The Phantom of The Opera and Its Relevance to The Modern Audience

The Phantom of the Opera 1911 Leroux’s original novel has been adapted into hundreds of different versions. From this, I am going to explore the ways in which the main story is relevant to the modern audience.

The Phantom of the Opera story reflected people’s desires, fears, challenges and anxieties. Looking into the reasons for its popularity, we have to consider and research into the novels genre and the literature of the era it was produced in. The majority of the adaptations are classed as Gothic Fiction, which combines Horror and Romance. Gothic fiction was very popular in the twentieth century in which it was first produced.

The story was set in a time where the culture was on the road to change socially and artistically then following onto the industrial expansion. This change in structure socially happened in many parts of the world around the same time which then helped the story appeal to a broader audience as is was so adaptable.

The original Phantom is represented as the living Death, he slept in a coffin, has skeleton like features and is described as smelling like death in Leroux’s novel. Clearly, the Phantoms whole existence as a ghost is a key connection to death revealing him to the modern audience successfully.

The Phantoms ability to kill and do anything he wants is due to his mysterious and genius ways which makes him desirable as well as terrifying. He is scary because he uses people to fulfil his wants and needs he then reminds them of their fate if they do not obey. A key example of this is he controls Christine as a disguise, using her voice; he uses her as his motivation to produce his best compositions as well as controlling Christine and putting her in a trance like state affecting her personal life, as he wants her all to himself. His intelligence, personality, talents and way of thinking makes him desirable. He has full control of the opera house and all of the beings in it. This shows the audience that he is dominant and powerful. Erik being in full control is one of his key traits that attracts the audience to the story and has been persistent throughout all the versions and adaptions of the novel.

Ignoring the silent movie version, the more modern versions of the novel display a history of the Phantom before his encounter with Christine. Naturally, he is perceived as child needing love and affection, receiving abuse from people judging and making fun of his deformity, his appearance made it hard for his family to love him. This gives him the justice to receive sympathy and compassion from the audience. Living in denial he covers his face that he believes is cursed. He is also rejecting his own identity, which reflects on others as no one calls him by his real name. “If I am The Phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so” taken from the 1925 film.

As the adaptations and versions of the novel become more up to date we see that the Phantom is visualised less monstrous and more as a victim. Some versions state that he was not born deformed but had acid thrown onto him (1943 by Arthur Lubin) which definitely makes him more of a victim than a monster looking back at the previous versions. Sadly, acid attacks still occur in today’s society. In 2009 Katie Piper Suffered from an acid attack arranged by her abusive partner. This connects the Phantom of the Opera to the modern audience as well as the Phantom being “a subject that teenagers could relate to and feel sympathetic for, with his rough, broken skin (akin to pubescent acne) and issues of being an outsider in a cruel, judgmental world that just doesn’t understand him (a gripe many adolescents possess).”