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Name: Dharaba Rayjada
Semester: 2
Roll No.: 7
Paper No.: 8 Cultural studies
Enrolment No.: 2069108420180045
Email id: dharabarayjada021@gmail.com
Year: 2017-19
Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Study of Frankenstein
‘Frankenstein’ is kind of a novel which touched every aspect of its contemporary time including the visual arts, fiction and nonfiction, stage plays, film, television, advertising, clothing, jewelry, toys, key chains, coffee mugs, games, Halloween costumes, comic books, jokes, cartoons, pornography, academic study, fan clubs, websites, and even food which have names like frankenberry. This practice has been divided in two parts first is talking about revolutionary births and second is talking about ‘Frankenstein’ in popular culture.
Revolutionary Births
As Frankenstein has become increasingly commodified by modern consumer culture, one wonders whether its original revolutionary spirit and its critique of scientific, philosophical, political, and gender issues have become obscured, or whether instead its continuing transformation attests to its essential oppositional nature. As George Levine remarks, Frankenstein is “ a vital metaphor, peculiarly appropriate to a culture dominated by a consumer technology, neurotically obsessed with ‘getting in touch’ with its authentic self and frightened at what it is discovering.” As we have many articles in magazine that warn of genetically engineered “Frankenfoods”, test tube babies, and cloning. Creature is seen as revolutionary birth and technology as monster and because of this thinking we always come to a conclusion that mew creation is always be harmful.
The Creature as proletarian
Proletarian simply means a working class which we can connect with the creature or monster and the bourgeois class is with victor who create the monster. So as bourgeois class will always wants to control the working class and if working class people start demanding their needs, high class people will consider them as monster same thing happen with monster of “Frankenstein” and victor who create monster. Johanna M. Smith calls the “alternation between fear of vengeful revolution and sympathy for the suffering poor”. Monster like the creature are indeed paradoxical. On the one hand, they transgress against “the establishment”; if the monster survives he represents the defiance of death, an image of survival, however disfigured. On the other hand, we are reassured when we see that society can capture and destroy monsters. We never think that may be the creator of creature can also be in fault we only consider creature as something bad and wants to destroy creature but never ask a question to its creator.
A Race of Devils
Here there is not a talk about black or white but a different creature which is not like others. When it comes to racism our mind started thinking about white and black and we can see this in white’s culture that whenever it comes to portray a black man or women they showing them as childlike, suffering, and degraded being. In this vein, Victor could be read as guilty slave master. Interestingly, one of Mary Shelly’s letters mentions an allusion to “Frankenstein” made on the floor of parliament by foreign secretary George Canning, speaking on March 16, 1824, on the subject of proposed ameliorations of slave conditions in the West Indies: “To turn him (the slave) loose in the manhood of his physical strength, in the maturity of his physical passion, but in the infancy of his uninstructed reason, would be to raise up a creature resembling the splendid fiction of a recent romance”. Now only because black is skin color of slave and they are different then white they jump to a conclusion that they don’t have enough sense, same thing happen with monster that just because he looks different then other people they start doubting and hitting monster which in a way shows the sense of racism.
From Natural Philosophy to Cyborg
Cyborg means partly human and partly machine. Today, in an age of genetic engineering, biotechnology, cloning, the most far reaching industrialization of life forms to date, “Frankenstein” is more relevant than ever. Developments in science were increasingly critical to society during the Romantic period, when a paradigm shift occurred from science as natural philosophy to science as biology, a crucial distinction in “Frankenstein” Mary Shelly also known about the Galvanism which are the experiments of Luigi Galvani who uses electricity for giving life to dead one and that idea Mary Shelly used in her novel. But here they show science as something harmful because the monster which is created with the help of science is at last become dangerous.
The Frankenstein in Popular culture
In the “Routledge Literary Sourcebook” on “Frankenstein”, Timothy Morton uses the term “Frankenphemes”, drawn from phonemes and graphemes, as elements of culture that are derived from “Frankenstein”. Broadly defined, Frankenphemes demonstrate the extent of the novel’s presence in world cultures, as the encoding of race and class in the 1824 Canning speech in Parliament, in today’s global debates about such things as genetically engineered foods, and of course in fiction and other media. So let’s have a look at the transformation of Frankenstein in Popular culture.
The greatest Horror story novel ever written
Frankenstein’s fictions Peter Haining, editor of the indispensable “Frankenstein Omnibus”, has called Frankenstein “the single greatest horror story novel ever written and the most widely influential in its genre”. Apparently the first writer to attempt a straightforward short tale inspired by Frankenstein was Herman Melville, whose story “The Bell-Tower” was published in “Putnam’s Monthly Magazine” in 1855. Then the first story about female monster is French author Villiers de L’Isle Adam’s “The future Eve”.
American writer W.C.Morrow published “The Surgeon’s Experiment” in “The Argonaut” in 1887. Jack London’s early story, “ A Thousand Deaths”. Frankenstein inspired the set of tales published in “Home Brew” magazine called “The Reanimator” by H.P.Lovecraft, which later become a cult classic movie, “Herbert’s West: Reanimator”. There is also some versions like Mikhail Bulgakov’s saire on Stalinist Russia, “The Master and Margarita” in 1940 and Theodore Roszak’s ecofeminist novel “The memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein” in 1995. There is a surprising amount of Frankenstein-inspired erotica, especially gay and lesbian-oriented.
Frankenstein on the stage
From his debut on the stage, the Creature has generally been made more horrific, and Victor has been assigned less blame. No dramatist would want to try for all of the complexities of the novel. In stage versions, only a few key scenes- the creation scene, the bride night and the destruction of the Creature are used. May be because in stage one can not show the whole novel because it is live and live performance are shorter in forms.
The first theatrical presentation based on Frankenstein was “Presumption, or, The Fate of Frankenstein” by Richard Brinsley Peake, performed at the English Opera House in London. This also inspired some parodies first with “Frankenstitch” in 1823, later “Franke-n-steam”, “The Devil Among the Players”, “The Man in the Moon”, “Frankenstein and His Bride” was performed at a club called strip city in Los Angeles in late 1950s. There is also children’s show like Witchiepoo and The Rocky Horror Show and that also filmed as The Ricky Horror Picture Show, which has very interesting and new character “Frank-n-furter”, a transvestite from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania and this character’s look is like gay.
Film Adaptations
James whale film Frankenstein, is the most famous of all film adaptations. It was loosely based on the novel with the addition of new elements, including the placing of criminal brain into the monster’s body. The first film version of Frankenstein, however, was produced by Thomas Edison in 1910, a one reel tinted silent. The early films, including this one, were able to move away from the melodrama and clumsy moralism of the stage productions and focus on more dreamlike and bizarre episodes that have more to do with the novel’s themes of creation.
In whale’s version there are new characters included and the criminal brain reflects the biological determinism popular among Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century. People consider heredity rather than environment, economic system, or education to be the critical factor in problems of social unrest, immigration, unemployment, and crime, and they looked to such pseudosciences as eugenics to promote the reproduction of groups judged to have sound genetic backgrounds and to prevent those who did not.
In Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” tends toward comedy, parody, and satire rather than pure horror. Some viewers note its attacks on sacred institutions like marriage and its gay subtext. It also construes the Creature more as an innocent victim, showing that he kills only when he provoked. The film which is most true to the novel is Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 “Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein” but at some level it seems most interested in the love affair between Victor and Elizabeth. These all are some example but there is lots of name which we can show as adaptations from Frankenstein.
Television Adaptations
Frankenstein has surfaced in hundreds of television adaptations, including Night Gallery, The Addams Family, The Munsters, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Scooby-Doo, Frankenstein Jr. And the Impossibles, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Simpsons, Wishbone, and so on. Perhaps the most authentic television version was Frankenstein: The True Story (NBC 1972), with script writing by Christopher Isherwood.
Conclusion
To conclude, we can see that how Frankenstein still lives. Though there are many differences made with various intensions but the text remain the ground for many works. In different adaptations the character of Creature also changes, like, in some adaptations it is innocent or in others there is implantation of criminal brain and in many others there is gay or lesbian texts. So this is how Creature and Frankenstein live in many ages and with many new themes and this changes also shows us the zeitgeist of different ages.
Name: Dharaba Rayjada
Semester: 2
Roll No.: 7
Paper No.: 8 Cultural studies
Enrolment No.: 2069108420180045
Email id: dharabarayjada021@gmail.com
Year: 2017-19
Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Study of Frankenstein
‘Frankenstein’ is kind of a novel which touched every aspect of its contemporary time including the visual arts, fiction and nonfiction, stage plays, film, television, advertising, clothing, jewelry, toys, key chains, coffee mugs, games, Halloween costumes, comic books, jokes, cartoons, pornography, academic study, fan clubs, websites, and even food which have names like frankenberry. This practice has been divided in two parts first is talking about revolutionary births and second is talking about ‘Frankenstein’ in popular culture.
Revolutionary Births
As Frankenstein has become increasingly commodified by modern consumer culture, one wonders whether its original revolutionary spirit and its critique of scientific, philosophical, political, and gender issues have become obscured, or whether instead its continuing transformation attests to its essential oppositional nature. As George Levine remarks, Frankenstein is “ a vital metaphor, peculiarly appropriate to a culture dominated by a consumer technology, neurotically obsessed with ‘getting in touch’ with its authentic self and frightened at what it is discovering.” As we have many articles in magazine that warn of genetically engineered “Frankenfoods”, test tube babies, and cloning. Creature is seen as revolutionary birth and technology as monster and because of this thinking we always come to a conclusion that mew creation is always be harmful.
The Creature as proletarian
Proletarian simply means a working class which we can connect with the creature or monster and the bourgeois class is with victor who create the monster. So as bourgeois class will always wants to control the working class and if working class people start demanding their needs, high class people will consider them as monster same thing happen with monster of “Frankenstein” and victor who create monster. Johanna M. Smith calls the “alternation between fear of vengeful revolution and sympathy for the suffering poor”. Monster like the creature are indeed paradoxical. On the one hand, they transgress against “the establishment”; if the monster survives he represents the defiance of death, an image of survival, however disfigured. On the other hand, we are reassured when we see that society can capture and destroy monsters. We never think that may be the creator of creature can also be in fault we only consider creature as something bad and wants to destroy creature but never ask a question to its creator.
A Race of Devils
Here there is not a talk about black or white but a different creature which is not like others. When it comes to racism our mind started thinking about white and black and we can see this in white’s culture that whenever it comes to portray a black man or women they showing them as childlike, suffering, and degraded being. In this vein, Victor could be read as guilty slave master. Interestingly, one of Mary Shelly’s letters mentions an allusion to “Frankenstein” made on the floor of parliament by foreign secretary George Canning, speaking on March 16, 1824, on the subject of proposed ameliorations of slave conditions in the West Indies: “To turn him (the slave) loose in the manhood of his physical strength, in the maturity of his physical passion, but in the infancy of his uninstructed reason, would be to raise up a creature resembling the splendid fiction of a recent romance”. Now only because black is skin color of slave and they are different then white they jump to a conclusion that they don’t have enough sense, same thing happen with monster that just because he looks different then other people they start doubting and hitting monster which in a way shows the sense of racism.
From Natural Philosophy to Cyborg
Cyborg means partly human and partly machine. Today, in an age of genetic engineering, biotechnology, cloning, the most far reaching industrialization of life forms to date, “Frankenstein” is more relevant than ever. Developments in science were increasingly critical to society during the Romantic period, when a paradigm shift occurred from science as natural philosophy to science as biology, a crucial distinction in “Frankenstein” Mary Shelly also known about the Galvanism which are the experiments of Luigi Galvani who uses electricity for giving life to dead one and that idea Mary Shelly used in her novel. But here they show science as something harmful because the monster which is created with the help of science is at last become dangerous.
The Frankenstein in Popular culture
In the “Routledge Literary Sourcebook” on “Frankenstein”, Timothy Morton uses the term “Frankenphemes”, drawn from phonemes and graphemes, as elements of culture that are derived from “Frankenstein”. Broadly defined, Frankenphemes demonstrate the extent of the novel’s presence in world cultures, as the encoding of race and class in the 1824 Canning speech in Parliament, in today’s global debates about such things as genetically engineered foods, and of course in fiction and other media. So let’s have a look at the transformation of Frankenstein in Popular culture.
The greatest Horror story novel ever written
Frankenstein’s fictions Peter Haining, editor of the indispensable “Frankenstein Omnibus”, has called Frankenstein “the single greatest horror story novel ever written and the most widely influential in its genre”. Apparently the first writer to attempt a straightforward short tale inspired by Frankenstein was Herman Melville, whose story “The Bell-Tower” was published in “Putnam’s Monthly Magazine” in 1855. Then the first story about female monster is French author Villiers de L’Isle Adam’s “The future Eve”.
American writer W.C.Morrow published “The Surgeon’s Experiment” in “The Argonaut” in 1887. Jack London’s early story, “ A Thousand Deaths”. Frankenstein inspired the set of tales published in “Home Brew” magazine called “The Reanimator” by H.P.Lovecraft, which later become a cult classic movie, “Herbert’s West: Reanimator”. There is also some versions like Mikhail Bulgakov’s saire on Stalinist Russia, “The Master and Margarita” in 1940 and Theodore Roszak’s ecofeminist novel “The memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein” in 1995. There is a surprising amount of Frankenstein-inspired erotica, especially gay and lesbian-oriented.
Frankenstein on the stage
From his debut on the stage, the Creature has generally been made more horrific, and Victor has been assigned less blame. No dramatist would want to try for all of the complexities of the novel. In stage versions, only a few key scenes- the creation scene, the bride night and the destruction of the Creature are used. May be because in stage one can not show the whole novel because it is live and live performance are shorter in forms.
The first theatrical presentation based on Frankenstein was “Presumption, or, The Fate of Frankenstein” by Richard Brinsley Peake, performed at the English Opera House in London. This also inspired some parodies first with “Frankenstitch” in 1823, later “Franke-n-steam”, “The Devil Among the Players”, “The Man in the Moon”, “Frankenstein and His Bride” was performed at a club called strip city in Los Angeles in late 1950s. There is also children’s show like Witchiepoo and The Rocky Horror Show and that also filmed as The Ricky Horror Picture Show, which has very interesting and new character “Frank-n-furter”, a transvestite from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania and this character’s look is like gay.
Film Adaptations
James whale film Frankenstein, is the most famous of all film adaptations. It was loosely based on the novel with the addition of new elements, including the placing of criminal brain into the monster’s body. The first film version of Frankenstein, however, was produced by Thomas Edison in 1910, a one reel tinted silent. The early films, including this one, were able to move away from the melodrama and clumsy moralism of the stage productions and focus on more dreamlike and bizarre episodes that have more to do with the novel’s themes of creation.
In whale’s version there are new characters included and the criminal brain reflects the biological determinism popular among Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century. People consider heredity rather than environment, economic system, or education to be the critical factor in problems of social unrest, immigration, unemployment, and crime, and they looked to such pseudosciences as eugenics to promote the reproduction of groups judged to have sound genetic backgrounds and to prevent those who did not.
In Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” tends toward comedy, parody, and satire rather than pure horror. Some viewers note its attacks on sacred institutions like marriage and its gay subtext. It also construes the Creature more as an innocent victim, showing that he kills only when he provoked. The film which is most true to the novel is Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 “Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein” but at some level it seems most interested in the love affair between Victor and Elizabeth. These all are some example but there is lots of name which we can show as adaptations from Frankenstein.
Television Adaptations
Frankenstein has surfaced in hundreds of television adaptations, including Night Gallery, The Addams Family, The Munsters, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Scooby-Doo, Frankenstein Jr. And the Impossibles, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Simpsons, Wishbone, and so on. Perhaps the most authentic television version was Frankenstein: The True Story (NBC 1972), with script writing by Christopher Isherwood.
Conclusion
To conclude, we can see that how Frankenstein still lives. Though there are many differences made with various intensions but the text remain the ground for many works. In different adaptations the character of Creature also changes, like, in some adaptations it is innocent or in others there is implantation of criminal brain and in many others there is gay or lesbian texts. So this is how Creature and Frankenstein live in many ages and with many new themes and this changes also shows us the zeitgeist of different ages.
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