David Lynch’s 1980 The Elephant Man is just over forty years old. Even looking at it from a modern perspective, it is no hard feat to see what makes this film special and how it has stood the test of time. The film depicts the life of John Merrick, played by the late character actor John Hurt. Merrick was born with severe facial and bodily deformities, earning him the cruel nickname, “The Elephant Man.
A pivotal scene in the film is when the audience first sees Merrick’s face properly. Up until now, we have only seen the reactions people have to Merrick's face: disgusted, horrified, and for Treves, curious. When a nurse comes into Merrick’s room without any warning as to what she will see, she howls a blood-curdling scream and we see what she is so horrified by.
These actions, this absolute lack of humanity, are what should be feared. As the film goes on, we start to look past John’s appearance to see a vulnerable, scared but good man. A man who wants to hear about people’s children, who wants to go to the theater and finally connect with the world around him. In the scene where he is crowded in the train station, John shouts the mantra of the film: “I am not an animal. I am a human being.
What David Lynch does in The Elephant Man is make us question what it is that we truly fear. A person who is known as “The Elephant Man” and who is on display in a “freak show” may fall under conventional ideologies around what scares us, but after watching this film, it’s the barbaric nature of people that is what is really frightening here. Greed, unkindness, abuse, and apathy. These are what drive the horror of the film - not John’s appearance.