title: Neoliberalism

text: In sum, the neoliberal policies of the 1980s and 1990s—initiated by a repressive authoritarian government—transformed the Chilean economy from a protected market with high barriers to trade and hefty government intervention into one of the world's most open free-market economies. Chile experienced the worst economic bust of any Latin American country during the Latin American debt crisis (several years into neoliberal reform), but also had one of the most robust recoveries, rising from the poorest Latin American country in terms of GDP per capita in 1980 (along with Peru) to the richest in 2019. Average annual economic growth from the mid-1980s to the Asian crisis in 1997 was 7.2%, 3.5% between 1998 and 2005, and growth in per capita real income from 1985 to 1996 averaged 5%—all outpacing Latin American averages. Inflation was brought under control. Between 1970 and 1985 the infant mortality rate in Chile fell from 76.1 per 1000 to 22.6 per 1000, the lowest in Latin America. Unemployment from 1980 to 1990 decreased, but remained higher than the South American average (which was stagnant). And despite public perception among Chileans that economic inequality has increased, Chile's Gini coefficient has in fact dropped from 56.2 in 1987 to 46.6 in 2017. However, while this is near the Latin American average, Chile still has one of the highest Gini coefficients in the OECD, an organization of mostly developed countries that includes Chile but not most other Latin American countries. Furthermore, the Gini coefficient measures only income inequality; Chile has more mixed inequality ratings in the OECD's Better Life Index, which includes indexes for more factors than only income, like housing and education. Additionally, the percentage of the Chilean population living in poverty rose from 17% in 1969 to 45% in 1985 at the same time government budgets for education, health and housing dropped by over 20% on average. The era was also marked by economic instability.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Overall, scholars have mixed opinions on the effects of the neoliberal reforms. The CIA World Factbook states that Chile's "sound economic policies", maintained consistently since the 1980s, "have contributed to steady economic growth in Chile and have more than halved poverty rates," and some scholars have even called the period the "Miracle of Chile". Other scholars, however, have called it a failure that led to extreme inequalities in the distribution of income and resulted in severe socioeconomic damage. It is also contested how much these changes were the result of neoliberal economic policies and how much they were the result of other factors; in particular, some scholars argue that after the Crisis of 1982 the "pure" neoliberalism of the late 1970s was replaced by a focus on fostering a social market economy that mixed neoliberal and social welfare policies.


title: Neoliberalism

text: As a response to the 2019–20 Chilean protests, a national plebiscite was held on 25 October 2020 to decide whether the Chilean constitution would be rewritten. The "approve" option for a new constitution to replace the Pinochet-era constitution, which entrenched certain neoliberal principles into the country's basic law, won with 78% of the vote. On 11 April 2021 another referendum will be held to decide the makeup of the convention that will rewrite the constitution. The new constitution is expected to shift away from the neoliberal economic structure laid out in the current constitution and to address the country's economic inequality.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, the founder of one of the first neoliberal organizations in Latin America, Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), began to receive assistance from Ronald Reagan's administration, with the National Endowment for Democracy's Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) providing his ILD with funding. The economic policy of President Alan García distanced Peru from international markets, resulting in lower foreign investment in the country. Under García, Peru experienced hyperinflation and increased confrontations with the guerrilla group Shining Path, leading the country towards high levels of instability. The Peruvian armed forces grew frustrated with the inability of the García administration to handle the nation's crises and began to draft an operation – Plan Verde – to overthrow his government.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The military's Plan Verde involved the "total extermination" of impoverished and indigenous Peruvians perceived as a drain on the economy, the control or censorship of media in the nation and the establishment of a neoliberal economy in Peru. During his campaigning for the 1990 Peruvian general election, Alberto Fujimori initially expressed concern against the proposed neoliberal policies of his opponent Mario Vargas Llosa. Peruvian magazine "Oiga" reported that, following the election, the armed forces were unsure of Fujimori's willingness to fulfill the plan's objectives, though they planned to convince Fujimori to agree to the operation prior to his inauguration. After taking office, Fujimori abandoned his campaign's economic platform, adopting more aggressive neoliberal policies than those espoused by his election competitor Vargas Llosa. With Fujimori's compliance, plans for a coup as designed in Plan Verde were prepared for two years and finally executed during the 1992 Peruvian coup d'état, which ultimately established a civilian-military regime.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Shortly after the inauguration of Fujimori, his government received a $715 million grant from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on 29 September 1990 for the Policy Analysis, Planning and Implementation Project (PAPI) that was developed "to support economic policy reform in the country". De Soto proved to be influential to Fujimori, who began to repeat de Soto's advocacy for deregulating the Peruvian economy. Under Fujimori, de Soto served as "the President's personal representative", with "The New York Times" describing de Soto as an "overseas salesman", while others dubbed de Soto as the "informal president" for Fujimori. In a recommendation to Fujimori, de Soto called for a "shock" to Peru's economy. The policies included a 300% tax increase, unregulated prices and privatizing two-hundred and fifty state-owned entities. The policies of de Soto led to the immediate suffering of poor Peruvians who saw unregulated prices increase rapidly. Those living in poverty saw prices increase so much that they could no longer afford food. "The New York Times" wrote that de Soto advocated for the collapse of Peru's society, with the economist saying that a civil crisis was necessary to support the policies of Fujimori. Fujimori and de Soto would ultimately break their ties after de Soto recommended increased involvement of citizens within the government, which was received with disapproval by Fujimori. USAID would go on to assist the Fujimori government with rewriting the 1993 Peruvian constitution, with the agency concluding in 1997 that it helped with the "preparation of legislative texts" and "contributed to the emergence of a private sector advisory role". The policies promoted by de Soto and implemented by Fujimori eventually caused macroeconomic stability and a reduction in the rate of inflation, though Peru's poverty rate remained largely unchanged with over half of the population living in poverty in 1998.


title: Neoliberalism

text: According to the Foundation for Economic Education, USAID, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Nippon Foundation also supported the sterilization efforts of the Fujimori government. E. Liagin reported that from 1993 to 1998, USAID "basically took charge of the national health system of Peru" during the period of forced sterilizations. At least 300,000 Peruvians were victims of forced sterilization by the Fujimori government in the 1990s, with the majority being affected by the PNSRPF. The policy of sterilizations resulted in a generational shift that included a smaller younger generation that could not provide economic stimulation to rural areas, making such regions more impoverished.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Though economic statistics show improved economic data in Peru in recent decades, the wealth earned between 1990 and 2020 was not distributed throughout the country; living standards showed disparities between the more-developed capital city of Lima and similar coastal regions while rural provinces remained impoverished. Sociologist Maritza Paredes of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru stated, "People see that all the natural resources are in the countryside but all the benefits are concentrated in Lima." In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru compounded these disparities, with political scientist Professor Farid Kahhat of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru stating that, "market reforms in Peru have yielded positive results in terms of reducing poverty ... But what the pandemic has laid bare, particularly in Peru, is that poverty was reduced while leaving the miserable state of public services unalteredmost clearly in the case of health services." The candidacy of Pedro Castillo in the 2021 Peruvian general election brought attention to the disparities between urban and rural Peruvians, with much of his support being earned in the exterior portions of the country. Castillo ultimately won the election, with "The New York Times" reporting his victory as the "clearest repudiation of the country's establishment".


title: Neoliberalism

text: In the 1960s, Latin American intellectuals began to notice the ideas of ordoliberalism; they often used the Spanish term "neoliberalismo" to refer to this school of thought. They were particularly impressed by the social market economy and the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") in Germany and speculated about the possibility of accomplishing similar policies in their own countries. Note that neoliberalism in 1960s Argentina meant a philosophy that was more moderate than entirely Laissez-faire free-market capitalism and favored using state policy to temper social inequality and counter a tendency towards monopoly.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In 1976, the military dictatorship's economic plan led by José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz was the first attempt at establishing a neoliberal program in Argentina. They implemented a fiscal austerity plan that reduced money printing in an attempt to counter inflation. In order to achieve this, salaries were frozen. However, they were unable to reduce inflation, which led to a drop in the real salary of the working class. They also liberalized trade policy so that foreign goods could freely enter the country. Argentina's industry, which had been on the rise for 20 years after the economic policies of former president Arturo Frondizi, rapidly declined as it was not able to compete with foreign goods. The deregulation of the financial sector, however, lead to short-term economic growth, before rapid decline after capital fled to the United States. Following the measures, there was an increase in poverty from 9% in 1975 to 40% at the end of 1982.


title: Neoliberalism

text: From 1989 to 2001, more neoliberal policies were implemented by Domingo Cavallo. This time, the privatization of public services was the main focus, although financial deregulation and free trade with foreign nations were also re-implemented. Along with an increased labour market flexibility, the unemployment rate dropped to 18.3%. Public perception of the policies was mixed; while some of the privatization was welcomed, much of it was criticized for not being in the people's best interests. Protests resulted in the death of 29 people at the hands of police, as well as the resignation of president Fernando de la Rúa two years before the full completion of his term.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Along with many other Latin American countries in the early 1980s, Mexico experienced a debt crisis. In 1983 the Mexican government ruled by the , the Institutional Revolutionary Party, accepted loans from the IMF. Among the conditions set by the IMF were requirements for Mexico to privatize state-run industries, devalue their currency, decrease trade barriers, and restrict governmental spending. These policies were aimed at stabilizing Mexico's economy in the short run. Later, Mexico tried to expand these policies to encourage growth and foreign direct investment (FDI).


title: Neoliberalism

text: The decision to accept the IMF's neoliberal reforms split the PRI between those on the right who wanted to implement neoliberal policies and those the left who did not. Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who took power in 1988, doubled down on neoliberal reforms. His policies opened up the financial sector by deregulating the banking system and privatizing commercial banks. Though these policies did encourage a small amount of growth and FDI, the growth rate was below what it had been under previous governments in Mexico, and the increase in foreign investment was largely from existing investors.


title: Neoliberalism

text: On 1 January 1994 the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, named for Emiliano Zapata, a leader in the Mexican revolution, launched an armed rebellion against the Mexican government in the Chiapas region. Among their demands were rights for indigenous Mexicans as well as opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which solidified a strategic alliance between state and business.  NAFTA, a trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, significantly aided in Mexico's efforts to liberalize trade.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In 1994, the same year of the Zapatista rebellion and the enactment of NAFTA, Mexico faced a financial crisis. The crisis, also known as the "Tequila Crisis" began in December 1994 with the devaluation of the peso. When investors' doubts led to negative speculation they fled with their capital. The central bank was forced to raise interest rates which in turn collapsed the banking system as borrowers could no longer pay back their loans.


title: Neoliberalism

text: After Salinas, Ernesto Zedillo (1995–2000) maintained similar economic policies to his predecessor. Despite the crisis, Zedillo continued to enact neoliberal policies and signed new agreements with the World Bank and the IMF. As a result of these policies and the 1994 recession, Mexico's economy did gain stability. Neither the 2001 or 2008 recessions were caused by internal economic forces in Mexico. Trade increased dramatically, as well as FDI. However, as Mexico's business cycle synced with that of the United States, it was much more vulnerable to external economic pressures. FDI benefited the Northern and Central regions of Mexico while the Southern region was largely excluded from the influx of investment. The crisis also left the banks mainly in the hands of foreigners.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The PRI's 71 year rule ended when Vicente Fox of the PAN, the National Action Party, won the election in 2000. However, Fox and his successor Calderon did not significantly diverge from the economic policies of the PRI governments. They continued to privatize the financial system and encourage foreign investment. Despite significant opposition, Enrique Peña Nieto, president from 2012 to 2018, pushed through legislation that would privatize the oil and electricity industries. These reforms marked the conclusion to the neoliberal goals that had been envisioned in Mexico in the 1980s.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Brazil adopted neoliberal policies in the late 1980s, with support from the worker's party on the left. For example, tariff rates were cut from 32% in 1990 to 14% in 1994. During this period, Brazil effectively ended its policy of maintaining a closed economy focused on import substitution industrialization in favor of a more open economic system with a much higher degree of privatization. The market reforms and trade reforms ultimately resulted in price stability and a faster inflow of capital, but had little effect on income inequality and poverty. Consequently, mass protests continued during the period.


title: Neoliberalism

text: During her tenure as Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher oversaw a number of neoliberal reforms, including tax reduction, exchange rate reform, deregulation, and privatisation. These reforms were continued and supported by her successor John Major. Although opposed by the Labour Party, the reforms were, according to some scholars, largely accepted and left unaltered when Labour returned to power in 1997 under Tony Blair.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The Adam Smith Institute, a United Kingdom–based free-market think tank and lobbying group formed in 1977 which was a major driver of the aforementioned neoliberal reforms, officially changed its libertarian label to neoliberal in October 2016.


title: Neoliberalism

text: According to economists Denzau and Roy, the "shift from Keynesian ideas toward neoliberalism influenced the fiscal policy strategies of New Democrats and New Labour in both the White House and Whitehall... Reagan, Thatcher, Clinton, and Blair all adopted broadly similar neoliberal beliefs."


title: Neoliberalism

text: While a number of recent histories of neoliberalism in the United States have traced its origins back to the urban renewal policies of the 1950s, Marxist economic geographer David Harvey argues the rise of neoliberal policies in the United States occurred during the 1970s energy crisis, and traces the origin of its political rise to Lewis Powell's 1971 confidential memorandum to the Chamber of Commerce in particular. A call to arms to the business community to counter criticism of the free enterprise system, it was a significant factor in the rise of conservative and libertarian organizations and think-tanks which advocated for neoliberal policies, such as the Business Roundtable, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academia and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. For Powell, universities were becoming an ideological battleground, and he recommended the establishment of an intellectual infrastructure to serve as a counterweight to the increasingly popular ideas of Ralph Nader and other opponents of big business. The original neoliberals on the left included, among others, Michael Kinsley, Charles Peters, James Fallows, Nicholas Lemann, Bill Bradley, Bruce Babbitt, Gary Hart, and Paul Tsongas. Sometimes called "Atari Democrats", these were the men who helped to remake American liberalism into neoliberalism, culminating in the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. These new liberals disagreed with the policies and programs of mid-century liberals like Walter Reuther or John Kenneth Galbraith or even Arthur Schlesinger.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Early roots of neoliberalism were laid in the 1970s during the Carter administration, with deregulation of the trucking, banking and airline industries, as well as the appointment of Paul Volcker to chairman of the Federal Reserve. This trend continued into the 1980s under the Reagan administration, which included tax cuts, increased defense spending, financial deregulation and trade deficit expansion. Likewise, concepts of supply-side economics, discussed by the Democrats in the 1970s, culminated in the 1980 Joint Economic Committee report "Plugging in the Supply Side". This was picked up and advanced by the Reagan administration, with Congress following Reagan's basic proposal and cutting federal income taxes across the board by 25% in 1981.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The Clinton administration embraced neoliberalism by supporting the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), continuing the deregulation of the financial sector through passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act and implementing cuts to the welfare state through passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. The American historian Gary Gerstle writes that while Reagan was the ideological architect of the neoliberal order which was formulated in the 1970s and 1980s, it was Clinton who was its key facilitator, and as such this order achieved dominance in the 1990s and early 2000s. The neoliberalism of the Clinton administration differs from that of Reagan as the Clinton administration purged neoliberalism of neoconservative positions on militarism, family values, opposition to multiculturalism and neglect of ecological issues. Writing in "New York", journalist Jonathan Chait disputed accusations that the Democratic Party had been hijacked by neoliberals, saying that its policies have largely stayed the same since the New Deal. Instead, Chait suggested these accusations arose from arguments that presented a false dichotomy between free-market economics and socialism, ignoring mixed economies. American feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser says the modern Democratic Party has embraced a "progressive neoliberalism", which she describes as a "progressive-neoliberal alliance of financialization plus emancipation". Historian Walter Scheidel says that both parties shifted to promote free-market capitalism in the 1970s, with the Democratic Party being "instrumental in implementing financial deregulation in the 1990s". Historians Andrew Diamond and Thomas Sugrue argue that neoliberalism became a "'dominant rationality' precisely because it could not be confined to a single partisan identity." Economic and political inequalities in schools, universities, and libraries and an undermining of democratic and civil society institutions influenced by neoliberalism has been explored by Buschman.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Scholars who emphasized the key role of the developmental state in the early period of fast industrialization in East Asia in the late 19th century now argue that South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore have transformed from developmental to close-to-neoliberal states. Their arguments are matter of scholarly debate.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, Deng Xiaoping led the country through far ranging market-centered reforms, with the slogan of Xiǎokāng, that combined neoliberalism with centralized authoritarianism. These focused on agriculture, industry, education and science/defense.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Experts debate the extent to which traditional Maoist communist doctrines have been transformed to incorporate the new neoliberal ideas. In any case, the Chinese Communist Party remains a dominant force in setting economic and business policies. Throughout the 20th century, Hong Kong was the outstanding neoliberal exemplar inside China.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Taiwan exemplifies the impact of neoliberal ideas. The policies were pushed by the United States but were not implemented in response to a failure of the national economy, as in numerous other countries.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Neoliberal policies were at the core of the leading party in Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), after 1980. These policies had the effect of abandoning the traditional rural base and emphasizing the central importance of the Tokyo industrial-economic region. Neoliberal proposals for Japan's agricultural sector called for reducing state intervention, ending the protection of high prices for rice and other farm products, and exposing farmers to the global market. The 1993 Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations opened up the rice market. Neoconservative leaders called for the enlargement, diversification, intensification, and corporatization of the farms receiving government subsidies. In 2006, the ruling LDP decided to no longer protect small farmers with subsidies. Small operators saw this as favoritism towards big corporate agriculture and reacted politically by supporting the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), helping to defeat the LDP in nationwide elections.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In South Korea, neoliberalism had the effect of strengthening the national government's control over economic policies. These policies were popular to the extent that they weakened the historically very powerful chaebol family-owned conglomerates.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in 2014 with a commitment to implement neoliberal economic policies. This commitment would shape national politics and foreign affairs, and put India in a race with China and Japan for economic supremacy in East Asia.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In Australia, neoliberal economic policies (known at the time as "economic rationalism" or "economic fundamentalism") have been embraced by governments of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party since the 1980s. The Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating from 1983 to 1996 pursued a program of economic reform focused on economic liberalisation. These governments privatised government corporations, deregulated factor markets, floated the Australian dollar and reduced trade protections. Another key policy was the accords which was an agreement with unions to agree to a reduction in strikes, wage demands and a real wage cut in exchange for the implementation of social policies, such as Medicare and superannuation. The Howard government continued these policies, whilst also acting to reduce union power, cut welfare and reduce government spending.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Keating, building on policies he had introduced while federal treasurer, implemented a compulsory superannuation guarantee system in 1992 to increase national savings and reduce future government liability for old age pensions. The financing of universities was deregulated, requiring students to contribute to university fees through a repayable loan system known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and encouraging universities to increase income by admitting full-fee-paying students, including foreign students. The admission of domestic full-fee-paying students to public universities was abolished in 2009 by the Rudd Labor government.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Immigration to the mainland capitals by refugees have seen capital flows follow soon after, such as from war-torn Lebanon and Vietnam. Later economic-migrants from mainland China also, up to recent restrictions, had invested significantly in the property markets.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Australia was one of few developed countries not to go through a recession during the Great Recession; Australia's last recession before the COVID-19 recession occurred in 1991.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In New Zealand, neoliberal economic policies were implemented under the Fourth Labour Government led by Prime Minister David Lange. These neoliberal policies are commonly referred to as Rogernomics, a portmanteau of "Roger" and "economics", after Lange appointed Roger Douglas minister of finance in 1984.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Lange's government had inherited a severe balance of payments crisis as a result of the deficits from the previously implemented two-year freeze on wages and prices by preceding Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, who had also maintained an exchange rate many economists now believe was unsustainable. The inherited economic conditions lead Lange to remark "We ended up being run very similarly to a Polish shipyard." On 14 September 1984, Lange's government held an Economic Summit to discuss the underlying problems with New Zealand's economy, which lead to calls for dramatic economic reforms previously proposed by the Treasury Department.


title: Neoliberalism

text: A reform program consisting of deregulation and the removal of tariffs and subsidies was put in place. This had an immediate effect on New Zealand's agricultural community, who were hit hard by the loss of subsidies to farmers. A superannuation surcharge was introduced, despite having promised not to reduce superannuation, resulting in Labour losing support from the elderly. The financial markets were also deregulated, removing restrictions on interests rates, lending and foreign exchange. In March 1985, the New Zealand dollar was floated. Additionally, a number of government departments were converted into state-owned enterprises, which lead to significant job losses: 3,000 within the Electricity Corporation; 4,000 within the Coal Corporation; 5,000 within the Forestry Corporation; and 8,000 within the New Zealand Post.


title: Neoliberalism

text: New Zealand became a part of the global economy. The focus in the economy shifted from the productive sector to finance as a result of zero restrictions on overseas money coming into the country. Finance capital outstripped industrial capital and the manufacturing industry suffered approximately 76,000 job losses.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Beginning in the late 1960s, a number of neoliberal reforms were implemented in the Middle East. Egypt is frequently linked to the implementation of neoliberal policies, particularly with regard to the 'open-door' policies of President Anwar Sadat throughout the 1970s, and Hosni Mubarak's successive economic reforms between 1981 and 2011. These measures, known as "al-Infitah", were later diffused across the region. In Tunisia, neoliberal economic policies are associated with former president and "de facto" dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali; his reign made it clear that economic neoliberalism can coexist and even be encouraged by authoritarian states. Responses to globalisation and economic reforms in the Gulf have also been approached via a neoliberal analytical framework.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The adoption of neoliberal policies in the 1980s by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank had a significant impact on the spread of neoliberal reform worldwide. To obtain loans from these institutions, developing or crisis-wracked countries had to agree to institutional reforms, including privatization, trade liberalization, enforcement of strong private property rights, and reductions to government spending. This process became known as structural adjustment, and the principles underpinning it the Washington Consensus.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The European Union (EU), created in 1992, is sometimes considered a neoliberal organization, as it facilitates free trade and freedom of movement, erodes national protectionism and limits national subsidies. Others underline that the EU is not completely neoliberal as it leaves the development of welfare policies to its constituent states.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The Austrian School is a school of economic thought originating in late-19th and early-20th century Vienna which bases its study of economic phenomena on the interpretation and analysis of the purposeful actions of individuals. In the 21st century, the term has increasingly been used to denote the free-market economics of Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, including their criticisms of government intervention in the economy, which has tied the school to neoliberal thought.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Economists associated with the school, including Carl Menger, Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises, have been responsible for many notable contributions to economic theory, including the subjective theory of value, marginalism in price theory, Friedrich von Wieser's theories on opportunity cost, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk's theories on time preference, the formulation of the economic calculation problem, as well as a number of criticisms of Marxian economics. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking of the originators of the School, said in 2000 that "the Austrian School have reached far into the future from when most of them practiced and have had a profound and, in my judgment, probably an irreversible effect on how most mainstream economists think in [the United States]".


title: Neoliberalism

text: The Chicago school of economics is a neoclassical school of thought within the academic community of economists, with a strong focus around the faculty of the University of Chicago. Chicago macroeconomic theory rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. The school is strongly associated with University of Chicago economists such as Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Ronald Coase and Gary Becker. In the 21st century, economists such as Mark Skousen refer to Friedrich Hayek as a key economist who influenced this school in the 20th century having started his career in Vienna and the Austrian school of economics.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The school emphasizes non-intervention from government and generally rejects regulation in markets as inefficient, with the exception of the regulation of the money supply by central banks (in the form of monetarism). Although the school's association with neoliberalism is sometimes resisted by its proponents, its emphasis on reduced government intervention in the economy and a "laissez-faire" ideology have brought about an affiliation between the Chicago school and neoliberal economics.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The Washington Consensus is a set of standardized policy prescriptions often associated with neoliberalism that were developed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the US Department of Treasury for crisis-wracked developing countries. These prescriptions, often attached as conditions for loans from the IMF and World Bank, focus on market liberalization, and in particular on lowering barriers to trade, controlling inflation, privatizing state-owned enterprises, and reducing government budget deficits. However, Williamson has emphatically rejected any association with Neoliberalism and has publicly stated his regret with the term itself, saying that the original 10 points were supposed to be a model for fiscal discipline and macroeconomic stabilization, not monetarism, supply-side economics, or a minimal state (which Williamson argues are the important elements of the Neoliberal model).


title: Neoliberalism

text: Neoliberal policies center around economic liberalization, including reductions to trade barriers and other policies meant to increase free trade, deregulation of industry, privatization of state-owned enterprises, reductions in government spending, and monetarism. Neoliberal theory contends that free markets encourage economic efficiency, economic growth, and technological innovation. State intervention, even if aimed at encouraging these phenomena, is generally believed to worsen economic performance.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Many neoliberal thinkers advance the view that economic and political freedom are inextricably linked. Milton Friedman argued in his book "Capitalism and Freedom" that economic freedom, while itself an extremely important component of absolute freedom, is also a necessary condition for political freedom. He claimed that centralized control of economic activities is always accompanied by political repression. In his view, the voluntary character of all transactions in an unregulated market economy and the wide diversity of choices that it permits pose fundamental threats to repressive political leaders by greatly diminishing their power to coerce people economically. Through the elimination of centralized control of economic activities, economic power is separated from political power and each can serve as a counterbalance to the other. Friedman feels that competitive capitalism is especially important to minority groups since impersonal market forces protect people from discrimination in their economic activities for reasons unrelated to their productivity. In "The Road to Serfdom", Friedrich Hayek offered a similar argument: "Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends". Amplifying their arguments, it has often been pointed out that increasing economic freedoms tends to raise expectations on political freedoms, eventually leading to democracy.


title: Neoliberalism

text: A central feature of neoliberalism is the support of free trade, and policies that enable free trade, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, are often associated with neoliberalism. Neoliberals argue that free trade promotes economic growth, reduces poverty, produces gains of trade like lower prices as a result of comparative advantage, maximizes consumer choice, and is essential to freedom, as they believe voluntary trade between two parties should not be prohibited by government. Relatedly, neoliberals argue that protectionism is harmful to consumers, who will be forced to pay higher prices for goods; incentivizes individuals to misuse resources; distorts investment; stifles innovation; and props up certain industries at the expense of consumers and other industries.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Monetarism is an economic theory commonly associated with neoliberalism. Formulated by Milton Friedman, it focuses on the macroeconomic aspects of the supply of money, paying particular attention to the effects of central banking. It argues that excessive expansion of the money supply is inherently inflationary and that monetary authorities should focus primarily on maintaining price stability, even at the cost of other macroeconomic factors like economic growth.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Monetarism is often associated with the policies of the US Federal Reserve under the Chairmanship of economist Paul Volcker, which centered around high interest rates that are widely credited with ending the high levels of inflation seen in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s as well as contributing to the 1980–1982 recession. Monetarism had particular force in Chile, whose central bank raised interest rates to counter inflation that had spiraled to over 600%. This helped to successfully reduce inflation to below 10%, but also resulted in job losses.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Neoliberalism has faced criticism by academics, journalists, religious leaders, and activists from both the political left and right. Notable critics of neoliberalism in theory or practice include economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, Michael Hudson, Ha-Joon Chang, Robert Pollin, Julie Matthaei, and Richard D. Wolff; linguist Noam Chomsky; geographer and anthropologist David Harvey; Slovenian continental philosopher Slavoj Žižek, political activist and public intellectual Cornel West; Marxist feminist Gail Dines; British musician and political activist Billy Bragg; author, activist and filmmaker Naomi Klein; head of the Catholic Church Pope Francis; journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot; Belgian psychologist Paul Verhaeghe; journalist and activist Chris Hedges; conservative philosopher Roger Scruton; and the alter-globalization movement, including groups such as ATTAC.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The impact of the Great Recession in 2008 has given rise to a surge in new scholarship that criticizes neoliberalism.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Neoliberal thought has been criticized for supposedly having an undeserved "faith" in the efficiency of markets, in the superiority of markets over centralized economic planning, in the ability of markets to self-correct, and in the market's ability to deliver economic and political freedom. Economist Paul Krugman has argued that the "laissez-faire absolutism" promoted by neoliberals "contributed to an intellectual climate in which faith in markets and disdain for government often trumps the evidence". Political theorist Wendy Brown has gone even further and asserted that the overriding objective of neoliberalism is "the economization of all features of life". A number of scholars have argued that, in practice, this "market fundamentalism" has led to a neglect of social goods not captured by economic indicators, an erosion of democracy, an unhealthy promotion of unbridled individualism and social Darwinism, and economic inefficiency.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Some critics contend neoliberal thinking prioritizes economic indicators like GDP growth and inflation over social factors that might not be easy to quantify, like labor rights and access to higher education. This focus on economic efficiency can compromise other, perhaps more important, factors, or promote exploitation and social injustice. For example, anthropologist Mark Fleming argues that when the performance of a transit system is assessed purely in terms of economic efficiency, social goods such as strong workers' rights are considered impediments to maximum performance. He supports this assertion with a case study of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), which is one of the slowest major urban transit systems in the US and has one of the worst on-time performance rates. This poor performance, he contends, stems from structural problems including an aging fleet and maintenance issues. However, he argues that the neoliberal worldview singled out transit drivers and their labor unions, blaming drivers for failing to meet impossible transit schedules and considering additional costs to drivers as lost funds that reduce system speed and performance. This produced vicious attacks on the drivers' union and brutal public smear campaigns, ultimately resulting in the passing of Proposition G, which severely undermined the powers of the Muni drivers' union.


title: Neoliberalism

text: American scholar and cultural critic Henry Giroux alleges that neoliberal market fundamentalism fosters a belief that market forces should organize every facet of society, including economic and social life, and promotes a social Darwinist ethic that elevates self-interest over social needs. Marxist economic geographer David Harvey argues that neoliberalism promotes an unbridled individualism that is harmful to social solidarity.


title: Neoliberalism

text: While proponents of economic liberalization have often pointed out that increasing economic freedom tends to raise expectations on political freedom, some scholars see the existence of non-democratic yet market-liberal regimes and the seeming undermining of democratic control by market processes as evidence that this characterization is ahistorical. Some scholars contend that neoliberal focuses may even undermine the basic elements of democracy. Kristen Ghodsee, ethnographer at the University of Pennsylvania, asserts that the triumphalist attitudes of Western powers at the end of the Cold War and the fixation on linking all leftist political ideals with the excesses of Stalinism, permitted neoliberal, free-market capitalism to fill the void, which undermined democratic institutions and reforms, leaving a trail of economic misery, unemployment and rising economic inequality throughout the former Eastern Bloc and much of the West that fueled a resurgence of extremist nationalism. Costas Panayotakis has argued that the economic inequality engendered by neoliberalism creates inequality of political power, undermining democracy and the citizen's ability to meaningfully participate.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Despite the focus on economic efficiency, some critics allege that neoliberal policies actually produce economic inefficiencies. The replacement of a government-owned monopoly with privately owned companies might reduce the efficiencies associated with economies of scale. Structurally, some economists argue that neoliberalism is a system that socializes costs and privatizes profits. They argue this results in an abdication of private responsibility for socially destructive economic choices and may result in regressive governmental controls on the economy to reduce damages by private individuals.


title: Neoliberalism

text: American political theologian Adam Kotsko argues that contemporary right-wing populism, exemplified by Brexit and the Trump Administration, represent a "heretical" variant of neoliberalism, which accepts its core tenets but pushes them to new, almost "parodic" extremes.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Critics have argued that neoliberal policies have increased economic inequality and exacerbated global poverty. The Center for Economic and Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker argued in 2006 that the driving force behind rising inequality in the United States has been a series of deliberate neoliberal policy choices, including anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism and profiteering in the healthcare industry. The economists David Howell and Mamadou Diallo contend that neoliberal policies have contributed to a United States economy in which 30% of workers earn low wages (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers) and 35% of the labor force is underemployed while only 40% of the working-age population in the country is adequately employed. The globalization of neoliberalism has been blamed for the emergence of a "precariat", a new social class facing acute socio-economic insecurity and alienation. In the United States, the "neoliberal transformation" of industrial relations, which considerably diminished the power of unions and increased the power of employers, has been blamed by many for increasing precarity, which could be responsible for as many as 120,000 excess deaths per year. In Venezuela, prior to the Venezuelan crisis, deregulation of the labor market resulted in greater informal employment and a considerable increase in industrial accidents and occupational diseases. Even in Sweden, in which only 6% of workers are beset with wages the OECD considers low, some scholars argue that the adoption of neoliberal reforms—in particular the privatization of public services and the reduction of state benefits—is the reason it has become the nation with the fastest growing income inequality in the OECD.


title: Neoliberalism

text: A 2016 report by researchers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was critical of neoliberal policies for increasing economic inequality. While the report included praise for neoliberalism, saying "there is much to cheer in the neoliberal agenda," it noted that certain neoliberal policies, particularly freedom of capital and fiscal consolidation, resulted in "increasing inequality", which "in turn jeopardized durable [economic] expansion". The report contends that the implementation of neoliberal policies by economic and political elites has led to "three disquieting conclusions":


title: Neoliberalism

text: A number of scholars see increasing inequality arising out of neoliberal policies as a deliberate effort, rather than a consequence of ulterior motives like increasing economic growth. Marxist economic geographer David Harvey describes neoliberalism as a "class project" "carried out by the corporate capitalist class", and argued in his book "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" that neoliberalism is designed to increase the class power of economic elites. Economists Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy posit that "the restoration and increase of the power, income, and wealth of the upper classes" are the primary objectives of the neoliberal agenda. Economist David M. Kotz contends that neoliberalism "is based on the thorough domination of labor by capital". Sociologist Thomas Volscho argues that the imposition of neoliberalism in the United States arose from a conscious political mobilization by capitalist elites in the 1970s, who faced two self-described crises: the legitimacy of capitalism and a falling rate of profitability in industry. In "The Global Gamble", Peter Gowan argued that "neoliberalism" was not only a free-market ideology but "a social engineering project". Globally, it meant opening a state's political economy to products and financial flows from the core countries. Domestically, neoliberalism meant the remaking of social relations "in favour of creditor and rentier interests, with the subordination of the productive sector to financial sectors, and a drive to shift wealth, power and security away from the bulk of the working population."


title: Neoliberalism

text: Some organizations and economists believe neoliberal policies increase the power of corporations and shift wealth to the upper classes. For instance, Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell argue that urban citizens are increasingly deprived of the power to shape the basic conditions of daily life, which are instead shaped by companies involved in the competitive economy.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, two major international organizations which often espouse neoliberal views, have been criticized for advancing neoliberal policies around the world. Sheldon Richman, editor of the libertarian journal "The Freeman", argues that the IMF has imposed a "corporatist-flavored 'neoliberalism' on the troubled countries of the world." He contends that IMF policies of spending cuts and tax increases, as well as subjection to paternalistic supranational bureaucrats, have fostered "long-term dependency, perpetual indebtedness, moral hazard, and politicization" in the developing world, which has undermined "real market reform" and "set back the cause of genuine liberalism." Ramaa Vasudevan, associate professor of economics at Colorado State University, states that trade policies and treaties fostered by the United States in the neoliberal era, along with bailouts brokered by the World Bank and the IMF, have allowed corporate capital to expand around the world unimpeded by trade protections or national borders, "sucking countries in different regions of the world into global corporations' logic of accumulation." This expansion of global corporate capital, Vasudevan says, has buttressed its ability to "orchestrate a global division of labor most conducive to the demands of profitability" which in turn has facilitated "a brutal, global race to the bottom".


title: Neoliberalism

text: Mark Arthur, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development Research in Denmark, has written that the influence of neoliberalism has given rise to an "anti-corporatist" movement in opposition to it. This "anti-corporatist" movement is articulated around the need to reclaim the power that corporations and global institutions have stripped from governments. He says that Adam Smith's "rules for mindful markets" served as a basis for the anti-corporate movement, "following government's failure to restrain corporations from hurting or disturbing the happiness of the neighbor [Smith]".


title: Neoliberalism

text: Several scholars have linked mass incarceration of the poor in the United States with the rise of neoliberalism. Sociologist Loïc Wacquant and Marxist economic geographer David Harvey have argued that the criminalization of poverty and mass incarceration is a neoliberal policy for dealing with social instability among economically marginalized populations. According to Wacquant, this situation follows the implementation of other neoliberal policies, which have allowed for the retrenchment of the social welfare state and the rise of punitive workfare, whilst increasing gentrification of urban areas, privatization of public functions, the shrinking of collective protections for the working class via economic deregulation and the rise of underpaid, precarious wage labor. By contrast, it is extremely lenient in dealing with those in the upper echelons of society, in particular when it comes to economic crimes of the upper class and corporations such as fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, credit and insurance fraud, money laundering and violation of commerce and labor codes. According to Wacquant, neoliberalism does not shrink government, but instead sets up a "centaur state" with little governmental oversight for those at the top and strict control of those at the bottom.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In expanding upon Wacquant's thesis, sociologist and political economist John L. Campbell of Dartmouth College suggests that through privatization the prison system exemplifies the centaur state. He states that "on the one hand, it punishes the lower class, which populates the prisons; on the other hand, it profits the upper class, which owns the prisons, and it employs the middle class, which runs them." In addition, he argues that the prison system benefits corporations through outsourcing, as inmates are "slowly becoming a source of low-wage labor for some US corporations". Both through privatization and outsourcing, Campbell argues, the penal state reflects neoliberalism. Campbell also argues that while neoliberalism in the United States established a penal state for the poor, it also put into place a debtor state for the middle class and that "both have had perverse effects on their respective targets: increasing rates of incarceration among the lower class and increasing rates of indebtedness—and recently home foreclosure—among the middle class."


title: Neoliberalism

text: David McNally, Professor of Political Science at York University, argues that while expenditures on social welfare programs have been cut, expenditures on prison construction have increased significantly during the neoliberal era, with California having "the largest prison-building program in the history of the world". The scholar Bernard Harcourt contends the neoliberal concept that the state is inept when it comes to economic regulation, but efficient in policing and punishing "has facilitated the slide to mass incarceration". Both Wacquant and Harcourt refer to this phenomenon as "Neoliberal Penality".


title: Neoliberalism

text: The implementation of neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with the Great Recession as one of its results. In particular, various neoliberal ideologies that had long been advocated by elites, such as monetarism and supply-side economics, were translated into government policy by the Reagan administration, which resulted in decreased government regulation and a shift from a tax-financed state to a debt-financed one. While the profitability of industry and the rate of economic growth never recovered to the heyday of the 1960s, the political and economic power of Wall Street and finance capital vastly increased due to debt-financing by the state. A 2016 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report blames certain neoliberal policies for exacerbating financial crises around the world, causing them to grow bigger and more damaging.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Neoliberalism is commonly viewed by scholars as encouraging of globalization, which is the subject of much criticism.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The emergence of the "precariat", a new class facing acute socio-economic insecurity and alienation, has been attributed to the globalization of neoliberalism.


title: Neoliberalism

text: A number of scholars have alleged neoliberalism encourages or covers for imperialism. For instance, Ruth J Blakeley, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, accuses the United States and its allies of fomenting state terrorism and mass killings during the Cold War as a means to buttress and promote the expansion of capitalism and neoliberalism in the developing world. As an example of this, Blakeley says the case of Indonesia demonstrates that the U.S. and the UK put the interests of capitalist elites over the human rights of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians by supporting the Indonesian Army as it waged a campaign of mass killings, which resulted in the annihilation of the Communist Party of Indonesia and its civilian supporters. Historian Bradley R. Simpson posits that this campaign of mass killings was "an essential building block of the neoliberal policies that the West would attempt to impose on Indonesia after Sukarno's ouster."


title: Neoliberalism

text: Geographer David Harvey argues neoliberalism encourages an indirect form of imperialism that focuses on the extraction of resources from developing countries via financial mechanisms.


title: Neoliberalism

text: This is practiced through international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank who negotiate debt relief with developing nations. He alleges that these institutions prioritize the financial institutions that grant the loans over the debtor countries and place requirements on loans that, in effect, act as financial flows from debtor countries to developed countries (for example, to receive a loan a state must have sufficient foreign exchange reserves—requiring the debtor state to buy US Treasury bonds, which have interest rates lower than those on the loan). Economist Joseph Stiglitz has said of this: "What a peculiar world in which poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest."


title: Neoliberalism

text: The neoliberal approach to global health advocates privatization of the healthcare industry and reduced government interference in the market, and focuses on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank rather than government. This approach has faced considerable criticism. James Pfeiffer, Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington, has criticised the use of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) by the World Bank and IMF in Mozambique, which resulted in reduced government health spending, leading international NGOs to fill service holes previously filled by government. Rick Rowden, a Senior Economist at Global Financial Integrity, has criticised the IMF's monetarist approach of prioritising price stability and fiscal restraint, which he alleges was unnecessarily restrictive and prevented developing countries from scaling up long-term investment in public health infrastructure.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Some commentators have blamed neoliberalism for various social ills, including mass shootings, and deaths of despair in the United States.


title: Neoliberalism

text: It has been argued that trade-led, unregulated economic activity and lax state regulation of pollution have led to environmental degradation. Furthermore, modes of production encouraged under neoliberalism may reduce the availability of natural resources over the long term, and may therefore not be sustainable within the world's limited geographical space.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In Robert Fletcher's 2010 piece, "Neoliberal Environmentality: Towards a Poststructuralist Political Ecology of the Conservation Debate" his premise is that there is a conflict of ideas in conservation; that on one side of things you have deep ecology and protectionist paradigms and on the other side you have community based conservation efforts. There are problems with both approaches, and on either side they frequently fail to do conservation work in a substantial way. In the middle, Fletcher sees a space where social sciences are able to critique both sides of and blend the approaches, forming not a triangle of ideologies, but a spectrum. The relationship between capitalism and conservation is one that has to be reckoned with due to an overarching neoliberal framework guiding most conservation efforts.


title: Neoliberalism

text: Marxist economic geographer David Harvey argues neoliberalism is to blame for increased rates of extinction. Notably, he observes that "the era of neoliberalization also happens to be the era of the fastest mass extinction of species in the Earth's recent history." American philosopher and animal rights activist Steven Best argues that three decades of neoliberal policies have "marketized the entire world" and intensified "the assault on every ecosystem on the earth as a whole". Neoliberalism reduces the "tragedy of the commons" to an argument for private ownership.


title: Neoliberalism

text: The Friedman doctrine, which Nicolas Firzli has argued defined the neoliberal era, may lead companies to neglect concerns for the environment. Firzli insists that prudent, fiduciary-driven long-term investors cannot ignore the environmental, social and corporate governance consequences of actions taken by the CEOs of the companies whose shares they hold as "the long-dominant Friedman stance is becoming culturally unacceptable and financially costly in the boardrooms of pension funds and industrial firms in Europe and North America".


title: Neoliberalism

text: Critics like Noel Castree focus on the relationship between neoliberalism and the biophysical environment explain that critics of neoliberals see the free market as the best way to mediate the relationship between producers and consumers, as well as maximize freedom in a more general sense which they view as inherently good. Castree also asserts that the assumption that markets will allow for the maximization of individual freedom is incorrect.


title: Neoliberalism

text: In political science, disillusionment with neoliberalism is seen as a cause of depoliticization and the growth of anti-political sentiment, which can in turn encourage populist politics and "repoliticization".


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: The Thing is a 1982 American science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter from a screenplay by Bill Lancaster. Based on the 1938 John W. Campbell Jr. novella "Who Goes There?", it tells the story of a group of American researchers in Antarctica who encounter the eponymous "Thing", a parasitic extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates, other organisms. The group is overcome by paranoia and conflict as they learn that they can no longer trust each other and that any of them could be the Thing. The film stars Kurt Russell as the team's helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, with A. Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, David Clennon, Keith David, Richard Dysart, Charles Hallahan, Peter Maloney, Richard Masur, Donald Moffat, Joel Polis, and Thomas G. Waites in supporting roles.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Production began in the mid-1970s as a faithful adaptation of the novella, following 1951's "The Thing from Another World". "The Thing" went through several directors and writers, each with different ideas on how to approach the story. Filming lasted roughly twelve weeks, beginning in August 1981, and took place on refrigerated sets in Los Angeles as well as in Juneau, Alaska, and Stewart, British Columbia. Of the film's $15million budget, $1.5million was spent on Rob Bottin's creature effects, a mixture of chemicals, food products, rubber, and mechanical parts turned by his large team into an alien capable of taking on any form.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: "The Thing" was released in 1982 to negative reviews that described it as "instant junk" and "a wretched excess". Critics both praised the special effects achievements and criticized their visual repulsiveness, while others found the characterization poorly realized. The film grossed $19.6million during its theatrical run. Many reasons have been cited for its failure to impress audiences: competition from films such as "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", which offered an optimistic take on alien visitation; a summer that had been filled with successful science fiction and fantasy films; and an audience living through a recession, diametrically opposed to "The Thing"s nihilistic and bleak tone.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: The film found an audience when released on home video and television. In the subsequent years, it has been reappraised as one of the best science fiction and horror films ever made and has gained a cult following. Filmmakers have noted its influence on their work, and it has been referred to in other media such as television and video games. "The Thing" has spawned a variety of merchandiseincluding a 1982 novelization, haunted house attractions, board gamesand sequels in comic books, a video game of the same name, and a 2011 prequel film of the same name.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: In Antarctica, a helicopter pursues a sled dog to an American research station. The researchers witness as the passenger accidentally blows up the helicopter and the pilot. The man shoots at the dog and shouts at the Americans in Norwegian, but they are unable to understand him. He is shot dead in self-defense by station commander Garry. The American helicopter pilot, R.J. MacReady, and Dr. Copper leave to investigate the Norwegian base. Among the charred ruins and frozen corpses, they find the burnt corpse of a malformed humanoid which they transfer to the American station. Their biologist, Blair, performs an autopsy on the remains and finds a normal set of human organs.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Clark kennels the sled dog, and it soon metamorphoses and absorbs several of the station dogs. This disturbance alerts the team and Childs uses a flamethrower to incinerate the creature. Blair autopsies the Dog-Thing and surmises that it can perfectly imitate other organisms. Data recovered from the Norwegian base leads the Americans to a large excavation site containing a partially buried alien spacecraft, which Norris estimates has been buried for over a hundred thousand years, and a smaller, human-sized dig site. Blair grows paranoid after running a computer simulation that indicates that the creature could assimilate all life on Earth in a matter of years. The station implements controls to reduce the risk of assimilation.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: The remains of the malformed humanoid assimilate an isolated Bennings, but Windows interrupts the process and MacReady burns the Bennings-Thing. The team also imprisons Blair in a tool shed after he sabotages all the vehicles, kills the remaining sled dogs, and destroys the radio to prevent escape. Copper suggests testing for infection by comparing the crew's blood against uncontaminated blood held in storage, but after learning the blood stores have been destroyed, the men lose faith in Garry's leadership, and MacReady takes command. He, Windows and Nauls find Fuchs's burnt corpse and surmise he committed suicide to avoid assimilation. Windows returns to base while MacReady and Nauls investigate MacReady's shack. During their return, Nauls abandons MacReady in a snowstorm, believing he has been assimilated after finding his torn clothes in the shack.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: The team debates whether to allow MacReady inside, but he breaks in and holds the group at bay with dynamite. During the encounter, Norris appears to suffer a heart attack. As Copper attempts to defibrillate Norris, his chest transforms into a large mouth and bites off Copper's arms, killing him. MacReady incinerates the Norris-Thing, but its head detaches and attempts to escape before also being burnt. MacReady hypothesizes that the Norris-Thing demonstrated that every part of the Thing is an individual life-form with its own survival instinct. He proposes testing blood samples from each survivor with a heated piece of wire and has each man restrained but is forced to kill Clark after he lunges at MacReady with a scalpel. Everyone passes the test except Palmer, whose blood recoils from the heat. Exposed, the Palmer-Thing transforms, breaks free of its bonds, and infects Windows, forcing MacReady to incinerate them both.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Childs is left on guard while the others go to test Blair, but they find that he has escaped, and has been using vehicle components to assemble a small flying saucer, which they destroy. Upon their return, Childs is missing and the power generator is destroyed, leaving the men without heat. MacReady speculates that, with no escape left, the Thing intends to return to hibernation until a rescue team arrives. MacReady, Garry, and Nauls agree that the Thing cannot be allowed to escape and set explosives to destroy the station, but the Blair-Thing kills Garry, and Nauls disappears. The Blair-Thing transforms into an enormous creature and breaks the detonator, but MacReady triggers the explosives with a stick of dynamite, destroying the station.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Childs returns as MacReady sits by the burning remnants, saying he became lost in the storm while pursuing Blair. Exhausted and slowly freezing to death, they acknowledge the futility of their distrust and share a bottle of Scotch whisky.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: "The Thing" also features Norbert Weisser as one of the Norwegians, and an uncredited dog, Jed, as the Dog-Thing. The only female presence in the film is the voice of MacReady's chess computer, voiced by Carpenter's then-wife, Adrienne Barbeau. Producer David Foster, associate producer Larry Franco, and writer Bill Lancaster, along with other members of the crew, make a cameo appearance in a recovered photograph of the Norwegian team. Camera operator Ray Stella stood in for the shots where needles were used to take blood, telling Carpenter that he could do it all day. Franco also played the Norwegian wielding a rifle and hanging out of the helicopter during the opening sequence. Stunt Coordinator Dick Warlock also had a minor role in the film, appearing off-screen as the silhouette figure during the scene where the Dog-Thing enters one the researcher's living quarters whilst roaming around the base. This was so audiences could not identify which of the characters had been assimilated, thus leaving it ambiguous.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Development of the film began in the mid-1970s when David Foster and fellow producer Lawrence Turman suggested to Universal Pictures an adaptation of the 1938 John W. Campbell novella "Who Goes There?". It had been loosely adapted once before in Howard Hawks's and Christian Nyby's 1951 film "The Thing from Another World", but Foster and Turman wanted to develop a project that stuck more closely to the source material. Screenwriters Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins held the rights to make an adaptation, but passed on the opportunity to make a new film, so Universal obtained the rights from them. In 1976, Wilbur Stark had purchased the remake rights to 23 RKO Pictures films, including "The Thing from Another World", from three Wall Street financiers who did not know what to do with them, in exchange for a return when the films were produced. Universal in turn acquired the rights to remake the film from Stark, resulting in him being given an executive producer credit on all print advertisements, posters, television commercials, and studio press material.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: John Carpenter was first approached about the project in 1976 by co-producer and friend Stuart Cohen, but Carpenter was mainly an independent film director, so Universal chose "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" (1974) director Tobe Hooper as they already had him under contract. The producers were ultimately unhappy with Hooper and his writing partner Kim Henkel's concept. After several more failed pitches by different writers, and attempts to bring on other directors, such as John Landis, the project was put on hold. Even so, the success of Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction horror film "Alien" helped revitalize the project, at which point Carpenter became loosely attached following his success with his influential slasher film "Halloween" (1978).


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Carpenter was reluctant to join the project, for he thought Hawks's adaptation would be difficult to surpass, although he considered the film's monster to be unnotable. Cohen suggested that he read the original novella. Carpenter found the "creepiness" of the imitations conducted by the creature, and the questions it raised, interesting. He drew parallels between the novella and Agatha Christie's mystery novel "And Then There Were None" (1939), and noted that the story of "Who Goes There?" was "timely" for him, meaning he could make it "true to [his] day" as Hawks had in his time. Carpenter, a fan of Hawks's adaptation, paid homage to it in "Halloween", and he watched "The Thing from Another World" several times for inspiration before filming began. Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey first worked together on "Halloween", and "The Thing" was their first big-budget project for a major film studio.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: After securing the writer and crew, the film was stalled again when Carpenter nearly quit, believing that a passion project of his, "El Diablo" (1990), was on the verge of being made by EMI Films. The producers discussed various replacements including Walter Hill, Sam Peckinpah and Michael Ritchie, but the development of "El Diablo" was not as imminent as Carpenter believed, and he remained with "The Thing".


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Universal initially set a budget of $10million, with $200,000 for "creature effects", which at the time was more than the studio had ever allocated to a monster film. Filming was scheduled to be completed within 98 days. Universal's production studios estimated that it would require at least $17million before marketing and other costs, as the plan involved more set construction, including external sets and a large set piece for the original scripted death of Bennings, which was estimated to cost $1.5million alone. As storyboarding and designs were finalized, the crew estimated they would need at least $750,000 for creature effects, a figure Universal executives agreed to after seeing the number of workers employed under Rob Bottin, the special make-up effects designer. Larry Franco was responsible for making the budget work for the film; he cut the filming schedule by a third, eliminated the exterior sets for on-site shooting, and removed Bennings's more extravagant death scene. Cohen suggested reusing the destroyed American camp as the ruined Norwegian camp, saving a further $250,000. When filming began in August, "The Thing" had a budget of $11.4million, and indirect costs brought it to $14million. The effects budget ran over, eventually totaling $1.5million, forcing the elimination of some scenes, including Nauls's confrontation of a creature dubbed the "box Thing". By the end of production, Carpenter had to make a personal appeal to executive Ned Tanen for $100,000 to complete a simplified version of the Blair-Thing. The final cost was $12.4million, and overhead costs brought it to $15million.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Several writers developed drafts for "The Thing" before Carpenter became involved, including "Logan's Run" (1967) writer William F. Nolan, novelist David Wiltse, and Hooper and Henkel, whose draft was set at least partially underwater, and which Cohen described as a "Moby-Dick"-like story in which "The Captain" did battle with a large, non-shapeshifting creature. As Carpenter said in a 2014 interview, "they were just trying to make it work". The writers left before Carpenter joined the project. He said the scripts were "awful", as they changed the story into something it was not, and ignored the chameleon-like aspect of the Thing. Carpenter did not want to write the project himself, after recently completing work on "Escape from New York" (1981), and having struggled to complete a screenplay for "The Philadelphia Experiment" (1984). He was wary of taking on writing duties, preferring to let someone else do it. Once Carpenter was confirmed as the director, several writers were asked to script "The Thing", including Richard Matheson, Nigel Kneale, and Deric Washburn.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Bill Lancaster initially met with Turman, Foster and Cohen in 1977, but he was given the impression that they wanted to closely replicate "The Thing from Another World", and he did not want to remake the film. In August 1979, Lancaster was contacted again. By this time he had read the original "Who Goes There?" novella, and Carpenter had become involved in the project. Lancaster was hired to write the script after describing his vision for the film, and his intention to stick closely to the original story, to Carpenter, who was a fan of Lancaster's work on "The Bad News Bears" (1976). Lancaster conceived several key scenes in the film, including the Norris-Thing biting Dr. Copper, and the use of blood tests to identify the Thing, which Carpenter cited as the reason he wanted to work on the film. Lancaster said he found some difficulty in translating "Who Goes There?" to film, as it features very little action. He also made some significant changes to the story, such as reducing the number of characters from 37 to 12. Lancaster said that 37 was excessive and would be difficult for audiences to follow, leaving little screen time for characterization. He also opted to alter the story's structure, choosing to open his in the middle of the action, instead of using a flashback as in the novella. Several characters were modernized for contemporary audiences; MacReady, originally a meteorologist, became a tough loner described in the script as "35. Helicopter pilot. Likes chess. Hates the cold. The pay is good." Lancaster aimed to create an ensemble piece where one person emerged as the hero, instead of having a Doc Savage-type hero from the start.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Lancaster wrote thirty to forty pages but struggled with the film's second act, and it took him several months to complete the script. After it was finished, Lancaster and Carpenter spent a weekend in northern California refining the script, each having different takes on how a character should sound, and comparing their ideas for scenes. Lancaster's script opted to keep the creature largely concealed throughout the film, and it was Bottin who convinced Carpenter to make it more visible to have a greater impact on the audience. Lancaster's original ending had both MacReady and Childs turn into the Thing. In the spring, the characters are rescued by helicopter, greeting their saviors with "Hey, which way to a hot meal?". Carpenter thought this ending was too shallow. In total, Lancaster completed four drafts of the screenplay. The novella concludes with the humans clearly victorious, but concerned that birds they see flying toward the mainland may have been infected by the Thing. Carpenter opted to end the film with the survivors slowly freezing to death to save humanity from infection, believing this to be the ultimate heroic act. Lancaster wrote this ending, which eschews a "The Twilight Zone"-style twist or the destruction of the monster, as he wanted to instead have an ambiguous moment between the pair, of trust and mistrust, fear and relief.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Kurt Russell was involved in the production before being cast, helping Carpenter develop his ideas. Russell was the last actor to be cast, in June 1981, by which point second unit filming was starting in Juneau, Alaska. Carpenter had worked with Russell twice before but wanted to keep his options open. Discussions with the studio involved using actors Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges, or Nick Nolte, who were either unavailable or declined, and Sam Shepard, who showed interest but was never pursued. Tom Atkins and Jack Thompson were strong early and late contenders for the role of MacReady, but the decision was made to go with Russell. In part, Carpenter cited the practicality of choosing someone he had found reliable before, and who would not balk at the difficult filming conditions. It took Russell about a year to grow his hair and beard out for the role. At various points, the producers met with Brian Dennehy, Kris Kristofferson, John Heard, Ed Harris, Tom Berenger, Jack Thompson, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, Peter Coyote, Tom Atkins, and Tim McIntire. Some passed on the idea of starring in a monster film, while Dennehy became the choice to play Copper. Each actor was to be paid $50,000, but after the more-established Russell was cast, his salary increased to $400,000.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Geoffrey Holder, Carl Weathers, and Bernie Casey were considered for the role of Childs, and Carpenter also looked at Isaac Hayes, having worked with him on "Escape from New York". Ernie Hudson was the front-runner and was almost cast until they met with Keith David. "The Thing" was David's first significant film role, and coming from a theater background, he had to learn on set how to hold himself back and not show every emotion his character was feeling, with guidance from Richard Masur and Donald Moffat in particular. Masur and David discussed their characters in rehearsals and decided that they would not like each other. For Blair, the team chose the then-unknown Wilford Brimley, as they wanted an everyman whose absence would not be questioned by the audience until the appropriate time. The intent with the character was to have him become infected early in the film but offscreen, so that his status would be unknown to the audience, concealing his intentions. Carpenter wanted to cast Donald Pleasence, but it was decided that he was too recognizable to accommodate the role. T. K. Carter was cast as Nauls, but comedian Franklyn Ajaye also came in to read for the role. Instead, he delivered a lengthy speech about the character being a stereotype, after which the meeting ended.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Bottin lobbied hard to play Palmer, but it was deemed impossible for him to do so alongside his existing duties. As the character has some comedic moments, Universal brought in comedians Jay Leno, Garry Shandling, and Charles Fleischer, among others, but opted to go with actor David Clennon, who was better suited to play the dramatic elements. Clennon had read for the Bennings character, but he preferred the option of playing Palmer's "blue-collar stoner" to a "white collar science man". Powers Boothe, Lee Van Cleef, Jerry Orbach, and Kevin Conway were considered for the role of Garry, and Richard Mulligan was also considered when the production experimented with the idea of making the character closer to MacReady in age. Masur also read for Garry, but he asked to play Clark instead, as he liked the character's dialogue and was also a fan of dogs. Masur worked daily with the wolfdog Jed and his handler, Clint Rowe, during rehearsals, as Rowe was familiarizing Jed with the sounds and smells of people. This helped Masur's and Jed's performance onscreen, as the dog would stand next to him without looking for his handler. Masur described his character as one uninterested in people, but who loves working with dogs. He went to a survivalist store and bought a flip knife for his character, and used it in a confrontation with David's character. Masur turned down a role in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" to play Clark. William Daniels and Dennehy were both interested in playing Dr. Copper, and it was a last-second decision by Carpenter to go with Richard Dysart.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: In early drafts, Windows was called Sanchez, and later Sanders. The name Windows came when the actor for the role, Thomas Waites, was in a costume fitting and tried on a large pair of dark glasses, which the character wears in the film. Russell described the all-male story as interesting since the men had no one to posture for without women. Anita Dann served as casting director.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: "The Thing" was storyboarded extensively by Mike Ploog and Mentor Huebner before filming began. Their work was so detailed that many of the film's shots replicate the image layout completely. Cundey pushed for the use of anamorphic format aspect ratio, believing that it allowed for placing several actors in an environment, and making use of the scenic vistas available, while still creating a sense of confinement within the image. It also enabled the use of negative space around the actors to imply something may be lurking just offscreen.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Principal photography began on August 24, 1981, in Juneau, Alaska. Filming lasted about twelve weeks. Carpenter insisted on two weeks of rehearsals before filming as he wanted to see how scenes would play out. This was unusual at the time because of the expense involved. Filming then moved to the Universal lot, where the outside heat was over . The internal sets were climate-controlled to to facilitate their work. The team considered building the sets inside an existing refrigerated structure but were unable to find one large enough. Instead, they collected as many portable air conditioners as they could, closed off the stage, and used humidifiers and misters to add moisture to the air. After watching a roughly assembled cut of filming to date, Carpenter was unhappy that the film seemed to feature too many scenes of men standing around talking. He rewrote some already completed scenes to take place outdoors to be shot on location when principal photography moved to Stewart, British Columbia.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Carpenter was determined to use authentic locations instead of studio sets, and his successes on "Halloween" and "The Fog" (1980) gave him the credibility to take on the much bigger-budget production of "The Thing". A film scout located an area just outside Stewart, along the Canadian coast, which offered the project both ease of access and scenic value during the day. On December 2, 1981, roughly 100 American and Canadian crew members moved to the area to begin filming. During the journey there, the crew bus slid in the snow toward the unprotected edge of the road, nearly sending it down a embankment. Some of the crew stayed in the small mining town during filming, while others lived on residential barges on the Portland Canal. They would make the drive up a small, winding road to the filming location in Alaska where the exterior outpost sets were built.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: The sets had been built in Alaska during the summer, atop a rocky area overlooking a glacier, in preparation for snow to fall and cover them. They were used for both interior and exterior filming, meaning they could not be heated above freezing inside to ensure there was always snow on the roof. Outside, the temperature was so low that the camera lenses would freeze and break. The crew had to leave the cameras in the freezing temperatures, as keeping them inside in the warmth resulted in foggy lenses that took hours to clear. Filming, greatly dependent on the weather, took three weeks to complete, with heavy snow making it impossible to film on some days. Rigging the explosives necessary to destroy the set in the film's finale required 8 hours.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Keith David broke his hand in a car accident the day before he was to begin shooting. David attended filming the next day, but when Carpenter and Franco saw his swollen hand, they sent him to the hospital where it was punctured with two pins. He returned wearing a surgical glove beneath a black glove that was painted to resemble his complexion. His left hand is not seen for the first half of the film. Carpenter filmed the Norwegian camp scenes after the end scenes, using the damaged American base as a stand-in for the charred Norwegian camp. The explosive destruction of the base required the camera assistants to stand inside the set with the explosives, which were activated remotely. The assistants then had to run to a safe distance while seven cameras captured the base's destruction. Filmed when the heavy use of special effects was rare, the actors had to adapt to having Carpenter describe to them what their characters were looking at, as the effects would not be added until post-production. There were some puppets used to create the impression of what was happening in the scene, but in other cases, the cast would be looking at a wall or an object marked with an "X".


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Art director John J. Lloyd oversaw the design and construction of all the sets, as there were no existing locations used in the film. Cundey suggested that the sets should have ceilings and pipes seen on camera to make the spaces seem more claustrophobic.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Several scenes in the script were omitted from the film, sometimes because there was too much dialogue that slowed the pace and undermined the suspense. Carpenter blamed some of the issues on his directorial method, noting that several scenes appeared to be repeating events or information. Another scene featuring a snowmobile chase pursuing dogs was removed from the shooting script as it would have been too expensive to film. One scene present in the film, but not the script, features a monologue by MacReady. Carpenter added this partly to establish what was happening in the story and because he wanted to highlight Russell's heroic character after taking over the camp. Carpenter said that Lancaster's experience writing ensemble pieces did not emphasize single characters. Since "Halloween", several horror films had replicated many of the scare elements of that film, something Carpenter wanted to move away from for "The Thing". He removed scenes from Lancaster's script that had been filmed, such as a body suddenly falling into view at the Norwegian camp, which he felt were too clichéd. Approximately three minutes of scenes were filmed from Lancaster's script that elaborated on the characters' backgrounds.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: A scene with MacReady absentmindedly inflating a blow-up doll while watching the Norwegian tapes was filmed but was not used in the finished film. The doll would later appear as a jump scare with Nauls. Other scenes featured expanded or alternate deaths for various characters. In the finished film, Fuchs's charred bones are discovered, revealing he has died offscreen, but an alternate take sees his corpse impaled on a wall with a shovel. Nauls was scripted to appear in the finale as a partly assimilated mass of tentacles, but in the film, he simply disappears. Carpenter struggled with a method of conveying to the audience what assimilation by the creature actually meant. Lancaster's original set piece of Bennings's death had him pulled beneath a sheet of ice by the Thing, before resurfacing in different areas in various stages of assimilation. The scene called for a set to be built on one of Universal's largest stages, with sophisticated hydraulics, dogs, and flamethrowers, but it was deemed too costly to produce. A scene was filmed with Bennings being murdered by an unknown assailant, but it was felt that assimilation, leading to his death, was not explained enough. Short on time, and with no interior sets remaining, a small set was built, Maloney was covered with K-Y Jelly, orange dye, and rubber tentacles. Monster gloves for a different creature were repurposed to demonstrate partial assimilation.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Carpenter filmed multiple endings for "The Thing", including a "happier" ending because editor Todd Ramsay thought that the bleak, nihilistic conclusion would not test well with audiences. In the alternate take, MacReady is rescued and given a blood test that proves he is not infected. Carpenter said that stylistically this ending would have been "cheesy". Editor Verna Fields was tasked with reworking the ending to add clarity and resolution. It was finally decided to create an entirely new scene, which omitted the suspicion of Childs being infected by removing him completely, leaving MacReady alone. This new ending tested only slightly better with audiences than the original, and the production team agreed to the studio's request to use it. It was set to go to print for theaters when the producers, Carpenter, and executive Helena Hacker decided that the film was better left with ambiguity instead of nothing at all. Carpenter gave his approval to restore the ambiguous ending, but a scream was inserted over the outpost explosion to posit the monster's death. Universal executive Sidney Sheinberg disliked the ending's nihilism and, according to Carpenter, said, "Think about how the audience will react if we see the [Thing] die with a giant orchestra playing". Carpenter later noted that both the original ending and the ending without Childs tested poorly with audiences, which he interpreted as the film simply not being heroic enough.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: Ennio Morricone composed the film's score, as Carpenter wanted "The Thing" to have a European musical approach. Carpenter flew to Rome to speak with Morricone to convince him to take the job. By the time Morricone flew to Los Angeles to record the score, he had already developed a tape filled with an array of synthesizer music because he was unsure what type of score Carpenter wanted. Morricone wrote complete separate orchestral and synthesizer scores and a combined score, which he knew was Carpenter's preference. Carpenter picked a piece, closely resembling his own scores, that became the main theme used throughout the film. He also played the score from "Escape from New York" for Morricone as an example. Morricone made several more attempts, bringing the score closer to Carpenter's own style of music. In total, Morricone produced a score of approximately one hour that remained largely unused but was later released as part of the film's soundtrack. Carpenter and his longtime collaborator Alan Howarth separately developed some synth-styled pieces used in the film. In 2012, Morricone recalled:


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: I've asked [Carpenter], as he was preparing some electronic music with an assistant to edit on the film, "Why did you call me, if you want to do it on your own?" He surprised me, he said"I got married to your music. This is why I've called you."... Then when he showed me the film, later when I wrote the music, we didn't exchange ideas. He ran away, nearly ashamed of showing it to me. I wrote the music on my own without his advice. Naturally, as I had become quite clever since 1982, I've written several scores relating to my life. And I had written one, which was electronic music. And [Carpenter] took the electronic score.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: [Morricone] did all the orchestrations and recorded for me 20 minutes of music I could use wherever I wished but without seeing any footage. I cut his music into the film and realized that there were places, mostly scenes of tension, in which his music would not work... I secretly ran off and recorded in a couple of days a few pieces to use. My pieces were very simple electronic piecesit was almost tones. It was not really music at all but just background sounds, something today you might even consider as sound effects.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: "The Thing"s special effects were largely designed by Bottin, who had previously worked with Carpenter on "The Fog" (1980). When Bottin joined the project in mid-1981, pre-production was in progress, but no design had been settled on for the alien. Artist Dale Kuipers had created some preliminary paintings of the creature's look, but he left the project after being hospitalized following a traffic accident before he could develop them further with Bottin. Carpenter conceived the Thing as a single creature, but Bottin suggested that it should be constantly changing and able to look like anything. Carpenter initially considered Bottin's description of his ideas as "too weird", and had him work with Ploog to sketch them instead. As part of the Thing's design, it was agreed anyone assimilated by it would be a perfect imitation and would not know they were the Thing. The actors spent hours during rehearsals discussing whether they would know they were the Thing when taken over. Clennon said that it did not matter, because everyone acted, looked and smelled exactly the same before (or after) being taken over. At its peak, Bottin had a 35-person crew of artists and technicians, and he found it difficult to work with so many people. To help manage the team, he hired Erik Jensen, a special effects line producer who he had worked with on "The Howling" (1981), to be in charge of the special make-up effects unit. Bottin's crew also included mechanical aspect supervisor Dave Kelsey, make-up aspect coordinator Ken Diaz, moldmaker Gunnar Ferdinansen, and Bottin's longtime friend Margaret Beserra, who managed painting and hair work.


title: The Thing (1982 film)

text: In designing the Thing's different forms, Bottin explained that the creature had been all over the galaxy. This allowed it to call on different attributes as necessary, such as stomachs that transform into giant mouths and spider legs sprouting from heads. Bottin said the pressure he experienced caused him to dream about working on designs, some of which he would take note of after waking. One abandoned idea included a series of dead baby monsters, which was deemed "too gross". Bottin admitted he had no idea how his designs would be implemented practically, but Carpenter did not reject them. Carpenter said, "What I didn't want to end up with in this movie was a guy in a suit... I grew up as a kid watching science-fiction monster movies, and it was always a guy in a suit." According to Cundey, Bottin was very sensitive about his designs, and worried about the film showing too many of them. At one point, as a preemptive move against any censorship, Bottin suggested making the creature's violent transformations and the appearance of the internal organs more fantastical using colors. The decision was made to tone down the color of the blood and viscera, although much of the filming had been completed by that point. The creature effects used a variety of materials including mayonnaise, creamed corn, microwaved bubble gum, and K-Y Jelly.