American Literature: Romanticism Student Midterm Submissions 2016 (midterm assignment) 2b. Short Essay 2b. Choose a previously-read literary text . . .

Brittney Wilson

A Modern Adaptation of Poe’s The System of Doctor Tarr & Professor Fether

          The British actress, Kate Beckinsale, has always been an idol of mine and psychological thrillers have always been my favorite genre of movies, so when I saw Kate in Stonehurst Asylum—a psychological thriller with her as the supporting lead—I already had all the reason I needed to be hooked on it. Kate plays the role of a patient suffering from seizures but who does not seem to belong since she is classy and of sound mind, especially compared to the other patients. The asylum itself is patient-sustained aside from one man in charge who seems to direct and manage the asylum with an off-kilter approach to psychological care. He does not approach things the way a contemporary doctor would have executed such therapy; he simply lets the patients go about their behaviors as is. Seemingly out of the blue, a doctor-in-training happens upon the asylum and asks to shadow this rogue doctor in order to gain his clinical training but upon inspection learns that the doctor in charge is actually a patient there and that he and all of the patients have overrun the asylum and the real doctors and staff have been locked up in the basement mistaken for the real crazy people.

          After being blown away by this movie, I did some digging and found that it was an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Doctor Tarr & Professor Fether. This short piece is not exactly as the movie portrayed it but the movie stuck well enough to the plot with the patients taking over the asylum and trapping the staff that I was able to see the reflection there. Of course, in typical Poe fashion, the element of the gothic is abundant in the dim hallways of the asylum and the menacing nature of the patients so the abstractedness of the psychological is exactly what one would expect from him. Here again, we see the heroic individual on a quest to figure out what is going on and emotions constantly outweigh logic because reason and logic have been tossed out completely in an attempt to let the patients simply live in a soothing day-to-day in which their delusions are enabled instead of disentangled.

          What I eventually found so intriguing about this film adaptation of Poe’s original Romantic work is how a classic work could be taken and made into a contemporary, popular piece yet still retained its original Romantic qualities. It was easy enough to stick to the genre but the producers were also able to stick with the whole style and affectation of Poe’s Romanticism. This made it so captivating and admirable that I had to watch it several more times, and of course it was solely on an academic basis for Poe and not Kate Beckinsale.