The Disquieting Guest — Tentacles and Patriarchy
As something of an appendix to our Shoot the WISB discussion of the new Godzilla (where we were joined by Rachael Acks), I thought I’d talk a bit about something that I’ve always found very striking about It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955): the portrayal of Faith Domergue’s character, Professor Lesley Joyce. She is, on the one hand, part of a mini-trend in 50s monster movies where women are scientists (Them!, Creature from the Black Lagoon), roles that were virtually non-existent in the films of the preceding decades.* What makes It stand out, though, is that the narrative is at least as concerned with Joyce’s struggles to be taken seriously in a male-dominated world as it is about Ray Harryhausen’s magnificent octopus. Joyce is, unsurprisingly, the only female character of any importance in the film. What is unusual, however, is that we are meant to notice her position, repeatedly pointed out in her interactions with submarine commander Peter Mathews. The latter is played by Kenneth Tobey, doing very much the same self-confident officer as in The Thing (1951). He keeps refusing to take her seriously, and the body language in the (colourized) still below is pretty telling:
