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This paper provides a new reading of E. T. A. Hoffmann's romantic novella "Der Sandmann" and of Ira Levin's postmodernist SF thriller novel The Stepford Wives in the context of their film adaptations. The phenomenon of Pygmalionism and agalmatophilia has been traced from the Greek antiquity up to now and has been used as a net of significant analogies with literary works. Additionally, the occurrence of male attraction to artificial, non-respondingfemale surrogates has been interpreted in the context of the diagnoses of Asperger's syndrome and narcissism. New insights about Hoffmann's novella could be gained in multiple intertextual, intermedial comparative procedures whereas Levin's novel has been critically put into relationship with another literary work for the first time. The comparison has shown interesting similarities between the two literary works, alerted to the intensification of sexual alienation problems in the course of time up to now, and has warned of disagreeable consequences of certain uncanny tendencies if reality-based and digital agalmatophilia continues.
Keywords: literature and film / love / Pygmalionism / agalmatophilia / Hoffmann, E. T. A: "The Sandman" / Levin, Ira: The Stepford Wives / film adaptations
Men's tendencies to project their own expectations and images of 'perfect' female qualities on women surrounding them can be considered a universal patriarchal behavior pattern demanding from women to accept a redesign after the male masters' scheme. Possibly as a result of disappointment through encounters with unchanging female individuals who have been ready to rebel and defend postulates of feminism, male projections were replaced with a Pygmalion complex of inventing (or acquiring otherwise) substitute, artificial, non-responding female creatures (nowadays preferably made of platinum-based silicone). In case of celibate males (interested not in Eros, but only in agape), statues of Virgin Mary (having partly the same status as Venus or Aphrodite, the "heavenly woman" of Ovid's Metamorphoses in the Greek antiquity) could possibly provide harmony and contentment. If we review this phenomenon from the beginnings in the Greek myth and Ovid's tale up to so many examples in works of literature, theater, film, television, painting, ballet and opera up to now - we deal here with (predominantly) male technosexuals, "iDollators"1 and lovers of sex robots (sexbots) - then we must come to the conclusion that this motif has proved...