Dennis R. Perry, Carl H. Sederholm (Eds.) - Adapting Poe - Re-Imaginings in Popular Culture-Palgrave Macmillan US (2012)

Adapting Poe
Adapting Poe
Re-Imaginings in Popular Culture
Edited by
Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm
ADAPTING POE
Copyright © Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm, 2012.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-12086-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2012 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-29898-3 ISBN 978-1-137-04198-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137041982
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adapting Poe : re-imaginings in popular culture / edited by
Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm.
p. cm.
1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849—Adaptations. 3. Poe, Edgar Allan,
1809–1849—Influence. 4. Popular culture and literature.
I. Perry, Dennis R. II. Sederholm, Carl Hinckley.
PS2638.A43 2012
818⬘.309—dc23 2012002446
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: August 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: Poe and the Twenty-First-Century

Adaptation Renaissance 1
2 Edgar Allan Poe and the Undeath of the Author 13
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
3 Lusty Ape-men and Imperiled White Womanhood:
Reading Race in a 1930s Poe Film Adaptation 31
Jessica Metzler
4 An “Ambrosial Breath of Faery”: Jean Epstein’s La Chute
de la Maison Usher and the Inverted Orphism of Poe’s
“Poetic Principle” 45
Saviour Catania
5 Rethinking Fellini’s Poe: Nonplaces, Media Industries,
and the Manic Celebrity 59
Kevin M. Flanagan
6 Evolutions in Torture: James Wan’s Saw as Poe for the
Twenty-First Century 71
Sandra Hughes
7 A Poe within a Poe: Inception’s Arabesque
Play with “Ligeia” 81
Dennis R. Perry
8 Identity Crisis and Personality Disorders in Edgar
Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839), David Fincher’s
Fight Club (1999), and James Mangold’s Identity (2003) 93
Alexandra Reuber
vi Contents
9 Horrific Obsessions: Poe’s Legacy of the Unreliable and

Self-Obsessed Narrator 105
Rachel McCoppin
10 The Pleasure of Losing One’s Way: Adapting Poe’s
“The Man of the Crowd” 119
Rebecca Johinke
11 “The Telltale Head,” “The Raven,” and “Lisa’s Rival”:
Poe Meets The Simpsons 133
Peter Conolly-Smith
12 In the Best Possible Tastes: Rhetoric and Taste in
AIP’s Promotion of Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle 145
Joan Ormrod
13 From the Earth to Poe to the Moon: The Science-Fiction
Narrative as Precursor to Technological Reality 165
Todd Robert Petersen and Kyle William Bishop
14 The Perfect Drug: Edgar Allan Poe as Rock Star 179
Tony Magistrale
15 That Vexing Power of Perverseness: Approaching
Heavy Metal Adaptations of Poe 193
Carl H. Sederholm
16 Picturing Poe: Contemporary Cultural
Implications of Nevermore 207
Michelle Kay Hansen
17 What Can “The Tell-Tale Heart” Tell about Gender? 217
Mary J. Couzelis
18 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Adaptations of the
Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Chronology 231
M. Thomas Inge
19 The Purloining Critic: Adaptation, Criticism, and
the Claim to Meaning 249
Jason Douglas
20 Quid Pro Quo, or Destination Unknown: Johnson,
Derrida, and Lacan Reading Poe 261
Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá and Geraldo Magela Cáffaro
Notes on Contributors 275

Index 281
Figures
2.1 The American promotional poster for Castle of Blood 18

2.2 The undead Poe of Torture Garden 26
4.1 Madeline’s “phantom-being” 49
4.2 Madeline as swirling veil-wraith 51
4.3 Epstein’s forest of candles 53
4.4 Usher’s stellar resurrection 54
12.1 The vortex of publicity and the The Masque
of the Red Death 148
12.2 Elsie Lee Paperback Adaptation, Lancer Books 149
12.3 Cover of Dell’s Comic 150
12.4 Panther book cover 151
12.5 The evil face press pack, by Al Kallis 159
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful for three women associated with this project, each of which
performed both professionally and selflessly: Debbie Harrison, our
copy editor whose conscientiousness went beyond the “contract”; Cyndi
Sederholm for essential computer expertise without which this book
would still be in process; and Mary Lyn Perry for some emergency edit-
ing help. In addition, the Palgrave editorial staff has been helpful and
cooperative.
Dennis R. Perry
I would like to thank Steven L. Ricks for his help with musical questions
as I began working on my chapter. I would also like to thank Robert
Walser for reading a copy of my paper and for his encouraging remarks.
My wife, Cyndi, was a tremendous help to me throughout the work on
this project. My son, Nathanael, helped me find sources of fun outside
of this project. Thanks, finally, to friends within the Popular Culture
Association, including Phil, Mary, Kris, Jim, Jasie, Tony, and too many
others to list.
Carl H. Sederholm
1
Introduction: Poe and the Twenty-First-Century
Adaptation Renaissance
If Poe’s fame has endured into the twenty-first century, to a large extent it is due to
his prominent place in popular culture.
—Mark Neimeyer
Edgar Allan Poe’s connection to contemporary popular culture should no

longer raise questions of “where” or “why,” but of “what” and “how.”
For years, a number of scholars have adequately tracked Poe’s appear-
ances in American culture generally, usually finding traces of his image
and his work almost everywhere—from alarm clocks to coffee mugs to
football team mascots (see Neimeyer; Reilly). Generally, these scholars
have established plausible theories for why Poe turns up so often, includ-
ing the obvious tragic/romantic appeal of his life, which is easily made
out to work in harmony with his frequently nervous or obsessive charac-
ters. The figure at the heart of the Poe myth makes a perfect fit for the
narrator of “The Fall of the House of Usher” or the melancholy speaker
of “The Raven.” The Poe legend gives the public a perfectly archetypal
horror writer, one complete with a dramatic life, outrageous fiction, and
a mysterious death—in short, a ready-made literary legend. Like the use
of medieval black-letter script on a heavy metal album, Poe’s name, his
image, and his works consistently signify something dark, macabre, or
grotesque. In addition, as a certified member of the American literary
canon of great writers, Poe’s image alone may bring a certain highbrow
2 Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm
prestige to one’s cap, bag, mug, song, or film adaptation—a perk one
does not necessarily get with fellow horror writers like Stephen King,
H. P. Lovecraft, or Robert Bloch. In this introduction we examine, in
the light of our current renaissance of adaptation theory, what some
scholars have observed about Poe adaptations, not only in the familiar
genres of film and comic art but in how adaptation can also be applied to
areas like film advertising campaigns, the history of racism in America,
heavy metal music, rock videos, and literary criticism itself. Beyond what
new approaches are being explored, the book also examines the ways in
which adaptation theory may be applied to Poe today, and what it tells us
about not only the pervasive use of Poe in our culture but also the ubiqui-
tous deployment of his primary themes that make him such a prominent
intertextual or “matrix” figure, on a scale that few writers or filmmakers
have attained.
According to David S. Reynolds in Beneath the American Renaissance
(1988), writers like Irving, Hawthorne, and Melville drew from the liter-
ary popular culture of their times. Reynolds suggests that this immer-
sion in popular literature helped American writers escape the orbit of the
oppressive influence of British classics, freeing them to create their own
indigenous texts (5). In this vein, a strong case can be made that Poe,
though his works rarely suggest their American origins, wrote the most
indigenous literature of all his contemporaries since he most lavishly
drew from his contemporary popular culture as a primary inspiration for
many of his most famous tales.
He began by taking various popular-fiction styles as sources for par-
ody, like the sensation tale in “Loss of Breath” or the plague scenario
in “King Pest,” themes and topics typical of Blackwood’s fare. Poe also
developed the psychological dimensions of popular gothic tales. These
genres became sources to be exploited and modified in his art. For exam-
ple, Poe would take a tale with classic gothic elements and trim its ram-
bling plot, hackneyed ghosts, and out-of-place humor, turning it into a
brooding, surreal, minimalist gothic nightmare that focuses with laser
sharpness on the inexplicabilities of psychological aberration. Poe per-
ceived in popular culture untapped literary resources, making him the
watershed figure of the gothic in our time.
Of course, Poe’s connection to popular culture included more than
popular literature; it also drew from the newspapers: balloon travel (“The
Balloon-Hoax”), unwrapping mummies (“Some Words with a Mummy”),
lionizing military heroes (“The Man Who Was Used Up”), end-of-the-
world prophecies (“The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion”), the fear
of being buried alive (“The Premature Burial”), dying scenes (“Ligeia”),
mesmerism (“Mesmeric Revelation”), and public fascination with
Introduction 3
Antarctica (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym). But Poe did not stop
at adapting pop-culture genres and sensational current events; he also
created his own news sensations (his hoaxes), helped lay out the generic
features of new genres like detective fiction, and contributed to the devel-
opment of science fiction and horror fiction. In the process, Poe trans-
formed American popular culture. Given his own literary interests, it
seems fitting that popular culture since his time has devoted more energy
to adapting his work than that of his American contemporaries. Paul
Woolf, for example, notes that Poe “is the most filmed American author
of the nineteenth century” (43). This is surely true for some other genres
as well; comic adaptations of Poe’s work currently number at over three
hundred. Interestingly, the great variety of popular-culture media into
which Poe has been adapted reflects the range of his own work—detec-
tive, gothic, satirical, science fiction, sensation and hoax tales, poetry,
theoretical criticism, reviews, a play, cosmological theory, fantasy, and
so forth. Underlying much of his continuing popularity in high or low art
circles, among young and old, is clearly the power of his own personal-
ity. His compelling and ambiguous persona, even his unusual looks that
are so in concert with his writing, surely inspire adaptors and audiences
to continue creating and buying Poe adaptations. A good number of film
adaptations, for example, have included Poe as a character, including the
recent James McTeigue film, The Raven (2012), in which Poe must play
detective to find a killer who wants to match wits with him by using the
tales as clues to his murders.
With all of these adaptations, the question for Poe scholars is what to
do with them. The traditional answer in adaptation circles has been the
case study approach of comparing a source text with its adaptation, usu-
ally leading to discussions concerning fidelity to the “original” source.
Such approaches, however, are usually simplistic and do not allow critics
the proper range of judgment they need to understand the adaptation.
Underlying this traditional approach is a complex cultural history that
valued canonized literary texts over commercial cinema, leading to a set
of assumptions that Thomas Leitch identifies as critical fallacies, includ-
ing those which suggest that novels are better than films, that novels deal
in concepts whereas films deal in percepts, or that source texts are more
original than adaptations (“Twelve Fallacies”). Citing Brian McFarlane,
Leitch also underscores the sometimes sorry state of adaptation studies
generally: “In view of the nearly sixty years of writing about the adapta-
tion of novels into film … it is depressing to find at what a limited, tenta-
tive stage the discourse has remained” (149).
The title of this book, Adapting Poe: Re-Imaginings in Popular
Culture, sums up concisely the general theory of adaptation represented
here. To suggest that adaptation is a re-imagining of a text implies a

number of things, including that the adaptation is a new text that is
both related to and independent from the source text. “The Fall of the
House of Usher,” for example, re-imagines elements from specific texts
such as Hoffmann’s “Das Majorat,” Warren’s “Thunder-Struck,” and
Clauren’s The Robber’s Castle, as well as a broader array of gothic
tropes. When Epstein filmed La Chute de la Maison Usher (1928), he
likewise re-imagined, reinvented, and re-visioned Poe’s own imagina-
tive adaptation of sources. Such a perspective on adaptation is certainly
not about how accurately Epstein reproduced Poe’s vision but whether
it is a good film or not. Since film is a different and more public-facing
medium than prose fiction, creating a singular kind of effect, the possi-
bility of accurately reproducing a reader’s unique experience—rereading
passages, imagining scenes and characters from the reader’s own experi-
ences, responding to particular words and descriptions in the reader’s
own eccentric way, figuring out what is happening—is clearly out of
the question. This book reflects what might appropriately be called a
renaissance in adaptation studies that opens up new intertextual inqui-
ries and employs scores of new terms for examining the relationship
between sources and adaptations. Theorists such as Linda Hutcheon,
Julie Sanders, and Thomas Leitch are asking new questions about the
nature of texts themselves: what is an adaptation; what is the relation-
ship between a text and its adaptation; and the who, what, where, why,
and how of adapted texts.
Both sources and adaptations are part of a unique intertextual net-
work that raises complex questions about their overall relationship.
How do these texts relate to each other in the context of the other works
in their intertextual neighborhood (Sanders)? What kind of adaptation
is this? Revision? Allusion? Colonization? Expansion? Update (Leitch,
Film Adaptation)? What path does this adaptation take through the
text? Why? Why now? Are there other paths that could have been taken
(Albrecht-Crane and Cutchins 18)? Such questions open limitless possi-
bilities for shedding light on both the source(s) and the adaptation(s). For
example, Roger Corman’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) adapts
Poe’s original through the lens of the Hammer Studio’s Technicolor
gothic horror films that had been doing well in the market since the mid-
1950s. Hence, Corman turns Poe’s tale into a horror film by using color
and gothic settings to construct his narrative around a series of ominous
shocks. Corman (following Richard Matheson’s script) also changes the
story so that Philip, the narrator figure, is not friends with Roderick
but rather the lover of Madeline—changes that were required to create
a cinematic story with clearer motivations and relationships among the
Introduction 5
characters. In addition, casting Vincent Price as Roderick, with his siz-

able horror credentials, recalls the dimension of more familiar gothic
villains having a helpless young woman in thrall. These preliminary
observations only begin to uncover the intertextual network of literary
and film influences that problematize the one-text-one-film case study
assumptions. By taking-in this more inclusive textual vista, we can ask
such questions as why these particular elements were combined, what
their cumulative effect was, and how these choices were inevitable or
eccentric in the context of when the film was made. Further, we can ask
what making these adaptation choices says about the original tale and
contemporary cultural perspectives on Poe in general. Also, what light
do the changes made to the tale shed on the choices Poe originally made
for his characters and situation? Such questions can also lead to very
specific and narrow analyses of a character, the setting, the language
used in each version, social mores, or specific thematic interests of Poe’s,
such as the imp of the perverse, the death of a beautiful woman, live
burial, and so on.
For decades scholars have traced the sources of Poe’s oeuvre. We
should recognize, however, that, beyond that worthy endeavor, much
more needs to be said about why these findings are significant. This
is particularly true in our intertextual age that distrusts scholarship
that seeks only to establish direct sources of inspiration or influence.
Scholars in our generation want things that endlessly proliferate and
complicate texts, things that demonstrate the infinite relationships
between things. Ours is an age of adaptation, one in which scholars
have begun to employ more sophisticated theoretical perspectives that
allow for new possibilities in understanding Poe-inspired texts, and then
reexamining Poe’s work from new intertextual-theoretical prisms. From
this perspective we anticipate a flowering of adaptation studies within
Poe scholarship.
For this collection, we draw on a metaphor applied to Alfred Hitchcock
by John Orr—that of the “matrix-figure” (53). Such a figure, as the name
implies, suggests an individual whose ideas, works, and influence inter-
sect other areas of life at so many points that it becomes impossible to
imagine the world without him or her. That is, everything finally “goes
back to him” or, perhaps even “goes through him” (Orr 53). As Orr
writes of Hitchcock:
The image is enduring: Hitchcock at the center not only of his own cin-
ema but of cinema as such. Through his work so much of the entire life of
Western cinema has been nurtured and dispersed. So much shock, so much
suspense, so much montage, so much mystery, so much watching, so much
doubling, so much disaster, so much redemption: it all goes back to him.

Or rather, because it also precedes him, it all goes through him. (53)
With the necessary apologies to Orr, we claim that Poe, too, figures as
a key intertextual figure somewhere near the heart of American popu-
lar culture. Through his own work, so much of contemporary Western
engagement with the depths of the human heart has been nurtured and
dispersed. So much terror, so much madness, so much perverseness, so
much fear, so much phobia, so much detection, so much destruction, so
much fear of the feminine: it all goes back to him. Or rather, because it
precedes him, it all goes through him.
Our claim may seem grandiose, but our point is that Poe’s very
intertextuality needs to be understood as something that feeds into a
constantly changing network of relations. While Poe’s life and work reso-
nates throughout much of Western culture and, increasingly, beyond, the
purpose of this collection is not to revel in Poe’s vast influence; rather,
it is to reexamine his work in terms of the strength of the matrix-figure
metaphor. As Graham Allen writes, “the act of reading … plunges us into
a network of textual relations. To interpret a text, to discover its mean-
ing, or meanings, is to trace those relations. Reading thus becomes a pro-
cess of moving between texts. Meaning becomes something which exists
between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates, mov-
ing out from the independent text into a network of textual relations” (1).
For our purposes, the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe has come to be
such a dominant part of this larger network of meanings and ideas that
he even factors into larger discussions of literary meaning, theory, and
criticism (e.g., the work of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Barbara
Johnson on “The Purloined Letter”). The essays in this collection take up
the kinds of conventions that Poe worked with to determine how they are
being transformed into modern popular art.
Our collection draws on the premise that adaptation studies is itself
a subspecies of postmodern intertextuality. As Julie Sanders writes,
adapted “texts rework texts that often themselves reworked texts. The
process of adaptation is constant and ongoing” (24). Sanders further
notes that adaptation also contributes to
[o]ngoing experiences of pleasure for the reader or spectator in tracing

the intertextual relationships. It is this inherent sense of play, produced in
part by the activation of our informed sense of similarity and difference
between the text being invoked, and the connected interplay of expecta-
tion and surprise, that for me lies at the heart of the experience of adapta-
tion and appropriation. (25)
Introduction 7
Adapting Poe speaks to the need to see Edgar Allan Poe in intertextual
terms.
As indicated above, legitimate adaptations of Poe do not necessarily
need to be conscious, as Poe’s themes, character types, plots, and theories
are all but universal among texts, media, and films that explore genres
related to gothicism, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and so forth. Some
of the essays on film adaptations in this volume seem on the surface to
have little to do with Poe’s source texts but ultimately reprocess Poe’s
major concerns in contemporary terms. For example, Kevin Flanagan’s
essay on Fellini’s short film Never Bet the Devil Your Head, aka Toby
Dammit from the omnibus Spirits of the Dead (1969) engages with celeb-
rity culture in the emerging global media-sphere, making it seem more
of an adaptation of “Lionizing.” However, the lionized Toby Dammit’s
experience touches on several Poe themes, including isolation, drug use,
insanity, and the imp perverse. Jeffrey Weinstock’s essay on Robert
Bloch’s “The Man Who Collected Poe” is similarly about the penalty of
isolated celebrityhood as Poe is brought back to life and forced to con-
tinue writing. This ultimately becomes a metaphor for how Poe himself is
adapted in many films, and is thus brought back from the dead through
his various textualizations.
With a related focus on audience perceptions, Joan Ormrod examines
how even promotional campaigns can serve as adaptations, specifically
American International Picture’s (AIP’s) promotion of Roger Corman’s
The Masque of the Red Death (1964), advertised with equal emphasis on
both Vincent Price and Poe. Both figures ensured cultural capital for gen-
eral as well as more sophisticated audiences in an era of gothic revival.
Like Poe’s own stories, these campaigns invoke hunger and obsession. The
Simpsons, according to Peter Conolly-Smith, despite their parodic form,
reflect the guilt, macabre, and grotesque from “The Tell-Tale Heart” in
both Lisa’s and Bart’s separate adaptations. Saviour Catania’s reading of
Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la Maison (1928) similarly demonstrates how
the film actually preserves the spirit of Poe by taking liberties. Epstein
inverts the Orpheus-Eurydice myth by having Madeline return from the
dead to liberate Roderick from the Usher underworld. This adaptation
becomes a dialogic variation on Poe’s theory about beauty, reasserted
here as the resurrection, not the death, of a beautiful woman as “unques-
tionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
Three of the essays look at the doppelganger in Poe as a means for
finding the self in several film adaptations. Alexandra Reuber analyzes
Fight Club (1999) and Identity (2003) as unacknowledged adaptations
of “William Wilson.” Both films are forced by their double to ask them-
selves, “Does a real ‘me’ exist?” The relation of the three texts creates an
adaptation phenomenon, referred to by Hutcheon as a “dialogical pro-

cess,” that forces viewers to look back at the source text to reconstruct
its hidden subtext, which in this case is the interrelatedness of personality
disorders in the three texts (21). Rachel McCoppin also examines the
search for self through the obsessions of the Poe-like “unreliable narra-
tors” in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth
Sense (1999). Examining Poe’s rarely adapted “A Man of the Crowd,”
Rebecca Johinke analyzes two short television adaptations of the tale,
several student adaptations posted online, a couple of museum installa-
tions, and Paul Auster’s City of Glass (1994), a novel with deliberate allu-
sions to “William Wilson” and “A Man of the Crowd,” which has itself
been adapted in both graphic novel and video game formats.
In looking at Universal’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (Florey 1932), a
film traditionally dismissed as being so far removed from Poe’s story as to
be irrelevant as an adaptation, Jessica Metzler interprets racism as a sig-
nificant point of connection back to Poe. She demonstrates how the film
revives nineteenth-century constructions of scientific racism, speciation,
and miscegenation as a means of entering into prevalent 1930s discourses
of primitivism, hinged upon a persistent fear of foreign Others. Such a
twenty-first-century update of how adaptation between seemingly dis-
similar stories can function is further explored in Dennis Perry’s analy-
sis of Inception (Nolan 2010) against the backdrop of Poe’s “Ligeia.”
In this reading, the film becomes a “playful allusion” that transforms
Poe’s arabesque dream text into the high-tech business of entering and
manipulating people’s dreams for profit. Sandra Hughes’ study of Saw
(Wan 2004) as an adaptation of “The Pit and the Pendulum” reveals how
Wan re-visions it in terms of the twenty-first century’s paranoid culture
of surveillance. In the process, Hughes posits Poe as a pioneer in the fic-
tion of torture and in the psychology of both tortured and torturer. Wan
expands the tale’s untapped potential for graphic horror, a dimension
unthinkable in Poe’s day.
Poe’s stories have regularly been adapted into graphic narratives.
These adaptations not only introduce Poe to new readers but also poten-
tially expand more seasoned readers’ understanding of each story’s larger
significance within popular culture. To help readers appreciate the sheer
range of these graphic adaptations, we also include M. Thomas Inge’s
revised and updated bibliographic chronology of these adaptations
through mid-2011. One of the more striking of these recent adaptations
is the 2008 collection titled Nevermore, which adapts nine works by Poe
within a single volume. In her essay on Nevermore, Michelle Hansen
examines the sophisticated ways in which it updates not only the Poe
Introduction 9
legend but also how it uses Poe’s work to comment on contemporary

social problems. In another essay on Nevermore, Mary J. Couzelis turns
our attention to the graphic adaptation of “The Tell-Tale Heart” to help
readers challenge the assumption that the narrator of Poe’s famous tale
is a man, helping us understand new ways of thinking of the narrator’s
supposed madness as a larger response to a patriarchal culture overly
committed to dominating and exploiting women.
When most people think of Poe’s presence in popular music, they usu-
ally point to the Alan Parsons Project’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination
as the best example. Carl Sederholm’s essay addresses the increasingly
growing body of heavy metal adaptations of Poe’s work and analyzes
ways in which compositions by bands like Iron Maiden and Metal Church
draw on his work to help them explore the darker themes of madness,
murder, and perverseness. Also working in the field of popular music,
Tony Magistrale ties the imagery and themes of Trent Reznor’s musical
project Nine Inch Nails to the gothic-inflected aesthetic perfected by Poe.
In his analysis of the music videos for “Burn” and “Hurt” by Nine Inch
Nails, Magistrale connects Poe’s own exploration of the outcast and the
insane to the creative turmoil of modern rock stars as they seek to tame
their own demons of addiction.
Like Ormrod’s analysis of AIP’s ad campaign as adaptation, a cou-
ple of other essays probe unexpected applications of adaptation the-
ory. In separate essays, Jason Douglas and Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá
and Geraldo Magela Cáffaro think about how adaptation studies may
apply to larger ways of thinking and producing creative works as they
examine the ways in which literary theorists like Lacan, Derrida, and
Johnson become adaptors of texts in the way they schematize them for
the purposes of defining literary theory. Moreover, Todd Petersen and
Kyle Bishop draw on Linda Hutcheon’s discussion of some adaptations
as forms of “transposition” that in this case shifts reader attention from
artistic adaptations of Poe’s ideas to technological adaptations, including
concepts that shaped our understanding of space exploration.
Finally, not only did Poe pioneer popular culture in terms of mining
its latent artistic potential and contributing to the development of sev-
eral popular-culture genres, but he also established the trend of, in vari-
ous ways, adapting Poe texts himself. Artists and critics who re-imagine
Poe and his writings only follow in the footsteps of a man who continu-
ally re-imagined and adapted his own work. He explained to Philip
P. Cooke, for example, that he made connections between “Morella”
and “Ligeia” by modifying the end of the latter, because in “Morella”
he had already explored the very slow realization “of the parent that
the spirit of the first Morella tenants the person of the second” (Poe,
Collected Letters 193). Other examples include “Hop Frog,” which
is a study in revenge that re-imagines “The Cask of Amontillado” as
a dark fairy tale; “The Pit and the Pendulum’s” new setting for “A
Descent into the Maelstrom”; and “The Masque of the Red Death,”
which re-imagines Poe’s comic-grotesque plague tale, “King Pest,” as
a more serious arabesque. As with many of the subsequent adaptations
of Poe in our time, Poe most often, perhaps, adapted concepts from his
tales, varying them from one story to another. For example, the mad,
self-destructive narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” gets rebooted as the
narrator of “The Black Cat.” In short, with his own subsequent re-
imaginings and reworkings, Poe recognized that, despite his personal
obsession with plagiarism, all texts are ultimately re-imaginings of pre-
vious texts. We think, too, that he would agree that judgment should
not depend on how faithful an adaptation is to its sources but on how
creatively a work engages with its predecessors within the larger inter-
textual grid.
Works Cited
Albrecht-Crane, Christa, and Dennis R. Cutchins, eds. Adaptation Studies: New
Approaches. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2010.
Allen, Graham. Intertextuality. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Print.
Leitch, Thomas. “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory.”
Criticism 45.2 (2003): 149–71.
———. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
UP, 2007. Print.
Neimeyer, Mark. “Poe and Popular Culture.” The Cambridge Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 205–
24. Print.
Orr, John. “Hitch as Matrix-Figure: Hitchcock and Twentieth-Century Cinema.”
A Hitchcock Reader. Ed. Marshall Deutelbaum and Leland Poague. 2nd ed.
Danvers, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 47–67. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 1: 1824–1846.
Ed. Burton Pollin, Jeffrey A. Savoye, and John Ostrom. 3rd ed. New York:
Gordian Press, 2008. Print.
Pollin, Burton R. “Poe in Art, Music, Opera, and Dance.” A Companion to
Poe Studies. Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.
494–517. Print.
Reilly, John E. “Poe in Literature and Popular Culture.” A Companion to Poe
Studies. Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. 471–93.
Print.
Introduction 11
Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive

Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
UP, 1989. Print.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Print.
Woolf, Paul. “The Movies in the Rue Morgue: Adapting Edgar Allan Poe for
the Screen.” Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen. Ed. R. Barton
Palmer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 43–61. Print.
2
Edgar Allan Poe and the Undeath
of the Author
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
As cult film classic Danza Macabra (1964, released in the United States
as Castle of Blood) opens, journalist Alan Foster (Georges Rivière) enters
the London Four Devils tavern and intrudes upon a story in progress. A
well-dressed man with a thin moustache, seated at a table with a glass of
wine, is regaling his small but rapt audience with a morbid tale of obses-
sion and madness featuring his cousin Berenice and a box of thirty-two
teeth. “Knowing” spectators, to make use of Linda Hutcheon’s preferred
term,1 will of course immediately recognize the account as a variant of
“Berenice” (1835), and the teller as Poe himself, but the film quickly
establishes the identity of the raconteur for those not in the know by
having Foster salute Poe (played by Silvano Tranquilli) on the dramatic
telling of his story. “I recently read that story of yours, Mr. Poe,” says
Foster. “It’s fiction. But hearing you narrate it, I begin to believe it could
be true.” After establishing that Foster has been “stalking” Poe in the
hope of obtaining an interview with the famous American author—who,
according to the film, is visiting London for the first, and what he antici-
pates to be the last, time—Poe responds to Foster’s characterization of
his writing with a clarification. He is, he explains, not a novelist, an
author of fiction, but a “colleague” of Mr. Foster’s—a reporter—and
every story that he has ever written “is true.” “It really happened,” states
Mr. Poe.
This assertion then leads to a metaphysical discussion concerning
mortality and the possibility of life after death. Poe, in keeping with his
previous claim concerning the veracity of his tales, steadfastly maintains
14 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
that death is an illusion and that, at least in many cases, consciousness

persists after physical dissolution. Foster, the skeptic, in contrast regards
death as a termination point. “A man of your great intelligence,” he says
to Poe, “certainly doesn’t believe that there is a hereafter.… I’d like to
give you more credit.” He then adds, “Nobody ever returns from the
dead as in your stories.” It is this confident assertion that prompts an
auditor to this conversation, Lord Thomas Blackwood (Umberto Raho),
to interrupt with a wager. If Foster can survive one night in his haunted
castle, he can collect upon a modest sum. Foster agrees (mainly with
the objective of prolonging his opportunity to speak with Poe), and the
trio sets off for the castle. Along the way, Foster interviews Poe, and
the knowing spectator again appreciates allusions to several Poe texts
and a direct reference to “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) when
Poe explains to Foster that “the death of a beautiful young woman is
undoubtedly and unavoidably the most poetic theme in the world”—a
premise that will be tested in the narrative that follows as Foster dallies
with a variety of dearly departed, including lovely Elisabeth Blackwood,
played by B-movie starlet Barbara Steele.
Thus begins a familiar tale of a skeptic challenged to spend a night
in a haunted house. Directed by prolific Italian filmmaker Antonio
Margheriti, the movie, which features the ghosts of murdered inhabit-
ants replaying their deaths before turning on the living interloper for his
blood (which they require in order to be able to manifest the next year), is
in fact quite entertaining, but my interest here is not in the film itself, but
rather in its frame, which begins with Poe—or rather, since this Poe has
never been to London before, “Poe”—telling a story and concludes with
his quip, “When I finally write this story, I’m afraid they’ll say it’s …
unbelievable.” My focus here also will not be centered on the adaptation
of Poe’s works —although one could (and perhaps should) consider the
role that the narration of a condensed and adapted form of “Berenice”
plays as the motor force propelling the plot into motion. Instead, what I
will consider is the adaptation of Poe himself—the ways in which Poe, the
author, through voodoo rituals and the magic of narrative, is summoned
from the afterlife, reembodied—zombified—and compelled to keep cre-
ating even after his death. I therefore will be focusing not on Poe’s texts
but rather on the textualization of Poe, the transformation of Poe the his-
torical entity into “Poe” the adaptable narrative. In order to facilitate this
discussion, I will first revisit French philosopher Michel Foucault’s con-
sideration of the “author function” before returning to Danza Macabra.
I will then shift my attention to American author Robert Bloch’s 1951
short story, “The Man Who Collected Poe,” and its subsequent cinematic
Poe and the Undeath of the Author 15
adaptation in the British film Torture Garden (1967), for which Bloch
wrote the screenplay.
There is clearly a kind of poetic justice at work in this repeated sum-
moning of Poe from the grave. After all, his writing is persistently poised
precisely at the intersection of life and death. Again and again, his charac-
ters are suspended between worlds or are invoked to speak from outside
time or from beyond death. Beyond this, however, this construction of an
uncanny afterlife for America’s most famous writer of gothic stories, in
which the author is compelled to give voice to new tales from beyond the
grave, speaks to us concerning the strange economy of authorship in gen-
eral in which the author becomes part of the narrative he himself tells—a
construction that then becomes available for adaptation and appropria-
tion. 2 Therefore, in answer to the question posed by Foucault by way of
Becket, “What does it matter who is speaking?” Danza Macabre, “The
Man Who Collected Poe,” and Torture Garden suggest that, in terms
of establishing what one could consider the particular ethos or “aura”
of a tale, it matters very much. “Poe” continues to speak from beyond
the grave and thereby remains an uncanny living force that continues to
produce effects.
The Author Function

Foucault’s essay “What Is an Author?” first published in French in
1969, must be acknowledged as, in its own way, a kind of ghost story.
The essay first of all invokes the absent presence specifically of Roland
Barthes, serving as it does as a rejoinder to Barthes’ 1967 essay, “The
Death of the Author,” in which Barthes celebrates the liberation of the
text from the tyrannical limitations imposed on its interpretive possi-
bilities by recourse to the author’s biography and suppositions concern-
ing authorial intent. “To give a text an Author,” writes Barthes, “is to
impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close
the writing” (147). “[T]he birth of the reader,” Barthes famously con-
cludes, “must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (148). And yet,
even as in a very Derridean way the absence or future death of the author
is inherently inscribed in the mark, the author’s name, as Foucault will
suggest, “seems always to be present, marking off the edges of the text,
revealing, or at least characterizing, its mode of being” (107). Barthes in
this way can be said to haunt his own text, and it is this uncanny struc-
ture of haunting exemplified by attributing “The Death of the Author”
to the author “Barthes” that becomes the focus of Foucault’s “What Is
an Author?”
In Foucault’s essay, he—in a sense channeling Mark Twain—proposes

that news of “the Author’s” death has been premature. The author (like
some Monty Python character) isn’t quite dead yet; eerily, however, he
also isn’t quite alive either—at least not in the sense of being a flesh-and-
blood person whose life, tastes, and passions (to borrow from Barthes
[143]) precede the text. Instead, in a perhaps counterintuitive way, texts
(at least some of them3) are assigned authors—and the name of the author
“does not refer purely and simply to a real individual” (Foucault 113). As
opposed to the “real writer” (112), the author is a kind of conjuration,
an abstract principle that facilitates the classification and interpretation
of texts. Stylistically similar texts of approximately the same quality
expounding related themes or principles and written around the same
time can thereby be grouped together under the rubric of the author’s
name.
This classificatory function of the author—as both Barthes and
Foucault appreciate—thereby works to constrain interpretive possibili-
ties. Since literary texts invariably contain moments of ambiguity and
support multiple and even sometimes contradictory interpretations, and
since this ambiguity is intolerable to readers looking for determinate
meaning, the attribution of an author “allows a limitation of the cancer-
ous and dangerous proliferation of signification within a world where one
is thrifty not only with one’s resources and riches, but also with one’s dis-
courses and significations” (Foucault 118). The author is, in short, “the
ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the
proliferation of meaning” (119). In the effort to “make sense” of a text—
that is, to assign a singular and conclusive meaning to it—one can appeal
to the author to help explain the presence of certain events, themes, and
stylistic devices. Thus, while Barthes may have joyously embraced the
absence of the author as a liberation from unnecessary and burdensome
hermeneutic restrictions, Foucault counters that, rather than confronting
the terrifying possibility of the lack of absolute meaning, we conjure a
ghost to keep from having to confront the void. The name of the author
acts as a kind of fetish that helps us disavow this absence.
The Poe Function

Returning now to Danza Macabra, what the opening and closing scenes
make clear is first of all the distinction between the “real writer” and
what Foucault refers to as the “author function.” The presence of Poe in
the film initially seems to be a kind of quotation. The author has been
“taken out of context” and inserted into a new one—appropriated by a
modern film representing a scene that never took place. He is not Poe,
therefore, but “Poe.” If he is a quotation, however, then he is an inac-
curate one, because this Poe claims never to have been in London before,
whereas the historical Poe, the real man, spent part of his childhood there.
It therefore seems more accurate to refer to the presence of Poe within
Danza Macabra as an adaptation in which “Poe” becomes “textualized”;
Poe himself becomes the recognizable “work” creatively and interpre-
tively “transcod[ed] into a different set of conventions” (Hutcheon 33).
The knowing film audience thereby experiences what Hutcheon playfully
refers to as “palimpsestuous intertextuality” (21) as this “Poe” is over-
laid upon the effaced but still visible traces of an earlier Poe—again, not
the real writer, but the body of knowledge and associations the spectator
holds in relation to that actual person who was born; had a short, tem-
pestuous life; and then died tragically young.
Adding another level of complexity to this adaptation of Poe is the
intentional misattribution of the Danza Macabra narrative to Poe
(which, if interpreted literally, dizzyingly but wholly in keeping with
Poe as author of Pym [1838] suggests that Poe purposefully misrepre-
sents himself within his own narrative). The promotional tagline for the
English version of the film, “The living and dead change places in an
orgy of terror in Edgar Allan Poe’s Castle of Blood” (see figure 2.1), mis-
leadingly construes the story upon which the film is based as a creation
of Poe’s. Inasmuch as Poe’s name connotes creative tales of terror that
are part of the canon of great literary works, the association of the film
with Poe thereby seeks to capitalize on the author’s name, which invests
the film with an aura of “gothic authenticity.” This association, conjured
up by the film’s creators and marketers, is then reinforced by giving the
film a suitably generic gothic title (both the Italian title, Danza Macabra,
and English title, Castle of Blood, perhaps are meant to suggest “Masque
of the Red Death” [1842]) that presumably could have come from Poe
and featuring Poe prominently at the beginning and ending of the film.
Indeed, Poe’s final line within the film—“When I finally write this story,
I’m afraid they’ll say it’s … unbelievable”—seems to imply that what the
spectator has been witnessing is the unbelievable yet true story that Poe
will go on to write.
Danza Macabra thus quite consciously manipulates the concept of the
author function in relation to Poe—Poe, although dead, is not allowed to
rest in peace but rather is put to work. The film uses the idea of and asso-
ciation with Poe as a shortcut (or dodge) toward establishing its gothic
credentials and cinematic merit. Spectators not especially well versed in
Poe may “fall for it” and accept the film for what it presents itself as
being: an adaptation of Poe. Knowing spectators, in contrast, will enjoy
Figure 2.1 The American promotional poster for Castle of Blood
the dual satisfaction of initially recognizing the adaptation of “Berenice,”

the incorporation of Poe, and the allusions and references to other Poe
works while also appreciating the liberties taken with these texts. The
story is not Poe’s, and he of course does not actually appear in the film;
nevertheless, the author-function Poe (or “Poe function”) absorbs and
assimilates these representations. The Poe aficionado—or collector—
now must include Castle of Blood in his or her collection, despite the
fact that it is neither an adaptation of a Poe story nor actually features
Poe. Poe did not write the story on which Danza Macabra is based; it is
nevertheless now inseparable from him.
Collecting Poe
Poe is again resurrected from the grave (literally) and compelled to pro-
duce new tales that both are and are not his in Robert Bloch’s short story
“The Man Who Collected Poe.” Bloch was a prolific American author of
horror, crime, and science fiction who is probably best known as the writer
of Psycho (1959), the novel that served as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s
famous 1960 film. “The Man Who Collected Poe,” first published in
1951 in the fantasy-fiction magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries, has
been republished at least thirteen times since. The story begins as an
imitative adaptation of Poe and ends as a double homage both to Poe and
to another presence that haunts the story, H. P. Lovecraft—himself a Poe
disciple. Put another way, the story begins as a Poe tale and ends up as a
Lovecraftian tale about Poe.4 This transformation of Poe from author to
character, as in Danza Macabra, again demonstrates both the uncanny
temporality and malleable nature of the author function in which the
author is the retroactive fictive postulation of the work—a subsequent
text presumed to be prior—that changes with each invocation. Poe died
some sixty-eight years before Robert Bloch was born. Nevertheless, “The
Man Who Collected Poe” is both literally and figuratively a “Poe story”
that becomes absorbed by and enriches the Poe function.
Bloch’s dual intention to imitate and adapt Poe is signaled immediately
by the opening two paragraphs that quote, with small but significant devi-
ations, from “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839). The story begins,
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been pass-
ing alone, by automobile, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and
at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view
of my destination.”5 The knowing reader of course will immediately rec-
ognize this opening paragraph as an almost word-for-word transposition
of the opening paragraph of what is arguably Poe’s most famous tale—but

with two significant alterations that signal the self-consciousness of this
act of quotation: first, “on horseback” in Poe’s original has been replaced
with “by automobile,” and second, “within view of the melancholy House
of Usher” in the original has been replaced by “my destination” in Bloch’s
story.6
These two changes economically drive a wedge between Poe and
“Usher” and partially pry the story loose both from its historical moor-
ings and its connection with its presumed author. The reference to the
automobile is jarring because it is historically anachronistic; Poe of course
died before the invention of the automobile, and even for the reader
unaware that the opening paragraph is an altered quotation from Poe,
the reference to the car must feel awkward, given the nineteenth-century
style of the prose. The substitution of “my destination” for “melancholy
House of Usher” is more subtle but more uncanny—and is precisely what
Hutcheon means by the “palimpsestuous intertextuality” of the adapta-
tion: what the narrator of Bloch’s story refuses to speak here is the title to
the story he is initially retelling. “The Man Who Collected Poe” begins
by being written on top of the altered but still visible form of “The Fall
of the House of Usher.” In cinema or photography, one might refer to
this as superimposition—the placement of an image or video on top of an
already existing image or video such that both are present, to dramatic
effect. Here, wavering beneath the narrator’s “destination” is the House
of Usher, and this duality to a certain extent structures the rest of the
tale. Usher may not be the narrator’s ostensible destination, but that is
where both he and the reader end up.
The next paragraph of the story continues this deliberate superim-
position of Usher and Bloch’s story and then adds an additional twist.
The first few lines of the paragraph render “Usher” verbatim: “I looked
upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple land-
scape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant
eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees …” It is here, however, that the telling diverges
from “Usher.” In Poe’s tale, the line continues, “—with an utter depres-
sion of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly
than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse
into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil.” Eschewing
the opium reference, the narrator of Bloch’s tale continues, “—with a
feeling of utter confusion commingled with dismay. For it seemed to
me as though I had visited this scene once before, or read of it, per-
haps, in some frequently rescanned tale. And yet assuredly it could not
be, for only three days had passed since I had made the acquaintance
of Launcelot Canning and received an invitation to visit him at his

Maryland residence” (106).
Beyond a simple divergence from the original text, Bloch’s alteration
simultaneously functions in three capacities: it first metatextually fore-
grounds the telling of the tale; second, it raises questions about the nar-
rator’s conversance with Poe and whether the Poe Bloch’s narrator knows
is the same one familiar to the reader of Bloch’s tale; and, third, it com-
plicates the adaptation of Poe’s tale by confusing “fictive levels” in a way
one today would tend to acknowledge as characteristically postmodern.
The narrator’s sense of déjà vu, “[f]or it seemed to me as though I had
visited this scene once before, or read of it, perhaps, in some frequently
rescanned tale,” obviously is a playful touch in which Bloch’s narrator
ventriloquizes the intended effect of the opening paragraphs on the ideal
reader. It is a little joke communicated from Bloch, the author function,
to the reader by way of his narrator—almost as if Bloch is winking at the
reader and asking, “Get it?” It is this authorial wink that reinforces the
sense that the reader is supposed to appreciate not just the plot of the tale,
but the tale as a retelling of another tale. The story insists that we read it
as a story rewriting another story.
That the joke is intended solely for the reader is also indicated by the
fact that Bloch’s narrator, a man who “own[s] to a more than passing
interest in the tales of Poe” (106), doesn’t get it—this despite the fact
that he later specifically references Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
(107), volume 1 of which contains “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This
suggests either that the narrator is not nearly as conversant with Poe’s
tales as he claims to be or that the fictive universe he inhabits is one in
which “Usher” was never written—Poe in the world of the text thereby
would differ from the Poe familiar to the reader of Bloch’s story. The
text I think leans toward the latter explanation, but as in some science-
fiction narratives in which communication is established between alter-
nate realities —or postmodern narratives in which characters are aware
of being characters within a text—the narrator’s sense of déjà vu suggests
a kind of dimensional bleed through in which he is on the verge of real-
izing his textual status. He has some dim recollection of having read the
story of which he is a part, but he can’t quite place it—that is the job of
Bloch’s reader.
What Bloch’s reader is also asked to appreciate is the confusion of fic-
tional “levels” (what Gérard Genette refers to as “metalepsis”) brought
about by Bloch’s “recasting” of Poe’s story.7 In Bloch’s adaptation of
“Usher,” the narrator as outside observer remains stable. Roderick, how-
ever, is recast as Launcelot Canning, “the world’s leading collector of the
works of Edgar Allen [sic] Poe” (106). Bloch’s narrator tells the reader
that Canning “might have himself stepped from the pages of a Poe tale”
(107), which indeed he has in two senses. First, he is the stand-in for
Roderick Usher. The narrator of Bloch’s tale explains, in language taken
from “Usher” and then adapted, that Canning has “the cadaverousness
of complexion, the large, liquid, luminous eye, the thin, curved lips, the
delicately modeled nose, finely molded chin, and dark, web-like hair of a
typical Poe protagonist” (107). Similarly, Canning’s home is modeled after
the Usher mansion, complete with “long, narrow, and pointed windows”
that admit “[f]eeble gleams of encrimsoned light,” “dark draperies,” and
“profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered” furniture (107–8)—all of
which again stimulates the narrator’s uncanny sense of having seen this
before: “[T]hey rendered more distinct that peculiar quality of quasi-rec-
ollection; it was as though I found myself once again, after a protracted
absence, in a familiar setting. I had read, I had imagined, I had dreamed,
or I had actually beheld this setting before” (108).
But Canning is not just a character who “might” have stepped out of
the pages of Poe; he is a character from a Poe story. Readers familiar with
Poe’s “Usher” will recall that within Poe’s tale Sir Launcelot Canning
is the author to whom is attributed “The Mad Trist”—the medieval
romance of Ethelred and the dragon that the narrator reads to Roderick
during the storm. Here is one of many instances in which Poe plays with
ideas of authorship: both Sir Launcelot Canning and “The Mad Trist”
are Poe’s inventions—Canning exists within Poe’s story solely as an
author function, the proposed author to whom the text is attributed. He
is, however, a kind of alter ego for Poe (who is the real author of “The
Mad Trist,” such as it is), so when Canning arises from his sofa in “The
Man Who Collected Poe” to welcome the narrator, what hails the reader
is the schizoid concatenation of Poe’s fictional author, Poe’s Roderick
Usher, and Poe himself. That Canning is the world’s foremost collector of
Poe who displays to the narrator not just Poe’s first editions and letters,
but personal effects, souvenirs of his youth, and even his flute further
illustrates the strange logic of the author function in which “Poe” is the
retroactive construction of his creations. Bloch’s Sir Launcelot Canning
is the “author” of “Poe.”
Whereas Bloch violates the hierarchy of literary worlds in one direc-
tion by having the author of the story that is read to Roderick during the
storm substitute for Roderick, he scuttles this hierarchy in the other direc-
tion by substituting for Madeline Usher nothing less than Poe himself.
What the reader discovers over the course of “The Man Who Collected
Poe” is that Launcelot Canning, his father Arthur, and his grandfa-
ther, Christopher, have literally collected Poe—not just his effects, but
his remains—and that Launcelot Canning, through application of dark
sorcery, has successfully reanimated Poe, whom he compels to continue

writing in a locked vault in the basement. Canning is now the unique
possessor of unpublished original Poe manuscripts. At the end of the
story, as a storm rages, the narrator rushes from the agitated Canning
and observes, quoting “Usher,” “There without the doors there did stand
a lofty and enshrouded figure” (121). But it is not Madeline Usher with
blood upon her white robes whom the narrator sees or thinks he sees, but
rather “a figure all too familiar, with pallid features, high, domed fore-
head, moustache set above a mouth” (121–22). Poe, resurrected through
the sorcery of narrative and inserted into his own tale confronts both the
narrator and the reader as the mansion, rather than tumbling into the
tarn, is consumed (like a manuscript) by flames.
As in Danza Macabra, “Poe” in “The Man Who Collected Poe” is
textualized and adapted to a new context. What this makes clear is that
Poe, the author function—like any author function—is always already
a character in a narrative, available for adaption or appropriation. Like
Madeline Usher, the author always returns. Poe finds his way back to
collect the collector.
Re-collecting Poe
According to Foucault, texts began to have authors “to the extent that
authors became subject to punishment—that is, to the extent that dis-
courses could be transgressive” (108). This transgression has to do both
with scandalous content—the voicing of themes or principles that run
contrary to what a given culture deems acceptable or “decent”—and to
the violation of a system of property rights.8 Bloch’s “The Man Who
Collected Poe,” however, suggests that texts have authors to the extent
that they are collectable.
In On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the
Souvenir, the Collection (1993), Susan Stewart addresses the strange
economy and temporality of the collection. According to Stewart, the
collection “presents a metaphor of ‘production’ not as ‘the earned’ but as
‘the captured’” (164). In contrast to the souvenir, which is something one
goes out and gets, the collection comes to us. This mode of production,
writes Stewart, “is made magical” (165). “The Man Who Collected Poe”
presents a hyperbolic representation of this logic through the literaliza-
tion of the collection as magical capture. Launcelot Canning has literally
conjured up Poe from his ashes and now keeps him captive, forcing him—
like the ultimate capitalist, the slave owner—to continue to produce new
stories without any wages at all. And Poe hates him for this: “[H]e hates
me as he hates life. I have locked him in the vault, alone, for the resur-
rected have no need of food or drink. And he sits there, pen moving over
paper, endlessly moving, endlessly pouring out the evil essence of all he
guessed and hinted at in life and which he learned in death” (120–21).
The stories that Poe posthumously produces are ones that, as Canning
realizes, can never be read: “[T]hese tales, these works, are filled and
fraught with a terror not to be endured. They cannot be shown to the
world, he cannot be shown to the world; in bringing back the dead I have
brought back the fruits of death!” (Bloch 121). But, like Stewart’s retell-
ing of the tale of the English bibliomaniac who burns the only other copy
of a rare book to make his unique (160), the content of the stories Poe
produces for Canning are not the point—the point is having them as part
of the collection, even if they cannot be shown.
The principle of organization governing the collection in “The Man
Who Collected Poe” is, of course, “Poe”—anything and everything asso-
ciated with the author, from his works to his letters to his personal effects
to his actual remains. The attempt, therefore, seems to be to move beyond
the author function to the real writer. But each of the objects within
Canning’s collection—including Poe himself—has been ripped from its
historical context, its individual significance drained away and replaced
by the “measureless emptiness that marks [its] new aesthetic function”
(Stewart 159). History has been replaced with classification: “In the col-
lection … all time is made simultaneous or synchronous within the col-
lection’s world” (151). Although authorized by the past, the collection
“presents a hermetic world” in which the object is “severed from its ori-
gin” (152). As opposed to the souvenir, the purpose of which is remem-
bering, “the point of the collection is forgetting—starting again in such
a way that a finite number of elements create, by virtue of their combina-
tion, an infinite reverie” (152). The whole of the collection “supersedes
the individual narratives that ‘lie behind it’” (153).
Canning’s collection, therefore, is not finally about Poe at all, but
rather, in keeping with the logic of the collection in general, Canning’s
uncanny collection replaces “the narrative of history with the narra-
tive of the individual subject—that is, with the collector himself” (156).
Canning’s collection is finally about Canning—but in resurrecting Poe
and compelling him to write anew, he is forced to confront that which
the collection futilely seeks to contain—what Stewart refers to as “the
fire of infinity” (159). Finitude, asserts Stewart, is the “collector’s obses-
sion” (159): “In the collection the threat of infinity is always met with
the articulation of boundary.… The collection thus appears as a mode of
control and containment” (159). The fantasy of the collector is comple-
tion. The resurrection of Poe, however, undoes Canning not just with the
revelation that completeness is impossible but with the realization that

the person behind the author function will inevitably escape.
This last point is made clear through the recognition of the story’s
ironic inversion. Canning, the world’s foremost Poe collector is himself
collected by Poe in two senses. Poe, to the extent that we can trust the
narrator, appears at the end, an avatar of death, to collect Canning’s
soul and bear him to the underworld: “My glimpse lasted but an instant,
an instant during which the man—the corpse—the apparition—the hal-
lucination, call it what you will—moved forward into the chamber and
clasped Canning to his breast in an unbreakable embrace. Together, the
two figures tottered toward the flames, which now rose to blot out vision
forevermore” (Bloch 122). This demonstrates that the author function
will exceed all attempts at containment and instead assimilates those
who would put it to work for their own benefit. The recognition that
“The Man Who Collected Poe” is an adaptation of “Usher” in which
Canning is substituted for Roderick and Poe himself is appropriated to
stand in for Madeline makes this clear. “Poe” therefore has collected
Canning as part of his narrative legacy.
Poe’s Last Best Trick

Much of the discussion above can be punctuated through some brief con-
sideration of “The Man Who Collected Poe” segment of the 1967 Freddie
Francis film, Torture Garden. Torture Garden, the screenplay for which
was written by Bloch, is an anthology consisting of four Bloch stories
loosely held together by a framing narrative in which Dr. Diablo (Burgess
Meredith)—whose devilish nature is unsubtly suggested by his name—
purports to give carnival goers who enter the “Torture Garden” fun
house a glimpse of the future evil and disastrous fates that await them if
they don’t change their present courses. “The Man Who Collected Poe”
segment—the last of the four stories—is thus the adaptation and trans-
position from literature to film of an adaptation in which the insertion of
Poe as a character remains central. Poe (Hedger Wallace appearing under
the name Geoffrey Wallace) in this instance, however, departing from the
silent Madeline Usher role he plays in Bloch’s written tale, speaks and,
as a consequence, is both masculinized and demonized, thereby further
nuancing the construction of “Poe” as an occult figure in communion
with dark forces and as a harbinger of death. Here again is a Poe story
that is not written by Poe but that nevertheless, through the appropria-
tion of him, participates in the construction of the Poe function. Torture
Garden presents not Poe the man, but Poe the myth.
“The Man Who Collected Poe” within Torture Garden begins with
Ronald Wyatt (Jack Palance) stepping forward at Dr. Diablo’s invita-
tion to contemplate a mannequin of Atropos—of the three Fates, the
one responsible for cutting the threads of mortal life. This has the effect
of transporting Wyatt to a scene in which he meets Lancelot Canning
(Peter Cushing), the world’s preeminent Poe collector. In this adaptation
of Bloch’s story, the narrative is not the first-person account of Wyatt;
nor is Wyatt a kind of Poe dilettante. Rather, he shares Canning’s mania
for all things Poe and jumps at Canning’s invitation to peruse the latter’s
personal collection of Poe manuscripts and memorabilia.
As in Bloch’s story, Wyatt journeys to Canning’s home and there con-
templates (“salivates over” is more apt) a variety of Poe artifacts before
an inebriated Canning, drunk on too much amontillado, reveals to Wyatt
his true treasure—unpublished Poe manuscripts. When Wyatt protests
that the stories could not possibly be authentic because the watermark
on the paper is far too recent, Canning divulges his final secret: through
black magic, “Poe has been brought back to us,” he explains to Wyatt.
“He is still alive.” Departing then from Bloch’s original story, Wyatt
insists on seeing what is behind a locked door in the basement. When
Canning refuses and blocks Wyatt’s way, the frenzied Wyatt bashes
Canning over the head with a candlestick holder and forces his way into
the room in which he discovers satanic and cryptic symbols etched on the
floor, a secret door, and finally Poe himself, sitting pale, dusty, and still
amid a variety of spooky accoutrements (see figure 2.2).
Figure 2.2 The undead Poe of Torture Garden

Here Wyatt introduces himself and offers his assistance in “releasing”

all of Poe’s new works. Poe, however, is no longer interested in fame or
fortune but instead only in release through death. He “prays to die,” but
he cannot, he explains, because “I sought and found the unknown, made
a deal with the devil.” He is now condemned “to a living hell” and can
only be released by one of two ways: if a living soul replaces his “in the
devil’s domain” or by fire. Wyatt, who is holding a lit candle, possesses
the latter means and volunteers to release Poe if he will educate him on
“the unknown.” Poe readily agrees to this Faustian bargain, and Wyatt
sets fire to the room. The knowledge of the unknown that Poe reveals,
however, as first the room and then the house is consumed by flames,
is that the liberator of one who has made a pact with the devil himself
becomes “the devil’s slave.” “You are trapped, my friend,” Poe intones.
“Trapped. Is that not a good ending for the last story of Edgar Allan
Poe?” The scene then ends with flames rising up around Wyatt, and Poe’s
echoing ominous laugh.
This adaptation of Bloch’s story, in deviating from the written tale,
consequently also diverges from Poe’s “Usher,” on which the story was
originally based. Nevertheless, there is a kind of logic to the rewriting,
in which, through the confrontation with the damned “Poe,” the work-
ing of the author function is laid bare. Authors, summoned into being by
their works, have all made deals with the devil—in exchange for immor-
tality, they become the slaves of readers and critics and are compelled to
do their bidding. This “last story of Edgar Allan Poe” is of course not the
last. Both Poe’s works and Poe himself will again and again be adapted,
transposed, and appropriated.
In Torture Garden’s final scene, the fun-house attendees, discon-
certed by what they have witnessed, have departed—all, that is, except
for Wyatt, who steps forth and confronts Dr. Diablo with the intention
of “making a deal.” Although the details of the arrangement are with-
held from the viewer, when Dr. Diablo places a cigarette between his lips
and asks Wyatt for a light, the latter produces a lighter that the spectator
saw him pocket when previously offered a light by Lancelot Canning in
his vision—the implication being that, far from being dissuaded from his
future course of action by the glimpse of things to come provided by Dr.
Diablo, Wyatt has chosen to embrace it. It seems that, having dallied with
the devil, he has a date with Poe in the future—a future that is already
written and told but is yet to take place. Perhaps this, then, is the “unbe-
lievable” story yet to be written by Poe at the end of Danza Macabra: the
story of Poe that both is and is not his, the posthumous tale in which he
continues to write his own story. The Poe presented in Danza Macabra
finally is correct—death, at least for the author, is an illusion. With each
new iteration of Poe’s story, with each adaptation of Poe, the Poe func-
tion is expanded and enriched, and the undead Poe today is more alive
and vibrant than ever.
Notes
1. In A Theory of Adaptation, Hutcheon proposes the term “knowing” as pref-
erable to terms such as “learned” or “competent” to describe readers or
viewers who possess the knowledge necessary to recognize an adaptation as
an adaptation (120).
2 . As Julie Sanders notes in Adaptation and Appropriation, adaptation and
appropriation intersect and interrelate in various ways. However, for Sanders,
“An adaptation signals a relationship with an informing sourcetext or origi-
nal,” while an appropriation generally “affects a more decisive journey away
from the informing source into a wholly new cultural product and domain”
(26). What I will be emphasizing here is the adaptation of what I would refer
to as the “Poe narrative”—the narrative construction and reconstruction of
the author-function Poe.
3. As Foucault explains in his essay, the author function “does not affect all
discourses in a universal or constant way” (109). In our present moment,
texts presumed to be “literary” are attributed to authors, whereas scientific
discourses are “received for themselves” (109).
4. During the 1930s, Bloch was an avid reader of the pulp magazine Weird
Tales, and American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, a frequent contributor
to the journal, was among his favorite authors. Bloch corresponded with
Lovecraft, who gave him advice on writing, and Bloch’s early publications
were strongly influenced by Lovecraft, including several stories set in and
extending the world of what has come to be called Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu
mythos”—his supernatural tales of monstrous extraterrestrial powers and
forces. While it is outside the scope of this chapter to explore “The Man
Who Collected Poe” as an homage to Lovecraft, the device of reanimation
of the dead via sorcery is clearly indebted to Lovecraft. For more on Bloch
and Lovecraft, see Joshi’s “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H. P.
Lovecraft.”
5. Robert Bloch, “The Man Who Collected Poe,” The Man Who Called Himself
Poe, ed. Sam Moskowitz (London: Victor Gollancz, 1970) 105. Page num-
bers will refer to this edition and will be parenthetically indicated within the
text.
6. For purposes of comparison, I have used the original Burton’s Gentleman’s
Magazine publication of “The Fall of the House of Usher” from September
1839. The complete text is available online at http://www.eapoe.org/works/
tales/ushera.htm.
7. For a discussion of Genette’s notion of metalepsis, see Brian McHale’s
Postmodernist Fiction, pp. 119–21.
8. Foucault observes that “once a system of ownership for texts came into being,
once strict rules concerning authors’ rights, author-publisher relations, rights
of reproduction, and related matters were enacted … the possibility of trans-

gression attached to the act of writing took on, more and more, the form of
an imperative peculiar to literature” (108). “Ownership” of a text therefore
has both its dangers and its benefits. The writer to whom authorship of a
text is attributed can be either punished or rewarded (or in some cases both)
for his labors.
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Image Music Text. Trans. Stephen
Heath. New York: Noonday Press, 1977. 142–48. Print.
Bloch, Robert. “The Man Who Collected Poe.” The Man Who Called Himself
Poe. Ed. Sam Moskowitz. London: Victor Gollancz, 1970. 104–22. Print.
Castle of Blood. [Danza macabre]. Dirs. Sergio Corbucci and Antonio Margheriti.
Italy: Giovanni Addessi Produzione Cinematografica, 1964.
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow.
New York: Pantheon, 1984. 101–20. Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Joshi, S. T. “A Literary Tutelage: Robert Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft.” The Man
Who Collected Psychos: Critical Essays on Robert Bloch. Ed. Benjamin
Szumskyj. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. 23–40. Print.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge, 1987. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” http://www.eapoe.org/
works/tales/ushera.htm. Web.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the
Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. Print.
Torture Garden. Dir. Freddie Francis. UK: Amicus Productions, 1967.
3
Lusty Ape-men and Imperiled White
Womanhood: Reading Race in a 1930s
Poe Film Adaptation
Jessica Metzler
Universal Picture’s precode 1932 horror-film classic Murders in the Rue

Morgue is a less-than-faithful adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 short
story of the same name. Although the film strays far from its source
material, nods to its origin remain, most notably in the racially coded
figure of the ape-man, a trope that mutates in form but ultimately sur-
vives the transition from nineteenth-century story to twentieth-century
film. Universal’s film adaptation appropriates and revises nineteenth-
century constructions of scientific racism, speciation, and miscegenation
as a means of entering into racially charged 1930s discourses of primitiv-
ism, which frequently hinged upon a persistent fear of foreign Others.
Fears over miscegenation and cross-class mobility that “The Murders
in the Rue Morgue” reifies in the figure of the murderous ape resurface
in discourses of primitivism well under way during the economic and
cultural anxiety of the Great Depression. Public fascination with racial-
ized, filmic representations of apes in studio pictures, such as King Kong
(1933), and exploitation or poverty-row films, such as Ingagi (1930), was
very similar to the lure that mid-nineteenth-century depictions held for
their audiences. Poe holds a particular draw for the United States as a
nation engaged in a continual process of refiguring notions of race and
representation, and often serves as a figure or reference point for endur-
ing discourses about racial Others and horror. For 1930s filmmakers,
invoking the spirit of Poe became a means of exploiting the profitable,
taboo territory of miscegenation through symbolic representations.
32 Jessica Metzler
Upon reviewing the English translation of the French serialized novel

The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue in an 1846 “Marginalia” column
for Graham’s Magazine, Poe made some rather pointed observations
about a chapter that bore a suspicious resemblance to his own work,
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Sue’s chapter, “Gringalet et Coupe en
Deux” (“Gringalet and Cut-in-Half”), features a murderous ape “remark-
able for its size, strength, ferocity, and propensity to imitation” (245).
Poe’s review makes a convincing case for plagiarism while also highlight-
ing the susceptibility of his tale to imitation, revision, and adaptation.
As Poe is credited with inventing detective fiction, one could argue that
most anyone writing within the genre owes a debt to Poe’s conventions.
In this case, however, the imitative nature of Sue’s piece rests upon its
co-optation not of narrative structure or character, but rather of specific
plot points, such as the murderous ape given to imitation, specifically of
a barber. At first it may seem odd to copy such a singular characteristic of
the story—after all, for modern readers, the revelation that the murderer
is an orangutan tends to feel a bit bizarre or unsatisfactory. During the
nineteenth century, however, the figure of the “ape-man”—a beast that
straddled the line between human and animal—occupied a far different
position in public consciousness, and the mythology surrounding this
figure made it a ripe target for appropriation.
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” details what seems at first to be an
unsolvable, unspeakable crime—a mother and her daughter are found to
have been beaten and murdered within a locked and seemingly impen-
etrable room. Camille’s corpse is discovered firmly wedged up a chimney,
and her mother’s body is found in a yard to the rear of the building,
with her head nearly severed. While police are baffled, the observant
and logical Auguste Dupin solves the mystery by revealing the culprit to
be a large, escaped orangutan owned by a sailor who had captured it in
Borneo. The ape had observed his “master” shaving with a straight razor,
and its murderous frenzy is initially triggered when he attempts to “play
barber” with the women, an imitative act that leads to the beheading.
Poe’s violent ape comes to stand in for a specific discourse about race
occurring at that time. As critics have noted, Poe’s orangutan can eas-
ily be seen as representative of a certain type of nineteenth-century sci-
entific racism. Elise Lemire addresses the historical and cultural work
the racialized images in Poe’s story perform in her reading of the nine-
teenth-century construction of race. Lemire traces the racial and eco-
nomic anxieties prevalent in Poe’s Philadelphia and illustrates the various
ways black men were associated with apes in a racist evolutionary dis-
course that worked to create hierarchical relationships between whites,
blacks, and nonhuman primates (100). The commonly held belief that
Ape-men and Imperiled White Womanhood 33
primates sexually desired human women, a myth that frequently found

its way into nineteenth-century natural history texts, became the basis
for various representations of black sexuality as primal, insatiable, and
indiscriminate.1 Lemire notes that such scientific arguments about spe-
ciation inspired horror at the thought of miscegenation: “For if blacks
were viewed as related to apes and were thus perceived to be a separate
species from whites, contrary to Linneaus’s argument … that all men
comprised one species, then by virtue of the most common definition of
species, sexual contact between blacks and whites was arguably wholly
unnatural” (111). Given this historical context, Lemire examines “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue” as a tale that reflects the period’s attitudes
about race: “[I]f orangutans were thought to look and act like blacks who
had not recently shaved and even to be related to them, nothing made the
two seem more similar, as we have seen, than the type of desire they each
supposedly had for the women above them on the Great Chain of Being.
Poe’s 1841 tale … raises the specter of inter-racial sex.… The orangutan
kills the two women not only while they are in their bedroom, but as they
are making preparations to retire for the evening” (109).
As a trope, miscegenation coded in the form of apes who sexually
desired white women did not disappear between the nineteenth century
and the 1930s. Indeed, a cultural fascination with “primitivism” flour-
ished in the years prior to World War II. Marianna Torgovnick has con-
vincingly argued that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels (published
between 1912 and 1947) depict the reestablishing of Western social hier-
archies in the jungle. She notes the persistence of the threat of interspe-
cies rape throughout the series, noting that the works’ scenes of female
abduction “suggest certain rules: qualities like lust belong to animals and
blacks, not to Euro-Americans, except when they are renegade, outcast;
flirtations with miscegenation are allowed, but miscegenation, especially
between white females and nonwhite males, must never occur” (53). 2 By the
1930s, a social order that placed white Americans above black American
Others in an artificially imposed hierarchy was firmly entrenched and
shored up by legally condoned discrimination, and antimiscegenation
laws existed in thirty states. Holding the potential to unsettle such racial
divisions and the hierarchies built upon them, miscegenation served as a
lingering site of fascination and anxiety. This was especially true during
the Great Depression, when the economic gain associated with institu-
tional and cultural racial privilege was threatened. A discourse of primi-
tivism, inherited from a history of white colonialism as well as the legacy
of slavery in the United States, which linked black Americans with both
animals and “less-evolved” African Others, was repeatedly rehearsed in
early sound motion pictures during the precode era. Such a discourse
34 Jessica Metzler
allowed insinuated interspecies sexual contact to stand in for black-white

miscegenation. The exploitation of this taboo would prove exceptionally
profitable for filmmakers as they built an audience from anxious patrons
eager to see such “horrors” enacted on-screen.
The visual representation of miscegenation in motion pictures was
restricted during the first half of the twentieth century by state censorship
boards and the industry’s self-regulating standards. In 1927, the Motion
Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) released a list
of “Don’ts and Be Carefuls,” prohibitive guidelines intended to keep film
producers from running afoul of state censorship boards. Miscegenation
was listed as a “don’t” (Schaefer 147). In 1930, the “Don’ts and Be
Carefuls” became the Production Code, which addressed interracial
relations: “Miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black
races) is forbidden” (qtd. in Courtney 103). The rule remained in effect
until 1956. The period before 1934, however, is widely known as the
“precode” era, as industry rules were haphazardly followed and rarely
enforced, leading to far “racier” pictures than those produced after 1935,
when greater oversight and censorship began to occur. Despite such early
relative freedom, the appearance of interracial couples in films was nearly
nonexistent. What did appear on-screen, however, were frequent, sym-
bolic depictions of interracial desire. Whereas the myth that presented
black men as dangerous rapists intent on defiling pure white women was
seen in early silent films such as D. W. Griffith’s notorious The Birth of
a Nation (1915), in the 1930s this form of racial panic was represented
not only by actors in blackface makeup, but also in the resuscitated form
of the nineteenth-century ape-man trope. As fodder for adaptation, Poe’s
story fulfilled Universal’s desire for a marketable screenplay. It was in the
public domain and was thus inexpensive material to use during the Great
Depression, a time when the studio verged on bankruptcy. Changing
Poe’s detective story into a horror film about miscegenation also allowed
the studio to capitalize on both a taboo subject matter and the success of
its recent horror films (1931’s Dracula and Frankenstein).
Ape figures were highly visible cinematic tropes during the early
1930s. A striking number of films displayed a fascination with racialized
representations of apes. As one of the first films to exploit the often racist
territory of early ethnographic film, the notorious and wildly success-
ful picture Ingagi advertised itself as a scientific study of the desire of
African apes for “native” women in 1930, even though it was purely an
exercise in propaganda and exploitation filmmaking. The film purported
to be an ethnographic travelogue about a pair of explorers on an African
expedition who discover new animal species and document their encoun-
ter with an African tribe that sacrificed women to gorillas, with whom
they subsequently mated. The movie claimed that “some otherwise bar-
ren women mate with the gorillas by choice in order to conceive. At the
climax of the film, a naked woman emerges from the bush to mourn her
dead gorilla lover” (Erish). The Washington Post described the popular-
ity and content of Ingagi this way:
The most startling feature depicted in this picture sponsored by Congo

Pictures, Ltd., is the discovery of what may easily be creatures that are
half human, half ape. Apparently also there is a tribe of natives lowest of
all in the scale of humanity, scarcely as intelligent as the apes, who each
year after an elaborate celebration which is hideously weird, give one of the
women to the gorillas. That these women are taken as companions by the
great apes is claimed. (“African Film”)
As Erish notes, “Ingagi’s most offensive moment shows a topless black

woman cradling a baby adorned with patches of glued-on fur, described
as ‘a strange-looking child, seemingly more ape than human.’” The sug-
gestion of interspecies sex proved phenomenally popular with audiences.
The film grossed over a million dollars in its first year of release, eventu-
ally earning over four million (Schaefer 267).
Though the Washington Post ’s description of the film took it to
be an accurate account of a real ethnographic expedition, it was soon
shown to be a hoax, and the producers were sued over their deception.
One lawsuit claimed that half of the film consisted of copied footage
from “Lady Mackenzie’s play, ‘The Heart of Africa,’ based on 20,000
feet of film taken by her in Africa in 1914” (“Attacks”). The Better
Business Bureau involved itself in the matter and asked that Ingagi be
pulled from theaters. It “presented a report of the American Society of
Mammologists, saying that the gorilla scenes were ‘duped’” (“Attacks”).
The gorilla scenes clearly were faked, with actor Charlie Gemora dressed
in an ape suit of his design. Gemora would go on to make a career out of
his skill in portraying gorillas—he appeared in ape costume in twenty-
two films between 1928 and 1954, including 1932’s Murders in the Rue
Morgue and 1954’s Phantom of the Rue Morgue —another Poe adapta-
tion (“Gorilla”). The Federal Trade Commission eventually declared the
film fraudulent and ordered it pulled from theaters after determining that
“‘much of the wildlife was filmed at the Los Angeles zoo; that the film’s
gorillas were in actuality ‘human beings dressed in animal skins’; [and]
that the pygmies were ‘colored children from five to 10 years of age, liv-
ing in Los Angeles’” (Feaster and Wood 161).
I have indulged in the long, convoluted history of this film not only
because it offers a clear picture of a racist, primitivist discourse that
36 Jessica Metzler
found widespread popularly in the 1930s—a discourse of Africa, and

African Americans by extension, as uncivilized, superstitious, libidinal,
and id driven—but also because Ingagi, with its tagline, “Wild Women—
Gorillas—Unbelievable!” served as a foundational text for a generation
of horror films about gorillas, ape-men, and their uncontrollable sexual
urges. Films such as Murders in the Rue Morgue and King Kong would
reiterate and refine this conception of the murderous, lusty ape and asso-
ciate the gorilla figure with uncontained black male sexuality.
Though a studio picture and not an exploitation film, Murders in the
Rue Morgue drew upon the popularity of Ingagi in both its figure of
the ape and its invocation of interspecies mating, which the film uses as
code for miscegenation. A 1932 Washington Post article on the vaga-
ries and moral turpitude of the horror-film genre remarks on the debt
Universal’s Murders in the Rue Morgue owes to Ingagi, stating, “Here is
an argumentative subject that verges close upon some of the least engag-
ing aspects of ‘Ingagi’ during its speculation as to whether the blood of
human beings may successfully be blended with the blood of gorillas and
the theory of evolution thus be authenticated.… [H]ere again reliance
has been placed in the public’s avaricious interest in the ‘shocker’ form
of drama” (Bell).
The film’s plot concerns a mad scientist, Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi),
who is intent upon proving “ape-human kinship” and sets out to do so
by kidnapping prostitutes from the streets of Paris and injecting them
with blood from Erik—the ape he keeps for just such a purpose. When
these experiments end in the death of these women (due, he believes, to
their “rotten,” impure blood), Mirakle encourages Erik the ape to pursue
Camille (Sidney Fox), the white heroine of the film who catches Erik’s
eye during the carnival scene that opens the film. Erik breaks into the
home of Camille and her mother, murders Madame L’Espanaye, deposits
her in the chimney and carries a swooning Camille off among the Paris
rooftops. Dupin’s role in the film is that of a young medical student, and
Camille serves as his love interest. Discovering Mirakle’s plot, he saves
the girl, and Erik plunges off a rooftop to his death. Such a scene would
be mirrored (albeit on a far grander scale) a year later in King Kong —the
film that possibly marked the height of popularity for movies starring
lusty ape-men. Significantly, the first half of King Kong would essentially
replicate the plot of Ingagi.
Many scholars have analyzed King Kong through the lens of criti-
cal race theory. Joshua David Bellin claims that King Kong “is deeply,
inextricably, indeed indistinguishably involved in a pervasive and urgent
early-twentieth-century cultural project to define and defend whiteness,
a project that ritualistically found its fulfillment in the conjuring to life,
and condemning to death, of a fantasized scapegoat: the black ravisher of

white womanhood” (24). Reading King Kong as an allegory of the slave
trade, George Snead argues, “For a 1933 screen audience, black skin was
a code for limited narrative range. Blackness in such a context could not
but mean ‘the primitive’, ‘the elemental’, as well as ‘the marginal’, the
‘unproductive’” (62–63). Fatimah Tobing Rony, addressing a particular
ethnographic reading of King Kong that proves valuable in a treatment of
Murders in the Rue Morgue, asserts,
Kong is a cinematic fantasy of the Darwinian link between the anthropoid

ape and man.… As we have seen with the work of Regnault, the desire to
rank the “races” and find the “missing link” between man and ape was
a defining obsession of nineteenth-century anthropology. This fascina-
tion manifested itself in popular culture in the portrayal of the ape as evil
monster, a characterization which only gained currency in the latter half
of the nineteenth century with the rise of Social Darwinism. Edgar Allan
Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) is an early instance of this
genre. (179)
This cinematic trajectory leads us to question how such films speak to the
discourses of race, apes, and scientific racism that permeate Poe’s 1841
story. To address such a question, a closer look at the significant differ-
ences between Poe’s story and Universal’s adaptation is in order.
A New York Times review noted the various changes necessary to
transform the story into the classical Hollywood cinema mode audiences
expected:
The great defect in “Murders in the Rue Morgue”—from the standpoint

of hallowed cinema technique—was the absence of a romantic element,
which Poe did not bother about. He never related his two victims to any
other character in the story; neither did he furnish any good motion-pic-
ture reason why they should have been so ferociously slain. That great
mystery—the motive—puzzled the screen folk no less than it puzzled Dr.
Dupin. The problem then became one of making these women interesting
to the audience and of introducing characters who would be interested in
them and their fate. (“Weird Films”)
This emphasis on the advisability of positing a good “motion-picture

motive” provides a view of motion-picture audiences at the time, as
well—an audience that demanded not only a normative, heterosexual
romance plot that would spare the life of the heroine in the name of pre-
serving a melodramatic ending, but also a plausible motive for the ape’s
murderous tendencies. While the ape in Poe’s tale acts in an imitation of
38 Jessica Metzler
its master, the film’s creature is blatantly motivated by a taboo sexual

desire, one easily read as the desire for miscegenation in the parlance of
the film. Upon first seeing Camille during the carnival scene, Erik the
ape asks for and receives her white bonnet—a marker of white, delicate
femininity. Erik caresses the bonnet suggestively in his cage and attempts
to strangle Dupin when he comes too close to his prize. The bonnet, hav-
ing already been visually contrasted with the exotic, sequined headwear
worn by the carnival’s belly dancers—the writhing brown bodies of the
“Arab Angels”—serves as a symbol of white womanhood, which Erik
inappropriately desires.
Building on the successes of films such as Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde (1931), Murders in the Rue Morgue created a mad-scien-
tist villain in the persona of Dr. Mirakle. Instead of a sailor attempting
to profit from the trade in stolen simians, something far more sinister is
at work in the film, and Mirakle becomes not only the embodiment of
evil, inhabiting a body coded specifically as foreign and incomprehen-
sible, but also the agent of miscegenation, the third-person enabling role
often applied to nineteenth-century abolitionists.3 As Harry M. Benshoff
writes, “The classical Hollywood horror film is arguably one of the
more explicitly racist of Hollywood genres, frequently using ethnic and
racial coding to (quite literally) ‘color’ its monsters. Boris Karloff and
Bela Lugosi, the era’s most successful box-office monster actors, were
Caucasian but quite pointedly not American” (46). In Murders, both
Lugosi and Erik the ape constitute dangerous foreign Others.
The film’s visually telling opening carnival sequence works to struc-
ture ways of looking that code racialized Others as monstrous. This
sequence portrays the spectacle of an 1845 Paris carnival reminiscent of
Barnum’s traveling circus. The scene begins with a crowded frame filled
with throngs of giddy spectators, including Dupin, Camille, and their
friends. It then shifts to shots of the three primary sideshow attractions:
the aforementioned belly-dancing “Arab Angels,” tomahawk-wielding
Apache Indians in war paint, and finally the tent that holds Erik the ape.
The camera pans from one site of racialized entertainment to the next,
silently indicating a hierarchy on a scale of humanity. Once we enter
Dr. Mirakle’s tent of wonder, we learn that Erik is the “missing link” he
is using to test his theories of evolution. This carnival scene provides a
concise view of the source of the film’s horror—a foreign Other intent on
destroying white female virtue and disrupting a normative heterosexual
romance plot.
Throughout the scene, the camera never takes on the point of view of
the objects of spectacle. The spectator is aligned with the white gaze of
one of the film’s principles, or finds himself or herself observing the white
audience from a viewpoint deliberately obscured by the legs or hips of the
marginalized stage performers, or by the bulk of Erik’s lumbering body.
The camera is frequently positioned behind these objects of spectacle,
showing the reaction of the white audience, but not allowing the dancers,
Native Americans, or Erik a subjective point of view. These racialized
bodies constitute disembodied fodder for visual consumption rather than
filmic subjects.
The first sideshow attraction Camille and Dupin witness is the “Arab
Angels.” Here the exoticized nonwhite female body is juxtaposed with
the “pure” ladies in their bonnets who observe them. In a low-angle
shot, the camera pans seductively up the body of the lead dancer, show-
ing a disembodied, hypnotically writhing torso for several seconds.
When the camera eventually reaches the woman’s face, she slowly raises
her downcast eyes to gaze directly into it, her “come-hither” stare indi-
cating that this “brown” body is an object of consumption for not just
the carnival goers, but the film’s audience as well. The dialogue during
this moment is perhaps predictably disturbing. An older man asks if
“they bite,” and his friend answers, “Oh yes, but you have to pay extra
for that.” Camille says, “See, Pierre, how brown they are. Is that their
real color, do you suppose, or have they painted themselves?” Camille’s
wonderings point to the illusionary nature of racial spectacle and ges-
ture toward the various acts of “blacking up” that were occurring not
only in the 1845 world of the diegesis, but also in many 1930s films.
Indeed, a number of the actors in this scene do seem to be “painted” to
appear to possess a darker skin tone, and African American actor Noble
Johnson, who plays “Janos the black one,” Mirakle’s henchman, wears
makeup to appear either darker or lighter skinned, depending on which
source one consults. The carnival becomes a space of racial mythmak-
ing: spectacle meant to entertain, invoke, and create white fantasies of
a racialized Other.
As Camille and Pierre continue their ethnographic sightseeing and
move away from the spectacle of the commodified nonwhite female
body, they encounter the threatening, nonwhite male body of the “noble
savage”—the mythical American Indian. These performers are similarly
disembodied. Strong, unmoving legs block the camera’s view as they
wear a costume signifying their “authenticity.” From here, the camera
moves into Mirakle’s tent, and we encounter Erik: “Behind this curtain
is the strangest creature your eyes will ever behold. Erik the ape-man!
The monster who walks upright and speaks a language even as you and
I,” the barker calls. Mirakle claims that he is not a “sideshow charlatan.”
40 Jessica Metzler
He protests, “I am not exhibiting a freak, a monstrosity of nature, but a

milestone in the development of life.” Of course, Mirakle is part of a car-
nival sideshow, and his claim not to be “exhibiting a freak” or a “mon-
strosity of nature” only serves to simultaneously highlight the “freakish”
nature of the earlier exhibits, the “Arab Angels” and the Apaches, while
calling his own positionality into question. Erik’s presentation to the
audience is similarly framed by his giant, disembodied form. The camera
shows the back of his head and shoulders while capturing the horrified
faces of the audience members. The white characters and the cinematic
apparatus have made the spectacles of “brown” sexualized bodies, “red”
savage ones, and a black monstrous one all objects of their privileged,
white gaze. This carnival sequence provides the viewer with a clear
notion of how race works in the film through its depiction of evolution-
ary hierarchies (a key element of the discourse of primitivism occurring
at the time) and its positioning of racialized figures as the objects of a
controlling white gaze.
While the film largely abandons its source material, nods to Poe
remain: the body wedged in the chimney, the witnesses who cannot
identify the mother tongue of the voice heard during the attack, and of
course the racially coded trope of the figure of the ape-man. One might
suggest that the film simply reproduces a nineteenth-century discourse
about racial inferiority and miscegenation as an abomination; however,
the work refuses such an explanation by virtue of the changes made to
the screenplay and its relationship to other 1930s films, such as Ingagi
and Kong. The film’s screenplay went through numerous revisions. At
one point studio executives strongly recommended changing the setting
from an 1845 period piece to the contemporary 1930s in order to save
money on sets and costuming. Such a recommendation suggests that
the appeal to the horror of miscegenation relied upon audience expec-
tations rather than the film’s historical source material (Senn 50). The
original screenplay also explicitly included “the mating of an ape with
a woman” (Senn 51). While eventually omitted, interspecies sex is still
suggested throughout the film as the result both of Mirakle’s evolution-
ary experiments and of Erik’s own sexual desires for white women. In a
scene strongly coded as a rape, the doctor struggles with a prostitute—
bound crucifixion style in his laboratory—and forcibly injects her with
a syringe full of ape blood. The prostitute temporarily possesses, liter-
ally, “mixed blood,” but in the narrative of the film, this sacrilegious
and abnormal miscegenation is an untenable prospect and the woman
quickly succumbs to a whimpering death. Furthermore, Erik’s abduc-
tion of Camille from her bedroom is portrayed as the product of his
sexual desire for her. Thomas Doherty reads the film’s bedroom ape
attack as a rape: “What transpires during the cross-cut commotion—

between the attack in the bedroom and the frenzied activity in the
hallway as neighbors prepare to break down the door and rescue the
women from the gorilla’s clutches—can be interpreted in only one way:
the gorilla is raping one of the women” (306). While such a possibility
is certainly suggested, the film’s crosscuts create ambiguity. Is the ape
raping or murdering? The film holds both possibilities to be equally
horrifying.
In A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon argues that “[t]o expe-
rience it [a film] as an adaptation … we need to recognize it as such
and to know its adapted text, thus allowing the latter to oscillate in our
memories with what we are experiencing. In the process we inevitably
fill in any gaps in the adaptation with information from the adapted text
[emphasis in original]” (120). While we might characterize Rue Morgue
audiences as “knowing”—the film’s title screen proclaims the film to
be “based on the immortal classic by Edgar Allan Poe,” and audiences
would likely have been aware of the story—Florey’s adaptation veers too
far from Poe’s text to assume or expect its audience to “fill in the gaps”
and understand the film solely in relationship to Poe’s work. Indeed, the
intertextuality at play between Poe and 1930s horror and ape-man films
in this adaptation relies upon an audience not overly interested in the
fidelity between source material and adaptation for its success. The film
succeeded as a horror picture because audiences were more interested in
its fidelity to an emerging franchise than to Poe’s work.4 Thus the motiva-
tion for adapting Poe can be read as profit oriented. The film appealed to
desires on the part of the viewer for satisfactions apart from those that
might be gained in viewing a faithful adaptation of Poe’s work. Such
pleasures arose from a persistent historical and cultural fascination with
interracial sexual contact, which were, in turn, economically fruitful for
the studio.
Murders in the Rue Morgue ultimately capitalizes on the taboo sta-
tus of miscegenation during the 1930s, using the nascent horror-film
genre as a vehicle to harness and profit from racial anxieties. If Poe had
famously constructed tales of the macabre, then a film bearing his impri-
matur participated in the horror genre by association. In this case, the
film sought to adapt not Poe’s work, but a racial ideology. Poe served as
fruitful source material for this ideology. His story, which participated in
and helped construct nineteenth-century discourses of scientific racism,
was well suited to capitalize on easily exploitable 1930s racial fears. In
this sense, the film was not interested in adapting Poe’s work, but rather
in using Poe’s authorial imprint to lend authenticity to the film’s depic-
tion of miscegenation as horror-film territory.
42 Jessica Metzler
Notes
1. See Lemire, pp. 100–102.
2 . The first of the Tarzan franchise films, Tarzan the Ape Man, appeared in
1932.
3. See Pérez-Torres, Rafael, “Miscegenation Now!” American Literary History
17.2 (2005): 378.
4. Universal would go on to produce two more similarly loose adaptations
within this genre, both starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and “sug-
gested by” Poe works, The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935).
Works Cited
“African Film Continues to Pack Keiths.” Washington Post 4 May 1930: A4.
Print.
“Attacks Gorilla Film in Suit to End Showing.” New York Times 25 July 1930:
8. Print.
Bell, Nelson B. “Thoughts on Horror Era, Renaissance, and Miss Ulric.”
Washington Post 21 Feb. 1932: A1. Print.
Bellin, Joshua David. Framing Monsters: Fantasy Film and Social Alienation.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.
Benshoff, Harry M. “Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or
Reinscription?” Cinema Journal 39.2 (2000): 31–50. Print.
The Black Cat. Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer. Perf. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David
Manners, Jacqueline Wells, and Lucille Lund. Universal, 1934. Film. Universal
Studios, 2005. DVD.
Courtney, Susan. Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives
of Gender and Race, 1903–1967. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005. Print.
Doherty, Thomas. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in
American Cinema, 1930–1934. New York: Columbia UP, 1999. Print.
Erish, Andrew. “Illegitimate Dad of ‘Kong.’” Los Angeles Times 8 Jan. 2006: n.
pag. Web.
Feaster, Felicia, and Bret Wood. Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the
Exploitation Film. Baltimore, MD: Luminary Press, 1999. Print.
Ingagi. Dir. William Campbell. Prod. William Alexander. Congo Pictures, 1931.
Film.
King Kong. Dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Perf. Fay Wray,
Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot. RKO Radio Pictures, 1933. Film.
Warner Bros., 1999. VHS.
Lemire, Elise. “Miscegenation”: Making Race in America. Philadelphia: U of
Pennsylvania P, 2002. Print.
Murders in the Rue Morgue. Dir. Robert Florey. Perf. Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox,
Leon Waycoff, and Noble Johnson. Universal, 1932. Film. Universal Studios,
2005. DVD.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “Marginalia” Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of
Literature, Art, and Fashion 29.5 (Nov. 1846): 245. Print.
———. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” 1841. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and
Tales. New York: Library of America, 1984. 397–431. Print.
The Raven. Dir. Louis Friedlander. Perf. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Irene Ware,
Lester Matthews, and Inez Courtney. Universal, 1935. Film. Universal
Studios, 2005. DVD.
Rony, Fatimah Tobing. The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic
Spectacle. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1996. Print.
Schaefer, Eric. “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!”: A History of Exploitation
Films, 1919–1959. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1999. Print.
Senn, Bryan. Golden Horrors: An Illustrated Critical Filmography of Terror
Cinema, 1931–1939. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996. Print.
Snead, James. “Spectatorship and Capture in King Kong: The Guilty Look.”
Critical Quarterly 33.1 (Spring 1991): 53–69. Print.
“That Gorilla Is Gemora in His ‘Monkey Suit.’” Washington Post 31 Jan. 1938:
X14. Print.
Torgovnick, Marianna. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. Print.
“Weird Films.” New York Times 10 Jan. 1932: X6. Print.
4
An “Ambrosial Breath of Faery”: Jean Epstein’s
La Chute de la Maison Usher and the Inverted
Orphism of Poe’s “Poetic Principle”
Saviour Catania
all is Life—Life—Life within Life
—Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem
Representative of the paradoxical position that Jean Epstein’s La Chute

de la Maison Usher (1928) usually occupies in Poe film criticism is the
Aurum’s anonymous critic’s assertion that, “[t]hough often dazzling
visually, [t]his version is, in fact, a travesty of Poe” (39).1 Strangely, what
this reviewer seems to be suggesting is that Epstein’s Usher sacrifices
Poe’s vision for its selfish cinematic achievement. Hence the conclusion
that “the film is basically an empty exercise in style” (39). More explic-
itly exemplary, however, of this critical misconception is the belief that
“by ‘slay[ing]’ Poe to assert his own self and aesthetic, [Epstein] makes
a nonsense of him” (O’Donoghue). What such approaches apparently
denigrate is the appropriative essence of Epstein’s creative engagement
with Poe’s universe that vindicates Hutcheon’s Genettean definition
of adaptation as “its own palimpsestic thing—a derivation that is not
derivative—a work that is second without being secondary” (9). Torres
rightly claims in fact that Epstein’s Usher “conveys a prospective explo-
ration of aesthetic and cinematic values in Poe’s fiction, opening new
paths and visions” (184). For Epstein’s Usher transcends D. W. Griffith’s
46 Saviour Catania
The Avenging Conscience (1914), with its similar fusion of several Poe
writings, by its untypical tendency to invert its literary inspiration.
Crucial, in fact, to an understanding of Epstein’s Usher as a Poe adap-
tation is Abel’s suggestion that, by “[i]nverting the Orpheus-Eurydice
myth” (43), the film reverses its main source’s Orphic affiliations.
Significantly, while retaining Poe’s essential notion of the posthumous
Madeline’s manifestation, Epstein transmutes her into anything but a
vitiated Orphic heroine. For Epstein’s Madeline, unlike her Poesque coun-
terpart, subverts the Virgilian-Ovidian Orphic tradition by successfully
initiating Roderick’s parallel rise from his Usher-Hades. But Epstein’s
radical inversion of Poe’s Orphic Madeline entails more than a negation
of that existential vacuum where she ultimately buries her Usher lineage.
For equally crucial to Epstein’s transmutation of Roderick’s cataleptic
sister into a liberating wife, and hence presumably a savior of non-Usher
blood, is evidently Poe’s “Poetic Principle,” whose inverted Orphism, like
that of H. D.’s “Eurydice,” sublimates female love into aesthetic hope by
making it “the ambrosia which nourishes [the artist’s] soul” (Poe, Essays
93). What Epstein’s Madeline recalls in this respect is Poe’s Eleonora
rather than her literary equivalent. For Eleonora, by inspiring her cousin-
poet to a heavenly vision of love, likewise incarnates the feminine ideal of
“The Poetic Principle.” But this is only half the point. For what catalyzes
Roderick’s artistic salvation is Madeline’s realization of Eleonora’s unful-
filled desire to transcend her mortal plight by “return[ing] visibly in the
watches of the night” (Poe, Poetry 471). Consequently, Epstein’s Usher
also inverts what Poe’s “Philosophy of Composition” uncannily claims
by suggesting that it is the resurrection of “a beautiful woman” rather
than her “death” that is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the
world” (Poe, Essays 19). But by relocating Madeline’s trajectory beyond
what Bruzelius terms “the myth’s fatal topography” (459), Epstein evokes
Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” specifically its tormented narrator’s
intimations of immortality: “In death—no! even in the grave all is not
lost” (Poe, Poetry 492). Paradoxically, then, only by appropriating Poe’s
inverted heart does Epstein (de)construct the ruined Usher House. The
result is a Poesque mutation, an offshoot-hybridity that strongly paral-
lels Sanders’ definition of appropriation by offering Epstein “as many
opportunities for divergence as adherence, for assault as well as homage”
(9). But this statement can be viewed in truer perspective if we analyze in
detail the hybrid suspension of antithetical Poesque preoccupations upon
which Epstein pivots his subversive cinematic vision.
The segment where Epstein’s Roderick entombs Madeline in his paint-
ing offers a resonant example. For this process of artistic consumption,
clearly interpolated from Poe’s “The Oval Portrait,” paradoxically subverts
An “Ambrosial Breath of Faery” 47
the aesthetics of death which MacAndrew sees haunting Poe’s psyche: “In
Poe, as in Hoffmann, art is ambiguously and mysteriously inimical to life”
(217). Significantly, what Poe’s Roderick concretizes in his abstract paint-
ing is a vaultlike interior, proleptic of the crypt where he eventually buries
Madeline. But Epstein, it should be stressed, inverts the death discourse of
Poe’s texts by undermining the mortal art that Roderick shares with his
“Usher” and “Oval” equivalents. In fact, Epstein depicts Roderick, fever-
ishly at work on Madeline’s portrait, in a series of close-ups that inter-
change painter and painting through what Thoret describes as “frontal
alternations” (142).2 For what this interplay of perspectives suggests is
that the artist’s deadly look is being counteracted by the portrait-Madeline
he is facing. As Blanchot states, “everything is at stake in the decision of
the gaze” (441). For by subverting, through her reciprocal staring, what
Bruzelius calls the “narrow economy” of patriarchal Orphic gazing (458),
the portrait-Madeline mutates into an active variant of Blanchot’s vision
of Eurydice as “the limit of what art can attain” (437). But by aesthetically
undermining Roderick’s lethal gazing through the portrait-Madeline’s
staring, Epstein distills his Poesque sources to their oxymoronic essence as
Allen S. Weiss defines it: “[W]hile reveling in the morass of the metaphys-
ics of decay, all the while [they] attempt the task of revealing the malleabil-
ity and reversibility of death” (22). What Epstein’s sentient painting evokes
is in fact Eureka’s animistic philosophy that annihilates any distinction
between “the Material and the Spiritual” (Poe, Poetry 1306)—a fantastic
notion that Poe bequeaths to Roderick. For Roderick’s belief in “the sen-
tience of all vegetable things,” Poe’s narrator stresses, “trespasse[s] upon
the kingdom of inorganization” (Poe, Poetry 327). So essential to Epstein is
the integration of biological life and inanimate matter that he paraphrases
what Poe claims about the narrator of “Loss of Breath” being “alive with
the qualifications of the dead—dead with the propensities of the living”
(Poe, Poetry 152) in his notes on the Usher adaptation: “Life and death are
the same substance, the same fragility. The spell of life, like that of death,
suddenly breaks. All the dead are but superficially dead” (La Chute 36).3
But Epstein intensifies Poe’s animistic vision, for his portrait-Madeline
eclipses her “Oval” counterpart’s “absolute life-likeliness of expression”
(Poe, Poetry 482) by animating into a blinking painting. According to
Aumont, “[S]he visibly blinks at least on two occasions” (138), but four-
teen times would be a more accurate estimate. More crucial, however,
to Epstein’s blinking portrait-Madeline is “The Poetic Principle,” where,
among the soul-stirring attributes of “the beauty of woman,” Poe includes
“the lustre of her eye” (Poe, Essays 93). For the portrait-Madeline’s optical
reaction is just as life affirming in its allusive subversion of the Orphic
Roderick’s deadly aesthetic.
48 Saviour Catania
Worth emphasising here is that Epstein, equally inspired perhaps

by Warm’s creed that “[f]ilms must be drawings brought to life” (qtd.
in Kracauer 352), re-visions “The Oval Portrait” in terms of his own
parallel concept, stating that “the photogenic is based on movement”
(“Magnification” 236). Significantly, Epstein differs from other contem-
porary film theorists such as Béla Balázs and Dziga Vertov by claim-
ing that cinematic movement animates not just lifeless bodies but even
material objects: “To things and beings in their most frigid semblance,
the cinema thus grants the greatest gift unto death: life” (“On Certain
Characteristics” 317).4 While Epstein’s Roderick, as a Poesque death
painter, becomes therefore an antifilmic agent, his portrait-Madeline,
being clearly a blinking painting, transcends her “Oval” equivalent’s life-
in-death by accruing a kind of life-after-death in Epstein’s filmic sense.
Only seemingly does Epstein’s portrait-Madeline share the “Oval” lady’s
painted predicament, for the former is never likewise “dead,” even as aes-
theticized “Life itself” (Poe, Poetry 484). Madeline’s is a filmic aestheti-
cization, and she is consequently, to use Epstein’s antithetical terms, “[e]
mbalmed in movement” (“Senses” 245). More crucial in this respect is
the close-up of Madeline’s facial cast which Epstein refers to as her “death
mask” (La Chute 46). 5 Despite its apparent immobility, this close-up,
being a negative image, inverts its light and dark areas, thereby creating a
ghostly cast of Madeline. The death mask’s eerie effect recalls in fact the
carriage sequence’s phantasmal landscape in F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu
(1922), with its similar reversal of the chiaroscuro texture. Significantly,
far from being a Metzian kind of cinematic synecdoche displaying “a
‘part’ [that] stands for the whole” (195),6 the close-up of Madeline’s death
mask is what Epstein defines as a “separated soul” (“For a New Avant-
Garde” 352), or what Deleuze calls an “Entity … abstract[ed] from all
spatio-temporal co-ordinates” (96). Hence Deleuze’s Epsteinian conclu-
sion: “the close-up turns the face into a phantom” (99; see figure 4.1).
Indeed, true to Epstein’s concept of “the close-up [as] the soul of the
cinema” (“Magnification” 236), Madeline’s death mask unleashes what
Thoret calls her “phantom-being” (142)7 in terms of Poe’s definition of
“the [Poetic] Principle [as] an elevating excitement of the Soul” (Poe,
Essays 93). For Madeline’s face refracts into three positive versions of its
death mask’s negative image that seem, through multiple exposure, to be
floating from her fatally fainting body. Bazin’s Cartesian notion of cin-
ematic “spatial unity” (50) suddenly collapses into the spectral spatiality
of Madeline’s facial fracture. Indeed, if “close-ups deify” (“For a New
Avant-Garde” 352), as Epstein contends, what they mould Madeline into
is a Deleuzian phantom deity that, like Francis Ford Coppola’s vampiric
count in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), appropriates what Powell terms
Figure 4.1 Madeline’s “phantom-being”
“the cinema’s own technological power of movement” (109). Looming

as a proleptic incarnation of Deleuze’s “movement-image” (ix), Epstein’s
Madeline imbues Roderick’s Usher-Hades with what she initially displays
in her blinking portrait—a filmic fluidity totally inaccessible to both her
“Usher” and “Oval” equivalents.
Epstein roots his inverted vision of Poe’s Orphic Madeline in what
Deleuze describes as French Impressionist cinema’s “general predilec-
tion for water,” a prevalent tendency that signifies this school’s “transi-
tion from a mechanics of solids to a mechanics of fluids” (43). Fluidity
is of the essence in Epstein’s anti-Orphic Usher, for it animates what
Bachelard calls Poe’s “dead waters” (45) with cinematic movement. As
Bachelard observes, “[i]magined water in Poe has all the traits of life
drawn toward death, of the life wanting to die” (47). No Poesque dying
water swamps Epstein’s Usher, however, for Madeline’s filmic fluidity
purifies its deadly properties. Hence Madeline’s self-cleansing, as a blink-
ing portrait, of the fatal fluid that Roderick appropriates for his palette
of death from the “liquid eye” of his Poesque equivalent (Poe, Poetry
321). To use Deleuze’s phrase, Epstein’s is a “liquid perception” (76) that
purifies its lethal Poesque counterpart by imbuing Madeline with the
antithetical fluidity animating “The Poetic Principle’s” “waving … grain-
fields” (Poe, Essays 93). Significantly, Epstein’s Madeline “dies” in slow
motion—a “death” that undulatingly oozes the grain-fields’ fluidity of
50 Saviour Catania
renewal. Since Epstein’s “slow-motion effects intermesh life and death”

(92),8 as Dessuant says, they strongly suggest that what ebbs away flows
back again.
Nowhere, however, is this more fluidly attested to than in Madeline’s
funeral sequence. This is a seminal moment in Epstein’s elemental aes-
thetics, for true to his vision of “[c]inema [as] all movement, without any
need for stability or equilibrium” (“Magnification” 236), not only does
he shoot the mourning procession in slow motion, but he also exploits
camera oscillation to intensify the sensation of a floating funeral. In fact,
Georges Lucas’s camera keeps “swaying backwards and forwards so that
we have the impression that we approach and constantly recede from any
fixed point” (Kline). Evoking Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927), with its
pendulum camera device swinging the French Convention into an emo-
tional deluge, Epstein’s buoyant handheld shooting likewise epitomizes
what Deleuze labels the “liquid image” (43) by infusing mourners and cas-
ket with the fluidity of Madeline’s wavelike veil manifestation. Madeline’s
coffin is anything but what Poe’s narrator calls a “mournful burden” (Poe,
Poetry 329), for imbued with its occupant’s fluid spirit, it rivals its equally
floating counterpart in the short film version of Usher (1928) directed by
James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber. What Leprohon intuits about
Epstein’s “living beings, how gracefully they seem to flow into objects”
(84),9 equally applies to his “dead” characters. Significantly, what
Madeline’s funeral oozes is the aqueous spirit which she clearly shares
with the Sein fisherfolk of Epstein’s docu-fiction Mor Vran (1931), or The
Sea of Ravens. Hence the funeral’s interpolated crossing of the lake, where
Madeline flows out of the closed coffin with her trailing burial veil to flut-
ter in slow motion over the water, thereby confirming Turvey’s view that
she cannot be “immobilized by coffin, mansion, or portrait” (28). The
startling effect is of a totentanz in reverse, a dance celebrating Madeline’s
rebirth in subverted “Usher” terms. Hence, Epstein’s low-angled tracking
shots of buoyant branches—an estranging viewpoint which Carl Theodor
Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) appropriates for its funeral sequence to likewise
animate the coffined corpse of David Gray. Subverting this seemingly
doom-laden landscape is its animating liquefaction. For this most liquid
of Epstein’s “floating spaces” (95), as Cohen calls them, ruffles “the still
waters of [Poe’s] tarn” (Poe, Poetry 327) through the fluidity of Madeline’s
renewed life. What Epstein’s liquidity reflects is an inverted vision of Poe’s
“unruffled tarn” text (Poe, Poetry 318).
Central to Usher’s ruffled spirit is Madeline’s fluid funeral. As
Crucianelli comments, “with the funeral procession in particular Epstein
creates an alternate spatial-temporal universe that is not so much ‘inner’
as ‘other’” (31). What evidently animates Madeline’s funeral is this
otherness—the Eurekian animism which Madeline, as an anti-Orphic

heroine, unleashes through her Epsteinian filmic potential. It is Madeleine
as Other, for instance, who wreathes her leafy funeral; for what Epstein’s
superimposed leaves, hovering in slow motion, suggest is the portrait-
Madeline’s animation of her withered floral frame. Significantly, what
counterpoints Roderick’s guitar playing, so catalytic to his aesthetic
internment of Madeline, is the latter’s blooming into wind-strewn foliage.
The “agenda” which Collura senses in the “leaves blowing around” the
Usher mansion is elementally Madeline’s who, absently present in what
Thoret calls her “foliated” essence (141),10 modulates Roderick’s appro-
priation of his literary equivalent’s “discordant melody” (Poe, Poetry
327) to her wind-blown leafy musicality. What “The Poetic Principle”
exalts as “the melody of [a woman’s] voice” (Poe, Essays 93), Epstein’s
Madeline dissolves into a windy variant of the metaphysical might Poe
finds in a simple female “sigh” (Poe, Essays 93). For Madeline, thriving
on what Hagan calls Epsteinian “aural perception” (50), reels in swirling
leaves. Suggestive of Madeline’s restless spirit, these oracular leaves are
equally proleptic of her stormy resurrection. For Madeline ascends from
her grotto of death by materializing in her swirling burial veil, thereby
reiterating her life-after-death analogy to “The Poetic Principle’s” “rus-
tling of [female] robes” (Poe, Essays 93) stirring the Poesque artistic soul
(figure 4.2).
Figure 4.2 Madeline as swirling veil-wraith

52 Saviour Catania
Epstein’s Usher teems with visual evocations of Poesque acoustics.

What Poe’s “Marginalia” terms music’s “breath of faery” (Poe, Essays
1435) finds, for instance, its visual echoing in Madeline’s wraith, whose
gusty breathing tunes Roderick’s snapping strings to her liberating waltz of
the wind. As Dessuant says, “Epstein’s House of Usher is a windy domain”
(94),11 for draperies, manuscripts, family tree, everything rides the crest of
Madeline’s billowing breath. Nor is the wood owl spared; in fact, repeated
inserts of its ruffled pale plumage seem to invert “The Raven’s” echolalia,
with its insistent “Nevermore” croaking (Poe, Poetry 83–86). The Epstein
of Usher is a bird in hopeful feathers. Hence the film’s radical inversion of
Poe’s Orphic Madeline. For what the latter leaves in her “whirlwind” wake
(Poe, Poetry 331) is the Usher inertia she elementally incarnates—a “rush-
ing gust” (Poe, Poetry 335) that swamps her lineage in eternal Stygian stag-
nation. Being “the double of Roderick” (310), as Hoffman states, Madeline
likewise moves in stasis. Hers is a stormy return that precipitates the static
motion of Usher’s self-implosion, thereby fulfilling what Kennedy calls
Poe’s “perception of death as an absolute horizon of existence” (211). But
by conversely evoking what Poe’s Oinos says in “The Power of Words”—
that “all motion, of whatever nature, creates” (Poe, Poetry 825)—Epstein’s
Madeline embodies what Levin describes as Poe’s “reassert[ion] [of] the
creative principle of the logos” (131). Once again, Epstein’s Usher exploits
Poe’s antithetical instinct to assert its own subverted vision. Significantly,
unlike Poe’s canoeing nereid whom the Island of the Fay darkly claims,
Epstein’s Madeline floats into Usher’s Isle of the Dead to billow back again
as a cleansing flame. Hers is a hauntology of elemental fluidity.
Madeline as Other also waxes the waning candles illuminating her fatal
portrait sitting into treelike columns of supernal tapers superimposed on
her funeral procession. Flickering without dripping, these candles suggest,
like the fluid cortège, that Madeline’s funereal landscape is not a Jamesian
altar of the dead reconceived in sylvan terms. For Madeline’s candle ritual,
unlike Julien Davenne’s in François Truffaut’s La Chambre Verte (1978),
quivers with her non-liebestodic rapture (figure 4.3). Madeline’s is a soul-
stirring flame, for as Abel argues, hers is a trajectory of “reversal and
liberation” (38). She even transcends in this vital respect Poe’s “radiant
Una” (Poe, Poetry 449), whose “nebulous light” (457) Death’s void extin-
guishes in Monos’s thanatographic narrative. It is Epstein’s Madeline who
truly radiates Una’s “light of enduring Love” (457). Manifesting like a
proleptic posthumous incarnation of the Deleuze-Guattari concept of art
as “a tool for blazing lifelines” (187), she propels Roderick to his aesthetic
redemption by unleashing upon him the “burning enthusiasms” (Poe,
Essays 93) that “The Poetic Principle” extols in Poe’s ideal woman. It is as
if Madeline, having mutated into the forest of candles sprouting from her
Figure 4.3 Epstein’s forest of candles
funeral procession, imbues the Usher mansion with her flaring resurrec-
tion. Hence Madeline’s fiery destruction of her blinking portrait self—the
ultimate elemental ordeal in her Epsteinian crucible that correspond-
ingly flashes into Roderick’s unseeing eyes the light of insight. Such is the
“Elysian” fate of the Poesque artist whose eulogy on Helen’s starry eyes
could easily be Roderick’s: “Their office is to illumine and enkindle— / My
duty, to be saved by their bright light, / And purified in their electric fire”
(Poe, Poetry 96–97). Equally applicable then to Epstein’s Roderick is what
Bruzelius says about the Orpheus of H. D.’s “Eurydice,” that “[h]e is not
the source of light that illuminates the object and allows art to be made,
but rather a thing himself illuminated by art” (449). Like H. D.’s Eurydice,
whom Poe’s Helen also heralds, Epstein’s Madeline is the living embodi-
ment of art, for she too has her own “spirit for light” (55). She is spiritually
an inverted ancestress of the candlelit Usher siblings whose fiery demise in
Roger Corman’s 1960 film version parallels Bachelard’s apocalyptic vision
of “[l]ove, death and fire … unit[ing] at the same moment” (17). Epstein’s
Usher is anything but Corman’s Bachelardian celebration of Poe’s Usher
annihilation, for its fiery ending actually subverts what Bachelard terms
“[d]eath in the flame” (19). Like Eliot’s, Epstein’s is an antithetical sen-
sibility that disassociates by association. Significantly, just like the Four
Quartets’ bardic persona, the Lord of Usher is “redeemed from fire by
fire” (196). For Madeline’s is a Pentecostal flame that scorches Roderick’s
54 Saviour Catania
aesthetic death to a phoenix-like rebirth. In Epstein’s words, “The House

of Usher erupts into its ashen light. Nothing horrible lurks there” (La
Chute 36).12 For Madeline kindles Usher’s regeneration by modulating
Roderick’s appropriation of his Poesque equivalent’s “leaden-hued” exis-
tence (Poe, Poetry 319) to the tonality of Epsteinian grisaille as Deleuze
defines it: “grey, or light as movement” (44).
True, in fact, to what Deleuze states about French Impressionist cin-
ema, that it differs from its German Expressionist counterpart by offer-
ing “an alternative, a spiritual choice instead of a struggle or fight” (113),
Epstein’s Usher entails no “violent struggle between light and darkness”
(44). Pivotal to Epstein’s light palette, and to his vision of Madeline as
an inverted Orphic heroine, is the halftone, or what Deleuze terms “the
alternating movement [of a] luminous grey” (44–45). What Madeline
significantly radiates is Epsteinian ashen light, or Deleuzian luminism in
its most effective metaphysical mobility—a light-movement that radically
modifies Poe’s expressionistic finale, with its Usher “shadows” shattered
by the bloody moon’s “wild light” (Poe, Poetry 335). For Epstein modu-
lates Madeline’s lightning-storm manifestation to a stellar reconciliation.
Again, in Epstein’s words, “[a] misty ray of light rises from the ruins to
the sky” (La Chute 76),13 thereby crucially effecting a light conversion to
what Epstein describes as “[a] starry tree of life” twinkling Usher’s ashes
(74; see figure 4.4).
Figure 4.4 Usher’s stellar resurrection

The effect is truly Deleuzian. Deleuze’s anti- Cogito statement, that

“it is not consciousness which is light, [but] the light which is conscious-
ness” (114), finds its parallel luminary in the enskied Madeline, rather
than in Epstein’s inverted Cartesian maxim, “I think therefore I am not”
(Le Cinéma 67).14 For Madeline’s ashen light filters through Roderick’s
Hades, which, as Poe’s narrator stresses, has “no affinity with the air of
heaven” (Poe, Poetry 319), thereby kindling the doomed Usher lineage into
a starry-tree awakening. As ashen light, Madeline catalyzes the ascent of
the House of Usher by radiating what Deleuze calls “a movement-colour”
(44). Epstein’s Usher, together with Jean Grémillon’s Gardiens de Phare
(1929), is the aesthetic culmination of a French sensibility of filmic light
that penetrates even Murnau’s Tartuffe (1925)—a film that transcends
its Expressionist roots through what Jacques Rancière, echoing Deleuze,
calls its “grayness of tone” (43). Epstein’s grisaille, like Murnau’s, is an
alchemical light modulation that distills the stagnant grayness of Poe’s
melancholy manor to its inverted fluid essence. For Madeline liquefies
the “gray stones” (Poe, Poetry 327) which Poe’s “Usher” bequeaths into
shifting shades of lambent gray.
By appropriating Poe’s “Usher” to his auteurist vision of a photogénie
that “does not allow for stasis” (“Magnification” 236), Epstein recreates
it as a Poesque mutation, thereby attesting to the essential paradox of
adaptation as Hutcheon astutely defines it: “It is repetition but without
replication, bringing together the comfort of ritual and recognition with
the delight of surprise and novelty” (173). What distinguishes even fur-
ther Epstein’s film adaptation as a work of art in its own right, and argu-
ably the oddest of filmed Ushers, is that it inspiringly thrives on Poe’s
subverted self for its inverted Poesque effects. Significantly, Madeline’s
ashen light, so crucial to the annihilation of her Poesque equivalent’s
leaden unfruitfulness, pulsates with what Lawrence terms Poe’s “ele-
mental consciousness” (83). For Madeline’s starry tree affirms Eureka’s
claim that “The Body and The Soul walk hand in hand” (Poe, Poetry
1306). As ashen light, Epstein’s Madeline comes in fact close to incar-
nating Poe’s Annie of “Landor’s Cottage,” with her “‘spiritual gray’ …
eyes … gleam[ing] [with the] enthusiasm” (Poe, Poetry 896) extolled by
“The Poetic Principle.” Like Annie, Epstein’s Madeline shines through
her Poesque flaming heart, or as “The Poetic Principle” puts it, through
“the altogether divine majesty—of her love” (Poe, Essays 94). In Epstein,
as in Poe, art becomes what the narrator of “Landor’s Cottage” intuits as
“romance”—a matter of “the heart of hearts” (Poe, Poetry 896). For only
by opening his heart’s eyes to Madeline’s twinkling love does Roderick
leave his Usher-Hades to enter the realm of “The Poetic Principle’s” ideal
artist, who likewise “recognises the ambrosia which nourishes his soul, in
56 Saviour Catania
the bright orbs that shine in Heaven” (Poe, Essays 93). Equally applicable
to Epstein’s Madeline is what Strauss remarks about Blanchot’s Eurydice,
that she becomes “the center of polar attraction to which the modern
Orpheus, in quest of being and in quest of creation, is drawn” (254).
For what Madeline offers Roderick is the “magical dependence” that
Blanchot’s Eurydice offers to Orpheus (438). What Madeline’s starlight
evokes is in fact the “astral lamp” (Poe, Poetry 384), which Poe’s “The
Philosophy of Furniture” extols as a haunting light source that similarly
“throws a tranquil but magical radiance over all” (387). Enchanted, like
Roderick, by the spell of Madeline’s starry call, we too soar with her
Poesque ambrosial soul.
Notes
1. See Hardy, ed., The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror. Reviews are not
specifically attributed to any of the contributors listed on the title page.
2 . My translation of “alternance frontale.”
3. My translation of “La vie et la mort ont la même substance, la même fragil-
ité. Comme la vie soudain se rompt, ainsi la mort se défait. Tous ses morts
ne sont morts que légèrement.”
4. Epstein transcends Vertov’s and Balázs’ belief that the camera connotes
human emotions by focusing on actors’ faces and bodies—for he claims that
the camera emotionally animates even inert objects by likewise focusing on
their surfaces, thereby transmuting them into object-characters.
5. My translation of “masque mortuaire.”
6. Metz claims that the close-up functions like the figurative device known
as “synecdoche” because it likewise “evokes the ‘whole’” by focusing on a
detail. See Metz 196.
7. My translation of “être-fantôme.”
8. My translation of “Par le ralenti, la va vie et la mort s’unissent.”
9. My translation of “Comme si la vie des êtres coulait doucement dans les
choses.”
10. My translation of “foliacée.”
11. My translation of “La maison Usher est chez Epstein, le territoire du vent.”
12 . My translation of “La maison Usher entre dans sa lumière cendrée. Il n’ya
là rien d’horrible.”
13. My translation of “Un rayon lumineux, flou, s’élève des ruines, monte vers
le ciel.”
14. My translation of “Je pense donc je ne suis pas.”
Works Cited
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1929. Vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. Print.
———. “Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la Maison Usher: Reversal and Renewal.”

Wide Angle 3.1 (1979): 38–44. Print.
Aumont, Jacques. “Le Portrait Absent.” Iris 14–15 (1992): 135–45. Print.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Trans. Alan C. M. Ross. London:
Quartet, 1987. Print.
———. Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter. Trans. Edith
R. Farrell. 2nd ed. Dallas, TX: Dallas Institute, 1999. Print.
Bazin, André. What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1967. Print.
Blanchot, Maurice. “The Gaze of Orpheus.” Trans. Lydia Davis. The Station
Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction and Literary Essays. Ed. George Quasha.
Barrytown, NY: Station Hill/Barrytown, 1999. 437–42. Print.
Bruzelius, Margaret. “H. D. and Eurydice.” Twentieth Century Literature 44.4
(1998): 447–63. Print.
Cohen, Keith. Film and Fiction: The Dynamics of Exchange. New Haven, CT:
Yale UP, 1979. Print.
Collura, Scott. “The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).” 2001. DVD Review.
Web. 24 March 2006. http://www.mania.com/fall-house-usher-1928_arti-
cle_26923.html.
Crucianelli, Guy. “Painting the Life out of Her: Aesthetic Integration and
Disintegration in Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la Maison Usher.” Monstrous
Adaptations: Generic and Thematic Mutations in Horror Film. Ed. Richard J.
Hand and Jay McRoy. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 2007. 20–34. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and
Barbara Habberjam. 3rd ed. London: Athlone, 2001. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone, 1988. Print.
Dessuant, Anne. “La Chute de la Maison Usher: Un Film Surréaliste.” Positif
Jan. 1993: 92–95. Print.
Eliot, T. S. The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot. London: Faber, 1969.
Print.
Epstein, Jean. “For a New Avant-Garde.” Trans. Stuart Liebman. Abel. French
Film Theory. 349–53. Print.
———. La Chute de la Maison Usher. Paris: L’Avant-Scène Cinéma, 1983.
Print.
———. Le Cinéma du Diable. Paris: Melot, 1947. Print.
———. “Magnification.” Trans. Stuart Liebman. Abel. French Film Theory.
235–41. Print.
———. “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie.” Trans. Tom Milne. Abel.
French Film Theory. 314–18. Print.
———. “The Senses I (b).” Trans. Tom Milne. Abel. French Film Theory. 241–
46. Print.
The Fall of the House of Usher. Dir. Jean Epstein. Perf. Marguerite Gance and
Jean Debucourt. 1928. All Day, 2001. ADED0618DVD. DVD.
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle). Collected Poems: 1912–1944. Ed. Louis L. Martz. 6th
ed. New York: New Directions, 1986. Print.
Hagan, John. “Cinema and the Romantic Tradition.” Millennium Film Journal
1.1 (1978): 38–51. Print.
58 Saviour Catania
Hardy, Phil, ed. The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror. Vol. 3. London: Aurum,
1985. Print.
Hoffman, Daniel. Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe. New York: Paragon, 1990.
Print.
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UP, 1987. Print.
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Practice.” 2008. Web. 8 Nov. 2008. http://www.ncl.ac.uk/crif/sfc/downloads/
conference/papers/Kline.doc.
Kracauer, Siegfried. “Caligari.” Film: An Anthology. Ed. Daniel Talbot. 4th ed.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. 340–60. Print.
Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature. New York: Penguin/
Heinemann, 1971. Print.
Leprohon, Pierre. Jean Epstein. Paris: Seghers, 1964. Print.
Levin, Harry. The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville. Athens: Ohio
UP, 1980. Print.
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UP, 1979. Print.
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Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982. Print.
O’Donoghue, Darragh. “On Some Motifs in Poe: Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la
Maison Usher.” Senses of Cinema 30 (2004). Web. 16 Feb. 2004. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews. Ed. G. R. Thompson.
New York: Library of America, 1984. Print.
———. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick Quinn. New York:
Library of America, 1984. Print.
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de la Maison Usher de Jean Epstein).” Jeune, Dure et Pure! Une Histoire du
Cinéma D’Avant-Garde et Expérimentale en France. Ed. Nicole Brenez and
Christian Lebrat. Paris: Cinématheque Française/Milan: Mazzotta, 2001.
140–45. Print.
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(2010): 182–91. Print.
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Print.
5
Rethinking Fellini’s Poe: Nonplaces, Media
Industries, and the Manic Celebrity
Kevin M. Flanagan
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” which
first appeared in Graham’s Magazine in 1841, briefly charts the unfor-
tunate life, and even more unfortunate death, of a pitiful character
called Toby Dammit. Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn refers to
the tale as “an amusing satire on things in general, the New England
Transcendentalists in particular [which] contains a defence [sic] by Poe
against the charge that he had never written a moral tale” (324–25).
Boisterous Toby Dammit, against the better judgment of his friend (the
narrator), takes his friend’s simple enough bet, which would have him
leap over an obstacle. Dammit acknowledges the challenge with his typ-
ical claim to assured success: “I’ll bet the devil my head …” At this,
an old man—the devil—materializes and sees the claim through to its
bitter end. In Poe’s telling, the devil is a suspiciously polite and patient
bystander who tempts Dammit to abandon caution (Poe 464–65). Lulled
into a false sense of security, and fortified by an affected air of invin-
cibility, Dammit makes a running leap over an oddly placed turnstile
that is at the end of a covered bridge. Dammit decapitates himself on an
outcropping that is above the obstacle. “In any event,” Quinn concludes,
“it [the story] is a trifle” (325). If it is a trifle, it is a dense one that teases
readers with something of a universal moral message, albeit one that is
enhanced by reading for contextual and cultural specificity.
While most of Poe’s major tales have been adapted for film and televi-
sion multiple times, even his more obscure and less celebrated works have
made it to the screen. Poe is possibly the most filmed American author of
60 Kevin M. Flanagan
the nineteenth century (Woolf 43). In particular, the 1960s saw a mas-
sive interest in Poe adaptations, notably with a cycle of films made by
entrepreneurial American filmmaker Roger Corman. However, Poe was
of interest to audiences and filmmakers outside of a purely American
market. Producer Raymond Eger recognized the international appeal of
Poe’s dark tales and set about organizing an all-star portmanteau film.
Though such luminaries as Joseph Losey, Orson Welles, and Luchino
Visconti were initially considered (these names in some ways helped lure
Federico Fellini to the project in the first place), the final product, Spirits
of the Dead (1968) features short contributions from Roger Vadim
(“Metzengerstein”) and Louis Malle (“William Wilson”), and, of course,
our man Fellini (Wiegand 114–15; Baxter 227–36; Lucas 30–39).
What is clear from the outset of Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” portion
is that he was not concerned with even an indirect approximation of
Poe’s short text. John C. Stubbs notes that “certainly very little of the
Poe story was used by Fellini and [screenwriter Bernardino] Zapponi:
only the protagonist’s name and the tale’s gristly ending” (208). On top
of this, Fellini and his collaborator were interested in maintaining the
original piece’s streak of irreverent humor—updated with the times, of
course—and continued to look to the Poe story’s insistence on putting
morality on trial. Millicent Marcus has noticed a similar trend across
Fellini’s adaptations: “In adapting literary works, what inspires him are
the loopholes and breaches in the text, the vacuums that invite the work
of Fellinian ‘in-fill’” (205–6). Thus, when this film is usually discussed,
the absences of direct correspondence to the original text cause scholars
and biographers to play that great “find the director” game, and as this
is Fellini, this method has yielded plenty of interpretive results. Fellini has
given us “something else,” something beyond, outside of, or extrinsic to
the Poe text.
Naturally, fidelity-based frameworks of literary adaptation are at a
disadvantage when faced with a text that hardly even bears a superfi-
cial resemblance to its source (Welsh xiv; McFarlane 3–13). The gritty
particulars—time period, environment, geographical locations, available
technologies—differ in most respects, as do the historical and cultural
contexts for judging Dammit’s moral compass. With faithful reverence to
a literary source a nonissue, there might be a temptation to merely read
the “something else” of “Toby Dammit” as Fellini’s typically/topically
excessive mind working in overdrive. However, auteur-based analysis of
Fellini is a largely tired game by this point. Often, scholars and biogra-
phers look at Fellini’s creations solely in terms dictated by the maestro
himself, to the detriment of the larger historical and institutional con-
texts in which he made movies.1
Rethinking Fellini’s Poe 61
Perhaps more useful, at least as a preliminary starting place, is

Robert Stam’s model for adaptation, which insists on the importance of
working through the seemingly peripheral sites of an adapted text—its
intertextual allusions, its contexts, the paratexts that help construct its
meaning—as an alternative to fidelity (1–17). For “Toby Dammit,” this
means extended attention to the represented spaces and their implica-
tions for a peculiarly 1960s mode of celebritydom, over and above an
exercise of placing the short film between other works in Fellini’s oeuvre.
Positioned thus, “Toby Dammit” is a concise guide to the spaces of inter-
national pop modernity as routed through a 1960s Italian media context.
In particular, the presentation of spaces of communicative mobility—the
airport at the beginning of the film, the car ride into Rome, and later
the spaces of the broadcast media (I’m speaking both of the television
center and the gaudy awards ceremony)—suggest an engagement with
an emerging understanding of transnational film production in the post-
war world. These spaces reveal a contradiction between the individual
creative talent—the film’s Toby Dammit, who is a delirious, egotistical
drunk—and the world of commodity. Again, this is not to posit that in
“Toby Dammit” Fellini constructs his titular character as his own exag-
gerated, lionized creative surrogate and places that in opposition to the
stifling spaces of public celebrity culture. Rather, this metatextual adap-
tation becomes directly emblematic of a transnational flow of ideas about
celebrity, of the dark, dangerous, and sublime side of popular stardom in
the face of a worldwide hype machine that tends to liquidate the coping
agency of the individual—or, if you prefer, a self-aware warning about
the prevalence of the manufactured emptiness of media industries.
In Poe’s short story, the Toby Dammit character is not shown to be
particularly famous, nor is his hubris tied to recognition by the public
at large. Fellini and Zapponi choose this figuration of celebritydom and
a contemporary periodization for a reason. Chris Rojek has described
celebrities as “cultural fabrications” and notes that “no celebrity now
acquires public recognition without the assistance of cultural intermedi-
aries who operate to stage-manage celebrity presence in the eyes of the
public” (10–11). Because of their always-already-processed qualities (the
fact that their fame depends on having been filtered through the various
channels of the communication media), the film “Toby Dammit’s” obses-
sion with its central character’s celebrity necessarily cues attention to the
spaces in which this figuration unfolds. The choice to make Toby a dif-
ficult thespian in the vein of Richard Burton (or perhaps as a caricatured
amplification of Stamp himself) is especially apt, since the 1960s repre-
sented the height in the international enviability, perhaps even notoriety,
of the eccentric British film star (Babington 10). While Stamp’s Toby has
clearly been made up to look like a vampiric likeness of Poe himself, the
boorishly drunken persona he exhibits correlates to the manic exploits of
such “hellraisers” (a moniker coined by Robert Sellers) as Oliver Reed,
Richard Harris, and Peter O’Toole (Sellers 9–10). These stars were given
to almost schizophrenic periods of public excess, combined with calcu-
lated retreats out of the limelight and into introspective worlds of their
own making. Given that ours is an age of microdocumentation on the
rise and fall and rise of such iconic names as Charlie Sheen and Lindsay
Lohan, one could say that this impulse continues to intensify.
After a title sequence among the clouds and some shots of an airplane
cockpit, “Toby Dammit” opens to its first extended sequence, which
depicts the star’s landing at Aeroporti de Roma. In the yellowy hues of
an unnatural twilight, the camera reveals the unsettling aspects of the
airport terminal. Arrival and departure notices appear as phantasms
on distracting screens; amid clearly heightened “types” (nuns inexpli-
cably in the midst of gale-force winds, Muslims praying toward Mecca,
South or Central American revolutionary soldiers in uniform) are the
tired masses of passengers, their dull liveliness set against the unset-
tling presence of two-dimensional cardboard cutouts of people, which
are interspersed through the crowds. The paparazzi recognize Dammit,
who is first shown with bleary eyes, captured in front of a bouquet of
gaudy flowers. The intrusive, blinding flashes of these journalists’ cam-
eras cause Dammit to fly into a rage, whereupon he throws his bag at a
photographer. Retreating onto an escalator, he apologizes but soon starts
performing a kind of hallucinogenic pantomime. He is met by film repre-
sentatives from Rome and taken to a car.
Broadly speaking, airports are what Walter Benjamin, in his sprawl-
ing Arcades Project, referred to as “zones of transitions”: like the act
of “falling asleep,” the airport represents a “threshold experience,” a
space in which the human in flight is grounded, ushered back into the
world of daily, earthbound being (Benjamin 856). 2 Anthropologist Marc
Augé, writing in relation to traditional concepts of space, has spoken of
the “non-places” of modernity, of public junctures for the circulation
of bodies and ideas: “high-speed roads and railways, interchanges, air-
ports” (34). David Pascoe brings this idea more specifically to bear on the
experience of the space of the airport, which he advocates as something
more than just a boring stop between the origin of a trip and its ultimate
destination:
Airports, lying as they do at the threshold of airspace, should be treated

not as the sterile transitory zones with which we are all familiar, but as
“vessels of conception,” for the societies passing through them. More than
any other building type of the last century, their being seems to depend
on cultural identification no less than architectural use, on their aesthetic
properties no less than technological function. (10)
In order to impart the importance of this sequence to my reading of the

film, it is worth considering another extended exploration of an airport
from a different art film of 1967, Jacques Tati’s Playtime. At the risk of
belaboring the point, the comparison is fitting in that both films con-
tain different uses of similar shots throughout (two examples would be
the opening titles against shots of clouds, or the later use of the urban
roundabout as a visual metonym for the constant, cyclical negotiations of
city life) and that both films seem to be about the conceptual and literal
presentation of new interpretive fabrics for experiences of the postwar
European city.
Both Playtime and “Toby Dammit” use the space of the airport as an
instructive, introductory place that, in their intense overdeterminations,
teach the spectating audience how to decode the events of the rest of
the film. For example, Playtime is an anti-individualistic film, in which
our expected protagonist, M. Hulot (Tati) constantly becomes lost, liq-
uidated, or swept up in the radically modernistic spaces and crowds of
Paris. As the title implies, the film carefully unfolds through several
ingenious set pieces that juxtapose gentle slapstick situations against the
foibles of technology and newness. All of this is neatly contained in the
airport sequence, which transitions the audience into the expectation for
a new aesthetic experience. The airport is not only a place of arrival but
also happens to be where Tati’s previous film Mon Oncle (1958) ended,
suggesting a personal lineage. 3 The airport sequence contains gags and
situations that consistently occur throughout the film—heightened, non-
naturalistic sound effects; the appearance of other men dressed uncannily
as Hulot (“the false Hulot”); the introduction of the group of American
tourists as embedded figures of expected wonderment; and digressive,
seemingly incidental conversations, acts, and jokes that happen in the far
corners of the cinematic frame, often in extreme distance.
Though the ends are different—“Toby Dammit” is not gentle and
playful, and rather than cast its spaces in terms of an ambivalent celebra-
tion of technological modernism, it reads hell and the horrific into what
it shows—both films work to acclimate the audience to what is at stake in
the particular film, well outside of the ego of the director. Thus situated,
the airport sequence in “Toby Dammit” not only establishes the phan-
tasmagorical world in which Toby’s mind operates, but also transitions
the audience into a diegesis in which a heightened reality caricatures the
isolating and alienating aspects of celebrity. While Playtime stresses the
liquidation of the individual when faced with massed activity, “Toby

Dammit” positions the airport as a place where the individual comes
under an intensified form of scrutiny. “Toby Dammit’s” airport sequence
foregrounds the internationalist circulation of ideas: different cultures
come into contact (people from the Middle East and South America min-
gle with Italians and Americans), but international popular culture and
its celebrities are shown to transcend other aspects of cross-cultural con-
tact. In its attention to star discourse and diversity, the airport becomes
the funneling point for the media literacies of the entire world.
These ideas are carried into the actual vessel of transportation, a
crowded limo, that takes Toby and his entourage of cultural emissaries
(the minister of films, his guide, and the two directors of his upcoming
film) to the TV studio. Here, Dammit, who is to star in the first explic-
itly Catholic spaghetti western, betrays himself as greedy, alcoholic, and
intensely ambivalent about his star persona. Despite the outlandish situa-
tion, the courting of a British star for an Italian film based on an American
genre is not an aberration. The late 1950s through the 1970s saw a wide
internationalization of Italian genres, with foreign stars headlining sword
and sandal, western, and gritty urban crime films heavily indebted to
other dominant cinematic traditions (Landy 324). English-speaking stars
such as Clint Eastwood, Cameron Mitchell, and Steve Reeves achieved
lasting popularity based on their Italian-produced genre films.
Amid pretentious talk of film semiotics, the car passes by an extreme
marriage of commercial art and industry: models pose in the latest fash-
ions in front of a heavily industrialized, messy construction site. During
this trip, the camera lingers on the grotesque merging of humanity and
commercial industry. Once closer to the city, the trip consists of conges-
tion, traffic accidents, broken-down cars, gypsies who flag down motor-
ists, and cross-dressed nuns in tiny cars. At times, the imagery bears an
uncanny resemblance to the famed vision of traffic detritus in Jean-Luc
Godard’s Week End (1967), a film which similarly positions the periph-
eral nonplaces of modern travel—in this case, the highway—as a poten-
tial nightmare. As Pierre Sorlin has discussed, many European art films
of the latter 1960s no longer show cities and towns as positive and geo-
graphically specific but rather use abstract, evocative, and even paranoid
imagery to suggest a collective anxiety, even mass neurosis, toward the
possible dangers of urban modernity (132–33). “Toby Dammit’s” Rome
does not promote the specificity found in Neorealist films of the imme-
diate postwar era, nor does it personalize Rome to the positive extent
found in later Fellini fantasies such as Roma (1972).
Dammit ends up at a television studio, the lion’s den of manufactured
images. He is subjected to a rather trivial interview about his career and
his reasons for being in Rome.4 In the TV studio, Fellini takes great pains
to expose the apparatuses behind broadcast TV—this is an invitation
to consider television media in its fullest dimensions as a carefully con-
structed and executed cultural technology. Says Steven Kovacs, “[I]t is as
if the very process of filmmaking were mirrored or even laid bare” (258).
While the airport is the emblematic space for the promise of physical
mobility realized by modernity (the ability to be transported across the
globe in mere hours), broadcast television promotes a different sense of
the mobile, one less physical but in the end more pervasive. Raymond
Williams has famously situated this as a shift to technologies which he
describes as fostering “an at-once mobile and home-centered way of liv-
ing,” and which, in their ability to transmit meanings from afar into
the personal space of the home, could be blanketed under the rubric of
“mobile privitisation” (19). Even more than radio and serialized print
media, television promises an always accessible, albeit commercially
compromised, gateway to culture. John Fiske explains the technology’s
modus operandi in saying that “television broadcasts programs that are
replete with potential meanings, and … it attempts to control and focus
meaningfulness into a more singular preferred meaning that performs
the work of the dominant ideology” (1). Moreover, broadcast (presum-
ably commercial) television operates under an assumed ideological unity
that tends to position its diverse audiences into a single subjective frame
(55). Television can manufacture and presume celebrity as well as pre-
empt viewer interpretation and reception.
My reason for bringing these broader statements about television
into this analysis of “Toby Dammit” is to help make sense of this very
complex, seemingly contradictory scene. During his interview, Dammit
exposes his flaws (his abuse of drugs, his forthright hatred of his fans)
in a kind of halfhearted attempt at subverting the expectations of the
format (the TV chat show). Yet the stoic visages and lack of surprise from
the TV crew suggest the advanced capitalist mediascape’s capacity to
consume, or to use Fredric Jameson’s Taylorist/Fordist term, “manage,”
anxieties about the public face of celebrity.5 Thus, the television inter-
view sequence serves to show how the individual agency of the subject in
question—a self-destructive Toby Dammit—is powerless against televi-
sion’s larger goal of commodifying, marketing, and indeed repacking the
actor back to an all-too-complicit public.
The film’s major set piece, an international awards ceremony at which
Dammit is to be honored, combines thematic elements from the previ-
ous sequences. As at the airport, it is a kind of antispatial “nonplace.”
The event appears to be taking place in an indeterminately expansive
black abyss. It is Dammit’s prison, his externalized personal hell. Like
the uncomfortable limo ride, Dammit is surrounded by members of the

film industry, whose praise and support he despises. As with the televi-
sion interview, the whole affair becomes an occasion to put Dammit’s
celebrity on display in front of an audience that seems blind to his rage
and frustration. The various supernatural elements accentuated by this
sequence—the little girl with the white ball as innocent devil, Dammit’s
generally surreal and spatially abstract subjectivity caused by drugs and
his developing madness—are attempts to cope with the massive, sinister
pressure of being a celebrity. Almost dead drunk, the Dammit character
endures the seedy spectacle of the event, even falling asleep at one point.
He is roused by the crowd upon the announcement of his award, which
is in support of his generally excellent acting and his service of interna-
tionalizing the Italian film industry. He stumbles to the stage, quizzically
accepts the award, and flees the event in disgust. The absurdities of the
rest of the film—the grotesque bodies, the overwhelming glitz and glim-
mer of the popular media, the continuous spectacle on which this adapta-
tion rests—are contained in this sequence, which is part runway fashion
show and the rest risible solipsism.
Humiliated and literally driven to total madness (by his new Ferrari,
of course), Dammit loses his head to the devil, being decapitated as he
attempts to jump across a bridge. But unlike in Poe’s story, it is not just
the protagonist’s flawed boisterousness that is at fault, but an entire sys-
tem of manufactured celebrity, herein shown on the brink of collapse.
While a reading of “Toby Dammit” might suggest that this fate is excep-
tional, only appropriate to the circumstances of Fellini and Stamp’s mor-
bid 1960s Poe surrogate, Marc Augé sees this impulse as redolent of our
general attempts at making sense of space and place in an age of uncer-
tainty. He writes,
In one form or another, ranging from the misery of refugee camps to the
cosseted luxury of five-star hotels, some experience of non-place (indis-
sociable from a more or less clear perception of the acceleration of his-
tory and the contraction of the planet) is today an essential component of
all social existence. Hence the very particular and ultimately paradoxical
character of what is sometimes regarded in the West as the fashion for
“cocooning,” retreating into the self: never before have individual histo-
ries (because of their necessary relations with space, image and consump-
tion) been so deeply entangled with general history, history tout court.
(119–20)
What Poe could not have foreseen is this intense sense of public visibil-
ity—a constant circulation of ideas, images, and people—that ignites a
retreat into the self. For Fellini and Stamp’s Dammit, a private life is not
an option. The character is compelled to seek a reckless end. This attempt

to cope in itself provides limited opportunities:
In this situation, any individual attitude is conceivable: flight (back home,

elsewhere), fear (of the self, of others), but also intensity of experience
(performance) or revolt (against established values). It is no longer pos-
sible for a social analysis to dispense with individuals, nor for an analy-
sis of individuals to ignore the spaces through which they are in transit.
(Augé 120)
Dammit feels the pressures and tries to ignore the spaces. In the end, the
devil gets his due.
If Poe’s short story is an amusing send-up to the foibles of an over-
reliance on self-centered lifestyles like those encouraged by literary
transcendentalism, then Fellini’s film is a grimly comic exploration of
the changing world of media (and the shifting role of celebrities) at the
dawn of the information age. Given the massive visibility of this new
breed of celebrities—whose stories and images circulate across cultural
contexts and national boundaries—it suggests that the self-medicating
solution (the retreat into one’s own dark recesses, as an affront to the
radically public quality of mediascapes) is as problematic as the whole-
hearted embrace of a superficial public life. For Fellini, as with Poe, you
are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
Acknowledgments
A version of this chapter was presented at the 2009 Literature/Film
Association Conference in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Thanks to Samuel J.
Umland for some initial thoughts and encouragement.
Notes
1. This is borne out by the popularity of books of interviews with Fellini,
including Fellini on Fellini (1976), Federico Fellini: Comments on Film
(1988), and Federico Fellini: Interviews (2006), each of which enforces the
interpretive frameworks favored by the director.
2 . This passage appears in the “First Sketches” section, note “M, 26.”
3. See AlSayyad 108. Says AlSayyad, “Playtime starts where Mon Oncle leaves
off. The old world has been banished to the provinces with Hulot, and only
the new world of glass, plastic and electro-mechanical living remains.”
4. In one of Stamp’s autobiographies (Double Feature), he discusses having an
interview encounter during the filming of “Toby Dammit” uncannily like
the actual one in the film. See Stamp 308.
5. Here, Jameson is amplifying Norman Holland’s position in The Dynamics of

Literary Response: “Hence Holland’s suggestive conception of the vocation
of the work of art to manage this raw material of the drives and the archaic
wish or fantasy material.” In particular, [this model] “allows us to grasp mass
culture not as empty distraction or ‘mere’ false consciousness, but rather as a
transformational work on social and political anxieties and fantasies which
must then have some effective presence in the mass cultural text in order sub-
sequently to be “managed” or repressed.” See Jameson 141.
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6
Evolutions in Torture: James Wan’s Saw
as Poe for the Twenty-First Century
Sandra Hughes
Poe begins his tale “The Pit and the Pendulum” with a chilling Latin epi-
graph, which reads, in part, “Here an insatiable band of torturers long
wickedly nourished their lusts for innocent blood” (Levine and Levine
60). Poe was, in fact, one of the pioneers of fiction about torture—about
the psychology of both tortured and torturer—and that aspect of his
work continues to inspire twenty-first-century directors such as James
Wan, whose film Saw made its debut in 2004.1
Although Saw is not an acknowledged adaptation of “The Pit and
the Pendulum,”2 the similarities between the nineteenth-century tale and
the twenty-first-century film are striking: the stories are set in enclosed,
subterranean spaces and involve the protagonists’ slow struggle toward
full comprehension of the largely psychological torture to which they
are being subjected. Moreover, in both narratives, there is theoretically
some higher moral purpose to the torture, the sensations of the captives
are explored in vivid detail, and the torturers seem to derive voyeuristic
pleasure from watching the victims’ suffering. Despite these similarities,
Wan’s film goes beyond even Poe’s worst imaginings in its attempts to
appeal to a modern audience.
“The Pit and the Pendulum” is set in a dungeon of the Holy Inquisition
in Toledo. The two principal characters in Saw, Adam Faulkner and
Lawrence Gordon, are tortured in a sort of modern-day dungeon: a large,
filthy bathroom in the basement of an abandoned building. The narrator
from the Poe tale and the protagonists from the film all regain conscious-
ness, whether from a swoon or from drug-induced sleep, in a dark space
72 Sandra Hughes
where they have been confined. Though the movements of Poe’s narra-
tor are primarily limited by darkness and his own physical frailty, each
Wan character is actually chained to a pipe in the bathroom by a large
manacle around one ankle. Adam and Lawrence have been strategically
positioned on opposite sides of the room, separated by a distance of some
ten or twelve feet. The fictional prisons of Poe and Wan both contain
something particularly terrifying at the center of the space—in the tale,
a pit harboring unnamable horrors, and in the film, as the characters
discover after finding a light switch, the gruesome corpse of an apparent
suicide, who is holding a gun and surrounded by a large pool of blood.
These focal points of terror bring into sharp relief the fact that the
torture in store for the subjects will be more psychological than physical.
Although the protagonists do suffer bodily during their captivity, either
from the sting of the blade or from the electrical current flowing through
the manacles, the greatest pain that they must endure originates within
their own minds. In both narratives, an important aspect of the torture
involves having the characters come to the slow realization of the exact
nature of the torture that they must undergo.
Knowing that he is in the hands of the Inquisition, the narrator of
“The Pit and the Pendulum” first speculates that he has been buried
alive, saying, “I longed, yet dared not to employ my vision. I dreaded the
first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon
things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see”
(493). The narrator’s first insight into his true situation occurs when he
trips and falls at the “very brink of a circular pit,” which he describes as
follows: “[M]y chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips, and
the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than
the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, my forehead seemed bathed
in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my
nostrils” (496). After having discovered the pit by accident, he concludes
that the Inquisitors have slated him for psychological rather than physi-
cal torture: “To the victims of [the Inquisition’s] tyranny, there was the
choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hid-
eous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter” (496). Indeed, the
efficacy of the psychological torture quickly becomes apparent since the
narrator imagines his situation to be worse than it actually is: “Shaking
in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall—resolving there to per-
ish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now
pictured many in various positions about the dungeon” (497).
Having foiled his torturers’ design that he meet death in the pit, he
wakes again to find himself lying flat on his back, securely bound, and
looking upward toward a figure of Father Time on the ceiling some thirty
Evolutions in Torture 73
or forty feet above. Although he initially fancies that the pendulum held
by Father Time is moving, perhaps an hour elapses before he comes to an
understanding that the great sharpened blade is descending on a trajec-
tory that will eventually bisect his torso. Having discerned the nature of
this new form of torment, he must again endure an agony that is primar-
ily psychological:
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal,
during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel! Inch by inch …
down and still down it came! Days passed—it might have been that many
days passed—ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid
breath.… I prayed—I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy
descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward
against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. (499–500)
The narrator has, by this point, grown so desperate as to attempt to has-

ten his own death, even by means of such a horrific instrument.
The victims of the torture in Saw, photographer Adam Faulkner and
doctor Lawrence Gordon, are not so different from Poe’s psychologically
embattled narrator; they, too, undergo a prolonged process of working
out what type of torture they will be subjected to, but their uncertainty is
greater than that of Poe’s narrator because they lack even the basic knowl-
edge of who is holding them captive and why. The first clue comes when
Adam and Lawrence listen to cassette tapes their captor has left for them.
Adam’s tape says, “Rise and shine, Adam. You’re probably wondering
where you are. I’ll tell you where you might be. You might be in the room
that you die in. Up until now, you simply sat in the shadows, watching
others live out their lives.… So are you going to watch yourself die today,
Adam? Or do something about it?” (Wan 7). When Lawrence, in turn,
plays his tape from the killer, it says, “Dr. Gordon, this is your wake up
call. Every day of your working life, you have given people the news that
they are going to die soon. Now you will be the cause of death.… If you
do not kill Adam by 6:00, then Alison and Diana [Lawrence’s wife and
child] will die.… And I’ll leave you in this room to rot” (Wan 7–8).
The stunned captives proceed to follow clues that lead them to discover
a pair of hacksaws in the toilet tank next to Adam, and both men make
frantic and futile attempts to cut through their chains with the saws.
Then the horrible truth dawns on Lawrence: he and Adam are being held
by a serial killer named Jigsaw who has never been caught—who had,
indeed, tried to frame Lawrence several months earlier for committing
the murders. Jigsaw’s signature as a killer is that he never murders the
victims himself but rather forces them to become the agents of their own
74 Sandra Hughes
deaths. Knowing his captor’s identity helps Lawrence discern what the
saws are actually for: “He doesn’t want us to cut through our chains. He
wants us to cut through our feet” (Wan 9).
Lawrence has now come to the full realization of the nature of the psy-
chological torture to which he will be subjected: if he wants his wife and
child to be released, he must kill his fellow captive, Adam; if he wants
to free himself, he must saw through his own leg to escape the chains.
Adam, for his part, must try to convince Lawrence not to kill him, even if
that means sacrificing the latter’s wife and child. Adam, in other words,
is chained in a room with someone who has a powerful motive to kill
him, and the only way to escape is to saw off his foot. These are the
horrifying choices that each man must face. The psychological stressors
are such that, like Poe’s narrator, they might almost wish to hasten the
descent of the blade.
If “The Pit and the Pendulum” and Saw share this element of psycho-
logical torture, they also share the theme of torture being conducted in
order to achieve a higher moral purpose. The purpose of torture during
the Spanish Inquisition is obvious—to cause the captives to renounce
their heretical beliefs and embrace the one true church. At least in
theory, the Inquisitors saw themselves as working toward the laudable
goal of preserving the captives’ souls. Jigsaw also believes he is teach-
ing important lessons through torture. As a terminal cancer patient of
Dr. Gordon’s, Jigsaw has come to see the value of life, so he preys on drug
addicts, people with feigned illnesses, and people who have attempted
suicide in order to teach them not to take their survival—the privilege of
living—for granted. As a surveillance photographer, Adam lives his life,
as Jigsaw says, “in the shadows,” watching others live instead of living
himself. And Dr. Gordon not only remains detached from his patients,
but also from his own family, whose needs have been subordinated to his
career and his fantasies about an affair with a medical student. Like the
Inquisitors, Jigsaw tortures in an attempt to “save” his victims.3
One of the things that makes the Poe and Wan narratives so compel-
ling is that they explore in detail the sensations and mental processes
of those undergoing the torture. The protagonists all suffer disorienta-
tion, sensory deprivation, and lapses in memory or consciousness; they
progress through states ranging from fascination to apathy to despair;
and they must work through moments of intense revulsion and use items
around them to escape before their very limited time expires. Poe, in
particular, focuses on the bizarre sensory perceptions and deprivations of
his narrator in a way that creates a disturbing sense of immediacy for the
audience. When, for example, the sentence of death is pronounced by the
Inquisitors, their voices dissolve into “one dreamy indeterminate hum”
(491), after which the narrator loses his sense of hearing altogether. He
must rely entirely on sight, and that an eerily distorted type of vision:
I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white—

whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words—and thin even to
grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness—of
immoveable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that
the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw
them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my
name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. (491)
Poe biographer Kenneth Silverman describes ways in which the author

uses his “characteristic poetic effects” to heighten the audience’s sense of
the torment the narrator is undergoing:
[T]he captive narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” experiences the
descending blade by smell and sound, by how it “hissed as it swung through
the air.” Poe kept the menacing pendulum aurally present for the reader
by deploying hissing words like “surcingle,” “cessation,” “crescent” and
“scimitar,” or in such sentences as “With a steady movement—cautious,
sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage and
beyond the sweep of the scimitar.” (206)
The film, on the other hand, forces members of the audience to iden-
tify with the torture subjects not so much through choice of language
as through visual and sound effects. When Adam and Lawrence are in
darkness, we are in darkness, for we face a completely black screen. When
they must rely on only the sense of hearing to understand their surround-
ings, so must we, and this sensory deprivation does, in fact, significantly
heighten the terror for the audience as well as for the protagonists.
Certainly, both tale and film create a sense of horror and inevitability
in the audience once the instruments of torture—the sharp blades of the
pendulum and the saw—are introduced, and both narratives emphasize
voyeurism on the part of the torturers. We know that Poe’s narrator is
being watched closely, for as soon as the design of having him fall to a
horrible fate in the pit is frustrated, “there c[omes] a sound resembling
the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint
gleam of light flashe[s] suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly
fade[s] away” (496). The narrator likewise imagines that his captors arrest
the descent of the pendulum whenever he falls into a swoon so as to pro-
long his agony. Moreover, when he demonstrates his cleverness through
escaping death by the pendulum, his eagerly watching captors immedi-
ately activate the mechanism that will cause the walls to contract.
76 Sandra Hughes
It is important to note that, as readers, we participate to some degree

in the voyeuristic pleasures of the torturers because we too watch the nar-
rator’s every move, and though we sympathize with the narrator’s suffer-
ing on one level, we are also permitted to observe it with a certain degree
of detachment. As Foucault explains in Discipline and Punish, “perma-
nent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible,
as long as it c[an] itself remain invisible” carries with it great power (214).
How better to describe a reader’s perspective on the tale?
The levels of surveillance and voyeurism are disturbingly multiplied
in the cinematic narrative. Indeed, the film’s title— Saw —is, I would
argue, a double reference to the implement of torture and to this theme
of voyeurism. First, Detective Tapp, a police officer who had become
obsessed with the case after Jigsaw killed his partner and Tapp lost his
job on the force, hires Adam to follow and photograph Lawrence. Tapp
simultaneously conducts his own twenty-four-hour video surveillance of
Lawrence’s residence because he is convinced that Lawrence is the killer.
Meanwhile, Zep, an orderly from the hospital where Lawrence works,
has been forced by Jigsaw to hold Lawrence’s wife and child at gunpoint
in the doctor’s residence to await the outcome of “the game,” and to
execute the wife and child if Lawrence fails to kill Adam by six o’clock.
Zep is the one who operates the camera that is focused on the bathroom
in which Lawrence and Adam are imprisoned because he must, after
all, know the outcome of their struggle. So Tapp, in keeping Lawrence’s
house under surveillance, is thereby watching Zep, who is in turn watch-
ing Lawrence and Adam. The Jigsaw killer is, of course, also watching
Lawrence and Adam, and we, the audience, are watching the watchers.
The film features alternating scenes of live action, flashbacks, and grainy
surveillance video of the victims in the bathroom, and often the view
from the camera is over the shoulder of a character who is watching
someone else—when, for example, we view the surveillance footage of
Lawrence’s house over Detective Tapp’s shoulder.
And if we watch with horror, we also watch with fascination. Jennifer
Ballengee, writing about “The Pit and the Pendulum,” points out that
“[t]he eyes of the tormentors watching the progress of the narrator’s tor-
ture also recall the eyes of those witnesses located outside the text; the
witnessing reader, whose voyeuristic engagement in reading this descrip-
tion of torture implicates him or her in this spectacular conflation of
pain and art” (37). In fact, as Wheeler Winston Dixon has suggested in
his article “The Site of the Body in Torture/The Sight of the Tortured
Body: Contemporary Incarnations of Graphic Violence in the Cinema
and the Vision of Edgar Allan Poe,” “the images presented in graphic
horror films retain a margin of audience safety, allowing us to engage
in the play of torture, dismemberment, and sadomasochistic oscillation

between the figure under torture and the ground it seems to occupy
without true physical risk” (67).4 Audience members are also, it seems
to me, in the privileged position of being able to consider their own
answer to one of the many questions implicitly posed by Poe’s and Wan’s
narratives—namely, “What are you willing to do to survive?”—without
having to face any of the difficult consequences of those speculations.
Interestingly, both narratives of survival have unexpected or “twist”
endings that strain credulity. At the end of Poe’s tale, as the narrator is
being forced toward the pit by the contracting walls of the chamber, he
is literally pulled back from the brink of death by General Lasalle in a
grand deus ex machina flourish:
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as
of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders!
The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell,
fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army
had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies. (505)
And the ending of Wan’s film is every bit as unbelievable as that of the
tale. Lawrence saws off his foot in an effort to escape and go to the aid
of his family, leaving Adam as the only victim in the bathroom. As Adam
watches in horror, the “corpse” that has been lying in the middle of the
room for the entire film slowly rises from the floor and peels off a mask
that had simulated the head wound of the apparent suicide. The figure
proves to be Jigsaw himself. As the killer walks toward the door of the
prison, we hear his words in voice-over: “Most people are so ungrate-
ful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore” (Wan 57). Then Jigsaw pro-
nounces sentence on Adam, emphatically stating “game over” (57) as
he closes the door, burying Adam alive. Certainly, the notion of being
buried alive is nothing if not Poesque.
However, in spite of Wan’s significant debt to Poe, differences exist
in the two narratives that represent what I would call “evolutions” in
torture. In Saw, the voyeurism is more immediate in that the torturer
is physically present in the room as opposed to watching from on high.
The doctor in the film has an external motive to succeed in his escape
because his family is being held hostage, and his intense concern for their
well-being makes his own captivity even more intolerable. This differ-
ence also leads to an escalation in violence: in Poe’s story, the Inquisitors
impose the penalty of the pendulum, with its threatened act of bisecting
the torso, on the narrator, whereas the climactic moment in Saw involves
the doctor’s desperate act of self- dismemberment, undertaken to free
78 Sandra Hughes
him to help his family. Unlike the single torture subject in “The Pit and
the Pendulum,” in Saw there are two men being held in the “dungeon”
together, and they must cooperate if they are to survive. Thus Saw poses
a new question: In a life-or-death scenario, is it worse to be absolutely
alone or to be forced to cooperate with someone you cannot trust? Poe
gives his tale an uncharacteristically positive resolution: the narrator is
spared thanks to the intervention of General Lasalle. In the film, we get
no definitive answer about what happens to the two protagonists. We
may perhaps assume that the doctor bleeds to death while trying to go
for help, and the photographer starves to death in the bathroom, but the
ending of Saw is far bleaker in any case.
Further discrepancies between the two narratives move beyond plot
into larger considerations of genre. As Linda Hutcheon observes in A
Theory of Adaptation, “[i]n reading, we gather details of narrative, char-
acter, context, and the like gradually and sequentially; in seeing a film …
we perceive multiple objects, relations, and significant signs simultane-
ously, even if the script or music or soundtrack is resolutely linear” (130).
Although in “The Pit and the Pendulum” we are given the details of the
narrator’s total sensory experience—not only sight, sound, and smell,
but also touch and taste—we can only gain awareness of those senses one
at a time. In contrast, as we watch the doctor in the film place the hack-
saw against his shin and begin to cut, we experience with absolute simul-
taneity the room’s sickly, flickering florescent light; the sound of sawing;
the doctor’s muffled cries of pain; and throbbing industrial music. In
the words of Bruce Morrissette, “Has the novel ever evoked, even in its
most intense action sequence, the physical empathy affecting the muscles,
the glands, the pulse, and breathing rate that chase, suspense, and other
extremely dynamic sequences in film bring about in most, if not all view-
ers?” (qtd. in Hutcheon 130–31). This physical response in viewers of the
film is, moreover, heightened by the circumstance of watching the movie
with strangers in a theater. Though the literary text may be suspenseful,
the escalation of fear due to shared emotional reaction—the sharp intake
of breath of everyone in the theater, for example—brings a new level to
the experience. Such a reaction is not produced even by reading “The Pit
and the Pendulum” aloud to a gathered audience.
So does this mean that the Poe text is inferior to the film? No, merely
that the audience’s type of engagement with the story is different. Poe’s
story creates more of an intellectual or imaginal reality, whereas the film
creates a more physical one—a greater sense of direct participation in the
experience. If the tale forces you to imagine what is in the pit, the film
forces you to look into it. While one could certainly argue, as I did previ-
ously, that the terrors of the mind are worse than the terrors of the body,
and that reading the tale offers a more satisfying intellectual experience
overall, certainly the film would appeal more to a mass audience. Saw
grossed over $55 million in the United States and roughly an additional
$48 million in foreign markets (“Saw”). Poe, despite his popularity with
modern audiences, has never attracted such a wide readership.
Ultimately, then, Poe’s work survives not only because of its own mer-
its as a literary text, but also because of its extreme adaptability. Even the
newest, edgiest products of popular culture resonate with the influence of
the nineteenth-century writer, and Poe continues to thrive in a different
era, in a new medium, with an expanded audience. Appearing in an age
when the intensity of surveillance has substantially increased, when the
genre of “torture porn” is ascendant and draws ever more bloodthirsty
audiences, James Wan’s Saw is Poe for the twenty-first century.
Notes
1. This chapter will only concern itself with the original film in the Saw fran-
chise, which was cowritten by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, directed by
Wan, and featured Whannell in a leading role. Later films in the franchise
move away from psychological torture toward intense physical torture and
could arguably be placed within the genre of “torture porn.”
2 . Saw script coauthor Leigh Whannell did, however, openly acknowledge
Poe’s influence on a later film project called Dead Silence: “The town that
the film takes place in is called Ravens Fair. It’s just dripping with Edgar
Allan Poe and [H]ammer horror film references” (Whannell).
3. In a 2004 interview accompanying the release of Saw, Whannell explains
that “[i]n one respect, the villain … is not a serial killer. His aim is actually
for people to live. He wants people to go through these little games but he
wants them to come out the other side alive.” (Wan and Whannell).
4. In a similar vein, as Laura Tanner notes in Intimate Violence: Reading Rape
and Torture in Twentieth-Century Fiction, “[a]rt invites the audience’s par-
ticipation in its created worlds while offering that audience the comfort of
aesthetic distance; that distance allows the reader or viewer to accept the
work’s invitation to titillation without appearing to become implicated in its
trafficking with violence” (18).
Works Cited
Ballengee, Jennifer R. “Torture, Modern Experience, and Beauty in Poe’s ‘The Pit
and the Pendulum.’” Modern Language Studies 38.1 (2008): 26–43. Print.
Dixon, Wheeler Winston. “The Site of the Body in Torture/The Sight of the
Tortured Body: Contemporary Incarnations of Graphic Violence in the
Cinema and the Vision of Edgar Allan Poe.” Film and Philosophy 1 (1994):
62–70. Print.
80 Sandra Hughes
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan
Sheridan. 1975. New York: Vintage, 1979. Print.
Levine, Stuart, and Susan Levine, eds. The Short Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe: An
Annotated Edition. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Poe: Poetry and Tales. Ed.
Patrick F. Quinn. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1984.
491–505. Print.
Saw. Dir. James Wan. Perf. Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, and Leigh Whannell.
Lion’s Gate, 2004. DVD.
“Saw.” Box Office Mojo, n.d. Web. 17 Aug. 2011.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.
New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. Print.
Tanner, Laura E. Intimate Violence: Reading Rape and Torture in Twentieth-
Century Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Print.
Wan, James, and Leigh Whannell. Saw. The Internet Movie Script Database, n.d.
Web. 7 Mar. 2009.
———. Interview by Paul Fischer. “James Wan, Leigh Whannell for Saw.” Dark
Horizons 25 Oct. 2004. Web. 7 Dec. 2010.
Whannell, Leigh. Interview by Paul Fischer. “Leigh Whannell for Dead Silence.”
Dark Horizons 15 Mar. 2007. Web. 11 Mar. 2011.
7
A Poe within a Poe: Inception’s
Arabesque Play with “Ligeia”
Dennis R. Perry
While this paper discusses Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) as an

adaptation of Poe’s “Ligeia,” Nolan neither cites nor perhaps even rec-
ognizes it as such. Like Poe’s tale, Inception involves a man so obsessed
with his dead wife that he regularly brings her “back to life” through
drug-induced dreaming. Adaptation involves the semantics of textual
relations—or intertextuality. Thomas Leitch notes how adaptation can
veer off into allusion, that is, how a film can incorporate a source with-
out attempting an adaptation proper. Allusion to a “source” can also
involve another function of adaption, that of serious play. Such play can
be the pleasure of the adaptor’s reinterpreting and then recreating a text
(Hutcheon 8), or “riffing,” in the sense of improvising, on that source
(Sanders 10–11). Play in this musical sense suggests adaptation as perfor-
mance, while in another way, to “play” is to manipulate for one’s own
interests—like “playing the horses.” Certainly Nolan takes advantage
of these various ways of playing with “Ligeia” as he incorporates Poe’s
themes, together with an appropriate arabesque complexity of design and
self-reflexivity.
One playful category of allusion is analogue, referring to unacknowl-
edged resemblances between a source text and a film. In the case of
Inception, while Nolan reworks key points from “Ligeia,” the film is not
a traditional adaptation. In fact, he alludes to other Poe texts as well as
other film genres and ancient mythologies to create a pastiche. Hence,
to borrow an image of Bakhtinian intertextuality described by Leitch,
“each text [is] … afloat upon a sea of countless other texts from which it
82 Dennis R. Perry
could not help borrowing (Leitch, “Adaptation” 63). Such a sea of texts,
like flotsam, is available for salvaging. One dictionary definition of flot-
sam mentions “residue,” taking us back into the realm of the possible
unconscious analogue of Nolan to Poe, since Freud describes dreams as
“day’s residue,” suggesting in the context of oceanic intertextuality a
kind of flotsam in the unconscious mind (Freud 197). That is, each adap-
tor of another text plays upon a sea of related images, themes, characters,
and so forth. In the case of the creative process, which certainly draws
its many surprises from the unconscious mind—analogous to daydream-
ing—Nolan picked up some gothic rubble in the sea of dream texts he
sailed through in putting Inception together. We begin the examination
of his adaptation/allusion to Poe by inspecting the flotsam Nolan picks
up in order to identify their relations to one another.
In fact, Inception’s similarity to Poe’s poem “A Dream within a
Dream” floods the Internet. However, several other Poe texts contribute
to Nolan’s film. It echoes, for example, “The Assignation” (a story that
involves a lovers’ suicide pact and is set in Venice, which in the film is
cited as Mal’s floating house on the water); “The Imp of the Perverse”
(a self-destructive impulse embodied by Cobb’s internalized version of
Mal whom he keeps projecting to foil his own purposes); “The Purloined
Letter” (about carefully measuring and then manipulating minds for
personal gain); and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (particularly evi-
dent in Cobb and Mal’s unhealthy, isolated relationship and the build-
ings crumbling into the sea, effectively suggesting Cobb’s deteriorating
mind). Poe’s work in general, along with the particular aspects listed
here, have, of course, cast a wide net of influence, direct and indirect,
on all things gothic, strange, uncanny, horrific, or darkly romantic. In
a sense, Poe is a matrix figure who is virtually inescapable within his
sphere of genre-defining tropes (see Orr). Poe’s use of the double, the
return of the dead, the sentience of inanimate objects or animals, and his
apocalyptic endings, particularly in enigmatic narrations in which com-
plete explanatory interpretations are impossible, have influenced every-
thing from James’s The Turn of the Screw to Bloch’s Psycho —to cite the
tip of the iceberg. Beyond the literary adaptations of his works, the influ-
ence of over 140 motion-picture and television films based on his writ-
ings (particularly on horror films via Roger Corman’s 1960s Poe films)
have left their stamp on films of all stripes. Also, such Hitchcock films
as Vertigo (1957), with its Usheresque return of the repressed Madeline,
or the apocalyptic shades of The Birds, which like “The Masque of the
Red Death” vainly attempts to keep the monster outside, demonstrate the
indirect reach of Poe through Hitchcock and his endless disciples—like
DePalma, Truffaut, and Donen. In short, afloat as he is amid all of this
A Poe within a Poe 83
fictional day residue, Nolan would have been hard pressed to avoid Poe
even had he tried.
However, Inception is indebted simultaneously to a number of other
films and genres it absorbs and adapts, creating its own intertextual
crossroads. Among other sources, it draws from recent films about enter-
ing the minds of others (Cell [2000] and Dreamscape [1984]); manipu-
lating reality and/or history (The One [2001], Lost Memories [2002],
Clockstoppers [2002], Timequest [2002], and Eternal Sunshine of the
Spotless Mind [2004]—not to mention Nolan’s own Batman Begins
[2005]); and any number of heist films with their expert crews, daring
objectives, and clever escape plans (The Asphalt Jungle [1950], Ocean’s
Eleven [1960 and 2001], and Heat [1995]). To these genres Nolan adds
the international high-tech glamour world of the Bond films and the grav-
ity-defying battlefields of The Matrix (1999), where dying can mean real
death. Mythology also comes into play through the character Ariadne,
named after the woman who helps Theseus escape Minos’s labyrinth
with a string [like the “kick” in Inception], and Hypnos, the god of sleep
and dreams who, dwelling on ocean shores, is often referenced in the
film’s imagery. Of course, other allusions could be explored.
The arabesque inexplicability of “Ligeia” opens itself up to various
possibilities of meaning and has led to scores of widely divergent inter-
pretations, including debates over whether the narrator’s experience is
supernatural or psychological, and whether Ligeia herself is a vampire
or a mother figure, lover or emasculator, a symbol of cosmic universal
forces of dissolution or of restoration. More recently, she has been linked
to nineteenth-century concerns about reproduction and lesbian sexuality.
In short, like other ambiguously designed texts, readers become as won-
der filled as the characters experiencing the arabesque directly. Recent
adaptation studies help us to see the text through the lens of subsequent
texts, like Inception, that have reinterpreted it into a new form. Thus,
“Ligeia’s” potential for yielding new meanings constantly grows as the
intertextual matrix of common themes, characters, and story lines it
inhabits continually grows.
Poe’s cosmological “romance,” Eureka: A Prose Poem (1849), provides
a context by which to better understand how the arabesque functions in
both “Ligeia” and Inception. Richard Wilbur goes so far as to state that
“we can make no sense” of Poe without attending to the “deliberate and
often brilliant allegory” in his works embodied in Eureka (Wilbur, 255).
In fact, Poe’s cosmology is a stunning scientific adaptation of the central
Christian-Western myth of Eden, the Fall, and the eventual return to
an ideal state. In Eureka, Poe describes how the universe was originally
one perfect, spiritual particle, characterized by harmony, love, beauty,
84 Dennis R. Perry
joy, and a nonrational poetic consciousness that reflected its oneness (as
in the Garden of Eden). Inexplicably, a “big bang” causes the universal
particle to explode into fragments emblematic of disunity, alienation,
ugliness, sorrow, and an uninspired practical consciousness that, like sci-
ence, rationally separates and categorizes phenomena. However, even-
tually the separating force will finally dissipate, and the fragments of
our universe will begin to collapse back toward its original unity via a
mega-apocalyptic cosmic vortex, finally returning to its perfect, original
state of poetic, spiritual beauty and harmony (as in the final state of
Redemption). Poe notes the aesthetics of this process: “It is the poetical
essence of the Universe— of the Universe which, in the supremeness of its
symmetry, is but the most sublime of poems” (Tales and Poems 1349).
The vortex image in this process helps us understand the significance
of Eureka’s relevance to both “Ligeia” and Inception. On one level, the
vortex is an image of the physical return from the many to the one. On
another level, commonly associated with hypnosis and moving through
various states of consciousness, the vortex becomes an image of descent
into the unconscious mind. With the vortex, Poe anticipates the psycho-
logical function of the mandala, a circular image that aids in Tibetan
Buddhist meditation rituals. According to Jung, the mandala “is meant
to aid concentration by narrowing down the psychic field of vision and
restricting it to the centre” (356). Like Poe’s vortex, meditating on the
mandala enables one to return “from the illusion of individual existence
into the universal totality of the divine state” (357). This process can be
read as the deep structure underlying the efforts of both the narrator of
“Ligeia” and Cobb in Inception, both of whom use dreams to leave this
world (consciousness) and return to a more perfect one (unconscious-
ness) to recover what has been lost. The state of mind suggested by being
drawn into the vortex or mandala is echoed by the state of mind sought
in worship rituals using Islamic arabesque designs.
Arabesque is a term Poe relied on heavily to describe certain of his
tales (his first collection of which was entitled Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque). Arabesque refers to the style of Islamic art which, to avoid
representing a humanoid deity, features repetitious design interpretations
of flowers, leaves, and tendrils that are usually arranged in complex geo-
metric patterns. These designs are associated with worship and medita-
tion ritual, which, like the vortex and mandala, help the practitioner
leave behind the confines of space and time. These designs, according
to the Koran, are without beginning or end, steering the mind toward
the limitless. Arabesque design in Poe’s tales echoes the experience of
his troubled protagonists as they discover deeper levels of their uncon-
scious, thus luring readers into a state of intense dreamlike wonder. This
is also a central narrative strategy used in Inception. The emphasis in this

discussion will be on the arabesque complexity of design shared by Poe
and Nolan that leaves audiences ultimately uncertain about what exactly
happened: Does Ligeia really possess Rowena and return from the dead?
Does Cobb’s story end in a dream or reality? Much like Poe, Nolan cre-
ates complex, arabesque structures that are meant to delight by the very
strangeness of their effects.
“Ligeia” begins as the narrator announces that he cannot “remember
how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the
lady Ligeia” (Poe, Poetry and Tales 262).1 He goes on to confess that
he had never known her paternal name and that they may have met “in
some large, old, decaying city near the Rhine” (262). A clue about these
strange lapses emerges in the narrator’s description of his and Ligeia’s
studies, described as “of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden
impressions of the outward world” (262). Hence, the narrator’s introduc-
tion suggests that his experiences with his dark-haired beauty Ligeia may
have been a dream. As Cobb reminds us in Inception, dreams never have
a beginning, and hence the details of the narrator’s life with Ligeia are
vague. Poe’s narrator goes on to describe Ligeia’s dreamlike beauty as
being “above or apart from the earth” and the inexplicable expression
of Ligeia’s eyes as bringing the narrator “upon the very verge of remem-
brance, without being able, in the end, to remember,” perfectly embody-
ing the frustration all have with remembering details of the shadowy
labyrinth of our dreams—or tracing the arabesque design of the narra-
tor’s memory (Poetry and Tales 264–65).
As he proceeds to describe his dream, we discover that the narrator
and Ligeia share various traits—an interest in transcendental metaphys-
ics, a gigantic will, and a passionate nature, combined with a capacity
for romantic devotion that verges on idolatry. As the narrator painfully
describes Ligeia’s inexplicable death, we surmise that he is losing her
because he may be waking up from his dream. Even the poem Ligeia
writes, “The Conqueror Worm,” usually interpreted as the human drama
of life and the horrific inevitability of death, seems more likely about
the life and death of our nightly dream life. After all, it begins with the
phrase, “Lo! ’tis a gala night,” in a theater thronged by angels, “while the
orchestra breathes fitfully / The music of the spheres,” giving the setting
a mystical, unreal feeling (268). Arguably these phrases suggest an ideal
that has more to do with dreamland than with ordinary life.
After Ligeia dies, our narrator moves to “fair England”—a transition
from dark, mysterious Germany that reinforces the idea of his waking
up—where he marries the very ordinary Lady Rowena. On the other
hand, by reseeing “Ligeia” through Inception’s eyes, perhaps the narrator
86 Dennis R. Perry
has plunged into yet another level of dreaming. The arabesque narration
of the tale, of course, makes it impossible to distinguish reality from
dream. In fact, because of the gaps characterizing the narrator’s tale, we
are not sure if the speaker is even awake as he narrates. Perhaps he is in
a perpetual dream limbo, to borrow the language from Inception, from
which he cannot wake. Certainly what ultimately happens in England
is even stranger than the German dream of the narrator’s married life
with Ligeia. In either case, our narrator finds his marriage to Rowena
tiresome and invokes memories of Ligeia by creating a dream bower in a
“high turret of the castellated abbey” (270). He furnishes this pentagonal
bower with curtains covering each wall, sarcophagi muffling the walls’
sharp corners (with which Poe equated waking reality), and placing an
eclectic collection of Turkish, Egyptian, and other furnishings to “deaden
impressions of the outward world” (262).
Importantly, he describes his curtains as covered with “arabesque fig-
ures” that were “made changeable” according to where one stood, partly
due to the continual current of wind keeping them undulating (120). This
creates an unearthly “phantasmagorical effect,” aping the instability and
vagueness of dreamscapes, as well as reflexively mirroring the futility of
the reader’s attempt to make sense of the tale. Inception creates similarly
phantasmagoric effects in the opening dreamscape’s building constantly
changing, as the roof collapses and then water rushes in out of nowhere.
In essence, the artificial movement in the “Ligeia” room has doubled
the strange effect of the arabesque. However, since the bower serves as
his opium den, the effect is tripled. (Here, as in Inception, drugs play a
central role in dreaming.) Later, Rowena lies sick, fading in and out of
lifelessness, until she finally fails. During this “wake,” the narrator either
goes mad, falls asleep, or enters a third dream level, as he comes face to
face with the risen Lady Ligeia, now in possession of and transforming
dead Rowena’s body. While the arabesque designs in Islam are meant to
avoid idolatry and lead one closer to God, our narrator, by obsessing over
a figure he himself dreamed up, indeed a version of himself, becomes a
narcissist, worshipping himself as the idol of his dreamworld. Hence,
from this perspective, as Floyd Stovall notes, Ligeia becomes partly an
idealized version of the narrator (see Weekes 158). This oneness of Ligeia
and narrator is punctuated by the cosmopolitan furnishing details of the
bower, reflecting imagery that described Ligeia.
Hence, the arabesque tale abounds in unstable and destabilizing
doublings—Ligeia and the narrator, Ligeia and Rowena, the dream
bower and Ligeia and the narrator—recreating a typically confusing
dreamscape. This tale’s design mimics the “phantasmagoric effect” of
the changing images of the bower’s arabesque curtains. In the process,

the narrator creates a number of adaptations in this self-reflexive tale—
turning his bridal chamber into a version of Ligeia herself, and there-
fore simultaneously into a reflection of his own mind. Finally, at the
furthest level, he dreams Rowena into Ligeia herself. As in Inception,
the dreamer becomes increasingly lucid and able to control the dream-
ing through its progressive levels. As in Inception, a dream is implanted
within, not extracted from, the mind of the reader/audience. Surrounded
by an elaborately designed artificial atmosphere, we find ourselves in
dreams within dreams, simulating the return to the nonrational state of
original oneness described in Eureka.
Inception shares parallels with “Ligeia” that, in the spirit of adapta-
tion as analogue, become technological expansions and character exten-
sions of Poe’s tale. Like Poe’s narrator, Cobb is obsessed with his dead
wife, Mal, and the life they shared in a drug-induced dream state that
seemed to them about fifty years. As in “Ligeia,” this husband and wife
are involved in their own metaphysical studies of how to test whether
they are awake or dreaming as they create a dreamworld of buildings,
beaches, prior homes, and the like. To wake up, they finally commit sui-
cide together when Cobb convinces Mal that they are actually asleep.
However, like Ligeia, Mal becomes ill, albeit psychologically in her case.
Once awake, Mal is still confused and, unable to accept that she is not
still dreaming, tragically commits suicide again in order to really “wake
up.” In director Nolan’s self-reflexive gesture, like the film’s audience,
Mal can no longer discern between dream and reality, making explicit
Poe’s implicit confusion between the two. Ironically, and arabesquely,
Nolan leaves the door ajar to the idea that perhaps Mal was right, that
the life she and Cobb returned to is not reality. 2 Cobb ultimately becomes
as obsessed as Poe’s narrator with his lost wife, creating a “Ligeia”-like
dream bower in the form of a dream elevator, each floor of which is a
separate memory of his life with Mal.
Like Poe’s tale, Inception is an extended arabesque that functions
like a hall of mirrors. 3 The opening shots disorient the audience with a
series of scene changes that continually disrupt our sense of continuity.
The film begins as a young man is washed up on the shore and speaks
with a very old man in an Asian-styled room. With a smooth jump cut,
we find ourselves in the same room, with the same young man (Cobb),
now cleaned up and making a sales pitch for dream extraction—which
at this point we know nothing about. Shortly we jump to yet another
setting, a grungy apartment in an unidentified Asian city during a revolu-
tion, where Cobb, along with others, appears to be asleep, dreaming the
88 Dennis R. Perry
previous sequence—or sequences. We then go back and forth between

these two linked settings, with events in the revolution setting having
weird effects in the second dreamscape—explosions that cause the Asian
building to crumble and water to rush in. Finally, the film cuts to a fourth
setting on a speeding train, revealing that we have been witnessing a
dream (the sales pitch) within a dream (the grungy apartment) within
a dream (the train). That is, in both the grungy room and the train,
our main characters are all asleep. However, it is still not clear what the
film’s opening sequence had to do with these subsequent dreamscapes.
Like readers of Poe’s mad narrator, audiences are left unbalanced and
disoriented, watching a film that itself seems mad. Though subsequent
events seem to clarify a few things, ultimately the status of other things
remains ambiguous.
Many viewers, in fact, have wondered if it is ever possible to discern
when and where the various dreams begin and end, even after viewing
the whole film. Some argue, for example, that the final scene of the film,
which seems like reality, is also a dream.4 Another theory has it that
when we see Cobb awash on the shore at the beginning of the film, he
is actually awake, quickly dreams everything else we see in the film (in
the manner of Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”), and then
dies. 5 These Poesque ambiguities create an arabesque sense of labyrin-
thine infinity that may, as is the case with “Ligeia,” impel analysis for
some time to come. Like “Ligeia,” Inception is designed to elude defini-
tive interpretation. After all, how better to mirror dream states than to
leave much of the story in vague, mystical shadows that simulate the
unconscious mind itself?
Another dimension of the arabesque design of Inception is the dream
levels themselves and how they relate to each other. In order to keep the
viewer somewhat straight on what’s happening on which level and when,
Nolan creates a tour de force of crosscutting between levels. However,
no matter how clear we are about the level on which the action is taking
place, the resulting montage quality of the film creates such a complex
film fabric of ideas that it cannot be fully absorbed. For example, the
dream team is sleeping on a plane for ten hours, but that ten hours is
multiplied many times in each successive dream level, making the time
differentials like Russian nesting dolls: an hour on one level becomes
one week on the next, six months on the next, and ten years on the last.
In addition, if you die on one of the lower levels, you could be thrust
into a limbo state for up to fifty years. In addition to these compli-
cations of comprehension, Cobb’s guilty conscience over Mal’s death
causes him to project Mal figures that subvert the team’s plans in some
of the dream levels. Cobb’s projecting echoes Poe’s concept of the “imp
of the perverse,” a self-destructive impulse characterizing the “Ligeia”

narrator and other hapless Poe characters, for instance the narrator of
“The Black Cat.” In that tale, the narrator takes the police into his base-
ment, where he has hidden his wife’s corpse in the wall, and perversely
pounds on the walls, causing the cat to shriek, thus revealing the hidden
corpse. Fisher, the man whose dreams Cobb’s team is infiltrating and
manipulating, also complicates things by projecting well-armed security
forces to combat possible extraction attempts. Still another dimension of
these dream levels is that every person or object in a dreamscape, such
as the hotel in level two, is an extension of the mind of the dreamer,
creating a potentially lethal reaction. Thus, if Fisher is feeling suspicious
or paranoid about what is happening in the dream, his feelings create a
hostile reaction that ripples through the apparently anonymous strang-
ers staying at the hotel, who then might attack the intruders. Behind all
of these unconscious minefields and conundrums, there is the wonder
we feel at the breathtaking idea that Fisher is dreaming so many levels
of mutually exclusive activity simultaneously, adding an almost sublimi-
nal arabesque dimension to the already confusing design of the film.
In short, Nolan packs the screen—and our unconscious minds—with
so many ideas that it requires many viewings just to remember (forget
about grasping) the interlocking ramifications of each element in the
overall design.
Another dimension of the film’s self-reflexive structure is rather
blatantly made evident in the extraction team’s preparations for tak-
ing Fisher down through three dream levels in order to manipulate his
mind. The extraction team’s concerns reflect those of the film’s produc-
tion crew: to cast various roles (the forger as Brownie; Cobb as Mr.
Charles, a kidnapper, and an infiltrator; etc.); to design sets (Ariadne
and Arthur); to write a script scenario (by committee of the whole);
and to create special effects (the dream drugs, the design of the kick,
etc.). And all of this is done in terms of the effect it will have on the
audience—Mr. Fisher. At the same time, these sequences hint at the
effect Nolan intends to have on his audience. Hence, self-reflexivity
functions as an arabesque house of mirrors, with the making of the
film, the production of the extraction, and our experience as viewers all
endlessly reflecting each other.
While both “Ligeia” and Inception attempt through these arabesque
complications and self-reflexive gestures to blur the lines between real-
ity and dreams, they actually do so in very different styles. Besides
Inception’s more detailed plot, character development, and overall
conceptual realism, the dreams themselves do not feel very dream-
like. While weird things might happen within them (the folding of city
90 Dennis R. Perry
blocks, the Penrose steps, crumbling buildings, etc.), as David Denby

notes, “the movie is nothing like a dream” (15). Compare, for example,
Cobb and Mal’s moments together with the more Poesque atmosphere
of Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), with its truly uncanny reunions of Kris
and his dead wife Hari. Hence, it is as if Nolan drew equally from the
rational Poe of “The Purloined Letter” and the haunted Poe of “Ligeia,”
creating a rational arabesque in the form of a mathematical paradox.
But however different Poe’s and Nolan’s stories are stylistically, they
both seduce us into wonder at the infinite facets of the unconscious
mind. Hence, as Linda Hutcheon observes, the “different media and
genres that stories are [adapted] to and from … also represent various
ways of engaging audiences” (xiv). One such way, as I’ve tried to dem-
onstrate here, is to put readers and audiences in the uncanny position
of becoming lost in an arabesque labyrinth, simultaneously watching or
reading and experiencing in their minds the borders of the unconscious
mind.
Notes
1. Significant contributors to the conversation about “Ligeia’s” meaning include
Hoffmann, D. H. Lawrence, and Alterton and Craig (Hoffmann 241–42).
Others include Basler and Hamilton (Basler 51–52); Stovall, Weeks, Jordan,
and Matheson (Weekes 158–60); and Silverman (139–40). Carlson sum-
marizes Wilbur, Gargano, Lauber, and Thompson (Carlson 176–87). More
recently are contributions from Dayan, Roby, Taylor, Keetley, Crisman, and
Cantalupo.
2 . In one website “Philip” notes that when Cobb is facing Mal across a court-
yard, just as she is about to commit suicide, it is clear that the room she is
in is a mirror image of the room Cobb is in. “She’s in their room facing out,
but as in Ariadne’s exploratory world, it’s wrapped around on itself so that
despite the fact that he’s in the room behind her, he sees her opposite him
facing him” (Filmaster.com).
3. See Brad Oshorne’s Hall of Mirrors (2001).
4. See Mike Bruno, “Inception: Let’s Talk about That Ending” for a perspec-
tive on this question that is much discussed on the Internet.
5. See “Philip” in “Inception Revealed.”
Works Cited
Basler, Roy P. “The Interpretation of Ligeia.” Poe: A Collection of Critical
Essays. Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Print.
Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-Analytic
Interpretation. Trans. John Rodker. London: Imago, 1949. Print.
Bruno, Mike. “Inception: Let’s Talk about That Ending.” EW: Entertainment
Weekly, “Pop Watch.” 17 July 2010. Web.
Cantalupo, Barbara. “Poe’s Visual Tricks.” Poe Studies 38 (2009): 53–63.
Print.
Carlson, Eric W. “Tales of Psychal Conflict: ‘Berenice,’ ‘Morellam’ ‘Ligeia.’” A
Companion to Poe Studies. Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1996. Print.
Crisman, William. “Poe’s Ligeia and Helen of Troy.” Poe Studies 38 (2009):
64–75. Print.
Dayan, Joan. Fables of Mind: An Inquiry into Poe’s Fiction. New York and
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. Print.
Denby, David. Rev. of Inception. New Yorker, “Now Playing.” 6 Sept. 2010: 15.
Print.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans. James Strachey. New
York: Avon/Discus, 1965. Print.
Hoffman, Daniel. Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe. New York: Avon, 1978.
Print.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York and London: Routledge,
2006. Print.
Inception. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros., 2010. Film.
Jung, C. G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans. R. F. C.
Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1968. Print.
Keetley, Dawn. “Pregnant Women and Envious Men in ‘Morella,’ ‘Berenice,’
‘Ligeia,’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’” Poe Studies 38 (2009): 1–16.
Print.
Leitch, Thomas. “Adaptation Studies at the Crossroads.” Adaptation 1.1 (2008):
63–77. Print.
———. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
UP, 2007. Print.
Perry, Dennis R. Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror. Lanham,
MD; Scarecrow, 2003. Print.
Philip. “Inception Revealed.” Filmaster.com. 21 July 2010. Web.
Polonsky, Rachel. “Poe’s Aesthetic Theory.” The Cambridge Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002:
42–56. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New
York: Library of America, 1984. Print.
Roby, Valerie. “Ahistorical.” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 12
(2008): 61–83. Print.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. London and New York:
Routledge, 2006. Print.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance.
New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. Print.
Taylor, Matthew A. “Edgar Allan Poe’s (Meta)Physics: A Pre-History of the Post-
Human.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 62 (2009): 193–221. Print.
92 Dennis R. Perry
Thompson, G. R. Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales. Madison:

U of Wisconsin P, 1973. Print.
Weekes, Karen. “Poe’s Feminine Ideal.” The Cambridge Companion to Edgar
Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002: 148–62.
Print.
Wilbur, Richard. “The House of Poe.” The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe.
Ed. Eric W. Carlson. Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1970: 255–77.
Print.
8
Identity Crisis and Personality Disorders
in Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839),
David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), and
James Mangold’s Identity (2003)
Alexandra Reuber
“Who am I?” and “Who are you?” are questions that express an existing
opposition as well as an intertwined relation between the self and the
external other (social, professional, and political surrounding), as well
as internal other (repressed thoughts, desires, and fears). As an external
reality as well as an internalized concept, the other has a direct effect
on the formation and development of the self. Through an “interlocking
series of relationships” (Scharff 13) that are incorporated into the psychic
organization of any individual, the other shapes the becoming of the self
and the development of personal identity. As a consequence, personal
identity finds its representation in one’s actions and reactions as well as
in often repressed and (un)familiar psychological qualities that constitute
a part of our unconscious.
In this sense, the question of “Who are you?” is twofold. On the one
hand, it refers to our psychological counterpart—our alter ego—that
opposes and ridicules the idea of a unified self. On the other hand, it is a
self-directed question inquiring upon the uniqueness as well as the resem-
blance of the other in regard to the self, thus referring to the question,
“Who am I (compared to you)?” The implied opposition of the self and
the other reflects Julia Kristeva’s notion of the foreigner and the “strange
within us” (191), provoking the mental image of “the abyss separating
me from the other who shocks me” (187), thus leading to the ultimate
question of “Me … does ‘me’ exist?” (19).
94 Alexandra Reuber
Edgar Allan Poe’s tale “William Wilson” (1839), David Fincher’s film
Fight Club (1999), and James Mangold’s movie Identity (2003) make the
question, “Me … does ‘me’ exist?” their main interest. Via an illustration
of their narrators’ actions, thoughts, fears, and desires, all three “texts”
provide a detailed portrayal of the internal other, use the doppelgänger
motif, show the resulting opposition of self and other, and illustrate the
final domination of other over the self. Moreover, in all three works, the
first encounter between the self and the other takes place in a residence
that reflects the main protagonist’s state of mind of “extensive enclosure”
(Poe 339). Finally, all three works illustrate the fear, the attraction, and
the denial of otherness as important emotional and cognitive states of the
main character’s development of personality, its disorders, and related
issues of identity formation and dissolution, or both.
Even though neither Fight Club nor Identity actually claims Poe’s
short story as the ultimate source of inspiration, the following two state-
ments hold true: First, the literary tradition of the “William Wilson”
story is alive in popular culture and needs to be recognized. Second, the
existing interconnectedness between the three works triggers an ongo-
ing “dialogical process” (Hutcheon 21) between the old and the new
material, forcing its “readers” to return to the works’ “referential fields”
(Iser 197) and reconstruct their hidden subtext. In other words, whereas
the analysis of the two films approaches Poe’s text from “a new criti-
cal direction” (Rich 18), the rereading of “William Wilson” facilitates
an understanding of the two films. A general appreciation of text and
film as intertext with multiple readings and meanings then promotes
an understanding of the films’ “embeddedness in the context of [the
literary] tradition” (Benjamin 24), illustrates Poe’s impact on popular
culture, and shows that each text, whether it is textual or visual, “is an
irreducible … plural” (Barthes 159). It is, as Julie Sanders states, “an
ever-expanding network of textual relations” (3) undergoing constant
change.
This change is apparent in Fincher’s and Mangold’s films, in which
the directors re-visioned the explicit and implicit meaning of Poe’s source
text and performed “basic operations within” (Iser 169) the story. In their
films, the two directors focused on the illustration of rebellion against
established structures and conventions, the transgression of social and
legal boundaries, and the depiction of diverse mental states. Hence,
“through an independent and creative response to the [original] text”
(Everett 154), Fincher and Mangold “constructed their [own] understand-
ing” (153) of “William Wilson” in general, and of the ongoing discussion
of the opposition of the other and the self in particular. This being said,
Fight Club and Identity are far from being simple rereadings of “William
Identity Crisis 95
Wilson.” Containing the remains of Poe’s tale, both films appeal to the
viewer’s freedom to transpose and adapt typical Poesque characteristics
to present popular fiction.
The question is, which remains of “William Wilson” were chosen?
In contrast to “most theories of adaptation,” according to which “the
story is the common denominator” (Hutcheon 10) for any adaptation,
Fincher’s and Mangold’s films illustrate that this assumption is not neces-
sarily true. Neither Fincher nor Mangold chose the story line for adapta-
tion. They chose the text’s main themes, symbols, and forms of narration.
The uncanny remains of “William Wilson” are, thus, the following: first,
the doppelgänger motif with its resulting ego–alter ego relationship and
the juxtaposition of love and hate; second, the dark, dilapidated, isolated
setting in which the different alters manifest themselves; and third, a
mentally and emotionally unstable male character producing an unreli-
able narrative.
Here, it needs to be noted that even though both films reuse the sto-
ry’s doppelgänger motif, they re-vision and adapt nineteenth-century
psychological assumptions about a possible ego–alter ego relationship
to psychosomatic symptoms related to several personality disorders.
Whereas Poe fictionalized Benjamin Rush’s notion of “the alienation of
the mind” (360) explained in his Medical Inquiries and Observations
upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812), twenty-seven years prior to the
publication of Poe’s text, Fincher and Mangold illustrate symptoms of
conduct, dissociative, and narcissistic personality disorder. By doing so,
both directors allude to the increasing problem of mental illnesses in our
fast-moving society, in which only the strongest and smartest survive,
and in which billboards and television ads determine what it means to be
successful. The directors point a finger at the “one-size-fits-all lifestyle”
(Tuss 95) and the (too often) enforced social identity that does not allow
for the development of a true self but that easily causes intrarole conflicts,
self-doubt, and even self-alienation. In this sense, the two films predate
the results of a recent International Personality Disorder Examination
(IPDE), according to which “roughly one-tenth of US adults suffer from
a diagnosable personality disorder” (Lenzenweger 8) and consequently
from an unstable identity formation.
Even though Poe’s text does not openly name any personality disor-
ders, the observant reader will notice that from early childhood on, Poe’s
narrator shows several “maladaptive patterns of motivated behavior”
(Dowson 3). He expresses “a strong need to exploit others, to outsmart
them, to make them of use to himself” (Klein 65). He consciously takes
advantage of others as he feels “an ascendency over all” (Poe 341). The
fact that it is his voice that establishes “household law” (Poe 338), not
96 Alexandra Reuber
his father’s, indicates that he has never had a strong father figure, and
consequently he has never processed the Oedipal complex.
To compensate for his weak parents and the “missing” father figure,
the narrator creates an illusionary unified self-image of utmost perfec-
tion. As a result, the narrator develops a narcissistic personality disorder
(NPD), which, as Freud states, allows him to “set up an ideal in himself
by which he measures his actual ego” (Freud, “Narcissism” 51) and dis-
misses the outside world accordingly. Since the inflated ego prevents him
from functioning properly in the sense of censorship, control, and rea-
soning, the intensifying rigid narcissistic attitude heightens his resistance
to change, causes isolation from family members and friends, and results
in the projection of his alter ego, called “William Wilson.”
The resemblance of Poe’s, Fincher’s, and Mangold’s narrators is strik-
ing. All three narrators are angry men who grew up fatherless; disap-
prove of “their creators, parental and social” (Tuss 95); refuse to conform
to social norms and expectations; feel superior to their fellow men; and
are ignorant of their true name. Whereas in Poe’s text the narrator pre-
sumably calls himself “Wilson,” the narrators in Fight Club and Identity
are either unnamed or have multiple names.
In Fight Club, the narrator hands out a nameless business card—a sign
that Jack, Cornelius, Rupert, or Tyler is either incapable of or unwilling to
define his personal identity. He is lost. He stumbles from one situation into
the next. First, he seeks fulfillment in his unfulfilling job, then comfort in
mass consumption, then consolation in support groups for terminal ill-
nesses, and then peace in the underground arenas of Fight Club. As Poe’s
narrator becomes dependent on the “air of patronage” (Poe 342), Fincher’s
narrator becomes addicted first to these support groups and then to Fight
Club, a homosocial bonding experience that increases his “grandiose sense
of self-importance” (Dobbert 94) and allows him to be this “warm little
center that the life of this world crowded around” (Fight Club).
Even though Fincher reuses Poe’s representation of the ego–alter ego
conflict, he does more than just adapt the relationship between the self
and other and the resulting sensations of loss, exclusion, and self-alien-
ation so often described in Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
and Tales of Mystery and Imagination. He “adopts a posture of critique”
(Sanders 4) and thus appropriates the original material. He criticizes the
modern opportunistic and self-centered lifestyle of young professionals
who switch personal identities according to their likings and the envi-
ronmental expectations imposed upon them. In doing so, the director
articulates his understanding of the twentieth-century “lost generation”
whose members find themselves within in a world of possibilities without
knowing who they are supposed to be (Fincher).
Identity Crisis 97
This feeling of loss and exclusion—and the phenomenon of self-

alienation—is, however, taken to an extreme in Mangold’s film, in which
the journal of the imprisoned psychotic serial killer Malcolm Rivers is
the story’s narrative voice. Suffering from severe dissociative identity dis-
order (DID), which is “marked by a disturbance in the integration of
identity, memory, and consciousness” (“Dissociative Disorder”), Rivers
has created ten alters who all meet at a solitary old motel in order to tell
their story. As a result, Identity has to be understood as a multipersonal
account that invites the viewer to access the prisoner’s sick mind and
determine his personal identity.
Whether “alone” on Dr. Bransby’s extensive school grounds, nerved
by its “deeply-shadowed avenues” (Poe 338) and surrounded by a “high
and solid brick wall” (339); “alone” in a dilapidated Victorian mansion
in the warehouse district of an unnamed twentieth-century American
city; or “alone” in the dark rooms of an imagined nameless motel, all
three narrators are exposed to and ruled by strange psychological forces
demanding withdrawal “from the external world (people and things)”
(Freud, “Narcissism” 31). Within these enclosed remote localities of
almost gothic character, all three narrators confront their individual
double figure(s), which have to be understood as personifications of their
proper unconscious.
In Poe’s tale and Fincher’s film, the seclusion from the external world
allows the narrator to indulge in unbound self-love and self-promotion,
leading to the following typical diagnostic criteria for NPD: a lack of
empathy for others, a need for “excessive admiration” (Dobbert 94), and
a false sense of entitlement. In Mangold’s film, the mental isolation of the
narrator permits his self to externalize everything that it “experiences as
dangerous or unpleasant in itself, making of it an alien double, uncanny
and demoniacal” (Kristeva 183). The consequential projection of the once
familiar now tainted with strangeness results from an unprocessed child-
hood trauma and causes a severe case of DID, showing features of dereal-
ization, antisocial behavior, and conduct personality disorder (CPD).
Independent, however, from the narrator’s individual suffering, the
setting functions as a place in which strange ideas and fancies find nec-
essary room for development. It is here that the double figures develop
fully and the narrator’s “self becomes confounded, or the foreign self is
substituted for his own … by doubling, dividing, and interchanging the
self” (Freud, “Uncanny” 387). As such, the Victorian mansion in Fight
Club and the shabby motel in Identity can be compared to Dr. Bransby’s
school in Poe’s text, whose “graduates” are creations “dating back to
a very early mental stage, long since left behind” (Freud, “Uncanny”
389). Facing the double in these remote settings of extreme contrast
98 Alexandra Reuber
to former living conditions and styles implies that something “that

ought to have remained hidden and secret … comes to light” (Freud,
“Uncanny” 376).
Even though the narrators’ emotional imbalance becomes fully appar-
ent in isolation and leads back to a fatherless childhood in all three fic-
tional accounts, their insufficiently developed psychological states differ.
In Poe’s story, the incubated ideal self takes the form of the narrator’s
mirror image. The reader encounters a man who bears the narrator’s
name, was born on the same day, represents his “general contour of per-
son and outline of feature” (Poe 344), and imitates his actions and words.
Yet he is so different. He reveals his otherness by questioning the narra-
tor’s unmoral conduct, unmasking his fraudulent behavior, and illustrat-
ing the “tendency toward disintegration” (Klein 4) of his consciousness
and common sense. He fights the narrator’s false sense of superiority and
entitlement as well as his lack of moral agency and object libido. He is
other in the sense that he functions as a reemerging Freudian superego
or a Lacanian Ideal-I. He opposes an insufficiently developed personality
and provokes in his host a set of contradictory emotions extending from
respect to hatred, from curiosity to extreme fear, and from esteem to
animosity, which ultimately turns fatal.
Whereas in “William Wilson” the double is a complete imitation of its
host, the narrator’s double figure in Fight Club is taller, more muscular,
and more aggressive than his counterpart. Moreover, in contrast to Poe’s
double figure as intervening moral agency in situations of social mis-
conduct, Fincher’s doppelgänger personifies the opposition of twentieth-
century masculine perversity to family values, of individuality to social
conformism, of freedom to social restrictions, of underground terrorism
to social order, of private enterprise to capitalism, and of personal iden-
tity to social identity. As such, the double in Fincher’s film represents
a revolutionary reaction against twentieth-century “hypocrisies and
agreed deceptions of modern life” (Fincher). It has become an expres-
sion of revolt against any established norm, taking the name of Tyler
Durden.
“Fuck off with your sofa units and string green stripe patterns. I
say never be complete. I say stop being perfect” (Fight Club). These are
Tyler’s words of encouragement to see things differently and to traverse
roles and types of fantasies (Iocco 54) in a way the narrator has never
done before. Being a soap salesman, Tyler Durden helps the narrator to
wash away his “IKEA nesting instinct” (Fight Club), the importance of
social status, and most importantly the fragmented perception of his self,
beautifully illustrated via the materialistic belongings that were lost in
the incineration of the narrator’s luxurious apartment.
Identity Crisis 99
In accordance with Poe’s text, Durden first appears to be a friend. As

the etymological meaning of his Christian name indicates, he offers the
narrator shelter, a roof over his head. Soon, however, Durden exchanges
his advisory role for masculine authority, virile drives, and acted-out
aggression and destruction. He turns into “an active sociopath, an artic-
ulate apprentice of random malice” (Walker) and becomes the epitome
of the most basic desires and animalistic instincts. Hence, Tyler Durden,
like William Wilson, starts with good intentions but transforms from
the good to the bad self, promoting an excessive lifestyle without any
consequences. He reflects everything that society prevents the narrator
from being: strong, sexy, “smart, capable, and most importantly … free”
(Fight Club).
Trapped in this twentieth-century society of false (be)longing and
being, Fincher’s narrator suffers from depression and insomnia. In
order to find a true and stable self, he has to liberate himself from all
outer constraints and expectations ever imposed on him by others and
by himself. He needs to shake off his falsely adopted social identity that
causes his intra- and interrole conflicts and that stimulates the devel-
opment of antisocial and conduct personality disorders, manifesting
themselves in his impulsivity, irritability, aggressiveness, repeated fail-
ure to sustain consistent work behavior, reckless disregard for safety of
self and others, destruction of property, and serious violations of rules
(Dobbert 54, 35). Nevertheless, to become fully himself, the narrator
in Fight Club has to return to the actions of his literary predecessor
William Wilson. He has to follow his path and even kill off his double
figure, Tyler Durden.
In Identity, Mangold continues where Fincher left off. He reuses Poe’s
doppelgänger motif already developed by Fincher but transforms his illus-
tration of intra- and interrole conflicts into a severe case of DID, putting
forth not one but ten alter egos that all need to be identified in order to
understand the prisoner’s true self. In Mangold’s film, the ten alters are
all born on the same day and are on the move to another place. The fact
that they are in transition reminds us of both Poe’s text, in which the nar-
rator relocates several times in order to leave his past (and double) behind
and find his true self, and of Fincher’s film, in which the anonymous nar-
rator travels from one airport to the next, wondering, “Could you ever
wake up as a different person?” (Fight Club). In all three “texts,” the
phenomenon of transition and relocation mirrors the narrator’s mental
and emotional instability, unsteadiness, and fragile identity.
Even though referred to as Malcolm Rivers, the narrator in Mangold’s
film, like the one in Poe’s story and Fincher’s movie, is unaware of his
identity. “Call me whatever you want” is the man’s answer to Dr. Malick’s
100 Alexandra Reuber
inquiry, “Whom am I speaking to? What shall I call you?” (Identity).

Shall we call him Timothy?
Young Malcolm, alias Timothy, is a troubled child. Left behind by his
father and finding no means to establish a relationship with his stepfa-
ther, he feels alone in this new patchwork family. Due to this unsatisfac-
tory family structure, the young boy, like his nineteenth-century literary
predecessor, grows “self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a
prey to the most ungovernable passions” (Poe 338), which lead to a com-
plete lack of empathy for “the feelings and needs of others” (Dobbert
94). Unlike Wilson, who chooses every means to dominate his fellow
students and acquaintances, the young Malcolm withdraws himself from
the external world. In total isolation of his mind, he directs all his energy
towards his self, leading to the creation of further alter egos, as for exam-
ple the one of Caroline-Suzanne Carolina.
Caroline-Suzanne is a self-centered actress who, like Poe’s narrator,
“expects to be recognized as superior” and is “preoccupied with fanta-
sies of unlimited success, power, [and] brilliance” (Dobbert 94). She is
driven by anything that establishes her power over others and requests
constant recognition and praise. Hence, she has to be understood as the
personification of Malcolm Rivers’ developed NPD. Her violent death
represents the painful exposure as well as attempted repression of Rivers’
narcissistic traits.
The bloody dismemberment of her body, however, stresses Malcolm
Rivers’ pronounced “irritability and aggressiveness” (Dobbert 54) toward
his surroundings. This act of violence is essential for the film as a whole,
since it visualizes Rivers’ general disrespect for social norms and his
physical cruelty toward his fellow citizens. Moreover, it introduces the
viewer to a level of brutality that Poe’s text spares its reader. In addition,
whereas in Poe’s story the narrator’s mood swings are merely symptoms
of his NPD, in Mangold’s film, Rivers’ “habits of vice” (Poe 348) are also
symptoms for his suffering from CPD.
This personality disorder finds personification in two further alter
egos: Rhodes Rhode-Island and Robert Maine, two prisoners on the run.
Their attempt to flee from the prison mirrors Malcolm’s effort to escape
from his trauma when left behind by his father as well as his attempt to
free himself from the multiple alter egos that haunt him day and night. As
constant reminders of Malcolm’s still existing dependency on the missing
father figure, Rhodes and Robert are responsible for further outbreaks of
violence, destruction, and the brutal murder of the following four alters:
Alice and George York, Lou Isiana, and Ginny Virginia.
The murder of Alice and George York (Timothy’s mother and step-
father) visualizes Malcolm’s aggression toward his own mother, his
Identity Crisis 101
intolerance of his stepfather, and his dependency on his lost but desired
natural father. To erase this artificial family structure and return to the
time when no stepfather was present, the murder of Alice and George
is the only solution, but not yet enough. Malcolm Rivers also has to
erase the haunting feelings of dependency and loss. These sensations
find personification in the two additional alters Ginny Virginia and her
nine-hour husband, Lou Isiana, who is far from being ready for life in
matrimony.
As Malcolm still depends on the love of his natural father, Ginny
depends on the love and acceptance of her young and sexually driven
husband, Lou. Whenever the desired object seems out of reach, Malcolm,
alias his female alter Ginny, feels weak, alone, and rejected. As soon as
these sensations dominate reality, Malcolm turns violent, since he feels
the urge to suppress his dependent personality disorder (DPD) at the
same time that he wants “to protect” others from the painful experience
of loss. By now he no longer realizes that his course of action estranges
him more and more from society and from himself. He loses his self to
the point that he is terrified when confronted with his own reflection in
the mirror.
In conclusion, we can state that even though the two films, Fight
Club and Identity, differ to some extent from “William Wilson,” Poe’s
influence on the films is apparent. Via the reuse of Poe’s theme of the
haunting double figure, Fight Club and Identity address the notion of
otherness and unfamiliarity, and they elaborate on important issues of
self-definition as opposed to self-alienation and personal as opposed to
social identity in modern society. Even though each of the three narrators
relates his own personal ego–alter ego conflict and shows an individual
set of characteristics related to identity formation, personality disorders,
and eventual identity dissolution, the source of discontent and the final
attempt to free himself from the alter(s) are the same. In the original
text as well as the two cinematographic adaptations, the narrator’s psy-
chological instability goes back to a missing father figure and a lack of
respect for society. In all three texts, the narrators understand neither
the existence of the other nor the power that the alter ego has over the
self. Their ignorance is especially apparent in their bodily fight from the
alter(s) and in their resulting attempts to free themselves, either with a
knife (William Wilson), with a gun (Tyler Durden), or with a variety of
weapons including a gun, a knife, an axe, a baseball bat, and explosives
(Malcolm Rivers). Ultimately, the recognition scene at the end of Poe’s
story has also been adapted in the two films, both of which conclude
with the narrator’s realization that the externalized double figure is part
of his own self.
102 Alexandra Reuber
As a product of what Linda Hutcheon calls a “mixture of repetition

and difference, of familiarity and novelty” (114), both films offer an
uncanny representation of William Wilson’s wild fancies and moments
of recognition. Yet, as independent works of art, they are so much more
than just “a copy of a copy of a copy” (Fight Club).
Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” 1971. Image-Music-Text. Ed. and Trans.
Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. 155–64. Print.
Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility
and Other Writings on Media. 1836. Ed. Michael W. Jennings. Trans. Edmund
Jephcott. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2008. Print.
Everett, Wendy. “Reframing Adaptation: Representing the Invisible (On The
House of Mirth, Directed by Terence Davis, 2000).” The Literature/Film
Reader: Issues of Adaptation. Ed. James M. Welsh and Peter Lev. Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow, 2007. 149–63. Print.
“Dissociative Disorder.” Glossary of Psychological Terms. American Psychological
Association. APA, 2002. Web. 12 May 2011.
Dobbert, Duane L. Understanding Personality Disorders. An Introduction.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. Print.
Dowson, Jonathan H. Personality Disorders: Recognition and Clinical
Management. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.
Fight Club. By Chuck Palahniuk. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward
Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. USA: Fox 2000 Pictures, 1999. Film.
Fincher, David. Interview by Galvin Smith. Film Comment Sept./Oct. 1999.
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Freud, Sigmund. “Papers on Applied Psychoanalysis: On Narcissism.” 1914.
Collected Papers. Trans. James Strachey. Vol. 4. London: Hogarth, 1949.
30–59. Print.
———. “Papers on Applied Psychoanalysis: The Uncanny.” 1919. Collected
Papers. Trans. James Strachey. Vol. 4. London: Hogarth, 1949. 368–407.
Print.
Identity. By Michael Cooney. Dir. James Mangold. Perf. John Cusack, Ray
Liotta, and Amanda Peet. USA: Columbia Pictures Cooperation, 2003. Film.
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MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. Print.
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Columbia UP, 1991. Print.
Identity Crisis 103
Lenzenweger, Mark F., et al. “DSM-IV Personality Disorders in the National

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Mind. Philadelphia, PA: Kimber and Richardson, 1812. Print.
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Jason Aronson, 1992. Print.
Tuss, Alex. “Masculine Identity and Success: A Critical Analysis of Patricia
Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club.”
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Walker, Alexander. Rev. of Fight Club. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 May 2011.
9
Horrific Obsessions: Poe’s Legacy of the
Unreliable and Self-Obsessed Narrator
Rachel McCoppin
Many of Edgar Allan Poe’s works include obsessed narrators who are
plagued by their unconscious in order to discover their true selves. Carl
Jung declares that people wear a persona to present to the world that
hides their true self from society, and even from themselves; “the persona
is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others
think one is” (Jung, “Concerning Rebirth,” 221). When one’s persona is
in conflict with one’s inner self, tension can arise, and Jung declares that
the unconscious can force the individual to come face to face with one’s
true self, revealing the falseness of the persona that he or she wrongly
identified with. Many of Poe’s narrators are so enveloped within false
personas that they become unclear of their own realities and their own
true identities, making them unreliable to the reader. Poe’s depiction of
these characters shows their unconscious obsession to unmask them-
selves, revealing a self that does not adhere to societal expectations.
The narrators of “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and many
other Poe texts try repeatedly to convince readers that they are sane; they
blame forces beyond their control as driving them to engage in the actions
they do, even murder, yet James Gargano in “The Question of Poe’s
Narrators” states that “Poe assuredly knows what the narrator never sus-
pects and what, by the controlled conditions of the tale, he is not meant
to suspect—that the narrator is a victim of his own self-torturing obses-
sions” (166). Gargano’s idea of Poe’s narrators as being “self-tortured” is
central to this chapter. In many of his stories, Poe shows how his unreli-
able narrators’ obsessions are at first misdirected; the characters become
106 Rachel McCoppin
obsessed with seemingly unrelated objects, like a cat or an “evil eye.”

These objects serve as clues to the reader, and eventually to the narrator,
of the narrator’s unconscious, though the majority of the narration is
devoted to the narrator’s desperate attempts to flee or fight against these
clues. Once the narrator must face the invented culprit of his obsessions,
then the truth about the inner self of the narrator and the reality of the
situation is illuminated.
I contend that many of Poe’s narrators follow a self-destructive path
propelled by these invented obsessions, which are really misdirected
attempts at facing their own unconscious. In their attempts to try to
escape the truth of who they really are, they shun reality because of inter-
nal problems and fears. Yet, again, it is the unconscious attribution of
objects that the characters obsess over that finally drives them to do some-
thing, usually something violent, as a form of escape from facing their
true identity. Ironically, Poe allows this action of ultimately attempting to
escape their unconscious obsession to be the event that brings the truth
of who they are to the forefront of their perception. Once they discover
their unconscious selves, the characters are forced to finally confront the
truth of who they are and what they may have done. Poe goes as far as to
have his characters’ obsessions be what forces them to turn themselves in,
further revealing that their obsession is their own internal desire to face
their true identity. His narrators succumb to their unconscious, making
the process of self-discovery sometimes self-destructive.
Gargano argues that Poe “intends his readers to keep their powers
of analysis and judgment ever alert” because Poe is a “chronicler of the
Romantic excesses which lead to psychic disorder, pain, and disintegra-
tion” (“Question” 166). Readers of Poe know all along that these obsessed
narrators are unreliable; the reader understands that their invented obses-
sions define them as insane. Yet the structure of these works also induces
readers to question what they believe to be reality; Poe’s works reveal that
reality is limited by subjective perception. If one’s unconscious can force
itself to be recognized, and if that “true” self is not socially acceptable,
then Poe’s fictional horror comes to life, compelling readers to question
their own self-identification.
Poe’s “The Black Cat” constructs a narrative in which the protagonist
is tortured by his own invented obsessions. He tries to convince readers
that he is sane, but readers understand quickly that he is far from it. Poe
makes it clear throughout the text that the narrator is unbalanced; he
is an alcoholic, and he is overcome by, as Gargano states, “‘sentimental
excesses; his extreme happiness in feeding and caressing his pets’” (qtd.
in Piacentino). The narrator also reveals a disturbing childhood in which
he was ridiculed, and it appears that he substitutes relationships with his
Horrific Obsessions 107
pets for ones with humans. The narrator commits atrocious acts but jus-
tifies them by blaming any number of causes, rather than focusing on his
own self-blame. Jung’s idea of the persona is precisely this—one wears a
mask as a front to society in order to escape facing one’s true self, poten-
tially out of fear or shame of one’s past, but, again, one’s unconscious has
a way of revealing itself to the individual.
The narrator is propelled through the plot of the story by his obses-
sions; these misdirected obsessions serve as clues to his unconscious self.
The objects of his obsession, the cats, consistently show him who he is
and what he is capable of, and this is precisely why they serve to torment
him. The leftover burned image of the cat reminds him of his actions, the
blinded eye of both cats accuses him again and again, and the haunted
cry of the cat trapped within the wall next to his murdered wife finally
exposes the narrator’s true identity to himself. The narrator’s murder of
his wife “seems to be unconscious and, therefore, the crime is not con-
sciously premeditated” (Piacentino).
The ending of this work is a shock to the reader, but not because of
the narrator’s demented action of killing his wife and hiding her body;
this action fits the character’s behavior. What shocks the reader is that
the character’s continued obsession forces his actions to be revealed. The
ending of the story, with the protagonist still being haunted by the cat,
shows the true horror of the narrative. The terror does not come from
his actions entirely, but from his inability to face why the cats torment
him so much. When the cry of the hidden cat breaks forth, revealing the
narrator’s crime to the authorities, readers see that some part of the nar-
rator demands to be noticed. In Jungian terms, the narrator’s obsession
with the cat reveals aspects of the narrator’s identity that have not been
dealt with. When the narrator leads authorities to the murder site, he
feels proud of the job he did of sealing in his wife’s body within the wall,
but the cat’s cry is like the unconscious self within us all. By the narrator
attempting to hide his unconscious within his symbolic wall, his uncon-
scious still finds a way to be heard. The very fact that he led the authori-
ties to the site reveals his unconscious desire to know himself.
In this work, Poe shows the difficulty of knowing one’s true self. The
protagonist either will not or cannot come to terms with his real self.
This intricate narrative structure of continually depicting a character
who cannot accept accountability for his own actions serves to force the
reader to wonder how the narrator can be so swayed by his own hidden
psyche without any indication of why he does what he does. Many of
Poe’s works reveal the abhorred reality of human existence; he unflinch-
ingly describes characters who wrestle to understand why they commit
violence. They repeatedly appear lost and without any semblance of
108 Rachel McCoppin
self-control. Conversely, readers, hopefully being of sound mind, ques-

tion how one can become so demented. Again, in the Romantic era, with
self-knowledge being a predominant topic, stories that show a complete
reversal of self-knowledge may speak to readers of the importance of
inner contemplation, or conversely the “perversion” of too much focus
on the internal self may serve as a warning to audiences, as admitted by
“The Black Cat’s” narrator.
Similarly in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator creates a heightened
obsession with another misdirected object, the old man’s “evil eye.” Again
the narrator tries repeatedly to convince the audience that he is sane, but
Poe introduces a character who is drowning in his self-created delusions
and his false persona. He again is torturing himself in an attempt to focus
on anything that will take the place of focusing inward.
As in “The Black Cat,” the narrator’s unconscious breaks through
to him in his obsession with the old man’s evil eye. In order to escape
the reality of what the eye sees, which of course is himself, the narrator
insanely chooses to murder the old man, ultimately revealing the real-
ity of his own identity. Once again the narrator kills without being able
to connect himself to the crime; he feels out of control, forced by his
obsession to commit this violent act. Robert Con Davis in “Lacan, Poe,
and Narrative Repression” states that “Poe’s narrators busy themselves
by walling up, burying, dismembering, analyzing, and rationalizing in a
furious attempt to remain active and, thus, elusive” (993).
After the “evil eye” is hidden, the heartbeat in the floorboards then
shifts to serve as the narrator’s unconscious trying again to break through
to him, as did the cat trapped in the wall in “The Black Cat.” The end-
ing of the work once again is a shock to the reader because of the twist it
takes in its expected outcome; readers assume he will commit violence,
but the “twist” in the narrative, by having him again lead authorities to
the murder site, shows that the protagonist’s desire is to face his actions,
and thus face his true self. In both stories, the narrators must finally
accept the obsessions as misdirected, and thus finally accept their true
identities. Again, the shock of a life unexamined leads readers to question
their own personas or definitions of self.
Poe’s legacy of the obsessed narrator has dominated horror films since
the beginning of the genre; therefore, this chapter will discuss how horror
films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and M. Night Shyamalan’s
The Sixth Sense (1999) are adaptations of this technique. The chapter
will draw on Linda Hutcheon’s book A Theory of Adaptation and her
definition of a “plural” adaptation, in which a theme is taken from many
sources and adapted widely into new versions. Within these films, each
protagonist obsesses over misdirected objects until such a culmination
of escape occurs that the protagonist is finally forced to view the reality
of his true self. These films, though, add an important element to Poe’s
theme of the unconsciously obsessed narrator; they all make their pro-
tagonists more relatable than Poe’s madmen. This new adaptation is still
in holding with Poe’s central theme, to possibly even a greater extent than
witnessed in Poe. Poe’s works show narrators who are clearly insane,
and who thus risk the potential of being kept at a distance by readers.
These contemporary film adaptations eliminate this issue, making the
protagonists understandable, so that Poe’s central issue, the horror of a
misdirected persona and a false identification with reality, becomes the
predominant message of the films, thus giving new terror to audiences
because the possibility of having a skewed definition of self hits closer to
home. These films expose the fact that life is all perception, and sanity
and reality are subjective; this believable aspect of reality as being able
to be redefined in an instant is apparently thrilling to audiences, as the
popular reception of these films is undeniable.
Hutcheon’s view in A Theory of Adaptation reveals one kind of film
adaptation, that of taking a theme as a “source” and applying it to a later
adaptation; she states that “the ‘adapted text’—the purely descriptive
term I prefer to ‘source’ or ‘original’—can be plural too, as films like Baz
Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (2001) have taught us’” (21). She also states
that “from the adapter’s perspective, adaptation is an act of appropriat-
ing or salvaging, and this is always a double process of interpreting and
then creating something new” (20).
In accordance with Hutcheon’s “plural” adaptation, this chapter does
not contend that any one Poe text has been specifically adapted into a
modern horror film, but instead I argue that Poe’s theme of the self-
obsessed narrator, who is unable to accept the reality of either who he is
or what has happened to him, has shaped the context of many popular
horror films. Also, I contend that this technique of Poe’s has become so
popular in contemporary times because of its important ability to compel
audiences to question their own identity and reality.
There is also a fairly new tendency toward the “twist” technique in
contemporary horror films, and again, it is this technique that I argue is
also connected to Poe’s texts of self-obsessed narrators. As in “The Black
Cat” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” both works end by shocking the reader
with unexpected endings; both texts support the premise that the narra-
tors feel they are justified in their actions, but the “twist” ending comes
when readers understand that indeed the narrators seem in some way
to want to be discovered, as revealed by the fact that they are the ones
who turn themselves in to the authorities. However, in fitting with their
denial of self, they both do this without knowing why, revealing that the
110 Rachel McCoppin
entire plot of the stories was focused on the narrators’ true obsession to
learn the truth of their unconscious. Although this technique is not new,
as evidenced in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it has become increasingly
popular in contemporary times.
The concept of a narrator in film presents a problem, and so this issue
should be addressed briefly. Narrators in literary texts are presented dif-
ferently than in film, and this is important to the idea of “twist” mov-
ies. Narration in film is organized under different circumstances. Many
times a film sets up a linear format, in which viewers are forced to view
events and concepts according to the film’s structuralized presentation. A
viewer’s imaginative ability is not encouraged the way it is in print.
The narration in “twist” movies can be unreliable and “depends pre-
cisely on the audience’s confounded expectation that the norm of nar-
rational transparency will have been in place” (Wilson). In literary texts,
the reader must rely solely on the account of the narrator, with language-
based textual clues as to the narrator’s mental stability; “in the novel
the two kinds of focalization (internal/external) alternate, in film several
internal and external focalizers can appear simultaneously” (Schmidt).
In film, viewers gain a broader view of any given situation; myriad visual
elements, music, flashbacks, and flash-forwards can all add to the ability
of a viewer to gain insight, or at least help to set an atmosphere of doubt
within the viewer.
Modern films, like the ones discussed in this chapter, experiment a
great deal with how to fully portray a filmic narrator immersed in an
unreliable film structure to showcase his unstable view of reality and
self-identification. These films still allow the “twist” to be the moment
of self-actualization, but the medium of film also enables directors to
give more precise and measurable clues to viewers of the instability and
unreliability of the filmic narrators.
In addition, similarly to Poe’s texts, Erlend Lavik in “Narrative
Structure in The Sixth Sense” states, “[T]he introduction of the twist
represents a kind of catharsis that we as viewers are invited to share by
being epistemically aligned with [the narrators]” (56). This “catharsis”
coming from the shock of the “twist” of self-actualization is adapted
from Poe because the shock to the audience at the end of the film again
compels audiences inward to question their own definitions of identity
and reality.
Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) is a good adaptation of Poe’s theme of the
unconsciously self-obsessed narrator. Hitchcock was quite influenced by
Poe: “I can’t help but compare what I try to put in my films with what Poe
put in his stories” (qtd. in “Some Thoughts”). His Vertigo is no excep-
tion; it is Scottie’s unreliability as a narrator because of his self-obsession,
misdirected as an obsession with the macabre and Madeline, that con-

nects him to his predecessor in Poe. In fact, Vertigo influenced what
audiences have now come to expect as the “twist” movie tradition, thus
making Hitchcock a transmitter of Poe through this film, and others he
produced with similar surprise endings, to later films of this genre.
Vertigo follows Scottie, a detective, as he is hired to pursue a friend’s
suicidal wife, Madeline. Like Poe’s formula for slowly revealing to his
readers the instability of his narrators, Hitchcock offers clues that Scottie
is an unreliable narrator for many reasons; he suffers from acrophobia,
and possibly posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after trying to save a
police officer who fell to his death from a tower because Scottie’s vertigo
kept him from saving the officer. His past of hardship serves, as with the
narrator in Poe’s “The Black Cat,” to reveal an unstable psyche and a
possible cause for the eventual breakdown of Scottie’s false persona.
Scottie, again like Poe’s narrators, misdirects his need to come to self-
actualization with his true self by becoming obsessed with the charac-
ter of Madeline. His initial obsession with Madeline shows a side of his
personality that he did not know existed; for instance, Scottie begins to
believe that Madeline is possessed by her great-grandmother, Carlotta
Valdes, who committed suicide. This break with his traditional embrace
of rationality serves as one of Hitchcock’s first clues that Scottie is wres-
tling with something within himself and with the way he defines reality.
Another clue, in the tradition of Poe, is Hitchcock’s visual cues that rep-
resent a dreamlike atmosphere every time Scottie encounters Madeline.
The plot thickens to further interweave Scottie within his own confused
psyche.
Scottie cannot accept that he was unable to rescue the cop at the
beginning of the film, or the fact that Madeline is dead. By transform-
ing Judy into Madeline, he is wallowing in the sorrow he is unable to
accept. Yet more telling is his obsession with Madeline in the first place;
in reality, Scottie never really knew Madeline at all. His obsessive sor-
row for someone he barely knew reveals important information to the
viewer about Scottie’s unresolved unconscious state. Following Jungian
psychology, there is something unexamined within Scottie that he does
not know, but the fact that he continues to push toward discovering the
truth of the mystery reveals his unconscious need to learn who he really
is, like many of Poe’s narrators.
Scottie, who as a detective is supposed to represent rationality and
even skepticism, is utterly tricked, not knowing that through the majority
of the film he was set up by his friend Elster, the husband of Madeline.
Scottie’s vulnerability to being so deceived exposes that he is experiencing
a time of unstable selfhood. In order to further deceive Scottie, Madeline
112 Rachel McCoppin
fakes her suicide by jumping off a tower, and once again because of his
unbalanced state, Scottie cannot save her. His repeated inability to save
the object of his obsession shows his inability to fully grasp who he is. He
cannot save Madeline, solely because of his own insecurities; at this point
within the film, he has not come to terms with his true self.
Following this incident, Scottie suffers more acutely from PTSD, and
a “guilt complex,” as his doctor states in the film, which only height-
ens his obsessions. He finds a woman named Judy who reminds him
of Madeline, and again he immediately becomes obsessed with her. It
is important to note that the audience believes Scottie’s perspective for
much of the film, until it is revealed that he is unstable and thus unreli-
able. The audience begins to pick up more acutely on the many clues that
Hitchcock reveals in Scottie’s new encounters with Judy.
The film becomes increasingly dreamlike as Hitchcock uses even more
visual techniques to create a false, skewed reality by shooting scenes
through a “fog filter” or by circling the room as the background changes,
as in the scene in which Judy as Madeline embraces Scottie (Wilson). The
music also helps to induce a sense of unease when Judy and Scottie are
together.
Again, similar to Poe’s tales of self-obsessed narrators, Scottie is
unable to know himself and accept reality. Like Poe’s works, the whole
film focuses on Scottie as he is mired in his own inner confusion. He
struggles to figure out reality, but the very thing that keeps him from
discovering the truth is his own inner conflicts, not necessarily the hoax
that was set up to deter him. Yet, like Poe’s stories, Scottie’s unconscious
wish to know the truth of who he is propels the film ever forward. He
continues down the destructive plot of the movie precisely because of
his unconscious wish to figure out the truth of the mystery, which is in
essence the truth of who he is.
Even more telling is Scottie’s obsession with remodeling Judy to look
exactly like Madeline, specifically Madeline on the day that she died.
Judy resists this change; she repeatedly states that she just wants Scottie
to love her as she is, but she finally succumbs to all of his demented
wishes. Judy’s submission to Scottie is quite important to the message of
identity and persona. Hitchcock makes it clear that Scottie’s instability
of self drains away Judy’s sense of self. In this final scene of Judy’s trans-
formation into Madeline, she clearly wears an undeniable persona and
has lost her true self. Only in her wearing this persona is she attractive
and appealing to Scottie, because Scottie himself is so immersed in his
persona. Though, conversely, it is precisely this obsession, as with Poe’s
narrators, that will unravel for Scottie the true nature of his unconscious
desires, stripping away his comfortable persona.
It is also essential to the plot that Scottie is obsessed with Judy only
when she is masked as Madeline, which in reality is someone who never
existed in the first place. His object of obsession is clearly delineated as
something that is completely false, as the whole thing was set up to be
a hoax, thus heightening his obsession as actually a misdirected way of
escaping his true unconscious self. When Scottie and Judy, fully masked
as Madeline, succumb sexually, Hitchcock again uses visual elements
that make the scene reflect Scottie’s misdirected obsession; bathed in iri-
descent green light, Judy as Madeline embraces Scottie, and he clings to
her, but this embrace and Scottie’s clear joy at having “reunited” with
Madeline are clearly unnerving to the audience. Hitchcock, like Poe, offers
these clues to show that Scottie is choosing to escape his self through this
obsession. He is not in reality in love with Judy or even Madeline. He is
only escaping his unconscious self. Hitchcock’s portrayal of this embrace
with its sexual undertones suggests a fatalistic infatuation with death
itself. This scene of copulation represents the heightened culmination of
escape for Scottie; just as in Poe’s works, when the narrators viciously
murder to escape their misdirected objects, Scottie now, through “lov-
ing” the selfless Judy/Madeline, cannot escape to any higher degree.
Directly following this scene, Scottie helps Judy put on a locket that
he recognizes as Madeline’s. Finally, as with Poe’s texts, the truth comes
to Scottie, through his obsession. Scottie knows, suddenly, the trick that
was played on him. And also like Poe’s characters who unconsciously
bring detectives to the murder scene and the bodies, Scottie is uncon-
sciously welcoming this opportunity to face the true nature of his identity
by fully discovering the truth of the mystery. Scottie drives the resistant
Judy to the place of Madeline’s death, stating that there is “[o]ne final
thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.”
Judy, as Madeline, resists, possibly representing the side of Scottie that
is also immersed entirely in his persona, but he fights this and forces her,
and himself, to go up the stairs. He demands that she verbalize that she
has been wearing a false persona the whole time, also demanding that
she declare her own selfhood. In no longer wanting a false partner, this
complete transformation in Scottie’s desires shows that he is finally com-
ing to know his true self.
In a moment of faltering back to his persona, he briefly forgives Judy
and embraces her, showing that he still desires to return to this invented,
and false, reality. But the film cannot end there because Scottie still has
not revealed his full unconscious self. A figure in black, later revealed to
be the nun, startles Judy, who is “terrified, thinking and believing she
is seeing the ghost of the murdered Madeleine” (“Vertigo”). Judy, the
catalyst and object of Scottie’s obsession, falls backward to her death,
114 Rachel McCoppin
finally revealing, to Scottie and the viewer, that Scottie’s true obsession
has been death itself. It is this discovery that shows him who he is on an
unconscious level.
If Scottie and Judy had ended up happy, all the clues throughout the
film would only have produced a run-of-the-mill mystery plot, but what
makes this a classic horror film is its psychological nature. In Jungian
terms, Scottie has been battling throughout the entire film with himself.
In becoming obsessed with a clearly invented character, he was attempt-
ing to escape his own unconscious, but when he cannot escape any fur-
ther, he can only turn to himself, or the true reason for the obsessions.
He forced himself and Judy up the tower so that he again must witness
death firsthand; all the clues thus far have shown that Scottie has an
infatuation with death and loss. This ending opens the more horrifying
question, did he not save the police officer, Madeline, or Judy because he
unconsciously wished them dead?
Regardless, the film’s true horror comes from the revelation that Scottie
is flawed and may unconsciously wish for his own demise by attempting
to pursue the truth of this case. In pursuing Madeline, he has been pursu-
ing “death itself which he has mistaken for life” (Maxfield 10).
The hoax within the film is successful only because of Scottie’s unex-
amined internal state. Like Poe’s work, this film is terrifying precisely
because of Scottie’s inability to grasp who he really is and the truth of
the reality that surrounds him. This intricate and even unbelievable plot
shows that Hitchcock did not intend to make the plot rational—the true
horror comes from the fact that Scottie could be so deceived, as we all
can.
M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999) is another adaptation
film told through the perspective of Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychol-
ogist, who becomes, again like Poe’s narrators, obsessed with discovering
the truth about one of his patients, Cole Sear. Cole is an eight-year-old
boy who is suffering because he believes he sees dead people. Malcolm’s
obsession is to not only cure Cole but to also discover if he indeed can see
ghosts. This film is connected to Poe’s works of the self-obsessed narra-
tor because Malcolm, as with Poe’s characters and Scottie in Vertigo, is
obsessed with figuring out his own unconscious truth. The Sixth Sense
leads to another “twist” ending, again similar to many of Poe’s texts in
that by the end of the film the shock it brings audiences compels them
to reanalyze their perception of selfhood and reality, just as it forces
Malcolm to do.
Also, like many of Poe’s works, the film reveals clues to warn the reader
that Malcolm holds an unreliable perception of reality. He is never seen
directly talking with anyone besides Cole throughout the film. Again,
similar to Scottie, Malcolm has experienced a past of trauma that accord-

ing to Jungian psychology leads to his obsession with self-actualizing.
Malcolm’s biggest traumatic event is of course his own death; since he
is able to come back, even after death, and continue his journey toward
self-actualization, it becomes clear that Malcolm has repressed the truth
of his murder and the fact that he is dead; thus part of the persona he
wears is that of a living man.
Once the plot of the movie firmly moves into Malcolm as a ghost,
though still unbeknownst to him, there are again clues that suggest that
Malcolm is preoccupied with his misdirected obsession to cure Cole,
rather than focusing on the truth of himself, but again it is precisely
his obsession, as with Poe and Hitchcock, that will reveal to him the
truth of his unconscious. The first and one of the most important clues is
that Malcolm is a psychoanalyst. His profession enables him to actively
search his own psyche, again unbeknownst to him, in his infatuation to
cure Cole. Malcolm as psychoanalyst serves to show that he must heal
himself by coming to terms with the truth about what he is—a ghost.
Another important clue into Malcolm’s unconscious quest is that he is
never portrayed with his death wound showing, and he also cannot see
it. All of the other ghosts in the movie do not realize that they are also
dead, though their death wounds are highly visible; Houtman suggests
that all the ghosts who wear these scars but do not know the true nature
of themselves, the fact that they are dead, are also repressing their true
selves but wear unconscious clues that signal this repression. Malcolm,
by not seeing his death wound, is also repressing the truth of who he is,
though since the wound remains unseen, maybe he is doing it to a greater
extent. The youth of the objects of Malcolm’s obsessions, Vincent and
Cole, also serves as an important clue toward understanding the truth of
his loss of life.
Once again following as an adaptation of Poe, this film leads Malcolm
to a culmination of conflict in which he tries to become lost in his obses-
sion. Malcolm perpetuates the narrative by unconsciously wanting to
solve his identification crisis; he wants, unconsciously, to figure out the
truth of himself. This attempt at complete escape comes when he all but
gives up on his marriage and fully commits to saving Cole. In order to
be able to help Cole, Malcolm must believe in Cole’s ability to see the
dead, which happens because of Vincent, who serves within the film as
the catalyst of Malcolm’s self-actualization. Malcolm listens to an old
session he had with Vincent and can hear the voices of the dead antago-
nizing him. This ability to hear the dead, something most living people
within the film cannot do, is a point of realization for Malcolm and
allows him to believe Cole. This ability to finally hear, and thus believe
116 Rachel McCoppin
in, ghosts shows that in reality he is closer to unconscious identification;

but at this point in the narrative, this turning point only allows Malcolm
to justify furthering his obsession with Cole, as a way of escaping his
unconscious.
Again, as with Poe, the misdirected obsession becomes the necessary
agent of unconscious revelation when it is actually Cole, the misdirected
object of Malcolm’s obsession, who forces Malcolm to see the truth about
himself. Cole suggests that Malcolm return to his wife, and once there,
Malcolm sees that she has dropped his wedding ring. This action shows
him that he is not wearing it, and suddenly the truth hits him. He is able
to connect his past to himself in connection with reality. Malcolm’s recol-
lection of Cole signals his obsession with Cole, and this connection kept
Malcolm tied to his created false persona; his memory of the reality of
the initial scene with Vincent represents the truth of himself—a lost man
who up until this point has feared death. Vincent, and his representation
in Cole, feared the dead, and Malcolm in his effort to escape the truth
of his unconscious clung to healing young boys, who were supposed to
be far from death, but who in reality were quite close to it through their
extrasensory perceptions. Malcolm, as a ghost, serves as a figure of the
ultimate reality of the unconscious—death.
As in Poe’s works, the inability of Malcolm to face what happened
to him serves as the premise of the entire movie. This film reveals how
fleeting life can be, but also how one’s perception of life is only that, a
perceived view of what one believes is true, despite the reality of the situ-
ation; this aspect of the film heightens the horror of the movie, proving
that Cole is indeed quite capable of conversing with the dead.
The fine line that Poe walks between warning readers of the perversity
of overly intense self-actualization and the need for scrutiny of self and
reality is mended within the films discussed in this chapter. Vertigo and
The Sixth Sense allow viewers to like and commiserate with Scottie and
Malcolm. These contemporary “twist” movies have revised Poe’s theme
of the self-obsessed narrator; they have eliminated Poe’s savage narrator
in place of a relatable narrator that audiences can identify with, because
the point of the films is not only horror but the message of self-actualiza-
tion within a complex reality.
Though Poe acknowledges that self-reflection is a complicated and
difficult process, possibly risking perversion and destruction, his works
still imply that it is a necessary process for emotional, mental, and even
societal well-being, and contemporary adaptations of his techniques
pose similar results to audiences today. As Jung states, “Nothing is so
apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with
oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of
waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the

primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility”
(“Psychological Typology” 964).
Works Cited
Davis, Robert Con. “Lacan, Poe, and Narrative Repression.” Modern Language
Notes 98.5, Comparative Literature (Dec. 1983): 983–1005. JSTOR. Web.
24 Sept. 2010.
Gargano, James W. The Masquerade Vision in Poe’s Short Stories. Baltimore,
MD: Enoch Pratt Free Library, the Poe Society, and the Library of the U of
Baltimore, 1977. Print.
———. “The Question of Poe’s Narrators.” Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays.
Ed. Robert Regan. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967. 164–71.
Print.
Houtman, Coral. “Questions of Unreliable Narration in The Sixth Sense.”Scope.
Web. 13 Oct. 2011. Print.
Jung, Carl. “Concerning Rebirth.” The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious. 1940. P. 221. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. Print.
———. “Psychological Typology.” Psychological Types. 1936. P. 964. Print.
Lavik, Erlend. “Narrative Structure in The Sixth Sense: A New Twist in ‘Twist
Movies.” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006). Academic Search Premier.
Web. 30 Nov. 2010.
Maxfield, James F. “A Dreamer and His Dream: Another Way of Looking at
Hitchcock’s Vertigo.” Film Criticism 14.3 (Spring 1990): 3–13. Academic
Search Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2010.
Piacentino, Ed. “Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’ as Psychobiography: Some Reflections on
the Narratological Dynamics.” Studies in Short Fiction Spring 1998. Web. 11
Oct. 2010.
Schmidt, Johann N. “Narration in Film.” The Living Handbook of Narratology.
Ed. Peter Hühn et al. Hamburg: Hamburg UP. Web. 12 Oct. 2011.
The Sixth Sense. Dir. M. Night Shyamalan. Barry Mendel Productions and
Hollywood Pictures, 1999. Film.
“Some Thoughts on Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov.” Images Journal.
com. Web. 12 Aug. 2010. Print.
Stark, Joseph. “Motive and Meaning: The Mystery of Will in Poe’s ‘The Black
Cat.’” Mississippi Quarterly Spring 2004: 255–63. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 18 Nov. 2010.
“The Unreliable Narrator in Poe’s Fiction.” Poe’s Poetry Summary and Analysis.
Web. 24 Sept. 2010.
Vertigo. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount Pictures, 1958. Film.
“Vertigo (1958).” Filmsite Movie Review. Web. 13 Oct. 2011.
Wilson, George. “Transparency and Twist in Narrative Fiction Film.” Journal
of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64.1 (2006). Academic Search Premier. Web.
18 Sept. 2010.
10
The Pleasure of Losing One’s Way: Adapting
Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd”
Rebecca Johinke
The fact that Edgar Allan Poe’s life and work remain a popular source
text for adaptation is well established. Any search of a movie database
like IMDB or a simple Wikipedia search using “Poe” and “adaptations”
or “Poe” and “popular culture” provides ample evidence to support this
claim.1 Immediately after Poe’s death in 1849, the process of adapting
his life and work began with Rufus W. Griswold’s famous obituary. 2 As
Kyle Dawson Edwards describes, “By the end of the nineteenth century,
Edgar Allan Poe was enmeshed in [a] self-perpetuating rhetorical machi-
nation that used his life story as fodder to fuel further scrutiny, specu-
lation, intrigue, and adulation” (5). Moreover, Poe himself was clearly
fixated on mythologizing his own life and writing, which contributed to
the blurring between his fiction and his life and is played out in many Poe
adaptations. Poe’s self-reflexive writing, along with his scathing reviews
of other writers’ work, his interest in the creative process, and his habit of
hoaxing, ensured that Poe was central to discussions about American let-
ters during his lifetime. His fascination with hoaxes and plagiarism also
demonstrate that Poe himself was alert to the possibilities of adaptation
as, what Hutcheon would describe as, a “process” and a “product” (xiv).
In this chapter I want to explore how adaptations of Poe’s “The Man
of the Crowd” (1840) can help us grapple with broader questions about
adaptation studies and what Linda Hutcheon describes as the pleasures
of “repetition” and “change” across a range of media from films to video
games (9).
120 Rebecca Johinke
The best-known or most popular film adaptations of Poe’s work appear

in three main waves in the twentieth century. The first were the early silent
films from 1909 to 1915. Thomas C. Carlson notes that there were sev-
enteen Poe films made during this period and that the unreferenced text
in these films is Poe’s life (5). He examines four of the early silent films:
Edgar Allen [sic] Poe (D. W. Griffith, 1909), The Raven (American Eclair
Company, 1912), The Avenging Conscience (Mutual, 1914—also made
by Griffith), and The Raven (Essanay Company of Chicago, 1915). All
four films conflate Poe’s fiction with his life, and they typically focus on
Poe’s poverty and the early death of his wife Virginia (Carlson 5–6). All
continue the epideictic tradition of praise and blame, and Carlson notes
that Griswold’s attacks on Poe’s reputation (and subsequent counterat-
tacks on Griswold) inevitably affect the tenor of the adaptations (6–7).
What is already evident from these early Poe film adaptations is that all
subsequent adaptations of Poe’s work will necessarily reference more than
just one literary source text and will inevitably also, whether knowingly
or not, reference literary and film adaptations and engage with them inter-
textually. As Edwards notes, what often transpires over a period of time
is that a single source text morphs into what he calls a “broad assem-
blage” that closer resembles a “discourse” rather than a “source” (1). This
becomes even more evident in the next wave of film adaptations.
The second wave of Poe adaptations includes the films starring Bela
Lugosi and Boris Karloff that we now know as “the Universal horror
cycle” of the 1930s (Woolf 46). Necessarily, they were influenced by the
first wave. Each film serves as a palimpsest for the next one and con-
tributes to the Poe discourse. Horror “classics” such as Dracula (1931),
Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) paved the way for a number of Poe
adaptations such as Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Black Cat
(1934), and The Raven (1935). As Ronald L. Smith notes, “[f]eature-
length films often are too long to support short stories where mood is
more easily sustained and there is less emphasis on characters” (ix). Thus,
just as in the first wave, this second wave of Poe adaptations also liberally
combines several stories or poems—much more than is usual for adapta-
tions of poems or short stories in general (Woolf 43). As Edwards notes,
in films like The Raven and The Black Cat, the defense of Poe’s repu-
tation becomes part of the motivation for the characters and a subject
of the narrative (9–11). Of course, given that filmmakers were making
longer films by the 1930s, Poe’s short stories needed additional “pad-
ding” to make them suitable as feature-length projects. Thus, despite
Poe’s popularity as a source, the majority of adaptations are extremely
loose adaptations—so much so that they are characterized by this lack of
The Pleasure of Losing One’s Way 121
interest in narrative “fidelity.” Paul Woolf calls such adaptations “clas-

sic non-Poe Poe” (56). Woolf observes, “It is as if Poe’s works were one
vast repository of characters, events, and themes, from which filmmakers
are happy to select the items they want and disregard all others” (43).
“Fidelity” to a singular source and a singular way to interpret that source
thus gives way to a dialectical engagement with a number of texts within
the discourse that are all characterized by this hybridity and intertex-
tuality. Perhaps a more accurate way to describe these adaptations is as
“multiple-Poe Poe” rather than “non-Poe Poe.”
The third wave, the American International Pictures (AIP) or Corman
Poe cycle from the 1960s, continues the trend for “multiple-Poe Poe”
adaptations. The AIP films include The Fall of the House of Usher (1960),
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), The
Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Raven (1963), and each film
contributes to what Hutcheon calls an “extended intertextual engage-
ment with the adapted work” (8). Vincent Price starred in all but one of
the AIP films, and as a knowing acknowledgement to the Universal cycle,
Corman has Karloff join Price in The Raven. In this way, the third wave
pays homage to the second. In an interview accompanying the 2002 DVD
rerelease of The Masque of the Red Death and The Premature Burial,
Roger Corman cheerfully notes that in a typical “three-act” story, Poe’s
original story sufficed for one act, and then he made up the rest. In some
instances Corman combined more than one Poe story in a film, as is the
case with The Masque of the Red Death, which incorporates elements
from “Hop Frog.” As Hutcheon explains, this type of addition is typi-
cally the case when short stories are adapted for the screen and sources
need to be expanded rather than cut (19). Thus, if the source text is a
short story or poem and the medium of the adaptation is a feature-length
film, the adaptors are obliged to embrace intertextuality (a discourse
rather than source).
What I want to explore in this chapter is how adaptations of Poe’s
“The Man of the Crowd” (1840) relate to these first three waves of film
adaptations. On the face of it, “The Man of the Crowd” does not feature
as a primary source in the first three waves of Poe film adaptations. It has
been adapted into a number of other media, however, and if one employs
Hutcheon’s definition of adaptation as a “derivation” but not “deriva-
tive,” and as both “process” and “product,” it provides the flexibility
for engaging with adaptations in diverse media rather than an exclusive
literature-to-film paradigm (8–9). As a case in point, Ronald L. Smith’s
Poe in the Media (1990) lists one entry under “The Man of the Crowd”:
Josef Holbrooke’s piano sonata from 1938. Holbrooke dedicated a suite
of musical compositions to Poe, with each one inspired by a different
122 Rebecca Johinke
short story (67). In his encyclopedic Images of Poe’s Work, Burton R.

Pollin lists a 1979 German TV version directed by Karl Heinz Kramberg,
which also apparently incorporates elements of “The Tell-Tale Heart”
(338).3 Along with a range of literary adaptations, I have located at
least two more professional film adaptations and a number of amateur
ones. Despite the challenges of making an adaption of “The Man of the
Crowd,” as I will outline below, it is still remarkable that, given Poe’s
popularity, there were not more film adaptations of the story made dur-
ing the twentieth century.
Perhaps it was deemed too inaccessible for popular film audiences? It
is tempting to hypothesize that the story has not been a traditional favor-
ite for professional or commercial film adaptation because, unlike his
other stories featuring murders, spirits, ghosts, and premature burials,
little actually happens in the narrative. The unnamed narrator follows a
suspicious-looking stranger through city streets for a twenty-four-hour
period, but he cannot “read” the eponymous figure and the narrative
ends. Nothing happens. No crimes are committed and no answers are
provided. Unlike Poe’s famous detective Dupin, the narrator in “The Man
of the Crowd” fails to uncover a crime, let alone solve one. Hence, per-
haps it was deemed too obscure and not likely to attract popular appeal.
If the “fiend” is evil, readers have no evidence to substantiate his sins.
Yet given the tendency for Poe adaptations to cannibalize his stories and
borrow from events in Poe’s life, it is interesting that unlike many of the
other liberal adaptations of his work, very few twentieth-century film-
makers appear to have been tempted to do the same with “The Man of
the Crowd.” Clearly there is scope for the narrator to uncover a hideous
crime after following the stranger through the city streets, and it is note-
worthy that savvy adaptors like Corman did not seize upon this oppor-
tunity for narrative framing and start one of his Poe adaptations with
the “chase” sequence from “The Man of the Crowd.” As Dennis Perry
observes, however, Hitchcock did make use of elements of “The Man of
the Crowd” in films like Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), and,
according to Pollin, so did Kramberg in his made-for-TV German ver-
sion (Perry 146–48, 176–77; Pollin 338). No doubt other examples from
the twentieth century will emerge in the coming years, and perhaps it
is merely the fact that “The Man of the Crowd” is subsumed into other
adaptations that makes it more difficult to locate.
The visual adaptations of “The Man of the Crowd” that I have located
are what Hutcheon would call “acknowledged transposition[s] of a rec-
ognizable other work” (8). George Snow’s film adaptation made for
London’s BBC Channel 4 in 1987 is one such self-declared adaptation, as
is a twenty-minute film version produced in 2008 and written by Curtis
Harrington and directed by Oneshin Aiken, and a number of other ama-

teur adaptations available online. Early this century, there have also
been at least two video installations entitled “The Man of the Crowd.”
Paul Landen’s video installation can be viewed online. It features a triple
framing, with the audience watching a watcher looking at anonymous
walkers apparently unable to see or recognize others. It was exhibited in
ESPACE 1004, Montréal, Québec, in June 2004. The second is Matthew
Buckingham’s installation “A Man of the Crowd” (2003), which pre-
miered at the Museum Moderner Kunst-Stiftung Ludwig (MuMoK) in
Vienna. That installation featured a 16 mm film loop of the story set
in Vienna, projected through an opening onto a two-way mirror.4 All
self-consciously reference “The Man of the Crowd” and signal that their
work is a tribute to Poe.
Snow’s 11.14-minute adaptation of “The Man of the Crowd” (helpfully
entitled “The Man of the Crowd”) is one “professional” (commercial)
version made for television that I have located that other critics appear to
have overlooked. Although filmed in 1987, Snow (aka “Man of Hank”)
posted it on Vimeo three years ago along with another of his Poe adap-
tations filmed the year after, which was based on “The Assignation.”
“The Man of the Crowd” is narrated by Bill Mitchell and stars Frederick
(Freddie) Gore as the “fiend.” The colors, costumes, and graphics locate
it in the mid-1980s, and with music by Brendan Beal, it has an MTV sen-
sibility. 5 Its voice-over narration adheres closely to Poe’s original prose
with just a few well-judged elisions to ensure that the piece is concise and
coherent (for example, they chose to exclude the reference to the dagger
and the diamond in the fiend’s pocket). Given the absence of dialogue in
the short story, the decision to include a voice-over narration is under-
standable. Ronald L. Smith argues that often the most successful Poe
adaptations include Poe’s words voiced by a narrator, and he acknowl-
edges the challenge adaptors face when trying to capture the “terror” and
the “torment” in a different mode or medium (ix). Of course, the status
of the voice-over as overly intrusive (“telling” rather than “showing”) is
a vexed question in adaptation studies (Hutcheon 53–54). Skilled film-
makers are assumed capable of conveying meaning without the presence
of a voice-over narrator, but the fact that the illegible stranger “cannot be
read” but rather is presumed to be the embodiment of evil (without view-
ers actually seeing him commit any crimes) does present an artistic chal-
lenge. As Hutcheon notes, adaptors of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde face the
same challenge—how to convey unspecified evil in a nonliterary mode
(28–29). In the cases she cites, the filmmakers incorporated sins appro-
priate to the era when the films were made to substantiate Hyde’s evil.
Despite the obvious allure of such an appropriation, I am not convinced
124 Rebecca Johinke
that a similar tactic would be successful for “The Man of the Crowd,” as
it would risk deflating any narrative tension or unnecessarily imposing a
neat ending to a narrative that succeeds precisely because of its ambigu-
ity and open ending. This is not to suggest that Poe’s text is somehow
too difficult or complex to adapt for the screen without the insertion
of a voice-over but merely to acknowledge that it would be a challenge
(particularly in adaptations that do not pursue the doppelgänger motif).
Perhaps it boils down to whether one views the story as a convenient
launching device for another narrative (thereby potentially lessening the
impact of reading a text that is supposedly unreadable) or whether the
story is best left intact as a stand-alone piece rather than part of a Poe
assemblage.
The Snow adaptation resists the temptation to combine several tales
and instead commences with a voyeuristic peep through a bathroom win-
dow at a hirsute male showering. This scene is the only significant diver-
sion from the source text, and, although ambiguous, one assumes this
naked figure is the narrator (whose voice we hear throughout the film).
The film concludes with another shot of his naked body, with the skull
of a horned beast superimposed on his head. We never see his face, but
in this way the visual medium is able to suggest that the narrator is also
evil, though this is unstated in the original text. Along with the voice-
over from the early part of the story, this suggests that the narrator is
diabolical in some way, but this is the only suggestion that the narrator
and fiend may share this trait. It is insufficient evidence to suggest that
Snow is pursuing the premise that the narrator and the fiend may be dop-
pelgängers, as there is no suggestion that the fiend is either a reflection
of the narrator or a figment of his imagination. After the brief shower
scene, the location moves to the streetscape, we hear the narrator read
“The Man of the Crowd,” and we follow the stranger through the city at
night. Beal’s soundtrack enhances the menace of streets, but occasional
graphics (mechanical feet marching, birds swooping) do not provide any
meaningful narrative clues to solve the open ending of the narrative but
rather serve to locate the film in the mid-1980s and within the context of
Snow’s other work from that time. Unlike many adaptations of the text,
Snow’s version includes the physiognomic survey of the crowd, and the
fiend is not introduced until almost exactly halfway through the film.
When the fiend does appear, he prowls and skips around the city, and
Gore’s hyperbolic gestures (eye rolls, hand-wringing) suggest madness
rather than sinfulness. The notes accompanying the video claim that
“[t]his Edgar Allan Poe tale tells of the scapegoat who walks, forever, the
streets of London absorbing the sins of others.” Thus, the challenge for
Snow is to create a character that embodies evil without providing any
evidence that he commits any sins himself but merely takes on those of
other people. This is a challenge for film adaptations that resist the urge
to provide additional intertexts to provide answers to questions that Poe
chose to leave unanswered.
The most recent adaptation of the story is a twenty-minute short film
version written by Curtis Harrington and directed by Oneshin Aiken.
“Man of the Crowd” (2008) has screened to limited audiences in North
America. The film is dedicated to Harrington, a longtime Poe fan and
cult avant-garde and horror film director who died in 2007. There is
no voice-over or subtitles, so viewers are left to navigate their own way
through the text. Viewers who are not familiar with the Poe short story
would be unlikely to recognize that it is an adaptation or perhaps would
associate the film with the work of David Lynch or Curtis Harrington
before thinking of Poe. Interestingly, there is no overt engagement with
the first three waves of Poe film adaptations. The opening shot features
two young lovers on a beach on the California coast; the couple encounter
a native North American shaman figure who gives the protagonist (Eric)
a dream catcher (a feathered object to hang above one’s bed to capture
the bad spirits from one’s dreams), and that night he dreams of a long-
haired man in a red shirt beckoning to him. The next day, when sitting
having coffee and watching the crowd go by, he sees the stranger from
his dreams and follows him. In this version, the stranger knows that he
is being followed and indeed is clearly luring Eric into a trap. They enter
a theater via the stage door, and in a series of scenarios typical of Lynch
films (dwarfs, flickering lights, dreamlike sequences, and a baroque mise-
en-scène), Eric awkwardly bribes the doorman, wanders around back-
stage, and encounters a group of burlesque dancers. He eventually finds
the stranger, who asks whether he has read the “classics” and whether he
has ever wanted to know what is on the other side of the looking glass
(obviously a reference to “William Wilson” and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland). The stranger explains that he is the dream
catcher; he then pushes Eric through a mirror and then covers it with
red paint while Eric (dripping in amniotic-like fluid) screams in terror.
Viewers familiar with the second and third wave of Poe film adaptations
would recognize the recurring motif of premature burial so prevalent in
the Universal and AIP adaptations like The Black Cat and The Premature
Burial. Harrington also explored the theme of premature burial in his
two adaptations of The Fall of the House of Usher, filmed sixty years
apart in 1942 and 2002. Despite this repetition of a familiar Poe motif,
the use of the mirror in this fashion differentiates this adaptation from
others. The final shot in this Harrington/Aiken version of “The Man of
the Crowd” shows Eric, dressed like the stranger, confidently greeting
126 Rebecca Johinke
his girlfriend with a long kiss, and we see the image of the stranger in a
reflection in the car window. So he has been “possessed” by his doppel-
gänger as he moves from nervous young adulthood to manhood. Thus, in
the stranger Eric recognizes his future “reflection,” and the filmmakers
are clearly engaging with Poe discourse and with the work of Freud and
Lacan as intertexts. Once again, this adaptation is part of a dynamic
cluster of intertexts stemming from Poe’s body of work but also a wide
range of other texts.
I now want to move from these two ambitious film adaptations to what
I will term a fourth wave of Poe adaptations: short student films posted
online. The emergence of this fourth wave of short amateur films online
demonstrates that makers of adaptations still turn to Poe’s work, perhaps
motivated by the “cultural capital” or the “pedagogical impulse” associ-
ated with adapting a “classic” like “The Man of the Crowd” (Hutcheon
91–92). It is easy to understand why the story is a popular story for young
amateur filmmakers—paradoxically for the same reasons it has not tra-
ditionally been a popular one with professional filmmakers. Given that
there is no dialogue, no real action (no murder to shoot, no talking birds
or premature burials), and it is set on city streets (rather than in a Gothic
mansion), it is an ideal story and setting for a small team or a single
person with a camera to tackle. As Ronald L. Smith notes, the most suc-
cessful Poe adaptations are often “half-hour TV shows and short edu-
cational films. Keeping the essence of Poe, artistic visuals are mated to
a narration that remains faithful to the uniqueness of his prose” (ix).
This rather essentialist observation about fidelity and faithfulness nev-
ertheless makes a good point about choice of media and mode. Despite
the cautionary comments about the pitfalls of essentialism and fidelity
made by theorists like Robert Stam, it is not necessarily hierarchical or
reductive to suggest that different media employ different means to tell
stories. Indeed, Stam suggests that instead of reductive arguments about
“medium specificity,” critics should formulate an approach that embraces
“diacritical specificity,” with each medium’s specificity “deriving from its
respective materials of expression” (59). The examples below do exactly
that, and they employ visual means to tease out interpretations that are
suggested but not explicit in the original text.
The growing body of Poe adaptations online adds to the Poe discourse
and provides further intertexts for students to reference. In a tradition
that dates back to D. W. Griffith’s Edgar Allen Poe (1909), many of these
adaptations misspell Poe’s name. Many student versions of “The Man
of the Crowd” posted on sites like YouTube just feature one person fol-
lowing another around a streetscape, but the more sophisticated ones
pick up on the doppelgänger motif and have one character essentially
follow himself or herself around the streets. There are at least a dozen
similar versions available online, but Reyson Morales’ 8.28-minute ver-
sion filmed in 1998 is particularly well realized. We follow one character
as he moves about the city over a twenty-four-hour period. In the second
half of the film, the protagonist becomes increasingly agitated, and it
becomes apparent that he is following himself. This is very simply real-
ized on-screen and is one of the advantages of film as a medium to tell
this particular doppelgänger story by showing rather than telling. The
film closes with the disheveled character stumbling along the street in the
early morning. The suggestion of the uncanny doubling of the protago-
nist lends the film narrative tension regardless of whether the audience is
familiar with “The Man of the Crowd.” There are no subtitles or voice-
over, and the soundtrack is made up of diegetic street noises, and so to a
viewer unfamiliar with Poe’s story, the doppelgänger perspective would
be apparent, but not the fact that the protagonist is a “fiend,” although
the film succeeds regardless.
Another engaging amateur effort is “Man about Crowd” by Pantelis
Makkas, which is a 31.17-minute version posted on Vimeo in 2009. It
bears some similarity to the video installation work of Buckingham and
Landen. It takes a diacritically specific approach to the story as it consists
of six simultaneous projections of documentary footage taken with a hid-
den camera. Thus the physiognomy described chronologically in the story
can be enacted simultaneously on screen. From our stationary positions
in front of the screen (simulating Poe’s coffeehouse window), we observe
the crowd from our position of power. Rather than following a fiend or
experimenting with doubling or doppelgängers, it sets up the unseen man
with the camera as a voyeur or flâneur capturing images of the city. The
accompanying postscript underneath the video does not attribute Poe,
but clearly the title of the film does. Instead the postscript states that the
man with the camera is a “solitary urban stroller” or “detective” and that
he is “tracking down transgressions committed in the metropolis and is
imposing a form of social control over that lawless formation known as
the crowd” (Man about Crowd 2009).
Finally, Nathan Crouse (2008) and Jacqueline Nguyen (2011) have
both created extremely engaging animated versions of Poe’s story as
student projects. Crouse’s 2.09-minute adaptation utilizes cartoon stick
figures, short snippets of text accompany each frame, and he has added
an uncredited soundtrack that works well to evoke a somber mood of
mystery and desolation. Crouse follows the central narrative thread of
Poe’s original and does not offer an alternative reading. Nguyen’s more
sophisticated but even shorter 1.57-minute version features a jaunty piano
soundtrack and a voice-over by Martin Murray. The narrative follows
128 Rebecca Johinke
the plot of Poe’s story closely, but, interestingly, the closing frames do
not as they have the fiend stab the narrator, who dies in a pool of blood
on the street. This disjunction between the voice-over and the action in
the frames is particularly arresting and is one of the advantages of visual
adaptations. Nguyen makes her reading of the story clear as she superim-
poses images of the fiend and the narrator in several frames, thus high-
lighting the fact that they are doppelgängers. Although the voice-over
does not indicate that a murder has been committed or that the two men
are doubles, the frames make it clear that the old man who is the “genius
of deep crime” and who “refuses to be alone” is actually both men, not
just the fiend. This mirroring of the two characters and the stabbing sug-
gests that Nguyen is transposing the ending of “William Wilson” into
her version of “The Man of the Crowd.” In so doing, she continues the
tradition of “multiple-Poe Poe” assemblages and suggests a way for us to
read the text.
As a means to highlight the broad range of adaptations of “The Man
of the Crowd,” I want to finish with an overview of a number of literary
adaptations of the story. In the broader context of a study of what she
calls “metaphysical detective stories,” Patricia Merivale (1999) surveys a
number of literary adaptations of “The Man of the Crowd,” including
G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), Graham Greene’s
“A Day Saved” (1935), and Japanese novelist Kobo Abe’s The Face of
Another (1964) and Inter Ice Age 4 (1968). Finally, and famously, there
is Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy (1987), with the first novella in
the trilogy entitled City of Glass (1985), which is the most indebted to
Poe’s story. In a more recent examination of literary adaptations of “The
Man of the Crowd,” Paul Jahshan notes what influence the story, and
Poe’s crime fiction in general, has had on the American detective genre
and on cyberpunk and steampunk. He notes that authors such as Thomas
Pynchon, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, E. L. Doctorow, William Gibson, and
Neal Stephenson are deeply indebted to motifs and figures first employed
in “The Man of the Crowd.” Unsurprisingly, most of these literary adap-
tations tend to ignore or radically condense the first half the story where
the narrator gazes out at the crowd through a coffeehouse window and
mentally catalogues the masses. Instead, they focus on the relationship
between the narrator and the “fiend”—specifically, they experiment with
the figure of the doppelgänger and issues relating to voyeurism and surveil-
lance (forms of seeing and reading). And, typically, recent literary criticism
on the subject of Poe’s story considers it in terms of early crime fiction, the
literature of the city, reading practices, and the practice of flânerie.6
All of the above-mentioned literary adaptations of “The Man of the
Crowd” are, of course, also indebted to other texts. For example, Auster’s
trilogy and the first book, City of Glass, reference not only Poe’s “The
Man of the Crowd” and “William Wilson” but other classic crime fic-
tion narratives. Thus “The Man of the Crowd” is just one of a number
of source texts, and Auster’s project is clearly not to reproduce a “faith-
ful” copy of Poe’s original but rather to engage with it intertextually.7
Interestingly, Auster’s City of Glass has been adapted, in part, into Paul
Karasik’s and David Mazzucchelli’s graphic novel City of Glass (2004).
As Hutcheon notes, this required the adaptors to translate the text into
the specialist language of graphic novels (or comics) with its own set of
conventions (35).8 Demonstrating that any text is itself a “tissue of quota-
tions” (Barthes 170), City of Glass was one of a number of inspirations
for a PlayStation game titled Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, featur-
ing a character called Peter Stillman. The game in turn inspired a series
of comic book adaptations by Ashley Wood and Alex Garner, which
inspired a digital version of the comic and a DVD film, and then a further
novelization of the game published by Del Ray (Adetunji; Mackay; Page;
“Metal Gear”). None of these adaptations were constrained by a need
to be “faithful” to a single “original” and made radical revisions to the
narrative(s). Clearly, only some of the readers, viewers, and gamers con-
suming these adaptations would be familiar with Auster’s original City
of Glass, let alone Poe’s “A Man of the Crowd,” and so this naturally
affects the audience’s interaction with the adaptations. How to cater to
audiences without confusing, boring, or patronizing them is a challenge
that all artists making adaptations face, and this has been recognized
from the earliest days of modern filmmaking when filmmakers began
adapting “the classics” for the big screen (Carlson 11).
This study of adaptations of the story (and its offshoots) demonstrates
that Poe continues to inspire devoted imitators. It also serves to illustrate
that the line between “imitations,” “adaptations,” and texts that are
“inspired” by a specific text or author is notoriously difficult to demar-
cate and one that Hutcheon sidesteps with her generous schema for defin-
ing adaptations (Hutcheon 8–9).9 On the surface, The Man Who Was
Thursday and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty appear to have little
in common with Harrington’s “Man of the Crowd,” but a genealogical
line can be traced back to Poe and these “adaptations” form part of an
ever-expanding discourse, a “family” of texts, related to “The Man of
the Crowd.”
As this survey illustrates, until very late in the twentieth century, the
tale has not been a popular one for commercial film adaptation despite
the vast number of film adaptations of Poe’s other work. Rather, the
story is enjoying a revival online in a fourth wave of student adaptations
and in the gaming world by means of a circuitous route via Auster’s City
130 Rebecca Johinke
of Glass. One of the pleasures of adaptation is grappling with inacces-

sible or illegible texts and adding to the conversation about possible ways
to engage with them. “The Man of the Crowd” makes an intriguing case
study because it is a tale about reading and interpretation with an unreli-
able narrator and an illegible central character, thus frustrating readers’
desire for narrative closure. The pleasure it offers makers and consumers
of adaptations is the pleasure afforded by negotiating one’s way through
the short but labyrinthine text and possibly getting lost along the way.
Notes
1. Paul Woolf (43) makes a similar claim.
2 . Killis Campbell and Kyle Dawson Edwards provide comprehensive over-
views of the Poe-Griswold affair.
3. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a copy, but IMDB lists the
sixty-minute German title as Das Verräterische Herz, starring Hans Clarin
and Ferdy Mayne.
4. As I have not seen these exhibitions live I am unable to comment any
further.
5. I have only been able to locate limited information about Snow, but it appears
that most of his work has been in music videos and in short experimental
pieces. In the past week (July 2011) he has posted four versions of a piece
entitled “Lick My Cunt” on Vimeo, which is described as a “test animation
made by Nina Gehl and George Snow of SNOWgehl using animated chalk
board drawings.”
6. I will not be providing a comprehensive overview of the various ways
that critics have interpreted the story but instead will merely flag relevant
“themes” or “motifs” as they are pertinent to the adaptations I examine. See
Mazurek (1979), Gutiérrez (2000), Hayes (2002), Rignall (1992), Sweeney
(2003), or Whalen (1999) for different interpretations of the tale.
7. Robert Stam’s (2000) well-known work on “fidelity” and “faithfulness”
informs my argument here.
8. This type of transposition is discussed by Mary Couzelis and Michelle
Hansen in this volume.
9. Gérard Genette’s (1992) work in this area also provides a useful schema for
subdividing adaptations into discrete categories.
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11
“The Telltale Head,” “The Raven,” and “Lisa’s
Rival”: Poe Meets The Simpsons
Peter Conolly-Smith
The sun rises over Springfield, USA. Bad boy Bart Simpson rolls over
in bed, yawns, and opens his eyes to behold the grotesque presence of
a severed head lying on his pillow. He emits an involuntary yelp of hor-
ror. “Bart, are you alright?” asks Marge, offscreen. He pulls himself
together: “Uh—yeah; top of the world, Ma.” “Well then come down
for breakfast.” Downstairs, Homer pores over the Bowl Earth Catalog,
which offers customized bowling balls. “Look at this one: the Hammer
of Thor. It will send your pitch to—Valhalla? Lisa?” Sitting across from
him, Lisa, the smart Simpson, dutifully provides the relevant informa-
tion: “Valhalla is where Vikings go to die.” Even by the standards of
the densely layered textual world of The Simpsons, this short sequence
in episode 8 of season 1 fires off references rapidly enough to boggle the
mind of even the most devoted proponent of postmodernism: the severed
horse head scene in The Godfather, James Cagney in White Heat, the
Whole Earth Catalog, Norse mythology—all are alluded to, winked at,
or parodied in the space of just thirty seconds. The overarching allusion,
though, the glue that binds them all, is the head that sets the sequence
into motion: “The Telltale Head” of the episode’s title.
This was the earliest of The Simpsons’ many references to Edgar Allan
Poe: an extended conceit on “The Tell-Tale Heart,” in which Bart, try-
ing to impress the older kids at school, saws off the head of the statue
of founding father Jebediah Springfield, much to the town’s collective
outrage. Dismayed to learn that the older kids were only kidding when
they said they wished someone would cut off the statue’s head—and that,
134 Peter Conolly-Smith
in fact, they will “break every bone in his stupid little body” once they
apprehend the culprit—Bart is left to ponder his deed while lugging the
head through Springfield in his backpack, his guilt manifesting itself in
the imagined voice of Jebediah taunting him: “Look what you’ve done.…
You’re the most hated boy in town” (“The Telltale Head”).
The following season, in the first of what was to become the annual
Simpsons Halloween Special (later known as “Treehouse of Horror”), the
last of three segments, “The Raven,” again paid tribute to Poe, this time
in a more explicit fashion. Featuring a James Earl Jones reading of Poe’s
celebrated poem, “The Raven” casts the members of the Simpsons family
as its dramatis personae: Homer is the lyric speaker, Bart is the raven,
and Marge (who is seen only in a framed diptych whose second panel
accommodates her trademark beehive hairdo) is the lost Lenore. Lisa and
baby Maggie finally appear as “seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the
tufted floor” (“The Simpsons Halloween Special: ‘The Raven’”).1 This
episode in particular helped establish The Simpsons’ early reputation as
a show whose “double-coded identity of being both … critical and com-
mercial” assured its mass appeal even as it flaunted the imprimatur of
high-culture allusion (Knox 73).
In subsequent seasons, the show further consolidated this reputation
with references to works as varied as The Odyssey, the Bible, Hamlet,
“Howl,” Moby-Dick, and more, as well as—at the opposite end of the
literary spectrum—J. K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, and Stephen King, the
latter one of several noted authors who has appeared (as himself) on the
show (Irwin and Lombardo 90; Waltonen and Du Vernay 181). Such
references to literary culture high and low helped justify The Simpsons’
status as “the most literate of all situation comedies” (Koenigsberger
46). And Poe continued to play an important role in this growing repu-
tation: casual Poe references in passing include nods to “The Cask of
Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and to Poe himself,
whose tombstone and bust make occasional appearances, sometimes in
the most unlikely of scenarios. So central has Poe been in burnishing
The Simpsons’ stature that, in discussing the show’s application to class-
room pedagogy, Karma Waltonen and Denise Du Vernay in their chap-
ter on literary adaptations subhead an entire section “Poe: The Tell-Tale
Bart” (181). The story they herewith acknowledge, already the inspira-
tion for “The Telltale Head” in the show’s first season, is indeed one to
which The Simpsons owes a special debt, and to which it returned in
its season 6 episode “Lisa’s Rival.” Finding herself challenged for the
first time in her role as Springfield’s resident child genius, Lisa befriends,
and then develops a sense of inferiority toward, the new kid in class,
Allison. Their competitiveness comes to a head in the school diorama
contest, during which Lisa replaces Allison’s loving tribute to Poe’s “The
Tell-Tale Heart” (equipped with a metronome whose ticking provides
the all-important sound effect) with an actual animal heart. Overcome
with remorse at the sound of the metronome emanating from beneath the
school’s floorboards, where she has stashed the evidence, Lisa confesses
her crime, restores the diorama to its rightful owner, and settles for being
second best (“Lisa’s Rival”).
The Simpsons’ frequent allusions to Poe, and these three adaptations of
two of his best-known works in particular, have much to teach us about
the show’s strategies of cultural allusion. They also exemplify different
possibilities of adaptation, from the “straight,” near-verbatim reading
of “The Raven” to the “looser” adaptations of “The Telltale Head” and
“Lisa’s Rival.” Interestingly, and although both stray from and take lib-
erties with “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the latter two episodes nevertheless
capture not only Poe’s original narrator’s guilt, but also elements of the
grotesque and the macabre (a severed head, in Bart’s adventure; a severed
heart, in Lisa’s) that in their own way—and not in spite of, but because
of their infidelity to the source material—invoke Poe’s sensibility. In their
similarities as much as in their departures from their models, then, these
adaptations offer insight into the enduring double-coded appeal of both
The Simpsons and Poe in contemporary America, as we shall see.
Of the three, “The Raven” hews closest to its literary model. A
framing device—the Simpsons children sit in Bart’s tree house, trading
Halloween stories—explicitly establishes the segment’s provenance when
Lisa, holding a book titled “American Literature,” announces that she is
“about to read you a classic tale by Edgar Allan Poe.… It’s called ‘The
Raven.’” Eerie music accompanies the appearance of a superimposed title
insert bearing the poem’s name. Lisa’s voice reads the opening of the first
line, “Once upon a midnight dreary,” and is then replaced by James Earl
Jones’s in a sound dissolve—“while I pondered, weak and weary”—as
the camera alights on the upper shelf of a stuffed bookcase, tilts down
(scanning past a bust of Poe en route), and then settles on a high-angle
view of Homer in an armchair in front of a fireplace, dozing “over … a
quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.”
“The Raven” thus sets up the expectation that it is going to engage in
what Julie Sanders calls mere “quotation” or “citation”—an adaptation
whose “reverence” for its source suffers from what Thomas Leitch calls
a “fidelity fetish” (Sanders 4; Leitch 123). Such “curatorial adaptations,”
writes Leitch, promise “a negative cachet, a guarantee that they will pro-
tect the audience from experiencing any new thoughts or feelings that
would not have been provoked by their source texts” (96, 6). At first,
The Simpsons’ “Raven” does indeed seem to hold that promise. Even in
foreshortening the text by eight of its eighteen verses, this animated ver-
sion on one level remains remarkably true to the original. The material it
skips does little to add to the poem’s content, and its loss is therefore not
that keenly felt. 2 Indeed, “The Raven” has never been a content-driven
work in the first place, but rather one defined by tone and mood, by
the sheer aesthetic pleasure of its complex rhyme schemes and its all-
suffusing sense of loss and nostalgia—aspects of the original that Jones’s
reading captures well.
Yet, on another, albeit obvious but also meaningful level, given the
primarily tonal appeal of Poe’s “The Raven,” The Simpsons’ version also
engages in what Sanders calls an “act of transposition” from one medium
(poetry) to another (voice-over animation). In so doing, this “Raven”
engages in an “amplificatory procedure” of “addition, expansion, accre-
tion, and interpolation” (19). Quite aside from the framing device and
its repeated intrusions upon the text in the form of Bart’s interruptions
(on which, more below), the most obvious addition here is that of visual
imagery. It is in this realm that The Simpsons’ version of “The Raven”
departs from and adds to Poe’s. Simone Knox has pointed out that The
Simpsons’ animation allows for “the potential to suspend conventional
laws of physics” and, in its “beautifully choreographed … elaborate
‘camera movements,’ … exceed[s] a variety of [“real”] film techniques”
(74). This is certainly the case in “The Raven,” in which at one point
Homer-in-armchair morphs into a still life that, via a 180-degree cam-
era turn, is embedded into an oil painting, and then released back into
“live action.” For the final, frantic sequence, during which Homer chases
the Bart-faced raven through the library, the camera scales bookshelves,
plunges from bird’s-eye to low-angle views, and indulges in other visual
flourishes that, in live-action films (this being 1990), would not become
possible for several years.
While this culminating sequence threatens to degenerate into visual
slapstick, it remains in keeping with the mounting hysteria of Poe’s
poem. By verse seventeen, after all, the increasingly mentally unstable
narrator finds himself “shrieking.” A line in that verse, screamed by
Homer—“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from
off my door!”—is “particularly well done,” according to Waltonen and
Du Vernay’s assessment of this adaptation’s relation to its source text
(190). By the subsequent and final verse (“And the raven, never flitting,
still is sitting, still is sitting …”), the agitated visuals calm down, thereby
returning to the somnolent mood in which both this and Poe’s original
version find closure, the camera now slowly tracking in on the raven as
the bird intones one last resounding “Nevermore” before dissolving back
to Bart in the tree house.
It is in its casting that this adaptation definitively crosses the line between
fidelity and excess that it has skirted throughout. Notwithstanding its
insistence on being a faithful rendition of Poe’s poem, as soon as we
see this “Raven’s” narrator embodied by Homer (holding in his hands
a book titled “Forgotten Lore, Volume Two,” no less), we know that
there is going to be a comic twist. The somber mood is further broken by
the fact that all of the narrator’s direct speech (the line screamed above,
and all others) is voiced not by Jones, but by Homer himself, just as the
raven’s refrain (“Nevermore”) is voiced by Bart. This comic intrusion of
the Simpsons—in character as themselves, as soon becomes apparent—
prevents the adaptation from ever achieving full faithfulness. Thus we
quickly realize that our narrator not only looks and sounds like Homer
Simpson, but he acts like Homer, too: physically and mentally slow, cow-
ardly yet aggressive, and quick to anger. In like manner, the raven not
only wears Bart’s likeness (as emphasized by the final dissolve to Bart’s
face) but also enacts trademark characteristics of his persona: being irri-
tating, disrespectful, and mischievous. The “actors’” identification not
with their roles but with them selves is further emphasized by their use of
their signature catchphrases: Homer/the narrator interrupts the flow of
Jones’s reading with “D’ohs” throughout, and prior to the Raven’s first
utterance of its own signature phrase, Bart’s extradiegetic voice inter-
rupts: “[Jones, for the first time:] Quoth the Raven,—”; “[Bart:] Eat my
shorts!” The overidentification of Homer as the narrator and Bart as
the raven is fully realized when, at the beginning of the frantic chase
sequence that ushers in the finale, the narrator unsuccessfully lunges for
the raven’s throat with the words, “Why, you little … ,” much as Homer
has tried to strangle Bart on many occasions.
In this respect, it of course makes perfect sense that Maggie and
Lisa, the “good” Simpsons kids, should (quite literally) be cast as “little
angels,” leaving whom else but Marge to portray Lenore. Herein lies a
final twist. Having successfully subverted the text to be as much a medi-
tation on loss and sorrow as it is an illustration of the same old Simpsons
family dynamics, the casting of Homer’s long-suffering Marge in the
image of Lenore has resonance of it own. Poe’s Lenore is a mysterious
figure, whose exact relationship to the narrator is never revealed. Is she a
former lover, a betrothed? An abstract romantic ideal, even, or someone
once admired from afar? The unspecified identity of the object of the
narrator’s sorrow allows for an indeterminate reading that broadens the
poem’s appeal as each reader anew fills the empty vessel of Lenore with
his or her own longings.3 Once invested with a concrete relationship to
the narrator, however, Lenore’s open-endedness is lost. The narrator’s
plaintive “Lenore” (in Homer’s voice) echoes the tone in which he has on
countless previous, if less tragic, occasions uttered his wife’s name, and
as we are left to ponder with sadness Homer’s apparent loss, the template
of The Simpsons eclipses that of Poe’s poem irrevocably. In the end, this
“Raven” constitutes less a case of Poe being adapted by The Simpsons
than one of the Simpsons colonizing Poe. That said, the segment never-
theless constitutes a successful effort to bring Poe’s poem to life. For all
its omissions and transgressions, the adaptation captures much of the
essence of its source material. In any case, Sanders points out, “[i]t is usu-
ally at the very point of infidelity that the most creative acts of adaptation
and appropriation take place” (20).
With that in mind, we turn to The Simpsons’ two “Tell-Tale Heart”
adaptations, which, more even than “The Raven,” depart sufficiently far
from their source text to qualify as “appropriations”—adaptations that,
rather than assuming a reverential stance, undertake “a more decisive
journey away from the informing source into a wholly new product and
domain” (Sanders 26). In such appropriations the source text is “not
always as clearly signaled or acknowledged” as, for example, in “The
Raven” (26). This is particularly true for “The Telltale Head,” the earliest
of The Simpsons’ Poe adaptations, which was aired seven months before
“The Raven,” in the show’s first season. This episode shares with the far
later “Lisa’s Rival” not only its source, but also a narrative strategy that
has since become one of the show’s basic modi operandi: the layering
of multiple, often parodistic, allusions into a narrative that interweaves
several story lines, each following a different family member. In “The
Raven,” we get an entire uninterrupted segment of The Simpsons riff-
ing on Poe. In “Lisa’s Rival,” on the other hand, the specific “Tell-Tale
Heart” allusion does not emerge until the second half, and even then
it is folded into the titular main plot of Lisa’s angst over being chal-
lenged as Springfield Elementary School’s smartest student, which in
turn competes for screen time with a subplot involving Homer’s theft of
a truckload of sugar, and a third narrative strand involving Bart’s best
friend Milhouse being wrongfully pursued by America’s Most Wanted.
Cultural allusions include nods to Brian De Palma’s Scarface, The
Wizard of Oz, Batman, sundry other pop cultural texts and icons, and
Gabriel García Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Returning to
“The Telltale Head,” the Poe allusion is here again folded into a story of
youthful anxiety over schoolyard popularity (although the angst-ridden
kid is this time Bart) in an episode that simultaneously engages issues
of traditional small-town values (versus their underside: mob violence
and vigilante justice), juvenile delinquency, gambling, and (according
to Lisa) “deep theological questions.” Although this is an episode Carl
Matheson finds “surprisingly free of quotation,” it boasts numerous
allusions to cultural texts both high and low, as noted at the outset of
this chapter, and, as in “Lisa’s Rival,” an overarching “Tell-Tale Heart”
conceit (112).
“The Telltale Head,” however, makes its Poe gesture without ever
explicitly identifying its origin. It is in this respect an “analogue”—an
adaptation that does not depend for its success (although it helps) on the
viewer’s recognition of the source; the text is enjoyable in its own right
(Sanders 22). This, again, is part of The Simpsons’ basic narrative tech-
nique. Although its “density of allusion”—what Matheson calls its “quo-
tationalism”: “the device of referring to or quoting other works”—creates
a brand of humor based on “a world-weary cleverer-than-thouness,” The
Simpsons works perfectly well for, and even elicits laughter from, those
who do not get its references (112, 109). “The Telltale Head’s” nod to
Poe thus “brings pleasure to those who recognize it, but goes unnoticed
and causes no disruption to those unequipped to get it,” as William Irwin
and J. R. Lombardo have observed of this general strategy (89). Indeed,
viewers of the show’s first season, at which time it had not yet reached the
cult status that was, at least for a time, to make it a darling of the post-
modernist intelligentsia, are more likely to have recognized this episode’s
broader, stylistic references than its specific nod to Poe—that it opens in
medias res, for example, at night, with Homer and Bart in streetlamp-lit
downtown Springfield, about to restore the statue’s severed head, only
to be intercepted by an angry mob; that it then shifts, film noir–like, to
an extended flashback that later returns to its initial point of departure
and (shortly thereafter) to its conclusion; that the torch- and pitchfork-
wielding mob is lit from below in the stylized Expressionist horror-movie
style generally understood to have influenced noir in the first place, an
aesthetic the Simpsons, in turn, frequently invokes (including in its later
Halloween specials); and that … et cetera.4
The free-form association modeled above in regard to The Simpsons’
visual style is of course also another of the show’s characteristic narra-
tive techniques as it meanders from one plot strand (and allusion) to the
next in each weekly episode. And in “The Telltale Head,” it is precisely
this stream of consciousness—on a diegetic level, now—that ushers in
the Poe reference. In the flashback, which illustrates Bart’s plea for clem-
ency as he explains to the angry mob how he came to sever the head of
the city’s founding father’s statue in the first place, he lies in the grass
with the older school bullies, whom he desperately wants to impress.
In this moment of respite following a rampage of delinquent behavior
that has included sneaking into a movie theater, shoplifting, and pitch-
ing rocks at the statue, one of the bullies sighs, “You know, when you
look up at clouds in the sky, they start looking like stuff,” a comment
that, along with the romantic background music and bird’s-eye shot of
the four boys splayed in star formation on the grass, seems to contradict
their preceding bad-boy behavior—until, that is, these bad boys identify
the “stuff” they see: “That one over there looks just like a cherry bomb.”
“That one looks like a guy with a switchblade stuck in his back.” “That
one looks like a school bus in flames going over the side of a cliff with
kids inside screaming.” And, Bart’s turn: “That one looks just like the
statue of our town’s founder, Jebediah Springfield.… Without the head,
of course.” “I wish somebody really would cut his ugly old head off,”
another rejoins glibly, a line Bart in turn misinterprets as a dare, with
far-reaching consequences.
While the macabre images the boys imagine they see in the clouds
provide the first inkling that the episode is sliding into Poe territory, the
allusion becomes more apparent thereafter, with Bart’s decapitation of
the statue (following Poe’s narrator, who “dismembered the corpse” and
“cut off the head”) and his painstaking preparations, which again parody
the story’s: “I opened [the door] … until, at length, a single dim ray, like
the thread of a spider, shot from out the crevice and full upon the [old
man’s] vulture eye”—a scene “The Telltale Head” invokes visually (and
acoustically, replete with Poe’s “hinges creak[ing]”) as Bart prepares to
do the deed, although in this case, his old man (Homer) remains asleep,
allowing him to sneak out of the house unnoticed (Poe 557–58). The
most obvious nod to Poe, of course, is the sound of the statue’s head
berating Bart, stirring his conscience and ultimately moving him to con-
fess first to his family, and then, with Homer by his side, to the town at
large. Retroactively, the episode’s entire in medias res narrative situation
itself signals its debt, as Poe’s tale too opens in mid-first-person narra-
tion in what, by story’s end, has also come to resemble a confession of
sorts. Thus, “The Telltale Head” succeeds in capturing some of the key
elements of its source text without once—with the exception of its title—
referring to it.
“Lisa’s Rival” is far more explicit in its reference to “The Tell-Tale
Heart,” making use of a device that Sanders calls an “embedded text,”
as it too plays on the parallels between the guilt Lisa feels over having
stolen Allison’s diorama (culminating in her confession) and the guilt and
confession of Poe’s narrator: “[T]he pure adaptation rests in the embed-
ded [diorama], … the appropriative text[,] … in the wider framework
story” (Sanders 29). Indeed, the scene in which Allison first presents the
diorama to Lisa—“This is the bedroom where the old man was murdered,
and he’s buried here under the floorboards.… I used an old metronome to
simulate the heartbeat that drove the killer insane. [Demonstrates.] Neat,
huh?”—practically models the embedding of a source text, with the two
girls’ faces (Lisa’s anxious, as she realizes Allison’s effort is likely to win
the school competition) looming over the miniature set. Later, Lisa’s
switching of the diorama for a box containing a cow’s heart, followed by
the amplified sound of the real diorama’s metronome from beneath the
floorboards nearby, where Lisa has concealed it, elicits a response—“It’s
the beating of that hideous heart!”—that follows Poe’s narrator’s closely,
yet serves equally to illustrate Lisa’s own guilty conscience. “The Telltale
Head,” though less explicit in invoking Poe, offers a similarly College
English 101 decoding of the text, as Bart attempts to silence the head’s
taunting with the observation, “You’re not really talking to me; you’re
just my overactive imagination.” Thus, each episode not only invokes
specific aspects of Poe’s tale but also offers what amounts to an, albeit
simplistic, explanation of one of its commonly accepted deeper mean-
ings: that the sound of the beating heart perceived by the narrator is in
fact a manifestation of his own guilty conscience.
At the same time, however, both episodes subvert Poe’s ending, clos-
ing with gestures of contrition and redemption. Both Lisa and Bart learn
valuable lessons and, having seen the error of their ways, are restored to
the warm embrace of the community. Thus, in one of the “profoundly
anachronistic” ways in which, “even while mocking it,” The Simpsons
“simultaneously celebrates the virtues of the traditional American small
town,” the jury/mob in “The Telltale Head” is swayed by Bart’s confes-
sion and forgives him (Cantor 173, 172). Similarly, Lisa too finds redemp-
tion: “I’m really sorry about what I did, Allison,” she says. “It’s no shame
being second to you.” And the two decide to stay friends after all. Poe’s
literary template offers no such redeeming closure: “We are horrified by
the crime,” David S. Reynolds observes of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” but—
unlike our feelings toward Bart and Lisa—“we are not ever sympathetic”
with the criminal (233).
This is no small distinction. The Simpsons’ takes on Poe are not
merely transpositions from one medium to another but, following Leitch
(100–102), superimpositions, in which the essence of an existing text
is grafted onto a new template, or genre (in this case, the postmodern
animated family sitcom). In thus moving Poe’s works from their gothic-
Romantic origins into a context populated by preadolescent characters
(although The Simpsons’ target audience is of course an older one, as
indicated by its prime-time slot), the three adaptations discussed in this
chapter actually reverse their source texts’ dynamic. Poe, although writ-
ing about adults, taps into the uncanny precisely by invoking childhood
states of mind through repetition (“The Raven’s” refrain; “The Tell-Tale
Heart’s” obsessive cracking of the old man’s door), imagination (talk-
ing birds), and other such flights of primordial fancy. The Simpsons, in
reversing this dynamic, can no longer fall back on Poe scholarship’s tra-
ditional explanation for his narrator-characters’ (mis)deeds: their unreli-
ability and/or madness. Grafted onto the paradigm of the family sitcom,
such explanations fail to provide an interpretive key. As Waltonen and
Du Vernay point out, “Bart and Lisa’s sanity are not the focus of these
episodes,” which must, instead, provide “clear motives for their [charac-
ters’] actions” (181). That these motives are culled from the realm of pre-
adolescent anxieties—the desire to be “best,” in Lisa’s case, or popular,
in Bart’s—in turn necessitates the happy endings dictated by the genre
requirements of the family sitcom for which such issues are a stock-in-
trade.
It is no coincidence, in this respect, that “The Telltale Head’s” title,
while undoubtedly a wink at the audience, “misspells” Poe’s two-word
original (“Tell-Tale”) and, in so doing, transports his phrase into the pre-
adolescent realm of tattlers and sneaks. Given that half the writers work-
ing on The Simpsons are “Harvard geeks,” according to series creator
Matt Groening (qtd. in Irwin and Lombardo 81), it seems unlikely that
this mistake crept in by accident. Nor is the three episodes’ “dumbing
down” of Poe’s originals coincidental. Rather, this recurring gesture con-
stitutes a defense mechanism designed to confirm The Simpsons’—and
mass culture’s—own cultural legitimacy. As Principal Skinner observes
of Allison’s diorama, once Lisa has restored it, its take on Poe (and, by
extension, perhaps The Simpsons’ own) is “a little sterile,” showing “no
real insight.” In the end, Skinner awards first prize not to Allison, nor
to Lisa’s effort (on Oliver Twist), but to class idiot Ralph (“what’s a
diorama?”) Wiggum, whose entry consists of factory-sealed collectible
Star Wars figurines: the ultimate triumph of mass culture.
Returning, in this context, to The Simpsons’ “Raven,” when Bart
protests Lisa’s introduction of the poem (“Wait a minute! That’s a
school book!”), she reassures him (and the audience), “Don’t worry …
you won’t learn anything.” Back in the tree house upon the completion
of the reading, Bart dismisses the poem for its failure to induce terror:
“Lisa, that wasn’t scary. Not even close.” “Well, it was written in 1845;
maybe people were easier to scare back then.” “Oh yeah,” Bart agrees,
dragging Poe down to the level of twentieth-century schlock culture:
“Like when you look at Friday the Thirteenth, Part I, it’s pretty tame
by our standards.… Guess I’ll have no trouble getting to sleep tonight.”
Interestingly, and in further illustration of the dialectic of child-adult
sensibilities at work in Poe (and inverted in The Simpsons), it is Homer,
having eavesdropped on the kids’ storytelling, who is left affected by
the poem and who begs Marge not to turn off the lights that night.
“Homer, I’m not sleeping with the lights on,” Marge snaps. “They’re
just children’s stories.”
Today, old Simpsons reruns may constitute American children’s first
exposure to Poe. In his capacity as literary critic, Poe himself spent much
of his career lambasting popular tastes: contemporary mass-circulating
literature’s penchant for the “crude” and “sensational,” for example, and
its favored vehicle and format, the serial novel, “which [Poe] found want-
ing in structure and design” (Reynolds 225, 228, 525). This from a writer
who courted popular success as much as he craved critical recognition,
twin ambitions that were fully realized only after his death, when Poe’s
works finally took their place in the canon. Yet Poe’s reputation in more
recent years seems once again unsteady, as it was during his lifetime. In
an apt metaphor for his fluctuating standing in contemporary American
culture, the interior of the New York City building in which Poe resided at
the time of “The Raven’s” publication was demolished by NYU in 2001,
though its facade—replete with plaque—remains (O’Grady). In like man-
ner, it is more the idea of Poe than the substance of his work that retains
cachet today. This idea, promulgated largely via American mass culture,
finds expression in fictionalized Hollywood biopics like The Raven and
shows like The Simpsons, cultural offerings whose “crude” and “sensa-
tional” impulses Poe would likely have abhorred. True, early in its run,
The Simpsons itself sought legitimacy through (admittedly tongue-in-
cheek) allusions to high-culture sources such as Poe. Today, however, it is
Poe (and high culture) who find their reputations stoked by the frequency
with which they are referenced in The Simpsons and the mass media. For
all his grousing, Poe did have quite a sense of humor, as David Reynolds
has shown (524–33). Perhaps he would have appreciated the irony.
Notes
1. “[A]ngels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor,” in Poe’s
original.
2 . The Simpsons’ version of “The Raven” skips verses five, nine through thir-
teen, and fifteen through sixteen, with a few additional omissions and alter-
ations here and there.
3. An earlier Poe poem, “Lenore” (1843) may have eulogized Poe’s then-dying
wife, Virginia. However, this reading (Lenore = Virginia) is complicated by
the fact that an even earlier version of the poem was published (under a dif-
ferent title: “A Pæan”) in 1831, long before they were married.
4. Leitch suggests that the aesthetics of “film grammar may [themselves] be
nothing more than intertextual borrowings” (i.e., visual adaptations in their
own right), which is the point I am making here.
Works Cited
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Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer. Ed. William Irwin, Mark T.
Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble. Chicago: Open Court, 2001. 160–78. Print.
Irwin, William, Mark T. Conard and Aeon J. Skoble, eds. The Simpsons and
Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer. Chicago: Open Court, 2001. Print.
Irwin, William, and J. R. Lombardo. “The Simpsons and Allusion: ‘Worst Essay
Ever.’” The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer. Ed. William
Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble. Chicago: Open Court, 2001.
81–92. Print.
Koenigsberger, Kurt M. “Commodity Culture and Its Discontents: Mr. Bennett,
Bart Simpson, and the Rhetoric of Modernism.” Leaving Springfield: The
Simpsons and the Possibility of Oppositional Culture. Ed. John Alberti.
Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 2004. 29–62. Print.
Knox, Simone. “Reading the Ungraspable Double-Codedness of The Simpsons.”
Journal of Popular Film and Television 34.2 (2006): 73–81. Print.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the
Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007.
Print.
“Lisa’s Rival.” The Simpsons. Fox. 11 Sept. 1994. Television.
Matheson, Carl. “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life.” The
Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer. Ed. William Irwin, Mark T.
Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble. Chicago: Open Court, 2001. 108–25. Print.
O’Grady, Jim. “NYU Law School Agrees to Save Part of Poe House.” New York
Times 23 Jan. 2001, late ed.: B3. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn.
New York: Library of America, 1984. 555–59. Print.
Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive
Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. New York: Knopf, 1988.
Print.
“The Simpsons Halloween Special: ‘The Raven.’” The Simpsons. Fox. 25 Oct.
1990. Television.
“The Telltale Head.” The Simpsons. Fox. 25 Feb. 1990. Television.
Waltonen, Karma, and Denise Du Vernay. The Simpsons in the Classroom:
Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Print.
12
In the Best Possible Tastes: Rhetoric and
Taste in AIP’s Promotion of Roger
Corman’s Poe Cycle
Joan Ormrod
One day over lunch in 1960, American International Pictures (AIP)

executives Samuel Z. Arkoff and James Nicholson asked Roger Corman,
their in-house director, to make two black-and-white horror films at
$100,000 each. Corman pitched a better idea, a film based upon Edgar
Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Corman ratio-
nalized that Poe “has a built in following with [kids].… He’s read in
every high school. Plus one quality film in colour is better than two cheap
films in black and white” (qtd. in McGee 249). In his pitch, Corman
identified the dual appeal of Edgar Allan Poe as a part of the American
literary canon but also a fan favorite. He proposed a strategy for AIP
to reposition the studio upmarket. Previously, AIP was regarded as an
exploitative production company, something that Arkoff and Nicolson
seemed to revel in. Arkoff, for instance, stated that all the company was
interested in were “[t]its and ass. Sex and Violence.… Anything else is
arty farty” (qtd. in McGee 137). Corman was a director that Arkoff and
Nicholson employed for his fast turnover, miniscule budgets, and reli-
ability as much as his competence. Up to this point he produced black-
and-white films in teen-targeted genres such as horror, science fiction,
and juvenile delinquency (JD). The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and
the Poe cycle “is one of the high points in the commodification of Poe,
imposing a theatrically gothic aspect to his writings … and making him
a favorite to a wide range of audiences” (Neimeyer 218). It was shot in
146 Joan Ormrod
full color and Cinemascope for $270,000, most of which was paid to the
star, Vincent Price. Price, Poe, Corman, and AIP were to be inextricably
connected for four years and seven films in the Poe cycle.1
Using The Masque of the Red Death (1964) as a focus, which is the sev-
enth of the eight films in the Poe series and the most critically respected,
this chapter examines the issues involved in promoting a film adaptation
of Poe’s work, especially one perceived as exploitative rather than artis-
tic. AIP’s promotional techniques, contrived by James Nicholson, were
a forerunner of contemporary promotional practices and, in addition to
advertisements, posters, and billboards, featured more creative strategies
such as tie-ins, stunts, and newspaper article placement (advertorials). For
many of their films, AIP began with a title for which a marketing cam-
paign had already been prepared, and after audience studies, the script
and film were produced. This strategy resulted in good profits for AIP in
an era when television audiences were growing and film audiences were
in decline. The promotion, however, often promised more than the film
delivered.
Rather than dwelling upon the more sensational promotion or the
exploitation of Poe’s themes in the adaptation of The Masque of the
Red Death (although, of necessity, this has to be addressed), this chapter
explores the marketing of the Poe cycle, focusing on issues of both high
and low culture in its promotion. Although these promotional materials
have been discussed, it is usually either in validation of Poe’s exploita-
tion within AIP’s distribution system (Watson 1997) or as an example of
AIP’s promotional strategies (McGee 18). It is, perhaps, worth examin-
ing the relationship between the promotion of adaptations because, as
Wernick (112) notes, adaptations hail preexisting audiences and attract
new audiences to the source texts (Wernick 92–121). They also encour-
age audiences to complete narrative gaps (Hutcheon 76). The promotion,
too, can be a source for the audience to understand the text as it sets up
their expectations of the significant moments in the film, encouraging
them to compare and fill in the gaps between the two narratives.
Promotion is explored using a discursive analysis to frame The Masque
of the Red Death within its cultural and promotional context using
Cook and Wernick. As an adaptation, the timeliness of the Poe cycle
cannot be overestimated because its changing cultural context includes
the “amount” and kind of “hype’” used in promoting the adaptation
(Hutcheon 143). In 1960, AIP aimed to develop an upmarket profile along-
side its traditional teenage and fan bases. Corman’s proposal responded
to an interest in the gothic canon inspired by the recirculation of 1930s
Universal black-and-white films and Hammer’s full-blooded color adap-
tations of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and The Horror of Dracula
In the Best Possible Tastes 147
(1958). The interest in gothic horror hailed two types of audiences that
were by no means dissimilar in their obsession: fandom and academia
(Jenson 18–21). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, magazines for horror
fans such as Famous Monsters of Filmland and Horror Monsters began
publication. Their articles often promoted AIP and Hammer films, and
Edgar Allan Poe featured regularly in these publications, as much for his
life story as his literary output. For instance, Horror Monsters, issue 2
(1961), ran an article promoting The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) along-
side an article devoted to Poe. In the article, Poe is described as “the most
original genius of American literature … master of the macabre, unhappy
in life, wretched in death, but in his fame—immortal” (“Edgar Allen [sic]
Poe” 24–25).
I begin by discussing AIP’s promotion of the Poe cycle drawing on
the notion of the “vortex of publicity” (Wernick 92–95). In the vortex of
publicity, advertisements are self-referential, endlessly promoting other
advertisements or products across a transmedia landscape. Analyzing
the press packs for the films, it is clear that AIP foregrounded names,
particularly Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price, in their promotion. This
dual appeal is examined in the final section of this chapter using ideas of
Pierre Bourdieu on aesthetic production and hierarchies in the fields of
literature, art, and class. To contextualize this discussion, the next section
examines the cultural and promotional production of AIP’s marketing.
Promoting the Poe Series: AIP and

the Vortex of Publicity
Wernick proposes that promotion of media and popular cultural texts
is similar to “a hall of mirrors. Each promotional message refers us to
a commodity which is itself the site of another promotion” (121). There
is no starting point in the chain of advertising, and it is continuously
self-referential, relying on serial promotion to appeal to ever- expanding
audiences. The Fall of the House of Usher represented a successful
model; consequently it inspired further adaptations. The promotion
and the films were self-referential as they referred to previous films
within the horror genre and the cycle, not least of which was their refer-
ence to Vincent Price as star. How this vortex of publicity relates to the
Poe cycle is shown in the diagram in figure 12.1, based upon Wernick’s
model.
Like all films in the Poe series, The Masque of the Red Death press
book consists of a mixture of overt/covert promotion and serial promo-
tion across commodities. Among the more outlandish stunts are sending
148 Joan Ormrod
Fans look for

Increases celebrity of similar films –
Price as horror star eg; Hammer,
Sells more Poe other Price,
books Corman, AIP
Poe films
Increases awareness
AIP linked with
of Corman as
Corman/horror
director/auteur
films
Figure 12.1 The vortex of publicity and the The Masque of the Red Death
a man out into the streets dressed as the Red Death and passing out
cards advertising the film, giving audiences smelling salts to revive those
who faint at the screening, and offering the opportunity for clientele to
attend a midnight screening. The Poe cycle generated a stunt that was a
departure from the usual AIP excess: promotion of the film in library and
bookshop displays. Under “exploitation” in the press pack, there were
tie-ins of an adaptation of the Corman film by Elsie Lee (figure 12.2)
under the logline, “The Master of Horror, Edgar Allan Poe’s story of
Good vs Evil.” The cover featured Vincent Price as the Red Death placed
in a prominent position on a purple background.
A monotone still from the film of the masquerade party was displayed
as a banner across the top third of the cover. Dell, known for adaptations
of film and television tie-ins, produced a comic book with a fine cover
drawing of Price as Prince Prospero holding a bird of prey while the vari-
ous Deaths lurk in the background (figure 12.3).
Promotion, though, was not one-way. The tie-ins and film promo-
tion also inspired the publication by Panther of a book of short horror
stories entitled The Masque of the Red Death (figure 12.4) but featuring
tales from Ray Bradbury and others. The cover features a man’s face that
looks suspiciously similar to Vincent Price.
The written copy included advertorials and features for the local press.
Much of this promotion was hyperbolic and featured elements not found
in the plot. For instance, the poster promised “the hideous tortures of
the catacombs of Kali! … the sacrifice of the innocent virgin to Baal!”
Neither of these elements was in the film or Poe’s short story. Yet the
scene that equated nearest to these descriptions featured Hazel Court (as
the nonvirginal Juliana) submitting to ritual sacrifice in a drug-induced
delirium. It is perhaps a tribute to the promotion that although Miss
Court was fully dressed, the English censors cut the scene.
Figure 12.2 Elsie Lee Paperback Adaptation, Lancer Books
Figure 12.3 Cover of Dell’s Comic
Figure 12.4 Panther book cover
152 Joan Ormrod
It is clear that Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death is not a faithful
adaptation but is inspired by Poe’s short story of the same name and incor-
porates “Hop Frog” to pad out the plot. The film was produced in England
to save costs, and the look of the film was sumptuous thanks to the use of
sets left over from the filming of Becket (1964). Although Corman sug-
gested he had put off producing The Masque of the Red Death earlier in
the cycle because of its similarity to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal
(1958); nevertheless, Corman could not resist quoting The Seventh Seal in
the opening and closing scenes of The Masque of the Red Death featuring
the various plagues haunting the land. This hailing of what was generally
accepted as an art film leant an air of distinction to Corman’s film and
was partially responsible for its better critical reception.
The film, The Masque of the Red Death, differs from the short story,
which concentrates only on a masquerade ball in which Prince Prospero
faces the figure of death in the black and red room. Of necessity, the film
had to expand the characterization and story lines. The opening sequence
of the film shows a meeting between the Red Death and an old woman,
toiling under the repression of the land’s ruler, the evil Prince Prospero.
Death offers her a rose and promises her that the day of deliverance is at
hand. This comes to pass, but in a cruel manner, with the death of people
from plague; the rose symbolizes not love or passion but blood. Prince
Prospero (Vincent Price) locks himself in his castle with his mistress,
Juliana (Hazel Court), and cronies for an orgy of food, depravity, and
satanic rites. For their pleasure, Prospero captures three peasants from
the local village: Francesca (Jane Asher), to corrupt her innocence; Gino,
her lover; and her father. The film culminates in a masked ball when a
mysterious figure in red appears. When Prospero pulls off the mask of
the mysterious figure, thinking the figure is a servant of Satan, Prince
Prospero stares into his own blooded face, the face of the Red Death,
which comments, “Why should you be afraid of death? Your soul has
been dead for a long time.” Prospero staggers away and dies, surrounded
by his guests’ disease-raddled bodies.
The film expands the slender short-story plot with its development of
subplots: Francesca and Prospero, Esmerelda and Hop Toad, and Prospero
and Juliana’s Satanism. Poe’s description of the seven rooms based on dif-
ferent colors is ideal for AIP’s use of Technicolor and is used in trailers
and dream sequences. But the main selling point of any text, as Wernick
notes, usually coalesces in names. In the Poe cycle, promotion emphasizes
the cultural capital promised by Poe and the star, Vincent Price.
Poe’s Prince Prospero is eccentric and hedonistic, with peculiar tastes
for the bizarre and grotesque. Price’s Prince Prospero reflects these char-
acteristics, but his character is fleshed out; he is a Satan worshipper, and
Corman adds a frisson of exotic ancient Baal worship in dream/altered-

state sequences and the promotion. The final sequence when Prince
Prospero unmasks the mysterious intruder is the pivot of the marketing
campaign. In the short story, the figure is clothed in a stained shroud to
resemble the blood of the Red Death. It wears a mask that looks like “the
countenance of a stiffened corpse” (327). When Prospero confronts the
figure he falls dead. Corman changes this by having Prospero confront
the figure thinking it is a servant of Satan. On unmasking the figure he
discovers it is himself, his face bearing the stains of the Red Death. This
image became the pivot of AIP’s promotion.
Timeliness, Names, and Dual Appeal

Wernick suggests that names are a central part of promotional culture
whether it is the brand name, a star, or an originator (105–6). One might
therefore regard Poe as a legitimate component of AIP promotion along
with Vincent Price. The star image, as Dyer notes, is constructed from
culture, marketing, and life, “everything that is publicly available about
stars” (Dyer 3). A star’s image consists of output, commentary, criticism,
gossip, news, lifestyle, and biographies. “Star images are always exten-
sive, multi-media, intertextual” (Dyer 3). The ambiguity of Poe’s audi-
ence appeal in the early 1960s was an opportunity for AIP to gain more
cultural credibility, what Pullman describes as “the worthiness argu-
ment” in adapting literature considered classic (qtd. in Hutcheon 29).
In adapting Poe, AIP enhanced their reputation, but they also, in their
promotional hyperbole, heightened Poe’s cultural capital.
The main selling points of the campaign for The Masque of the Red
Death were in the promotion of the film through names, principally
Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price. Promotion of Poe and Price’s names
reflects their dual appeal to audiences within academic circles and also
fan culture. The Masque of the Red Death is a film in the Poe cycle
that audiences would know by following Poe’s writings. This encour-
ages audiences to fill in the gaps between the two texts, “with the dra-
matic setup of the encounter in the previous scene” (Hutcheon 76). Fans’
expectations are also set up by previous adaptations in the cycle, and
promotion is crucial in reminding audiences of previous films and Poe’s
writings. Fan audiences also read magazines and comics devoted to the
horror genre, to adaptations of previous films in the Poe cycle, or to
Poe. Price’s name, too, evokes previous work and films in the Poe cycle.
Beyond these promotional issues, however, Poe and Price’s star images
were revised in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the Poe cycle arguably
154 Joan Ormrod
contributed to this revision. The remainder of this chapter draws upon

Bourdieu’s ideas of taste and class to discuss this dual appeal of Edgar
Allan Poe and Vincent Price.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Changing Status

It is sometimes assumed that “good” art is eternal and taste is innate in
some individuals. However, according to Bourdieu, the “pure” gaze of
artistic production is not natural; rather it is the result of legitimization
by institutions, individuals, and class, imposing “norms” upon the field
of production:
The denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, servile—in a word, natural—

enjoyment, which constitutes the sacred sphere of culture, implies an affir-
mation of the superiority of those who can be satisfied with the sublimated,
refined, disinterested, gratuitous, distinguished pleasures forever closed to
the profane. That is why art and cultural consumption are predisposed,
consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimat-
ing social differences. (Bourdieu, Distinction 7)
A “field” is defined as a social space in which individuals or institutions

struggle for access or position over specific stakes affecting individual
practice and production. Within a field, levels of legitimacy operate to
define the hierarchies that construct the object’s cultural capital.
An object’s cultural capital is dependent upon the critical or cultural
acclaim it achieves, and this can rest upon its genre, producer, or the his-
toric moment. An example of this can be seen in a discussion of film as an
art form in which there is conflict between the need to make profits and
the need to attain aesthetic quality. However, Watson argues that cinema
is rooted in exploitation from precinematic technologies, which exploited
body images for the audience’s pleasure.2 If the argument against the
worth or validity of exploitation films rests with their profit-making
motive, then mainstream cinema can also be accused of exploitation in
its marketing and promotion. In thinking about timeliness, Arkadin, in
the film journal Sight and Sound, noted,
If you’re really interested in the opinion of posterity and all that, you have
to face the fact that most of what we now revere as art was conceived
originally as everyday work designed to meet some specific need of the
moment for a patron or the public. In the cinema you only have to look at
the American silent film now to see that at this distance of time it is the
entertainment film which still lives as art, while the big art films of the
period have mostly fallen by the wayside. (30)
AIP may have begun as an exploitation company, but in 1979 they

received cultural capital from their output when it was screened in the
New York Museum of Modern Art.
Bourdieu’s ideas about art production can also be used to rationalize
the changing cultural status of Poe’s work in the years after his death and
into the twentieth century. This is due to changing attitudes from nine-
teenth-century Protestant to twentieth-century secular morality. Early
appraisals of Poe’s work describe it as childish, debased, and sensational
(Walker 19–42). Henry James, for instance, proposes that to enjoy Poe
is to “lack seriousness … a decidedly primitive stage of reflection” (60),
and T. S. Eliot describes Poe’s intellect as that “of a highly gifted young
person before puberty” (qtd. in Elmer 9). Poe’s reputation as a writer
on his death was subsumed into moral condemnation of his perceived
decadence and his drug and alcohol addiction. These faults of character
(largely denounced by people who knew him) were disseminated in a
defamatory article by Rufus Griswold (1849) just after Poe’s death. Poe’s
perceived alignment with German Romanticism and its gothic imag-
ery predisposed critics to regard his work as overly sensational and his
use of the supernatural not in keeping with the American “anti-roman-
tic national character” (Ringe 6). Poe’s work was also excluded from
Matthiessen’s book on the literary canon, American Renaissance, for its
ambiguity toward good and evil.
There were a few lone voices before the 1960s singing Poe’s praises,
notably in France where the Symbolist poet, Baudelaire, produced excep-
tional translations which generated respect from academics and critics
alike. Baudelaire’s disciples Valéry and Mallarmé also championed Poe’s
work. By the mid-twentieth century, when Corman produced his films,
Poe’s work was receiving acclaim in the literary academy. Allen Tate and
Richard Wilbur identified themes running through Poe’s work. Tate, in
particular, connected Poe’s themes with the modern human condition
and the “disintegration of the modern personality” (qtd. in Carlson 239).
This notion was also echoed by Mooney who proposed Poe as the “prov-
ing ground for the modern consciousness” and suggested that earlier cri-
tiques of Poe were more a comment on the narrow-mindedness of his
critics than on Poe’s true character (261–83). The use of “The Purloined
Letter” in 1957 as a case study for a psychoanalytic analysis by French
philosopher Jacques Lacan, with a response by Jacques Derrida, brought
Poe to the forefront of literary theory in universities all over Europe. By
the early 1970s, critical acclaim came from the American academy in a
number of books, principally by G. R. Thompson, who also edited the
Poe Newsletter, and there was a symposium to critically examine Poe’s
works.
156 Joan Ormrod
In the 1960s, Poe’s status as a writer in the American literary canon

was undergoing transformation, and there is little doubt that the Poe
cycle raised awareness of his work beyond fandom. Peeples, for instance,
suggests that the films “fuelled Poe’s continuing popularity and shaped
an enduring, if somewhat misleading image of his works” (137).
Nevertheless, AIP’s promotion shamelessly played upon Poe’s name and
possibly flattened the richness and diversity of Poe’s work into his gothic
and horror stories. The promotional copy in AIP’s press pack for The
Masque of the Red Death conflated the stories and film under the ban-
ner of Poe in advertorials with headlines such as “Newest Poe thriller,”
“Most terrifying of all Edgar Allan Poe films,” and “Famous Poe terror
tale … opening today.” However, Poe’s status as a writer was undoubt-
edly inflated for its time. The press pack for the first film, The House of
Usher, suggests that “Edgar Allen [sic] Poe undoubtedly ranks as one of
the greatest mystery writers of all time.… Anglo Amalgamated … bring
to the screen the story that the writer considered to be his finest.… In
fact it’s likely that Edgar Allan Poe would be pleased at the masterly way
in which Anglo Amalgamated have transferred his story to the screen.”
This hyperbole was meant to enhance Poe’s cultural capital. It also hailed
a number of audiences: Poe fans, horror fans, and literary students.
Central to this discussion is the notion that Poe simultaneously
addresses different types of audience (Benton 1). Elmer, for instance,
notes Poe’s dual appeal to serious culture as a literary figure but also
his playful use of childish fun appeals to mass culture—his work hails
“mass culture’s commodification of high cultural signification” (2). Poe
appeals to fandom and mass culture with his gothic and detective fic-
tion. However, Poe was also a powerful self-publicist, so much so that
Baudelaire accused him of being a “charlatan” and his self-promotion as
being peculiarly American. In this, Poe could be said to be very modern
in his acknowledgement of the need for self-promotion. “Poe … belongs
as much to the history of publicity as to the American literature in which
he played so distinctive and strange a founding part” (A. Robert Lee 7).
Worland makes a similar point in his essay on the promotion of The
Pit and the Pendulum for drive-in theaters, claiming that “Poe’s abiding
fame is bolstered by popular culture as much as the labor of teachers and
scholars” (285). However, Worland regards popular culture and academe
as mutually exclusive.
The publicity surrounding the Corman films did much to foster Poe’s
high and low appeal in the vortex of publicity. For instance, the press
pack for The Masque of the Red Death uses serial promotion to refer to
previous films in the series: “If you thrilled to The House of Usher, got
goose pimples from The Pit and the Pendulum …” (“Newest Poe Thriller,
‘Masque of the Red Death,’ Opens Here Tomorrow”), “The new Poe
thriller … guarantees nightmare horror entertainment in the tradition
of American International’s six previous Poe masterpieces” (“Famed Poe
Terror Tale … Opening Today”), “Starring in the seventh and newest Poe
thriller, filmed in color … Reunited again with Price is Roger Corman
who directed all previous Poe films” (“Most Terrifying of All Edgar
Allan Poe Films, Due to Open Here Soon).” This emphasis on Poe’s stat-
ure in the films’ promotion may partially explain why his reputation was
enhanced by the late 1960s. Poe’s rising status in the American liter-
ary canon can be compared with Mary Shelley, whose reputation was
not so fortunate. The philosophical ideas underpinning Mary Shelley’s
best-known work, Frankenstein (1818), were not discussed to any great
extent outside fandom in the 1960s despite popular film adaptations
by James Whale (1931) for Universal Studios and Terence Fisher (1957)
for Hammer. Shelley’s reputation was not liminal like Poe’s in the early
1960s. Her status as a female writer and marriage to her more famous
husband may have contributed to a general disinterest in the quality of
her achievement within academe. Mary Shelley’s name appears on no
posters in the Universal series. Nor did Universal or Hammer use her
name as extensively in their promotion of the Frankenstein franchise as
AIP did Poe’s. It was only after a boom in academic interest in the gothic
and science fiction genres from the 1970s onward, which analyzed the
more philosophical and psychoanalytical themes present in Frankenstein,
and the growth of film studies as a discipline that recognition was finally
given to Shelley as writer.
Vincent Price: Taste, Class, and Dual Appeal

Like Poe, Vincent Price also had dual appeal, but this was expressed in
a different way between his acting, public image, and artistic passions.
Price’s soubriquets, the “Grand Guignol” and the “Master/Monarch
of Menace,” demonstrate his horror credentials, but his nickname, the
“Renaissance Man,” is also testimony to his interest in art.
Price’s acting career spanned quality theatrical and film productions
at one extreme and exploitation horror at the other. He debuted as an
actor on the London stage and achieved Broadway success. Price had a
steady film career as a character actor in films such as The Private Lives
of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and Laura (1944). He also worked in the
Mercury Theater with Orson Welles. From the early 1950s he became
known for his roles in exploitation horror films beginning with the first
3-D film, House of Wax (1953) and The Tingler (1959). These films
consolidated his capital in fandom as a horror and character actor and
158 Joan Ormrod
are constantly referenced in the press pack. For instance, an advertorial

included in the press pack plays with the notions of the “real” Price versus
the character he played in the film. “‘Thank you for coming to my orgy,’
said Vincent Price as he passed amongst his guests at the end of the party
… still in costume for his role of the depraved Prince Prospero” (“Host at
an Orgy”). Price overturns his “depraved Prince Prospero” persona when
he admits he is too old and nervous to attend an orgy and could never
find one despite searching Hollywood when younger.
The star image of Price is that of an urbane, charming, often effete or
sophisticated upper-class character, a “sissified Karloff” (Peter J. Dyer
180). The film journal Films and Filming describes how “[i]n his own
way he’s quite a stylist. No matter what piece of junk he appears in,
he never seems embarrassed or uncomfortable” (qtd. in Brosnan 147).
Throughout the Poe cycle, Price played aristocratic individuals who did
evil, often through extreme circumstances, or responded inappropriately
to the evil of others. For instance, in The Fall of the House of Usher
(1960) he plays Roderick Usher, the head of an ancient family; in The Pit
and the Pendulum (1962) he plays Nicolas Medina, a wealthy Spanish
aristocrat driven mad by his wife; and in The Masque of the Red Death
(1964) he plays Prince Prospero, a rich and cultured Italian nobleman.
Indeed, the cover of the Dell comic emphasizes this urbane, aristocratic
image in his anachronistic Renaissance-type dress (figure 12.3). These
roles reflect his star image as a cultured man from an upper-middle-class
background and merge in his star image with his private cultural activi-
ties. Price’s aesthetic sensibilities were also the key to what he regarded
as central to evil: “The heavy who loves beauty makes the most terrifying
villain” (McAsh 8). Prince Prospero in the film is more complex than in
the short story where he is described as possessing bizarre, eccentric, and
grotesque tastes. In the film, Prospero is not entirely devoid of positive
qualities, for when his attempts to corrupt Francesca fail, he begs the Red
Death to spare her as her zeal for Christianity mirrors his own for evil.
Vincent Price’s face as the Red Death/Prince Prospero was also the
key image in the Masque of the Red Death campaign. Produced by in-
house illustrator, Al Kallis, the evil face (figure 12.5) is reminiscent of the
style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Renaissance portraiture in which faces
are constructed from fruit and vegetables. However, Kallis’s evil face was
constructed from images of tortured, terrified, half-naked women’s faces
and bodies and strange religious rites. The latter reflect the copy that
mentions Kali and pagan rituals. The evil face was described in the press
pack as “the most powerful advertising piece in your campaign,” which
was to be used as “blow ups for out front display use. Install color lights
in the eyes and set flashing for full effect. Or use it on the marquee to
Figure 12.5 The evil face press pack, by Al Kallis
command attention” (“Use Evil Face for Triple Impact”). The image was
also used in trailers, posters, advertisements, displays, and, ingeniously,
as a mask in a fan magazine. Underpinning discourses surrounding the
evil face were mesmerism, as implied by the use of flashing lights and the
logline on the poster, “Stare into this face … count if you can the orgies
of evil!” The face was also used in the trailer where it was superimposed
and then dissolved onto that of Price. The voice-over states that “The
Masque of the Red Death leaves its imprint on your face, on a world
tyrannized by terror” (The Masque of the Red Death film trailer). In the
160 Joan Ormrod
underlying themes of masking and imprinting, the fan could cut out the
image and use it as a mask to become Price/Prospero/The Red Death.
Price’s habitus is that of the upper middle classes (Bourdieu 101–2).
Price was born into a wealthy family and at sixteen did a grand tour of
Europe. His education culminated in a BA degree in art history at Yale
and a lecturing career. Exploitation horror films ironically made Price
more economic capital, and with it he bought into the cultural capital
of the art collector, connoisseur, and gourmet cook. Price’s art collec-
tion was funded by his acting; “presumably the more highbrow side of
his artistic aspirations is taken care of by his work as an art expert,
from which horror films make an agreeable and not unprofitable break”
(Gillat 55). Gillat noted that Price was “making London a convenient
centre for his forays on behalf of his own famous art collection and his
current art-buying spree for Sears Roebuck, whose peripatetic art-for-
sale shows have, under his enterprising guidance, been turning thousands
of unlikely people into collectors all over the States for the last year”
(56). This dual career as art connoisseur and actor formed a symbiotic
relationship in which the promotion of one fed the other. A significant
aspect of Price’s later career was in the respect he garnered as a horror
actor in later life, in his sound recordings of horror short stories, and,
most famously, in his rap on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The raising of
his profile in the Poe cycle and his unique speaking voice contributed to
these acknowledgements of his capital as horror actor.
Conclusion
This chapter has not been about the faithfulness of the adaption that AIP
made of Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Rather it addresses the timeli-
ness of the adaptation and how the promotion used names and their dual
appeal to widen AIP’s audience base away from traditional teen audience.
What is of note here are the ways in which culture, as Bourdieu suggests,
constructs our ideas about aesthetic values. Changing cultural values
also affect how we view an artist or works of art over time. Within this
analysis I have suggested that dual audiences’ reception of AIP adap-
tations were incorporated into the promotional campaign principally
through the appeal of Poe and Price. Hutcheon suggests that adaptation
provides cultural capital for the film, but this works both ways (91–92).
By raising awareness of Poe as writer, as Worland argues, Corman’s
series may have raised awareness for his work. However, beyond this,
in their promotion of his name, AIP’s hyperbole raised Poe’s and Price’s
status in the minds of fans and film audiences. At a time when Poe’s
work was undergoing reassessment, this may have contributed to his
increased literary stature, and, as noted above, the difference between the
academic and fan is not that great, except that one works under the aegis
of academia. Issues of timeliness are significant in this discussion as Poe’s
and Prices’ dual appeal within popular and high culture enabled their star
images to migrate between various cultural registers. Adopting a discursive
analysis of the promotion of the Poe cycle to highlight the dual appeal and
timeliness of the adaptation shows that adaptation studies can gain much
by locating analysis beyond intertextuality and into the cultural.
Notes
1. There were eight films produced under the Poe banner. The Haunted Palace
(1963) was given the title and promoted as a Poe story but was adapted from
a novella, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” by H. P. Lovecraft. Price
starred in seven of the eight films. Ray Milland starred in The Premature
Burial (1962).
2 . Watson cites images of naked human beings moving through gridded back-
grounds as evidence. The purpose of these images, though ostensibly scien-
tific, is to evoke pleasure and wonder in the audience.
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13
From the Earth to Poe to the Moon:
The Science-Fiction Narrative as
Precursor to Technological Reality
Todd Robert Petersen and Kyle William Bishop
The core assumption about adaptation concerns the transformation of a

narrative’s form, usually from one medium into another. Adaptation stud-
ies has traditionally focused on the relationship between a written text
and a cinematic product, as evidenced by George Bluestone’s landmark
1957 Novels into Film; however, recent trends call for a “textual stud-
ies” approach (Leitch 168), one that “carefully and rigorously examine[s]
‘intertextual’ relationships” (Albrect-Crane and Cutchins 13), suggest-
ing multiple directions of transformation, toward and away from the
“source” text. However, nonnarrative material can also be adapted into a
narrative. Linda Hutcheon identifies this type of adaptation as “transpo-
sition,” calling it “a shift in ontology from the real to the fictional, from
a historical account or biography to a fictionalized narrative or drama”:
an event becomes a text (8). Hutcheon considers many such traditional
adaptations but fails to consider the inverse: a shift in ontology from the
fictional to the real. In this alternate option, a text can become an event,
a real thing, following the pattern by which Pinocchio begins as a mari-
onette and ultimately becomes a boy.
A number of recent technological developments have followed this
pattern. One of the obvious examples is the “flip phone,” with its hinged
cover echoing the design of communicators used in the original 1960s Star
Trek television series. Cellular technology pioneer, Dr. Martin Cooper,
claims that Star Trek was a direct inspiration for the development of this
166 Todd Robert Petersen and Kyle William Bishop
technology. “To the rest of the world it was a fantasy,” Cooper asserted.
“To me it was an objective” (qtd. in Laytner). Similarly, in early 2011,
researchers at MIT demonstrated a real-time projected hologram of a
graduate student dressed as Princess Leia mimicking the “Help-me-
Obi-Wan-Kenobi-you’re-my-only-hope” segment from Star Wars (1977)
(Cervallos). This event, though orchestrated for a nostalgic effect, illus-
trates that practical holography is more than a technology; it is a meme
born into our culture through a science-fiction film. Such examples can
be as impactful and established as Arthur C. Clarke’s development of
the idea for the communications satellite (Tweney) or as quixotic as an
engineering firm recently announcing a competition for the development
of a Star Trek–style tricorder (X Prize).
Science fiction traffics in these newnesses, or neologies. They are
arguably the genre’s central identifying mark that distinguishes it from
other fantastic genres. Istvan Csicsery-Ronan Jr. employs the term signa
novi to describe neologies, or “signs of the new.” Specifically, he refer-
ences science-fiction staples such as aliens, faster-than-light propulsion,
sentient computers, and extradimensionality, which “conjure up a sense
of the inevitability of a new thing” (13). Csicsery-Ronan argues that the
existence of a word describing a thing that does not yet exist suggests
prior existence at some basic level, by extension suggesting that this future
must also already exist.1 The signa novi can then be understood as acts
of persuasion, which are more successful the more rationally convinc-
ing they are (qtd. in Csicsery-Ronan 13). A signum novum establishes
the presence of the new thing and then paradoxically “displays that it is
fiction,” a revelation that the future obviously doesn’t yet exist but feels
as if it should. The signum novum, then, “is a playful, poetic conjuring
device, suggesting that any imaginable future is always a poetic construc-
tion” (Csicsery-Ronan 13). This tension between the possible and impos-
sible (or rather its simultaneous existence) is always already present in
sci-fi texts. When these signs are transposed from the fictional into the
actual, a new challenge emerges for scholars of adaptation.
More than any other form of speculative literature, science fiction, by
its very definition, suggests impossible ideas, or at least those currently
unachievable; however, some technologies are now, or will eventually
become, possible. For example, H. G. Wells anticipated the atom bomb
with his novel The World Set Free (1914), and Stanley Kubrick suggested
recent technologies such as the iPad and Skype in 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968). These examples show an important adaptive process not com-
monly acknowledged or explored by adaptation studies, one requiring
an expanded definition of “text” that embraces a nonnarrative text-to-
artifact or text-to-event process. One of the most intriguing examples of
From the Earth to Poe to the Moon 167
such a text-to-event adaptation occurs within the variegated tapestry of

“trip to the moon” narratives. While all evidence usually points to Jules
Verne as the primary inspiration for NASA engineers and early pioneers
in rocketry, the real seed is Edgar Allan Poe and his earlier moon-travel
story, “The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall” (1835).
Poe is not only the father of detective fiction and the American short
story, but he is also often recognized as contributing much to the science-
fiction genre. In stories such as “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
(1839), “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844), and “Mellonta Tauta” (1950), Poe
tapped into the advancements of his age to explore new horizons of travel
and experience. John Tresch emphasizes how Poe’s “speculative fictions
arose from the encounter with new sciences and technologies that were
stretching and surpassing the boundaries of the world” (114). In fact, the
majority of science-fiction tales crafted by Poe deal with speculative voy-
ages and displacement, realized via sea vessels, dirigibles, mesmerism, or
forms of time travel. Many of these stories are satirical and cautionary,
but Csicsery-Ronay perceives that Poe plays a crucial role in the develop-
ment of science fiction because inasmuch as he “believed wholeheartedly
in the scientific truth of the pseudoscience he wished to trick his audience
into accepting, so too are most science fiction writers deeply invested in
the scientific world that they also ludically criticize, undermine, and turn
into wonders” (128).
In addition to laying down the rails for science fiction in general
(Tresch 122), Poe should be seen specifically as the purveyor of the pos-
sibility of real-world space exploration. Although Tresch thoroughly dia-
grams dozens of science-fiction authors and texts that have been directly
influenced by the antecedent texts of Poe, he only considers this literary
influence in terms of fiction, not as actual scientific advancements. Yet
one of Poe’s greatest, if most overlooked, contributions appears early in
his career and addresses the plausibility of a lunar voyage. Indeed, thirty
years before Jules Verne’s influential 1865 novel From the Earth to the
Moon, Poe penned a whimsical yet compellingly plausible story about
a balloonist’s supposed journey to the moon. In “Hans Pfaall,” Poe not
only prefigures the actual events of the moon shot, but he also imagines
technical details such as a dual-chemical fuel mixture and a vessel requir-
ing both a propulsion section and a “command module.” In doing so,
he creates a completely new discourse of plausibility within the idea of
space travel, where before it had been primarily a matter of magic and
the fantastic.
Yet as original as Poe’s narrative appears, the story—like Verne’s—
doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Many recent adaptation theorists acknowledge
these kinds of complexities and argue against the idea that narratives exist
exclusively in one-to-one textual relationships. Indeed, Pamela Demory

embraces Leitch’s idea of intertextual relationships among “scores of …
precursor texts” (150) and sees popular and repeatedly adapted works,
such as Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in terms of “a thick tapes-
try” comprised of “numerous other filmic and literary texts, and col-
ored by various genre conventions, reader and viewer expectations, and
market forces” (123). Such intertextual adaptations, imitations, sequels,
and other forms of repetition inevitably create text systems, matrices
of related narratives, tropes, and memes. Hutcheon suggests that this
desire for repetition—as much as for change—explains the popularity of
adaptations across all media (9); because consumers wish to read, view,
and enjoy tested and approved texts of familiarity, long-lasting systems
of similar works invariably develop. One of the more interesting tapes-
tries, one that culminates in a text-to-event adaptation, is the “trip to the
moon” scenario.
The early moon-travel narratives may pave the way for “Hans Pfaall,”
but they differ from Poe in one uniform way: they aren’t striving for plau-
sibility. They are instead fantastic pieces primarily about our relationship
to the moon as an object of desire or a vehicle for satire. These works
are too numerous for a full enumeration here, but sections of Lucian
of Samosata’s True History (second century AD), Francis Godwin’s The
Man in the Moone: or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo
Gonsales2 (1638), and Cyrano de Bergerac’s A Voyage to the Moon3
(1657) are worth a brief detour, not only because they are foundational
“trip to the moon” narratives, but also because they are the type of fan-
tastical work Poe was reacting so vehemently against in “Hans Pfaall.”
Each work quickly describes their particular mechanics of moon travel,
methods that rely on fantastic or magical solutions, and then move on to
their more central concerns with moon denizens. Poe is clearly aware of
these, as we will examine later, as he excoriates the logic of the precursor
stories in his extended note at the end of “Hans Pfaall.”
Lucian’s True History is important both because scholars generally
hold it to be one of the first works of proto–science fiction and because
one of its sections, the “Dialogue of Icaro and Menippus,” details a fan-
tastic journey to the moon. Menippus describes how he procures the wing
of an eagle and the wing of a vulture, lashes them to his arms, and uses
them to flap under his own power to the moon. Once there, he meets and
interacts with moon folk and a variety of lunar beasts. Like many early
works, it is primarily fantastic in nature, but in it, Lucian anticipates one
important point that emerged from the actual NASA missions: catching
a view of the entire planet, which grants the astronaut a fundamentally
changed perspective. Lucian gives Menippus just such a moment, when,
with the globe in view, Mennipus describes seeing “all the poor perform-
ers upon earth, and of such is composed the discordant music of human
life; the voices not only dissonant and inharmonious, but the forms and
habits all differing from each other, moving in various directions, and
agreeing in nothing” (Lucian loc. 1116–17). Using only his imagination
to achieve escape velocity, Lucian anticipates not the science of space
travel but its philosophical outcomes.
Godwin’s The Man in the Moone is noteworthy insofar as it continues
two important memes of moon travel. First, the method of transport is
fantastic. In this case, Gonsales fashions a sort of chariot to which he
attaches twenty-five birds “taken young” and raised by Gonsales for the
purpose of using them to power his flight (Godwin 13). Using these birds
as propulsion, Gonsales makes a somewhat harrowing twelve-day trek
to the moon. Second, he reintroduces the “NASA Astronaut/Menippus”
moment, in which he gains a glimpse and perspective of the whole of the
earth. In Gonsales’s case, he is moved to confirm Copernicus’s view of
the planet in rotation (24–25). He encounters a plague of locusts, lands
on the moon, meets a series of moon inhabitants (of which there are three
varieties), makes observations, and flies home to share his tale. The tone
is decidedly light and the adventures fraught with little peril. One can
easily see how Poe might find such a take distasteful and unengaging.
De Bergerac’s A Voyage to the Moon recounts the bold escapades of
a narrator who develops a desire for a lunar visit after reading Jerome
Cardan, an astrologer and mathematician who wrote about a visit from
two moon men in his De Subtilitate Rerum (1551) (12). In other words,
de Bergerac was inspired by a literary text, which leads the narrator to
declare, “And why not?” (14). Quickened by a sense of the possible, he
ties himself to “a great many Glasses full of Dew,” but the ascent is too
rapid and lacks the proper trajectory (15–16). After a rough landing in
the New World, de Bergerac’s narrator tries to reach the moon again,
this time by means of a spring-powered “Machine,” and crashes again
(38). Finally, after some well-meaning soldiers fasten fireworks to the
machine, the adventurer is finally launched high into the air and through
space, eventually falling safely onto the lush surface of the moon (42).
Thereafter, the bulk of de Bergerac’s tale offers a satirical, and often
heretical, account of the weird topography, denizens, and politics of the
moon.
Although an adaptive fabric of “trip to the moon” stories clearly existed
prior to Poe’s, his was the first to present a story in the realm of the plau-
sible. In his extensive endnote to “Hans Pfaall,” Poe defends his story’s
position, reminding readers that it had been published three weeks before
Richard Locke’s celebrated “Moon-Story” hoax4 (996–97), and he also
attacks many of the moon stories that preceded his own. For example,
Poe calls Godwin’s narrative “a naive specimen,” the de Bergerac story
“utterly meaningless,” and an unnamed tale from American Quarterly
Review as “deplorably ill conceived” (1000–1001). Primarily, however,
Poe’s greatest criticism for the entire litany of stories lies in their satiri-
cal nature; instead, he values his own tale’s “effort at plausibility in the
details of the voyage itself” (1001). Although not the first author to send
a literary character to the moon, Poe declares his intent to be the first to
pay attention to the science, to the engineering, and to the plausibility. He
thus claims in his endnote defense, “In ‘Hans Pfaall’ the design is origi-
nal, inasmuch as regards an attempt at verisimilitude, in the application
of scientific principles … to the actual passage between the earth and the
moon” (1001). A vital shift thus takes place with “Hans Pfaall,” one that
ultimately moves the adaptative tradition away from the fantastic.
Astute readers hardly need Poe’s emphatic explanation to recognize
both a link to the established tradition and an overt transition in nar-
rative focus and purpose. Like de Bergerac’s narrator, Hans Pfaall is
inspired initially about moon travel by reading the works of other writ-
ers, namely a treatise on speculative astronomy (956). Later, in his letter
to the leaders of the States’ College of Astronomers, Pfaall explains the
various motivations behind his daring endeavor:
I resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage, if I could, to the moon.
Now, lest I should be supposed more of a madman than I actually am, I
will detail, as well as I am able, the considerations which led me to believe
that an achievement of this nature, although without doubt difficult, and
incontestably full of danger, was not absolutely, to a bold spirit, beyond
the confines of the possible. (965)
Beyond the possible is the plausible, or believable. With this declaratory

statement, Pfaall (and by extension, Poe himself) introduces a narrative
that will prejudice the means of the journey above its results. Indeed,
much of the text describes mathematical calculations, presents scientific
suppositions and experiments, and narrates the manufacture and deploy-
ment of a lunar vessel. In other words, Poe breaks tradition with the
existing “trip to the moon” adaptations and, in doing so, initiates another
system of adaptations, one grounded in science rather than fantasy.
The most striking detail offered by Poe is undoubtedly Pfaall’s bal-
loon. Rather than having his traveler fly magically through space, be
transported on a bird’s wing, or rocket unprotected to the moon, Poe
foresees the need for a craft. Constructed of cambric muslin, and strength-
ened by a varnish of caoutchouc, Pfaall’s airship reaches “extraordinary
dimensions” (958). Yet Poe recognizes that hot air and hydrogen are
hardly buoyant enough to lift a wicker basket and its passenger beyond
the confines of terrestrial gravity, so he invents a remarkable “two-stage”
fuel mixture, his first signum novum, comprised of “a particular metallic
substance” and “a very common acid” that, when combined, release a
gas that is 37.4 times less dense than hydrogen (958). 5 Once freed from
its earthly tethers, and some critically calculated ballast, Pfaall’s balloon
rises with “inconceivable rapidity” (961), a speed that only increases the
farther the craft gets from the earth. Such an ascent is not without the
expected physiological difficulties, unfortunately, as Pfaall suffers dif-
ficulty breathing and begins to bleed from his ears.
Although Pfaall’s discomfort with “the bends” is somewhat lazily rea-
soned away with the aeronaut’s simply “getting used to it,” Poe does
recognize the need to explain scientifically how Pfaall could possibly
breathe during the course of his nineteen-day journey from Rotterdam.
Assuming (granted erroneously) that some atmosphere must exist the
entire distance between the Earth and its moon, Poe proposes the use of
the “very ingenious apparatus of M. Grimm” to condense the air outside
the craft into something sufficiently dense for Pfaall to breathe (968). By
regularly cranking the mysterious device, Pfaall keeps his air sufficiently
breathable, and his expended carbon dioxide sinks harmlessly beneath
his feet (977). Of course, these solutions invented by Poe hardly stand
up in the face of real-world application, because all modern-day space
missions have required the inclusion of pressurized tanks of oxygen, and
expended carbon dioxide must be extracted from the artificial atmo-
sphere by “air scrubber” filters. Nonetheless, Poe’s procedure remains
consistent with the practical, scientific logic of his story.
Regardless of the method, condensed or otherwise purified air would be
useless in the vacuum of space, but Poe addresses that issue as well. Unlike
the literary precursors to “Hans Pfaall,” Poe’s intrepid voyager encases
his vessel in an airtight gum-elastic bag. Perhaps recognizing the requisite
differences between having part of the ship be dedicated to propulsion
(i.e., the balloon) and the other for life support (i.e., the basket), Poe physi-
cally separates the two when Pfaall constructs a second balloon, one fitted
with four reinforced glass windows, around the basket. By using a variety
of valves, Pfaall draws a quantity of thin atmosphere into his condensing
machine and turns a hand crank until the secondary balloon is supported
by the newly condensed air (977). Here Poe presents us with another note-
worthy signum novum: the parallels between this imaginative construc-
tion and the actual NASA Apollo spacecraft are remarkable, as the latter
consisted of both a propulsive component, the Service Module, and a pres-
surized, airtight passenger compartment, the Command Module.
Pfaall’s narrative culminates in his arriving safely on the surface of the

moon. This lunar “touchdown” is arguably as fantastic in Poe’s story as
it had been in all the antecedent texts that preceded it, but it once again
bears some fascinating similarities to how the actual Apollo missions
achieved the same ends. Unlike the carefully planned and calculated mis-
sions executed by NASA, Pfaall simply relies on the power of lunar grav-
ity to pull his balloon into the proper trajectory (987). His landing is
made possible in a similar manner: once his craft arrives at the middle
point between the two celestial bodies’ attractions, the basket swings 180
degrees and begins to be pulled down by the moon’s gravity. Strangely,
this gravity appears to be stronger than that of Earth, for Pfaall must
immediately drop ballast to slow his descent, eventually cutting even the
basket itself loose (993).6 Thus, although Poe’s imagined lunar craft lacks
a Lunar Module, his astronaut must abandon the command module in
order to land safely on the moon’s surface.
Poe’s story clearly marks the initial shift of the “trip to the moon”
narrative from fantasy to science fiction; nonetheless, we acknowledge
the most influential imaginative works in this text-to-event process to
be Jules Verne’s “moon books,” From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and
Round the Moon (1870).7 Verne’s narrative is now ubiquitously familiar,
even to those who haven’t read the original works—thanks in large part
to Georges Méliès’s landmark 1902 film, Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip
to the Moon).8 From the Earth to the Moon begins in Baltimore where
the members of the highly successful and competitive “Gun Club” are
bemoaning the end of the Revolutionary War. With no enemy to fight,
their “arms race” has stagnated, and they feel themselves rapidly becom-
ing antiquated relics. Luckily, the club president, Impey Barbicane, has
a new goal in mind, a new challenge that will benefit society (and the
newly born United States in particular): building a giant cannon that can
launch a projectile all the way to the moon.
Like de Bergerac’s narrator and Poe’s Hans Pfaall, Barbicane’s scien-
tific imagination has been quickened by literature. In his impassioned plea
to the Gun Club,9 the president references the imaginative efforts of David
Fabricius, Jean Baudoin, and even de Bergerac, and he culminates with
an overt reference to Poe himself: “I will only add that a certain Hans
Pfaal [sic], of Rotterdam, launching himself in a balloon filled with a gas
extracted from nitrogen, thirty-seven times lighter than hydrogen, reached
the moon after a passage of nineteen hours. This journey, like all previous
ones, was purely imaginary; still it was the work of a popular American
author—I mean Edgar Poe!” (19). This declaration echoes the one above,
made by Poe in his antecedental text; the “one-upping” power of science is
to transcend science fiction, to make that which was imagined a reality.
From the Earth to the Moon and Round the Moon are filled with sci-
entific details and specifics that leave Poe’s story behind in their accuracy.
Two of the more interesting signi novi that parallel real life are Verne’s
chosen launch site and the particulars of the projectile. First, because of
the angle necessary for the cannon to hit the moon successfully, Verne’s
scientists decide a US space program must be located in either Florida or
Texas, and Tampa, Florida, is determined to be the optimal site (50)—a
city at almost the same latitude as Cape Canaveral. Second, Verne’s mis-
sion to the moon requires three mechanical elements: the Columbiad
cannon (analogous to the Saturn V rocket), the projectile (the command/
service module), and the gun cotton (the rocket fuel). In addition, once the
intrepid Frenchman Michel Ardan declares his intentions to travel inside
the projectile, the “ball” is redesigned as a “cylindro-conical projectile”
(68), one big enough to hold three travelers. Although Verne ignores the
need for captains’ chairs, a control panel, and computers, he describes a
spaceship surprisingly similar to the Apollo-series command modules—
including external rockets for course corrections.10
Of course, because science fiction is grounded in scientific specula-
tion, we shouldn’t be surprised that developmental and historical coinci-
dences arise between imaginative texts and real-world innovations. We
argue, however, that these connections are more than mere coincidences.
Rocketry pioneers Robert Goddard, Hermann Oberth, and Konstantin
Tsiolokvskii were inspired by what Howard E. McCurdy calls “errors
of imagination” (13). Tsiolokvskii was the most vocal about the con-
nection, stating that his “interest in space travel was first aroused by
the famous writer of fantasies Jules Verne.… Curiosity was followed by
serious thought” (qtd. in McCurdy 13). Years later, on July 23, 1969, the
Apollo 11 commander, Neil A. Armstrong, stated in a public broadcast
that “[a] hundred years ago, Jules Verne wrote a book about a voyage
to the Moon. His spaceship, Columbia [sic], took off from Florida and
landed in the Pacific Ocean after completing a trip to the Moon. It seems
appropriate to us to share with you some of the reflections of the crew
as the modern-day Columbia completes its rendezvous with the planet
Earth and the same Pacific Ocean tomorrow” (NASA 590). What’s inter-
esting for us is seeing how profound the influence of a text can be, how
these texts can participate in a form of adaptation, one in which reality
(as opposed to textuality alone) can become one of the many mediums
through which a narrative moves.
Although “The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall” isn’t
single-handedly responsible for NASA’s missions to the moon, it must
be recognized as a vital thread in the adaptive tapestry that encour-
aged engineers to consider such a journey in the first place. Even though
Poe’s science isn’t always correct, his story is fundamentally about being
inspired. Pfaall himself tells us about the power of imaginative literature
on the human mind:
There are some particular passages which affected my imagination in

an extraordinary manner. The longer I meditated upon these, the more
intense grew the interest which had been excited within me. The limited
nature of my education in general, and more especially my ignorance on
subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me dif-
fident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing me to
mistrust the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence, merely
served as a farther stimulus to imagination. (957)
Poe is important because he works explicitly with a notion of the pos-

sible. Tales of moon travel are no new thing, but Poe made it plausible,
which changed the game.
This need for plausibility is well documented in McCurdy’s history
of public policy and culture, Space and the American Imagination,
which argues that the general notion of space flight, the American space
program, and the policy agencies that sustain them were prompted and
sustained by cultural traditions that are thousands of years old. These
traditions helped “make the spacefaring vision strong, exciting, and,
above all, entertaining” (2). The discourse of space travel, from this
perspective, is just as central to the pursuit as the acts of engineering.
McCurdy argues that the value of imagination is that it allows people to
visualize a particular activity taking place, a key ingredient in convinc-
ing policy makers to undertake it. To become public policy, a vision must
seem familiar, feasible, and desirable. The truth or validity of the vision
is to a large degree irrelevant to the policy debate because no one knows
for certain how the policy will turn out (McCurdy 6–7). McCurdy argues
that there is always a split between the vision produced by the discourse
of the imagination and the reality produced by these works of popular
culture (4). This difference between the source texts and the reality of the
space program are perhaps more easily addressed when treated as acts of
adaptation, which, as a field, has worked at great length with issues of
fidelity.
Edgar Allan Poe adapted earlier texts and created the matrix that
allowed Verne, Wells, and Méliès to continue the work of adopting scien-
tific possibility, not a transposition of actual science into fictionality, but
transposing potentiality into fictionality. In turn, rocketry pioneers and
NASA engineers adapted early science fiction into reality. Such a posi-
tion may be troubling for many, as fiction is usually seen as a narrative
that is known not to have happened. Moreover, fantasy is a type of fic-

tion in which that illusion is apparent; it relies on the willing suspen-
sion of disbelief for its successes. Science fiction works differently; it
persuades us that its narrative content might actually be possible. Poe’s
move with “Pfaall” unlocks something new for Verne and all writers,
physists, and engineers who followed in his footsteps. Verne’s work
unlocked the possible for early rocketry and space program engineers,
which in turn unlocked possibilities for John F. Kennedy and the NASA
space program. Poe has taken an old idea (moon travel) and adapted it to
fit scientific discourse of the modern era. This adaptive tapestry results
in perhaps the most adventurous act of adaptation possible: the creation
of new technologies that in turn alter the literary genre that spawned
them. Once we were actually capable of going to the moon, the funda-
mental nature of space travel was changed. Poe shifted the entire matrix
of possibility.
Notes
1. This cognitive act of believing in the existence of a thing known to be false
matches Darko Suvin’s concept of cognitive estrangement, which is also a
central feature of science fiction.
2 . Originally published in French as L’Homme dans la Lune, ou le Voyage
Chimerique fait au Monde de la Lune, Nouuellement decouuert par domi-
nique Gonzales, Aduanturier Espagnol autremèt dit le Courier volant.
3. Originally titled L’Autre Monde: où les États et Empires de la Lune, de
Bergerac’s novel has variously been titled in English The Other World: The
States and Empires of the Moon and The Comical History of the States and
Empires of the World of the Moon.
4. In August of 1835, Locke allegedly published a series of scientific articles
attributed to John Herschel, titled “Great Astronomical Discoveries,” in the
New York Sun. The phony, yet widely believed, report describes the strange
flora, fauna, and humanoid life recently discovered upon the moon by means
of an extraordinarily powerful telescope.
5. Pfaall inadvertently assists his takeoff with a large amount of cannon pow-
der as well, although the resulting blast was intended merely to dispatch his
three persistent creditors.
6. As further evidence of Poe’s literary legacy, Verne would borrow the details
of this dramatic balloon landing in the first chapter of his 1874 novel L’Île
mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island), in which his five adventurers must cut
loose their balloon’s basket car to avoid plunging into the ocean.
7. Originally published in French as De la terre à la lune and Autour de la lune
respectively.
8. Or, to follow the meme further through the adaptational system, from the
Smashing Pumpkins music video, “Tonight, Tonight” (1996).
9. Barbicane’s challenge prefigures John F. Kennedy’s 1961 address to a joint

session of Congress in which he sets the United States on a course for the
moon.
10. For a more thorough discussion of similarities between Verne’s trip to the
moon and the actual Apollo missions, see the Encyclopedia Astronautica
web page, “Jules Verne Moon Gun.”
Works Cited
Albrecht-Crane, Christa, and Dennis Cutchins. “Introduction: New Beginnings
for Adaptation Studies.” Adaptation Studies: New Approaches. Ed. Christa
Albrecht-Crane and Dennis Cutchins. Madison, NC: Fairleigh Dickinson UP,
2010. 11–22. Print.
Bluestone, George. Novels into Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2003.
Print.
Cervallos, Marissa. “Princess Leia Debuts Kinect-Powered 3-D Video Streaming.”
Wired 27 Jan. 2011. Web. 8 June 2011.
Csicsery-Ronan, Istvan. The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT:
Wesleyean UP, 2010. Print.
de Bergerac, Cyrano. The Comical History of the States and Empires of the
World of the Moon. Trans. A. Lovell. London: Henry Rhodes, 1687. Internet
Archive, n.d. Web. 9 June 2011.
Demory, Pamela. “Jane Austen and the Chick Flick in the Twenty-first Century.”
Adaptation Studies: New Approaches. Ed. Christa Albrecht-Crane and Dennis
Cutchins. Madison, NC: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2010. 121–49. Print.
Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT:
Wesleyean UP, 2000. Print.
Godwin, Francis. The Strange Voyage and Adventures of Domingo Gonsales,
To The World in The Moon … With a Description of the Pike of Teneriff,
as Travelled Up by Some English Merchants. London: J. Lever, 1768. Duke
University Libraries. Digital Facsimile.
“Jules Verne Moon Gun.” Encyclopedia Astronautica, n.d. Web. 12 June
2011.
Laytner, Lance. “Star Trek Tech.” Edit International 2009. Web. 7 June 2011.
Leitch, Thomas. “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory.”
Criticism 45.2 (2003): 149–71. Print.
Locke, Richard Adams. “Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir
John Herschel, L.L.D., F.R.S., &c. at the Cape of Good Hope.” Museum of
Hoaxes 2002. Web. 13 June 2011.
Lucian. Trips to the Moon. Trans. Thomas Francklin. Project Gutenberg. Kindle
Edition.
McCurdy, Howard. Space and the American Imagination. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997. Print.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Apollo 11 Technical Air-to-
Ground Voice Transcription. Manned Spacecraft Center: Houston, July
1969. Johnson Space Center, NASA. 16 July 2010. Web. 6 June 2011.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.” Poetry and
Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1984. 951–1001.
Print.
Tresch, John. “Extra! Extra! Poe Invents Science Fiction!” The Cambridge
Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2002. 113–32. Print.
Tweney, Dylan. “May 25, 1945: Sci-Fi Author Predicts Future by Inventing It.”
Wired 26 May 2011. Web. 8 June 2011.
Verne, Jules. The Moon Book: From the Earth to the Moon and Round the
Moon. Rockville, MD: Arc Manor, 2008. Print.
X Prize. “Tricorder X Prize.” Life Sciences Prize Group. X Prize Foundation,
2011. Web. 7 June 2011.
14
The Perfect Drug:
Edgar Allan Poe as Rock Star
Tony Magistrale
There is a moment in “Ligeia,” one of Poe’s many tales of heterosexual

love gone horribly askew, where the unnamed male narrator informs
us that he has deliberately placed his wife, the blond Lady Rowena of
Tremaine, in a cavernous bridal chamber where gigantic tapestries “were
hung from summit to foot, in vast folds” (271). The “ghastly forms”
woven into these tapestries are a possible reason for Lady Rowena’s deep-
ening ill health, but equally her antipathy to her recent marriage is viv-
idly underscored in her husband’s confession that he has intentionally
exaggerated the monstrous ambiance of the room: “The phantasmago-
ric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong
continual current of wind behind the draperies—giving a hideous and
uneasy animation to the whole” (271).
Two points worthy of note emerge from this often overlooked visual
construction. Most obvious is the husband’s desire to heighten the gro-
tesque atmosphere of the chamber: to place Rowena in an intensely gothic
milieu wherein the likelihood of her recovery—physical as well as men-
tal—will remain in jeopardy. For the purposes of this chapter, however,
I would also like to propose that Poe’s narrator herewith choreographs
the first, albeit rudimentary, horror-film/goth-rock video. Indeed, these
particular tapestries are certainly more appropriately suited as back cur-
tains for a heavy metal rock concert than a bridal chamber. As well, the
narrator’s willful effort to supply an “artificial introduction of a strong
continual current of wind behind the draperies” essentially animates
the “simple monstrosities” (271) pictured in the tapestries in an infer-
nal dance macabre designed to produce an overall sense of disquietude
180 Tony Magistrale
for the reader as well as the new bride. The realized effect, one might
imagine, especially for an unfortunate young woman separated from her
family and country and thereby forced to rely on this unstable male, is
the unsettling realization that she is trapped in a nightmare that antici-
pates, as Poe often does, the subterranean torture-porn milieu of Saw
or Hostel. For the narrator, however, “wild with the excitement of an
immoderate dose of opium” (273), the phantasmagoric effect is uncondi-
tionally solicited, and not only because of his antipathy toward Rowena,
“a hatred belonging more to demon than to man” (272). After all, he has
created, directed, and brought to life this ghastly special effect from his
own drug-addled imagination as part of a larger plan to trade in Rowena
for another date with the lovely Ligeia. One could even go so far as to
suggest that the macabre images infernally animated are less connected
to Rowena’s personal torture than to the narrator’s desire to deepen his
own heightened gothic consciousness; that is, his willful effort to subvert
what little remains of his own rationality, supplanting it with an atmo-
sphere of dark and potentially supernatural possibilities as a psychic aid
to the reanimation of Ligeia. It is, ultimately, further evidence of the
narrator’s sadomasochistic tendencies that simultaneously confirms his
flirtation with madness.
We see here a prototypical example of male-female relationships
found in the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. The female subjects of Poe’s lyri-
cal verse and short fiction alike haunt the respective men in their lives,
who in turn maintain romantic vigils over both their women’s tombs and
memories. Only once, in his late prose narrative “Eleonora,” did Poe
represent the death of a beautiful woman as an essentially uncomplicated
event devoid of familial antagonism, a feminine revenge quest, or male
aggression toward women. Joan Dayan argues that the narrators who
wait for the forever beautiful, always elusive, and emotionally charged
women who have been buried prematurely or who return as lady rev-
enants share a “specific relation of domination, where the speaker who
has defined himself as possessor is in turn defined by his possession”
(186). The compulsive male lovers found in Poe’s tales always appear,
like his poetic melancholics, criminals, and murderers, to embody a full
range of sadomasochistic motivations. What begin as unions of adoring
love end in ghastly hauntings, as Poe’s narrators “first look upon, ideal-
ize, and feel with the mind, hallowing out the beloved image … only to
suffer retribution for their conversion” (Dayan 199). Poe’s males receive
a particular admixture of terror and excitement from both the situation
they have helped to create (the torturing of women that culminates in
apparent death and premature burial) and the consequent psychological
The Perfect Drug 181
enslavement that follows, as these women haunt the lives of their men
long after death and into resurrection.
The gender tension so pronounced in Poe certainly emerges from the
gothic-Romantic tradition that was Poe’s most important literary inheri-
tance. As Mario Praz was perhaps first to point out, the “glassy-eyed sev-
ered female head, this horrible, fascinating Medusa, was to be the object
of the dark loves of the Romantics and the Decadents throughout the
whole of the [nineteenth] century” (26–27). Poe inherited this Romantic
conceit from his reading of eighteenth-century gothic novels and the
poetry of Keats and Byron. But what Poe contributed to this Romantic
sensibility was a deepening focus on the femme fatale, the female as
object of desire made all the more desirable by her apparent inaccessibil-
ity, either as a consequence of death or her cruel rejection of the male.
The obsessive attraction Poe’s male narrators feel for the lost, unattain-
able beautiful woman is closely aligned to the writer’s conviction that the
human psyche’s greatest impulse is toward self-torture or perversity. As
Poe reminds us in “The Black Cat,” “perverseness is one of the primitive
impulses of the human heart … this unfathomable longing of the soul
to vex itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do wrong for the
wrong’s sake only” (599). What better illustration of this principle than
in the fanatical urge to pursue an unattainable object? Indeed, the gender
distress—that is, the tortured passivity of his male protagonists and the
correspondingly aggressive, masculinized female antagonists—presented
in Poe went on to strike a personal cord in Baudelaire, a revelation of his
own perspective toward male-female relationships and the “desire for that
complete fusion with the beloved being which ends in vampirism” (Praz
147). And when we arrive at the end of the nineteenth century, Poe’s fatal
women find their truest expression in Swinburne’s bevy of bloodthirsty,
implacable vampire idols. The English poet’s amoral females from Poems
and Ballads culminate in the figure of Dolores, Our Lady of Sensual
Pain: “Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel / Hard eyes that grow soft for
an hour; / Red mouth like a venomous flower” (141).
Poe’s inheritance and embellishment of a dark Romantic sensibility
was thus firmly cemented in his own century. And yet Poe might have felt
much more at home in our contemporary epoch than he ever was in his
own. He would have witnessed his vision of life treated not as aberration
but as reality; he would have found his poetic attraction to strange and
surreal worlds and his theory of perversity translated into street fashions,
commercial advertisements, night-club life, indulgence in nontraditional
sexualities, video games, graphic novels and manga comics, Internet
websites, fetish art, and music videos. Cultural critic Mark Edmundson’s
182 Tony Magistrale
position is as valid today as it was when he first posited it two decades

ago: “1990s Gothic modes are beholden to the genius of American ter-
ror, to Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s … spirit, like a specter from one of his own
tales, has risen up to brood over the fin de siècle” (71).
While the Romantic aesthetic that both influenced Poe and was in
turn enriched by him is present in each of the diverse and ironically non-
literary instances mentioned in the paragraph above, it is through the
variegated range of musical manifestations that Poe’s line of descent is
arguably most evocative. In essays such as “The Poetic Principle” and
“The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe posited that poetry, while ulti-
mately inferior to music as an art form, must endeavor to approximate
its melodies in the rhythmic music of word combinations, repetition, and
rhyme. In “The Rationale of Verse,” he urges that “in the construction of
verse, melody should never be left out of view” (1389), and in “The Poetic
Principle” he insists that the sole purpose of a poem, its aesthetic essence,
ought to be “the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty” (1438; emphasis Poe’s).
Consequently, his own poetry—“The Bells” and “The Raven” are ulti-
mate examples—relies heavily upon the careful arrangement of words in
proportional balance based upon sound resonances. In Poe’s aesthetics,
the admixture of music and poetry became a core component of beauty:
“It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end
for which, when inspired with the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles—the
creation of supernal Beauty” (“The Poetic Principle” 1438).
It should therefore come as no surprise that one of the more impressive
aspects of Poe’s literary legacy is its enormous breadth of influence on
generations of dance choreographers, musicians, and visual artists that
followed him. In music, Poe’s aesthetic left lasting impressions upon clas-
sical as well as popular composers. Claude Debussy, regarded as a leader
of the ultramodern school of music in the nineteenth century, wrote two
operas based upon Poe stories, while a century later, Alan Parsons, who
with the assistance of two hundred musicians, several electronic synthe-
sizers, and the rock group The Alan Parsons Project, produced in 1975 a
rock album entitled Tales of Mystery and Imagination. In most instances,
the “voice” of the narrator, who utters lines directly from Poe’s texts, is
not a human voice at all, but rather the simulated language of a Moog
synthesizer. In 2001, the rock musician Lou Reed headlined a rock hom-
age to Poe on Halloween night in New York City. Reed’s performance
led to a double CD entitled The Raven, released in 2003, that included a
multifaceted presentation of Poe’s works featuring a combination of new
rock songs and dramatized Poe stories.
Had Poe lived two hundred years later, he might himself have been
a rock star—and, if he had pursued such a career, most likely he would
have journeyed into the realm of the bizarre and macabre in that arena
as well, perhaps writing lyrics for and even touring with the likes of Lou
Reed, Alice Cooper, and Marilyn Manson. All his life Poe sought des-
perately the kind of fame that is best approximated in a contemporary
rock star. He was jealous of Emerson and Longfellow for this very rea-
son: they had managed to capture the national audience (and subsequent
dollars) that forever eluded Poe. And perhaps only a rock star would
understand the indulgence of excess—as both a curse and a muse—better
than Poe. Stories such as “King Pest” and “The Black Cat” wallow in
alcoholic prodigality and its consequences, while poems such as “City
in the Sea” and “Dream-Land” are opulent visions of worlds that never
were and never will be. For the last few years of his life, Poe chose to
dress habitually in black, even during the most humid summer weather
in Virginia and South Carolina (Silverman 422). He was the first real
American Goth—both in terms of his literary subject matter and his
inimitable personality—a person who, in some of his phases, might have
felt comfortable late-night drinking with contemporary urban teenage
Goths listening to heavy metal music and German “techno-industrial
noise” while employing excessive amounts of black eyeliner to exaggerate
their lips and eyes.
Poe’s organic connection to the music of contemporary Western youth
culture appears even more plausible after viewing the music videos of
many heavy metal rock groups. Most of these headbangers manage to
capture the fascination with death and mayhem that is omnipresent in
Poe, but a few of them, Nine Inch Nails (NIN) for example, also exercise
the poetic eloquence that turns the glorification of morbidity into art.
The members of Nine Inch Nails have left behind a Poesque legacy of
music videos and songs that are hauntingly evocative in their lyrics and
invasive sound; their visual atmospheric effects and imagery that could
easily serve as the cinematic backdrop for texts such as “The Fall of the
House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or
“The Raven”; and, most important, a highly agitated male narrator who
centers all the action via his romantic intoxication.
This intoxication is often the result, as was the case with Poe and so
many of his characters, of immoderate drug usage. It is just as likely,
however, that Trent Reznor, the featured male singer for NIN and the
focus of its music videos, embraces a similar gothic aesthetic to the one
that inspired the narrator to introduce the artificial animation of the
monstrous tapestries in “Ligeia.” Just as the speaker in Poe’s tale will-
fully seeks to surround himself and his new bride in a solipsistic micro-
cosm containing animated images that are both macabre and unnerving,
the lyrics and visuals in the videos of Nine Inch Nails embrace similar
184 Tony Magistrale
Romantic agonies and contradictions: tortured souls who engage in self-

torment as much as in the torment of others; an unrealizable yearning
for idealized unions with unreachable females; visceral scenes of death,
alienation, decay, and torture; dissonant rock music that is simultane-
ously as lyrical as it is relentlessly apocalyptic; and rock videos that are
frightening at the same time that they are fascinating visualizations of
psychic dissipation and fragmentation.
From 1989 to the present, although the individual constituents of the
band have changed, Reznor has maintained his position as the lead singer,
composer, instrumentalist, label owner, and front man for the group; he
likewise plays the central performer-protagonist in most of their music
videos. The other members of NIN typically appear at various points
throughout each video—often performing on musical instruments, or
poised stylistically at the frame’s periphery—but the focus invariably
remains, as is usually the case in Poe’s work, on a single character’s
(Reznor) particularized suffering. Like Poe, who fought his entire life
against depression and alcoholism, during the 1990s Reznor struggled
with depression, social anxiety disorder, suicidal impulses, and addic-
tions to alcohol and cocaine, the latter eventually forcing him into years
of rehab, which he completed in 2001. Just as Poe’s own addiction fueled
many of the dark poems and story lines that he composed, it is hard to
separate Reznor’s personal demons from the plethora of sadomasochis-
tic situations and visceral agonies that dominate the musical lyrics and
imagery of NIN videos. “Burn” (1994) places Reznor center stage in a
jump-cut montage of violent and invasive images that especially under-
score the debilitating effects of domestic child abuse. In this nightmarish
pastiche where Reznor appears to assume the communal pain collected
from each of the victims the video catalogues, he articulates their collec-
tive victimization in the line, “Sometimes I think I could burn this whole
world down.” And in “Hurt” (2003), Reznor goes so far as to assume the
suffering of Christ, singing plaintively, “I wear this crown of shit.”
The filmic suffering that Reznor endures and embraces frequently
occurs inside a dungeon of techno-masochistic captivity, as in “Happiness
in Slavery” (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlkkw_nin-happiness-
in-slavery_music), which features a David Cronenberg–like scenario that
brings together horrific torture and orgasmic pleasure linked together in
the infernal melding of a sadistic machine and a willing human victim.
It is clear from the video that the human who must endure this realm
of punishment just before he dies screams in a mixture of pleasure and
pain. Reznor, who sings the lyrics to the song from inside a metal cage,
reveals to the viewer at the conclusion of the video that he is next to
be tortured. “Happiness in Slavery” is particularly reminiscent of Poe’s
“The Pit and the Pendulum” in its dungeon setting and sadomasochis-
tic content, even as its emphasis on a specifically technological brand
of torture removes it from the medieval atmosphere of Poe’s tale. Both
narratives are about the complex psychology of torture: not only how
it operates, but, more perversely, how it fascinates—pulling victims, as
well as the vicarious viewer/reader, into a flurry of eroticized pain that
is indistinguishable within its machinery of extinction. The NIN video
merely marks the psychic devolution of Poe’s incarcerated victim in “The
Pit and the Pendulum”; had the Inquisition more time and effectiveness
in its design to break his will, Poe’s character might well have become
the willing suicide pictured in the video. Both video and short story may
be interpreted as existential allegories of anguished consciousnesses fac-
ing an indifferent universe that compels the victims to desire their own
deaths. Indeed, either one of the protagonists featured in these two situ-
ations might have uttered the line from “The Pit and the Pendulum,”
“Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind”
(Poe 500). The sadistic bondage inflicted in both narratives goes on to
become a parable of the human condition wherein we are all forced to
submit to the “hellish machinery” of time and the steady alienation of
ourselves from our own bodies.
Although my research failed to uncover any specific evidence that Poe
served as an inspiration for Reznor or the NIN video canon, it is none-
theless evident that there exist important intertextual correspondences
among them, especially in terms of lyrical themes and visual aesthet-
ics. Poe’s pervasive presence in popular culture undoubtably influenced
Reznor and NIN indirectly through a myriad of media sources that have
admitted to Poe’s impact, such as other rock lyricists (e.g., Lou Reed,
Marilyn Manson); horror writers like Clive Barker, whom Reznor credits
in the liner notes to NIN’s inaugural album, Pretty Hate Machine (1989);
and a select variety of contemporary horror films. As Michel Foucault
notes, tracing artistic influence may sometimes be an imprecise process,
but “no book [or rock video] can exist by itself … it is a spot in a net-
work” (qtd. in Cancalon and Spacagna 2). Additionally, Mark Romanek,
who directed several NIN videos, including “Hurt,” “Closer,” and “The
Perfect Drug,” has acknowledged the debt of nineteenth-century art on
his contribution to these videos. Although Poe is not referenced specifi-
cally in his remarks, Romanek’s construction of visual space consciously
circles back to include artists who were certainly influenced by Poe, or
his era of dark Romanticism, or both. Romanek designed these video
narratives to create an interface between the searing intensity of post-
modern industrial rock music and a visual backdrop that “was merely
a compendium of original and re-contextualized images from the last
186 Tony Magistrale
century of Art and Photography—images that I felt would resonate with

the song’s themes [and] images” (Tatusko, par. 29).
Following Romanek’s intention, most of Nine Inch Nails’ videos are
atmospherically reminiscent of the artificially constructed decorous
abstractions Poe sought to render real in his literary fictions and theoretical
essays—from highly circumscribed environments to a visualization of the
subjective mind’s most horrific impulses via fantasy-nightmare projection.
The NIN video that best illustrates the group’s closest correspondences
with a Poe aesthetic is arguably their most recognizable song, “The Perfect
Drug” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpuu_xODUpo), which was
written as part of the soundtrack to David Lynch’s film Lost Highway.
Emphasizing Romanek’s effort to capture a nineteenth-century Romantic
ambiance in dress, facial hair, chamber furnishings, antiquated musical
instruments, and choice of libation (absinthe), Reznor assumes the classic
role of the poète maudit, bearing a close resemblance to several of Poe’s
dissipated antiheroes, most notably as Aubrey Beardsley and Gustave Doré
envisioned them in their pen-and-ink illustrations. Surrounded by musical
instruments that distract him only momentarily and several elaborately
framed portraits and paintings that litter the backdrop of the residence,
including an enormous reproduction of Viennese artist Gustav Klimt’s
The Kiss, the agitated persona that Reznor assumes might easily be mis-
taken for the narrator in “Ligeia,” Roderick Usher, or one of the other
lost-artist figures found throughout Poe’s literature. His melancholic gaze
and relentless psychic pain link him to Poe’s long-suffering males; the
Klimt painting, with its tender emphasis on male-female intimacy, is an
ironic contrast to the singer’s isolated condition.
In the course of the five-minute video, Reznor wanders around a
gloomy gothic estate, while outside a darkening winter landscape featur-
ing barren trees and stormy sky mirrors the protagonist’s mental mood;
he thus places himself in a position to be wholly distracted and simultane-
ously obsessed by the dualism posed in the song. “The Perfect Drug” ref-
erences both a bottle of absinthe that Reznor ingests midway through the
video as well as a series of obscure allusions to a dark-haired female child
(Wikipedia posits that she is intended to be the deceased daughter of the
singer) who haunts the periphery of the video in distant unsmiling pho-
tographs, headshots, and vacant stares directly into the camera. As this
girl is pictured only once in the protagonist’s immediate (present-tense)
physical company—near the end of the video she hovers oppressively, like
Poe’s raven, in the shadows behind Reznor’s right shoulder—the viewer
is left to assume that her image is a recollected one, and thus the explana-
tion for the singer’s profound melancholia. Her absence from his life and
his consequent descent into poetic anguish—“The arrow goes straight
through my heart”—is the narrative tension inherent in “The Perfect

Drug”; it recalls Poe’s famous dictum of dark Romanticism in “The
Philosophy of Composition,” that the “most poetical topic in the world”
is “the death of a beautiful woman—and equally is it beyond doubt that
the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover” (1379).
Reznor complicates and enriches this quintessential Poe tenet, how-
ever, by keeping the identity of the “drug” he so craves ambiguous: pre-
cisely who or what is the “you” he associates with it? Does his obsessive
yearning refer to the dark-haired child who preoccupies the speaker’s
chant—“Without you, everything just falls apart”? Or is it rather the
absinthe itself, its marked bottle and evocative green essence in a martini
glass a provocative enticement throughout the song (in a long montage,
the video is screened through an emerald-green filter just after Reznor
imbibes the liquor), that represents the truest desire of the singer? This
ambiguity is of course the best part of the video, for it is likely that the
lost girl and the absinthe actually feed off one another and therefore are
addressed simultaneously in the song, their identities conflated in the
lyrics. Moreover, Reznor’s character is also aware of the self-destructive
nature of his yearning; yet he is either helpless to resist or seeks willingly
this self-annihilation: “I come along, but I don’t know where you are tak-
ing me. / I shouldn’t go, but you’re wrenching, dragging, shaking me.”
Perhaps this is the reason his persona appears nearly self-submerged (to
the point of drowning) in a deep pool of dark water on several occasions
during the video.
The mourned female and the liquor are interchangeable drugs that
enflame and inspire the poet; Reznor is drawn to the absinthe as a result
of her absence, but the absinthe, in turn, further deepens the awareness
of Reznor’s psychic pain. Like the narrator in “The Raven” (the NIN
video also includes a large exotic bird perhaps meant to resemble Poe’s
“ominous bird of yore” [84]) who is perversely drawn to the additional
torment the raven brings to him over his lost love Lenore, Reznor screams
rather than sings the lyrics to the song with a destructive compulsiveness.
The singer’s lack of direction and purposefulness—the mixed conse-
quences of his loss and subsequent addiction—is underscored within the
pounding repetition of the refrain, “The more I give to you, the more I
die,” reverberating in what is surely reminiscent of the paradoxical blend
of adrenaline and agonized despair present in works such as “The Tell-
Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” “Usher,” and “The Black Cat.”
The process of recalling the protagonist’s absent daughter is thus facil-
itated by the use of the liquor, so that the pain of “a bereaved lover” is
simultaneously summoned, sharpened, and rendered poetically through
the absinthe’s indulgence—the idealized lost female and the alcohol
188 Tony Magistrale
merge to become “the perfect drug.” This is a quintessential Poe-like

situation, not only because so many of his characters, such as the narra-
tor in “Ligeia,” rely on drugs to help them to focus their similar obses-
sions over the loss of women companions, but also because Poe himself
employed alcohol as a means for summoning the dead female relatives
of his own life—particularly his mother and step-mother, and his wife-
cousin, Virginia Clemm, who all died from tuberculosis—and recasting
them again and again into the plots of his stories and poems.
The evening news and the various CSI cop shows that follow it every
night on television underscore America’s daily fascination with violence
and the macabre. It is no longer possible to witness the events of these
televised programs without encountering a sense that we ought to be
very afraid—of our own neighbors, certainly, but also of ourselves. In its
fascination with all things gothic, our age continually references the very
pathologies that Poe helped to describe. And while Poe still impresses me
as the most contemporary of America’s writers from the nineteenth cen-
tury, one point worth noting about Poe’s children—be they literary, cin-
ematic, or musical—is that they tend to push Poe’s destructive impulses
to the extreme. That is to say, the generations of artists who can truly be
said to emerge from Poe’s dark shadow tend to reflect the social night-
mare that has become our era’s legacy, especially in terms of technologi-
cal anxieties and dysfunctional behavior.
Beneath its ear-bleeding thunder and rock-opera hysterics, the music
of NIN provides an unsentimental portrait of America’s dark side similar
to the one that preoccupied Poe two hundred years earlier. Poe’s men-
tally disturbed narrators form an early lineage, even if it is ultimately
by way of an indirect inheritance, with the unstable personae that tend
to populate the videos of Nine Inch Nails. Reznor’s various protago-
nists in these music narratives, and particularly in “The Perfect Drug,”
embody the morbid sensitivity of many Poe characters, transforming the
crescendo of interior pain into an aggressive fury that flails out against
the self, the larger world, or both simultaneously. Like the sci-fi tradition
that Poe anticipated and to which Nine Inch Nails is indebted, dystopia
already surrounds us, if only we were awake enough to see it. As such,
Trent Reznor’s various protagonists approximate a version of Poe’s most
estranged characters, albeit ramped up on crystal methylamphetamine:
paranoid, hyperactive, and apocalyptic. As Daphne Carr describes the
achievement of NIN’s music, “the effects of mechanization are laid bare:
the human experience of powerlessness in postmodern, postindustrial
life is crystallized by someone screaming in and against an impossible
room of synthesized sensations” (21).
And yet, like Poe, Reznor and his NIN collaborators also manage to
pull the viewer/listener into a world that is strangely fascinating, and
oftentimes darkly beautiful. There is a kind of poetic grandeur found
in high-caliber horror art that accompanies NIN’s visceral montages
of destruction and mayhem set to invasive rock music—what Kirsten
Thompson calls “scopic dread,” an attraction to and repulsion at moments
“too terrible for sight” (124–25). Just as we are drawn into the internal
workings of anguished selves in Poe’s criminals and psychopaths, the
videos of NIN are powerful statements about compressed and circum-
scribed worlds populated by psyches out of control. Poe was the first
American writer to describe as art the inner conflicts of the alienated, the
orphaned, the depraved, and the invisible, anticipating the postmodern
Alienated Man that is the anonymous central figure in many NIN videos.
Poe was also first to offer us what Reznor and other rock performance
artists likewise portray: the monster as a corrupt or degraded artist. If
Poe offers us in Roderick Usher or the narrator of “Ligeia” portraits of
artists on the edge of insanity, Reznor’s video personae suggest a similar
failure of art to rescue the artist from himself, or from a society that is at
best indifferent to his art and personal survival. One of the most unnerv-
ing qualities in Poe’s fiction is its circumscription of mental space—that
is, the construction of stories that revolve around the theme of the mind
closing in on itself. As Robert Solomon posits in his theoretical formula-
tion of horror art as aesthetic experience, “Horror is not just confron-
tation with an object. It is an imaginative confrontation with oneself”
(128). This characteristic also describes accurately the musical and video
contributions of Trent Reznor: a madman’s version of reality featuring
interior crises in which the human mind is under assault, and its primary
nemesis is itself.
Works Cited
Cancalon, Elaine D., and Antoine Spacagna. “Introduction.” Intertextuality
in Literature and Film. Ed. Elaine D. Cancalon and Antoine Spacagna.
Gainsville: UP of Florida, 1988. 1–7. Print.
Carr, Daphne. Pretty Hate Machine. New York: Continuum International, 2011.
Print.
Dayan, Joan. “Amorous Bondage: Poe, Ladies, and Slaves.” The American Face
of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman. Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 179–209. Print.
Edmundson, Mark. Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the
Culture of the Gothic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997. Print.
Hostel. Dir. Eli Roth. International Production Company, 2005. Film.
190 Tony Magistrale
Lost Highway. Dir. David Lynch. October Films, 1997. Film.

Parsons, Allan [Project]. Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Twentieth Century
Fox, 1976. CD.
“The Perfect Drug.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.
Poe, Edgar Allan. 1849. “The Bells.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays.
———. 1843. “The Black Cat.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New
York: Library of America, 1996. 597–606. Print.
———. 1845. “The City in the Sea.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New
———. 1844. “Dream-Land.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New
———. 1842. “Eleonora.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New York:
Library of America, 1996. 468–74. Print.
———. 1839. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected
Essays. New York: Library of America, 1996. 317–36. Print.
———. 1835. “King Pest: A Tale Containing an Allegory.” Poe: Poetry, Tales
and Selected Essays. New York: Library of America, 1996. 240–52. Print.
———. 1838. “Ligeia.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New York:
———. 1835. “Morella.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New York:
———. 1846. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected
———. 1843. “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected
———. 1850. “The Poetic Principle.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays.
———. 1848. “The Rationale of Verse.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays.
———. 1845. “The Raven.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays. New York:
———. 1843. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe: Poetry, Tales and Selected Essays.
Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony. New York: Oxford UP, 1970. Print.
Reed, Lou. The Raven. RCA, 2003. CD.
Reznor, Trent. “Burn.” Dir. Hank Corwin and Trent Reznor. Nothing Records,
1994. Film.
———. “Happiness in Slavery.” Dir. J. Reiss. TVT Records/Interscope, 1992. Film.
———. “Hurt.” Dir. Mark Romanek. Nothing Records, 2003. Film.
———. “The Perfect Drug.” Dir. Mark Romanek. Nothing Records, 1997. Film.
———. Pretty Hate Machine. TVT Records, 1989. CD.
Saw. Dir. James Wan. Evolution Entertainment, 2004. Film.
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New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.
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the Road?” Entertaining Ideas—Popular Philosophical Essays: 1970–1990.
New York: Prometheus, 1992. 119–30. Print.
Swinburne, Algernon. 1866. “Dolores.” Poems and Ballads. Ed. Morse Peckham.
New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970. 141–55. Print.
Tatusko, Andrew. “Transgressing Boundaries in the Nine Inch Nails: The
Grotesque as a Means to the Sacred.” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
11 (2005). ATLA Religion Database. EBSCO. Web. 8 Feb. 2011.
Thompson, Kirsten Moana. Apocalyptic Dread: American Film at the Turn of
the Millennium. Albany: State U of New York P, 2007. Print.
15
That Vexing Power of Perverseness:
Approaching Heavy Metal Adaptations of Poe
Carl H. Sederholm
Since its beginnings in the late 1960s, heavy metal’s dominant themes
have revolved around notions of power, rebellion, transgression, and
transcendence (Walser 9). Not simply interested in sex, drugs, and rock
and roll, heavy metal seeks to intensify human experience by evoking
feelings of power that border on eschatological concepts of meaning and
purpose. For nearly two decades, critical discussions of heavy metal have
focused mostly on the musical and cultural significance of heavy metal’s
fascination with power. As Deena Weinstein argues, “the essential sonic
element in heavy metal is power, expressed as sheer volume” (23). But
volume is only part of the equation. Heavy metal music also works within
a “variety of musical discourses, social practices, and cultural meanings,
all of which revolve around concepts, images, and experiences of power”
(Walser 2). Most heavy metal recordings prominently feature flashy gui-
tar solos, heavy bass and drum rhythms, singing that includes “screams
and growls as signs of transgression and transcendence,” aggressive
or violent lyrics, and dark album art (9). Heavy metal’s articulation of
power is ultimately self-reflexive: a musical invitation to think, move,
and act within a larger problematic of power.
Heavy metal certainly has significant thematic and musical ties to
power; the music is formally structured around bold, unambiguous musi-
cal progressions, riffs, and motifs built principally on power chords (tri-
ads created by the simple combination of a root, the interval of a perfect
fourth or fifth, and the octave of the root). At times, heavy metal’s fasci-
nation with power (and the scholarship it generates) makes it seem overly
194 Carl H. Sederholm
monolithic and commanding, aggressive, and dominating. But heavy

metal is not a culturally repressive force. Instead, scholars need to exam-
ine heavy metal’s fascination with power in terms of Michel Foucault’s
sense that “power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared,
something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is exercised
from innumerable points, in the interplay of nonegalitarian and mobile
relations” (94). Borrowing from this premise, I argue that heavy metal’s
relationship with power works in a similar vein—the music, lyrics, and
broader culture of heavy metal consistently explore the dynamic range of
power, particularly as it speaks to the shaping of the self. Heavy metal
music questions the cultural and psychological dimensions of human
power, particularly as it manifests itself in madness and violence.
Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction does not generate discussions of power in
precisely the same ways. The thematic connections between the man and
the music, however, seem too obvious to ignore. Poe frequently turned to
questions of extreme mental states, violence, and power in his fiction. In
stories like “The Black Cat” and “The Imp of the Perverse,” he explic-
itly examines the ways that human beings struggle with their occasional
inability to hold power over their own minds and actions. In his defini-
tion of perverseness, Poe insists that there are times when “we act, for the
reason that we should not” (“Imp” 827). Even worse, some individuals
discover that perverseness has a compulsive quality, one that is, at times,
“absolutely irresistible” (827). Poe explains that, “I am not more certain
that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action
is often the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels
us to its prosecution” (827). Heavy metal’s own commentary on human
power also turns listeners’ attention to the awful power of perverseness.
As in Poe, however, heavy metal often leaves us with the key questions
unanswered; what, indeed, should we do, how ought we react, “when we
persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them” (827)?
This essay will discuss two adaptations of Poe’s work in heavy metal—
Iron Maiden’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Metal Church’s “Of
Unsound Mind” (taken from “The Tell-Tale Heart”). Though I cannot
treat the subject exhaustively, I suggest that one way to begin exploring
the ties between Poe and heavy metal is through the themes of power and
madness. Like other contributors to this volume, I approach adaptation
largely as a subfield of intertextuality, which is usually understood as a
concept that both challenges notions of authorial and textual primacy
and also “encourages the ongoing, evolving production of meaning, and
an ever-expanding network of textual relations” (Sanders 3). Adaptation
is about the constant, dialogic production of texts, a retelling of stories,
things that “are second without being secondary” (Hutcheon 9). If we
That Vexing Power of Perverseness 195
begin to study heavy metal from the perspective of adaptation theory,

we will come to see new ways of thinking and writing about its domi-
nant themes, attitudes, and subjects. We will find ways in which heavy
metal engages with literary topics, not for commercial and cultural capi-
tal, but to suggest new perspectives on both the music and the texts that
enhance it.
Discussions of Edgar Allan Poe and music are broad and wide ranging.
As Mark Neimeyer writes, “given the stress he placed on the musicality
of his poetry, it is not surprising that Poe has frequently been adapted
by composers and songwriters” (220). Scholars such as Burton Pollin
and Jack Sullivan have traced the roots and depths of Poe’s place within
European and American concert music. Maurice Ravel claimed to be
profoundly influenced by “The Philosophy of Composition,” whereas
Claude Debussy was nearly obsessed with “The Fall of the House of
Usher” (Sullivan 62). As Sullivan writes, “there is a basicness about Poe,
a willingness to plunge into fundamental issues of life and death, that
European artists similarly inclined … admired, no matter how much
Poe was derided by Henry James, T. S. Eliot, [and] Ezra Pound” (63).
Poe’s emphasis on unity of atmosphere and mood also influenced the
American composer Philip Glass who adapted both “A Descent into the
Maelstrom” (1985) and “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1987). Poe’s
work itself is so variegated, his aesthetics so striking, that there “has
been probably a greater variety of musical forms for the works of Poe
than for those of other American writers” (Pollin 504–5). Traces of Poe’s
work spread widely across multiple styles, genres, and forms; simply put,
he “has provided composers with many humorous, dramatic, gripping,
dreamy, and narratively simple plots for short operas, for programmatic
tone poems, sometimes divided into sections or movements, and for
dances of every type, ranging from formal ballets to avant-garde experi-
mental productions” (504).
Scholarly work connecting Poe to popular music has not been so
detailed. Most people recognize Poe’s face on the cover of The Beatles’
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Other references to
Poe or his work may be found in The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” (1967),
Bob Dylan’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (1965) and Joan Baez’s
“Annabel Lee” (1967). The Glass Prism released Poe through the Glass
Prism (1969), which adapted some of the poetry into a psychedelic regis-
ter. The Alan Parson Project’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976)
included adaptations of “A Dream within a Dream,” “The Raven,” and
“The Fall of the House of Usher.” More recently, Lou Reed created a
stage show with Robert Wilson entitled POEtry (2001). Reed later
released a double-length CD titled The Raven (2003), featuring readings
by celebrities interspersed with musical adaptations; that same year he

published the lyrics in book form. In 2011, he rereleased the same book
with new illustrations by Lorenzo Mattotti. Reed shares an affinity with
the kinds of themes and questions Poe embraced. In the liner notes to
The Raven, he notes, “I have reread and rewritten Poe to ask the very
same questions again. Who am I? Why am I drawn to do what I should
not? I have wrestled with this thought innumerable times: the impulse of
destructive desire—the desire for self-mortification.”
Heavy metal deals with similar questions, particularly through its
exploration of chaos, mental instability, and power. Poe’s place in heavy
metal music, however, has gone mostly unrecognized. Even Internet
searches yield very few hits besides the extended list of Poe-inspired
songs found on Wikipedia’s “Edgar Allan Poe and Music” page. Despite
the paucity of critical works, there are certain obvious thematic, even
visual, ties to Poe within heavy metal music that need exploring, not the
least of which are its consistent explorations of power, madness, and
death. The number of Poe adaptations continues to grow as bands see the
potential that his stories and poems have offered to others. More impor-
tantly, his presence is found within the music itself; images and shadows
of Poe abound, ranging from bands who claim him as a broad influence
to bands who take their name from him (e.g., Nevermore), to bands who
simply nod to Poe in their lyrics or in liner notes.
Poe’s impact on heavy metal should not be understood simply in
terms of bringing easy cultural capital to a long-maligned musical form.
Instead, Poe should be recognized as a “matrix figure,” someone who has
such a pervasive impact on certain arts that everything finally “goes back
to him,” or perhaps even “goes through him” (Orr 53). Though applied
specifically to Alfred Hitchcock’s impact on film, John Orr’s comment
that “through his work so much of the entire life of Western cinema has
been nurtured and dispersed” may be borrowed and modified to sug-
gest Poe’s general impact on heavy metal music. Like Hitchcock’s place
in film, so Poe holds a “special link” within heavy metal that we may
understand not only through a consistent thematic presence but also as a
consistent “echo and repetition” throughout the music itself (53).
Despite Poe’s pervasive presence, we need to keep in mind that adapt-
ing his stories into heavy metal music and lyrics should never be under-
stood as a simple transition from page to stage. Heavy metal has its own
conventions, style, and genre expectations that must be considered. As
Linda Hutcheon points out, “the adapted text … is not something to be
reproduced, but rather something to be interpreted and recreated, often
in a new medium” (84). Although some of Poe’s work provides obvious
thematic connections to heavy metal’s conventional interest in themes
relating to power, madness, obsession, and evil, it certainly takes on a

different tone within the confines of a heavy metal song. Adapting a
short story or a poem by Poe usually requires that a band come together
to arrange chord progressions and song structures, bring the lyrics into
shape, and record the song in a studio, with its own staff of engineers,
sound mixers, and so forth. Whereas most of the songs are ultimately
credited to certain members of the band or to a single songwriter, the
collaborative nature of making music should not be overlooked.
In his preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Poe argued
that “terror is not of Germany, but of the soul” (129). This remark sug-
gests how Poe transformed the gothic away from its standard plots involv-
ing clichéd spooky castles, hidden underground pathways, and damsels
in distress so that he could explore the vortices of the human mind. The
labyrinthine nature of the human unconscious likewise provides much
of the thematic components of heavy metal music and lyrics. As Bryan
Bardine points out, some heavy metal songs present their lyrics much like
Poe shapes his stories—with the desire to create a powerful and lasting
effect. Poe’s emphasis on the power of a “vivid effect” not only influences
certain heavy metal bands, but it also serves as a significant means for
grabbing audience attention (Poe, “Philosophy of Composition”). When
Poe writes, for example, that “the brevity [of a poem] must be in direct
ratio of the intensity of the intended effect,” his words could be used to
describe the often short, yet pointed, lyrics and refrains of many heavy
metal songs (15). Bardine turns to the opening of “The Tell-Tale Heart”
as a key example of how “Poe uses punctuation and emphasis to great
effect” (129). Bardine’s point reminds us of the visceral nature of Poe’s
writing. As David Halliburton argues, Poe creates “experiential intensi-
ties” that connect deeply with readers (427). For Bardine, such “intensi-
ties” allow songs like Iron Maiden’s “Invaders” and Saxon’s “Warrior”
to “incorporate the musical equivalent of what Poe is doing in this short
story [“The Tell-Tale Heart”]—by using short lyrics and a short refrain,
the sense of chaos is increased” (129). Though neither song adapts Poe
(nor even alludes to him), they borrow his stress on effect to shape their
audience’s response.
In terms of adapting Poe’s work into heavy metal music, Iron Maiden’s
“Murders in the Rue Morgue” from their second album, Killers (1981),
counts among the very first. This album consistently serves up meditations
on topics including murder, insanity, bloodlust, stalking, and revenge. In
addition to their musical influence on other bands, Iron Maiden also
established the violent, horror-strewn pattern that makes up the content
of most heavy metal recordings. According to Ian Christe, early Iron
Maiden songs like “Phantom of the Opera” and “Murders in the Rue
Morgue” influenced the later, often more shocking and violent lyrics,
themes, and images of bands like Slayer and Exodus (280). Musically,
Iron Maiden also helped establish the conventions and expectations that
would shape the heavy metal music of the 1980s. As Wolf Marshall sug-
gests, “the specific elements of their haunting minor modality, intricate
twin guitar harmony and aggressive, relentless rhythm grooves have
become fixtures in modern rock vernacular beyond the confines of pure
heavy metal or hard rock” (113). Given their influence on other bands
and their penchant for adaptation, Iron Maiden helped establish heavy
metal’s broader interest in Poe’s work.
The album art for Killers, painted by Derek Riggs, sets a dark tone
for listeners through its violent imagery centered on the band’s mascot,
Eddie. Though not named for Eddie Poe, the analogue between the
author and the creature is too close to overlook entirely. Both figures
regularly signify themes of madness, rebellion, and mystery. The cover
of Killers shows Eddie brandishing an axe covered with the blood of a
recent victim whose hands still grasp the killer’s shirt. Eddie’s demonic
eyes, however, have already turned toward the viewer, his teeth bared in
a menacing smile, his left hand reaching toward the viewer. The image
serves as a striking reminder that madness, violence, and murder remain
part of the world. Like Poe’s “Imp of the Perverse,” Eddie’s murderous
acts suggest a willingness to kill without any clear motive.
Most of the songs on Killers were written by Steve Harris, Iron
Maiden’s bass player. Since the beginning of his career, Harris has regu-
larly adapted literary works, films, television series, and even dreams
into his lyrics. His long list of adaptations include “Phantom of the
Opera,” “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” “The Trooper” (inspired
by Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”), “The Prisoner” (from
the popular television series), “To Tame a Land” (from Frank Herbert’s
Dune), and “Children of the Damned” (from the horror film). Early in
his career, Harris stated that “we always believe that a song is a short
story and then you pick something from within the lyric that describes
the song. Lyrics are important … though not the most important thing.
I would say the music and the melodies of the vocal lines are the most
important. However, having said that, the lyrics shouldn’t just be a load
of old crap (Stenning 54). Though unstated directly, Harris’s comparison
of songs to short stories and his implied point that lyrics and melodies
ought to make a strong impact resonates with Poe’s aesthetic sense of a
unity of mood and effect.
Most scholars agree that Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
helped establish the major conventions of contemporary detective fiction
(Scaggs 19). The story relates the discovery of two dead women: Madame
L’Espayne, whose body is found nearly beheaded, and her daughter, whose
own body has been thrust feet first inside a chimney. Because these deaths
occurred in a locked room and the nearby witnesses could only partially
relate what they heard, the case could not be solved through conventional
means. Through his interpretive skill, C. Auguste Dupin solves the case
by demonstrating that the killings were caused by an escaped orangutan
armed with a razor. As Peter Thoms points out, Poe’s plot “unfolds as
a kind of puzzle or game, a place of play and pleasure for both detec-
tive and reader. The popularity of the stories of Poe and his successors
partly derives from this intense engagement with the text where, in the
scrutinizing of evidence and the interpreting of clues, the reader becomes
a detective and the detective a reader” (133).
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” reflects on the broader practices
of reading and interpreting themselves. One of the problems the story
avoids, however, is the larger psychological motivation of the murderer.
This is due to Poe’s decision to surprise readers by having an orangutan
commit the murders. Moreover, Poe almost excuses the killings by sug-
gesting that the creature was only acting on its natural “imitative pro-
pensities” rather than a desire to kill for its own sake (424). Though
its actions resulted in the deaths of two women, the orangutan will not
face prosecution for its actions; in fact, Dupin and the story’s narrator
seem far more interested in protecting themselves from the sailor who
owned the animal rather than from the animal itself. The deaths of the
L’Espayne women, then, may be said to be somewhat accidental, a means
to establish a plot that will allow readers to enjoy the way Poe solves
the narrative puzzle he created. As he explained in a letter to Philip P.
Cooke, Poe reflected on the pleasures of and the challenges of creating
such fiction: “These tales of ratiocination owe most of their popularity
to being something in a new key.… In the ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’,
for instance, where is the ingenuity of unraveling a web which you your-
self (the author) have woven for the express purpose of unraveling? The
reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the suppositious Dupin with
that of the writer of the story” (684).
The problem with adapting “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” into
a relatively short song lies in the elaborate nature of Poe’s original plot.
Poe’s tale constructs the plot slowly; unlike modern television detective
programs, Poe does not begin with a shocking revelation of the mur-
dered bodies, nor a dramatic backstory that attempts to trace the motives
behind the killings. Instead, Poe begins with a lengthy commentary con-
cerning “the higher powers of the reflective intellect,” or ratiocination,
which is followed by an ingenious foreshadowing of how Dupin’s analytic
ability may serve as a means of solving a local mystery. Moreover, when
Poe finally turns his attention to the deaths of the L’Espayne women, he
relates them through a newspaper account that simultaneously describes
the murders in the most ghastly detail, while likewise puzzling over the
motivations that lay behind them.
Instead of retelling Poe’s tale, Iron Maiden’s “Murders in the Rue
Morgue” adapts the text into the lyrics so that the focus falls on the
thoughts and actions of an unnamed human killer. The song’s lyrics
never reference Dupin or his powers of ratiocination; neither do they
mention the escaped orangutan, the mysterious condition of the bodies,
or the bungled police investigation. With the story narrated by the unsta-
ble killer himself, the song takes listeners directly into his attempts to
explain his actions to himself and others. At first, the narrator suggests
that he stumbled onto the two bodies while out “strolling” down Paris
streets. Caught off guard by a “piercing scream,” however, he “rushed to
the scene of the crime” only to discover “the butchered remains / Of two
girls laying side by side.” Although he initially calls out for help, includ-
ing crying out for police assistance, the narrator just as quickly flees the
scene, hoping to find a place to hide outside of France. His escape, how-
ever, is marred by his constant mental obsession with “the scene from my
mind” of the gruesome crime scene he either created or discovered. He
also begins to worry that other people will recognize him as a murderer.
After reflecting on whether to keep running or to “return to the scene of
the crime,” the narrator finally hints he may be the killer. In the closing
verse, he states that “If I could go to somebody for help / It would get me
out of trouble for sure. / But I know that it’s on my mind / That my doctor
said I’ve done it before.” These lines are initially confusing. Has the nar-
rator escaped from a mental institution? Has he killed before? Listeners
are left to wrestle with the problem of motiveless actions of violence and
murder. The result is a shift away from the ideology of the detective tale,
away from a focus on restoring order and reason, to an emphasis on
chaos and uncertainty.
Given these large omissions, it seems easy to suggest that “Murders
in the Rue Morgue” references Poe only to gain easy cultural capital for
heavy metal music. But such assumptions miss the song’s larger thematic
and textual purposes. As Thomas Leitch demonstrates, some adaptations
work against the original text so much that they not only alter its con-
tents but also “seek to alter the spirit as well” (107). The result is often a
work that bears some relationship to the original text but requires audi-
ences to reexamine their understanding of it. Although Iron Maiden’s
“Murders in the Rue Morgue” is not exactly an adapted commentary on
Poe’s tale, it lies somewhere between a complete reworking of the text
and simply offering a new perspective on it. Following Linda Hutcheon,
I suggest that some “adapters must have their own personal reasons for
deciding first to do an adaptation and then choosing which adapted work
and what medium to do it in. They not only interpret that work but in so
doing they also take a position on it” (92). In its ambiguous treatment of
the killer’s actions and motives, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” has more
in common with tales like “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Black
Cat.”
Another story that deals with questions of obsession, “The Tell-Tale
Heart,” opens with the narrator referring to the old man’s eye as the
major catalyst behind his murderous actions. As Poe’s narrator explains
it, one of the man’s eyes “resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye
with a film over it” (555). “Whenever it fell upon me,” the narrator con-
tinues, “I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid
myself of the eye forever” (555). It is the eye, the narrator reasons, which
drove him to kill; as readers quickly learn, however, the narrator seems
unable to understand his motives beyond pointing to the haunting nature
of the vulture-like eye. He even admits that “[i]t is impossible to say how
first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived; it haunted me day and
night” (555). The narrator attempts to use his own twisted reasoning to
discover why the old man had to die. He claims, “Object there was none.
Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.
He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was
his eye!” (555). Although sometimes read as a tale of a troubled con-
science, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is perhaps better understood as J. Gerald
Kennedy explains it: “Poe’s emphasis is less on the problem of conscience
than on the nature of psychotic obsession” (134). At times, the story also
seeks to unravel the kind of logic people use to justify horrific actions.
The old man’s vulture-like eye brings out an unstated paranoia in the
narrator, one that assumes the eye itself is as keenly aware as the nar-
rator’s own sense of hearing, a sense which picks up “all things in the
heaven and in the earth” (555).
Formed in the early 1980s, the members of Metal Church quickly
established themselves as a talented, aggressive, and fast heavy metal
band. Their third release, Blessing in Disguise (1989), includes the track
“Of Unsound Mind,” which adapts “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Written by
Craig Wells and John Marshall, the song focuses on the psychotic unrav-
eling of the narrator’s mind as he conceives of, executes, and reflects on
his plan to kill the unnamed old man. Like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” it uses
the old man’s eye as a catalyst for the narrator’s mental breakdown—as
the lyrics at the end of the first verse explain, it was “the staring of the
old man’s eye chills him deep inside.” The eye itself remains at the center
of the narrative, peering beneath the narrator’s mask of sanity and seeing
instead the murderer underneath. As sung by Mike Howe, these words

work with the music to shift listeners’ attention away from a fictional tale
of obsession into a musical exploration of the same theme. The vocals
consistently underscore the narrator’s seeming inability to forget the old
man’s lingering gaze. As the song’s chorus relates, “It is the eye that will
destroy him / Stuck in my mind / It is the eye that will destroy me / Stuck
in my mind.” These words suggest the increasingly frenzied state of the
narrator’s mind. Indeed, the words “that will destroy him” and “that will
destroy me” aggressively interrupt the sustained notes that correspond to
“eye” and “mind,” as if the narrator’s madness itself quickly distorts his
already insane efforts to consider his motives.
Another way the chorus destabilizes the narrator’s tale is through
its unexplained shifts in point of view between two persons—“him,”
presumably the killer, and “me,” perhaps the narrator. But as the song
reminds listeners in every chorus, the eye holds the power to destroy both
of these individuals. Does this mean that the narrator is the killer him-
self? If so, why does he refer to himself in the third person, only to slip
into the first person both in the chorus and in the bridge? Unfortunately,
neither the lyrics nor the music provide easy resolution to these questions.
The trouble with point of view, according to Linda Hutcheon, is that
most people assume its most sophisticated uses come from prose (52).
In a song like “Of Unsound Mind,” the sudden shifts in point of view
would probably be seen as clumsy attempts to build tension or to hint at
unstable notions of identity.
Such conclusions are premature. As Linda Hutcheon argues, “in a
multitrack medium, everything can convey point of view” (55). Though
commenting on film, Hutcheon’s claim applies to recorded music, par-
ticularly given its layers of drum, bass, vocal, and guitar tracks. “Of
Unsound Mind,” however, takes advantage of the musical properties
of heavy metal to convey the even more troubling internal madness of
Poe’s narrator. Reading the lyrics alone, the words shift inexplicably
from third- to first-person point of view. Indeed, the song begins with a
simple enough narration about a mysterious “man who lives alone” who
is “touched in such a wicked way” that he cannot separate reality from
fantasy. The suggestion here is that Poe’s narrator is alive and lives apart
from most people, perhaps in an asylum or a prison. He is lost in such
a state of complete madness, however, that he no longer has any hold
on reality itself; indeed, he continues to visualize “the staring of the old
man’s eyes.” From this third-person point of view, “Of Unsound Mind”
seems to imply a cautionary tale about learning to distinguish fact from
fancy, avoiding the excesses of obsession. When Mike Howe begins the
chorus by singing, “It is the eye that will destroy him,” listeners already
understand the subject of the song. In the second part of the chorus,
though, the point of view shifts directly to first person: “It is the eye
that will destroy me.” Throughout “Of Unsound Mind,” the lyrics create
an unstable relationship between third- and first-person points of view,
almost as though the singer is himself unraveling mentally before his lis-
teners. The effect of this blending of perspectives is to suggest not only an
unstable notion of identity generally but also to underscore the seemingly
contagious nature of madness itself. Both the tale and the telling of the
tale, in other words, may lead others into a state of insanity.
Although the murder in “Of Unsound Mind” is not described with
the kind of detail Poe used, there is an interesting pun in the printed lyr-
ics that helps convey how the murder itself contributed to the narrator’s
unraveling sense of self. The words to the song suggest that “his pain
and fear must lay to rest / piece by peace it’s done.” Although the singer
does not call attention to this punning on the word “piece,” the printed
lyrics suggest a relationship between the killer’s dismembering of the old
man’s corpse and the laying waste of his own mental condition, thereby
destroying the very peace he thought he’d gain through killing. The result
is not simply a reflection on madness, but a meditation on the insatia-
bility of obsession. As the song transitions to the bridge, this reflection
on madness increases further. It begins with a sustained G power chord
but shifts rapidly into a driving sixteenth-note rhythmic pattern estab-
lished by the drummer’s fierce double-kick bass mirrored by dual guitars.
Lyrically, this moment occurs not only after the murder of the old man,
but also after the chorus is performed twice. The effect is to ground into
the listener the awful image of the eye and its hypnotic power over the
killer. The lyrics to the bridge shift the point of view to the first person;
now that the murderous deed is done, the killer begins to reveal the depth
of his obsessive madness. Indeed, the lyrics to the bridge reveal that the
killer is constantly tormented by his desire to kill and that killing the
old man has only fed his dark urges. He asks himself questions such as
“When will it end? What can I do? / Who will believe? Why is this fear
haunting me?” Driven by the “twisting and tortured scars on my brain,”
the killer concludes that “the end is the cure, the only way out / To numb
the source of my pain / Death to life is insanity / the anger is growing
again.”
These questions and answers are sung at a slightly faster tempo than
the preceding verses and the chorus. The drummer begins to use a rapid
sixteenth-note double-kick bass pattern that, doubled by the two guitar-
ists playing rapid sixteenth-note rhythms, establishes a claustrophobic
feeling within the music. This double-kick rhythm pattern, as described
by Andrew Cope, helps establish “either a driving beat … or emphasis to
a riff” (101). In this case, the double kicks provide a fast, aggressive beat,
one suggestive of both the anxious heart and the mind of the killer as
his mind falls apart. Unlike Poe’s “low, dull, quick sound—much such a
sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton,” the aggressive beat
in “Of Unsound Mind” establishes a frantic, frenetic, frenzied beat, one
that does not merely reproduce the sound of a single heart beating, but
of a cacophony of beats, as if the narrator is surrounded by heartbeats
everywhere, including his own (Poe, “Tell-Tale” 559). The bridge in “Of
Unsound Mind,” therefore, does not seek to imitate the slow, measured
beating of a heart at rest; instead, it drives the beat into a frenzy, one that
would more likely drive the killer to confess his deed, as he does in the
story. As a result, Metal Church captures the feelings of madness and
doubt that plague the killer.
Iron Maiden’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Metal Church’s “Of
Unsound Mind” represent a sampling of how Poe has been adapted in
heavy metal music. They remain significant early examples of such work
because of the impact they had on other musicians and because of the
deep connection established between Poe’s fascination with obsession,
madness, and murder and heavy metal music. Heavy metal has found
in Poe a kindred spirit, one who led the way in considering the means
by which human beings wrestle with the darker angels of their natures.
That this struggle finds a home in a musical form regularly engaged with
power, madness, and despair should come as no surprise. Indeed, heavy
metal’s use of Poe places him further within that larger company of cre-
ative persons who have sought to understand the perverseness that lies
within the human heart. As Poe himself concludes, “Yet I am not more
sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive
impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary faculties, or
sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man” (599).
Works Cited
Bardine, Bryan A. “Elements of the Gothic in Heavy Metal: A Match Made
in Hell.” Heavy Metal Music in Britain. Ed. Gerd Bayer. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2009. 125–39. Print.
Christie, Ian. Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy
Metal. New York: Harper, 2003. Print.
Cope, Andrew L. Black Sabbath and the Rise of Heavy Metal Music. Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2010. Print.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1. Trans.
Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.
Halliburton, David. “Poe’s Aesthetics.” A Companion to Poe Studies. Ed. Eric
W. Carlson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. 427–47. Print.

Iron Maiden. “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Killers. Columbia, 1998. CD.
Kennedy, J. Gerald. Poe, Death, and the Life of Writing. New Haven, CT: Yale
UP, 1987. Print.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the
Wind to the Passion of the Christ. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007.
93–126. Print.
Marshall, Wolf. “Music Appreciation: Iron Maiden.” Guitar for the Practicing
Musician Jan. 1989. 112–16. Print.
Metal Church. “Of Unsound Mind.” Blessing in Disguise. Elektra, 1990.
Neimeyer, Mark. “Poe and Popular Culture.” The Cambridge Companion to
Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 205–
24. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Black Cat.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New
———. “The Imp of the Perverse.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New
———. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F.
Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1984. 397–431. Print.
———. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Essays and Reviews. Ed. G. R.
Thompson. New York: Library of America, 1984. 13–25. Print.
———. “Preface to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.” Poetry and Tales.
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———. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New
———. “To Philip P. Cooke (Letter 240).” The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan
Poe. Ed. G. R. Thompson. New York: Norton, 2004. 684–85. Print.
Pollin, Burton. “Poe in Art, Music, Opera, and Dance.” A Companion to Poe
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517. Print.
Reed, Lou. Raven. Reprise, 2003. CD.
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Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Stenning, Paul. Iron Maiden: 30 Years of the Beast. New Malden, Surrey, Great
Britain: Chrome Dreams, 2006. Print.
Sullivan, Jack. New World Symphonies: How American Culture Changed
European Music. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1999. Print.
Thoms, Peter. “Poe’s Dupin and the Power of Detection.” The Cambridge
Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. Kevin J. Hayes. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 2002. 133–47. Print.
Walser, Robert. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy
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Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Lexington
Books, 1991. Print.
16
Picturing Poe: Contemporary Cultural
Implications of Nevermore
Michelle Kay Hansen
Nestled in the final pages of Nevermore: A Graphic Adaptation of Edgar

Allan Poe’s Short Stories (2008) is a brief comic-formatted biography
entitled “The Facts of the Case of Edgar Allan Poe.” It begins with a
question engaging the reader: “Think you know Poe?” This is followed
by the images of three young people—most likely in their early teens—
who provide various answers to this initial query. First, a boy responds,
“Heehh … That Simpson’s episode where Bart was a raven!” Next, a
dark-haired girl dressed in typical “Goth” attire replies, “A master of
the macabre, second only to Tim Burton.” Finally, a bespectacled boy
retorts, “Horror writer … Big forehead … you mean him?” More than
just a playful comment on the stereotypes prevalent among Poe’s reader-
ship (or in some cases, lack of readership), this single panel shows how
easily Poe has been accepted into the world of popular adaptation. The
Simpsons’ first-ever “Treehouse of Horror” episode, which aired in 1990
(and was reportedly inspired by horror comics), included “that episode
where Bart was a raven” and was a success for viewers and critics alike.
It inaugurated an annual, eagerly anticipated Simpsons Halloween series
and once again proved the easy acceptance of Poe adaptations into popu-
lar culture. There has hardly been an American author more adapted
through various genres of multimedia than Edgar Allan Poe, and the
comic or graphic novel format is one of the most enduring genres of
adaptation. According to comics scholar M. Thomas Inge, with over two
hundred instances of Poe’s works appearing in the comics medium, Poe
has been adapted into the comic book form “more than … any other
208 Michelle Kay Hansen
American writer” (2). It comes as no surprise how often Poe has been
adapted into the comic format. In only two pages, the Nevermore biog-
raphy shows that Poe’s very life was replete with generic graphic novel
tropes, including action, suspense, and even mystery. The biography’s
artist, Laura Howell, depicts Poe with hero-like features as he arrives
in Baltimore, complete with stalwart posture and a flowing black cape.
Poe’s biography is what legends are made of, but his stories are what
continue to fascinate willing readers.
One reason for Poe’s ability to thrive in adaptation is that many of
his most popular tales—principally those included in Nevermore —show
particular concern with the inner workings of the human mind and the
relationship between one’s self and society. These universal themes have
always fascinated readers and will no doubt continue to captivate inter-
est because we, as human beings, are continuously dealing with how we
interact in the world while wrestling with the complexity of our own
identities. By setting Poe’s tales in modern and sometimes futuristic set-
tings, the adaptations found in Nevermore achieve an ability to push
for social commentary in our current society, which is a type of com-
mentary even Poe’s original stories tended to avoid. In “The Philosophy
of Composition,” Poe claims that “beauty” and “effect” are the main
elements to be considered when composing a text. He finds “radical error
… in the usual mode of constructing a story,” which allows “history” or
“an incident of the day” to offer a thesis for the text (Van Doren Stern
550). It seems Poe wished his writing to be categorized as nonmoralistic
and even nonsocial, as he was mostly interested in beauty for the sake
of beauty, rather than in pushing for any sort of sociohistorical com-
mentary. However, Nevermore alters the purpose of Poe’s stories and
requires contemporary readers to meditate on their own positions on
issues such as addiction (both to media and to alcohol), the ways human
beings interact with each other and with animals, and even the state of
the justice system.
By utilizing the graphic/comics format, Nevermore demands a fresh,
engaged audience, willing to actively participate in its own reading expe-
rience. In Linda Hutcheon’s recent work, A Theory of Adaptation, she
defines adaptation as “an extended, deliberate, announced revisitation
of a particular work of art” (170). She approaches adaptation through
a “reception continuum” where, on the one hand, adaptors attempt to
maintain a certain level of theoretical fidelity to the original work, and
on the other, adaptors rely on sequels or spin-offs of the original work
(171). The adaptations found in Nevermore fall into the former cate-
gory on Hutcheon’s continuum, as each story attempts to remain true to
Poe’s original narratives and themes, while the tales are simultaneously
Picturing Poe 209
reshaped to appeal to contemporary comics/graphic novel readers by

resetting the stories in mostly modern or futuristic societies. Because of
the collective compositional format of Nevermore —with each adapta-
tion showcasing a unique writer’s and illustrator’s interpretation of Poe’s
stories—the tales are widely varied in scope and in location on Hutcheon’s
continuum, but the collection is still focused on rendering Poe’s works in
a recognizable way, despite the liberty taken with characterization, set-
ting, and time.
Early in her text, Hutcheon delineates three common modes of the
adaptation process: Telling↔Showing, which usually occurs “from print
to performance” (38); Showing↔Showing, which deals with the move-
ment from one performance medium to another, such as screen to stage
(46); and Interacting↔Telling or Showing, in which Hutcheon references
various interactive games (board, video, and computer games) that have
been adapted from print or performance (50). At its most simplistic level,
Nevermore fits within the first mode, where Poe’s text (telling) is placed
in conjunction with pictorial images (showing), and Hutcheon mentions
that the graphic novel is often placed within this mode (39). However,
Nevermore is not merely confined to the Telling↔Showing mode of
Hutcheon’s text, but it actually fits within all three of the modes simul-
taneously: Telling↔Showing↔Interacting. What happens in the reader’s
imagination places Nevermore firmly into all three modes of adaptation.
In his groundbreaking study, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,
Scott McCloud describes what happens in between the panels of a comic
as the realm both of imagination and of reader participation. He explains
that readers are inclined to commit “closure,” or in other words, “to men-
tally complete that which is incomplete based on past experience” (63).
When a murder takes place in this or any other comic, the details are
rarely shown. Instead of hearing the details from Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”
narrator about dismembering and decapitating the corpse, Nevermore’s
adaptation of the tale reduces this murder scene to a single panel where
the narrator is plunging a knife into the dark figure of her victim (97). In
fact, there is no other discussion of how the victim is killed. As McCloud
points out, “[t]o kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thou-
sand deaths” (67). This is because although the artist draws the knife
being plunged, and then the blood being spread throughout the rest of
the scenes, it was not the artist’s decision as to how many times that
knife was plunged, how long it took to kill the victim, or even whether or
not he screamed as he was being stabbed. Instead, the reader is charged
with these crimes. Each person who reads this adaptation will commit
the murder in his or her own imagination and in his or her own style.
All readers participate in this type of murder between the panels, and the
killing of this man is no exception. Similarly, there is no evidence as to

how long it takes the protagonist to clean up the blood she spilt, or how
long it takes her to hide the body. This is all left up to the reader’s own
imagination. The visual interpretation of Poe’s story, therefore, becomes
much more active for the reader. Rather than passively hearing about a
murder taking place, the reader actually becomes involved in the killing.
Aside from “The Tell-Tale Heart” and many of the other stories
included in Nevermore, the collection contains three adaptations—“The
Oval Portrait,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Black Cat”—
which simultaneously call attention to universal themes dealing with the
self in relation to social issues and also necessitate the demand for reader
participation because of the graphic/comics format. Just as a reader can
use “close reading” to interpret a piece of fiction or poetry, McCloud
points out that the visual imagery of comics can be similarly interpreted.
Sometimes the visual adaptation allows for the same conclusions to be
drawn about both the original work and the adaptation. For example,
human/character representation in comics can range from realistic to
utterly cartoonish, or what McCloud labels “iconic.” At its most realistic
level, a drawing of a face will only represent one person. As details like
shading and contour are stripped away from the drawing, a face could
represent only a few people. With more abstract styles of drawing, with
“only outlines and a hint of shading” still present (McCloud 29), the
face will be able to represent thousands of people, and getting rid of
shading altogether results in an image that could be said to represent
millions of people. The more the character leans toward abstraction and
simplification—or, in McCloud’s words, the more “iconic” a character
is—the more relatable the character becomes to the reader, because, as
McCloud points out, “the more cartoony a face is, the more people it can
be said to describe” (31).
In Nevermore’s “The Oval Portrait,” artist Natalie Sandells has cho-
sen to portray her characters on the more abstract level of illustration,
lacking shading and details in the portrayal of human faces. One of the
possible reasons for this choice of illustrating is because of the adapta-
tion’s theme of celebrity obsession. Poe’s original tale is about an artist
who is obsessed both with his own art (painting) and the subject of his
art (in this case, his wife). As the artist continues to paint his bride’s
portrait, committed to absolute reality in his final product, “he would
not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from
the cheeks of her who sate beside him” (Poe 483). The artist’s beloved
dies as soon as the portrait is completed. Adaptor David Berner updates
this tale, as Nevermore’s version revolves around the tumultuous rela-
tionship between the Oscar-winning actress Liliana Kuschke (formerly
Picturing Poe 211
Lily-Anna) and Jed, the independent photographer. Before Lily-Anna

became famous, Jed was obsessed with getting the perfect photograph of
her as his subject. After countless days and studio sessions, Jed exclaims,
“Lily! Lily! These pictures … they’re … they’re you! I mean, they … they
capture everything! Your eyes, your smile, your … your … your life?”
(88). Jed approaches Lily-Ana on the final page of the narrative and finds
her sprawled on the couch, presumably dead. However, this death is more
metaphoric than the death Poe depicts of the painter’s bride. Though Lily-
Anna is dead, her new facade, Liliana, is alive and famous. The liberties
taken with this adaptation do not stifle Poe’s original theme of obsession
with art; instead, they shift the reader’s focus to the dangers of addiction
to celebrity in a media-obsessed society. In postmodern terms, celebri-
ties have become what theorist Jean Baudrillard calls “hyperreal” and
have become “simulacrums” of the self (8). In other words, Liliana has
become only a version of her former self because celebrities are not nec-
essarily considered “real” people once they become A-list stars. Rather,
celebrities are reduced to merely figures in the tabloids and images on
a screen or page—just like Liliana. This concept could contribute to
Sandells’ choice to illustrate her characters as more abstract, positioned
somewhere between the realistic and the completely iconic. This style
allows the audience to keep a certain amount of distance from the char-
acters while still being able to relate them to celebrities/artists familiar
to the audience.
Because of this illustrative style, the audience must participate in order
to place its own understanding of celebrity onto Liliana’s image. This
theme of celebrity obsession is reiterated even in the layout of the graphic
adaptation. First, the characters who are reminiscing about Jed’s time with
Lily-Anna are always facing each other as they enjoy wine and sit around
a table, giving a gossipy feel to the story. This atmosphere is enhanced as
the panels switch between “real time” and flashbacks in order to propel
the narration to its climax. Each panel that depicts real time is bordered
with harsh, rectangular lines, while the flashback panels have rounded
edges, connoting the difference between an easily defined present reality
and the “fuzziness” of the past, which always contains the impossibility
of knowing the truth of someone’s former situation. There are no straight
lines in flashback borders because the past is always filtered subjectively
through the narrator of a story (in this case, Jed). The final page of the
narrative shows these two panels together, but the most prominent image
on the page is the close-up headshot of “the body calling itself Liliana,”
as she waves to her adoring fans, with flashes of camera bulbs in the
distance (89). Liliana, like many other celebrities in current times, has
become a product of a celebrity-obsessed society, and in Jed’s mind she
will never be truly alive again. As readers gaze into Liliana’s eyes in this
last frame, it is as though they are being asked to contemplate the oblivi-
ousness of their own relationship to modern-day celebrities. Though
entertainment news and magazines often give the impression that the
world can know the lives and histories of celebrities, “The Oval Portrait”
suggests that our obsession with stardom is really only an obsession with
an unknowable visage on a page or movie screen.
When graphic illustrators choose to portray characters in a more real-
istic manner than that which is seen in “The Oval Portrait,” the audience’s
ability to relate to the character significantly diminishes. In Nevermore’s
“The Pit and the Pendulum,” artist Steve Pugh portrays his protagonist
in almost photo-realistic detail, right down to the wrinkles of the face
and neck, the facial hair stubble, and the grittiness of his palms. In doing
so, readers are no longer able to participate as easily in placing what
they may know about a character “type” onto this protagonist, and more
significantly, readers are distanced from the eventual demise of the char-
acter. Instead, the audience must concentrate on how this demise occurs,
thus compelling them to interact with the visual and spatial layout of
the story. It is well known that Poe’s original “Pit and the Pendulum”
deals with a man who has been caught and persecuted by members of the
Spanish Inquisition, and something very similar happens in the situation
of the Nevermore protagonist. Adaptor Jamie Delano has chosen to omit
any actual dialogue within this narrative and instead opts for including
only the internal monologue of the character juxtaposed with an array of
images. Most of the images are partial or full portrayals of the protago-
nist himself, and in some cases the panels allow the audience to visualize
what the narrator is seeing or remembering. By scripting the narrative in
this manner, Delano and Pugh both pay close attention to the timing of
their frames, and this timing is what evokes an audience’s empathy and
participation. In his book Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner calls
timing “indispensible to the storyteller, particularly when he is seeking to
involve the reader” (30). He continues by explaining that when narrative
art “goes beyond simple decoration” and “presumes to imitate reality in
a meaningful chain of events and consequences” in order to evoke empa-
thy, “the dimension of time is an inescapable ingredient” (30). In the con-
fines of each frame in “The Pit and the Pendulum,” time stands still. But
timing in a graphic narrative is not just about what happens within each
frame; it is about the actual frames themselves—their shapes, dimen-
sions, and even how they are spatially arranged on the page. McCloud
explains, “Panel shapes vary considerably … and while differences of
shape don’t affect the specific ‘meanings’ of those panels vis-à-vis time,
they can affect the reading experience” (99).
Picturing Poe 213
In Delano and Pugh’s adaptation, as the audience is introduced to the

man who has been forcibly abducted from his home and placed in a cir-
cular room with only a dark pit in the center, the panels constantly over-
lay each other, creating a feeling of claustrophobia and unease. When the
man takes off his burlap hood and first looks into the pit, the darkness
of the pit itself actually envelopes the entire bottom three-quarters of the
page, but panels of the man looking into it and shots of only his wild
eyes and grimacing mouth appear stacked on top of the darkness of the
pit, as though in his mind he has already imagined descending into its
blackness. Soon the background itself (outside of the panels) becomes
marbled like the walls of the circular room, and the reader, like the pro-
tagonist, feels there is no escape. After passing out and remembering
flashes from his accusation, torture, and condemnation, the protagonist
wakes to find himself swinging upside down like a pendulum descending
toward barbed wire and sharpened steel. Here, the rectangular panels
seem to become elongated, even giving the feeling of being stretched,
one after the other. The panels also begin to literally descend down the
page, as the protagonist descends toward his fate. These details allow
the reader to feel the tension of being hung by his/her extremities, being
stretched, and then descending toward the inevitable doom that awaits
below. When the narrator miraculously falls through the barbed wire
and comes out alive, his troubles have not ended. With speakers sur-
rounding him and describing his fate, he is formally put to death through
both an injection and poison gas. The words coming through the speak-
ers from an unknown party claim that the narrator’s death is happening
because he refused “any expression of regret and option of redemption”
and as an “unbending example of firm justice” (23). On this page, it
becomes clear that there was never any escape for this man whether he
was guilty of his accused crimes or not, which calls attention to the jus-
tice system of the current time. As one of the more realistic adaptations
in the collection, and by cleverly instilling a sense of timing, “The Pit
and the Pendulum” does not allow readers to put themselves or someone
they know in the place of this man, but the fact that this is happening to
someone unknown does not make his fate any less horrifying or any less
real to the reader. It forces the reader to think about what is happening to
this character from outside forces, encouraging empathy and meditation
about the real horrors of both torture and injustice.
Another story in which the framing is just as pertinent as the themes
of the adaptation is “The Black Cat,” adapted by Leah Moore and John
Reppion and illustrated by James Fletcher. Poe’s original tale focuses on
the insanity of the narrator as well as his lasting guilt after he kills his
cat, both of which are exacerbated by his dependence on alcohol. Moore
and Reppion have included all of these aspects in their adaptation, but
their version pays more attention to the mistreatment of animals and
concentrates on how interpersonal relationships can deteriorate in times
of economic crisis. Both of these additions are meant to appeal to a con-
temporary audience, with the proliferation of animal rights groups in the
last few decades as well as the economic downturn that has been hap-
pening worldwide. The protagonist, Harold, is a ringmaster in a circus,
and one of the starring acts is “Galenthias, the man-eating panther, the
black terror of Borneo” (69). From the outset, animal rights are brought
into focus as the audience reacts to the “barbaric” treatment of “the poor
creature.” In contrast to the original tale, which delves into the narrator’s
head and portrays a man driven insane by either alcohol or his own voli-
tion, Nevermore’s adaptation portrays Harold as a man whose circum-
stances with the circus seem to have led to his unhappiness, and even to
his binge drinking. Like “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the framing and
timing of “The Black Cat” is what demands reader participation.
The panels begin side by side, laid out in a rather traditional comic
book manner. Immediately following Harold’s circus act with Galenthias,
a turn of the page reveals a tumbler glass being filled with a “slooosh”
(70). Because of the spatial layout of the panels, there is no telling how
much time has passed, so the reader can either assume this glass is his
first drink or one of many he has had throughout the night. Here, the
commentary on economic hardship begins. Harold points to a picture
of happier times at the circus and states, “That’s what I was supposed
to inherit!” while berating one of his coworkers for wanting money to
feed Galenthias. “If I make one lousy dollar,” Harold muses, “they want
all of it. Every last penny to themselves” (70). He decides that the pan-
ther must disappear because it is an economic liability. He is “drunk
already” according to the woman who comes for money to buy food for
Galenthias, and over the next two pages he is seen drinking from his
glass two times, his tumbler glass is refilled once more, and he ultimately
appears to skip the glass altogether and keep the bottle in hand while
liquid spills sloppily out of its rim. As Harold heads out to Galenthias’s
cage, the bottle of booze is still in his hand, and the panels noticeably
become skewed and overlapping, in many cases cutting out parts of the
scenes enclosed by the frame borders. This shift in panel layout also cre-
ates a shift in the feeling of the story. Harold is clearly drunk, and just
as the scenes are sometimes obscured, so apparently is his judgment. He
shoots at the panther just to scare him away but instead kills him—and
this treatment only creates more hardship on the economic situation of
the circus workers. As the guilt of losing Galenthias takes over Harold’s
thoughts, so do the panels begin to take over the page, extending from
Picturing Poe 215
one edge of the page to the other. Harold begins to see images of panthers
everywhere: in the trees and foliage, in the circus props, and even as the
facade of his own trailer. The guilt has clearly overwhelmed him, and this
is felt by the reader because of these visual additions. When Harold thinks
he sees the panther come back and decides to kill it once and for all, his
madness is reflected in the images as the panels spill onto each other, and
the forest becomes the main focal point in an entire page. At this point,
words become minimal, and the visual completely takes over the narra-
tive. Through participating in the reading experience of this adaptation,
the audience becomes overwhelmed with Harold’s feelings of insanity
and guilt due to his actions and his alcoholism. However, there is still
empathy induced by the economic hardships, which is something many
readers would be able to relate to. Unlike Poe’s original tale, Nevermore’s
version of “The Black Cat” elicits a certain amount of moralizing from
the audience, as the reader is left to ponder the ramifications of both ani-
mal cruelty and the harsh reality of those who have fallen on hard times.
In a way, these two contemporary issues are intertwined through this
story—when the money supply becomes low, a pet owner is faced with
the ethical dilemma of whether to feed oneself or one’s animal. In the
case of Harold, he chooses to spend what little money he has on alcohol
rather than on food for Galenthias. But because the panther is also part
of his livelihood, Harold’s choice forces him and his coworkers into an
even more dire economic situation, as fewer people are coming to the
circus now that the main attraction, the “man-eating panther,” is no lon-
ger performing. “The Black Cat” shows that the more dire the economic
situation is, the more a person’s ethical choices might also devolve. This
can be seen as a direct commentary on any current economic downturn.
Humanity will continually struggle with the economy and its effects on
personal relationships.
Historically, graphic adaptations have had a negative connotation. In
1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham pinpointed the influence of comic
books as a motivating factor in youthful disturbance, rebellion, and even
suicide. He argued that “a steady diet of comic books would ruin an
adolescent’s taste for fine literature” (Weiner 8). In many ways, Poe’s
vexing but popular reputation makes him a perfect subject for adaptation
into graphic novel and comic formats because his works have a similar
negative connotation to that associated with graphic novels. His name
was connected to many labels according to his contemporaries, includ-
ing “Charlatan, plagiarist, pathological liar, egomaniac, whimpering
child, braggart, and irresponsible drunk” (Van Doren Stern xxxviii).
In Understanding Comics, McCloud explains the status of comics as a
“low” form of art, even going so far as to call comics “the bastard child
of words and pictures” (47). McCloud writes, “Traditional thinking has

long held that truly great works of art and literature are only possible
when [words and pictures] are kept at arm’s length. Words and pictures
together are considered, at best, a diversion for the masses, and at worst
a product of crass commercialism” (140). Because of this cultural trend,
comic books and graphic novels become viewed as mere “escapist” litera-
ture. However, through the graphic retelling of some of Poe’s best-known
tales, Nevermore paves the way for a wider range of audience participa-
tion with Poe’s works, while also creating an opportunity for Poe’s works
to reach readers of “rebellious,” “disturbing,” and “popular” fiction
rather than merely “fiction” readers, with an eye toward understanding
the social commentary of one’s contemporary circumstances.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. Trans. Phil Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e),
1983. Print.
Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. New York: Norton, 2008. Print.
Inge, M. Thomas. “Poe and the Comics Connection.” Edgar Allan Poe Review
2.1 (Spring 2001): 2–29. Web. 20 July 2011.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York:
HarperCollins, 1993. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Poetry and Tales. New York: Library of America, 1984.
Print.
Van Doren Stern, Philip, ed. The Portable Poe. New York: Penguin, 1973. Print.
Weiner, Stephen. Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel.
New York: Nantier Beall Minoustchine, 2003. Print.
Whitehead, Dan, ed. Nevermore: A Graphic Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s
Short Stories. New York: Sterling, 2008. Print.
17
What Can “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Tell about Gender?
Mary J. Couzelis
In 2001, M. Thomas Inge argued that Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most
popular authors to inspire graphic narratives, with over two hundred
comic books adapting his stories (2). With so many graphic adaptations
of Poe’s work entering the market, especially in the last decade, a new
area of Poe’s legacy is open to critical study. One such graphic adapta-
tion of Poe’s works is the 2008 collection Nevermore, which contains
nine adaptations plus one graphic rendering of Poe’s biography. Linda
Hutcheon notes in A Theory of Adaptation, “Adaptation is repetition,
but repetition without replication” (7). Nevermore is unique in the Poe
legacy because the writers do not replicate Poe’s works verbatim; instead,
they make alterations to the stories in hopes of appealing to a modern
audience. Nevermore’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Jeremy Slater, with art
by Alice Duke, is one of the text’s examples of repetition without repli-
cation. While many adaptors assume the narrator is male,1 Slater and
Duke illustrate a female narrator, thereby drawing attention to the lack
of gendered pronouns in Poe’s tale. When an author adapts a well-known
story, the intertextuality between the original and adaptation becomes a
prime area for investigating what cultural concerns emerge. Poe’s work
often depicts women victimized by patriarchal repression, and this cul-
tural concern is brought to the forefront in Slater’s adaptation. Slater’s
narrative connections to the original and Duke’s illustrations accentuate
the notion of women’s well-being deteriorating under the pressure of the
patriarchal gaze.
218 Mary J. Couzelis
A current area of focus for Poe scholarship is his interest in his peri-
od’s cultural attitudes about women. Joan Dayan’s and Eliza Richards’
research analyzes Poe’s linguistic ambiguities, his appropriation of femi-
nine writing styles, and the theme of female subordination in his poetry.
Richards’ monograph Gender and the Poetics of Reception in Poe’s
Circle contends that Poe’s relationship with his contemporary female
authors impacted his own writing because he often imitated women’s
poetic styles in search of a wider reading audience. Poe appropriated
female styles, and by default, he also included women’s issues, such as
exploration of emotions, use of romantic conventions, female abjection,
and claustrophobic feelings from the domestic sphere.
The notion that Poe’s work depicts women’s concerns is also present
in Joan Dayan’s “Poe’s Women: A Feminist Poe?” She argues that Poe
recognized that men’s need to define women within male frameworks
creates terms that often restrict women’s roles. Dayan states about his
prose-poems, “Having understood the demonic underside of men’s need
to poeticize and feminize women, Poe confronts his readers again and
again with scenes of terror.… [Women] decay, die, and are mourned, but
they return to teach the oppressive idolater a lesson he will not forget”
(5). She believes that this continual objectification of women deteriorates
a woman’s being; therefore, Poe shows the horror created for women by
male social restrictions.
While both of these scholars primarily focus on Poe’s poetry, Gita
Rajan’s article “A Feminist Rereading of Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’”
turns feminist theory toward his fiction. She argues that the narrator
of “The Tell-Tale Heart” could be easily read as a female due to the
lack of gendered pronouns. This reading makes the story less about the
Oedipal complex, the argument many male scholars have made, and
transforms the female narrator to represent a critique of male domina-
tion over women. Dayan’s and Richards’ arguments establish that Poe
utilized feminine poetics and was interested in how society subordinates
women, and Rajan demonstrates how these themes carry over into his
fiction. Nevermore’s publication begs the more relevant question of how
the vehicle of graphic adaptation emphasizes or represses these poten-
tially latent cultural concerns.
When discussing the success or failure of an adaptation, Karen Kline
argues that critics must understand the critical paradigm from which they
judge a text. While Kline discusses film critiques, her notion of a pluralist
paradigm applies to graphic novels as well. The pluralist paradigm judges
“the film’s ability to present a coherent fictive world within itself which
bears significant traces of the novel operating at a somewhat abstract
emotional/intellectual level” (71). Instead of questioning an adaptation’s
What Can “The Tell-Tale” Heart Tell? 219
fidelity to the original text, which tends to focus on the faithfulness to

literary elements such as characters and settings, critics who use a plural-
ist paradigm see the adaptation as having its own aesthetic value, yet still
conveying the “mood, tone, and values” of the original (Kline 72). Slater
and Duke keep the spirit of Poe’s original short story intact; they create
a graphic narrative that presents the familiar in a new manner. By doing
so, this text brings to the forefront the issues that, as Richards, Dayan,
and Rajan argue, concerned Poe during his time: the dangers of a patri-
archal society for women. In many older gothic texts, including Poe’s,
a main focus is “the extent to which women’s fears are warranted and
derive from normalized cultural arrangements” (Meyers 26). Slater and
Duke’s narrator, Annie, is justified in her paranoia about being watched
by her patient Sam Tate; the patriarchal gaze often constructs and scru-
tinizes women’s lives. By connecting to key concepts in the original, such
as the color blue, while changing the role of the narrator from hunter
to haunted, and the addition of Duke’s illustrations, Slater’s adaptation
portrays more explicitly than Poe could during his time how women can
become unhinged by the patriarchal gaze.
The Sky Is Blue

While Poe’s narrator tries to convince the reader of “his”2 ability to tell
the story “calmly” and fails to do so, Annie indeed does tell her story
calmly at the opening by explaining how she lost her sight as a child
due to fever. She discloses that the blue sky is her only visual memory
(92). Her memory of blue is significant. Many adaptations continuously
announce their relationship to the original text, and the appeal of adap-
tations “lies in their mixture of repetition and difference, of familiarity
and novelty” (Hutcheon 114). Slater includes an important signifier from
the original, the color blue, to provoke memory of Poe’s version. Poe’s
narrator fixates on the victim’s blue eye and claims that the blue eye is
the cause of his murderous desire (555). His narrator instantly attaches
blue with a vulture—a creature related to death and dismemberment.
Slater gives the color blue a positive association for the female narrator
and gives no indication of any unreliability.
The two narratives converge in a common area—the narrator’s
occupation. Both narratives create the same power dynamic in that the
narrators are caregivers for the victims, although altered in the degree
of dependence. Poe’s narrator resides with the old man and tends to
him day and night. Slater’s Annie lives at home, presumably by herself,
and travels to work daily at the Mesa Center for the Blind. She tells
the reader that she has volunteered at the center since she was nine.
If Annie has come to the Mesa Center since childhood, then this is a
place where she does not feel endangered and where she contributes to
society—she helps people adapt to their new loss of sight. This informa-
tion establishes a track record of trustworthiness, something Poe’s nar-
rator lacked. Unlike Poe’s narrator, Annie is not insane, overly proud of
her intelligence, or driven by the desire to be understood. Her apparent
“normalcy” reflects Poe’s interest in women’s roles in society and how
restrictions can lead to dangerous situations. Poe’s prose-poems and sto-
ries often feature women who slowly deteriorate due to the claustropho-
bic setting of the home or a lover’s oppressive adoration or both. Poe’s
work shows an awareness of how society’s construction of the female
gender can destroy women.
Given that Annie is blind, she begins to construct a mental picture of
Tate before she enters his room to instruct him on how to adjust to his
newly developed blindness. She assumes that since he has cataracts he
will have blue eyes, a positive association for her. Hutcheon argues that
when adapters take a textual narrative, like a short story, to a visual
medium, often “a certain amount of re-accentuation and refocusing of
themes, characters, and plots” occurs (40). Cataracts imply the vacant
blue eye that should create a link to Poe’s old man, although the emphasis
on eyes will be shifted. Poe’s narrator immediately linked blue eyes to the
evil eye, while Slater connects the color blue to something positive, the
sky. This heightens the distress for the narrator because a positive asso-
ciation for her will be turned into something terrifying. Slater’s adapta-
tion does not initially follow Poe’s, nor does it abide by traditional gothic
expectations of a woman as victim. She is a woman with confidence and
independence. By making the narrator explicitly female, Slater brings to
the forefront how gender is closely tied to power—Annie enters the room
in a position of power. Rajan argues, “[P]atriarchal morality condemns a
woman for being aggressive, for desiring power, and ultimately punishes
her for achieving this power even temporarily” (297). Writers may affirm
cultural ideologies surrounding women or disrupt them when they adapt
a text. Slater and Duke opt to explore the consequences of woman as
victim through modern conventions.
The narrative tension heightens during this section as well due to the
layout of the page. The page break at this moment in the graphic text
creates suspense because the page must be physically turned to see what
Annie encounters. The following page contains six panels. The first panel
is the view of Annie entering the room: “The first thing that hits me is the
cold” (94), an ominous beginning and one that readers of the gothic know
usually indicates something supernatural or evil is present. Annie’s face
lacks the confidence found on the previous pages. The most dominant
panel on the page is that of Tate, the second panel. While Duke depicts all
other faces clearly, Tate is shrouded in darkness, with only his eyes vis-
ible. Duke’s illustrations create an additional perspective that is unique
to graphic narratives. The graphics act as a second-party mediator or col-
laborator to the narrative. They mimic a limited omniscient narrator by
providing images that work in collusion with Annie’s perspective. Many
of the images are minimal, dark, and heavily shaded, thereby reinforcing
Annie’s point of view. As a blind woman, her “view” of the visible world
would be constricted. The reader sees what Annie perceives and more;
the images act as a collaborator to fill in the gaps and to heighten the ten-
sion for the reader. Duke’s illustrations confirm Annie’s perspective and
help create her reliability as a focalizer.
The panel with Tate’s heavily shaded face also contains Annie’s
thoughts, “Cataracts mean blue eyes. Blue like the sky” (94). This text
seems to act not only as a connector to Poe’s old man, but also sounds
as if the coldness of the room unsettles Annie and she is attempting to
reassure herself with a pleasant association. The only thing distinctly
illustrated is his eyes, thereby placing the same emphasis on eyes as found
in Poe’s story. Tate’s eyes stare straight out at the reader. Up to this point,
none of the character illustrations look directly out at the reader; Annie’s
eyes are always upward or to the left, thereby reinforcing her inability
to see anyone. This panel confronts the reader with a direct pair of eyes,
intending to unsettle the reader. If Tate is blind, then his eyes should be
illustrated in the same manner as Annie’s—unable to gaze specifically on
anything. Rajan argues that “in Poe’s story the power of the gaze desta-
bilizes the narrator” (293). Slater and Duke offer an illustrated version
of this destabilization and privilege the reader over Annie at this moment
by allowing the reader to experience what Annie cannot see. By directing
Tate’s eyes at the reader, at eye level, this creates a realist moment for the
reader. The reader is no longer a distant spectator to the action; instead
the reader now is subjected to a character’s gaze (Eisner 95). Where Poe
used the repetition of sounds in his writing to scare both his characters
and readers, graphic narratives utilize visual techniques to unsettle the
reader and intensify the horror.
The Haunting Gaze

In addition to altering the original association with blue from a nega-
tive to a positive, Slater also changes the narrative implications of the
gaze. By having the narrator be a woman, and the other a man who
potentially can see her, the graphic novel depicts the ramifications of
the patriarchal gaze. Laura Mulvey argues that in a patriarchal cul-
ture, society conditions men as controllers of the gaze and women as
passive recipients of it (19). Annie thinks, “Those eyes. I can feel them
crawling all over me” (94). Annie, the woman in the position of power,
becomes unsettled as she physically encounters a man who is—per the
images and her thoughts—not blind. Annie, however, is blind; there-
fore she is “not [a] rival [possessor] of masculine gaze. [She] acquire[s]
knowledge by direct bodily contact, an act that has sexual connota-
tions” (Attebery 53). 3 From one meeting with this man, she moves from
a power position of action to a passive position of being observed. This
is a significant change because, as Rajan argues, many scholars see the
original Poe story as being about two men in an Oedipal struggle to
control the power of the gaze (287). Poe’s narrator stalks the old man
and positions himself in a way that he can gaze upon the old man but
not be gazed at by the old man—he observes the old man in his sleep.
This method of gazing allows the Poe narrator to be the sole possessor
of the gaze, thereby subjugating the old man (Rajan 292). Slater does
not allow Annie to take on this role and this path to power. Her blind-
ness prevents her from ever even having the potential to return the gaze
upon Tate. By having Annie become the focus of the gaze, she becomes
an object without any chance to reverse power by reciprocating the
gaze. She can feel his eyes upon her; she can feel observed and implicitly
desired by a man.
Not only does the text depict Annie feeling like she is being watched
by the eyes, but the images also reinforce this concept with multiple
frames depicting a pair of eyes in the background watching her. Whereas
Poe presents his narrator as unreliable or insane or both, Slater does
not unravel Annie’s sanity until after the male encounter. Only after the
male gaze haunts her does she become paranoid. In the original story,
Rajan argues that if the narrator is read as a woman, then “the eye [is]
a metaphor of patriarchal scrutiny and social control” (292). Annie’s
feel of the patriarchal eye and her paranoid reaction represent society
restricting her by privileging one gender over another. The gothic, espe-
cially the femicidal narratives, uses paranoia as an aspect of self-defense.
Judith Halberstam contends, “[I]t is precisely the fear of being watched,
the consciousness that we may be being watched, that saves the woman
and allows her to look back. The women who are not worried about
being watched within the horror film very often die; the alternative to
paranoia in horror films very often is nothing more than a gullibility
and a kind of stupid naivete” (126–27). Meyers continues this argument
by saying, “[C]ultural feminism understands that a paranoid orienta-

tion to the world is justified and is a necessary part of feminist con-
sciousness raising” (88). Annie lives in a world where the patriarchal
gaze often scrutinizes and even victimizes women. For a woman to be
paranoid about being watched and being judged by men is not unusual.
Up to this point, Annie’s blindness could be read as symbolic of her
unraised feminist consciousness. Prior to Tate, Annie performed in the
world unaware of her role as object in a patriarchal society. Her blind-
ness permitted her to live a life ignoring the patriarchal gaze. Only after
her physical encounter with Tate does she struggle with the oppressive
gaze, potentially symbolizing her struggle with this new awareness of
women’s objectification. Modernization of the tale allows the narrator’s
internalization of this social occurrence, the patriarchal gaze, and her
response to the gaze, paranoia, to be recognized as a familiar attribute
of feminist gothic fiction.
Meyers argues that one of the most dangerous aspects of the gothic
is when women internalize their fears and the cultural misogyny (ix).
Women become a danger to themselves and others when they ignore
or dismiss their fears. A portion of the text illustrates Annie feeling
haunted/hunted by the patriarchal gaze, and her paranoia grows until
she reaches the point where she tires of being afraid. She tells herself,
“This is stupid” (96). Rajan argues that to reread Poe’s original story
with a female narrator shows how “she deeply resents the scrutiny of his
eye, feeling abused and objectified by his paternal surveillance. Angered
and humiliated by his gaze … her primary desire is to rid herself of the
male gaze, or domination” (295). Annie’s decision to kill is to put an
end to her perceived victimhood—constantly being watched and vio-
lated through the male gaze. Annie cannot return the patriarchal gaze;
she cannot reverse the power dynamic through gazing back at the gazer.
Therefore, she has to act in another manner. Through adaption, Slater
and Duke begin to alter the notion of female gothic victimhood. Unlike
other female victims in Poe’s works, Annie will not wait until after her
death to take action.
Part of the organizing structure for the mind, according to Meyers, is
the victim-victimizer dialectic within the paranoid process (91). Annie
sees the male gaze and the male domination in a patriarchal society as a
demon to women. Annie is caught in the Western binary opposition para-
digm in that she “can only imagine disidentifying from the victim posi-
tion through identification with the opposite term” (Meyers 93). Annie
tires of being watched and afraid; therefore, she moves into the aggressor
role. In her need to get him to stop gazing upon her, to defend herself
from his evilness (as noted from the cold room, his demonic-looking skin,
and the oozing and shiftiness of his skin upon their first meeting), she
attacks and kills Tate.
A woman murdering is an embodiment of “a larger cultural misogyny
and fear of too powerful women” (Dayan 10). Poe’s poetry and stories
show a concern for women’s subjugation in their culture and how those
restrictions could place men and women in dangerous situations. Poe
often played on this fear of powerful women when he had many women,
such as Madeline Usher and Morella, come back from the dead to exact
revenge on their antagonists (Dayan 5). In this contemporary adaptation,
the fear focuses in on women’s objectification and how this can lead to
women rebelling. Interestingly enough, while Slater has the woman com-
mit murder, he does not have Annie dismember the body as the original
narrator does. In the gothic genre, the female body is often fragmented,
but it is not acceptable for a male body to be fragmented; a woman is not
allowed to dismember a male’s body.
Even though Annie kills Tate, symbolically removing the patriarchal
gaze, the narrative and images imply that one rebellion against the social
order does not quell the hegemonic rule. Similar to Poe’s narrator, Annie
begins to hear a heart beating, conveyed through the images with “thud”
repeatedly written along the jagged panel frames. The “thud” becomes so
loud that Annie cannot hear anything else at all (101). Annie attempts to
return to life as a blind woman unaware of female victimization through
the patriarchal gaze, but neither this knowledge nor the hegemony will
be ignored. Annie’s main senses that help her negotiate the world are
hearing and touch. Even though she disrupts the oppressive gaze through
murder, the beating of the patriarchal heart deafens her hearing, and its
vibrations distract her from tactile functional ability.
The patriarchal gaze resurfaces after Annie murders Tate in the form
of the police officers. Rajan argues that in Poe’s story the “policemen’s
gaze, thus, both literally and metaphorically represents the sanctioned
authority that the narrator had just usurped from the old man. When
they gaze at the narrator, they reverse the path of the gaze, once again
throwing him back into the passive object position” (293). However, this
is not the case in Slater and Duke’s adaptation. The policemen are shad-
owed figures, with nondescript features. Attebery states that according
to the gothic code, “[i]f it sometimes reinforces the heroine’s submis-
sion to patriarchal demands, it can just as easily validate her rebellion
against them” (26). While the police may represent patriarchal order
being restored, they lack discernible eyes. By not depicting the policemen
clearly, the adaptation validates Annie’s refusal to submit to the patriar-
chal gaze.
Illustrating the Horror

Another way Duke intensifies anxiety is the manner in which she illus-
trates Tate’s face. Frequently his face is in the shadows, but the one time
he becomes semiapparent to the reader, the image is grotesque. Tate’s
face looks disfigured, almost leathery with the way the lines are drawn
across his face, which gives an evil appearance. Adam Frank argues that
facial descriptions and expressions seem to reflect inner moral qualities
(156). Frequently in the gothic tradition, ugliness is synonymous with
evil. Duke illustrates Tate’s face with a texture that might remind many
readers of Freddy Krueger, an infamous popular-culture antagonist of the
horror-film genre. The image and its film connection reinforce Annie’s
reaction to “reading” his face with her hands: “I wanted to scream. I
can’t even describe the way his skin felt. The way it oozed and shifted
beneath my touch” (Slater 94). The feel and look of his skin is not the
only unnatural aspects to Tate, as seen through the illustrations. Tate’s
face tilts up with his eyes seemingly looking at Annie, an unusual posi-
tion for someone blind. The illustration of Tate’s face and the positioning
of his gaze suggest that he is potentially evil.
Panel shapes and sizes also help convey the emotional states of char-
acters. Annie frequently feels haunted by Tate and unsure of herself and
her surroundings. As she questions another worker at the center about
Tate, the panels become horizontally long and thin. Will Eisner states,
“Long, narrow panels that create a crowded feeling enhance the ris-
ing tempo of panic” (33). These panels help convey to the reader that
Annie’s world is closing in on her because she perceives an evilness in
her safe haven.
Annie continues to become disturbed, and pairs of eyes continue to
haunt the frames. Several smaller frames are used to illustrate her mental
and physical meltdown and are offset by the large bottom frame. The
change in size forces the reader to focus in on the larger frame, which
holds the reader’s attention longer. During Annie’s decision to move from
victim to aggressor, this large frame shows a close-up of her face, and she
looks directly out at the reader. In this one frame, since the beginning
of the narrative, Annie looks directly at the reader. Annie’s direct stare
could symbolize the shedding of her metaphorical blindness to the female
as object in a male-dominated society. In Attebery’s discussion of the
gothic, he states, “Unlike, say, voices or genitalia, male and female eyes
differ hardly at all, and yet when eyes get adopted into symbol systems
like language, the meaning of the female gaze differs dramatically from
that of the male. More precisely, women are rarely represented as looking
or seeing” (49). Annie now “sees” her victimization under patriarchal
gaze. This panel is meant to jar the reader the same way Annie has just
forced herself out of paranoia and into a decision.
The first frame of the murder spread shows Annie walking into Tate’s
room carrying a knife. This panel is very small compared to the others
on the page, conveying how small and helpless Annie feels. Her shoulders
are pulled up close to her face, and the knife is clutched close to her chest;
her fear of entering the room is apparent through the images. The second
panel is of a pair of eyes. The first two smaller panels are used to compress
time (Eisner 30). Unlike Poe’s story in which the narrator talks about how
slowly he stalked and planned out the murder, these illustrations show
that this is not a slow, deliberately executed murder; instead this is a snap
decision and rapid action. The largest panel, center on the page, shows
Annie stabbing Tate. Eisner argues that panels centered on the full page
are to emphasize the action, “to lodge themselves in the reader’s memory”
(77). Tate’s murder is the focal point of the page and positioned as such so
that the reader stares the longest. Unlike other panels, fine-lined borders
do not contain the murder scene. As Annie stabs Tate, her head spills out
of the frame onto the tiny first frame of the page. By placing part of the
murder image spilling over onto the first panel of fear, the illustrations
convey her replacing fear and passiveness with action.
Another frame in which the images spill out of the panel borders is the
resolution or last panel of the graphic narrative. This last image shows
Annie’s open locker and a body hanging out of it. Tate’s arm and blood
spill outside of the frame, illustrating that the murder cannot be contained
by a woman. However, Annie spills out of the frame as well, which poten-
tially shows that she will not be reined in by society. This closing image of
Annie as a woman who refuses to be contained within the neat little frames
is something that could be akin to Poe’s interest in women’s reaction to
society’s restrictions. The images and paneling further add credence to the
argument that “The Tell-Tale Heart,” both Poe’s and this adaptation, has
to do with women’s discontent with patriarchal subjugation.
The shape of the panels is not the only way the illustrations emphasize
the subjugation Annie feels. Diana Wallace and Andrew Smith state that
the gothic with feminist concerns is “a politically subversive genre articu-
lating women’s dissatisfactions with patriarchal structures and offering
a coded expression of their fears of entrapment within the domestic and
the female body” (2). Annie’s attire acts as a code of expression in these
illustrations. At the beginning of the narrative, Annie wears a skirt and a
sweater over a blouse. After her encounter with Tate, her clothing changes
to slacks and a turtleneck. This implies that she feels observed and pro-
tects herself—she covers her body as fully as possible. When she thinks
that Tate is in the room with her at the clinic, a set of eyes looking directly
at her appears in a blackened background; she instinctively crosses her

arms, covering her chest; and even as she flees the room for a second time,
her arms remain across her chest. Williams contends that the “Gothic plot
takes it for granted that a woman’s virtue is her most valuable asset and
then places her in a situation where it will be threatened or destroyed”
(105). These illustrations depict Annie feeling threatened, and the act of
covering her body indicates a sense of violation.
Modernizing Poe
Michael Burduck argues that “‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ must be considered
a treatise on the nature of insanity and the harmful emotions it produces.
The horrible actions presented in the story arise from the narrator’s
demented mind. He suffers from fears that transform him into a warped
criminal. In this piece Poe shows how fear often creates demonic effects”
(93). Given Richards’ and Dayan’s analyses of Poe’s work, Rajan’s feminist
rereading of the tale, and my own reading of Nevermore’s graphic adapta-
tion, Burduck’s conclusions begin to seem narrow. He, like many scholars,
assumes the narrator is male and tends to ignore that Poe delighted in tex-
tual ambiguities that let his stories convey women’s fears. Dayan’s analysis
shows how Poe recognized the dark side of male adoration and how that
adoration often slipped into brutal repression for women (4). Slater and
Duke further illustrate patriarchal repression by not having the narra-
tor initially insane. Annie’s story is not one that arises from a demented
criminal mind, but one of how crushing patriarchal objectification can be
to women. By adapting the story into a graphic novel, Duke uses “panel
framing to heighten the sense of confinement that thematically underlies
the story” (Royal 56). Part of why adaptation is so appealing is that it
“can obviously be used to engage in a larger social or cultural critique”
(Hutcheon 94). In many of Poe’s works, the notion of women victimized
by male desire is popular, but the full comprehension of this theme and
its critique of society could not be fully portrayed in his time for fear of
losing readership. Slater and Duke are now able to make the underlying
cultural concerns obvious and to further question how far our society has
come in terms of confronting patriarchal repression of women.
Notes
1. Other graphic adaptations with male narrators: Richard Coren and Rich
Margopoulos, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe
(New York: Marvel, 2006) n. pag., print; Rick Geary, “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Tom Pomplun, 4th ed. (Mount
Horeb, WI: Eureka Productions, 2010) 72–89, print; Gris Grimly, “The Tell-
Tale Heart,” Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Death and Dementia (New York:
Atheneum, 2009) 1–24, print.
2 . I recognize the irony in mentioning that Poe’s short story lacks gendered
pronouns and then utilizing a masculine pronoun. I elect to use masculine
pronouns when referring to Poe’s narrator to differentiate that character
from Slater’s narrator, and to implicitly remind the reader of the gendered
assumptions and implications that accompany the use of any pronoun.
3. While Brian Attebery refers to aliens in the original quotation, the same
meaning applies when discussing human women, especially since aliens
in science fiction are often equated to “Other,” the frequent synonym for
“women.”
Works Cited
Attebery, Brian. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge,
2002. Print.
Burduck, Michael L. Grim Phantasms: Fear in Poe’s Short Fiction. New York:
Garland, 1992. Print.
Dayan, Joan. “Poe’s Women: A Feminist Poe?” Poe Studies 26.1–2 (June/Dec.
1993): 1–12. Print.
Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the
Legendary Cartoonist. 1985. New York: Norton, 2008. Print.
Frank, Adam. “Medium Poe.” Criticism 48.2 (Spring 2006): 149–74. Project
Muse. Web. 6 Sept. 2010.
Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters.
Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995. Print.
Inge, M. Thomas. “Poe and the Comics Connection.” Edgar Allan Poe Review
2.1 (Spring 2001): 2–29. Web. 24 Sept. 2010.
Kline, Karen E. “The Accidental Tourist on Page and on Screen: Interrogating
Normative Theories about Film Adaptation.” Literature Film Quarterly 24.1
(1996): 70–83. Project Muse. Web. 12 Oct. 2010.
Meyers, Helene. Femicidal Fears: Narratives of the Female Gothic Experience.
Albany: SU New York P, 2001. Print.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. 2nd ed. Great Britain: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poetry and Tales. New York: Library
of America, 1984. 555–59. Print.
Rajan, Gita. “A Feminist Rereading of Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’” Papers on
Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language
and Literature 24 (1988): 283–300. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20
Oct. 2010.
Richards, Eliza. Gender and the Poetics of Reception in Poe’s Circle. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.
Royal, Derek Parker. “Sequential Poe-try: Recent Graphic Narrative Adaptations
of Poe.” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 39–40 (2007–2008): 55–67. Print.
Slater, Jeremy, writer. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Illus. Alice Duke. Nevermore: A
Graphic Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories. Ed. Dan Whitehead.
New York: Sterling, 2008. 91–103. Print.
Wallace, Diana, and Andrew Smith. “Introduction: Defining the Female Gothic.”
The Female Gothic: New Directions. Ed. Diana Wallace and Andrew Smith.
London: Palgrave, 2009: 1–12. Print.
Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago: U Chicago P,
1995. Print.
18
Comic Book and Graphic Novel
Adaptations of the Works of
Edgar Allan Poe: A Chronology
M. Thomas Inge
The following chronology is based on the best available bibliographic

data and, when possible, an examination of each item by the compiler.
While the information is not always complete, when known the writer
(w) of the text for the adaptation as well as the artist (a) are identified.
Full information on comic book series and their publishers is avail-
able in any recent edition of Robert M. Overstreet’s annual Comic Book
Price Guide (Gemstone Publishing), so that information is not included
here.
Among those who have contributed significantly to making this list as
complete as it is are Mark Bernard, Gary M. Carter, Will Eisner, John
C. Haufe, Marvin and Marsha Humphrey, Cari Keebaugh, Joseph B.
Lambert, Michael Rhode, Randall W. Scott, Sidney Sondergard, Jim
Vadenboncoeur, and Bruce Weiner. A special word of gratitude goes to
John C. Haufe, Classics Illustrated historian, who has been an atten-
tive and faithful collaborator in updating and improving this checklist. I
greatly appreciate everyone’s help, as well as that of several people who
sent me material but didn’t leave their names. The resources of Special
Collections at Michigan State University and Virginia Commonwealth
University have been invaluable. At Michigan State, Randall W. Scott
and at VCU, Ray Bonos and Cindy Jackson are always congenial col-
laborators on all matters that have to do with the comics.
This checklist incorporates, corrects, and updates information pre-
viously published in the present writer’s “Poe in the Comics,” Comic
232 M. Thomas Inge
Book Marketplace 76 (March 2000) 20–25, 48–53; “Poe and the

Comics Connection,” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 2.1 (Spring 2001)
2–29; and the exhibition catalogue The Incredible Mr. Poe: Comic Book
Adaptations of the Work of Edgar Allan Poe (Richmond, VA: Edgar
Allan Poe Museum, 2008).
This is far from a complete checklist of all the Poe comic book and
graphic novel adaptations. In working toward a more complete chro-
nology, additions and corrections are solicited by the compiler: M.
Thomas Inge, Blackwell Professor of Humanities, Randolph-Macon
College, Ashland, VA 23005–5505, e-mail: tinge@rmc.edu, FAX:
804–752–7231.
1940
Detective Comics No. 44 (October 1940): “Monthly Book Review: ‘The Gold
Bug’ by Edgar Allan Poe.” [Plot summary without an illustration.]
1943
Classic Comics No. 17 (December 1943), The Deerslayer by James Fenimore
Cooper: “Annabel Lee,” a: Rolland Livingstone. [Text of poem with an
illustration.]
1944
Classic Comics No. 18 (March 1944), The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor
Hugo: “The Bells,” a: Louis Zansky. [Text of poem with illustrations.]
Classic Comics No. 21 (October 1944), 3 Famous Mysteries: “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue,” a: Arnold L. Hicks.
Yellowjacket Comics No. 1 (September 1944): “Famous Tales of Terror: The
Black Cat.” Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics, ed.
Peter Normanton (Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 2008), 15–21.
Yellowjacket Comics No. 3 (November 1944): “Famous Tales of Terror: The Pit
and the Pendulum.”
Yellowjacket Comics No. 4 (December 1944): “Famous Tales of Terror: The Fall
of the House of Usher,” a: Gus Schrotter.
Crown Comics No. 1 (Winter 1944–1945): “The Oblong Box.”
1945
Yellowjacket Comics No. 6 (December 1945): “Famous Tales of Terror: The Tell-
Tale Heart.”
Comic Book and Graphic Novel Adaptations 233
1947
Classics Illustrated No. 40 (August 1947), Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe: “The
Pit and the Pendulum,” w: Samuel Willinsky, a: August M. Froelich; “The
Adventures of Hans Pfall,” a: Henry C. Kiefer; “The Fall of the House of
Usher,” a: Harley M. Griffiths.
1948
The Spirit, August 22, 1948: “The Fall of the House of Usher,” w/a: Will Eisner
and Jerry Grandenetti. Reprinted in The Spirit No. 34 (August 1987). Reprinted
in Will Eisner’s The Spirit Archives, Vol. 17 (New York: DC Comics, 2005)
60–66.
Mysterious Traveler Comics No. 1 (November 1948): “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Reprinted from Yellowjacket Comics No. 6 (December 1945).
1949
Sunday Pix No. 1 (1949) and serialized in subsequent issues: “The Gold Bug.”
1950
The Haunt of Fear No. 15 (May–June 1950): “The Wall,” w/a: Johnny Craig.
[Combines elements from “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale
Heart.”]
1951
Crime SuspenStories No. 3 (February–March 1951): “Blood Red Wine” [“Cask
of Amontillado”], w: Albert B. Feldstein and William M. Gaines, a: Graham
Ingels.
Tales from the Crypt No. 24 (June–July 1951): “The Living Death” [“The Facts
in the Case of M. Valdemar”], w: Albert B. Feldstein and William M. Gaines,
a: Graham Ingels.
Classics Illustrated No. 84 (June 1951), The Gold Bug and Other Stories by
Edgar Allan Poe: “The Gold Bug,” w: John O’Rourke, a: Alex A. Blum; “The
Tell-Tale Heart,” a: Jim Lavery; “The Cask of Amontillado,” a: Rudy Palais.
1952
Adventures into Weird Worlds No. 4 (March 1952): “The Face of Death” [“The
Masque of the Red Death”], a: Bill Everett.
234 M. Thomas Inge
Spellbound No. 2 (April 1952): “The End.” [A variation on “The Pit and the
Pendulum.”]
Beware No. 10 (June 1952): “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a: Doug Wildey.
Nightmare (Ziff-Davis) No. 2 (Fall 1952): “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a: Everett
Raymond Kinstler.
1953
Strange Fantasy No. 4 (February 1953): “Demon in the Dungeon” [“The Cask
of Amontillado”].
Shock SuspenStories No. 8 (April 1953): “Seep No More,” w: Albert B. Feldstein
and William M. Gaines, a: George Evans. [A variation on “The Tell-Tale
Heart.”]
Chilling Tales No. 16 (June 1953): “The Curse of Metzengerstein.”
The Haunt of Fear No. 20 (July–August 1953): “Thump Fun,” w: Albert B.
Feldstein and William M. Gaines, a: Graham Ingels. [A variation on “The
Tell-Tale Heart.”]
Chilling Tales No. 17 (October 1953): “Doomsday Ship” [“Ms. Found in a
Bottle”] and “The Tell-Tale Heart” [text only].
1954
Mad No. 9 (February–March 1954): “The Raven,” a: Bill Elder.
Nightmare (St. Johns) No. 11 (February 1954): “Hop Frog.”
Nightmare (St. Johns) No. 12 (April 1954): “The Black Cat.”
The Vault of Horror No. 38 (August–September 1954): “The Catacombs,” w: Carl
Wessler, a: Bernard Krigstein. [A variation on “The Cask of Amontillado.”]
Amazing Ghost Stories No. 14 (October 1954): “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
Reprinted from Nightmare No. 2 (Fall 1952).
Children’s Digest (October 1954): “The Gold Bug.” Reprinted from Classics
Illustrated No. 84 (June 1951).
1955
Win a Prize Comics No. 1 (February 1955): “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Terror Illustrated No. 1 (November–December 1955): “Rest in Peace” [inspired
by “The Fall of the House of Usher”], w: Jack Oleck, a: George Evans. [An
earlier version reportedly appeared in Black Magic No. 28 (January 1954).]
1963
Dell Movie Classics: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror, 12–793–302 (February
1963), based on the Roger Corman film Poe’s Tales of Terror, a: George
Evans.
Dell Movie Classics: The Raven, 12–680–309 (September 1963), based on the
Roger Corman film.
1964
The Atom No. 12 (April–May 1964): “The Gold Hunters of ’49,” w: Gardner
Fox, a: Gil Kane and Sid Greene. [Poe appears as a character.]
Dell Movie Classics: Masque of the Red Death, 12–490–410 (August 1964),
based on the Roger Corman film, a: Frank Springer.
Superboy No. 110 (January 1964): “The Surrender of Superboy.” [Poe appears
as a character.]
1965
Dell Movie Classics: Tomb of Ligeia, 12–830–506 (April 1965), based on the
Roger Corman film also known as Tomb of the Cat.
Creepy No. 3 (June 1965): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” w: Archie Goodwin, a: Reed
Crandall.
Dell Movie Classics: War-Gods of the Deep, 12–900–509 (July 1965), based on
the film, which was in turn based on Poe’s “The City in the Sea.”
Creepy No. 6 (December 1965): “The Cask of Amontillado,” w: Archie Goodwin,
a: Reed Crandall.
1966
Creepy No. 11 (October 1966): “Hop Frog,” w: Archie Goodwin, a: Reed
Crandall.
1967
Eerie No. 11 (September 1967): “Berenice,” w: Archie Goodwin, a: Jerry
Grandenetti.
Eerie No. 12 (November 1967): “The Masque of the Red Death,” w/a: Tom
Sutton.
1968
Eerie No. 13 (February 1968): “Tell-Tale Heart,” w: Archie Goodwin, a: Reed
Crandall. Reprinted from Creepy No. 3 (June 1965).
Creepy No. 20 (April 1968): “The Cask of Amontillado,” w: Archie Goodwin,
a: Reed Crandall.
236 M. Thomas Inge
1969
Eerie No. 20 (March 1969): “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a: Tom Sutton.
Chamber of Darkness No. 2 (December 1969): “The Day of the Red Death,”
w: Roy Thomas, a: Don Heck. [A sequel to “The Masque of the Red Death.”]
1970
Eerie Yearbook (1970): “The Masque of the Red Death.” Reprinted from Eerie
No. 12 (November 1967).
Chamber of Darkness No. 3 (February 1970): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” a: Tom
Palmer.
Daredevil No. 62 (March 1970): “Quoth the Nighthawk, ‘Nevermore,’” w: Roy
Thomas, a: Gene Colan [only the title reflects Poe].
1971
Nightmare (1971): “The Lunatic Creations of Edgar Allan Poe.”
Detective Comics (1971): “The Mystery That Edgar Allan Poe Solved.” [Poe
appears as a character.]
Witzend No. 8 (1971): “The City in the Sea,” a: Frank Frazetta.
1973
Chamber of Chills No. 4 (May 1973): “The Opener of the Crypt,” w: John Jakes,
a: Frank Brunner [a sequel to “The Cask of Amontillado”].
Nightmare (Skywald) No. 12 (April 1973): “Nightmare in the House of Poe,” w:
Al Hewetson, a: Ferran Sostres; “Premature Burial,” a: Juez Xirinius.
Scream No. 2 (October 1973): “The Pit and the Pendulum,” w: Al Hewetson, a:
Ricardo Villamonte.
Scream No. 3 (December 1973): “The Fall of the House of Usher,” w: Al
Hewetson, a: Maro Nava.
1974
Ghosts No. 20 (January 1974): “Dark Destiny,” a: E. R. Cruz [fictional story
about Poe’s death].
Scream No. 4 (February 1974): “The Oblong Box,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Maro
Nava.
Scream No. 5 (April 1974): “Conqueror Worm” and “The Haunted Palace” com-
bined in a single story, w/a: Domingo Gomez; “The Cask of Amontillado,” w:
Al Hewetson, a: Maro Nava.
Psycho No. 18 (May 1974): “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” w: Al Hewetson,
a: Cesar Lopez.
Creepy No. 62 (May 1974): “The Black Cat,” w/a: Berni Wrightson.
Scream No. 6 (June 1974): “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Alphonso
Font.
Psycho No. 19 (July 1974): “Ligeia,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Jesus Duran.
Nightmare No. 19 (June 1974): “William Wilson,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Alphonso
Font.
Scream No. 7 (July 1974): “Berenice,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Ricardo Villamonte.
Scream No. 8 (August 1974): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Ricardo
Villamonte.
Psycho No. 20 (August 1974): “The Masque of the Red Death,” w: Al Hewetson,
a: Ricardo Villamonte.
Nightmare No. 20 (August 1974): “The Black Cat,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Ricardo
Villamonte.
Scream No. 9 (September 1974): “Metzengerstein,” w: Al Hewetson, a: Luis
Collado.
Creepy No. 65 (September 1974): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” w: Archie Goodwin, a:
Reed Crandall. Reprinted from Creepy No. 3 (June 1965).
Scream No. 10 (October 1974): “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” w: Al
Hewetson, a: Cesar Lopez.
Psycho No. 21 (October 1974): “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” w: Al
Hewetson, a: Jose Cardona.
Creepy No. 67 (December 1974): “The Raven,” w/a: Richard Corben. Reprinted
in Heavy Metal: The Best of Richard Corben Special. New York: Heavy
Metal, 1998.
1975
Psycho No. 23 (January 1975): “The Man of the Crowd,” w: Al Hewetson, a:
Ferran Sostres.
Scream No. 11 (February 1975): “Mr. Poe and the Raven,” w: Cappiello, a: Ford.
Creepy No. 69 (February 1975): “The Pit and the Pendulum,” w: Rich
Margopoulos, a: Jose Ortiz; “Premature Burial,” a: Vicente Alcazar; “The
Fall of the House of Usher,” a: Martin Salvador; “The Oval Portrait,” a: Rich
Corben; “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” a: Leo Sommers; “Facts in the Case of M.
Valdemar,” a: Isidro Mones.
Creepy No. 70 (April 1975): “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” w: Rich
Margopoulos, a: Jose Ortiz; “Man of the Crowd,” a: Luis Bermejo; “The Cask
of Amontillado,” a: Martin Salvador; “Shadow,” a: Rich Corben; “A Descent
into the Maelstrom,” a: Adolfo Abellan; “Berenice,” a: Isidro Mones.
Chamber of Chills No. 16 (May 1975): “Masquerade Party” [“The Masque of
the Red Death”], a: Steve Ditko. Note indicates a reprint from Strange Tales
No. 83 (1961).
Creepy No. 74 (October 1975): “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Hop-Frog,” w:
Archie Goodwin, a: Reed Crandall. Reprinted from Creepy No. 6 (December
1965) and No. 11 (October 1966).
238 M. Thomas Inge
1976
Creepy No. 76 (January 1976): “Imp of the Perverse,” w: Rich Margopoulos, a:
Luis Bermejo.
Vampirella No. 49 (March 1976): “The Oblong Box,” w: Rich Margopoulos, a:
Isidro Mones.
Arcade: The Comic Review No. 7 (Fall 1976): “The Inheritance of Rufus
Griswold,” w: Carol Becker, a: Spain (Manuel Rodriguez). [A biographical
sketch about Poe’s death.]
1977
Eerie No. 86 (September 1977): “The Oval Portrait” and “Shadow,” w: Richard
Margopoulos, a: Richard Corben. “The Oval Portrait” reprinted from Creepy
No. 69 (February 1975).
Pendulum Illustrated Classics (Now Age Illustrated) No. 64–2693 (1977), The
Best of Poe: “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
“The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” w: Naunerle
Farr, a: Gerry Taloac, Nestor Redondo, N. Zamora, E. R. Cruz. Reprinted
as Pocket Classics C33, The Best of Edgar Allan Poe (West Haven, CT:
Academic Industries, 1984). Reprinted as Lake Illustrated Classics: The Best
of Poe (Belmont, CA: Lake Education, 1994). Reprinted as AGS Illustrated
Classics No. 40465, The Best of Poe (Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance
Service, 1994). Reprinted as Educational Insights’ Illustrated Classics Series
No. EI-4678, The Best of Poe (Carson, CA: Educational Insights, 1999).
Reprinted as The Best of Poe, Saddleback’s Illustrated Classics (Irvine, CA:
Saddleback Publishing, 2006).
King Classics No. 14 (1977), The Gold Bug, w: Ramón Bacardit, a: Antonio
Calmeiro Tomás [translated from the 1977 Spanish edition published by
Editorial Bruguera in Barcelona].
1978
Marvel Classics Comics No. 28 (April 1978), The Pit and the Pendulum by
Edgar Allan Poe: “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The
Cask of Amontillado,” w: Don McGregor, a: Rudy Mesina, Yong Montano,
Rod Santiago, Mike Golden.
Creepy No. 103 (November 1978): “The Black Cat.” Reprinted from Creepy No.
67 (May 1974).
1979
Star*Reach No. 17 (July 1979): “The Raven,” a: Jeff Bonivert.
1981
The Mike Mist Minute Mist-Eries No. 1 (April 1981): “Poe Answer,” w: Max
Collins, a: Terry Beatty. [A knowledge of Poe solves a mystery.]
Regents Illustrated Classics No. 32224, The Flayed Hand and Other Famous
Mysteries (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Regents, 1981): “The Murders
in the Rue Morgue.” Reprinted from Classics Illustrated No. 21 (October
1944).
Regents Illustrated Classics No. 35788, The Gold Bug and Other Tales
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Regents, 1981). Reprinted from Classics
Illustrated No. 84 (June 1951).
1982
Vampirella No. 110 (December 1982): “The Masque of the Red Death,” w: Rich
Margopoulos, a: Auraleon.
1983
Creepy No. 144 (January 1983): “Berenice.” Reprinted from Creepy No. 70
(April 1975).
Berni Wrightson: Master of the Macabre No. 1 (June 1983): “The Black Cat,”
w/a: Berni Wrightson. Reprinted from Creepy No. 62 (May 1974).
1984
A Corben Special No. 1 (May 1984): “The Fall of the House of Usher,” w/a:
Richard Corben.
Heavy Metal No. 91 (September 1984): “Silence,” a: Terrence Lindall.
1985
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales of Horror
(New York: Catalan, 1985): “The Oval Portrait,” “The Raven,” “Shadow,”
and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” w: Richard Margopoulos, a: Richard
Corben. Reprints previously published stories.
1986
Murder No. 1 (Long Beach, CA: Renegade Press, August 1986): “Eleonora,” w:
Rich Margopoulos, a: Dan Day and Barbara Summers.
240 M. Thomas Inge
Murder No. 2 (September 1986): “Ligeia,” w: Rich Margopoulos, a: Dan Day.

Mad No. 265 (September 1986): “The Raven,” a: Jerry Gerstein.
Murder No. 3 (October 1986): “Morella,” w: Rich Margopoulos, a: Dan Day
and David Day.
Alien Encounters No. 10 (December 1986): “The Exiles,” w: Ray Bradbury, a:
Tom Sutton. [Poe appears as a character in a science-fiction story.]
Shock Therapy No. 1 (November 1986): “Murders Near the Rue Morgue,” w/a:
Howard Priestley.
Shock Therapy No. 2 (December 1986): “Murders Near the Rue Morgue, Part
2,” w/a: Howard Priestley.
1987
Shock Therapy No. 3 (January 1987): “Murders Near the Rue Morgue, Part 3,”
w/a: Howard Priestley.
Shock Therapy No. 4 (February 1987): “Murders Near the Rue Morgue, Part 4,”
Shock Therapy No. 5 (February 1987): “Murders Near the Rue Morgue, Part 5,”
Death Rattle No. 13 (November 1987): “Masque of the Red Death,” a: Daryl
Hutchinson.
1988
Shadows from the Grave No. 2 (March 1988): “Epitaph,” w: Kevin McConnell,
a: David Day [quotes from six stories and one poem by Poe].
Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories No. 1 (Newbury Park,
CA: Eternity Comics, June 1988). Reprints adaptations from Nightmare No.
19, Scream No. 8, and Psycho No. 21 (1974).
Edgar Allan Poe: The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories No. 1 (Newbury
Park, CA: Eternity Comics, September 1988). Reprints adaptations from
Scream No. 2 (1973), Scream No. 7, and Psycho No. 18 (1974).
Edgar Allan Poe: The Masque of the Red Death and Other Stories No. 1
(Newbury Park, CA: Eternity Comics, December 1988). Reprints adaptations
from Scream No. 4, Psycho No. 19, Psycho No. 20 (1974), and Scream No.
11 (1975).
Last Kiss No. 1 (1988): “The Black Cat,” w: Dick Hansom, a: John Watkiss.
The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Westlake Village,
CA: Fantagraphics, 1988): a: Daryl and Josef Hutchinson.
1989
Edgar Allan Poe: The Black Cat and Other Stories No. 1 (March 1989): reprints
adaptations from Scream No. 3 (1973), Scream No. 5, Nightmare No. 12, and
Nightmare No. 20 (1974). Newbury Park, CA: Eternity Comics.
Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories No. 1
(March 1989): reprints adaptations from Scream No. 5, Scream No. 6, and
Scream No. 10 (1974). Newbury Park, CA: Eternity Comics.
Clive Barker’s Tapping the Vein, Book 6 (1993): “New Murders in the Rue
Morgue,” w: Clive Barker.
Monster’s Attack! No. 2 (October 1989): “The Cask of Amontillado,” w: Charles
E. Hall, a: Walter Brogan.
The Bank Street Book of Creepy Tales, edited by Howard Zimmerman et al.
(New York: Byron Preiss/Pocket Books, 1989): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” w/a:
Rick Geary. First version, reprinted in Rosebud Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan
Poe (2001).
The Bank Street Book of Mystery, edited by Howard Zimmerman et al. (New York:
Byron Preiss/Pocket Books, 1989): “The Oblong Box,” w/a: John Pierard.
1990
Classics Illustrated No. 1 (February 1990), The Raven and Other Poems by
Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “Lines on Ale,” “The City in
the Sea,” “The Sleeper,” “Eldorado,” “Alone,” “The Haunted Palace,” “The
Conquerer Worm,” a: Gahan Wilson.
Classics Illustrated No. 14 (September 1990), The Fall of the House of Usher by
Edgar Allan Poe, w: P. Craig Russell, a: Jay Geldhof.
Daughters of Fly in My Eye (Forestville, CA: Eclipse Books, 1990): “The Raven,”
a: Ferdinand H. Horvath.
1992
Weird Tales Illustrated No. 1 (1992): “Annabel Lee,” a: P. Craig Russell.
Weird Tales Illustrated No. 2 (1992): Poe adaptation.
1993
Ray Bradbury’s Comics No. 4 (August 1993): “The Fall of the House of Usher
II.”
Nathan Massengill’s Poets Prosper & “Rhyme & Revel” (Plymouth, MI: Tome
Press, 1993): “Eldorado” and “To One in Paradise,” a: Nathan Massengill.
1994
Great Illustrated Classics: Tales of Mystery and Terror by Edgar Allan Poe
(New York: Baronet Books, 1994): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of
Amontillado,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Gold-Bug,” w: Marjorie
P. Katz, a: Pablos Marcos. Text on left page and illustration on the right page.
242 M. Thomas Inge
1995
Weird Business (Austin, TX: Mojo Press, 1995): “Masque of the Red Death,” w:
Erick Burnham, a: Ted Naifeh.
The Tell-Tale Heart: Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (Austin, TX: Mojo
Press, 1995): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Hop Frog,” “The Cask of Amontillado,”
“Eldorado,” “To Elizabeth,” “The Sphinx,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells,”
a: Bill D. Fountain. Interspersed with one-page excerpts from four other
selections.
1996
Poe by Jason Asala, Ashcan Edition (Oak Creek, WI: Cheese Comics, 1996).
[Poe appears as the main character in this fictional series.]
Poe by Jason Asala, Vol. 1, Nos. 1–6 (Oak Creek, WI: Cheese Comics, September
1996–April 1997).
S. R. Bissette’s Spider Baby Comix No. 1 (December 1996): “The Tell-Tale
Fart,” w: and a: Steve Bissette and Rich Veitch. [Parody.]
1997
Maxon’s Poe: Seven Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (San Francisco:
Cottage Classics, 1997): “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” “The Facts in
the Case of M. Valdemar,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” “The Bells,” “The
Masque of the Red Death,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” preface by Robert
Crumb, a: Maxon Poe.
Classics Illustrated: Stories by Poe (New York: Acclaim Books, 1997). Reprints
“The Adventures of Hans Pfall,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of
Amontillado” from the original Classics Illustrated No. 40 (1947) and No. 84
(1951), with new notes and study guide by Gregory Feeley.
Classics Illustrated: More Stories by Poe (New York: Acclaim Books, 1997).
Reprints “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
“The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Raven” from the original Classics
Illustrated No. 40 (1947), No. 21 (1944), and the second series No. 1 (1990),
with new notes and study guide by Gregory Feeley.
Poe by Jason Asala, Vol. 2, Nos. 1–24 (Dover, NJ: Dogstar Press/Sirius
Entertainment, October 1997–July 2000).
1998
Poe by Jason Asala, Book 1 (Dover, NJ: Dogstar Press/Sirius Entertainment,
April 1998). Reprints six issues of the first volume (1996–1997).
Heavy Metal: The Best of Richard Corben Special (New York: Heavy Metal,
1998): “The Raven,” a: Richard Corben.
Lenore by Roman Dirge, Nos. 1–12. Reprinted in three volumes as Roman

Dirge’s Lenore: Noogies (1999), Roman Dirge’s Lenore: Wedgies (2000), and
Roman Dirge’s Lenore: Cooties (2006) (San Jose, CA: Slave Labor Graphics,
1999–2006). [The name appears to be borrowed from Poe’s poem “Lenore,”
and issue two contains a parody of “The Raven.”]
1999
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Bells (Plymouth, MI: Tome Press/Caliber Comics, 1999),
w: Rafael Nieves, a: Juan Gomez.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Nos. 1–6 (La Jolla, CA: America’s Best
Comics, March 1999–September 2000), w: Alan Moore, a: Kevin O’Neill.
[Auguste Dupin appears in the first installment, which incorporates elements
from the plot of “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”]
2000
Snake ’n’ Bacon’s Cartoon Cabaret by Michael Kupperman (New York:
HarperCollins, 2000): “The House of Walls: Classy, Poe-Style Horror” and
“Two-Fisted Poe.” [Humorous uses of Poe.]
2001
The Dreaming No. 56 (January 2001): “The First Adventures of Miss Caterina
Poe,” w: Caitlan R. Kiernan, a: Steve Leiloha. [Fictional story incorporating
elements from Poe biography and “The Conquerer Worm.”]
The Mystery of Mary Rogers by Rick Geary (New York: NBM Comics Lit,
2001). [Graphic novel incorporating Poe and his use of the murder as a basis
for “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”]
Rosebud Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 1 (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka
Productions, 2001). Collects thirteen adapted and illustrated stories and
poems by various hands, several previously published: “The Raven,” “The
Tell-Tale Heart,” “Annabel Lee,” “Hop-Frog,” “A Dream within a Dream,”
“The Bells,” “The Conqueror Worm,” “The Black Cat,” “Spirits of the Dead,”
“The Masque of the Red Death,” “Eldorado,” “The Inheritance of Rufus
Griswold,” and “New Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
2002
In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: DC Comics, 2002), w: Jonathan
Scott Fuqua, a: Steven Parker and Stephen John Phillips. [Graphic novel incor-
porating elements of Poe biography.]
Poetry Comics: An Animated Anthology by David Morice (New York: Teachers
and Writers Collaborative, 2002): “The Raven,” a: David Morice.
244 M. Thomas Inge
2003
Batman Nevermore, Nos. 1–5 (June–October 2003), w: Len Wein, a: Guy Davis.
[Poe appears as a major character in a Batman story set in 1831.]
2004
Frankenstein Mobster No. 2 (February 2004): “Portraits Nevermore,” w:
Christopher Golden, a: Mike Oeming. [Poe appears in single-page visual
vignettes.]
Scooby Doo No. 80 (March 2004): “Cravin’ the Raven,” w: Rurik Tyler, a: Joe
Staton and Andrew Pepoy. [Poe appears as a character.]
Van Helsing No. 1 (April 2004): “From Beneath the Rue Morgue,” w: Joshua
Dysart, a: J. Alexander. [Partly inspired by the Poe story.]
Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 1, 2nd Edition (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka
Productions, 2004). Collects thirteen illustrated adaptations of poems and sto-
ries by various hands, several previously published and included in the first
2001 edition: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The
Cask of Amontillado,” “Hop-Frog,” “The Bells,” “Spirits of the Dead,” “The
Haunted Palace,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Raven,” “Eldorado,”
“The Black Cat,” “The Inheritance of Rufus Griswold,” and “Never Bet the
Devil Your Head.” Includes second version of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Rick
Geary, which will be reprinted in subsequent editions in 2006 and 2010.
Graphic Classics: Horror Classics, Vol. 10 (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka
Productions, 2004): “Some Words with a Mummy,” w: Rod Lott, a: Kevin
Atkinson.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness illustrated by Gus Grimly
[Stephen Soenkson] (New York: Atheneum, 2004): “The Black Cat,” “The
Masque of the Red Death,” “Hop-Frog,” and “The Fall of the House of
Usher.”
2005
Ravenous by Dawn Brown (Toronto: Speakeasy Comics, 2005). [Graphic novel
inspired by Poe’s works.]
Raven (Dallas: Level Ground Productions, 2005), a: Bill Fountain.
Edgar Allan Poe by Richard Corben and Richard Margopolous (New York:
Ballantine Books, 2005): “The Oval Portrait,” “The Raven,” “Shadow,” “The
Fall of the House of Usher,” w: Richard Margopolous, a: Richard Corben.
Reprint of 1985 collection.
2006
Edgar Allan Poe’s Haunt of Horror Nos. 1–3 (July–September 2006): “The
Raven,” “The Sleeper,” “The Conquerer Worm,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
“Spirits of the Dead,” “Eulalie,” “The Lake,” “Israfel,” “The Happiest Day,”
and “Berenice,” w: Richard Margopoulos, a: Richard Corben.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Haunt of Horror by Richard Corben and Richard Margopoulos
(New York: Marvel Publishing, 2006). Hardcover reprint of the above three
issues.
Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 1, 3rd Edition (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka
Productions, 2006). Collects twelve illustrated adaptations of poems and sto-
ries by various hands, several previously published and included in the 2004
second edition: “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “King Pest,” “The Premature Burial,”
“Eldorado,” “Spirits of the Dead,” “The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Raven,”
“The Masque of the Red Death,” “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” “Hop-
Frog,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror Hoodoo Voodoo Brouhaha by Matt
Groening (New York: Harper, 2006): “The Cask of Amontilla-D’oh,” w: Paul
Dini, a: Dan Brereton and Ted Naifeh.
Rosebud No. 36 (Cambridge, WI: Rosebud, August 2006): “The Tell-Tale
Heart,” w/a: Rick Geary. Reprinted from Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe,
Vol. 1, 2nd Edition (2004).
2007
Graphic Classics: Gothic Classics, Vol. 14 (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka Productions,
2007). “The Oval Portrait,” w: Tom Pomplun, a: Leong Wan Kok.
The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo (Berkeley, CA: Image Comics, 2007),
w: Dwight L. MacPherson, a: Thomas Boatwright. [A miniature Poe, renamed
Poo, appears as the main character in a fictional fantasy.]
Nevermore: A Graphic Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Stories (London:
Self Made Hero, 2007; New York: Sterling Publishing, 2008). Nine adapta-
tions of poems and stories by various hands, mainly British: “The Raven,”
“The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Black
Cat,” “The Oval Portrait,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Masque of the
Red Death.
2008
Masque of the Red Death, Vol. 1 (Agoura Hills, CA: Go! Media Entertainment,
2008), w/a: Wendy Pini. First of a three-volume series.
Creepy Archives, Vol. 1 (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2008): “The Tell-
Tale Heart.” Reprinted from Creepy No. 3 (June 1965).
Creepy Archives, Vol. 2 (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics. 2008). “The
Cask of Amontillado.” Reprinted from Creepy No. 6 (December 1965).
The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo: Book Two (Berkley, CA: Image
Comics, 2008), w: Dwight L. MacPherson, a: Avery Butterworth. Continues
the fantasy narrative begun in the 2007 volume.
246 M. Thomas Inge
Graphic Classics: Special Edition [Free Comic Book Day] (Mount Horeb,
WI: Eureka Productions, 2008): “The Black Cat,” w: Rod Lott, a: Gerry
Alanguilan.
Powerpop Comics Weird Thrills No. 1 (December–January 2008): “The Black
Cat” (excerpt), w: Hobby Jones, a: S. M. Vidaurri.
2009
Creepy Archives, Vol. 3 (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2009): “Hop
Frog.” Reprinted from Creepy No. 11 (October 1966).
Eerie Archives, Vol. 3 (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2009). Reprints
“Berenice” from Eerie No. 11 (September 1967), “The Masque of the Red
Death” from Eerie No. 12 (November 1967), and “The Tell-Tale Heart from
Eerie No. 13 (February 1968).
Creepy Archives, Vol. 4 (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2009): “The
Cask of Amontillado.” Reprinted from Creepy No. 6 (December 1965) and
No. 20 (April 1968).
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum No. 1 (Bluewater Comics, February
2009), w: Marc Lougee, a: Susan Ma. Uses images from a stop-action ani-
mated film produced by Ray Harryhausen.
Powerpop Comics Classics No. 1 (Summer 2009): “The Black Cat,” w: Hobby
Jones, a: S. M. Vidaurri; “The Facts in the Case of E. A. Poe,” w/a: Hobby
Jones and N. Obermeyer. [The second is a biographical fiction in which
Auguste Dupin searches for Poe on the eve of his death.]
Poe Nos. 1–4 (Los Angeles: Boom Entertainment, July–October 2009), w: W. J.
Barton Mitchell, a: Dean Kotz. [Fictional narrative mixing elements of biog-
raphy, fantasy, and characters from Poe’s fiction in which he functions as an
amateur detective who comes up against the supernatural and his own private
demons.]
Classics Illustrated No. 4. The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (New
York: Papercutz, 2009), a: Gahan Wilson. [Reprint of the 1990 edition.]
Graphic Horror: The Tell-Tale Heart (Edina, MN: Magic Wagon, 2009), w:
Joeming Dunn, a: Rod Espinosa.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Death and Dementia (New York: Atheneum, 2009):
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether,” “The
Oblong Box,” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” a. Gris Grimley.
90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry (Nicotext/Cladd Media, 2009): “The
Tell-Tale Heart,” w/a: Henrik Lange. One-page comics adaptations of classic
works of fiction.
2010
Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 1, 4th Edition (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka
Productions, 2010). Collects eleven illustrated adaptations of poems and sto-
ries by various hands, several previously published in earlier editions: “The
Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Raven,” “The Black Cat,” “William Wilson,”
“The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Premature Burial,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,”
“Annabel Lee,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Cask of Amontillado,”
and “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.”
Horrors: Great Stories of Fear and Their Creators (Jefferson, NC: McFarland,
2010): “Poe,” w: Rocky Wood, a: Glenn Chadbourne.
Eerie Archives, Vol. 4 (Milwaukee, OR: Dark Horse Comics, 2010): “The Fall of
the House of Usher.” Reprinted from Eerie No. 20 (March 1969).
2011
Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery, Vol. 21 (Mount Horeb,
WI: Eureka Productions, 2011). Collects thirteen illustrated adaptations of
poems and stories by various hands: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The
Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” “The Man in the Crowd,” “MS Found in a
Bottle,” “A Dream within a Dream,” “Berenice,” “To Vivian Vane,” “Alone,”
“The Conqueror Worm,” “Hop Frog,” “The Masque of Red Death,” “King
Pest,” and “Eldorado.”
Revised June 22, 2011.

19
The Purloining Critic: Adaptation,
Criticism, and the Claim to Meaning
Jason Douglas
Madeline strangles Roderick; after which they both perish in the con-
flagration of the ancestral Usher home. This climactic moment in the
1960 film House of Usher rewrites Madeline’s “violent and now final
death-agonies” (Poe 335) as intentional, homicidal violence. Instead of
the more ambiguous fall, “heavily inward upon her brother,” she is liter-
ally murdering him. These kinds of changes are not just allowed; they
are an essential part of what adaptation does: adaptation changes the
text. In A Theory of Adaptation (2006), Linda Hutcheon makes this case
by comparing adaptation to translation. Adaptations, when considered
as adaptations rather than original texts in their own right, “as openly
acknowledged and extended reworkings of particular other texts … are
often compared to translations. Just as there is no such thing as a literal
translation, there can be no literal adaptation” (16). Changes to the text
and contributions from the adapter are an essential part of adaptation.
Having relinquished strict fidelity to the original text grants adaption
the freedom to focus on other concerns, like the effects of moving across
mediums. What do Madeline’s “violent and now final death-agonies”
actually look like? How would the increased interactivity of a video game
require changes to the pace or plot of the story?
Literary criticism, on the other hand, imagines itself as having a much
more faithful relationship with the original text. Criticism doesn’t admit
to introducing the same kind of wholesale changes to a primary text that
we see in adaptations. A reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher”
250 Jason Douglas
that made the same alterations to the text as House of Usher would be a
strange thing indeed.
Regarding a relationship with the original text, the difference between
adaptation and criticism seems simple and obvious: adaptation reworks,
rewrites, and recreates the text, whereas criticism explains its meaning.
For adaptation, changes to the text are desirable or undesirable, suc-
cessful or unsuccessful. For criticism, changes to the text are a mistake
and false. A film with a murderous Madeline is either a good or a bad
idea. Criticism that claims Poe’s text says Madeline strangles her brother
amidst a raging fire is neither good nor bad; it is simply wrong. It would
be a claim that the text says something that it literally does not.
Despite this seemingly simple distinction—successful or unsuccessful
versus true or false—literary criticism actually produces some accounts
that are as divergent from the original text as fairly radical adaptations.
And some of those changes parallel the kind of changes common to adap-
tation. Madeline’s strangulation of Roderick would seem to be a fairly
definitive departure from the text that no piece of literary criticism could
get away with. But it is not difficult to find criticism that performs less
visible but equally significant changes when reading a text. Apparent
similarities between the accounts that both adaptation and criticism pro-
duce seem to blur the distinction. What distinguishes criticism’s accounts
of a primary text from adaptation’s?
“The Purloined Letter” is somewhat of a touchstone for literary criti-
cism of Poe. It is the subject of numerous and prominent pieces of criti-
cism. If criticism really is so faithful to the original, then a text that is so
well known should offer some sort of core or stable narrative of mean-
ing. This is, of course, not the case. But even more than disagreements
over what the text means, criticism of “The Purloined Letter” seems to
disagree over even the most basic accounts of the text. In a way, criticism
enacts changes on the original text that begin to look a lot like the kinds
of changes made in adaptation. I begin with two examples from perhaps
the most central text dealing with “The Purloined Letter”: The Purloined
Poe. At the heart of The Purloined Poe are the texts from Lacan and
Derrida that take up “The Purloined Letter.”
Lacan’s seminar on “The Purloined Letter” emphasizes the impor-
tance of the symbolic in the formation of subjectivity by focusing on
two scenes from the story: the Minister D——’s theft of the letter in the
queen’s boudoir and Dupin’s theft of the letter from the minister’s apart-
ments. Lacan dwells upon the gazes, both seen and unseen, that tracks
the letter during these scenes. In framing these two scenes as the defin-
ing points of the story, Lacan downplays the only transfer of the letter
that is told as present action. Between the narration of these two thefts,
The Purloining Critic 251
which are presented only as second- and third-hand accounts in the origi-
nal text, Dupin produces the letter under the gaze of the Prefect. Lacan
does not completely erase this scene or fail to acknowledge its narrative
distinction, but the other scenes are discussed at much greater length,
almost to exclusivity.
Recasting these second- and third-hand accounts as present action
and at the expense of direct events sounds like the kinds of changes that
might be enacted in an adaptation. In a film adaptation, events told in
conversation might be rewritten as part of the action or presented in a
flashback. The conversation itself would then become redundant. House
of Usher makes these kinds of changes to the circumstances surrounding
Madeline’s emergence from her coffin. Instead of focusing on Roderick’s
anticipation of her emergence, the film introduces images of the rocking
coffin and later shows a trail of blood where she has passed. The possi-
bility of these events existed in the text, but they are a visualization and
extension of events that the reader only gets from Roderick’s deductive
account in the text. Reframing narrative structures or actualizing unseen
events in this way is standard practice for adaptation and, surprisingly,
not all that uncommon in criticism, but it passes almost unnoticed as an
actual change to the text in criticism. Whether or not this kind of read-
ing reflects a change to the meaning, it certainly raises questions about a
strict notion of fidelity to the original text.
Derrida’s well-known response to Lacan’s reading of “The Purloined
Letter” in “The Purveyor of Truth” makes equally significant changes
to the text. Derrida emphasizes the way the letter works as an empty
sign or an aporia. It functions as an empty sign because it is evacuated
of content. Its presence is felt most keenly by its absence. I do not chal-
lenge the notion that there is something essential about absence and
lack in the text. But despite the fact that there is a central emptiness,
there is a simultaneous and equally important sense of presence that is
always trying to fill the gap. The absence of the letter from the Queen’s
possession is only an issue because of the presence of the letter in the
possession of the minister. The lack created by its absence is always
accompanied by the promise of the monetary reward that is waiting to
pour in and fill that gap. For every inscrutable or apparently aporetic
moment, there is an answer or fulfillment. Thus, in what becomes a
touchstone of Dupin and later Sherlock Holmes, the performance of
the conclusion’s deductive logic is not enough. It must be accompanied
by a demonstration of the process. Dupin’s miraculous production of
the letter cannot stand as a magical moment that defies understand-
ing; it must be narrated and described. Derrida seems to rewrite “The
Purloined Letter” into a mystery story where the outcome but not the
252 Jason Douglas
method of resolution is revealed. Derrida’s reading recasts every scene

to prolong the sense of mystery and elides the resolution offered by the
process of logic.
Derrida’s reduction of the movement between presence and absence
to an aporia rewrites a point of struggle and tension as a definitive state-
ment. Complex and subtle relationships of opposition can be difficult to
transfer across mediums and are often altered, simplified, or eliminated
in adaptations. In the 2006 film The House of Usher, the relationship
between Roderick and Madeline (now named Rick and Maddy) is, for
the most part, displaced by the introduction of Jill Michealson, Rick’s
estranged lover who only returns because of Maddy’s death. Sexual ten-
sion between Roderick and Madeline in “The Fall of the House of Usher”
is certainly a possibility; a kind of unfulfilled suspense is always main-
tained. But for all of the hints at a potential romantic relationship, there
are at least as many factors that preserve the tension of an unconfirmed
suspicion. The presence of the narrator, social taboo against incest, and
Madeline’s supposed death all work to keep the couple apart without
eliminating the possibility of a relationship. The House of Usher removes
almost all sense of tension in this regard. Not only is Madeline actually
dead (notwithstanding a mild, ghostly visitation), but Rick and Jill are
former and once again lovers. The film takes up only one side of the
forces that create the sexual tension, creating merely a sexual relationship
that necessitates emphasizing other sources of tension to preserve a sense
of mystery and suspense. The elimination of one part of the opposing
forces seems to be reductive in the same way as Derrida’s exclusive atten-
tion to the aporetic.
More recent criticism, although following a very different approach to
the text, demonstrates equally significant changes to the text. In trying
to explain Dupin’s methods of reasoning, Peter Swirski turns to the logic
of game theory in “Literary Studies and Literary Pragmatics: The Case of
‘The Purloined Letter.’” Looking at Dupin’s discussion of the map game
and the game of odds and evens, Swirski connects these examples to game
theory and tries to draw parallels to Dupin’s logic. Poe himself described
“The Purloined Letter” as a tale of ratiocination, lending credibility to
Swirski’s focus on logical processes in the text. But game theory, or any
of the interdisciplinary approaches that Swirski wants to make a case
for, imposes limitations that the text itself does not; potentially useful
limitations, but limitations nonetheless. Using game theory as a stand-in
for rather than a subset of logic reduces the broader categories of logic
in the text. The logic of game theory only describes one kind of logical
thinking—a particular kind of logic that Poe describes so that Dupin can
exceed its limitations. Game theory is only a metonymic representation
of logic. It is certainly related, but its limitations should not be mistaken

as the limitations of the broader category.
Similarly, The House of Usher converts Roderick’s powerful yet
ambiguous melancholy into Rick’s physiological and neurological sen-
sitivity to touch and sound. Roderick’s delicate state certainly may have
resulted from some physiological cause, but his affliction derived at least
as much from aesthetic sensibility as physical causes. Grounding Rick’s
condition in a purely physical cause takes one potential aspect of his
sensitivity as a substitute for the whole. In transferring the portrayal of
a complex aesthetic and physical experience from text to film, the met-
onymic work is quite understandable. But the failure to understand a
metonym as metonymy is a mistake for criticism.
Of course Lacan, Derrida, and Swirski invoke much broader theoreti-
cal stakes than my account has outlined. Lacan aligns his reading with
general notions of subjectivity and the psychoanalytic. Derrida argues
for the aporetic nature of language itself. Swirski argues for the impor-
tance of applying interdisciplinary methods to interpretation. These larger
claims, although related to the kinds of changes that criticism makes,
don’t supersede the primary importance of identifying the meaning of the
original text. Even criticism that doesn’t obviously forward a larger theo-
retical position may change the original text in significant ways. The Poe
Encyclopedia clearly identifies itself as a factual reference: “[T]he purpose
of The Poe Encyclopedia is to serve the factual and critical needs of read-
ers of Poe at every level” (Frank and Magistrale ix). This kind of clear
assertion about the factuality of the text is made at least three times in
the opening paragraph of the preface alone. The claim—the only claim—
seems to be an accurate representation of what’s in the text. It is surprising
that a text so concerned with the facts manages to get one wrong. As part
of the Encyclopedia, Frederick S. Frank and Anthony Magistrale include
summaries of Poe’s texts. For the most part, these summaries manage to
be both complete and concise. But when they summarize “The Purloined
Letter,” there is a subtle yet important discrepancy between their account
and the way events unfold in the original text.
Having vainly searched everywhere within Minister D——’s rooms, the

Prefect has now come to Dupin for advice and assistance. Dupin advises a
search of the premises.… When the Prefect revisits Dupin a month later, he
is astonished to find the detective in possession of the stolen letter.… He
pays the reward of 50,000 francs and rushes off with the letter. (294–95)
All of the events described do take place in the story, but not precisely
in that order. It is quite obvious from the story that Dupin does not
254 Jason Douglas
actually produce the letter until after he has received the reward from
the Prefect.
after several pauses and vacant stares, [the Prefect] finally filled up and
signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table
to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocket-
book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the
Prefect. (688)
In a very detailed book dedicated to factual documentation, I do not take

this for a simple failure of reading. Nor do I take this discrepancy to be
a deliberate manipulation of the text. The Encyclopedia’s reordering of
events seems to come from an understanding of the text in which the
order of producing the letter and paying the reward doesn’t matter. There
is an exchange of the letter and a reward; the precise details of how they
are passed from one individual to another are less important than the
recovery of the letter.
Offering a correction to the summary is not merely a pedantic point
about the chronology of events. The force of the correction is in the iden-
tification of changes that are important to the meaning of the text. I could
argue that “The Purloined Letter” nearly always conflates the letter with
its potential monetary value (often the prefect’s offered reward), in which
case the relationship between the letter and the reward—especially the
fact that in the final exchange the money actually precedes the letter—is
a fundamentally important part of the plot and the meaning. Changes to
the text are only changes that matter if they affect the meaning. A sum-
mary of a text must change the text; the nature of summary is to leave
some things out, after all. But an accurate summary doesn’t change the
meaning. Condensing the text without changing the meaning is exactly
what constitutes an accurate summary. In fact, a good summary will
actually communicate the meaning of the text because and not in spite of
the changes it makes. Any accurate re-presentation has to make changes
in order to avoid merely being a copy, and it is accurate precisely because
it makes changes that preserve the meaning: it changes the text in order
to preserve the meaning. If the monetary value of the purloined letter is
central to the meaning of the story, then payment of the reward prior to
its delivery should be emphasized in a summary. Emphasizing a subtle yet
crucial point is the kind of change that a summary—or any criticism—
must make. Criticism is accurate because its account of the text includes
changes that preserve and identify the meaning. If criticism is inaccurate,
it is for the same reasons: it includes things that don’t matter to the mean-
ing at the expense of things that do.
An assessment of mere mimetic accuracy has little meaning for

either criticism or adaptation. The implications of this are obvious
for criticism: either you make changes to the presentation of the text
that correctly identify and explain the meaning or you make changes
that don’t and consequently you get it wrong. It is surprisingly similar
for adaptation. Adaptations are not successful in spite of the changes
they make to the text. They are successful because of the changes they
make. Adaptations as adaptations, as reworkings of other texts, have
to re-present that original text; they have to communicate the meaning.
The changes that matter in adaptation are those that communicate the
meaning.
It is quite easy to see the kinds of changes that don’t really make much
difference. If a film adaptation of “The Purloined Letter” fitted Dupin
with blue-tinted glasses instead of the green that Poe specifies, it would
hardly be worth noticing unless the color of the lenses had some impact
on the meaning of the story. If the only point is that the color of the lenses
obscures his eyes, then it doesn’t matter what color they are as long as
they obscure his eyes. It is only if there is some significance to the color
green in particular for the story that it would matter. Changing the color
is a change to the text, but it is not a change that really matters because
it doesn’t affect the meaning.
Significant changes, changes that matter, are those that influence
meaning. These changes are successful when they communicate the mean-
ing and unsuccessful when they do not. The substitution of Rick’s bio-
logical affliction for Roderick’s semipsychological malady in The House
of Usher introduces a significant change to the text. But merely the fact
that it is a change is unimportant. Considering this change merely as a
change to the details of the text could lead to something like a review of
changes in medical diagnosis and terminology between 1839 and 2006
in order to see how similar their conditions are from a psychological and
medical perspective. Perhaps Roderick and Rick would receive the same
diagnosis were they examined with the same medical technologies. But
what would be the point in such a comparison? Under their respective
medical technologies, both men have very real afflictions that disrupt
their physical and mental health, but which, on both counts, fall short
of excusing or fully explaining the oddity and destructive nature of their
behavior. It doesn’t really matter if the cause of their illnesses could be
labeled with the same medical terminology. Trying to prove that would
be, in a way, trying to do away with changes that the adaptation enacts
on the text. It would be a way of saying that the adaptation is successful
because it translates nineteenth-century medical terminology into that of
the twenty-first century. It amounts to locating the meaning of the text
256 Jason Douglas
in the specific illness. That is hardly a plausible or convincing claim as

either a reading or an adaptation.
If we are to judge whether or not these changes to the text are suc-
cessful—the only way it matters to talk about changes for an adap-
tation—we have to consider if the changes help convey the meaning
of the text. The physiological explanation of Rick’s condition may be
more plausible for an audience acquainted with twenty-first-century
medical technology. It remains bizarre and mysterious enough to evoke
the uncanny of the original text. It also falls short of making Rick into
an undeniably raving lunatic. His bizarre and ultimately destructive
behavior, like Roderick’s, cannot be entirely excused as an unavoidable
symptom of his condition. If the last head of the Usher family is sup-
posed to be a troubled and tragic figure unbalanced by his encounter
with the melancholic sublime, the changes to Roderick that create Rick
may be necessary in order to create that kind of character for today’s
audience. Whether Usher is driven to his dark reflections by obsession
with a certain aesthetic or by constant overstimulation brought on by
hypersensitivity, the resultant meaning can be the same. If The House
of Usher is a successful adaptation —not just a successful film —it is
because of the changes that help communicate the meaning of Poe’s text
for a contemporary audience. If it isn’t successful as an adaptation, it’s
not because it changed the story—an adaptation will make changes—
it’s because it failed to change the film in a way that preserved and
communicated the meaning.
Changing the text normally seems to be the purview of adaptation,
but it is actually a unified part of what both adaptation and criticism
must do as secondary texts. You cannot deal with a primary text as a
primary text without working with its meaning. The implications are
obvious for criticism: the critic must identify and explain the meaning of
the primary text. Criticism is either right or wrong in the identification of
that meaning. The same is true for adaptation. The adapter must present
the meaning of the original. The changes made in adaption successfully
or unsuccessfully preserve this meaning. If it’s not about the meaning of
the original, then it isn’t really adaptation. If adaptation doesn’t make
changes to preserve the meaning of the original text, what’s the point
of calling it an adaptation? Any coherent and nonarbitrary account of
adaptation must center on meaning.
What would be necessary in order to consider a divergent account of
something like “The Fall of the House of Usher” an adaptation? Is the
return from the grave of a character buried alive enough? Does there have
to be a surviving sibling haunted by premonitions of the awful truth?
Does the family have to be isolated in an old mansion? Any such attempt
to measure what details of plot, structure, narrative, and so forth have

to be the same in order to constitute an adaptation will quickly turn into
some kind of assessment of mimetic accuracy—exactly what we are not
concerned about. The question of what matters enough in a text to call it
an adaptation is precisely the question of meaning.
Dennis Perry’s book on the affinity between Poe and Hitchcock,
Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror (2004), begins
with a very careful qualification of the relationship it is trying to describe
between these two bodies of work:
In this first book-length study of the aesthetic relationship between

Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock, I explore Poe’s influence on
important aspects of the “Hitchcock touch.” I use the term “influence”
rather loosely here and throughout the study, aware of how thorny influ-
ence studies are.… A more appropriate term is probably “affinity,” since
the similarities clearly exist, though we can’t know exactly how they got
there. (1)
The relationship being described is clearly not one of adaptation. The

similarities of plot, character, theme, and aesthetic that the study points
out do construct a compelling affinity, but it is never a question of adap-
tation. Notwithstanding the similarities of plot, character, and theme
that the text identifies between something like Vertigo and “Ligeia,” the
film would never seriously be considered an adaptation of the poem. And
it’s not because the stories aren’t similar enough. The important differ-
ences are on the level of meaning. To cite just one fundamental difference,
Scottie’s conscious and deliberate role in recreating the lost Madeline is
a fundamental part of Hitchcock’s exploration of loss that doesn’t come
into play for Poe.
Even seeing that a correct or successful identification of meaning is
central to adaptation and criticism, adaptation still seems to be unique in
allowing the creative contribution of the critic. This apparent difference
is mainly a function of failing to describe criticism and adaptation using
the same terminology. The work of identifying, explaining, or communi-
cating meaning is a claim to the meaning of the primary text. It is a claim
that both the adapter and critic make. The creative contributions of the
adapter are nothing more than secondary claims about something other
than the meaning of the text itself. When House of Usher makes Poe’s
narrator into Madeline’s betrothed, there are several possible claims
about romantic love that we could identify that were not part of Poe’s
text. These kinds of changes are secondary claims on the part of the
adapter.
258 Jason Douglas
Although a critic would not admit to creative contributions, mak-

ing secondary claims is a matter of course. The connections that critics
make to larger issues are this same kind of secondary claim. Derrida
makes a primary claim about the meaning of “The Purloined Letter” and
secondary claims about the nature of language. You can disagree with
either or both of Derrida’s claims—that “The Purloined Letter” is about
the aporetic nature of language and that language is indeed aporetic by
nature—but they remain separate claims. No one would begrudge him
the right to make the secondary claim, but we often fail to see this kind
of secondary claim in the same way that we see the work of adaptation.
An adaptation will certainly include a representation of the meaning of
the original work—that’s what makes it an adaptation—but that doesn’t
mean that that is all it does. Adapters make secondary claims in the same
way that critics do.
If there is any point to dealing with a primary text as a primary text,
it has to be in the meaning. This is equally true for criticism and adapta-
tion. All of the technical details are subordinate to the primary claim to
meaning. The importance of historical, biographical, and philological
information only matters in the ways they help to establish meaning. The
restrictions of medium and genre that require modifications to narra-
tive, time, and imagery are no different. All of these are only relevant to
adaptations as aids in the identification of meaning. The point is not to
bring criticism into the realm of adaptation or adaptation into the realm
of criticism. The point is not to identify the real or correct way of dealing
with a text. Each approach to a text will have its particular set of tools
for identifying and portraying that meaning. The point is that there really
is only one way of dealing with a text, and that if you are not working
with the meaning, you aren’t really working with text.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. “The Purveyor of Truth.” The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida,
and Psychoanalytic Reading. Ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988. 173–212. Print.
The House of Usher. Dir. Hayley Cloake. ThinkFilm, 2006. Film.
Frank, Frederick S., and Anthony Magistrale. The Poe Encyclopedia. Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1997. Print.
House of Usher. Dir. Roger Corman. AIP, 1960. Film.
Print.
Lacan, Jacques. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter.’”The Purloined Poe: Lacan,
Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. Ed. John P. Muller and William J.
Richardson. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 28–54. Print.
Perry, Dennis. Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of Delight and Terror. Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow, 2004. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick
F. Quinn. New York: Library of America, 1984. 317–36. Print.
———. “The Purloined Letter.” Poetry and Tales. Ed. Patrick F. Quinn. New
Swirski, Peter. “Literary Studies and Literary Pragmatics: The Case of “The
Purloined Letter.’” SubStance 25.81 (1996): 69–89. Web. 11 Jun. 2011.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684867>.
20
Quid Pro Quo, or Destination Unknown:
Johnson, Derrida, and Lacan Reading Poe
Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá and Geraldo Magela Cáffaro
Edgar Allan Poe wrote J. R. Lowell a letter dated July 2, 1844, in which he
stated that “‘The Purloined Letter,’ forthcoming in ‘The Gift’ is perhaps
the best of my tales of ratiocination” (qtd. in Mabbot 3). Many judicious
analyses of this text ensued, and Poe’s short story’s success was imme-
diate abroad. In 1972, one of the critical responses to “The Purloined
Letter” came from Jacques Lacan, and in 1975 Jacques Derrida addressed
Poe’s story by means of a deconstructive reading that performed a look-
ing back: Derrida read Lacan reading Poe. In 1977, Barbara Johnson
responded to Poe, Lacan, and Derrida by calling attention to the text’s
frame of reference and by introducing a question to the act of “reading
otherwise.” This article examines this critical polyptych and responds to
its multipanel acts of reading and “adapting” literature to theory.
Our analysis will take issue with Johnson’s, Derrida’s, Lacan’s, and
Poe’s notions of destination, which inhabit, orient, and structure all
four texts and constitute an otherwise articulated postal theory in the
plethora of poststructuralisms. Our focal point on those notions of des-
tination will be the word coined by Derrida, “destinerrance.” This term
is used by the Franco-Algerian philosopher in Paper Machine (89) and
points to the untenable line of a possible decision to interpret the name,
memory, and tradition, and to the impossible decision of interpretation
as a means of closure, fixity, and exclusion. The term destinerrance, we
now propose, comprises also the following notions: a set of texts sup-
posedly fatal, linked by a burden, concocted by fate, and pointing to an
end whose design is incomplete; that which one inherits (critically), that
262 Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá and Geraldo Magela Cáffaro
which is transmitted in the name that becomes memory, and this same
memory becoming tradition (of a poetics); the texts that wander, err, or
follow different paths by chance and in an uncertain way. Destinerrance,
as we now read it, unites under one heading: destiny, inheritance, and
errancy. As a conclusion, we refer to an article by Slavoj Žižek titled
“Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?” In this article
Žižek contends (alongside Poe, Lacan, Derrida, and Johnson) that a let-
ter always arrives at its destination, but we demonstrate how the final
destination of a letter is necessarily inadequate.
We may as well start discussing the possibility of “reading otherwise,”
that is, literary theory itself as a kind of readerly (following the French
critic Roland Barthes) adaptation of literature. One of the possible mean-
ings of the word “adaptation,” according to the OED, is “adjustment
to environmental conditions, as an adjustment of a sense organ to the
intensity or quality of stimulation.” Following this line of thought, it
is possible to propose that reading literature may take place in, and be
subject to, a varied and multiple horizon of expectations, from an en pas-
sant, entertaining assessment of the literary text, to an assessment of the
literary text in conjunction with other media (film, the arts in general,
other texts), to an assessment of the literary text in the realm of ideas,
which may include the space of academia or the highly developed topoi
of theory. In this last case, what really matters is not simply adapting,
say, a novel to film or a short story to documentary form, but adapting
the literary text, and adjusting it simultaneously, to the rigors of, and
stimulations provided by, theory. If we take a quick look at the “original”
meaning of the word “theory,” which is contemplation of the world out-
side (our brain or mind), the task of adapting a literary text to theory is
not simply one of transposition (as from one semiotic system to another
or from one type of discourse to another), but a procedure that requires
fine and sophisticated adjustments.
Curiously enough, both Julie Sanders and Linda Hutcheon have tack-
led the issue of literary or intermedia adaptation. If, on the one hand,
Sanders argues that adaptation is “a process of creation, the act of adap-
tation always involves both (re-)interpretation and then (re-)creation; this
has been called both appropriation and salvaging” (8). Hutcheon, on the
other hand, contends that adaptation may be seen either as a product or
a process on the level of product; adaptation relates to translation studies
and is dependent on interpretation. On the level of process, adaptation is
a combination of imitation and creativity, which ultimately leads those
interested in the adaptability of texts in general to consider the larger,
wide-ranging concept of remediation (13). What seems to be at stake for
Sanders and Hutcheon is the palimpsestuous quality of, or supplementary
Quid Pro Quo, or Destination Unknown 263
logic inherent in, any form of adaptation. Hutcheon even puts forward
the idea that adaptation is “a derivation that is not derivative—a work
that is second without being secondary” (9). In other words, adaptation
is not solely connected to the two-sidedness of source texts and adapted,
target texts, but, when it comes to adapting a literary text to theory,
adaptation becomes a re-imagining of texts subject to the refinements
of adjustment, heeding both the strictures of theory and the multilami-
nated, porous intertextual realm.
What gets to be adjusted, then, in terms of reading literature and
reading theory? For one, theory will generally depart from the literal
and the immediate to the abstract, and from the specific situations to
the general viewpoints. In our case, “The Purloined Letter” will be
adapted to the contemplating gaze of theory, and it will be adjusted in
order to conform to the rule of a specific situation: the short story itself,
metamorphosing into the general, the short story as a metacommen-
tary on literature and truth. If we are to show this specific adaptation/
adjustment scheme in relation to Poe’s short story, we should start with
the text itself. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” offers us the
following scenario: At Paris, on an 18—autumn evening, in complete
silence Dupin and his friend delight in smoking their pipes while savor-
ing the penumbra of his library. Given the impossibility of exposing all
the details of the story (which make up the logic web of its plot), we shall
say that its denouement—for which Dupin is responsible—happened in
a very simple way (in contrast with the complex search of the letter led
by the prefect and which occurred in unsuspected places). After taking
over the case, Dupin goes on to put himself in the Minister’s shoes: a
poet-mathematician, and not a poet or a mathematician separately. This
means understanding that the solution would have to be found through
his (Dupin’s) total identification with the adversary/minister’s intellec-
tual reasoning.
Following the same paradoxical path, in Dupin’s view the letter could
only have been placed in plain sight by the intelligent minister. On a first
visit to the minister’s palace, he spots the letter; on a second visit, he sets
a scene so that the minister will go to the window while he changes the
letter for another one containing an ironic message. Later on, Mr. G,
the Prefect, pays him another visit. Having received the 50,000 francs
according to the deal, Dupin hands the queen’s letter to the astounded
G. The members of the logical universe of the story undergo a complete
change: Dupin, at first a mere listener, reaches for the letter (and accepts
the reward); the minister, ignoring no longer having the letter, equally
ignores that he is no longer the keeper of the queen’s secret, who receives
the letter back and gets rid of the threat and of the one who had sent it to
her; the prefect is nullified and no longer part of the plot’s universe as he
goes from a feared to a neutral element.
According to Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst, Poe is a pre-
cursor, in literature, to experiments on mathematical strategic combina-
tions, which have been giving new life to the sciences in general. This
is exactly what brings Lacan and Poe together, for the latter is guided
in his fiction by a mathematical design very similar to the former, and,
we might add, the purloined letter and its detours, as they were initially
devised by Poe, are the matter proper of theory in terms of adjustment.
Lacan’s theoretical adaptation of the story is divided into two scenes: the
earlier one is described by the police inspector to the detective Dupin.
There we have the king, the queen, the minister, and the letter. The quo-
tient of the operation is that the minister stole the letter from the queen
and that she knows it. The operation leaves an insignificant remainder,
which is the letter left by the minister, with which the queen makes a
paper ball. The second scene, following Lacan’s theoretical adjustments,
takes place in the minister’s office. There we have the police inspector,
the minister, Dupin, and the letter. The quotient of the operation is as
follows: the minister no longer has the letter, but he doesn’t know it, nor
does he know who stole it from him. The operation leaves a significant
remainder for what is yet to come, since, when the minister decides to
utilize the letter, he will read the following words, there traced so that
Dupin’s signature may be recognized: “Un dessein si funeste, S’il n’est
digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste” (“So baleful a plan, if unworthy of
Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes”), which Dupin attributes to Atrée from
the tragedy by the eighteenth-century French playwright Prosper Jolyot
de Crébillon.
If we take Lacan’s reading of “The Purloined Letter” as an adaptation/
adjustment of literature to theory, we have to heed his affirmation that
in the story there are “three moments structuring three glances, borne
by three subjects incarnated at each time by three different characters”
(44).
The first is a moment that sees nothing: the King and the police.
The second, a glance that sees that the first doesn’t see and is deluded
itself as to the secrecy of what it hides.
The third sees that the first two glances leave what should be hidden
exposed to whomever would seize it: the Minister, and finally Dupin. (44)
To Lacan’s adjustment of literature to the rigors of theory, a structuring

gaze is necessary: the movement of a subject in Poe’s story “is deter-
mined by the place which a pure signifier—the purloined letter—comes
to occupy in their trio. And that is what will confirm for us its status
as repetition automatism” (45). Under this theoretical light and in view
of the etymology of the English verb for “to purloin,” Lacan suggests
that it concerns a letter mettre à gauche, that is, left aside, reserved in
a disguised, dissimulated way; alternatively, the letter that flew, from
the translation in French, volée, or to resort to the postal vocabulary, la
lettre en souffrance, the unretrieved letter.
Additionally, Lacan suggests that the letter is synonymous with the ini-
tial, radical subject. The letter is a pure, uncontaminated symbol, which
cannot be touched without making the “touching” subject immediately
entangled in its web, a web of plays. He also remarks, in relation to Poe’s
story, that it is “truth” that is veiled, concealed, and not necessarily the
letter. And finally, he concludes, “what the purloined letter, nay, the ‘let-
ter in sufferance’ means is that a letter always arrives at its destination”
(72). There, where the title says the letter had been deviated from its des-
tination, the final word is, in Lacan’s understanding, the impossibility of
preventing a letter from reaching its destination; the very possibility that
it can be deviated indicates that it has its own trajectory. In short, the let-
ter is not simply a letter, but an uncontaminated symbol under the gaze
of theory; the letter does not simply contain content but represents veiled
truth, and, we might add, it finally reaches the king, and it is always a
king who does not know anything.
The purloined letter is actually a letter that steals (une lettre voleuse),
a letter that steals from the subject its most intimate dispositions. The
king in Poe’s story has been duped by the letter and by the other char-
acters, and simultaneously has been “unkinged” in his state of loss in
relation to the letter and its contents. We, the readers, take pleasure in
this because we now know part of the theoretical adjustments made to
Poe’s story, and we now come to the full realization that we know better
than the king. The pleasure of the text (to use an expression that is privy
to Roland Barthes’ critical standpoints) in Poe’s story lies in generalized
deceit; everyone, including Dupin and the reader, is being deceived. By
saying that “a letter always arrives at its destination,” Lacan affirms,
initially, the hegemony of the symbolic, the determination of the subject
by the Other. Still, according to Lacan, it is the reader’s task to return to
the letter in question, beyond those who have been the addressees of that
same letter, that which he, himself, will find as a possible final word: the
letter’s destination. Without this theoretical adjustment to Poe’s story, the
naive reader would still be caught in the web of the not-so-important, as
far as theory is concerned, and the superficial, as far as plot in the detec-
tive genre is concerned. This raises questions: Has the letter been pur-
loined? Really? By whom? Under what pretexts and to what purposes?
We shall proceed then to Jacques Derrida in his “The Purveyor of

Truth,” where he elects the problem of the letter and its destination as the
main reason for his divergence with Lacan. Facteur/mailman/mailbox—
Derrida suggests that, “contrary to the final words of the Seminar … a
letter can always not arrive at its destination,” (65) and the facteur (pur-
veyor or mailman) in all languages does not always tell the truth. Derrida
outlines two axes toward which his divergences with Lacan’s reading
converge: the theme of truth and the way psychoanalysis is applied to
literature. First, Derrida summarizes the fallacies of the seminar: “The
truth of the purloined letter is the truth itself, its meaning is meaning,
its law is law, the contract of truth with itself in the logos” (60). Derrida
regards fiction as an open letter that eludes, “with no promise of topos
or truth” (65). If to Lacan, truth inhabits fiction, transforming it into
its dwelling place, to Derrida, the literary text exceeds the truth that it
offers. In other words, Poe’s short story and the letter therein are not
simply about “pure” truth, but under the divergent, highly sophisticated
theoretical gaze of the philosopher, the letter has gone through another
adjustment: it has been caught up in its itinerary, it stands for fiction in
the general sense, and it has to be made ours.
Next, Derrida shows the “disseminal structure, i.e., the no-possible-
return of the letter” (100). He performs a reading of the scene of writing
in Poe (relegated to the margins by Lacan) in relation to the centering on
the speech and language field. Derrida analyzes the effects of doubleness
that mark the relationship between Dupin and the narrator. Be it for
the emphasis given to scription or for the concern with the imaginary
effects present in the system of doubles, Derrida questions the hegemony
of the symbolic proposed by Lacan. Apparently, not only is the letter
unpossessed, but it is also deprived of any meaning, or even of immanent
contents that determine its trajectory; it is, therefore, structurally flying
and stolen. Derrida concludes that “[a] certain reappropriation and re-
adequation will reconstitute the proper, the place, the meaning and the
truth which are self-distanced for the duration of a detour or a suspended
delivery [une souffrance]” (57). Here, the philosopher, by further adjust-
ing Poe’s short story to the demands of theory, proposes to demonstrate
how this system of truth is the very condition of the signifying logic.
Assuming with Lacan that the place/location and meaning of a letter
are not available to the subjects, owing to their very subjection to the sig-
nifier, Derrida claims, nevertheless, that “[t]he signifier-letter, according
to the psychoanalytic-transcendental topology and semantics with which
we are dealing, has a proper place and meaning which form the condi-
tion, origin and destination of the entire circulation, as of the entire logic
of the signifier” (58). Not only has Poe’s short story been “miniaturized”
to the form of a letter in order to respond to theory’s close reading of

(literary) objects under its gaze, but “The Purloined Letter” has also, and
simultaneously, been generalized to the level of a signifier and its circula-
tion in language and culture. Derrida continues,
The fact that the entire surface of scription as a whole—the fiction called
“The Purloined Letter”—should be enveloped by a narration whose nar-
rator says “I” does not permit us to confuse fiction with narration. Even
less, of course, with any given narrated passage, however long and overt it
may be. We are faced with a problem of framing, bordering or delimiting
which demands an absolutely precise analysis of the effects of fiction are
to become evident. Without breathing a word, Lacan excludes the textual
fiction within which he isolates “general narration.” Such an operation is
facilitated, too obviously facilitated, by the fact that the narration contains
the entire fiction entitled “The Purloined Letter.” But that is the fiction.
There is an invisible but structurally irreducible frame around the narra-
tion. (52)
In other words, the frame of narration, possibly unnoticed by naive or

uninformed readers, plays narration against fiction, plays what is being
said in narrative form against what is being accomplished in terms of the
effects of fiction, and plays the narrative and diegetic levels of the short
story against the scene of signifiers and their circulation, under or despite
the usual logic of production and reception.
Derrida then puts forward the logic of dissemination: “[W]ith no
promise of topos or truth, a letter can always not arrive at its destina-
tion. Its ‘materiality’ and its ‘topology’ result from its divisibility, its ever-
possible partition. It can always be broken up irrevocably, and this is
what the system of the symbolic, of castration, of the signifier, of truth,
of the contract, and so forth, try to shield it from” (65–66). We are here
inserted in the parergonal logic, a logic through which something appar-
ently accessory, a detail, reveals itself as a key instance to decipher the
work. In the first paragraph of the story we have the ornamental framing
of the account (part of the Dupin trilogy or series), a literary decora-
tion (silence, smoke, and darkness). From the inner edge of the frame we
have the scene of writing, the library, random coincidences, and so forth.
Derrida concludes his analysis of Poe’s fictional text in an interminable
textual digression/perambulation:
The text entitled “The Purloined Letter” imprints/is imprinted in these

effects of indirection. I have only indicated the most conspicuous of these
effects in order to begin to unlock their reading: the game of doubles, the
endless divisibility, the textual references from facsimile to facsimile, the
framing of frames, the interminable supplementarity of quotation marks,

the insertion of “The Purloined Letter” in a purloined letter that begins
with it, throughout the narratives of narratives [the other stories in the
trilogy]. Above all else, the mise en abîme of the title: The Purloined Letter
is the text, the text in a text (the purloined letter as a trilogy). The title is
the title of the text, it names the text, it names itself and thus includes itself
while pretending to name an object described in the text. “The Purloined
Letter” functions as a text that escapes all assignable destination and pro-
duces, or rather induces by deducing itself, this inassignability at the exact
moment in which it narrates the arrival of the letter. It pretends to mean
[vouloir-dire] and to make one think “a letter always arrives at its destina-
tion,” authentic, intact, and undivided, at the moment and the place where
the simulation, as writing avant la letter, leaves its path. In order to make
another leap to the side. At this very place, of course. (110)
As the above exposition attests, Derrida ends by affirming the destiner-

rance (again, a Derridean coinage that encompasses destiny, inheritance,
and errancy) of the letter.
In turn, Barbara Johnson, in “The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan,
Derrida,” attests that both Lacan and Derrida are subject to the logic put
in circulation by the stolen letter. What is at stake on this level of theo-
rizing is not Poe’s story any longer, but theory itself. First, she remarks
that besides not mentioning the development made by Lacan on the rela-
tionship between symbolic determination and the randomly constructed
series, Derrida dismisses Lacan’s style, considering it a mere ornament,
which is why he veils Lacan’s unequivocal message as to the impossibility
of access to a single and unequivocal signification. Then Johnson shows
that, if Derrida grounds his critique in the fact that Lacan removes from
the scene the fourth side of what is at stake (by discarding the narrator),
the former, in turn, discards part of the seminar text in which Lacan
formalizes his intersubjectivity model, which is a quaternary. According
to Johnson, the divergence Derrida-Lacan does not reside in the equation
letter = phallus, but rather in the affirmation that a letter always arrives
at its destination. The hypothesis she formulates is that Derrida forces a
reading in order to insert Lacan’s affirmation within the paradigms and
models from which Lacan is actually trying to escape. Derrida’s approach
would represent not a simplification, blindness, or even equivocation, but
rather a strategy. In Johnson’s view, it is implied that Lacan is “the pur-
veyor of truth,” to which Derrida refers in the title of his text.
Additionally, we have to make clear that Johnson sides with Derrida
in his reading of the short story: literature is the beginning, middle, and
end (and even the interior) of “The Purloined Letter.” She demonstrates
this by listing books, libraries, and other writings mentioned in the story
(232–33). Thus, it is by reducing the library to its thematic presence as a

sign of writing that Derrida reaches his conclusion. It follows that what
he pursues is not the functioning of scription, but rather its theme. This
way, Derrida’s analysis errs, according to Johnson, not by opposing this
paradoxical functioning to Lacan’s allegorical reading, but by failing
to be consequent/coherent with Derrida’s own perceptions. Why stop
within the limits of the Dupin trilogy? And if the purpose of studying
“scription” is to disseminate an uncanny (unheimlich) uncertainty about
our position en abîme, wouldn’t the disseminating library as described
by Derrida still be somehow too certain or comfortable? And yet a more
pressing question: what of the short story itself? Has it been left aside
while theoreticians discuss among themselves the circulation of truth in
literature? The answer to this last question is a resounding no.
As far as Poe’s short story is concerned, we may say that the letter
enters Poe’s discourse as a place of rhetorical displacement, as a rhe-
torical fold which, in reality, nothing hides. The text’s “truth” puts the
reader’s position in perspective, representing him or her as its address, a
conclusion the naive reader would never come to, let alone come to with-
out the helping gaze of theory. The “truth” is not what fiction reveals as
nudity behind a veil. The destination of the letter is, therefore, wherever
it may be read. Its destination is not a location, decided a priori by the
sender, because the addressee is the sender and the addressee is someone
who wants to receive the letter, including no one. Thus, Johnson shows
that when Derrida states that the letter may not arrive at its destination,
that it may disseminate, she is reading destination as a location that pre-
exists the movement of the letter.
Yet, there is a problem here: Derrida refers to the postal theory and
even to the theory of literature. Every text or letter necessarily has an
implied addressee/reader. That does not mean this implied reader will
become the final reader/addressee of a certain letter. Johnson’s conclu-
sion is that the statement “a letter always arrives at its destination” can
be redundant or paradoxical, as it may mean many things: the only mes-
sage I can read is the one I send; wherever the letter may be, that is its
destination; when a letter is not read, it reads the reader; the repressed
always returns; I exist only as another’s reader; the letter does not have
a destination and we all die (248–50). The statement “a letter always
arrives at its destination,” we also add, may be enigmatic or simply a
metonymy for “truth”: a letter may always not arrive at its destination
or even a letter never arrives at its destination because every destiny and
every destination is erratic.
Since destiny meets destination in this analytical trajectory, and
since further adaptations or adjustments should be made in regard to
Poe’s short story, we shall return to Derrida’s notion of destinerrance.

If Derrida was intent on summarizing his philosophical projects under
the portmanteau word “destinerrance,” much the same way James Joyce
may have synthesized his Finnegans Wake under the portmanteau word
“nightmaze” (or Poe himself in view of the cryptic title of his short story
“The Purloined Letter”), with a view to showing that literature, fiction
and narrative included, is subject to a kind of inadequation that poten-
tializes readings, we now read destinerrance as a spatial figure for time,
since it names a fatal possibility of failure to reach a temporally pre-
defined object in addition to being equivalent to errancy, perambulation,
or deviation from a predefined spatial object. Destinerrance: errancy as
destination and errancy of destination. A letter subject to destinerrance,
we now assert, is a letter subject to the postal principle that reminds us
that a message may always not arrive. In relation to the letter that is
the story, we propose that destinerrance would be a location of/toward
error because the letter occupies the place of the correspondent’s body,
face, and voice, which means it could be completely lost in terms of voice
register and could trigger a semantic proliferation or an erratic forma-
tion. In the space between emission/production and reception, letters
may acquire new meanings as they participate in the general condition
of all textuality. In short, we conclude that destinerrance imposes desti-
tution on the destination of a letter, a deviation from which it may never
return.
After Derrida’s first texts, we may follow his elaboration of a thought
that is inseparable from perpetual errancy, from an incessant desire
toward destinerrance, that is, from an infinite unrootedness drive. Thence
the possibility to think of destinerrance as “destin(err)ation” in Jacques
Lacan, or even “destinarration” or “clandestination.” In an article titled
“Why Does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination?” Slavoj Žižek, a
Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist, reaffirms, alongside Lacan,
that “a letter always arrives at its destination” (10).
The Lacanian proposition “a letter always arrives at its destination,”
far from being univocal, gives itself to a series of possible readings, read-
ings that could be arranged according to three registers: the imaginary,
the symbolic, and the real. Read under the imaginary register, the propo-
sition points, according to Žižek, to the logic of recognition/misrecogni-
tion, a logic through which not only does one recognize but one also
misrecognizes him- or herself as the addressee of the ideological inter-
polation (following in the footsteps of Louis Althusser, a French Marxist
philosopher). And, we would add, read under the symbolic register, the
letter that is Poe’s story is pure symbol and its trajectory is erratic. A
letter, as Žižek paraphrases Johnson, always arrives at its destination as
long as its destination is wherever it arrives: and it now arrives at high

literary “theory” (10).
It seems as if Žižek was able to summarize the “Lacanian vouloir-
dire,” and, despite himself, Žižek also summarizes the statement on the
letter in Derrida: a letter never arrives at its destination if this same des-
tination is thought a priori, if this destination is conceived as preexistent
and if it works as a telos, an end (9–10). Yes, a letter always arrives at a
wandering destination, an erratic destination and a design (plan, project)
that finally brings death. Let us not forget Atreus’s fatal desire/design and
Thyestes’ fatal destiny/design that serve as a letter-within-letter device in
the short story and point, indirectly, to the epigraph which quotes Seneca
in Latin: King Atreus (Agamemnon’s father) offers his rival brother
Orestes a banquet with a meat dish: his own children. As in a quid pro
quo, Thyestes offers the former’s exiled son Aegisthus, who returns to
revenge his father and brothers. Back to Poe, in the silence of the dark and
smoky boudoir (and the library), in the fraternal complicity of friends who
delight in smoking a pipe, we may say that Dupin embodies the quid pro
quo, a substitution or displacement, with an also radical signifier: money,
more precisely 50,000 francs. In sum, besides tacking the commonplace
question “Who did it?” or “Who is going to find out who did it?” so dear
to mystery fiction and detective stories, the theoretical adaptations and
adjustments discussed here have made us, the readers of Poe, aware that
what is actually at stake in his short story—literature, truth, the destina-
tion of this letter/truth—could only be envisioned through theory.
Our itinerary in this chapter has followed Derrida’s notion of inter-
pretation in Paper Machine and has equated adaptation (a composition
rewritten into a new form, in our case a critical/theoretical discussion of
Poe’s short story) to inadequation, as follows:
What is needed, if you prefer, is that inadequation should remain always

possible in order that interpretation in general, and the reply, be possible in
its turn. Here is an example of this law linking the possible and the impos-
sible. For a faultless interpretation, a totally adequate self-comprehension,
would not only mark the end of a history exhausted by its very transpar-
ency. By ruling out the future, they would make everything impossible,
both the event and the coming of the other, coming to the other. (89)
Departing from the notion that every interpretation is also an adaptation,

and that every adaptation implies an “inadequation,” we have read the
poststructuralist renderings (Lacan’s, Derrida’s, Johnson’s, and Žižek’s)
of Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter” as “inadequate” adaptations/
adjustments; in other words, critical/theoretical readings of literature do
not exhaust the potentials of the latter. We should not fail to propose
that the above-mentioned theoretical quid pro quo has reached popular
culture as a general discussion on destination, and that it may be summed
up using the terms that serve as title to the present volume: Adapting Poe:
Re-Imaginings in Popular Culture.
Back to the story’s epigraph, nothing is more odious to wisdom than
excessive sharpness. Now, the quid pro quo here reported may meta-
morphose into excessive sharpness if we think that Lacan and Derrida
were talking about different things. However, we saw that both of them
approach the destiny/destination of the letter from distinct perspectives,
but which ultimately produce very similar conclusions. And back to lit-
erature, the Derridean destinerrance and the use we have put it to may be
said to continue its trajectory toward an ignored or unknown destination
in 1955 with the publication of a spy novel called Destination Unknown
by Agatha Christie, or more recently with the lyrics of a song that says,
“Follow me / And let’s go / To the place where we belong / And leave our
troubles at home / Come with me / We can go to a paradise of love and
joy / A destination unknown (Gaudino). Now, “a paradise of love and
joy,” however naive the lyrics of the song may be, can only exist as a des-
tination unknown, or, following Roland Barthes again, in the pleasures
that we readers may extract from the literary text with the adaptation/
adjustment(s) accomplished by theory. The letter finally returns to the
middle way (we refer here to Seneca) and follows its trajectory (as in
literature and as in our life), always arriving at its unknown destination,
and at the same time never arriving at its final destination.
Works Cited
“Adaptation.” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 1989. OED
Online. 20 June 2011. Web. <http://dictionary.oed.com/>.
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Derrida, Jacques, et al. “The Purveyor of Truth.” Graphesis: Perspectives in
Literature and Philosophy. Spec. issue of Yale French Studies 52 (1975):
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Gaudino, Alex. “Destination Unknown.” Destination Calabria. Data Records,
2007. CD.
Johnson, Barbara. “The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida.” The Purloined
Poe. Ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1988. 213–51. Print.
Lacan, Jacques, and Jeffrey Mehlman. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter.’”
French Freud: Structural Studies in Psychoanalysis. Spec. issue of Yale French
Studies 48 (1972): 39–72. Print.
Mabott, Thomas Ollive. “Text of the ‘Purloined Letter’ with Notes.” The
Purloined Poe. Ed. John P. Muller and William J. Richardson. Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988. 3–28. Print.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Purloined Letter.” The Purloined Poe. Ed. John P. Muller
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Žižek, Slavoj. Enjoy your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out.
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Contributors
Kyle William Bishop received a PhD in American literature and film

from the University of Arizona in 2009. His dissertation addressing the
cultural relevance of zombie cinema was published by McFarland as
American Zombie Gothic in 2010. He now teaches courses at Southern
Utah University in composition, American literature, young adult litera-
ture, fantasy fiction, and film studies.
Geraldo Magela Cáffaro is a doctoral student, specializing in com-
parative literature, and holds an MA in literary studies of literatures
in English from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (2010). His
research comprehends writers’ private journals and prefaces, Renaissance
and nineteenth-century literature, postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, and
Wolfgang Iser.
Saviour Catania is a senior lecturer in film studies at the Centre for
Communication Technology at the University of Malta. He has published
on-screen adaptations of Victorian and gothic fiction, Shakespearean
drama, and ancient Greek theater in Literature/Film Quarterly,
Entertext, and Studia Filmoznawcze. He is author of a chapter on
Kurosawa’s Macbeth in World-Wide Shakespeares and coauthor of a
paper on Minghella’s The English Patient in Shared Waters: Soundings
in Postcolonial Literatures. A forthcoming publication on Yoshida’s
Wuthering Heights will appear in Brontë Studies.
Peter Conolly-Smith is an associate professor at CUNY–Queens College,
where he teaches American culture and history. He received his PhD in
American studies from Yale University in 1996. He has published widely
on American studies, literature, film, adaptation, and transnational stud-
ies in books and journals.
Mary J. Couzelis is working toward her PhD in critical literacy with an
emphasis on children’s literature at Texas A&M University at Commerce.
276 Contributors
Currently she teaches undergraduate courses in composition and multi-

ethnic American literature. Her areas of interest are the gothic in chil-
dren’s and adolescent literature, contemporary young adult revisions of
fairy tales, and multiethnic American literature. She has published arti-
cles in the Journal of Children’s Literature Studies and MP: An Online
Feminist Journal.
Jason Douglas is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
He specializes in business and economics in nineteenth-century American
literature. His doctoral work focuses on the legal and literary develop-
ment of bankruptcy and debt in the latter half of the nineteenth and early
twentieth century.
Kevin M. Flanagan is a PhD student in the Critical and Cultural Studies
program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches courses in com-
position and film studies. He is the editor of Ken Russell: Re-Viewing
England’s Last Mannerist (2009). His essays and reviews have been pub-
lished in Framework, the Media Fields Journal, the Journal of British
Cinema and Television, and Film & History. Currently he is working on
a project concerning comedic war films in a post-1945 British context.
His other research interests include adaption, documentary, politics in
1980s American and British cinema, and some of the stranger films in
the history of horror cinema.
Michelle Kay Hansen received her BA in humanities from Brigham
Young University and her MA in English from the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas. She is currently working on her PhD in English at UNLV,
with an emphasis in American literature. Her scholarly interests include
American gothic and horror fiction.
Sandra Hughes is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky
University. She has published articles on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa
May Alcott, and Henry James, in addition to contributing to three install-
ments of the International Poe Bibliography Project for Poe Studies/Dark
Romanticism. She has presented conference papers on Poe in Richmond,
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Lisbon and is currently teaching a graduate
seminar titled Responses to Poe: Bicentennial Reflections.
M. Thomas Inge is the Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of Humanities
at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, where he teaches
and writes about American humor and comic art, film and anima-
tion, Southern literature and culture, William Faulkner, and Asian lit-
erature. Inge has been writing about the comics and animation for over
thirty years. For over twenty-five years he contributed a chronology
Contributors 277
of the history of the comic book to the annual editions of Robert M.

Overstreet’s Comic Book Price Guide. In addition, he has written many
books on the comics.
Rebecca Johinke is a member of the Department of English at the
University of Sydney, Australia, where she teaches a range of courses on
literary cities, street cultures, writing, and rhetoric. Her interest in Poe
centers on his representations of urban cityscapes. Her research interests
include Australian popular culture: magazines, creative nonfiction, genre
film, adaptation, and street narratives (car cultures, flânerie, and psy-
chogeography). She is currently working on a number of projects, includ-
ing two essays about Australian musician Nick Cave and two essays
examining the rhetoric of fitness magazines. She is also the director of
student support programs in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at
the University of Sydney.
Rachel McCoppin is an associate professor of literature at the University
of Minnesota, Crookston, where she teaches literature and humanities
courses. Her publications include “Questioning Ethics: Incorporating the
Novel into Ethics Courses” (in Teaching the Novel across the Curriculum),
“‘God Damn It, You’ve Got to Be Kind’: War and Altruism in the Works
of Kurt Vonnegut” (in New Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut), and
“Creating American Literature” (in Teaching American Literature: A
Journal of Theory and Practice).
Tony Magistrale is professor and chair of the English Department at the
University of Vermont. He is the author of twenty books, including The
Poe Encyclopedia; Approaches to Teaching Poe’s Prose and Poetry (coed-
itor); and Poe’s Children: Connections between Horror and Detection.
Jessica Metzler is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at
Cornell University, where she currently holds the Feminist, Gender,
and Sexuality Studies Dissertation Fellowship. Her dissertation, “That
Teenage Feeling: Affect and Queer Adolescence in the Mid-Twentieth
Century American Novel,” examines the relationship between affect,
queerness, and narrative structure. She has published “‘Course I Knows
Dem Feet!’: Minstrelsy and Subversion in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Slaves’
Escape; or, The Underground Railroad” (in Loopholes and Retreats:
African American Writing and the Nineteenth Century).
Joan Ormrod is a senior lecturer on film and media at Manchester
Metropolitan University. Her dissertation, Expressions of Nation and
Place in British Surfing Identities, focuses on representations of surf-
ing, gendered, and national identity in film and popular culture. She
278 Contributors
coedits the Routledge Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics with David
Huxley. She has published a number of articles on cultural meanings of
surfing in film.
Dennis R. Perry is an associate professor of literature and film at Brigham
Young University. He has published Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of
Delight and Fear (1993), and with Carl Sederholm, Poe, the “House
of Usher,” and the American Gothic (2009). He has also published on
Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, as well as
on colonial American writers in The Walt Whitman Quarterly, Studies
in Short Fiction, Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, and Early American
Literature.
Todd Robert Petersen has a PhD in English from Oklahoma State
University and teaches in the English Department at Southern Utah
University, where he also serves as the director of the Southern Utah
University Center for Creativity and Innovation.
Alexandra Reuber is a professor of practice of French and the director of
the French Language Program at Tulane University, New Orleans, where
she teaches classes in French language, literature, and culture; in language
pedagogy and methodology; as well as in folklore and comparative litera-
ture. She does research on the development of gothic and fantastic writ-
ing from the nineteenth century onward, as well as on adaptation. Recent
publications include “More Than Just Ghost Lore in a Bad Place: Mikael
Håfström’s Cinematographic Translation of Stephen King’s Short Story
‘1408’” (The Popular Culture Review) and “Voodoo Dolls, Charms,
and Spells in the Classroom: Teaching, Screening, and Deconstructing
the Misrepresentation of the African Religion” (Contemporary Issues in
Education Research).
Luiz Fernando Ferreira Sá is professor of English literature and compara-
tive literature on the Faculty of Letters at the Federal University of Minas
Gerais. His research interests include John Milton, postcolonialism, post-
modernism, and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. His recent publica-
tions include “Paradise Lost and Its Monsters: A Study of Abnormality,
Deformity, and Sin” (forthcoming as a chapter in Pour un comparatisme
renouvelé); “Edward Said Leitor de Milton” (CROP, 2009); “Jacques
Derrida: Atos de Leitura e Literatura Democracia” (A Tela e o Texto,
2009), “The Orpheus Myth in John Milton’s L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, and
Lycidas” (FALE, 2005), and others.
Carl H. Sederholm is an associate professor of humanities at Brigham
Young University specializing in American and gothic literature.
Contributors 279
Sederholm is coauthor of Poe, the “House of Usher,” and the American

Gothic (2009) as well as articles on Jonathan Edwards, Lydia Maria
Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, H. P. Lovecraft, and
Stephen King. In 2006, he was honored with the American Studies
Professor of the Year Award.
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is professor of English and graduate program
coordinator at Central Michigan University, where he teaches courses on
American literature and culture. He is the author of four books: Vampire
Movies: Undead Cinema (Columbia University Press, forthcoming);
Charles Brockden Brown (University of Wales Press, forthcoming); Scare
Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (Fordham University
Press, 2008); and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Wallflower Press,
2007). In addition, he is the editor of seven academic volumes including
the Modern Language Association volume on teaching Edgar Allan Poe
(2009).
Index
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 166 Batman Begins (2005), 83

Baudelaire, Charles, 155, 181
Adaptation Baudrillard, Jean, 211
as allusion, 81 Beardsley, Aubrey, 186
as analogue, 81, 87, 139 Benjamin, Walter, 62
as appropriating and salvaging, 109 Berner, David, 210
as criticism and theory, 249–50, 262 Bierce, Ambrose, “Occurrence at Owl
as dialogical process, 94 Creek Bridge,” 88
as ever expanding network of Bloch, Robert, Psycho, 82
textual relations, 94, 194 Bourdieu, Pierre, 160
as fidelity fetish, 135 Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), 48
as film promotion, 146 The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), 120
as palimpsest, 17, 20, 45 Burdick, Michael, 227
as play, 6, 8, 12 , 81–82 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 33
as process and product, 119, 209
as reception continuum, 208 Carr, Daphne, 188
as repetition without replication, 217 Cell (2000), 83
as shifting from representational to Christie, Agatha, 272
the real, 165 Christie, Ian, 197
as translation, 249 Clarke, Arthur C., 166
as transposition (non-narrative Clockstoppers (2002), 83
material), 165 Cooper, Martin, 165–66
The Alan Parsons Project, Tales of Cope, Andrew, 203
Mystery and Imagination, 182 Corman, Roger, 4–5, 53
Albrect-Crane, Christa, 165 Csicsery-Ronan, Jr., Istvan, 166
Allen, Graham, 6 Cutchins, Dennis, 165
American International Pictures
(AIP), 145–61 Davis, Robert Con, 108
The Asphalt Jungle (1950), 83 Dayan, Joan, 180, 218–19, 224, 227
Augé, Marc, 62 , 66 De Bergerac, Cyrano, A Voyage to the
Moon, 169, 170, 172
Bakhtin, M. M., 81 Debussy, Claude, 182 , 195
Balázs, Béla, 48 Delano, Jamie, 212 , 213
Bardine, Bryan, 197 De Lillo, Don, 128
Barthes, Roland, 15, 16, 262 , 265 Demory, Pamela, 168
282 Index
De Palma, Brian, 82 Hitchcock, Alfred, 82 , 196

Derrida, Jacques, 9, 15, 155, 250–53, The Birds, 82
258, 261, 266–69, 270, 271 Vertigo, 8, 82 , 257
Doctorow, E. L., 128 Howe, Mike, 202
Donan, Stanley, 82 Howell, Laura, 208
Doré, Gustav, 186 Hutcheon, Linda, 4, 8, 9, 13, 17, 41,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), 38, 123 45, 78, 119, 121, 122 , 123,
Dracula (1931), 34, 38, 120 162 , 165, 168, 194, 196, 202 ,
Dreamscape (1984), 83 208–9, 217, 219, 220, 249,
Duke, Alice, 217 262 , 263
Du Vernay, Denise, 134, 136, 142
Identity (2003), 7, 94–101
Edmundson, Mark, 181 Inception (2010), 8, 81–90
Eisner, Will, 212 , 226, 231 Ingagi (1930), 31, 34–36
Eliot, T. S., 53, 155 Inge, M. Thomas, 207, 208, 217
Epstein, Jean, 4, 7 Iron Maiden, 194, 197, 198–200
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Eddie, 198
(2004), 83 “Invaders,” 197
Killers, 197, 198
Fellini, Frederico, 7 “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” 194,
Fight Club (1999), 7, 94–101 197, 199–200
Fletcher, James, 213 Intertextuality, 3–5, 7, 17, 20, 45,
Foucault, Michel, 14, 15, 16, 28n, 76, 81, 194
185, 194 The Invisible Man (1933), 120
Fox, Sydney, 36 Irwin, William, 139
Frank, Frederick S., 253
Frankenstein (1931), 34, 38, 120 James, Henry, 82 , 155
Freddy Kreuger, 225 Johnson, Barbara, 9, 261, 268
Freud, Sigmund, 96 Joyce, James, 270
Finnigan’s Wake, 270
Gargano, James, 105, 106 Jung, Carl, 105, 106, 111, 114–15, 116
Gemora, Charlie, 35
Gibson, William, 128 Kallis, Al, 158, 159
Gillat, John, 160 Karloff, Boris, 119, 120
Glass, Philip, 195 Kennedy, J. Gerald, 201
“A Descent into the Maelstrom,” 195 King Kong (1933), 36, 37
“Fall of the House of Usher,” 195 Klimt, Gustav, 186
Godwin, Francis, The Man in the Kline, Karen, 218–19
Moone, 168–69 Kristeva, Julia, 93
Gremillon, Jean, Gardens de Phare, 55
Griswold, Rufus W., 119, 120 Lacan, Jacques, 9, 98, 155, 250, 251,
253, 261, 264–66, 268
Halberstam, Judith, 222–23 Lavic, Eric, 110
Halliburton, David, 197 Leitch, Thomas, 3–4, 135
Harris, Steve, 198 Loche, Richard, “Moon Story,” 169
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), “Eurydice,” Lombardo, J. R., 139
46, 53 Lost Memories (2002), 83
Heat (1995), 83 Lovecraft, H. P., 19, 28
Index 283
Lowell, James Russell, 261 Perry, Dennis R., 122 , 257

Lucian, True History, 168–69 Hitchcock and Poe: The Legacy of
Lugosi, Bela, 36, 119 Delight and Terror, 257
Playtime (1967), 63, 67
Magistrale, Anthony, 253 Poe, Edgar Allan
Marshall, Wolf, 198 apolalyptic endings in, 82
Matheson, Carl, 138–39 and the arabesque, 83–89
The Matrix (1999), 83 authorship, 15–28
Matthiessen, F. O., 155 doppelgangers in, 7, 82
Mattotti, Lorenzo, 196 and film, 3, 120–21, 126
McCloud, Scott, 210, 212 , 215–16 and gender, 181, 217–22
McCurdy, Howard, 174 and genre development, 2–3
McFarlane, Brian, 3 as matrix figure, 5–6, 196
Meyers, Helene, 222–23 and music, 195–96
Moore, Leah, 213–14 mythologizes his life, 119, 207–8
Mor Vran (1931), 50 myths and legends of, 1–3, 7, 25
Mulvey, Laura, 222 narrators, 109, 209, 218, 257
The Mummy (1932), 120 and popular culture, 1, 2 , 9
The Mysteries of Paris (Eugène Sue), 32 and psychological Gothic, 2
and race issues, 8, 31–41
Neimeyer, Mark, 1, 194 and science fiction, 3, 7,
Nevermore: A Graphic Adaptation 165–75
of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short and The Simpsons, 133–43
Stories, 8, 207, 208, 217 as textualized character, 13, 14,
“The Black Cat,” 210, 213–15 16–17
“The Oval Portrait,” 210–12 as torture fiction pioneer, 71
“The Pit and the Pendulum,” Film Adaptations
210, 212 The Assignation (Snow 1988), 123
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” 210, 217 The Avenging Conscience
Nine Inch Nails, 183–89 (Griffith 1914), 45–46
“Burn” (1994), 184 The Black Cat (Ulmer 1934),
“Closer” (1994), 185 120, 125
“Happiness in Slavery” (1992 ), La Chute de la Maison Usher
184–85 (Epstein 1928), 4–7, 45–56
“Hurt” (2003), 184 Danza Macabra, aka Castle
“The Perfect Drug” (1997), 185, 187 of Blood (Margheriti 1965),
Pretty Hate Machine (1989), 185 13–19, 23, 27
Nolan, Christopher, 81–90 Edgar Allen (sic) Poe (Griffith
Nosferatu (1922), 48 1909), 120, 126
The Fall of the House of Usher
Ocean’s Eleven (1960; 2001), 83 (Corman 1960), 4–5, 121,
“Of Unsound Mind” (Metal Church, 147, 249–51
Blessings in Disguise 1989), The Fall of the House of Usher
194, 201–4 (Watson/Webber 1928), 50
The One (2001), 83 The House of Usher (Cloake
Orr, John, 5–6, 196 2006), 252 , 255–57
Overstreet, Robert M., Comic Book “Lisa’s Rival” (The Simpsons
Price Guide, 231 1994), 133, 134, 138
284 Index
Poe, Edgar Allan—Continued “The Conversation of Eiros and

Man About Crowd (Makkas Charmion,” 167
2009) 127 “A Descent into the
The Man of the Crowd (Aiken Maelström,” 10
2008), 123, 125–26 “Dream-Land,” 183
The Man of the Crowd (Crouse “A Dream within a Dream,” 82
2008), 127 “Eleanora,” 46, 180
The Man of the Crowd (Morales Eureka, 83–84, 87
1988), 127 “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
The Man of the Crowd (Ngyen 19–20, 82 , 134, 145, 147, 256
2011), 127–28 “Hop Frog,” 10, 121
The Man of the Crowd ( Snow “The Imp of the Perverse,” 82 ,
1987), 123–25 194, 201
The Masque of the Red Death “King Pest,” 10, 183
(Corman 1964), 7, 10, 17, 121, “Lander’s Cottage, 55
146–61 “Ligeia,” 8, 9, 81–90, 179, 257
Murders in the Rue Morgue “Lionizing,” 7
(Florey 1932), 8, 36–41, 120 “Loss of Breath,” 47
The Pit and the Pendulum “The Man of the Crowd,” 119,
(Corman 1961), 121, 147 121, 127, 128–29
The Premature Burial (Corman “The Man Who Collected
1962), 121, 125 Poe” (Robert Bloch), 14 –15 ,
The Raven (Corman 1963), 121 19–25
The Raven (Éclair/American “The Man Who Collected Poe”
Standard 1912), 120 (in Torture Garden [Francis
The Raven (Essanay Company of 1967]), 15, 25–28
Chicago 1915), 120 “Marginalia,” 52
The Raven (Landers 1935), 120 “The Masque of the Red Death,”
The Simpsons Halloween 31–32 , 33, 37, 82
Special: “The Raven” (The “Mellonta Tauta,” 166
Simpsons 1990), 131, 133– “Morella,” 9
38 , 207 “The Murders in the Rue
Spirits of the Dead (Vadim, Morgue,” 31–32 , 33, 37, 198
Malle, Fellini 1967), 60 “Never Bet the Devil Your
“The Telltale Head” (The Head,” 59
Simpsons 1990), 134, 139–41 “The Oval Portrait,” 46
William Wilson, 7, 8 “The Philosophy of
Graphic Adaptations, 231–47 Composition,” 14, 46, 181
Works “The Philosophy of Furniture,” 56
“The Assignation,” 82 “The Pit and the Pendulum,” 8,
“The Balloon Hoax,” 167 10, 46, 72–79, 185
“The Bells,” 182 “The Poetic Principle,” 46, 47,
“The Black Cat,” 10, 89, 105–8, 48, 49, 51, 52 , 55, 181
181, 183, 194, 201 “The Power of Words,” 52
“The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Purloined Letter,” 82 , 90,
10, 134 250, 253, 261, 263
“City in the Sea,” 183 “The Rationale of Verse,” 181
“The Conqueror Worm,” 85 “The Raven,” 182 , 183
Index 285
Tales of Mystery and The Simpsons, 133–43, 207

Imagination, 96 The Sixth Sense (1999), 8, 108,
Tales of the Grotesque and 114–16
Arabesque, 96, 197 Slater, Jeremy, 217
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” 105, 108, Smith, Andrew, 226
122 , 227 Smith, Ronald L., 120, 123, 126
“The Unparalleled Adventures of Solaris (1972), 90
One Hans Pfaall,” 166, 167–75 Solomon, Robert, 189
“William Wilson,” 94–101, 125, Star Wars (1977), 166
128, 129 Sullivan, Jack, 195
The Poe Encyclopedia (Frank and Swinburne, Algernon, 181
Magistrale), 253, 254 Swirski, Peter, 252 , 253
Pollin, Burton, 195
Praz, Mario, 181 Tartuffe (1925), 55
Price, Vincent, 121, 146, 153, 154, Thompson, Kirsten, 189
157–60 Thoms, Peter, 200
Pugh, Steve, 212 , 213 Timequest (2002), 83
The Purloined Poe, 250 Tresch, John, 167
Truffaut, Francois, 82
Rajan, Gita, 218, 219, 221, 222
Ravel, Maurice, 195 Vampyr (1932), 50
Reed, Lou, 182 , 195–96 Verne, Jules, 167
Reppion, John, 213–14 From the Earth to the Moon, 167,
Reynolds, David, J., 141 172 , 175
Reznor, Trent, 183–89 Round the Moon, 172 , 173, 175
Richards, Eliza, 218, 219, 221, 222 Le voyage dans la lune, 172 , 175
Riggs, Derek, 198 Vertov, Dziga, 48
Romanek, Mark, 185–86
Rush, Benjamin, Medical Inquiries Wallace, Diana, 226
and Observations Upon Walse, Robert, 193
Diseases of the Mind, 95 Waltonen, Karma, 134, 136, 142
“Warrior” (Saxon), 197
Sandells, Natalie, 210 Weinstein, Deena, 193
Sanders, Julie, 4, 6 , 28n , 46 , 94, Wells, H. G., 166, 174
194, 262 The World Set Free, 166
Saw (2004), 8, 71–79 Wertham, Fredric, 215
The Seventh Seal (1857), 152
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, 157 Žižek, Slavoj, 262 , 270, 271

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Adapting Poe

Re-Imaginings in Popular Culture

List of Figures vii

1 Introduction: Poe and the Twenty-First-Century

9 Horrific Obsessions: Poe’s Legacy of the Unreliable and

Notes on Contributors 275

2.1 The American promotional poster for Castle of Blood 18

Dennis R. Perry and Carl H. Sederholm

Edgar Allan Poe’s connection to contemporary popular culture should no

here. To suggest that adaptation is a re-imagining of a text implies a

characters. In addition, casting Vincent Price as Roderick, with his siz-

doubling, so much disaster, so much redemption: it all goes back to him.

[o]ngoing experiences of pleasure for the reader or spectator in tracing

adaptation phenomenon, referred to by Hutcheon as a “dialogical pro-

legend but also how it uses Poe’s work to comment on contemporary

Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive

Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

that death is an illusion and that, at least in many cases, consciousness

The Author Function

In Foucault’s essay, he—in a sense channeling Mark Twain—proposes

The Poe Function

the dual satisfaction of initially recognizing the adaptation of “Berenice,”

of the opening paragraph of what is arguably Poe’s most famous tale—but

of Launcelot Canning and received an invitation to visit him at his

sorcery, has successfully reanimated Poe, whom he compels to continue

revelation that completeness is impossible but with the realization that

Poe’s Last Best Trick

Figure 2.2 The undead Poe of Torture Garden

Here Wyatt introduces himself and offers his assistance in “releasing”

of reproduction, and related matters were enacted … the possibility of trans-

Universal Picture’s precode 1932 horror-film classic Murders in the Rue

Upon reviewing the English translation of the French serialized novel

primates sexually desired human women, a myth that frequently found

allowed insinuated interspecies sexual contact to stand in for black-white

The most startling feature depicted in this picture sponsored by Congo

As Erish notes, “Ingagi’s most offensive moment shows a topless black

found widespread popularly in the 1930s—a discourse of Africa, and

and condemning to death, of a fantasized scapegoat: the black ravisher of

Kong is a cinematic fantasy of the Darwinian link between the anthropoid

The great defect in “Murders in the Rue Morgue”—from the standpoint

This emphasis on the advisability of positing a good “motion-picture

its master, the film’s creature is blatantly motivated by a taboo sexual

He protests, “I am not exhibiting a freak, a monstrosity of nature, but a

attack as a rape: “What transpires during the cross-cut commotion—

all is Life—Life—Life within Life

—Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem

Representative of the paradoxical position that Jean Epstein’s La Chute

Worth emphasising here is that Epstein, equally inspired perhaps

Figure 4.1 Madeline’s “phantom-being”

“the cinema’s own technological power of movement” (109). Looming

renewal. Since Epstein’s “slow-motion effects intermesh life and death”

otherness—the Eurekian animism which Madeline, as an anti-Orphic

Figure 4.2 Madeline as swirling veil-wraith

Epstein’s Usher teems with visual evocations of Poesque acoustics.

Figure 4.3 Epstein’s forest of candles

aesthetic death to a phoenix-like rebirth. In Epstein’s words, “The House

Figure 4.4 Usher’s stellar resurrection

The effect is truly Deleuzian. Deleuze’s anti- Cogito statement, that

———. “Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la Maison Usher: Reversal and Renewal.”

Perhaps more useful, at least as a preliminary starting place, is

Airports, lying as they do at the threshold of airspace, should be treated

In order to impart the importance of this sequence to my reading of the

liquidation of the individual when faced with massed activity, “Toby