on shrinking
The suspicion that man's productive ambitions will be punished is as at least as old as the Tower of Babel, and Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man is, in a sense, a retelling of this myth, wherein alienation is the result of progress. As Vivian Sobchack observes, "Scott's wife and brother become increasingly less sympathetic, their humanity dwindling as they physically loom larger on the screen until they are obliterated by a kind of visual synecdoche: a huge foot on the cellar stairs." The film thus demonstrates the resurrection, in 1950's America, of a very old fear.
It did not take long for most people to discern that nuclear testing heralded a significant change in man's relationship to scientific progress. People were clearly attempting to harness a force far beyond their means to control. There were those who had raised this argument against the airplane and the automobile, and even the locomotive, but never before had the potential consequences been so profound. The real destructive capacity of humanity's newest toy could really only be guessed at
Mass destruction once required a mass to bring it about. Suddenly it could result from one trigger-happy finger. It was also immediately evident that the various instructions as to how people should conduct themselves in the face of nuclear disaster were quite ridiculous. Should a nuclear attack occur, any given individual was absolutely helpless. It's enough to make a man feel pretty small.
Certainly, this is the effect it had on Scott Carey, whose rapid diminutization results partially from a chance run-in with an atomic dust cloud. The Incredible Shrinking Man is very much concerned with these issues of power and control. As Carey shrinks, he must constantly re-evaluate just what he is capable of dominating.
At first, it is merely other people against whom Carey is at a disadvantage. He can't be taken seriously, and he can't keep the hordes from his door. He begins to feel increasingly powerless, and he compensates by exacting a more and more dictatorial rule over his wife. His Napoleon complex is apparently inversely proportionate to his actual stature.
Next Carey falls prey to his own house cat. The cat was a domestic animal; Carey had been its master, and has become its dinner. His wife can no longer even hear Carey's demands, and thus he loses even the sense of power her dutiful adherence to her vows afforded.
As Carey sits alone, stranded in his basement and threatened by a tarantula that once he could have eliminated by accident, he is forced to reconsider the meaning of his "humanity." Man, he decides, is by definition master of his domain, and thus Carey resolves to conquer his basement prison. He finds himself nourishment in his new environment, builds bridges over the treacherous terrain, and kills the insect that is both his predator and the sole contender for his food.
But Carey continues to shrink. Eventually, he becomes so small that he can slip through the iron grating into the outside world. His decision to do so evidences a major change in his thinking. The basement was something like a controlled environment, but the ever-diminishing Carey is unlikely to enjoy such good fortune outside its walls. But Carey no longer wishes to be master of creation, but merely a part of it.
The proposition that as a man grows smaller he moves closer to free is, to say the least, counterintuitive. Until its close, the film exploits our inherent association of size with power. And, of course, this is the same fallacy to which the mysterious men of power in Wagner's retelling subscribe. In human affairs they cannot be bigger than they already are, and thus resolve to make everyone else smaller. The vanity of which Wagner, as a feminist writer, is accusing the patriarchy is clear: size matters.
Joel Schumacher's The Incredible Shrinking Woman has all the trappings of a remake. Like The Incredible Shrinking Man, it uses the tale of a diminishing individual as an allegory for the state of man (or, more acurately, woman). It employs the same narrative devices, and even much of the same narration, as its predecessor. It seems to follow the basic plot of the original, with a few obligatory twists and variations, and of course, a new surprise ending, for the old one is no longer a surprise.
But these ultimately superficial similarities are all that is shared by the two films. While Arnold's film is itself fairly "soft" sci-fi, it does voice a genuine and, at the time, widely-held concern: we just don't know what the effects of "atomic" power will be. While there is no hard science or cold equation to support the feasibility of the film's plot, The Incredible shrinking Man is nonetheless ultimately concerned with man's relationship to science and the natural world.
This is not, I think, screenwriter Jane Wagner's concern. True, Pat Kramer's problems do result from her exposure to a strange variety of new, ostensibly harmless chemical formulas found in household products. But her husband is not a chemist; he's in advertising. The real source of her woes is revealed as doctor Eugene Nortz lists the various detergents and glues that have collectively produced such unusual results. "We helped name half those products," she admits. It is not science, but consumerism, that is shrinking Mrs. Kramer.
Thus we are given only a meek and not terribly plausible explanation for how this curious phenomenon might occur, and yet we are treated to chorus after rousing chorus of the Galaxy Glue jingle. "What would we do without Galaxy Glue," it asks, and then provides its own answer: "Life would go to pieces without Galaxy Glue." The song, like so much actual advertising, attempts to convince the potential buyer that she "needs" this new wonder. As people grow increasingly dependent on all these "things," they become less than what they are. We are, in a very real sense, shrunk by our reliance upon commodities and our belief in advertising.
Given this legitimate fear, Wagner's switching of the protagonist's gender, which may initially seem a cheap concession to contemporary sensibilities, is justified. It is the long-held opinion of the American advertising industry that women are, on the whole, more susceptible to their wiles than men. Hence the soaps, detergents, shampoos, conditioners, sprays, and creams parodied by Shrinking Woman, alongside our time-honored image of the dutiful 1950's homemaker, whose life is so delightful since she bought the latest miracle to hit the market. An advertiser's job was, and largely still is, to convince women that their lives could be so much better than they are, and for such a reasonable price, that they would have to be crazy to go on without some small, simple, and yet remarkable thing.
The real trouble, however, with the sexist belief in women's responsiveness to propaganda is that, biased and inaccurate as studies tend to be, the stereotype is statistically supported. Ad campaigns aimed at women are simply more lucrative. It is this fact that inspires Kramer's look of horror as she realizes her complicity in her own decline; by believing the lie, by consuming the products, she has helped to "name" her assailant.
Finally, the two versions of this story draw quite different conclusions. Arnold's film concludes that the world has changed, but acceptance of these changes brings us closer to something cosmic. Contrary to the Babel hypothesis, our strivings to be closer to God will indeed bring about the desired effect. Progress is still progress.
Wagner is, of course, unwilling to accept circumstances as she perceives them. While Kramer claims to experience a feeling of peace similar to that of her predecessor as she approaches the infinite, she is all the while calling out instructions to her friends concerning how to fight the man once she is gone. She does not disappear, however; she falls into another mass of household wonders which reverse the process. If it momentarily appears that Wagner and Schumacher playing with the "good science is the cure for bad science" motif, she quickly puts this suspicion to rest. Kramer is now getting bigger. All these wondrous new conveniences really do, we see, is replace one problem with another.
It did not take long for most people to discern that nuclear testing heralded a significant change in man's relationship to scientific progress. People were clearly attempting to harness a force far beyond their means to control. There were those who had raised this argument against the airplane and the automobile, and even the locomotive, but never before had the potential consequences been so profound. The real destructive capacity of humanity's newest toy could really only be guessed at
Mass destruction once required a mass to bring it about. Suddenly it could result from one trigger-happy finger. It was also immediately evident that the various instructions as to how people should conduct themselves in the face of nuclear disaster were quite ridiculous. Should a nuclear attack occur, any given individual was absolutely helpless. It's enough to make a man feel pretty small.
Certainly, this is the effect it had on Scott Carey, whose rapid diminutization results partially from a chance run-in with an atomic dust cloud. The Incredible Shrinking Man is very much concerned with these issues of power and control. As Carey shrinks, he must constantly re-evaluate just what he is capable of dominating.
At first, it is merely other people against whom Carey is at a disadvantage. He can't be taken seriously, and he can't keep the hordes from his door. He begins to feel increasingly powerless, and he compensates by exacting a more and more dictatorial rule over his wife. His Napoleon complex is apparently inversely proportionate to his actual stature.
Next Carey falls prey to his own house cat. The cat was a domestic animal; Carey had been its master, and has become its dinner. His wife can no longer even hear Carey's demands, and thus he loses even the sense of power her dutiful adherence to her vows afforded.
As Carey sits alone, stranded in his basement and threatened by a tarantula that once he could have eliminated by accident, he is forced to reconsider the meaning of his "humanity." Man, he decides, is by definition master of his domain, and thus Carey resolves to conquer his basement prison. He finds himself nourishment in his new environment, builds bridges over the treacherous terrain, and kills the insect that is both his predator and the sole contender for his food.
But Carey continues to shrink. Eventually, he becomes so small that he can slip through the iron grating into the outside world. His decision to do so evidences a major change in his thinking. The basement was something like a controlled environment, but the ever-diminishing Carey is unlikely to enjoy such good fortune outside its walls. But Carey no longer wishes to be master of creation, but merely a part of it.
The proposition that as a man grows smaller he moves closer to free is, to say the least, counterintuitive. Until its close, the film exploits our inherent association of size with power. And, of course, this is the same fallacy to which the mysterious men of power in Wagner's retelling subscribe. In human affairs they cannot be bigger than they already are, and thus resolve to make everyone else smaller. The vanity of which Wagner, as a feminist writer, is accusing the patriarchy is clear: size matters.
Joel Schumacher's The Incredible Shrinking Woman has all the trappings of a remake. Like The Incredible Shrinking Man, it uses the tale of a diminishing individual as an allegory for the state of man (or, more acurately, woman). It employs the same narrative devices, and even much of the same narration, as its predecessor. It seems to follow the basic plot of the original, with a few obligatory twists and variations, and of course, a new surprise ending, for the old one is no longer a surprise.
But these ultimately superficial similarities are all that is shared by the two films. While Arnold's film is itself fairly "soft" sci-fi, it does voice a genuine and, at the time, widely-held concern: we just don't know what the effects of "atomic" power will be. While there is no hard science or cold equation to support the feasibility of the film's plot, The Incredible shrinking Man is nonetheless ultimately concerned with man's relationship to science and the natural world.
This is not, I think, screenwriter Jane Wagner's concern. True, Pat Kramer's problems do result from her exposure to a strange variety of new, ostensibly harmless chemical formulas found in household products. But her husband is not a chemist; he's in advertising. The real source of her woes is revealed as doctor Eugene Nortz lists the various detergents and glues that have collectively produced such unusual results. "We helped name half those products," she admits. It is not science, but consumerism, that is shrinking Mrs. Kramer.
Thus we are given only a meek and not terribly plausible explanation for how this curious phenomenon might occur, and yet we are treated to chorus after rousing chorus of the Galaxy Glue jingle. "What would we do without Galaxy Glue," it asks, and then provides its own answer: "Life would go to pieces without Galaxy Glue." The song, like so much actual advertising, attempts to convince the potential buyer that she "needs" this new wonder. As people grow increasingly dependent on all these "things," they become less than what they are. We are, in a very real sense, shrunk by our reliance upon commodities and our belief in advertising.
Given this legitimate fear, Wagner's switching of the protagonist's gender, which may initially seem a cheap concession to contemporary sensibilities, is justified. It is the long-held opinion of the American advertising industry that women are, on the whole, more susceptible to their wiles than men. Hence the soaps, detergents, shampoos, conditioners, sprays, and creams parodied by Shrinking Woman, alongside our time-honored image of the dutiful 1950's homemaker, whose life is so delightful since she bought the latest miracle to hit the market. An advertiser's job was, and largely still is, to convince women that their lives could be so much better than they are, and for such a reasonable price, that they would have to be crazy to go on without some small, simple, and yet remarkable thing.
The real trouble, however, with the sexist belief in women's responsiveness to propaganda is that, biased and inaccurate as studies tend to be, the stereotype is statistically supported. Ad campaigns aimed at women are simply more lucrative. It is this fact that inspires Kramer's look of horror as she realizes her complicity in her own decline; by believing the lie, by consuming the products, she has helped to "name" her assailant.
Finally, the two versions of this story draw quite different conclusions. Arnold's film concludes that the world has changed, but acceptance of these changes brings us closer to something cosmic. Contrary to the Babel hypothesis, our strivings to be closer to God will indeed bring about the desired effect. Progress is still progress.
Wagner is, of course, unwilling to accept circumstances as she perceives them. While Kramer claims to experience a feeling of peace similar to that of her predecessor as she approaches the infinite, she is all the while calling out instructions to her friends concerning how to fight the man once she is gone. She does not disappear, however; she falls into another mass of household wonders which reverse the process. If it momentarily appears that Wagner and Schumacher playing with the "good science is the cure for bad science" motif, she quickly puts this suspicion to rest. Kramer is now getting bigger. All these wondrous new conveniences really do, we see, is replace one problem with another.
posted by boy blue at 7:18 PM
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