The Gaze of the Spectral Setting in the 1968 BBC Adaptation of M. R. James’s “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”

Jacek Mydla, Anne Keithline

Abstract


This article is a study devoted to the BBC adaptation of a ghost story by Montague Rhodes James, “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.” The ideas of the spectral gaze and sympathetic spectreship are used to submit that in the film the setting itself is the spectre, with which/whom the viewer is invited to identify. This rearrangement—in comparison with the situation in the original story—casts the spectral setting both in the role of the haunting presence and the victim of an otherworldly (human) intrusion. A detailed analysis of the use of the camera supports the argument.


Keywords


ghost story genre; film adaptation; haunting; gaze; identification

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References


Films (in a chronological order)

Federico Fellini, dir., La Dolce Vita (Riama Film et al., 1960).

Michael Powell, dir., Peeping Tom (Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors, 1960).

Michelangelo Antonioni, dir., Blowup (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1966).

Francis Ford Coppola, dir., The Conversation (Paramount Pictures, 1974).

Nobuhiko Obayashi, dir., House (Toho, 1977).

Stuart Rosenberg, dir., The Amityville Horror (American International Pictures, 1979).

Rodney Bennet, dir., Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (BBC, 1980).

Stanley Kubrick, dir., The Shining (Warner Bros. 1980).

Sam Rami, dir., The Evil Dead (New Line Cinema, 1981).

Michael Radford, dir., Nineteen Eighty-Four (20th Century Fox, 1984).

Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, dir., The Blair Witch Project (Artisan Entertainment, 1999).

M. Night Shyamalan, dir., The Sixth Sense (Buena Vista Pictures, 1999).

Jonathan Miller, dir., Whistle and I’ll Come to You (BBC 1968).

Ghost Stories for Christmas 1968-2010. Expanded Six-Disc Collection (BBC and British Film Institute 2013).

Levan Gabriadze, dir., Unfriended (Universal Pictures, 2014-2015).

Literature

Casebier, A. 1991. Film and Phenomenology: Toward a Realist Theory of Cinematic Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Copjec, J. 1994. Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists. Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press.

Hay, S. 2011. A History of the Modern British Ghost Story. New York: Palgrave.

James, M. R. 2009. “Casting the Runes” and Other Ghost Stories. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Mulvey, L. 1999. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In: S. Thornham, ed. and introd., Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Mydla, J. 2016. “Joanna Baillie’s Dramatic Experiments with Strong Passions in the Light of the Idea of Sympathetic Spectatorship.” In: T. Bruś and M. Tereszewski, eds. Production of Emotions: Perspectives and Functions. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Mydla, J. 2017. “Old-Type Hauntings by New Ghosts? Word and Image in the ‘Cybernatural Horror’ Unfriended.” in esse: English Studies in Albania. Journal of the Albanian Association for the Study of English (ASSE), 7: 64-82.

Smelik, A. 1998. And the Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Thornham, S. ed. and introd. 1999. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.


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