The Thing, starring Kurt Russell, was originally released in theaters in 1982. All the characters in the film are male and all are scientists at a base in Antarctica. Dialogue is at a minimum throughout the movie, and blood, guts, and explosions are at a maximum. As a class we have spent a number of days analyzing the film with three theories by French feminists, Kristeva, Irigaray, and Cixous. In order to do so we based these theories on the idea that the Thing, the creature, was representative of a female and more precisely, a vagina. This is simply an unconscious leap into the dark. There is so little evidence that the Thing could actually represent a vagina that all other theoretical talk on the subject is futile. The idea is that when the thing appears as the bloody monster it is for the first time it splits open into a vaginal shape. Accepting that this one scene in the movie does actually portray the thing for what it really is, a gigantic bloody vagina representative of WOMANKIND who all men must destroy, is ridiculous and speculative. This is a 1980s movie directed at masculinity which mainstream America felt was ‘under attack’ due to things like Solid Gold, KISS, new androgynous clothing styles, and bands like White Snake and Motley Crue. The Thing is a movie meant to counter that ‘attack on masculinity’ and to entertain the “mainstream” man who is enthralled by blood, guts, and explosions, less talk, more explosions, and Kurt Russell’s grizzly beard. 
