The BLOB (1988)
This cinematic masterpiece directed by Chuck Russell was clearly meant as an illustration of symbolism as a concept. The film is a constantly shifting, and refuses to be confined to any particular symbolic containment, while maintaining the ability to conform to different symbolic interpretations. From one scene to the next, it produces illustrative pseudo-themes that individually reach out to grasp the audience without severing the connection to the plot. It's certainly a lot of interpretive matter to digest. This product of secret, almost other-worldly, genius creates an overall thematic and symbolic fluidity while also crystallizing the plot into one gripping integration of character-driven drama and late 1980's horror.
Whatever particular perspective one superimposes into The Blob will result in a symbolic deconstruction that, upon complete analysis, will appear to be the director’s particular symbolic presentation of The Blob. For example, from a Freudian perspective, the story is one of incestuous tension between father (Art LeFleur) and daughter (Shawnee Smith). As the father is unwilling to relinquish control of his daughter to her boyfriend (Donovan Leitch), his guilt (what Freud calls the death drive) begins as an inability to perceive anything in younger men except for internal grasping and lusting urges, and later manifests as a desire to dissolve existing human structure to reassert total control over his family. From a Kantian perspective, the story is one of the terrifying breakdown of society that would result in a loss of human reason. The concept of acting upon only pure inclination (hunger) as opposed to reason would lead to a loss of differentiation between individuals as our internal physical natures are exposed, and from there a loss of differentiation between humans and our lowest animal-like ancestors. Of course the application of human reason which exists within even social outcasts (here played by Kevin Dillon) re-imposes a shattering sense of structure and order upon the chaos caused by the unreasoning desires of humanity. Hegel would see it as a story of the struggle between historical necessity and contingency. As the townspeople react to their inability to comprehend the events of the present, (characterized by their attempts of the town law-enforcement to impose small-scale totalitarian rule, their resulting revolution from a faceless bureaucracy, and their eventual restructuring as a social democracy) they come to realize that the traumatic events of a summer revolution can only make sense as a past event, i.e. when viewed from the following winter, and even then, only through the rose-colored prisms of their new historical perspective.
Finally, and I’m sure you can think of many more- the Lacanian perspective. To the Lacanian, the story of the Blob is a story of symbolic structure itself. As the individual interacts with the Big Other, be it God, the government, the Social Order, the family, etc, one perceives an order that is not presented from without, but from within. Of course, what we perceive as Real is actually a story we tell ourselves, and so there is always the possibility of the breakdown of this symbolic order. The beginning of such a breakdown is a small disturbance which denies identification within the existing order, called the anamorphotic stain- the small disruption of Order that the individual sees as meaningless and non-conforming. Of course, when one continually focuses on what symbolically denies identification, the result is at first confusion and later dissolution of the overall symbolic structure- the dissolution of The Real. So in a fluent stroke of genius, the filmmaker assigns the function of the Lacanian vanishing mediator to the Stain itself. As the stain grows, it incorporates and destroys more and more of the symbolic order of small town life, and the remaining townspeople, paradoxically through the dissolution of order, overcome the symptoms that presented within the original symbolic order. Once they are “free” from the old Real and in this state of flux, they are able to solidify a new symbolic structure, and the mediator, the formless stain, is itself integrated into the symbolic order. In effect, the stain is no longer a stain. It disappears and will not return until the new order is itself significantly disturbed.
Truly this film is an outpouring of talent and genius from all parties involved. I can say without doubt this film was meant to inspire endless discussion while refusing to submit to one “right” interpretation.
Oh, and there’s like, some pink goo that eats people, or something. 5 Stars.