Edward Anderson - scholarship - The Brief and Bloody Resurrection of Mme. LEspanaye - An Exercise in Structuralism

Joe Anderson

Segments delivered at New Voices 2012 Conference, Georgia State University

The Brief and Bloody Resurrection of Mme. L'Espanaye: An exercise in structuralism within

the context of short story-to-film adaptation

While noted for its foray into ‘ratiocination’ amidst a detailed and well-peopled plot, the

underlying cause of the titular killings in Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is rather simple: an

orangutan with a straight razor gets loose from his master, climbs in the window of a house

occupied by a widow and her daughter, and kills them both in a fit of rage and fear. Again, a

complex story once all the fine details are worked out, but with a backbone well-suited to the

short story form. At the time of its original publication, the early 1840’s, and for a substantial

period after, ‘Rue Morgue’ maintained its popularity due, in large part, to its suitability within its

market; while the popularity of the printing press continued to grow, longer works were still

considerably more expensive to produce. Given that Poe had a following in his own time, albeit

largely foreign, the brevity of his tales made their publication that much cheaper and, therefore,

more profitable to publishers. Communications technology and its constituent and associated

fields continued to evolve, however, and the early 20th Century saw a media shift, or rather an

expansion, into the emergent technology of filmmaking. Accordingly, this new, content-hungry

market was quick to adapt the work of older forms to suit the needs of new ones. And so, on

several occasions over the last 80 years, Poe’s tale has been re-tailored in radical ways to fit the

screen, each time being reconstituted as a conglomeration of new elements, an infusion of

morals, concerns, and conceits contemporary to the respective period of the adaptation, and a

consistently-present though diversely-constituted collection of commonalities with the

text—‘original elements’—that would, it was likely hoped, invest the respective film product

Anderson – Title 2

with the class status that popular opinion has often held should accompany a “literary

adaptation”.

If we adopt a structuralist perspective, and, further, a Lacanian belief in the order of

language, we must understand that such a situation, or rather the power underlying it and

providing agency, demands that language be not simply invented or expanded, but used, and in

its use, made to evolve. However, while the expansion of a vocabulary might provide interesting

insights, what concerns us here is, again, the development of communications systems as a

substructure for the continued evolution of the linguistic order. Ironic, then, that in a radically

different media culture, Poe’s continued success is still tied to the length of his work. The author

himself noted the importance of this particular quality in valuing the effect of the immediate

impression; “If any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to

dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression (‘Philosophy’

677).” Through much of the first century of cinema, a similar sentiment became dogmatic due to

the particulars of the act of film viewing; while televised serials eventually gained popularity and

even the most monolithic films of mid-century were overshadowed by the franchising trend of

the 1980s-present, there was a point at which the singular viewing of a film was an event,

attended even by its own culture and, more to the point, its own duration; one sitting.


Two posters forMurders in theRue Morgue (1932), starring BelaLugosi. The subtitles in the piece

below read: IN A CLASS BYITSELF FOR A HUNDRED YEARS!Companion piece to DRACULAand FRANKENSTEIN... read by

countless millions of people... acrime story… a horror drama… ithas been the model for Mysterythrillers for generations! It may

have been equaled as a hair-raiser, but it will never be

surpassed… from the story byEdgar Allen Poe.

But what would prompt filmmakers to choose the

particular elements of the story to integrate into their film? For

that matter, why this tale at all, with its simplistic plot that even a

production of two-hours in length (or considerably less) should

not seem able to float? Rather than attempt to construct some

formula to try to explain (and thereby exert the existence of) a

unified set of rules governing film adaptation in its entirety, I

would suggest instead a thorough study of a single adaptation-

-perhaps the most accessible of its kind to the later development

of Lacanian thought. And since, as previously noted, filmgoing

at this time was an event, we might find a good starting point in

studying a media product that is not physically a part of the film

adaptation, but is necessarily and quite closely associated with

the experience.

1932’s Murders in the Rue Morgue stars Bela Lugosi as

Dr. Mirakle, a character invented somewhere in that peculiar

creative territory of the adaptation process; most of the currently-

accessible facsimiles of the film’s various posters serve as an

introduction to this figure, prominently featuring Lugosi’s image

in-character. Looking to the first of the two examples provided

here, we notice some details of structural significance. While the

color palate and rendering style of the composition clearly

indicates an attempt to leverage on the actor’s star-power in light


of the recent success of Dracula (1931), let us here show a generosity of optimism by crediting

the poster-designers as the first point in an extended address the film makes to its more well-read

viewers. We might consider this the first iteration of an assertion that will be made, rather

explicitly, many times over: Lugosi, artistically depicted as villainously as he had appeared in his

previous role, serves as a flag to those who, knowing the tale, would be otherwise shocked—or

tantalized—by such a broad departure, despite the exact transposition of the title. Let us ignore,

for a moment, the leftwards labeling that so obviously contributes to the transmission of the

message, even going so far as to provide the astute viewer with a name for the non-text-based

other. Assuming such blindness, we might figure that there are several minor, often-unnamed

characters Lugosi might be portraying—any one of the foreigners who are interrogated after the

discovery of the murders, for instance—but none is important enough to rate such centrality

within the image. Meanwhile, though he might pass for some viewers’ conceptions of Dupin,

who is never exactly described in the story (and was, in fact, played by an elderly George C.

Scott in a much later version), Lugosi’s age, looks, and newly-built reputation support the

assumption of the character’s villainy and, therefore, his novelty. Thus, considering the

simplicity of the short story’s conceit (orangutan with straight razor, with no human villain in

sight), a viewer familiar with the text would have ample reason to correctly presume the two

media products widely divergent, and all before setting foot in the theater.

But, in affirming the distance between text and film, we must also deconstruct that

affirmation; this particular situating of the two media products posits both as equals, each

diverging from a normative position defined by the other. This is an attitude that lies in sharp

contrast to the popular belief in the eminent primacy of the text, mentioned earlier. As such, the

approach we are making here is informed by the close proximity of Barthes’ obviated author, or


rather our proximity to the conviction that the author is, indeed, obviated. And if we no longer

need an author, it is for the same reason that the text does not maintain its supremacy; film, text,

and all individuals involved in the production of either form are, themselves, products of that

pervasive linguistic structure which stands as the true creative force.

Moving from the marquee into the movie house, taking our seats as the lights dim, we

find elements of interest—further messages commenting on the difference between what has

been read and what will be seen—even before the action of the film commences. The film’s

titles constitute a liminal element that speaks to the ways that the text is transformed in its

transposition. While the short story is credited to Poe alone, the film’s first title frame (see next

page) displays an interesting juxtaposition of Poe’s name with those of the filmmakers, the title

itself, and some legal and technical information. But, even as the viewers have already paid their

money, the film still takes the occasion to sell (and, therefore, categorize and compare) itself as

‘based on the immortal classic’ of the text. Each word in the object portion of the assertion must

be carefully considered in this instance, for both are indicative of the values (or, at least, biases)

being adopted by the linguistic system. Indeed, such adoption shows a degree of adroitness in

itself, as taking advantage of a culture’s text-privileging ideology through its most advanced and

novel communications medium serves to gain the viewer’s familiarity and favor that much more

thoroughly. ‘Immortal classic’ as a unified term can thus be considered a bow of respect made

on behalf of the audience to not simply an old story, but to an antiquated yet still meaningful

communicative form.


Of historical note, Noble Johnson, the actor who playsJanos, the Black One, used his earnings to establish oneof the first all-African American film studios, the LincolnMotion Picture Company. Though much could be made

of the casting of a black man in a role so titled, suchexaminations are afield from the objectives of this

examination.

But none of this insight effectively

dismisses the question of the use of these

specific terms—‘immortal classic’—and the

inclusion of each is, indeed, curious. The

film was produced only 90 years after the

first publication of the short story, so that

while it might have been a classic by some

standards, it had not even reached the period

of maximum human lifespan; not quite yet an

‘immortal’ tale, even by conservative

measures. On the other hand, the film does

seem to be disclaiming its own position,

yielding to a tale that, presumably, would

still be read long after audiences had ceased

discussing this particular adaptation. In this

sense, the descriptors are quite apropos, the

film being almost as old now as the story was

when the film was produced; it doesn’t seem

unreasonable to assume that the text is very

likely still being taught and talked of far more

often than any film version.

But the relationship between film and

text is not so easily rectified. On the


contrary, other elements within the same frame point to the continuing problematics of such

rectification, even as the title overhangs so much of the other momentary content. The

filmmakers chose to retain Poe’s full title perhaps because to do otherwise would have meant to

address the difference between film and text too directly. The same problem of is evident in

developing a paper such as this one; how does one self-evidently differentiate between two

products with a common name? Fortunately, as the text is a short story and not a novel, we are

saved here by the conventions of punctuation and style (‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ v.

Murders in the Rue Morgue). But the philosophical establishment of a dualistic identifier,

whether duplicated, split, imagined, or otherwise, calls forth the situation of the ‘I’ in Freudian

psychoanalysis. As the individual must rectify (or, in some unfortunate cases, fail to rectify) the

sense of a differentiated self with the image of oneself, the ‘I’ that serves as referent, so the

viewer is left to question the nature of the film in relation to the text. This would, at first seem

like a simple question, and one whose answer has long been ideologically assumed in that textual

primacy that we have already identified. And while the film will not settle the matter of its own

nature, the text of the title card (‘based on the immortal classic’) does prompt the viewer to at

least acknowledge that the film is, in some respect, a product of the text. But such an approach

avoids addressing the possibilities of a symbiotic relationship, one in which the social influence

of the film eventually affects readings of the text. Such situations are common amongst popular

adaptations such as Gone With the Wind or Lawrence of Arabia, or even the recent Harry Potter

franchise; each constitutes a case in which, relatively regardless of fidelity to textual plot, the

visual performances serve to provide a structure for comparison with what the reader

imagines—a process further cemented in instances where viewing of a film precedes a reading of

the source text. It is fortunate for our examinations here, then, that neither this nor any other film


version of the Poe story has ever so eclipsed the text as to precipitate such an inversion.

Elsewhere in this first title card, we again see Lugosi prominently identified. We might

note the comparative size of the star’s credit to that of Poe, but it is more interesting to return to

our previous line of thought regarding the signposts being shown for the benefit of those

expecting some degree of similitude with the text. Here, Lugosi’s name appears beside Sidney

Fox, the female lead and an actress of some popularity at the time. This serves as a less blunt

indicator of divergence: as there are no female characters prominent enough to warrant much

more than a one or two line speaking role in a close adaptation—the widow and her daughter

having been slaughtered just prior to their first appearance in the text—the familiar viewer is

again left to suppose that what they are about to see is not simply a random mutation of the text,

but a deliberate and nuanced variation that includes a female voice and, most probably, the

already well-established film trope of a love story. And though such a progression might seem

like over-analysis, the fact of the romance is borne out soon after the film opens. What we are

then left with is a brief but potent chain of signifiers: actress’ name leads to presumption of

prominent female role, which leads to presumption of romantic subplot. But the fact of the

romance only seems to call into question the fact that, among the stars listed in this first card, we

do not see that of Leon Waycoff, the actor who portrays Dupin. If previous details have served

as indicators of how the film diverges from the text, this absence might be taken as an indication

of exactly where fidelity ranks for the filmmakers, and all the more so since not only is the most

prominent ‘original’ character absent from the first card, but the character does not even rate

space for the fact that he is the romantic lead of the revised plot. In fact, when the

Dupin/Waycoff credit does appear in a later title card, it is only after Lugosi and Fox’s second

credits. While this could be explained sensibly as the highlighting of actors who would probably


be better known and more attractive to audiences than Waycoff, it is nevertheless telling that

more star power—and, most likely, more of the budget—would be invested in characters created

specifically for this adaptation than in those that were imported from the source. Yet, the needs

of the linguistic system must be served, and especially so by its own products; if the text was in

need of amending in particular ways to make it more accessible to film audiences of the time, it

is reasonable to assume that such media-friendly amendments would receive a greater degree of

attention.

To touch, then, on a final title card, the last piece of textual evidence which itself gives

an indication of the more visually-symbolic nature of the entertainments in which we are about

to engage. It has been common custom, from silent films through to the present era, for the

director’s name to be displayed prominently and separately within the opening credits. Murders

in the Rue Morgue adopts the custom, but with a striking addition. Rather than appearing before

a blank or abstract background, director Robert Florey’s name hangs just below an artistic

rendering of an ape—while not quite the orangutan of the story, the film is likewise ‘not quite’

the same as that of the text, as we have already surmised. Differential situation within the plot

notwithstanding, though, the two animals, the text’s orangutan and the film’s ape, both serve the

same function for a Lacanian interpretation; by being bestial, fundamentally non-human, each

represents the non-lingual real. In placing his own name, the linguistic identifier of his

differentiation from other language-users, within the same frame as the image of the ape, Florey

asserts his own phallic power, but he also, perhaps unwittingly, reveals the limitations of that

power; while we would invest ourselves in the fiction of the film, ultimately the language itself

must will out, both within the film and within our own frame of reference, as both are products

of and subject to language. We can go along with Florey so far in ascribing bestial


characteristics to the ape, but ultimately it and everything else in this film act at the command of

the director’s words, his phallic potency, represented here in the paired display of his title and

name. If viewing a film—changing one’s frame of reference to adopt limitations and liberations

that are otherwise false, even impossible—can be counted as a type of jouissance, we might then

be able to view the ape as something appearing close (or closer than we) to the real. Yet, the ape

is simply an actor, and that actor is being directed by Florey, himself a member of our same

lingual society; in approaching that cinematic mirage we mistakenly believe to be the real, we

are re-deposited, deeper than ever, in the midst of the order. What might at first be seen as an

association between the single most physically-powerful being in the story with the most

singularly powerful personage on the set, what is really displayed is the inescapability of both

factual and fictional from the artifice of language. And while we might have some grounds on

which to assume the intentionality of other indicators, it is a hard to imagine that the filmmakers

might have been so aware of their own situation as stewards of the order. Matters of likewise

interest will be pursued to as we continue on to the film’s body... or, rather, two bodies… or,

rather, still more bodies.

The first scene opens upon a fair, presumably located on the shipyards of the Seine.

While we might be able to associate this in some way with the sailor, the textual owner of the

murderous beast, the carnival aspect is entirely new and separate from the text. Thus, the plot’s

very first movement is one of both statement and intention. We are presented with a set of

seemingly foreign characters—foreign to the plot of the short story, that is, though quite vaguely

at home within the visual setting provided in the film, even if not convincingly French. This

party, a group of two couples, is having a half-drunken discussion at a bar-stand along the

concourse while, nearby, a barker in a turban calls out for them to come see the sights his show


offers. As the quartet agrees to go inside, one comments that it’s a better fate than visiting a

morgue. While the film will offer a few fair, relatively unvarnished interpretations of the text,

we can see already that so much of the adaptation is constituted of nuanced levels of addition and

invention. In fact, as we will come to find out, at least one of these characters is known to us,

though of quite a different disposition in the text, as Dupin. Here, though, the most interesting

detail is that of the mentioned morgue, serving as a reference to a setting that will, as it turns out,

be of at least some importance to the cinematically-reconstituted plot.

Here, though, we must fully assess the nature of the elements at work: the fabricated fair

setting is situated as the occasion for a group of (at least partially) fabricated characters to have a

fabricated conversation which includes reference to another fabricated setting which serves as a

point in the fabricated sections of the plot. And it is only when we are so thoroughly ensconced

in the material constructed for adaptation that the character who best represents the embodiment

of that media difference reveals himself. After a few interesting displays along the concourse,

Dupin, his fiancée (the female romantic lead, Sidney Fox, whose name was so prominently

displayed in the credits) and their friends, Dupin’s roommate--an interesting character in his own

right--and his young lady, enter the tent of Dr. Mirakle (rhymes with ‘spackle’). As they do so,

the barker continues to urge other patrons on to see “the strangest creature your eyes will ever

behold. Eric the Ape Man! The monster who walks upright and speaks a language even as you

or I!... The beast with a human soul! More cunning than a man and stronger than a lion!” The

patrons then proceed through an archway made between the legs of a two-story tall ape, painted

onto the side of the tent. This positioning of the patrons, so many members of the linguistic

order, gaining access to knowledge underneath the artistically-omitted but not truly absent


genitals of that beast with whom the director clearly associated himself is a phallically

provocative and quite assertive maneuver.

But, despite the clear temptation of our abilities to analyze such a detail, we must not be

diverted from the richer material of the barker’s speech, which concerns speech itself. The

barker gives us a preview of what will be seen—and heard and discussed—inside. Despite

occurring so early in the film, the ‘carnival act’ is a central scene, at least in terms of our reading,

as it explores the ways in which the characters’ placements within the linguistic order, especially

that of the gorilla, are skewed according to the demands of the co-opted plot. In order to adapt

the print story to the new media of film, the filmmakers rely less on the grammatical structures of

written communication in favor of exploiting the nuances of the spoken word and physical

performance. Namely, the filmmakers chose to alter a central character—one of the few in any

way native to the text—by investing him with a ‘language’ that he had not previously enjoyed,

and thereby making him a ‘him’ in the first place. The issue of language itself becomes central

as Mirakle disseminates the philosophies behind his work with the humanized animal. He claims

to be presenting “a milestone in the development of life. … Listen to him, brothers and sisters:

he’s speaking to you. Can you understand what he says, or have you forgotten? I have re-

learned his language!” Mirakle moves to the ape in its cage and, as if translating, tells a tale of

captivity and loneliness. Moving back to the audience, speaking again for himself, the doctor

espouses the world view that inspires him; “Life was motion. Things changed into beings. …

Behold, the first man! [Mirakle points back to Eric in his cage.] My life is consecrated to great

experiment. I tell you I will prove your kinship with the ape!” Science has since provided ample

evidence of such kinship, of course, but what Mirakle is proposing goes further than simple

genetics. Instead, the implication of our shared lineage with the ape points to a separateness


from the real (by virtue of language) that is something less than absolute. We are threatened

with a journey to the real, a quest for jouissance of a kind, that goes too far for contemporary

sensibilities: if we define ourselves as human through our language, but the beast also has

language, what then is our true proximity to the real, the non-lingual and therefore non-

differentiated, those incapable of conceiving and taking ownership of the ‘I’? And, the even

deeper horror to consider: if we are more like the ape than we are comfortable with, does it mean

that our position in relation to the real is not ever-widening or even fixed, but, perhaps,

contracting? Might the ape someday be an accepted part of our culture, or, further, might we

find ourselves no longer accepted in the beast’s company, no longer the most ‘human’ animal in

our own environment? Surely, Mirakle’s audience does not consciously take matters this far as

they storm out of the tent in revulsion, but the revulsion itself is enough to show that their minds

have been opened to an idea so traumatic to a sense of self within the social order that they are

critically incapable of considering it.

The plot moves along from here as the viewer discovers Mirakle making good on his

intentions to mix Eric’s blood with that of a human. But, for all the psychosexual imagery this

proclamation might suggest, and the fact that Mirakle’s victims are all female prostitutes, the

violation itself, the taking of blood samples and giving of unnamed medicines, is rather chaste.

It is in light of this novel turn that the filmmakers finally provide the morgue, the ideal

manifestation of difference with the text: we find that Dupin, here a young medical student, has

been examining the corpses the police have discovered. Such a scene is worthy of our inspection

if only for the combination of its difference from the text and its subsequent inclusion due purely

to the expectations of iconography, the desire that manifests in language. In fact, the scene

serves as a kind of connector, allowing the modified figure of Dupin to pursue Mirakle by


accessing the evidence of the bodies the mad scientist has left in his wake in a way that echoes

but in no way matches the depth of the textual deductions. Further, it is the end of this scene

which brings us back to Dupin’s apartment, which, in the text, he shared with the narrator.

However, as the uses of a narrator are quite different in film, the character has been divested of

status, only to take on a much less influential but perhaps more psychoanalytically-telling role.

As Dupin sits at his workbench, his roommate, here named Paul, cooks lunch as he complains

that his fellow is not showing enough thanks for not having to worry about domestic attentions.

His whining—like that of an old mother or wife—only becomes more incessant as Dupin

continues to ignore him: “the macaroni’s ready and the coffee’s getting cold. … You give five

francs to that old ghoul down at the morgue and I have to turn magician and pull a loaf of bread

out of my nose so we can eat. … Pierre, why don’t you go down to the morgue and live there

instead of making a morgue out of our home?” The role of narrator is central to the text insofar

as that character, through his words, is the presenter of the tale itself; he serves as the wielder of

the language that communicates the story and, as the linguistic order has been constructed by and

to accommodate phallic power, so his powers of narration are rather comparable to those of

Dupin’s deduction, a point that seems fundamental to a true understanding of the story. This is a

functional distinction rather than a plot-based one, though. While the reader most directly

accesses the story through the narrator’s words, such detail and preciseness of description is

generally expected of a narrator, so that we easily overlook the character who is speaking

directly to us, habitually paying greater mind to the abilities of Dupin than the vehicle by which

those abilities are described. The narrator would support such a positioning of reader attention

as, indeed, Dupin is also the focus of the narrator’s own attentions seemingly in all eventualities.

Meanwhile, though, the cinematic divestment of narrative authority leaves the position of mere


roommate—and whatever function may be served in that non-essential role—rather lacking.

Assuming, for simplicity’s sake, some degree of functional agency within this character—a

knowledge of his own demotion—his apparent feminization, as we have observed, actually

works to his benefit, as it makes him quite a bit more conscious of the politics of power positions

within a structure that has divested him of his own phallic potential. While he can exert no

influence over Dupin, who has retained some of his phallic power in his medical knowledge

(though much of the text character’s intuitiveness is lost), Paul’s understanding of his positioning

means that he is on his guard for others who might jostle for what little power there is to be had

within this domestic setting. In fact, fresh from his failure to get his roommate to eat, Paul deftly

waves off the visiting morgue attendant who tries to beg for a portion of the meal. A small,

though interesting exchange comes next, as Dupin explains to Paul what he has been working on

and why he has been keeping late hours. Paul’s response: “Oh, so that’s what you were up to. I

thought you were with Camille.” Though said dismissively, the acknowledgement that Paul had

at least been wondering of the whereabouts of his friend and roommate, the other half of the

discourse structure that had previously afforded him an important position in the tale, indicates

that this is not a settled issue for this character, that he is enduring psychic tension. And, while

Dupin may not yet know the identity of his own antagonist, Paul has come to ascertain a further

threat to his already-diminished positioning: Dupin’s fiancée. However, the heteronormative

conventions of a film plot of the time—and even, oftentimes, today—dictate that the hero and

heroine must be together in the end. Accordingly, while Camille is only mentioned briefly, Paul

directs his excess resentment toward the subject of Mirakle, indirectly at first as Paul pours over

his notes on the murders, then more directly as the two men discuss the carnival show and Dupin

indicates that he might consult with the man. If Paul can no longer contribute to the transmission


of the tale, he will instead serve as support of a kind, expressing the only sort of sympathetic

aggravation toward Mirakle, his unwitting friend’s true antagonist. Unfortunately, the dynamics

of the ‘old mother’ position indicate that such empathy is inappropriate to the conventions of the

film, and that this sort of character is meant to express frustration at his roommate rather than in

solidarity with him. Accordingly, the scene ends as Paul shouts his roommate’s name in

exasperation as Dupin reflects on Mirakle aloud, still not coming to the table for lunch.

Finally, let us look to the psychoanalytically fascinating way the plot of the film is best

resolved with that of the text, the events which lead to the film’s climax. The ape, which has

become fixated on Dupin’s fiancée, is let loose on the L’Espanaye home by Mirakle. Camille is

taken away to become the next test subject after her mother is killed and stuffed up the chimney.

While the text saw both of the women, neither of whom that version of Dupin knew personally,

violently killed, the necessities of the new media set the borders for any common territory

between text and film. Killing the heroine in the film would have been a crossing of those

borders of a kind that wouldn’t be taken with any popular success until almost three decades

later, with Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Further, with the elimination of the relatively-neutral

sailor as the ape’s main authority figure in favor of the more sadistically-determined Mirakle, the

plot has been arranged in such a way as to require a more involved resolution than Poe provides.

Instead, Camille is brought back to Mirakle’s laboratory, but the scientist quickly loses control of

Eric and is strangled to death, bringing one killing spree to an end while, with an amorous but

enraged gorilla now on the loose, another threatens to begin. Ironically, Mirakle’s death, as well

as his experiments, are rather in vain, as the liminality he was looking for, that space between

human and animal, was quite within his grasp the whole time. If we return, once again, to the

credits, we notice, further down the screen, another, still-stranger moniker; Janos the Dark One.


As full of foreboding promise as such a title is, the character is a rather standard one; Mirakle’s

assistant who we first see during the carnival scene. While the carnival does not give us much

time to observe Janos or determine the nature and severity of his ‘darkness’, he takes a more

important role as Mirakle returns with Camille. Dupin has figured out who is behind the

murders and, as a manhunt sweeps through the streets, Janos, a near mute, warns Mirakle briefly

but effectively enough for the context: “Police!”. Mirakle sends Janos to secure the front door,

but he is no match for the gendarme, who come with rifles and shoot their way through.

Janos’ status in the film is puzzling in a few respects, but to understand his theoretical

positioning better, we should look to the physical positioning of the character’s first appearance,

that key sequence from early on in which we are also introduced to Mirakle and Eric. As

Mirakle takes the stage, we are presented with a full, centered shot of the presentation space, but

our view is divided into thirds by a pair of tent poles. Mirakle, the star of the show if not

necessarily its big draw, is centered between these poles, in front of the map he uses to explain

his concepts; his shadow overhangs a large map, a detail that becomes telling for reasons we will

soon ascertain. To the far left of the stage stands the ape’s cage, spatially completing the

continuum that Eric and Mirakle signify. Standing before his diagram, a pictographic

representation of his own theories on the course of man’s evolution into the present, in which the

formation of language and the commensurate invention of the ‘I’ have been essential, Mirakle

quite bluntly and literally stands in for humanity despite the fact of his audience’s impending

repulsion with his efforts and his own indifference toward the social norms whose violations the

audience reaction represents. Meanwhile, the cage itself seems like a sufficient barrier between

the ape and the audience, the beast of the real and so many comparatively-puny members of the

linguistic order, suggesting that the tent poles do not themselves represent the barrier between


Notice theposition ofJanos, thestagehand,between thecage, on theleft, and Mirakleon the right, aswell as the tent-poles thatvisually divideJanos andMirakle.

real and symbolic, but that they function in some more complex manner. This is the point at

which Janos’ position on the stage becomes most telling; he is physically between the ape and

Mirakle, suggesting the positing of his intellect as a marginal language user between the real and

the fully-realized, fully-human symbolic order. The bars of the cage, the barrier between Janos

and the ape, are quite solid, just as the language user becomes divided from the undifferentiated,

non-linguistic real as soon as he begins to engage in the artificiality of language. But Janos is

still quite closer to Eric’s in his cage than Mirakle, who singularly occupies a position of

qualitative distinction; while Janos is separated from the real by language, he is not entirely

human, not in the way that Mirakle, Dupin, Paul, or any of the other characters who engage in

conversation might be considered human. Rather than participating in human discourse, and in

doing so using the ‘I’, Janos is only capable of engaging in the most concrete, explicit of

conversations. At best, his status as a language user, his grasp of the ‘I’ that definitively

separates humanity from the real, is unknowable, as we never actually witness him self-

differentiate in any manner. The true utility of Mirakle’s approach is called into question,


however, when we remember that, at least by Mirakle’s own account, Eric the ape is actually

capable of language. If this claim is legitimate—and there does exist evidence elsewhere in the

film that contributes to the assumption, such as Eric’s romantic fixation on Camille—nothing

more complex than the act of translation Mirakle himself performs on the stage would be

necessary. This also leads to the inevitable truth that, in being lingual, Eric is no more an

authentic manifestation of the real than any other character, save perhaps Janos. Consider the

driving forces, the desires, that affect Mirakle (his devotion to ‘experiment’) and Eric (his

romantic pursuit of Camille): within Mirakle’s company, as well as the rest of the characters of

the film, Janos is the only one who is not assigned any identifiable desire, that manifestation of

the phallus that marks and is fueled by linguistic engagement. While desire is essential to the

progress of full subjects of the order, those who have been commanded to mean rather than

simply be, it can be a destructive and conceptually messy motivator when the relationship

between the subject, his language, and his own identity as an individual are in question. On the

other hand, the position of authority that the linguistic order is afforded is hard to ignore, and we

could reasonably infer that Janos’ reference to authority—‘Police!’—is indicative of more than

just the immediate threat. Might Janos, when confronted with the request to engage in discourse,

only be able to name an authority, any authority, as he is not necessarily able to differentiate

anyone above him from the higher authority of the linguistic structure of which he is barred from

full membership? This is a stretch, certainly, but an instructive one as, if there is truly some

force or condition withholding Janos from complete engagement with the linguistic culture, it

would seem that Mirakle has in his employ a citizen of that same liminal country he has been

using the ape and the murdered women to try to discover.


The potential existence of this more legitimate otherly-linguistic option is not pursued,

however, beyond Janos’ death at the beginning of the climax. Despite the wild potentialities of

the structure they had created, the filmmakers must have understood that they would have their

best chance of success by appealing to contemporary expectations at the most meaningful points,

the chief of these being the ultimate resolution. Earlier, we effectively divested Eric of his

position within the real, positing him instead as a language user and thus, for the purposes of this

argument, human. Thus, it becomes especially hard to think of the man in the ape suit as

anything but when the very juxtaposition of the two elements—ape and human—is at issue

whether considering the fiction of the story or the reality of the media product. But this is what

the filmmakers require of the viewer as Eric responds to his baser instincts—perhaps

structurally-imbued by the spirit, the media memory, of King Kong—by carrying Camille away

from Mirakle’s lair and up onto a terrain of sharply-sloping roofs overlooking the Seine. As

expected, the beast and his damsel are pursued by Dupin, equipped with a gun. Dupin rescues

Camille and shoots Eric, sending him plummeting into the river, back into the unifying waters of

the real, back into a state of true non-differentiation, by the only means possible: death.


Works Cited

Murders in the Rue Morgue. Dir. Robert M. Florey. Perf. Bela Lugosi, Sidney Fox, Leon

Waycoff. Universal Pictures, 1932. Online. Blip.tv. Blip Networks, 9 Feb. 2009. Web. 22

June 2012.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe:

Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Gary Richard Thompson.

Norton Critical Editions ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 239-66. Print.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Philosophy of Composition." The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe:

Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Gary Richard Thompson.

Norton Critical Editions ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 675-84. Print.

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Edward Anderson - scholarship - The Brief and Bloody Resurrection of Mme. LEspanaye - An Exercise in Structuralism