This semester I’ve had the pleasure of teaching an upper-level course (English 4120) with a focus on “Poe’s War on Terror.” The title is deliberately counter-intuitive: we usually think of Poe as promulgating Gothic terror in his tales. But in fact from one angle, Poe’s work represents a sustained reflection on where terror comes from, how we can contain it, and thus how we avoid becoming victims of our own apprehensions. Certain tales–like “Hop-Frog”–seem immediately relevant to a critique or deconstruction of terrorism. Other works, like “The Pit and the Pendulum,” epitomize what has lately been called “terror management.”
Our class together went to see the new John Cusack movie, “The Raven,” and we enjoyed the film, though not always in ways the director might have intended. There’s a fair amount of internal self-parody, and quite apart from the gruesome re-enactments of several Poe tales, it was instructive to see how Poe had been repurposed for contemporary film audiences. Almost all of the cerebral interest that generates suspense or terror in the tales was eclipsed by graphic spectacles of mutilation. Cusack did his best to play Poe but he kept saying things that Poe himself would never have said, like the F-bomb in the tavern. Poe lived in the Victorian era and in 1849 he was courting not an 18-year old vixen but a late-thirty-something widow who was more than a little uneasy about Poe’s recourse to drink. By 1849 he was also on the skids professionally and would hardly have had a crazed but fervent fan of the sort this film is built around. Think “Criminal Minds” in period costumes, with people talking like participants in reality TV episodes. Still, there were some good moments, and the story is entertaining if you have no investment in Poe.
Thank you for your comments, Jerry. I haven’t seen the movie yet but am planning watch it since I am a horror and murder mystery buff. That being said, I read a really B-A-D review in Entertainment Weekly last night that claimed the film used tactics of terror that Poe would have never deployed himself. I thought that was interesting given your point about the “graphic spectacles of mutilation.”
Why call it The Raven though? Is it the most recognizable work? Or the most appropriate, one in which terror is located in the title itself?
“The Raven” was Poe’s best known composition in the 1840s and became so closely associated with him that it became something of a nickname. Eliza Richards has written a provocative essay on the circulation of parodies of “The Raven” in Poe’s lifetime. The movie uses the raven as a visual motif, even though Baltimore is not quite a habitat for this bird. But of course it’s not really Baltimore: the movie was shot in Hungary and Serbia, I think.
I was delighted to be a part of Dr. Kennedy’s Poe class this semester. From the very beginning I learned not only a tremendous amount of insight into how Poe wrote about human terror, but also about Poe himself, through class discussions and perusals through his biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn. Whenever our class went to see “The Raven,” I wasn’t expecting anything extraordinary, based on reviews the movie was receiving, but I was willing to watch a film that purports to depict Poe and a story based off of his stories in a creative way. John Cusack as Poe seems to me an imperfect fit. I don’t think that Poe was such a boisterous and gregarious character as Cusack portrayed. Coincidentally, I was reading Walt Whitman’s ‘Specimen Days’ a day or two before we saw the movie, and the scene in which he meets Poe corroborated all my previous conceptions of him. Based off of their “short interview,” he wrote, “Poe was very cordial, in a quiet way, appear’d well in person, dress, &c. I have a distinct and pleasing remembrance of his looks, voice, manner and matter; very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded.” Cusack’s Poe was, for the majority of the film, possessed of an almost sensational and emotional spirit, but not even in a depressing, subdued way. His scenes with his young lover especially portrayed him as a happy, gregarious flirt, I thought. There were moments where Cusack did certainly assume an expression and demeanour which I thought truthfully presented a presentation of Poe, such as the scene where he is writing one of his short stories, but for the most part I think that Director James McTeigue’s Poe was fabricated more for the purpose of entertainment, rather than authentic representation.
The movie elucidates no feelings which I have whenever I read Poe’s poem “The Raven,” which seems to me to be problematic. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining film, despite my constant mental criticisms, and one which I think merits a viewing simply based on its creativity.
I’ve used The Simpsons’ version of “The Raven” to teach that poem in high school English. Each student had to memorize part of a stanza, and then they each performed their stanzas one after the other to put the poem together, and then we watched The Simpsons, and I was thrilled that they were aware of what parts had been left out as well as what was in there and how it was interpreted.
At any rate, thanks for this review, which reinforces my sense that authors are rarely well-represented on film, even when they’re not being purposely fictionalized the way Poe is in this one.
OK by me. JGK