Frankenstein's Monster: from Misunderstood Creature to Scientific Breakthrough
The 19th century reader of the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was treated to a tale of fantastic proportions. A story of a monster that was created from parts of corpses and could be brought to life would have been an extremely scary story. They would not know if the creation of a monster in this way was really a scientific possibility. The 21st century audience however, now knows that this is not scientifically possible. The fear that was struck in the hearts of the 19th century reader by this monster is now gone. With this in mind the story of Frankenstein now has to be altered to conjure the same fear in our current society of that which existed in the hearts of the original audience. In Hollywood's remakes of the original novel the monster is not the same monster as was in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Hollywood has used aesthetics, science and dehumanization of the monster to turn the story of Frankenstein into movies that would reflect our current society. This essay will strive to draw connections from the original text, empirical research and Hollywood's modern day film remakes of Frankenstein to demonstrate how the monster has been changed and turned into a monster that our society can understand.
In the original text the monster was feared for mostly aesthetic reasons. When people saw the monster they reacted out of fear and either tried to flee him or fight him. They did not have any conversations with the monster to see if he had truly evil intentions. The people just immediately judged the monster as evil. Since as far back as early Greek philosophers, beauty has been equated with good and ugliness equated with evil. In the first description of the monster, Victor Frankenstein told us that he stands eight feet tall. This would be a person of enormous stature and quite intimidating to anyone. Victor was striving to create the perfect man and in such resolves to make him beautiful.
"His limbs were in proportion, and I had
In the original text the monster was feared for mostly aesthetic reasons. When people saw the monster they reacted out of fear and either tried to flee him or fight him. They did not have any conversations with the monster to see if he had truly evil intentions. The people just immediately judged the monster as evil. Since as far back as early Greek philosophers, beauty has been equated with good and ugliness equated with evil. In the first description of the monster, Victor Frankenstein told us that he stands eight feet tall. This would be a person of enormous stature and quite intimidating to anyone. Victor was striving to create the perfect man and in such resolves to make him beautiful.
"His limbs were in proportion, and I had
References: Shelley, M. (1818, 2000) Frankenstein. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin 's Botting, F. (2003) Metaphors and Monsters. Journal for Cultural Research, 7 (4), 339- 365. Hellston, I. (2000) Dolly Scientific Breakthrough or Frankstein 's Monster? Journalistic and Scientific Metaphors of Cloning. Metaphor & Symbol, 15 (4), 213. Padley, J. (2003) Frankenstein and (sublime) creation. Romanticism, 9 (2), 196-212 www.frankensteinfilms.com, November 29, 2007 Sommers, S. Van Helsing, Universal Pictures, 2004 Whale, J. Frankenstien, Universal Pictures, 1931