Becoming Hyde: excess, pleasure and cloning

This essay examines the proliferation of visual representations of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), considering the question of what links contemporary (Scottish?) Gothic to its problematic origins. After a survey of cinematic and graphic adaptations, the essay focuses on Steven Moffatt's Jekyll (BBC, 2007), which combines the post-Darwinian anxieties surrounding Stevenson's tale of human regression with a much more contemporary interrogation of the ‘human’ against the backdrop of complex globalised scientific conspiracies. Significantly, the production draws on the Scottish origin of the text, re-proposing the question of (national) identity and authenticity against the threat of globalisation