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.

Brand Mascots

In Satisfaction Guaranteed, Susan Strasser discusses the evolution of the advertising agency and its reshaping of the consumer mind from one of utilitarian and agrarian to that of modern, urban, and industrial. Strasser discusses how ad agencies weren’t only trying to sell new products to a consumer culture, “but also creating new domestic habits and activities, performed at home, away from stores and outside the marketing process” (p.89). In other words, by creating new activities (or the illusion of new activities) within the consumer’s home based in part or solely on these new activities, advertising agencies managed to make the products they were pushing a domestic imperative. As Strasser adds, “people who had never bought cornflakes were taught to need them” (p.89).

This major shift in the expanse and integration of advertisements didn’t really occur until the 1870’s newspapers and magazines began to offer “low rates to advertisers who bought whole pages” (p.91). From there, magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal and newspapers such as the Saturday Evening Post, found themselves “supported by advertising revenues and designed to highlight the ads—to function as advertising media” (p.90) in the span of five years. These new advertisements “contributed to a larger change; the goals of advertising shifted from an emphasis on providing information to an attempt to influence buys by any means possible” (p. 90).

This unrelenting advert explosion soon broke free from the newsprint and glossed pages into the realm of posters, electric signs, and billboards. With the advent of new technologies, came the rise of ads in the public space, catching the consumer’s eye day or night. However, some of these “new technologies enabled advertisers to create billboards so intrusive that they provoked public controversy about the visual space for commercial purposes” (p.91). This led ads into the realm of politics, which ultimately, led to campaign reform against advertising on public property.

The ushering in of the 20^th century also ushered in an expansion of services ad agencies offered: “many agents began to hire artists and copywriters and to offer clients coordination with the agencies that handled outdoor and transit advertising…and handled sampling and other nonprint promotions” (p.93). These product peddlers grew into multi-tasking leviathans of splash-page consumption. With a gestalt of goods-aggrandizers at their beck and call, advertisement agencies began to assault the consumer with carefully-planned ad campaigns that “encouraged new needs and new habits…by linking the rapid appearance of new products with the rapid changes in…social and cultural life” (p.95).

These new ad agencies insidiously created new activities to perform at home in order to sell their new products which initially either had not existed before or found its existence outside of the home (ie- shaves at the barbershop), then claimed that their prefabricated product simplified the subtle fabrications of fast-paced modern lifestyle.

To detract from the homogeneity of the assembly line and the monstrosity of the factory and to distract the consumer from questioning the need for such products, identifiable and, oftentimes, wholesome middle-men appeared. These advertisement avatars had the power to offer comfort and lend sage advice to the confused. Such identifiable humans such as King Gillette, Betty Crocker, and William Penn, the Quaker Oats figurehead, offered their countenance and signature to authenticate the merits of these new products and lent their flesh and blood to make factory goods real and a necessity. As Strasser puts it, these human mascots drew “a connection between new products and the presumed integrity of previous times” (p.118).

Furthermore, an abbondanza of grandmas sprouted up overnight at ad agencies all around town. These sweet, elderly ladies “gave advice through…traditional wisdom and old-fashioned comforts” (p. 119). Grandmothers became symbolic of the comforts of community and home, while their opinions were held in high regard. If a grandmother says it’s alright, then it must be. Who’s gonna question a Granny????

At the opposite end of the age spectrum were the Dutch-girl characters whom appeared on the scene and in ads, adorning white caps to signify cleanliness and play on the stereotype of nostalgic wholesomeness: “clean old-country Netherlanders, dressed in traditional costume” (p.121). These girls were in keeping with Campbell’s Kids who gave the soup “a distinct Cambell’s individuality” (p.95). However, the Cambell’s Kids caricatures had an otherworldly quality to them that was less in line with Dutch-girls and more in keeping with the Jell-O Kewpies.

Jell-O hired Rose Cecil O’Neill to make the Kewpies the “subject of her illustrated poems, published regularly in Good Housekeeping, and, reproduced as dolls, created a sensational fad” (p.117). Other companies caught onto this craze and, soon, “pixylike characters” were popping out of Avalon left and right selling soap and crackers to the consumer. These mascots, as well as Palmer Cox’s Brownies and the Post Toasties Elves, “implied the ‘magic’ of mass production” (p.115) and wielded the “’mystic power’ into service collecting cottonseed and coconuts, manufacturing Ivory soap, and distributing it to every house in the land” (p.115).

These magical characters proved popular and although many of them have shed this mass-marketed mortal coil, they were symbolic of a bygone era and/or an otherworld. The element of magic made the machinations infesting factories and the spokes and wheels that churned out pre-packaged products on the assembly line less confusing to a generation of individuals who were facing the accelerated progress of industry and modernity.

Time to Eye!

Comparing Ridley Scott’s film adaptation to the novel that it is looser-than-loosely based on, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is a tricky task. However, considering that I could probably write volumes upon volumes, examining every dissimilar air and comparable nuance between the novel and film, I have decided to focus my attention on Scott’s and Dick’s visions of the future, and their inclusion and utilization of the eye as the transcendent symbolic device transmitting said visions of the future to its viewer/reader.

Keeping that in mind, let’s discuss the era in which Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was conceived and what issues were troubling Philip K. Dick’s mind, those of his peers, and the population in general when he wrote it in 1968. Blind faith in modernity and technological innovation prior to WWII seemed antiquated, outdated, and foolish in the decades following it. The world was left with questions: Could anyone with a little charisma lead a nation into war like a pied piper playing the sweet melody of delusional genetic superiority? Could one country be so hypnagogically removed from their emotions to commit genocide upon a percentage of their own people? If science and reason were such precise instruments of harmonious order and structure, how could the world have been thrown into chaos and bear witness to such societal evil? By the time the 1960s had arrived, the world still had no answers to the aforementioned questions and was now dealing with a new set of woes set in motion: important leaders were getting gunned down left and right; the Vietnam War was underway; the Civil Rights and Feminist movements were demanding equality; the youth counter-culture was questioning authority and religion; the world was frozen in the icy grip of the Cold War; and nuclear annihilation seemed in imminent. For many writers in this era of confusion and questions that had been built upon the confusion and questions of WWII, these issues weighed heavily on their minds and influenced their literary works; Philip K. Dick was no exception to this.  

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, he envisioned a post-apocalyptic future where the past was a blur and the present was a scramble to escape the realities of what humanity had wrought:  “No one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust which had contaminated most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country, and no one, even the wartime enemy, had planned on it” (p.13). This quote is not only telling of World War Terminus, the title Dick has baptized as Earth’s final war in the novel, but also of the time in which it was written. It’s quite obvious that Dick was drawing upon and commenting on Cold War fears of nuclear war. By the time Dick had written Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, neither science nor technology had proven to be humanity’s secularized savior, ushering in the pre-WWII promises of a utopian future like many adherents of modernism had confidently predicted. Instead of utilizing the advantages of science and the tools of technology to advance the human race into a better tomorrow, war, fear, and competition had consumed the world. It would seem that the powers that be would’ve much rather invested their time, energy, and money into ways of eradicating the enemy and, ultimately, themselves than building a better future for all.

Dick further plays upon these ideas by explaining that, after World War Terminus, “the sun had ceased to shine on Earth” (p. 14), and that humanity had few options in the aftermath of nuclear bombardment. Abandoning Mother Earth and migrating to the stars seemed the only viable option for those that survived the war. Thus, “the U.N. had made it easy to emigrate, difficult to stay. Loitering on Earth potentially meant finding oneself abruptly classed as biologically unacceptable, a menace to the pristine heredity of the race” (p. 14). This excerpt also echoes the Aryan ideals inherent in Nazism… a subject Dick was fascinated with. Elsewhere in the book, Dick touches upon the notions of the genetically enhanced and perfected ubermensche, “a weapon of war, the Synthetic Freedom Fighter, had been modified; able to function on an alien world, the humanoid robot—strictly speaking, the organic android—had become the mobile donkey engine of the colonization program” (p. 14). A one-way ticket to the off-world colonies was humanity’s only option for survival and “the ultimate incentive of emigration: the android servant” (p. 14), which sweetened the deal for hesitant humans. Earth was advertised as a death sentence to those who weren’t certain whether to stay or go. Dick also touches on other baser reasons behind the world’s final war and its ramifications: “the silence of the world could not rein back its greed” (p. 18); unsurprisingly, humanity’s greed had also weighed heavily in determining the events which led up to nuclear annihilation.

With that in mind, it seems fitting then that Ridley Scott’s interpretation of Dick’s apocalyptic, android-ridden future came to filmic fruition in the 1980s when the stock-market motto, “greed is good”, was running rampant among yuppies and young republicans from sea to shining sea. Although Scott’s Orwellian vision of tomorrow is quite noticeably different than Dick’s, which seems Criswellian in comparison. Unlike Dick’s Earthly ghost town awaiting humanity’s fate, Scott foreordains one of genetic modification, overpopulation, cross-cultural abrasion, over-commercialization, obsolescence, and the most conspicuous of consumptions. Given the current state of contemporary culture, Scott’s vision of the future seems more accurate as ‘November, 2019’ slowly slips from the future and into the present.

 From the opening scene of Blade Runner, the viewer is greeted with an over-industrialized, hellish future complete with bellowing, infernal plumes belching upward and disapproving lightning bolts raining down from the smog-filled heavens, creating an arguing dialect of symbolism between the elements. The viewer’s hovering gaze is pushed/pulled forward into this unholy urban congestion as hovercars whiz by, carrying their wayward occupants on thick stygian winds to their bleak fates. In the distance, the viewer can slowly make out the image of the camera’s ultimate destination—that of the Tyrrell Corporation’s pyramidal headquarters—Ridley Scott’s ultra-modern version of the Tower of Babel.

 The shot is then abruptly interrupted by an all-seeing eye enveloping the camera and staring back at the viewer. As Ridley Scott explains on the DVD commentary to Blade Runner, “the eyeball, really, was the symbol of the ever-watchful eye…which would be the idea of ‘big brother’…the eyeball represented that eye of Orwell”. Much like the novel, the film draws upon the eye not only as the window to the soul …or the soulless, which is the case for the androids in the novel and the replicants in the film… but as the eye of the ‘other’, watching every move the constituents of this apocalyptic future make and, ultimately, the viewer, leaving an overall feeling of uneasiness, discomfort, and violation of privacy.

The eye continues to be a limitless source for symbolism and signification throughout the novel and its film adaptation. Another example of this ocular significance and importance can be found in its fundamental usage in the Voight-Kampff Empathy Test as an external determinant to differentiate between human and android/replicant. This significance of the eye in gauging whether its subject is human or machine is first explained in detail when Rick Deckard, the bounty-hunting/blade-running protagonist of both book and film, uses the Voigt-Kampff apparatus on Rachel Rosen—the naïve Nexus-6 femme fatale/damsel-in-distress—while explaining how it works: “‘This’—he held up the flat adhesive disk with its trailing wires—‘measures capillary dilation in the facial area. We know [the police] this to be a primary autonomic response, the so-called ‘shame’ or ‘blushing’ reaction to a morally shocking stimulus…this records fluctuations of tension within the eye muscles’” (p. 44).

Likewise, a similar description is extolled by Eldon Tyrrell, a wizened older gentleman and head of the Tyrrell Corporation in the film (in Dick’s novel, his name is Eldon Rosen—head of the Rosen Association): “Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris”. Tyrrell obviously suffers from a severe case of poor eyesight as he is wearing a pair of thick glasses, which magnify and distort the image of his eyes. As Deckard sets up the Voight-Kampff apparatus in the film, the magnified image of Rachel’s eye appears on its main monitor screen, paralleling the image of the Orwellian-like eye looking out over the cityscape from the opening scenes. As in the novel, the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test administered in the movie is to detect a human from android, or, in the case of the film adaptation, human from replicant.

It should also be noted that the Tyrrell Corporation from Blade Runner and its equivalent in the book, the Rosen Association, are both in possession of a replicated and/or robotic owl. The owl’s eyes in the film are utilized as yet another source of being watched by the ‘other’ as it peers out with glowing, phantasmagoric eyes over the inhabitants of Eldon Tyrrell’s office. Furthermore, the owl’s penetrating eyes are part of the Tyrrell Corporation’s logo. In the novel, the owl was the first animal to go extinct after World War Terminus. The significance of the owl in both novel and film, quite possibly stems from its symbolism in ancient myth. In Indian folklore, the owl was endowed with the gift of prophecy. In Greek myth, the owl was the pet of Athena—the goddess of wisdom—and believed to have magical powers emanating from an inner light which gave it the power of night vision. Additionally, the ancient Greeks believed the owl offered protection to soldiers going into battle and, if an owl flew over the battlefield, it was taken as a sign of imminent victory. The owl also appeared on the reverse side of coins to monitor the honesty of all trade and commerce in Ancient Greece, which seems to be symbolic of its presence within the inner sanctum of the Tyrrell Corporation and the use of its eyes on their logo.

It also seems strange that both Dick and Scott introduce the reader/viewer to the owl almost simultaneously with that of the introduction to Rachel, giving her and the scene an almost supernatural quality. That being said, the ancient Romans believed witches could transform into owls, called the Stryx, as a means of transportation and to seek out that evening’s human victim. With this in mind, Rachel’s first appearance alongside the owl then takes on a vastly different meaning; although, in the novel, it would appear that Dick decided to weigh more heavily on the myths of Ancient Rome. This scene forces the reader to witness, with the written word, Rachel’s transmogrification from showroom-model into that of femme fatale. However, it would appear that Scott incorporated both Greek and Roman myths in his vision of Rachel since she teeters between noir-ish vamp and pencil-skirted damsel, leaning just as heavily on Greek myths of Athena and her holy pet owl as those of the aforementioned Roman ones. Regardless, both she and the owl appear together to extend a visual/textual dialogue between the eyes--those of the owl’s aglow with ‘inner light’ and those of the replicant’s, glowing with the ‘uncanny valley’.

Dick makes reference to the female androids’ eyes several times throughout Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. When Rachel is given the Voight-Kampff test, Dick describes, “She [Rachel] gave him [Deckard] a malice-filled sidelong glance” (p. 42) and “Her [Rachel’s] black eyes flamed up, she glowered at him [Deckard]” (p. 42). Later, in the novel, while describing Rachel again, Deckard observes, “Rachel had been modeled on the Celtic type of build, anachronistic and attractive…the total impression was good, however…Except for the restless shrewd eyes” (p. 185). However, Dick’s references to the eerie android eyes do not stop with Rachel. When describing Pris Stratton, one of the androids Deckard is out to kill, her eyes are described as “enormous, glazed over fixedly as she attempted to smile” (p. 60). Perhaps, the android that Dick most uses to symbolize this otherworldly glow emanating from the eyes can be found in the novel’s chapters dealing with the Luba Luft.

Luft is a renegade android masquerading as a human opera singer. As Deckard moves in for the kill backstage by portraying himself as an ardent opera fan, he notes in her dressing room that her stage makeup “enlarged her eyes; enormous and hazel, they fixed on him and did not waver” (p. 98). Later during questioning, using the Voight-Kampff test, Deckard observes, “her immense eyes widened with childlike acceptance, as if he had revealed the cardinal mystery of creation” (p. 100). Being an opera singer performing the role of Pamina from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Dick has created a Droste effect; in this case, entertainment within entertainment—the opera being performed in the literature being read. Another example of this appears later in the novel as Deckard is joined by another bounty hunter, Phil Resch, to apprehend Ms. Luft who hasn’t fled to the four corners of Earth but, instead, decides to take shelter within the confines of a museum exhibiting the works of Edvard Munch.

Dick has written yet another example or the recursive Droste effect into this scene, “Holding a printed catalogue, Luba Luft…stood absorbed in the picture before her: a drawing of a young girl, hands clasped together, seated on the edge of a bed, an expression of bewildered wonder and new, groping awe imprinted on the face” (p. 129). Here, the reader is left to envision Luba viewing the piece of art; thus, drawing upon Munch’s “Puberty” as an artwork within Dick’s literary work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Furthermore, Dick parallels Munch’s portrait of a young woman maturing within the confines of his painterly brush-strokes, while Dick metamorphoses the character of Luba Luft from cold, calculated android into one of warmth and empathy as she stands there viewing the portrait with an appreciation. Unfortunately, Luba was removed from Scott’s film adaptation.

However in her place, is Zhora, a replicant described in the movie as “trained for an off-world kick murder squad. Talk about Beauty and the Beast. She’s both.”  Like Luba, Zhora also works in the entertainment industry… albeit, the seedier side of the entertainment industry. Zhora performs in the 4^th Sector as ‘Miss Salome’ and, as the emcee announces to the audience in Taffey Lewis’ rather posh yet questionable establishment, “Ladies and gentlemen, Taffey Lewis presents Miss Salome and the snake. Watch her take pleasure from the serpent that once corrupted men”. Like Luba, the eye is focused on Zhora’s onstage performance, making entertainment within entertainment. Unlike Luba, Zhora bolts out of her dressing room before Deckard has the chance to run the Voight-Kampff test on her. As Deckard pursues her out into the heavy traffic of the raining dark of the noir-ish cityscape, the viewer is inundated with a barrage of advertisements. As our intrepid blade-runner fires away at Zhora, we see her crash into display windows filled with mannequins as she is gunned down. This is an obvious allusion to her being an organically-grown robot. She continues to run after Deckard fires each shot at her and hits his target. Scott positions the camera so that Zhora’s attempts to flee the scene like a wounded animal are mirrored in the reflections of her image emanating along the corridor of display windows. Ultimately, Zhora meets her demise with her eyes open wide as neon images of advertisements overhead pulse and flicker their products, reflected on her lifeless frame.

 Keeping representations of mass-media entertainment in mind, both film and novel handle its oversaturation in the public eye but in their own distinct, separate ways. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Dick introduces readers to the TV and radio personality of Buster Friendly and his merry band of Friendly Friends. Buster Friendly’s show appears to be the only thing that the constituents of this post-apocalyptic world tune into and no-one seems to mind. As Dick informs the reader, “The Buster Friendly Show, telecast and broadcast over all Earth via satellite, also poured down on the emigrants of the colony planets. Practice transmissions beamed to Proxima had been attempted, in case human colonization extended that far. Had the Salander 3 reached its destination, the travelers aboard would have found the Buster Friendly Show awaiting them. And they would have been glad” (p. 72); not even the cosmos appears to be free of Buster Friendly’s broadcasts.

Buster Friendly is a source of companionship, “Good old Buster…I watch him every morning and then again at night when I get home; I watch him while I’m eating dinner and then his late late show until I go to bed” (p. 61); a source of information, “it’ll be nice to see Buster Friendly on TV again, instead of just listening on the radio in the store truck…Buster Friendly is going to reveal his carefully documented sensational expose tonight. So because of Pris and Roy and Irmgard I get to watch what will probably be the most important piece of news to be released in many years. How about that, he said to himself” (p. 202); and a source of fear and disgust, “Better, perhaps, to turn the TV back on. But the ads, directed at the remaining regulars, frightened him. They informed him in a countless procession of ways that he, a special, wasn’t wanted...why listen to that?” (p. 19).

While Buster doesn’t appear in Scott’s adaptation of the novel, the viewer is assaulted with a multi-sensory surplus of inner-city commercialization and skyscraping advertisements replete with: massive, flashing Coca-Cola signs; smiling kabuki-faced women enjoying the stylized pleasures of the products they’re pushing; a throng of television sets stream neon images similar to Nam Jun Paik’s video artworks; an overwhelming barrage of brand-names and logos overpowering the city spires appear everywhere the eye can see; and catch-phrases and buzzwords radiate in katakana and hiragana under radioactive skies. Scott has taken the argument that Linda Hutcheon discussed in On the Art of Adaptation, concerning the logophiliac superiority and iconophobic mistrust that the literati feel towards cinematic adaptations  and turned it on itself; thereby, transforming the ‘logo’ into light-emitting ‘icon’, usurping every camera angle and jutting out every corner of the lens. It should also be noted that Scott has found an inventive way to include product placement into his film.

 Similar to the inventiveness involving product placement, Ridley Scott has masterfully created a way to explain part of the story and history behind Dick’s dystopian vision of tomorrow, and all within the context of conspicuous consumption. Several times throughout the film, Scott intersperses leering zephyrs floating alongside the thick of pollutants choking the dystopian skies. These dirigibles brandish a ‘friendly’ voice selling civilians below on the idea to escape the caustic environs of nuclear holocaust on Earth and head for the stars. The confident, masculine voice reverberating from the blimps announces, “A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure”, while yet another blimp appears to be selling the populace “the custom-tailored, genetically-engineered humanoid replicant designed especially for your needs.” This echoing voice may very well be an echoed homage to Buster Friendly from the novel.

Unlike Dick’s focus on the female of the android species, Scott singles out Roy Baty from the novel and expands and flushes out his character to create an antagonist to Rick Deckard’s sleuthing, hard-edged hero. Taking this liberty with the novel, Scott also adds an extra “t” to Roy’s surname; ultimately, changing the original meaning from “son of Talmay” (a commune in eastern France) to “crazy” or “insane”. Since Ridley Scott cut out the backstory of Roy’s leading an android commune and opted for accentuating his maniacal side, this change makes sense. Roy’s character in Dick’s novel is minimal at best, while his filmic counterpart takes on several symbolic meanings; that of temperamental child, god-killing machine, and bleach-blonde psychopath.

Roy’s two key scenes in the film adaptation both focus on sight. Once Roy has made his way to the center of the Tyrrell Corporation’s maze to face Eldon Tyrrell himself, he confesses, “It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker.”  After Tyrrell cautiously asks Roy how he might help him, he viciously responds with “Death!” Tyrrell then explains, “Death? Well, I’m afraid that’s a little out of my jurisdiction. You…” Roy impatiently interrupts Tyrrell as he predatorily moves in closer to his creator, “I want more life, father.” Tyrell then piously retorts, “The facts of life. To make an alteration in the… evolvement in an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it’s been established.” Roy continues to prod Tyrrell for possible solutions to prolonging his four-year lifespan until Roy must face his fate and sits down on Tyrrell’s bed. Tyrrell explains to Roy, “You were made as well as we could make you.” Roy calmly interrupts Tyrrell again, “But not to last.” After stroking Roy’s ego to sooth the savage beast within him, Tyrrell exclaims, “Look at you. You’re the prodigal son. You’re quite a prize.” Mimicking this ego-stroking, Tyrrell strokes Roy bleached-blonde coif. Roy confesses to his maker, “I’ve done questionable things.” Now, Tyrrell interrupts by feeding Roy’s ego even more, “Also, extraordinary things. Revel in your time.” Roy’s look of disparity shifts towards a sinister sneer and questions, “Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn’t let you in heaven for?” Roy smirks at Eldon Tyrrell, reaches out to embrace his creator, kisses him passionately upon the lips, then, grasping Tyrrell’s head in his hands, proceeds to crush his skull while crushing Eldon’s eyes with his thumbs; blindness in death.

Likewise, in Blade Runner, the brief battle between Roy and Deckard is expanded in the film and, in doing so, Ridley Scott transforms Batty from a soulless psychopath to a flawed, troubled soul. In his final dying moments, Roy saves Deckard who is hanging from the side of a building about to plummet to his death. Roy collapses into a meditative pose and proudly admits to Deckard, “I’ve… seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams…glitter in the dark near Tannhauser Gate… All those… moments will be lost… in time… like… tears in rain.” Roy then lowers his head to meet his fate. In this scene, the viewer is again faced with the eye and sights that he/she will never see due to Batty’s death. This parallels some of Deckard’s final thoughts in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: “Once, he [Deckard] thought, I would have seen the stars. Years ago. But now it’s only the dust; no one has seen a star in years, at least not from Earth. Maybe I’ll go where I can see stars, he said to himself” (p. 225).

For all intents and purposes, Blade Runner is Scott’s cinematic assimilation of Dick’s dystopian vision of tomorrow through the lens of a “many-worlds interpretation” into the ‘uncanny valley’ of human/machine interaction. This paper is by no means exhaustive for I have left out the mind’s eye of Mercerism—the Sisyphean video-game religion that would make Albert Camus proud. Nor have I included scenes from the film involving Chew—genetic engineer of the replicants’ eyes. However, I have tried to include as much as possible without turning this response into an 8-page paper. Therefore, I will end on this note: for as many liberties as Ridley Scott takes with Philip K. Dick’s novel, the overriding themes concerning the complexities of human nature and the nature of reality still remain intact, and Scott’s use of the eye keeps these themes in focus; without them, the movie would quite simply be blinded by kipple compared to the novel.