Comment Here for The Enduring Legacy of Frankenstein.

Share your favourite Frank moment, or views on the way that the original novel changed the way horror and science would go together from that point onwards....

2 comments

Comments (2)

Sumyra Ihsan

Oct 23

Some things I remember from studying the novel at Uni ( a very long time ago) is that, unlike the way it appeared in movies, there virtually was no attempt from Shelley to talk about science. We knew Frankenstein was a medical student messing around with cadavers. All those old movie images of lightning rods, Igor etc...not in the novel. So much was simply implied. I reminds me a little of that H.P. Lovecraft short story where something is happening in the family crypt but no one is telling us what. You can safely view Frank as doing scientific and medical experiments but there is a little space there for you to arugue that something more esoteric/occult led to creation. Another thing we talked about was the feminine (or perhaps the Dark Feminine). Shelley apparently suffered a pregnancy loss shortly before writing the novel. This always has a huge psychological effect on a woman. There are obvious themes of creation/terror of creation/failed creation and violent experimentation in the novel. You could easily apply the metaphor of post-partum depression to relationship of Frank and monster.

A few years ago I met a male associate for a drink and he very randomly brought up this novel only to inform me that Mary Shelley didn't really write it and had to get her husband, Percy, to help her write most of it. 🙄 It reminded me of an old Comedy Strip Presents show where some guy is arguing that Bramwell Bronté actually wrote all Emily, Charlotte and Anne Bronté's novels. 😄 It is also very interesting to recognise that the monster is very intelligent and deeply philosophical in the novel. This did not transfer to the original movie versions so a lot of us grew up with a bumbling monster and missed the original points. If you connect this story to marginalised and oppressed peoples (or even animals - see Morrison's We3 for e.g.) it is imperative that we maintain the created monster is very much a conscious, self-aware being with a lot of potential. Who in society has had opportunity to experiment on others?

Who has been experimented on (eugenics, colonialism, totalitarian regimes, MK Ultra victims)?

Modern connectible fiction:

Aliens AND Terminator

Deathlok and Robocop

Cyborg of Teen Titans/Justice League

obvs they did a version in Buffy too

darreninform

Oct 25

Replying to

I've heard that rubbish before as well re Mary didn't write it. I'd forgotten about the pregnancy loss, which as you say would have had a profound impact on a psyche dealing with questions about life and death, and what truly constitutes either. One can just imagine Mary and the poets sitting around a fire, a little high on wine and/or opium and engaging in such deeply philosophical debates.

The obvious intelligence of the monster in the novel is indeed a stark contrast to the bumbling malformed brain of the Karloff (and virtually every movie version) monster. I can see why the movies simplify and justify the violence the monster commits (with the criminal brain error), but in the book, when the monster starts to reason that his actions were wrong, his moral compass takes him away from civilisation and it is Frankenstein, the so-called rational man, who then pursues with only thoughts of vengeance. It is impossible not to feel sympathy for the Monster, even knowing the murders he had committed as he lashed out at a world that had only given him pain and betrayal.

That said, I do love the Karloff style of portrayal as well and even here, when played well (rather than the shlock-horror of the Hammer versions) you had to feel for the Monster rather more than Frankenstein. It was interesting to me that the Marvel Comics version, in both the colour and the black & white comics, went somewhere down the middle of both versions and made him an unwilling but constant (and always misunderstood) hero.

This was a theme taken on in the movie 'I, Frankenstein', with Aaron Eckhart, in which he becomes more of an unwilling superhero. It had some interesting angles and it's a shame that we didn't get to see the series of films that were planned. Personally, I think it should have been a TV series of films rather than released at theatres as the big screen really lay bare the issues with the story and set scenes. I saw it on the small screen later and it came across far better than I remembered.

I still haven't seen the Brannagh version which is supposed to be closer to the book. I may need to do so now, especially as we're heading for Halloween!