1970s. In his book, H.R. Giger ARh+, the artist remarks that his ‘biomechanoids’ works were “a harmonious fusion of technology, mechanics and creature” (p.48) Giger further elaborates that his artwork is laced with a grim message: “gene research will yet teach us fear. Cloning is already…a nightmare” (p.48). The allusions to the extra-terrestrial species in Alien possibly being a cybernetic organism with adaptive, assimilative abilities during its metamorphotic stages coupled with the beast’s unknown planet of origin, generates a level of fringe-scientific mystery comparable to Godzilla’s rather ambiguous origin (ie- Is he the result of nuclear testing, a mutated prehistoric dinosaur or some mythical sea-serpent worshipped by the inhabitants of Odo Island?).

Aside from shared contextual meanings and mysterious origins, the 50m-tall irradiated reptile and the biomechanoid life-form also have similar altercations with the ‘darker’ side of science. These scientific discoveries—and their sinister applications—aren’t in the hands of scientists but warmongers nations and their myopic governments.  It’s alluded to in Alien that the biomechanoid species is one that has not evolved on some distant planet over hundreds of millions, but, rather, one specifically created and/or modified as a weapon of war by some other extraterrestrial race. In the commentary, Ridley Scott remarks, “I think the space-jockey [the alien giant found by members of the Nostromo crew] is, actually, somehow the pilot and he’s part of a military operation, if that’s the word you want to apply to his world and, therefore, this is probably some kind of carrier. A weapon carrier.”

Likewise, on the audio commentary of the Godzilla DVD, Ed Godziszewski notes that “Godzilla is a stand-in for the [atomic] bomb,” while Steve Ryfle remarks, “When he [Godzilla director, Ishiro Honda] returned to Japan after the war [WWII], he and his fellow soldiers travelled through the decimated city of Hiroshima and…This experience haunted Honda and he often claimed it had a major influence on the way he directed Godzilla. To Honda, Godzilla was not so much a metaphor for the bomb, but actually a physical manifestation of it.” Thus, Godzilla’s duality as innocent, prehistoric denizen of the deep caught in the crossfire of hairless apes and as harbinger of holocaustic retribution upon the civilization that dared a dalliance with the atom. Thus, Honda has deftly entwined social commentary with cautionary tale.

Honda’s fortified belief that the exploitation of science by personages bent on utilizing its applicative potential not as a tool to build but as a weapon to destroy is echoed in Godzilla’s other empirical tinderbox: that of the Oxygen Destroyer. Dr. Serizawa, the scientist responsible for its invention, describes the Oxygen Destroyer as “a device that splits oxygen atoms into fluids,” and further explains, “I came across an unknown form of energy…I discovered a powerful force that scared me beyond words…Used as a weapon, this would be as powerful as a nuclear bomb. It could totally destroy humankind!” In the commentary, Steve Ryfle notes that “Serizawa has been compared to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who spearheaded the Manhattan Project…many of the physicists whose research led to the atom bomb actually started out searching for ways to apply Einstein’s theories to develop new sources of energy and eventually it was discovered that this energy could be used as a powerful weapon.”  However, Ryfle further states that, while there are many similarities between Serizawa and Oppenheimer, there are also differences. Unlike the physicist behind the Manhattan Project, Serizawa viewed the Oxygen Destroyer as a scientific aberration and, because of this, has elected to keep it a secret from the rest of the world rather than pursuing any further experiments into its destructive capabilities.

Ryfle also indicates that Ishiro Honda, “placed more faith in men of science than the government of the military” and that, via the character of Serizawa, the Godzilla director was urgently “pleading with the scientific community to stop this madness of the Arms Race, and if you [the scientific community] do inadvertently invent another doomsday weapon, it’s your obligation to never reveal it.” Ultimately, Serizawa is persuaded into revealing his mysterious device to the world in order to eradicate the irradiated thunder-lizard, but only after he sets fire to his life’s work—the documents and paperwork containing the Oxygen Destroyer’s cryptic equations and schematic designs: “This will be the first and last time that I will ever allow the Oxygen Destroyer to be used,”

Unfortunately, the scientist in Alien isn’t as honorable or conscientious as Dr. Serizawa is, but he does keep his secrets. As the film progresses, we learn that Ash—resident science-officer of the commercial towing spacecraft the ‘Nostromo’—has a secret: he isn’t human but an android…an android programmed to follow through with the ‘Special Order 937’. The Nostromo’s owners and the crew’s employers, The Weyland-Yutani Corporation, has planted Ash amongst the towing starship’s crew, rerouted the Nostromo to rendezvous with the downed spacecraft housing the alien eggs on planetoid LV-426, and ordered the android to: “Investigate life form. Gather specimen. Priority one. Insure return of organism for analysis. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable.”

Throughout Ash’s scenes in the film he is performing duties and task befitting a scientist; however, the android has his orders…even if it means lying to the crew members about the results of his empirical experiments, withholding any accurate information that he has gathered, and treating his fellow crewman as test subjects when he deems it necessary. After Ash’s hidden agenda has been exposed and his secret revealed, a confrontational scene between the android and the remaining crew members occurs. Ridley Scott signifies, “This is a great turnabout in the story because really just when you think your main—and only—aggressor is this thing loose on the ship, you now got a much bigger problem. You’ve got two aggressors which raises the paranoia and that of the audience twofold.” With that in mind, unlike Dr. Serizawa in Godzilla who has chosen to suppress his scientific discoveries and volatile device for the betterment of humankind, Ash in Alien is programmed to execute atrocities in the name of science; thus, making Alien have not one but two monsters.

After viewing both Godzilla and Alien, it becomes obvious that both of these science-fiction cinema classics are really nothing more than modern ghost-tales told ‘round the fire. So, what can we ascertain from watching Godzilla and Alien? For starters, both films portray the ‘monstrous’ repercussions of science when it’s used for military gains, to ensure political power, and/or to quench corporate greed. Furthermore, the use of science—or, more often than not, pseudo-science—as an instrument to demystify and rationalize the phantasmagorical element in contemporary cinema isn’t restricted to just Hollywood. It can also be surmised that monsters in science-fiction are re-appropriations of timeless myths and/or religious iconography that are identifiable beyond invisible borders. Perhaps, the language barrier and unfamiliar customs might be perplexing to the viewer at times, but what isn’t is the visual and visceral malevolence these Mephistophelean composites embody as they gnash and snarl and claw across theater screens.

 In his book, The Savage Mind, anthropologist and ethnologist, Claude Levi-Strauss wrote that “instead of contrasting magic and science, [it is better] to compare them as two parallel modes of acquiring knowledge…Both science and magic…require the same sort of mental operations and they differ not so much in kind as in the different types of phenomena to which they are applied” (p.13). In relation to Godzilla and Alien, it could easily be argued that both the irradiated dinosaur with atomic halitosis and the xenomorph with an infinite set of fangs and barbed prehensile tail are spoken in scientific terminology, but they could just as easily be referred to as a wingless fire-breathing dragon and a pointy-tailed “black devil”—as Jeffrey Cohen refers to the xenomoprh terrorizing the Nostromo. This might help explain why both of these filmic fiends evoke fear in their viewers; thus making it that much effortless to suspend one’s disbelief. Both monsters symbolize and are synonymous with terror and danger in any language, to any culture, in any time, and in any size.

Bibliography

Alien. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm. 20th Century Fox, 1979. DVD.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1996. Print.

Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/>.

Dictionary.com | Free Online Dictionary for English Definitions. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://dictionary.reference.com/>.

Giger, H. R. HR Giger ARh +. Zurich: Taschen, 1992. Print.

Gojira. Dir. Ishiro Honda. Toho Co. Ltd., 1954. DVD.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.

Destroyevsky (The Devil Take It)

Textually entrapped within Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Demons are the tortured souls and tortuous plots, which manifest themselves—via metaphor and allusion—in a Russia bereft of morals and meaning. This complex intertwining of both the spiritual world of the damned and doomed and the cerebral world of 19^th-century science and psychology is rife with the bitterness of irony, the hypocrisy of civilized society, and the heresies of hearsay. Dostoyevsky’s cautionary tale of a Russia gone awry with godlessness and astray with the ‘great idea’ is inundated with religious undercurrents, invoking imagery from both Russian Orthodoxy and pagan folk beliefs. The world of The Demons is inhabited by a rogues’ gallery of misanthropes and miscreants who are, more often than not, plagued by failed attempts to attain apotheosized perfection and panged by fits of depression, paranoia, and/or psychoses.

From the opening line of the novel, “As I embark on a description of the very strange events that recently occurred in our town” (7) to its final sentence, “After the autopsy, our medical men rejected insanity completely and resolutely” (748), each page of The Demons is strategically laced with a set list of alienating, anxious words: ‘strange’, ‘insane/insanity’, ‘delirious/delirium’, ‘fury’, ‘frenzy’, etc.. Additionally, Dostoyevsky infuses exclamations that often invoke the visage of Lucifer himself, such as: “the Devil only knows what these devils have up their sleeve” (300); “The Devil take it” (418); “the Devil take you” (429); and “Why, he should be packed off to the Devil” (607). His unrelenting usage of such an infernal language instills an overall, menacing tone of Mephistophelean proportions. 

As Varvara Pretovna—matriarch of the Stavrogin clan—exclaims, “Lord Jesus Christ, has everyone gone stark raving mad then!” (183), it becomes apparent to the reader over time that Dostoyevsky’s employment of the terms ‘madness’ and ‘insanity’ in describing almost every character at least once in The Demons is quite telling; considering, both words were often believed to be symptomatic of demonic possession. In his article titled “A Case Illustrating So-Called Demon Possession” from The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Dr. Edward Mayer explains, “Demoniacal possession as a church question was formerly accepted literally, being based upon the passage in John x. 20: ‘He hath a demon and is mad.’ …epidemics of demon possession occurred…which showed phases of mental dissociation” (265). Additionally, the term ‘demonic possession’ is described in The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology as “a morbid mental condition, in which the patient believes himself…possessed by a demon. The condition may be considered…a type of insanity…On the historic side, demon possession is important as a stage in the development of medical theory of disease” (268). Though, to lend credence to this argument, one really has to look no further than in the “Introduction” of The Demons.

As Robert L. Belknap elucidates, “From its [The Demons] title to its final sentence, this novel deals with insanity…The early Christians, like pagans before them, treated…insanity as possession by unclean spirits. Both epigraphs identify the demons of the title as earlier words for and understandings of madness” (xxvii). Though, perhaps, the character of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky concisely sums up the underlying intentions behind Dostoyevsky’s evocations of demonic possession while discussing the passage from Luke in the Bible, concerning Jesus and the madman possessed by demons: “You see, it’s just like our Russia. These demons who come out of the sick man and enter the swine—these are all the sores, all the contagions, all the uncleanness, all the demons…who have accumulated in our great and beloved sick man, our Russia, over the course of centuries” (724).

Dostoyevsky doesn’t end there with the satanic symbolism, disturbing the pages of The Demons. Another allusion to deviltry is transmogrified into the insectoid form of the fly. In the book, The Dictionary of Symbols, the entry for ‘fly/flies’ states that the insect symbolizes “evil and pestilence…flies were equated with demons and became Christian symbols of moral and physical corruption” (84). Dostoyevsky makes several references to flies throughout his novel; most notably, within the confines of Captain Lebyadkin’s poem titled “The Cockroach,” which he recites in the great halls of the Stavrogin house at Skvoreshniki: “In this world a roach did dwell, from birth a cockroach, proud and wise, one day into a glass he fell all chockablock with cannibal flies…The cockroach took his rightful place, the flies, they buzzed and clamoured, ‘Our glass is full, there’s no more space’ to Jupiter they yammered” (195-196).

Our esteemed author continues to use the fly as a metaphor for deviltry throughout The Demons. After Stepan Trofimovich has given his speech at the gala thrown by Yuliya Mikhaylovna von Lembke, he extols, “here in Russia there’s a whole mass of people who are concerned with nothing more than attacking other people’s impracticality…with the annoying persistence of flies in summer” (543). Dostoyevsky also compares the group of five to Beelzebub’s bug of choice, “They [the group of five] felt that they had suddenly fallen like flies into a huge spider’s web” (610). Later, Arina Prokhorovna Virginskaya—the wife of group-of-five member, Virginsky, and professional midwife—brushes off the birth of Marya Ignatyevna Shatova’s child, “It’s simply the further development of the organism, and nothing more, no mystery…Otherwise, any old fly is a mystery” (656). Lastly, during a confrontational scene between Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky and Aleksey Nilych Kirillov, Pyotr warns Kirillov that if he plans to run off and not fulfill his promise to kill himself at the proposed time, “ I’ll find you, even at the other end of the world…I’ll hang you…like a fly…I’ll squash you…you understand?” (622).

Speaking of Kirillov’s plans to kill himself, Linda Ivanits discusses the subject of suicide in her book, Russian Folk Belief. And its close link to the Devil. Ivanits states, “His [the Devil’s] connection with suicides was especially strong. The person’s distraught state of mind preceding a suicide was taken as a sign of struggle with the devil, and of course, the suicide itself was an indication that the devil had won” (48). With this in mind, it seems very likely that Dostoyevsky intentionally chose to use Kirillov’s plans to kill himself in order to attain deification as both a parallel to Lucifer’s revolt against and attempt to dethrone God and as emblematic of the Russian folk belief that the Devil is “always nearby awaiting his chance to inflict illness, steal children, and prompt arson, murder, or, especially, suicide” (50). Furthermore, the fact that Nikolay Vsevolodovich Stavrogin—the anti-heroic protagonist of The Demons—also commits suicide further solidifies the idea of Satan holding sway not only over Russia’s younger generation but also over the thematic structure of the novel.

  Dostoyevsky’s impetus for appropriating hellish imagery with a sense of biblical imprimatur is further emboldened by revelations of end times and the Apocalypse. While discussing the afterlife with Kirillov, Nikolay Stavrogin utters, “In the Apocalypse the angel swears that time will no longer exist” (262). The continuation of such foredooming discussion is unintentionally touched upon while Stavrogin visits with Ivan Pavlovich Shatov. Mixed amongst his highly subjective views concerning ‘the Russian spirit,’ atheism, and socialism, Shatov declares, “People are formed and moved by another force that rules and dominates them…this force is the…unquenchable desire to go on to the end…It is the spirit of life, as the Scriptures say, “of living water”, the drying up of which is threatened in the Apocalypse” (277).

The apocalyptic visions persist in The Demons during a conversation between Pyotr and Kirillov while discussing the latter’s housing Fedka the Convict: “At night I’ve [Kirillov] been reading him [Fedka] the Apocalypse and giving him tea” (418). Fedka then mentions these very same discussions later in the novel, while confronting Pyotr Stepanovich, “Aleksey Nilych [Kirillov], bein’ a philosopher, has explained the real God…the maker and creator, and the creation of the world, along with what’s fated in the future and the transformation of every creature and every beast from the book of the Apocalypse” (620). While on the subject of both apocalyptic beasts and the character most likely to carry the mark of the Beast, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, let’s turn our attention to Stepan Trofimovich’s prodigal son.

Pyotr is introduced in The Demons in Part 1, Chapter 5, which is noticeably titled “The Wise Serpent”. Although it might be debatable whether Dostoyevsky was directing Chapter 5’s title to either Pyotr Stepanovich or Nikolay Vsevolodovich, I’m inclined to believe it was the former and not the latter. The novel’s narrator and chronicler, Anton Lavrentyevich, makes the following observation concerning Pyotr: “He articulated his word in a surprisingly clear manner…At first you would find this very much to your liking, but then it would become repellent…You somehow began to imagine that his tongue must be of some special shape, usually long and thin somehow, terribly red and extraordinarily sharp, its tip in constant and spontaneous movement” (199). Anton’s study of Pyotr’s charm suggests not simply that of an articulate gentleman but also that of a forked-tongued snake, or rather, a ‘wise serpent’. According to the Dictionary of Symbols, the entry for ‘snake’ mentions that “the Judeo-Christian symbolism of the serpent as the enemy of humankind and…Satan himself” (187).

With this in mind, the narrator also makes the following remark about Pyotr in The Demons, “A rather strange thing it was…a gentleman who had dropped so suddenly from the sky to tell other people’s stories” (205), which parallels Lucifer’s banishment and subsequent fall from Heaven. Yet another parallel between Pyotr and Satan can be found in their power of persuasion. As Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger—authors of the book, Malleus Maleficarum, published in 1486—wrote, “It must be said that…he [Satan] instigates man to sin. And this he does…by persuasion…He presents something to the understanding as being a good thing…therefore the Devil can impress some form upon the intellect [of man], by which the act of understanding is called forth” (49).

As Dostoyevsky reveals throughout the novel, Pyotr spreads his subtle, persuasive gossip throughout the local landed gentry and genteel elite; however, his power of persuasion was most evident over the governor’s wife: “he acquired a strangely powerful influence over Yuliya Mikhaylovna” (359) who “looked on him as an oracle” (545). Moreover, Kirillov refers to Pyotr Stepanovich as “a political trickster and intriguer” (681) who wants to lead him “off into philosophy and ecstasy” (681), so that he can compel Kirillov to do his bidding; in this case, Pyotr persuades him to write a suicide note stating he’s murdered Shatov. In the Dictionary of Symbols, the entry for ‘trickster’ (with a cross-reference for ‘devils’) states, “In mythology and folklore…tricksters symbolize the important role in the selfish, subversive, irreverent, and shrewd” (210); 

Additionally, Linda Ivanits notes in Russian Folk Belief that “the devil existed for the sole purpose of inflicting harm and prompting evil deeds” (38) and that “the devil incites man to drink so that he can take advantage of him, prompting him to evil deeds and crimes…Russian peasants attributed sudden and violent crimes such as murder and arson committed…to the direct work of the devil” (42-43); it should be noted that both words ‘inciting’ and ‘prompting’ are synonymous with ‘persuading’. The Demons echoes these sentiments when Pyotr divulges to Nikolay Stavrogin his master-plan for Russia: “We will kill desire; we will foster drunkenness, gossip, denunciation; we will foster unheard-of depravity” (463) and later states, “We shall proclaim destruction…We’ll get fires going…There’ll be a shakeup the likes of which the world has never yet seen. Rus will plunge into darkness, the earth will begin to weep for its old gods” (467). Much of the ideas that the devil was trickster of the Russian peasant and a corruptor of their souls are mirrored in the aforementioned passages espoused by Pyotr Stepanovich, concerning his disturbing and disconcerting plans for the future of Russia and its people.

Altogether, Dostoyevsky deftly summons forth a host of demonic allusions, which taunt and harp the inhabitants of his novel; in so doing, he purposely suffocates his readers with a tempestuous miasma of 19^th-century, Russian societal ills. This intentional overuse of certain lexicon, expressions, and visions in The Demons, not only condemns its characters to directionless devilry and utter disillusionment, but also sends its readers spiraling downward into the abyssal depths of humanity’s darker side. Dostoyevsky’s fractured documentation of a country and its people teetering between turmoil and godlessness searches for some sort of reconciliation …when there is none. At times, The Demons can be an emotionally-draining novel. Still, Dostoyevsky’s use of frightful apparitions steeped in the religiosity of the Russian Orthodox faith and the inflections of Russian folk myths, leaves the mind wondering and the soul wandering; all of which, he irrefutably executes with razor-tipped pen dipped in mire of Stygian ink.

  Bibliography

“Demonic Possession.” Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. 1901.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Demonsf. New York: Penguin Books. 2008.

Ivanits, Linda J. Russian Folk Belief. New York: M.E. Sharpe. 1992.

Kramer, Heinrich and Sprenger, James. Malleus Maleficarum. New York: Dover Publishing. 1971.

Mayer, Edward E. "A Case Illustrating So-Called Demon Possession." The Journal of Abnormal Psychology,  6.1 (1911-1912): pp. 265-278.

Tresidder, Jack. Dictionary of Symbols. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. 1998.

Variations on a Thing

Way back in 1938, John W. Campbell, Jr. penned a paranoid little piece of science-fiction, which appeared in Astounding Stories magazine. Aptly—and rather ominously—titled Who Goes There?, Campbell crafted a short story about an unearthed, shape-shifting  alien frozen in a solid block of Antarctic ice had such lasting power that it spawned two film adaptations with a third on the way. To attempt to decipher what exactly it is about Who Goes There? that has captured the imaginations of countless readers of science-fiction—and still sends blustery chills of terror up their spines to this day—would require several pages solely devoted to the subject and be completely off-topic. So then, let’s address the real focus of this critique: that of the conveyance of science in Campbell’s novella and its filmic interpretations—Howard Hawks’ 1951 classic, The Thing from Another World, and John Carpenter’s 1982 gore-fest, The Thing. Although the science behind these three versions varies, their transmittal of scientific information does not, and, in so doing, each interpretation is imbued with a sense of confusion, astonishment, and exigency. With the brandishing of such a bold and verbose claim, there better be some hard-core, empirical evidence to back it up, right? You bet’cha and I will attempt to do just that while determining whether these forms of relaying scientific fact are effective or not.

Before I become too entrenched in the psychobabbling art of critical assessment, it might be best to identify the two structural methods in which these three pieces of science-fiction are cohesively bound—regardless of their divergences in plot—to churning out the scientific method: the ‘specimen analysis and/or examination’ model and the ‘scientific briefing’ model. The former usually concerns the alien life-form itself in one of its many transmogrified manifestations while the latter encapsulates various other types of scientific evidence and evaluations that are usually extolled by authoritative figures, concerning the alien in either a direct or indirect manner. Although these two types do appear in various incarnations throughout the novella and both films, such derivations are slight and often utilized to further the overarching ambience of the media format; in other words, the names, faces, and places may change but the aforementioned models do not.

The ‘military/scientific briefing’ model makes its first appearance within the first few paragraphs of Who Goes There?, and tackles much of the gathered scientific data upfront via a regimental exposition given by Second-in-Command—and main protagonist, ‘Mac’ MacReady—which is rather cleverly treated as a rehashing of events occurring just before the opening pages of the novella: “You know the outline of the story…I [Commander Garry] am going to ask MacReady to give you the details of the story, because each of you has been too busy with his own work to follow closely the endeavors of the others” (p. 2).

During MacReady’s debriefing the other men stationed at the American post in the Antarctic, the reader learns (if he/she didn’t already know) that the “compass does point straight down here [the South Magnetic Pole of the Earth]” (p.3) and that something has disturbed this earthly magnetic precision. Furthermore, we receive a minor lesson in the elemental properties of iron while determining what the cause of the polar, magnetic disturbance is not, “it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris [one of the story’s scientists] had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course, iron more so—and certain special steels even more magnetic. From the surface indications, the secondary pole…was…so small that…no magnetic material conceivable could have that effect” (p. 3). MacReady continues to address the anomalous results confounding the scientists, “As a meteorologist, I’d have staked my word that no wind could blow at -70 degrees…without causing warming due to friction with the ground, snow and ice, and the air itself…but for twelve consecutive days the temperature was -63 degrees…it was meteorogically impossible, and it went on uninterruptedly” (p. 4).

While discussing the alien spacecraft’s crash-landing on Earth, we also get a lesson in prehistoric continental drift, “it’s [the spacecraft] been frozen there ever since Antarctica froze twenty million years ago…it must have been a thousand times more savage…there must have been blizzard snow as the continent glaciated” (p. 4-5). At this point, MacReady waxes the technical while discussing the material composition of the alien spaceship, the countless metallurgical experiments that ensued, and the reason the ship was ultimately destroyed: “The metal was something we didn’t know. Our beryllium-bronze, non-magnetic tools wouldn’t touch it. We made reasonable tests—even tried some acid from the batteries with no results. They [the aliens] must have had a passivating process to make magnesium metal resist acid that way…we set off the thermite bomb. The magnesium metal of the ship caught” (p. 7).

Much of MacReady’s longwinded briefing in Who Goes There? is cut from John Carpenter’s cinematic adaptation and, instead, replaced with second-hand allusions to the spaceship’s discovery by a Norwegian expedition via a videotaped recording. In the commentary, Carpenter states that he opted for the Norwegian videotape as a visual tool to explain “basically, the back story of unearthing the saucer.” And, thus, the viewer experiences the pre-recorded discoveries right along with the team at the United States National Science Institute, Station 4. Instead of MacReady surmising the American team of scientists’ findings in the novella, John Carpenter elects to layer video footage of the Norwegian expedition’s findings on the TV screen via team members MacReady, Norris, and Commander Garry vocal reactions on the silver screen; thus, enveloping the audience viewing the American science team viewing the Norwegian expedition in an expositional Droste effect. As the American team watches the videotaped images on the TV, MacReady observes, “It looks like somethin’ buried under the ice.” This is followed by Norris’s conclusion, “And look at that. They’re planting thermite charges.” Commander Garry then remarks, “Whatever it was, it was bigger than that block of ice you found.” as MacReady and Doc Copper give each other grim looks of resignation.

After locating the site of the Norwegian expedition’s findings, MacReady and Norris fly to the location of the downed alien spacecraft’s crash-landing and examine the wreckage. MacReady asks Norris, “Jesus, how long do you figure this has been in the ice?” to which Norris responds, “Well, the backscatter effect’s been bringing things up from way down around here for a long time…I’d say the ice it’s [the spaceship] buried in is 100,000 years old, at least.” This is considerably less time than that surmised by MacReady in Who Goes There? Perhaps, Norris was distracted by MacReady’s ridiculous hat. Perhaps not. Regardless of the age discrepancy of the downed alien craft, Carpenter’s alteration of the novella works well for this scene by having the viewer experience the enormity and ominousness of the unearthly craft; thereby, indirectly asserting the advanced level of intelligence the American science team is up against.

Once MacReady and company return to Station 4, he briefs the other scientists on their findings. Unlike Campbell’s confident ‘bronze statue’, Carpenter’s version of MacReady is plagued by reservation, resignation, and a healthy dose of skepticism.  While some members of the American team inspect the metal scraps retrieved from the otherworldly wreckage, Mac exhales, “I don’t know. Thousands of years ago, it [the alien spaceship] crashes, and this Thing gets thrown out or crawls out, and it ends up freezing in the ice…they [the Norwegian expedition] dig it up. They cart it back. It gets thawed out, wakes up; probably not in the best of moods…I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” The level of authority Campbell’s MacReady demands by his sheer presence has been replaced with Carpenter’s version of Mac—played by Kurt Russell—who’s uncertain of and reluctant to believe in he and Norris’s findings; even though, he has witnessed firsthand the inexplicable.

Something else that is inexplicable is why Howard Hawks chose to remove all of the characters appearing in Campbell’s novella and replaced them with a new batch of flyboys and flask-burners…but that’d be an entirely different evaluation and totally inconsequential to this critique. In The Thing from Another World, we meet Air-Force Captain Patrick Hendry—played by Kenneth Tobey—who serves as Hawks’ cinematic equivalent to MacReady. Yet another inconsistency between Who Goes There? and Howard Hawks’ adaptation, the rather strategic uprooting of “the scientists holding a convention” from Antarctica to the North Pole. Perhaps, the famous producer flipped the glacial Poles on our intrepid band of scientists due to another kind of ‘cold’; one spelled ‘NSC-68’? Again, that’d be an altogether different critique and unrelated to my assessment.

With all of this in mind, it isn’t Hendry who—like his MacReady counterparts—briefs the congregating scientist on the alien spacecraft; instead, this honor is bestowed upon Dr. Carrington, chief scientist of Polar Expedition Six, who informs Capt. Hendry and co. of the previous night’s mysterious events. Even then, it appears to be below our esteemed Dr. Carrington to waste his valuable breath on these mere military mortals and has Miss Nicholson, his secretarial note-taker (and Hendry’s love interest), do the dirty work. While Carrington looks on with an ascot-wearing air, Miss Nicholson reads, “November 1^st, 6:15pm. Sound detectors and seismographs registered explosion due east. At 6:18, magnetometer revealed deviation 12 degrees, 20 minutes east…Such deviation possible only if a disturbing force equivalent to 20,000 tons of steel or iron ore…had become part of the Earth at about a 50-mile radius.” Although the Poles have been reversed and the spacecraft crash-landed the night before rather than 20,000,000 or 100,000+ years prior, these scientific findings coincide with Campbell’s and actually elaborate upon them.

Carrington decides to descend from his lofty heights to relieve Miss Nicholson’s vocal chords of their duty and further elaborates, “we have some special telescopic cameras. On the appearance of radioactivity, a Geiger counter trips the release and the cameras function…this is the result.” Dr. Carrington then leads Captain Hendry over to a monitor and continues, “This first picture was taken three minutes before the explosion, or 6:12. You can see the small dot below there in the corner…one minute later, that dot is moving from west to east fast enough to form a streak…at 6:14, it’s moving upward. 6:15, it drops to the Earth and vanishes. A meteor might move almost horizontal to the Earth but never upward.”  Hendry question the good doctor, “How’d you find the distance of impact?” Carrington loftily replies, “By computation,” before he focuses his attention elsewhere and has fellow scientist Ready pick up where the Dr. has left off, “It’s quite simple, Captain. We have the time of arrival of the sound waves and detectors and also the arrival time of the impact waves on the seismograph. By computing the difference, it becomes quite obvious they were caused by the traveling object and the distance from here is 48 miles.” Of course, Hendry has to adhere to his rugged workingman ethos and—whether he really comprehends what he’s just heard or not—blurts, “Well, you lost me, but I’ll take your word for it,” which would make any blue-collared pappy proud.

As Hawks’ The Thing from Another World trudges on past the snow-drifted discovery of the downed spacecraft (which had already taken place prior to the events in John Campbell’s progenitorial sci-fi masterpiece and is witnessed via video recording of the Norwegian expedition in John Carpenter’s The Thing), the retrieval of its alien passenger frozen in a block of ice, and the alien’s subsequent revivification from its icy prison, the ‘thing’ flees from  the gun-toting occupants of Polar Expedition Six and, in the process, loses a limb to the pack of huskies the scientific expedition uses to get around. The aforementioned severed arm ends up on the lab slab for some good old scientific scrutiny, and this leads to the second method of relaying scientific information in all three of these works: the ‘specimen analysis and/or examination’ model.

 As the gaggle of representatives from the military industrial complex, the mass media, and gender-specific stereotypes loom ‘round the council of enlarged craniums huddled over the severed arm in examination. As the scientists poke, prod, and confer with each other, one warns Dr. Carrington, “Be careful, doctor. Those barbs are sharp!” to which Carrington replies, “Seems to be a sort of chitinous substance.”  Uh-oh, somebody used a big word because pressman, Ned Scott interjects, “Speak English, will ya, Doctor” before Carrington has even finished his sentence. This results in Carrington taking it down a notch for the lay people in the room and the viewing audience in the theater: “Something between a beetle’s back and a rose thorn…Amazingly strong.” Another scientist adds, “very effective if used as a weapon.”

After some quips from Scott and the boys in bomber jackets, Carrington continues, “There’s no blood in the arm, no animal tissue” then asks his fellow colleague, Dr. Stern, to look at a tissue sample under the microscope. Dr. Carrington then turns his attention to reporter Scott and addresses his statement about the Thing freezing to death from a missing limb, “No, Mr. Scott. I doubt very much if it can die, as we understand dying.” Dr Stern observes through the lens of the microscope, “No arterial structure indicated. No nerve endings visible. Porous, unconnected cellular growth.” Scott responds, “Just a minute, doctor. Sounds like you’re trying to describe a vegetable.” Carrington confirms Scott’s suspicions as Dr. Ready interjects, “That could be why Sgt. Barnes’ bullets had no seeming effect.” 

Something else that appears ‘seeming’ is that Howard Hawks has elected Ned Scott as the conduit for the common man…and, apparently, the average movie-goer…unable to fully fathom the abbondanza of technical speak—which really isn’t all that technical—from the wise and withered quarters of the scientific intelligentsia. Scott half-jokingly speaks, “It sounds…as though you’re describing some form of super carrot.” The turtle-necked Carrington, never one for turning down the opportunity to present himself as a god among men, retorts, “This carrot, as you call it, has constructed an aircraft capable of flying millions of miles propelled by a force as yet unknown to us.” The confounded Scott quivers, “An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles.” At this point, both Scott’s and Carrington’s continuing dialogue becomes the focus and symbolic of the film’s attempt to address heady scientific issues to the viewers in the dark of the movie theater; Scott represents the common movie-goer seeming incapable of grasping even the most basic of scientific concepts and Carrington characterizes the Sagan-esque car-salesman attempting to make science accessible without losing its authoritative grip.

Dr. Carrington pushes Scott to “imagine how strange it would have seemed during the Pliocene age to forecast that worms, fish, lizards that crawled over the Earth were going to evolve into us.” Scott makes an objection, but Carrington pushes on, “On the planet from which our visitor came, vegetable life underwent an evolution similar to that of our own animal life, which would account for the superiority of its brain. Its development was not handicapped by emotional or sexual factors.” As if such concepts might seem unreasonable to the viewing audience, Scott austerely remarks, “Dr. Carrington, you won the Nobel Prize. You’ve received every kind of kudos a scientist can attain…I’m not, therefore, gonna stick my neck out and say you’re stuffed absolutely clean full of wild blueberry muffins, but I promise you, my readers are gonna think so.” In one fell swoop, the character of Scott has addressed the viewers and defended their communal common sense via witty quips and slang.

Carrington responds to Scott’s remarks with a half-giggling tsk, “Not for long, Mr. Scott. Not if they know anything about the flora of their own planet.” Scott, still speaking for the movie-goer who might view an advanced alien race of evolved plants as far-fetched and hard to swallow, exasperatedly questions, “You mean there are vegetables right here on Earth that can think?” As the soldiers standing behind the reporter take their leave—perhaps, lost by the plot or offended by Darwinian ideals (Chuckie D. and his theories were, and still are, never much of crowd pleaser)—Carrington replies, “A certain kind of thinking, yes. You ever hear of the telegraph vine?  Or the…Is it the acanthus century plant, Dr. Stern?” Taking some of the heat off of himself, Carrington hands scientific explanation over to Stern who is ogling the severed arm through a magnifying glass that’d make Sherlock Holmes green with envy, “The century plant catches mice, bats, squirrels, any small mammals Uses a sweet syrup as bait, then holds onto its catch and feeds on it.” Scott asks, “What’s the telegraph vine?” and Stern, his hands now folded behind his head as he basks in the spotlight, replies, “The vine…can signal to other vines of the same species…vines 20 to 100 miles away. Intelligence in plants and vegetables is an old story, Mr. Scott. Older even than the animal arrogance that has overlooked it.”

What is hard to overlook isn’t the fact that intelligence in plants is an old story, but that Howard Hawks & co. decided to scrap the shape-shifting alien in John Campbell’s original story for the ‘garden’ variety. At any rate, in Chapter 6 of Who Goes There?, the reader finds the ‘specimen analysis and/or examination’ model in full-swing. After being thawed awake from its multimillion-year sleep and supposedly burnt to death by members of the Big Magnet camp while attempting to assimilate then transmogrify itself into the huskies in Dogtown, resident biologist, Dr. Blair, gets the Thing’s charred carcass up on the examiner’s table for some detailed observations and a more thorough assessment. Blair speculates, “I wonder if we ever saw its natural form…it [the alien life-form] may have been imitating the beings that built that ship…I think that was its true form. Those of us who were up near the bend saw the Thing in action. The thing on this table is the result…From my observations…I think it was native to a hotter planet than Earth. It couldn’t…stand the temperature. There is no life-form on Earth that can live in Antarctica during the winter, but the best compromise is the dog. It found the dogs, and somehow got near Charnauk [the canine leader of the pack] to get him…The thing we found was part Charnauk…half-dead, part Charnauk half-digested by the jellylike protoplasm of that creature, and part the remains of the thing we originally found, sort of melted down to the basic protoplasm…Every living thing is made up of jelly—protoplasm and minute, submicroscopic things called nuclei, which control the bulk, the protoplasm. This Thing was just a modification of that same worldwide plan of Nature; cells made up of protoplasm, controlled by infinitely tinier nuclei” (54).

 Blair continues to parley this biological, technical speak by attempting to parallel, “You physicists might compare it—an individual cell of any living thing—with an atom, the bulk of the atom, the space-filling part, is made up of electron orbits, but the character of the Thing is determined by the atomic nucleus. This isn’t wildly beyond what we already know. It’s just a modification we haven’t seen before. It’s as natural, as logical, as any other manifestation of life. It obeys exactly the same laws. The cells are made of protoplasm, their character determined by the nucleus” (55).  Whether the character of Dr. Blair was successful in his comparison is beside the point. However, what is important is that Campbell imbues the good doctor with an air of authority, which makes the scientific information he’s relaying to the others at Big Magnet—and, ultimately, to the readers of Who Goes There?—seem believable regardless of their accuracy. 

Blair also makes note that there is a distinction between the alien’s cellular composition and that of earth-bound life, “In this creature, the cell-nuclei can control those cells at will. It digested Charnauk…studied every cell of his tissue, and shaped its own cells to imitate them exactly. Parts of it…that had time to finish changing—are dog cells. But they don’t have dog-cell nuclei.” In order for the team to better understand him, Blair points to certain parts of the misshapen mass of flesh as example, “That [a torn dog’s leg]…isn’t dog at all; it’s imitation…In time, not even a microscope would have shown the difference…not microscope, nor X-ray, nor any other means. This is a member of a supremely intelligent race…that has learned the deepest secrets of biology, and turned them to its use” (55). Much of this scene from the book is successfully echoed in John Carpenter’s film adaptation.

In Carpenter’s The Thing, the viewer witnesses the aforementioned examination scene with Dr. Blair—expertly played by Wilford Brimley—as he points out, with his partially-used eraser-capped pencil, different parts of the contorted mass of otherworldly anatomy before him, “You see, what we’re talking about here is an organism that imitates other life-forms, and it imitates them perfectly. When the Thing attacked our dogs, it tried to digest’em, absorb them, and in the process, shape its own cells to imitate them.” As he wanders around the examiner’s table with his fellow scientists listening intently to his every word, he stops and points out, “This, for instance—that’s not dog. It’s imitation. We got to it before it had time to finish…imitating these dogs.” In the DVD commentary of The Thing, John Carpenter explains that he “found it really difficult to get across to the audience something that’s rather simple, which is the life-cycle of this creature that can imitate you. And one organism can become the entire world…there’s nowhere to go and it’s [the relaying of scientific information] thankless kind of stuff.”

Carpenter’s frustrations can be felt as he breaks up the specimen examination from Who Goes There? into two scenes. Instead of continuing Blair’s examination with his fellow scientists standing around, Carpenter decides to divide the novella’s scene into two separate ones: the aforementioned examination scene and a computer analysis of the alien’s cellular composition. As Blair sits in front of the computer, 8-bit graphics of the dog cells and the Thing’s cells—identified as ‘cell intruder’—blip across the monitor screen. As the Thing’s cell approaches a dog cell then proceeds to devour it, the word “assimilation” appears, followed closely behind by “assimilation complete-cell dog imitation” while Blair watches what has transpired in disbelief. The screen graphics then dematerialize and are replaced with textual scientific information, “Probability that one or more team members may be infected by intruder organism: 75%. Projection: If intruder organism reaches civilized areas…Entire world population infected 27,000 hours from first contact.”

This rather ominous news appearing across Blair’s computer monitor, also echoes part of his book equivalent’s speech from Campbell’s Who Goes There?. As team member Barclay asks, “What was it [the Thing] planning to do?” (55) Blair’s response to his question is simple, “Take over the world, I imagine.  It would become the population of the world.”  The fact that John Carpenter chose to utilize the burgeoning computer technology at the time, which was unavailable when Campbell wrote his novella, lends credence to the assumption that computer analysis is infallible and devoid of human error and, thusly, provides another level of authority in communicating scientific information… however dated the computer and its graphics may appear to contemporary senses. Carpenter confesses in DVD commentary that he was “trying to explain the life-cycle…the Thing takes over one cell, as you can see…we still didn’t get it quite right.” Perhaps, that’s simply the perfectionist in Carpenter rearing its ugly head. However obsolescent the technology seems, the scene is still successful in communicating scientific information.

Out of the two silver-screen adaptations of Campbell’s Who Goes There?, it’s fair to say that both Hawks and Carpenter succeed with at least one model of scientific conveyance but not both. In Hawks’ adaptation, the ‘scientific briefing’ model is much more thorough and complex than Carpenter’s equivalent; the latter relying too heavily on the visual element and not enough on the dialogue. This reliance betrays the overall fluidity of the plot, which rends confusion not only to the stupefied scientists in his film but to its viewers who are left to draw their own conclusions on more than one occasion.  A little mystery is a good thing, but too much of it can be befuddling to someone unfamiliar with the plotlines of Who Goes There? and/or The Thing from Another World

Likewise, the ‘specimen analysis and/or examination’ model from The Thing from Another World isn’t as successful as John Carpenter’s adaptation. This might be partially due to the replacement of the shape-shifting alien from Who Goes There? and The Thing with that of the ‘super carrot’ in Hawks’ film. Although, the science is conveyed with a sense of authority, the scientists communicating the knowledge with an arrogance of superiority disguised as amusement over—resident ‘common man’ and ace news reporter—Ned Scott’s questions. Even if Hawks had been faithful to Campbell’s original story, the likeability factor of the character Dr. Carrington is about  -50, which also happens to be the temperature of the winds at the South Polar Plateau in Campbell’s novella. Perhaps if Hawks hadn’t switched Poles on us, the frigid Dr. Carrington would’ve had a better chance of warming our hearts …but that’s just conjecture on my part. Overall, the believability of the science communicated is diminished due to aloofness, arrogance, and secrecy of most of the scientists stationed at Polar Expedition Six in The Thing from Another World.  

If scientists were salesman, then John Carpenter’s down-to-earth team sell science much better than Howard Hawks’ elitist crew, led by a ‘la-de-da’ Nobel laureate, do. The level of believability is evenly matched with the likeability of The Thing’s scientists and that’s important in making science accessible to the masses. I suppose it doesn’t hurt either that Carpenter chose to fashion his film’s scientists and alien life-form after those appearing in Who Goes There? rather than replacing them like Hawks did in The Thing from Another World. Furthermore, though I don’t find the idea of plant-life evolving into an advanced sentient race, I do find it far-fetched that said race would look like a humanoid,…and a mammalian man, at that.

Moreover, the scientists in Campbell’s novella and Carpenter’s The Thing, are simply trying to survive and protect the Earth’s population from the shape-shifting alien; this in turn, portrays the scientists as fellow human beings and not some special category of high-minded individuals above humanity and with a secretive set of ulterior motives like Dr. Carrington and many of his fellow scientists in The Thing from Another World. Wanting to peacefully extend a hand in friendship to an extra-terrestrial intelligence is commendable if and only if said intelligence wishes to extend its hand—or tentacle—in return. Sacrificing the Earth’s population for the sake of scientific discovery is not only an abominable act but ultimately a defeatist one. Who will there be to reap the rewards of science breakthrough if Earth’s populations have all been consumed and assimilated by some alien invader? Dr. Carrington really needs to prioritize.

            Bibliography

Campbell, Jr., John W. “Who Goes There?” They Came from Outer Space: 12 Classic Science Fiction Tales that Became Major Motion Pictures. Ed. Jim Wynorski. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1980. pp. 31-90.

John Carpenter’s The Thing. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Kurt Russel, Wilford Brimley. 1982. DVD. Universal Studios, 2004.

DNA + ANR = BS

Estee Lauder’s ad for its Advanced Night Repair product touts that “women can’t live without” it while intertwining it with rather dubious, scientific persuasion; however, historically speaking, this wouldn’t be a first. The use of science to peddle beauty products is an old tactic, dating as far back as the advent of modern advertising in the late 19^th century with its origins in the medicine-show peddler. As Jackson Lears describes in his book, Fables of Abundance, “The desire for a magical transfiguration of the self was a key element in the continuing vitality of the carnivalesque advertising tradition…Itinerant peddlers sold everything…but their most profitable item…was the magic elixir” (43); with phrases such as ‘revolutionary formula’ and ‘high-performance serum,’ it’s apparent that the Estee Lauder company is continuing this old advertising standard into the 21^st century. Lears also notes that “as patent medicines came increasingly from well-lighted laboratories rather than dark forests…science was reified and venerated as an autonomous force…in advertising’s evocation of technological miracles and white-coated wizards” (120). After examining the Advanced Night Repair ad, it becomes increasingly apparent that Estee Lauder is a contemporary peddler, selling its ‘patent medicine’ through the guise of the scientific method.

As Lears suggests, the use of science in advertising dually serves as factual and fantastical with the roles of scientists performing the dual function of torchbearers of truth and modern-day shamen. Just a superficial once-over of the imagery embodied in the Estee Lauder ad and this truth/enchantment duality becomes quite obvious…that is, if you know what you’re looking for. The major signifier of such a duality in this particular magazine advertisement can be found in the almost apparitional appearance of a DNA double-helix crystallizing into a spiral staircase to the heavens—lavished with starry points of light emanating from behind this otherworldly and titanic DNA strand—suggesting the cosmetic’s cosmic transcendence into the constellatory realms of space; ultimately, making the Lauder ad paradigmatic of Lears’s explanation. Of course, this recognizable symbol of science also magically materializes from the glowing radiance of Advanced Night Repair’s bottles and compte-gouttes like some phantasmal genie released from its imprisoning lamp.

This duality can also be found in the advertisement’s structure; for starters, it’s two-pager. Those Estee Lauder ad execs worked overtime to make sure Advanced Night Repair embodied both the richesse of opulent fantasy on page one—partially resembling some cosmic Austrian-crystal chandelier—and the cold hard ‘scientific facts’ of its “comprehensive anti-aging” cold-cream formula on page two; in so doing, the ad manages to capture both essences of factual and fictitious by physically juxtaposing the preternatural ethereality of the product’s allure next to the scientific vagaries used to support its claims. In fact the only thing really separating the fiction from the facts is the crease caused by the magazine’s spine. With that in mind let’s take a look at these supposed facts.

According to the ad, “25 years of groundbreaking DNA research” from “Estee Lauder scientists” has culminated into the lustrous golden drops of Advanced Night Repair’s formula, which seems to resemble caramel syrup more so than a scientific serum. Perhaps, the heavenly nectar of the gods is the skin-rejuvenating cream for we mere mortals here on Earth. Whatever the case may be, Advanced Night Repair is bestowed with “age-defying power of our [Estee Lauder’s] exclusive Chronolux Technology.” Jackson Lears touches on this very subject by stating that advertising agencies played and continue to play “a major role in making science mysterious and promoting a superstitious reverence for technology…the promise of magical transformation preserved the carnivalesque tradition for a technological age” (194). With this in mind, the trademarked word ‘Chronolux’ sounds a bit mysterious to someone unfamiliar with its Latin root words, and the fact that it’s proceeded by the ever-galvanizing word ‘technology’, intimates that Advanced Night Repair’s formula is worthy of its expensive price and guaranteed to remove those unwanted “fine lines, dark circles, dryness, puffiness, and uneven skintone.” Of course, these are Estee Lauder’s facts with absolutely no documented proof contained anywhere in the ad’s two whole pages to support such claims. So, let’s look elsewhere outside the gift-wrapped box.

In a 2009 article titled “DNA Repair is the New Anti-Aging Frontier” from Entrepreneur magazine, Navin Garia notes, “U.S. anti-aging skin care product sales rose 13% to $1.6 billion between 2006 and 2008…This trend is expected to remain on track even as the economy struggles” (par. 1). He further states that “many academic and cosmetic industry researchers remain skeptical that a topical product can repair DNA. They insist that true DNA repair is difficult to achieve with gimmicky delivery systems using typical cosmetic ingredients, whose end benefits remain unproven” (par. 13). One such skeptic is MIT biologist and genetics researcher, Leonard Guarente Ph.D who states in the article that "No known substance can cause genes to repair themselves. There are a lot of things going wrong at the same time in cells. You could repair one thing, but something else could be just as bad" (par. 10).

With all of this in mind, the one undeniable fact is that this Estee Lauder advert embraces science in a purely vain attempt to validate its Advanced Night Repair product thereby playing on the fears of customer vanity that permeates our contemporary culture enamored with the illusion of youth. Rampant with technical terms and trademarked names, Estee Lauder makes it sound like they know what they’re talking about; consequently, commanding a false sense of authority over crow’s feet and a mastery over time’s ticking clock. Nevertheless, as “more multinational consumer health care companies are becoming DNA obsessed” (Garia, par. 14), Estee Lauder has poised itself to be at the forefront of this latest fad with over “20 Patents Worldwide;” this, of course, really means nothing at all, but, boy-oh-boy, it sure sounds good! Doesn’t it? It’s impossible to refute that Advanced Night Repair certainly reads like it’s a scientific fountain of youth, but whether it is or not is quite debatable. Since this trendy ‘new’ product’s facts—or, rather, the lack thereof—are disputable without, at the very least, some shred of documented scientific evidence to support its assertions, Advanced Night Repair comes across as nothing more than a jumped-up snake oil for the 21^st century …tsk-tsk, Estee Lauder.

Bibliography

Estee Lauder. “Advanced Night Repair.” Glamour magazine. Ed. Cynthia Leive. New York: Conde Nast. July, 2010.

Garia, Navin M. “DNA Repair is the New Anti-Aging Frontier.” Entrepreneur.com, June 2009, http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/print/202253483.html.

Lears, Jackson. Fables of Abundance. New York: Basic Books. 1994.