Introduction: Poe and the Twenty-First-Century Adaptation Renaissance

Abstract

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 appearances 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, including the obvious tragic/romantic appeal of his life, which is easily made out to work in harmony with his frequently nervous or obsessive characters. 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 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 ubiquitous 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.