The Incredible Shrinking Man (EOTWS)
End Of The Week Shorts #24 extract: The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a brilliant late-50s action-adventure sci-fi picture, and, in many senses, a profound commentary on the nuclear age.
Following a man who continually shrinks after being showered by an ambiguous nuclear mist, this not only captures the anxiety and horror of a man who is diminishing before his wife, physically and existentially, but it constructs a story of re-adaptation. In such, there is a direct commentary on the fall of man from what could easily be perceived as a near-perfect situation into times of great unknown that simply dwarf him. However, despite his size, the man is still a man, and the world has only been blown up and intensified; maybe he can survive. After all, man has always been a tiny creature, and in a world where the universe, God, has no true conception of 0 thanks to the concept of the infinite, what could possibly stop the future human race whose world, thanks to technology, will only ever continue to make them seem smaller?
