1. 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

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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.

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Two posters for Murders in the
Rue Morgue (1932), starring Bela
Lugosi. The subtitles in the piece
below read: IN A CLASS BY
ITSELF FOR A HUNDRED YEARS!
Companion piece to DRACULA
and FRANKENSTEIN... read by
countless millions of people... a
crime story… a horror drama… it
has been the model for Mystery
thrillers for generations! It may
have been equaled as a hair-
raiser, but it will never be
surpassed… from the story by
Edgar 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

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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

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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.

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Of historical note, Noble Johnson, the actor who plays
Janos, the Black One, used his earnings to establish one
of the first all-African American film studios, the Lincoln
Motion Picture Company. Though much could be made
of the casting of a black man in a role so titled, such
examinations 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

18. Anderson – Title 18
Notice the
position of
Janos, the
stagehand,
between the
cage, on the
left, and Mirakle
on the right, as
well as the tent-
poles that
visually divide
Janos and
Mirakle.
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,

19. Anderson – Title 19
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.

20. Anderson – Title 20
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.

21. Anderson – Title 21
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.