Welcome to the Many Adaptations of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

 Did y'all know that there's a musical version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring David Hasselhoff and can be found on YouTube (link here)? Well there is and it's as ridiculous as you think it is. Go check it out if you want to spend two and a half hours of your time watching a man angst about his life and commit murder while drinking a special potion that makes him look like something out of the uncanny valley (at least that's the impression the book gives). 

If you'd rather watch the twenty-two minute summary from Musical Hell on YouTube, you're welcome to do that instead.

What I find interesting about this version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde isn't it's misstep in stunt casting, but how far it deviates from the original source material.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a compact novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. The same guy who famously wrote Treasure Island. Mr. Stevenson is probably one of my favorite late Victorian writers (along with Stoker, Carroll and Doyle). His prose are, for the most part, are easy to read for modern audiences. The one exception I'm familiar with is the short story "Thrawn Janet", which is written entirely in Scots. (I internally screamed the entire time I tried to read this one.) 

Most people know of Stevenson's work. Treasure Island has had many adaptations and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has become well intertwined with horror pop culture. My first introduction to both stories was through children's media. The Muppets did fantastic adaptation of Treasure Island, while Scooby and the Gang met Jekyll and Hyde in the episode "Nowhere to Hyde". Interestingly enough, The Scooby Doo episode is actually somewhat closer to the original mechanics and motivations of the story than that musical adaptation I mentioned at the start of this post.

Don't believe me? 

I could tell you to read the book, but that takes a lot more time than you probably want to spend (though you should read the book because it is excellent). Instead, you can watch the wonderfully sarcastic summary by Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube (click here). 

Yes, the big twist at the end has been spoiled by pop culture. However, that's not what makes the book so interesting. It's the suspense. We know Hyde is bad news, but what evil will he do next? Will he ever be caught? And will Dr. Jekyll put an end to Hyde for good?

It's also a little more complicated than a split personality (or Dissociative Identity Disorder as is the mental illness's proper name). 

However, this fore knowledge of the main twist somewhat necessitates the changes to the plot. Most people know going in what the connection between Jekyll and Hyde is (I'm not going to outright type it out because you might be the 0.0001% of my readers who aren't familiar with the story). So, adaptions need to keep the audience interested in the story another way.

Insert the love interest(s).

The original novella has very few female characters. The two most important are a little girl and a maid - neither of these characters have a name. 

Thus adaptations love to add a lady or two - usually as a love interest (or two) - to add some drama to the plot. This has been done in a lot of movie adaptations, the previously mentioned hilarious musical, and some cartoon adaptations. The Scooby Doo episode included a maid character who is a suspect in the mystery. In Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman, their school is putting on a stage version of the story that includes a love interest.

These love dramas are not in the original story at all. The main drama starts out as a mystery that eventually leads to the questioning of human nature. The question drifts from who Mr. Hyde is and becomes what makes a person evil and can that part be carved out. Dr. Jekyll struggles with personal issues (that are left incredibly vague in the novella). 

I find that most adaptations drift from this theme to focus more on the added love drama. Which is a shame because the original theme is much more interesting.

Recently, I read a graphic novel adaptation of Stevenson's novella. Klimowski and Schejbal collaborated to create hauntingly beautiful drawings (which is the reason I brought the book in the first place). It's an extremely faithful adaptation, including characters who are typically left out such as Mr. Enfield and Dr. Lanyon. It even has one of my favorite lines ("if he be Mr. Hyde, then I shall be Mr. Seek"). However, the novella in its original state doesn't seem to take well to a visual adaptation and the narrative felt a little too streamlined.

They also made (in my opinion) the mistake of showing Dr. Jekyll's struggles...and they aren't all that shocking.

Okay, they're shocking by Victorian standards (maybe). But one of the most creepy aspects of Stevenson's original work is how vague he is about the evil being committed. The author leaves it up to the reader to fill in the gaps and that makes for a more interesting experience while reading the text. 

The graphic novel decided to just show their readers this "evil" and I didn't find it all that "evil". If they had left it vague, my imagination would have definitely come up with something a lot worse (especially with the creepy charcoal drawings to go off of). Instead they chose something pretty generic - even for the Victorian standards of the time. 

Which brings me back to why any adaptations of this novella need to have some narrative changes to keep the reader interested. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a very internally driven narrative. It's a fight between the good and evil within a person rather than an external one. Any visual medium has to add an external drama element to draw out the story.

The original novella on its own is really good and I do recommend y'all check it out if you haven't yet. If you have read the novella, let me know what you think of it. Also let me know if you enjoyed Mr. Hasselhoff on Broadway. I can assure you that I was entertained. 

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Welcome to a Tragedy

Why do we listen sad stories? Why do we retell the tragic tales? The whole world is filled with tragedy, so why do we feel a need to put pen to paper and end the happily ever after?

I saw Hadestown this week on broadway. A friend was nice enough to take me. If you don’t know this beautiful musical, it’s an American retelling of the story of Orpheus and his trip into the underworld to save his lady love. Hades and Persephone are there having some martial problems (unusual for their myth as they have the most solid marriage of the Greek gods). The Fates are spinning around and around. Then there’s Hermes narrating the journey.

The band is on stage. The story told as a series of songs. Seems right for a story about Orpheus. Though the setting has been changed to the hard times of the early nineteenth century America. My friend and I weren’t sure if it was New Orleans, Tennessee, or West Virginia, but the atmosphere felt southern, poor, and like the old mining communities we have a bad habit of romanticizing.

Do you guys know the story of Orpheus and his lady love Eurydice?

The original tale is cautionary, about how the dead should stay with the dead. This telling is a little different, has a different message to give. But the ideas are still there and the ending stays the same, no matter how much I or anyone else might wish it would change.

Why do we tell tragic stories? Why do we like tragedy?

History is full of tragedy. There really aren’t happy endings in real life. Nothing falls into place like how our modern fairytales go. Everybody dies. Everybody has a perspective and the popular one might not be all that right.

If we live in constant tragedy, why do we keep telling these stories? Why tell the story of Orpheus and Eurydice again and again like Hadestown? What do we get out of it?

A lesson?

An emotion?

A warning?

I love the music of Hadestown. It’s very American - jazz and blues. Perfect for many reasons, first and foremost because of the subject matter. I think it’s also appropriate that the 20s are just around the corner and it’s time to bring back jazz.

One song in particular seems like it was written for this this year, but it was actually written in 2006. “Why We Build the Wall” is intense, creepy, and cultish. Hades leads the song by asking his followers why “they build the wall, my children” and his children answer that they “build the wall to keep [them] free” and keep out the enemy. And who is the enemy? Poverty.

They make a few changes here and there to the myth. Traditionally Hades isn’t hell, but in this musical it is. And Hades doesn’t tempt people with death, he doesn’t really have much to do with the act of dying at all (that’s Thanatos for the most part). He just rules the underworld and keeps the dead where they ought to be.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice doesn’t have much to do with poverty or have any capitalistic analogies. It’s actually about how the poet and artist Orpheus goes into the underworld to retrieve his dead wife. The play has Eurydice’s selling her soul to Hades because she’s hungry. In actuality she dies. Hades allows Orpheus the chance to rescue Eurydice (both in the play and myth) after he proves himself as a musician. In the myth it’s to bring Eurydice back to life, whereas in the play it’s to free her from slavery.

But the changes, like the music and the setting, are appropriate for the overall feel of the play. It’s very American. Did I mention that? It’s a new incarnation of an old story, an old song that’s been told again and again and again.

Tragedy.

The one change not made is the ending. The myth and play end the same way. Orpheus fails.

No matter how many times or different ways we tell the story, Eurydice doesn’t escape the underworld. The dead stay dead and Eurydice is never free.

We hope to never experience it. We wish for happiness, but there can be no happiness without the biting taste of despair at the back of our minds. We hear a tragic story and we’re just a little more grateful for the good things in our lives, as short as they are. We might even learn what not to do or learn that there’s nothing we can do to prevent tragedy.

Is there a sad story that you keep coming back to? Do you go back and watch a movie like Titanic or read The Fault in our Stars? We know how these stories end. Why read about a doomed relationship or watch a terrible series of events?

Because we tell stories to help us deal with the emotions we feel and tragedy is one of the hardest to process.

We hope for the story to change. It never does. Yet we tell the story again anyway.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like herding from me.