Unwrapping "The Mummy". A Modern Example of Doomed Love and the Gothic

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: Ancient Egypt and the Gothic go well together - or to be more precise, modern images of what most consider to be a magical and enchanted, rather exotic period in history appear to find their most touching expression in what is widely considered to be a typical gothic manner of representation.

This paper deals with Stephen Sommers's movie "The Mummy", released in 1999 (c.f. International Movie Database, IMDb). It might be considered a Blockbuster, as it was able to not only regain but more than double its budget within the opening weekend alone (c.f. ibid.). What are the reasons for such a success? Two of them may already be found in the opening sentences of this introduction - "The Mummy" successfully unites both the audience's visions of ancient Egypt and a typical - covert, but still tangible - gothic way of narration and style. However, another layer has been added that seems to have contributed to the movie's success at international box-offices: the idea of an eternal love obviously doomed from its very beginning. It is this fatal love between a high priest and the Pharaoh's mistress that represents the center of this paper's argumentation. It will be examined whether this love can be called the "prima causa" (Conrad 1973: 17) of the catastrophe that follows it. Furthermore, it will be shown how well the love-story fits into the film's general story and to its gothic appeal.

In preparation for this discussion, the paper enlists criteria of what is considered being a representative gothic novel and compares these criteria with characteristics of the movie. Additionally, the movie's villainous couple and their love will be examined: Can he be seen as a typical gothic villain and is he "a se" (ibid: 18) evil or are the origins of his villainy to be sought in his environment? Does she truly love him or only see him as her possib