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I'll survey the history of films inspired by Moby-Dick to show how filmmakers produce an enigmatic fantasy of the whales in fragmented parts, epitomized by their inscrutable eyes. This fantasy owes something to the technological difficulties of capturing vast creatures in low light submarine environments and it also is inspired by Melville’s comments on the majestic enigma of the whale. I’ll contrast the enigmatic fantasy of the whale with the killer fantasy of sharks from the first silent 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916), exhibiting their predation. Predatory sharks of course do recall the savagery of Melville’s white whale and also inspire some portrayals of Moby Dick, notably Huston’s Moby-Dick, whose scenes of destruction would then be taken up by Spielberg in Jaws (1975). Yet this portrayal did not gain imaginative traction. The talk ends with considering how BBC’s Blue Planet II (2017) pursued the quest to penetrate the whale’s inscrutable eye with remote, documentary recording that would reveal the secrets of the whale nursery mused on by Melville in “The Grand Armada.”Margaret Cohen is Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization, and Director, Center for the Study of the Novel at Stanford University. She is the author of The Novel and the Sea (2010) and general editor of A Cultural History of the Sea (2021). Her most recent book is The Underwater Eye: How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy (2022).
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, 2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco, United States
Tickets
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