Having passed the halfway point in my exploration of the Universal Monsters, I’m faced with the three lesser-celebrated entities: The Invisible Man, The Gil Man, and The Mummy. With the recent adaptations of the first two—from Leigh Whannell and Guillermo Del Toro, respectively—being celebrated for their thoughtful interpretations. This isn’t to say there haven’t been numerous modern adaptations of the dusty fiend, from Stephen Sommers 1999 blockbuster The Mummy and its sequels to Alex Kurtzman’s 2017 reimagination of the same name, starring Tom Cruise. The Mummy films seem to stray from the philosophical and societal themes emphasized by Whannell and Del Toro, sticking more closely to the action/adventure genre that’s been deeply rooted in stories surrounding archeology—I’m looking at you Spielberg.
Like the other Universal Monsters, the Mummy has appeared on screen countless times. It’s undeniable that the iconography of the decrepit, bandage-wrapped fiend has made its mark on popular culture, but there always seems to be a tinge of humor applied from within. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, the bandages are removed, and the body explodes in a cloud of dust. From Monster Squad to Bubby Ho-Tep, the stumbling dead never fails to conjure a laugh that undermines the horror of the scenario. But some films have tried to return to the darker origins of the figure, like Grégory Levasseur’s 2014 found-footage debut The Pyramid.
The Past Won’t Stay Dead
On a macro level, the story of the Mummy (and the act of archeological expedition) deals with prying into the past for the sake of discovering some hidden truth. But this prying inevitably reveals horrific and deadly secrets. No matter how obscured or deeply buried, the past is unearthed with horrific consequences. We should, instead, leave the past behind us—or let sleeping dogs lie.
An interesting aspect of this type of story, however, is the emphasis on discovery and the inability to unknow. The Mummy, then, is not indifferent to the myth of Pandora’s box. Once the box is open, it cannot be closed, and once the Mummy is freed of its sarcophagus, its wrath will be reaped. The Mummy then becomes a morality tale focused on reminding the viewer that they must reap what they sow. However, the Mummy is almost always stopped, and the way of modern life is returned to normality. The moral of the story then becomes null, and the horror becomes temporary and, therefore, fleeting.
Let the Evil Go East
With the spiritual conflict of cultural invasion, as previously mentioned, comes the ethical underpinning of colonialism. It is almost never the members of the cultures who celebrated the mummification process who attempt to excavate the dead, but those from the West who wish to better understand the exotic. In this way, the aphorism “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This veers into the territory of cosmic horror as emphasized by the dangers of scientific advancement as illustrated in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Similar to the themes of life and death explored with Frankenstein, The Mummy calls into question what we know about the nature of existence and pits conflicting spiritual beliefs against each other. By attempting to further our understanding of ancient cultural practices, we are ultimately faced with a revelation regarding the existence of an afterlife or our pretenses regarding the finality of death.
The revelations made by our Western explorers are that the secrets of the East are ultimately deadly or evil. The Mummy, then, becomes an emphasis on Western chauvinism and Christian superiority. Red flags are raised at the problematic nature of this emphasis, which may be why the story has leaned away from the more serious and horrific implications and into the fun and adventurous as we’ve seen in recent adaptations.
On the other hand, if the Western explorers are met with demise, we are also given a just deserts tale of morality that warns of the evils of cultural invasion and colonialism. But herein lies the rub: either way you play it, the pathos of these interpretations leaves the viewer to believe that different cultures cannot mix. There will always be a complex of superiority that attempts to spread and control rather than blend in an attempt to coincide. That is the horror of the Mummy, that there is only one way of viewing the world, and that it must ultimately be Right, leaving all others to be wrong.
