In 1932, The Island of Dr Moreau became "Island of Lost Souls" -- Garbo

There was a time when most literary critics, when they encountered racial or cultural bias,  set the problem passages to the side and told us to ignore the obsolete past and keep reading. But a few voices have always said, "Hey, no, wait a minute, let's look at that."

In 1978, scholar Judith Fetterley's book The Resisting Reader.  In this groundbreaking work,  Fetterley noted that it was normal for girls to read boys' adventure stories and see themselves in the male characters, but that the reverse not only happened rarely, but parents and teachers saw it as harmful or demeaning for boys to read about girls' lives and wonder what life would have been like for them if they'd been born with a different gender identity.

In the 1980s, authors like Michel Foucalt and Jacques Derrida re-opened questions about who builds culture and who interprets it. Derrida became famous for the concept of deconstruction, which was a broader form of the questions Fetterley was asking in The Resisting Reader.  Didn't it matter,, in writing of all kinds who did the writing, especially if only some kinds of people were allowed to do it? 

Out of this question grew the concept known then as multi-culturalism, which introduced Europeans and Americans to the now-obvious concept that the world is quite large and filled with all kinds of people, quite a few of whom see their own cultures and values are normal, agreeable, and worthy of retaining. 

Now, in 2020,  we are at the point of trying to figure out what cultural touchpoints -- from team mascots and 20th century Confederate statues hastily built to bolster Jim Crow laws -- to classic English literature , artistic portraits of white rich people, and revered European music  -- are still relevant and valuable if they do soul-deep harm to some people in our society.

 The current cultural re-evaluation is a bit like that HGTV show where people sell of their old stuff at yard sales to earn the money for a home renovation. Part of the deal was to allow  a "Keep" tarp spread out to hold out a limited number of items family members feel an intense urge to save.

Without burning books or shuttering art museums, we're left with looking with fresh eyes at books and movies and art which may give the world good things while still having problematic stuff embedded in it. Until the 1930s, Western literature almost always portrayed most of the world as brutal to the point of bestiality, or hopelessly corrupt, or distastefully debauched, or poor imitations of their "betters." 

 These viewpoints were bolstered by vintage versions of science which saw itself as finding facts, when too often it was actually a tool of dominant colonial powers to self-justify the worst kind of behavior. Even if the research wasn't meant to do that, that's what it got used for, like the explosives Alfred Novel only meant for demolition to save hard labor with pick-ax and shovel. 

Fortunately for us all, in every era some people are more thoughtful than others, and more willing to explore expansive or unfamiliar viewpoints. The author H. G. Wells is an example. In addition to works of nonfiction and any number of stories, Wells wrote many novels. One of the latter, published between The Time Machine and The Invisible Man was The Island of Dr Moreau, which appeared in 1896. To put this mad-science tale into perspective, it's helpful to have a bit of a timeline, i think. So I've created this one. 

If you haven't had the opportunity to read The Island of Dr. Moreau, you may not have time to sit down with the book in this crazy year. But perhaps you can get a flavor of the book by listening to this one-hour radio version from the BBC. 

A good copy of the first printing of The Island of Dr Moreau sells for over three thousand dollars on eBay. But you and I can look at a copy for free. 

In the original illustrations for the first edition, the creatures on the island look a lot like giant ferrets wearing my father's swim trunks from 1960. 

The band DEVO did a stage version of the song "Jocko Homo," which uses the question "Are we not men?" from "Island of Lost Souls," as a refrain, and for the last part of the song, band members wore black shorts every similar to the creatures' outfits above. 

In the 1926 illustration below, the island dwellers are now more like circus animals dressed in the clowns' cast-offs. 

The movie version from Paramount studio, starring Charles Laughton, featured furry-faced beings who were more like dogs, or bears, or apes. 

Or in the case of Bela Lugosi's character, like one of the cavemen from the old Geico TV commercials. 

There are 1977 and 1996 film versions of the Dr. Moreau story, and of course because modern technology allowed it, there was more focus on making the animal-people look somewhat realistic. There was supposed to be a version (titled "The Island of Dr. Moreau" like the novel) this year, but the pandemic has delayed the film industry. When that one comes out, I'm sure the visuals will make the '96 version look like it was done with Lego people in front of a Sony home-video recorder.  

But it seems to me that it was the very limitations of the 1932 movie which made it the best film adaptation, It's the acting which has to make us believe in a remote island, peopled with strange creatures made by a mad doctor, where science has gone too far.  

Next week:   A famed children's author first wrote for grown-ups

Notes: 

The 1926 image used above was found  here.

For a brief summary of the eugenics movement's rise and fall, you can go here.

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                                                Garbo