The Return of the Victorian Mummy
Alex Kurtzman’s The Mummy (2017), A Modern Orientalist Tale
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21608198 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nolwenn Corriou (Constructing Excellence, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Polysèmes (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0999-4203 • E-ISSN: 2496-4212 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/polysemes.7449 |
| OpenAlex | W3039855693 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
As part of the Dark Universe reboot of Universal Monsters, Alex Kurtzman’s movie, The Mummy (2017) was meant to give new life to the Victorian monsters that fascinated Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. As it happened, the film also gave new life to the ideological dynamics of Victorian and Edwardian mummy fiction by displacing them to reflect current global issues. Indeed, the anxieties and obsessions put forward by the authors of mummy fiction (Bram Stoker, Conan Doyle, etc.) within the genre of imperial Gothic are dramatised in Kurtzman’s film and brought up to date to resonate with contemporary issues. The original tales of the mummy constructed the female mummy as a terrifying as well as enthralling embodiment of an imperial Other who comes back to life to wreak revenge upon the transgressive male archaeologists who disturbed her rest. Therefore, the well-known motif of the mummy’s curse acts as a metaphor for imperial dynamics as well as an ominous projection of what may happen, should the Empire strike back. The gender of literary mummies also points to the fear of a patriarchal society confronted to the growing struggle of women for social and political empowerment. The political and gendered dimensions of mummy fiction were left out of the numerous film adaptations which only retain the monstrous character of a dead body come back to life to threaten the living. Alex Kurtzman’s film marks the return of the Victorian mummy as a female embodying radical Otherness and the threat of an Orient embroiled in an endless war with the West
Ancient history · Art · Art history · Literature · Orientalism · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
| Highly cited | No |
|---|