What Is This Thing? Framing and Unframing the Science-Fiction Film

Abstract

This essay considers the uncertainties surrounding the advertising of science fiction when it was still a relatively new player among film genres in the 1950s. Because it was sourced in the science-fiction pulp magazines—based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s story "Who Goes There?"—and was the first science-fiction film advertised in the pulps, The Thing from Another World (1951), as well as RKO studio's unconventional ad campaign for it, offers some insight into this uncertainty. While science fiction was starting to powerfully emerge in various media, as evidenced by the new television space operas, comic books, and a growing number of pulp magazine platforms, RKO seemed unsure of how best to frame The Thing. Instead of presenting it in a science-fiction context, RKO mounted a campaign that framed this work, even for the pulp audience, in various non-science-fiction ways: as a horror movie, as an exploitation effort, and even as a mystery or suspense narrative. The approach of this curious campaign, the essay argues, reveals the film industry's indecision about the box-office potential of science fiction, even as the genre was poised to explode in popularity during the decade. That uncertainty underscores the extent to which science fiction has followed what Rick Altman describes as a "process" route in its perception as a genre.