MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

(I am one of three people submitting an abstract for a panel together; Catherine Siemann, John Ziegler, and I would like to present together representing the journal _Supernatural Studies.)

Entering into the public consciousness almost immediately after its publication in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson’s _Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the character of Jekyll-Hyde, the mad scientist and his alter ego, have remained active cultural referents, to the extent of becoming an essentially blank slate onto which the anxieties of any time and place can be projected. For the most part, this “projection” is literal: Stevenson’s tale has been adapted for film and television over 100 times, and this paper will examine a selection of these reimaginings, including the 1920 John Barrymore silent _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; the 1931 Rouben Mamoulian version and the 1941 post-Hayes Code remake; 1971’s gender-swapping take on Jekyll and Jack the Ripper, _Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde; the 1976 blaxploitation film _Dr Black, Mr Hyde; Walerian Borowczyk’s 1981 kinkfest _Docteur Jekyll et les femmes; the 1990 made-for-television _Jekyll & Hyde; 1996’s would-be blockbuster _Mary Reilly; and the 2006 Canadian film _Jekyll + Hyde. I will argue that Stevenson’s relatively benign and essentially womanless morality tale (d)evolved first into a trite domestic tragedy and eventually, as the twentieth century progressed, into increasingly complicated plots that explicitly engage with, and perpetuate myths and stereotypes about, non-normative sexual desires and acts. These adaptations, viewed separately or as part of a continuum, are interesting in that they are equal parts sanctimonious and salacious: these films seem to revel in the depravity and violence, particularly against women, even as they deliver their message of self-control and knowing the limits of science and oneself.