“Revenge upon a Dumb Brute”: Casting the Whale in Film Adaptations of Moby-Dick

upon the 2011 announcement of the discovery of the sunken antebellum ship The Two Brothers, a rash of Wikipedia pages instantly broke out, opening up new dialogue about the previous voyage of its captain George Pollard Jr. on the whaleship Essex. The discussion gravitated toward Pollard’s link to the fictional character Ahab in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick; the Essex, like Ahab’s Pequod, sunk in the aftermath of a hull-shattering collision.¹ But did the whale intentionally ram the ship’s hull? Is it in the nature of this essentially docile creature to attack in such a manner? The history of film adaptations of Moby-Dick, the general subject of this article, evolved out of the widely held belief that whales are in fact capable of such malevolence. The representation of the whale as evil or malicious reflects a number of factors, especially developments in film technology and the popularity of monsters. The popularity of monsters in film and attitudes toward animals, I argue, coalesce in each adaptation’s larger ideological function. Just as Ahab heaps his worldly woes onto the whale, filmmakers have typically made the creature a scapegoat for the culture’s political and social frustrations.

Questioning the whale’s capacity for revenge threatens the core of the legend—largely perpetrated by the tendency to turn Moby-Dick into an action-adventure film—that whales are natural enemies to humans and will seek out and attack ships at sea. To problematize the agency of the whale in film versions of Melville’s novel not only threatens to defuse the tension at the core of Melville’s narrative, which bloggers desperately wanted to revive in their discussion of Pollard. Such questions also deflate the drama of conventional cinematic storytelling that demands an unambiguous villain. Film thus represents a radical departure from the pages of Moby-Dick, which not only showcase the dramatic potential of such blood vengeance by staging a fierce confrontation between Ahab and Moby Dick, but which also depict sperm whales in their own nautical sanctuary in scenes detailing the animal’s peaceful nature.

When Melville’s Moby-Dick is not following the expansive ruminations of its cerebral and reflective narrator Ishmael on philosophy, ethics, law, science, and other fields, it centers on Ahab’s quest for revenge against the notorious white whale that tore away his lower leg in a previous encounter. Ishmael’s original intention to ship aboard a whaler as a common sailor goes awry when he finds himself on the Pequod, captained by a madman uninterested in the commercial enterprise of hunting all whales and instead obsessed with vengeance toward one particular creature. Melville interweaves Ishmael’s meditations and reveries with Ahab’s search for Moby Dick, which eventuates in his sighting and a three-day chase. The confrontation ends with the destruction of the Pequod, leaving Ishmael as its sole survivor, clinging to a coffin his shipmate converted into a lifebuoy. Among Ishmael’s more poignant ruminations throughout the journey are those about the relation between humans and whales that lead him to value compassion and diversity, a perspective providing a sophisticated counterpoint to Ahab’s autocratic rule over the crew and obsessive thirst for power and domination.

In film adaptations of Moby-Dick,² directors have avoided Melville’s complex ambiguity and signature delight in ironic, often absurd dissonance in order to highlight the spectacle of the clash of the legendary sea creature and the monomaniacal captain. Film has rendered the whale not in the serene independent existence of his own natural habitat but as a malicious foe capable of matching Ahab’s ill will with equal and opposite force. With a few notable exceptions, film has eschewed Melville’s complex multi-perspective approach to the whale that includes consideration of the creature’s instinct for flight or self-defense and instead has staked its claim on the seemingly blunt alternative of casting him as a predator whose behavior is marked by concerted and tactical aggression. But such portrayals have enabled more than just narrative fireworks for...