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STEIN
March 24, 2000
Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein",
is haunted by the ghosts of many movies.
Reading it gave me a renewed appreciation
for the early 30s Frankenstein film.
Everyone knows of course that the monster
of the novel learns to speak eloquently,
while the movie has him remain
inarticulate.
But the stitched together body covered
with scars, brought to life by a lightening
bolt... that's all the invention of the No neck bolts
film, not the novel. for easy jump
starts, either.
What technology did Shelley have
in mind for the creation of the
monster?
Shelley seems to imagine
Victor Frankenstein
mixing up flesh out of
raw chemicals. The
phrase "spark of being"
is used once, but there's
no other allusion to
electricity. And his
trips to the graveyard
are more a matter of
anatomical studies,
understanding death in
order to tease out the
secret of life. He
denies being able to "I thought that if I
revive the dead -- which could bestow animation
would be an obvious upon lifeless matter, I
spinoff app of the might in the process of
technology of the film. time (although I now
found it impossible)
renew life where death
had apparently devoted
the body to corruption."
FRANKENSTEINS_QUOTATION
Here's Victor's first impression of his
creation:
"His limbs were in proportion, and I had
selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!
Great God! his yellow skin scarcely covered
the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his
hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his
teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these
luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast
with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the
same colour as the dun-white sockets in which
they were set, his shriveled complexion and
straight black lips."
And that's about it for the
physical description. There's
no mention of scars or seams.
And despite being told repeatedly how
horrible he looks, he sounds more like
a tall goth with a skin condition.
There are all sorts of possibilities in
this material only hinted at by Shelley.
For example, Frankenstein regards these
creations as a new species, and worries
about them breeding a new race that preys
on humans.
It's not clear if the monster could
breed with a human female.
(It also isn't clear how well Shelley,
writing around 1818, understood these
matters... But then, Edgar Rice Burroughs
remained confused on through the 1940s.
And we will not ask where Spock came from.)
What if Frankenstein had created the
bride, and sent the pair of them off
to the new world? The mind reels at the
thought of the new genre of cowboys,
indians and monsters... (And suppose the
monsters sided with the native americans?)
Or maybe they would settle up North, in
the French provinces (since they mind the
cold, not at all). They could find
themselves recruited to fight the English
colonies down south, and re-make the map
of America...
But somehow I imagine
them just settling
down in Europe.
How monstrous are
they, after all?
What if Frankenstein were not quite
such an irresponsible 'parent'?
Charmed by the little smile
with which the big lug first
greets existence, Victor resolves
to give him a solid classical education.
The monster is a quick study, with
maturity of an adult combined with the
intellectual flexibility of a child.
Victor settles down with Elizabeth, and
she helps out with the lessons, glad to be
let in on the project. They legally adopt
the monster, formally giving him the name
of Frankenstein (and unwittingly allaying
confusion in the minds of millions
everywhere). But everyone just calls him
Cornelius. Cornelius A. Frankenstein.
Victor publishes his results and they all
become celebrities, invited to tour Europe.
At first Cornelius
often wears dark glasses
to hide his watery eyes, but people
seem to get used to them after awhile.
And a young oculist makes a name for himself
by coming up with a formula of eyedrops
to treat the condition.
Everyone is impressed with the
monster's elegance, and the heavy
make-up he uses to cover his yellow
skin gives him a kind of foppish,
ambiguous sexuality. All the women
want to know if Frankenstein created
*everything* about him in proportion.
Elizabeth succumbs to the
temptation, but the
divorce is relatively
peaceful...
Discretion being the better
part of valor when
contemplating a duel with a
7 foot tall monster.
Having pulled a Woody Allen,
Elizabeth finds it advisable
to move to France. The
monster becomes a pianist,
renown for his impressive
reach. They hang out a lot
with Chopin and Liszt, until
George Sand writes a novel
about them, using rather
transparent pseudonyms (there
being few artificial giants
around). Resenting the
unflattering portrait, the
couple move back to Geneva.
Anyway, though the trips
to the South of France
had been nice, they
were very hard on the
monster's allergies.
Victor Frankenstein himself retreats to
Scotland and earns a fortune breeding
a new line of pets with the worst
features of cats, dogs and horses.
They're like hissing Chihuahuas with
little razor sharp hooves that chew up
the hard wood floors. But people love
them anyway.
The Church spent quite a lot of time
debating the deep theological
implications of these developments
(Expressing an attitude summed up very
well recently by an AM radio personality
that asked "Do clones have *souls*?").
But the Church dithered around on this for
a few years, and the obvious popularity
that Cornelius enjoyed helped discourage
any overt restrictions against creating
new species.
Pretty soon the economic importance of the
new creations trumped the theological
implications, which is perhaps not a great
surprise.
Victor continues his researches,
And realizes that it isn't quite so
difficult to revive the recently
dead.
Medical science rejoices, and if a
monster gets a little excited and
crushes a few throats, well that's a
fixable problem now.
Things are threatening to get a little
crowded with the expected lifespan of much
of Europe shooting off to infinity, but in
the time honored juggling act of
technological advances, Victor gets to
work on cranking out fixes for the
inevitable problems of a new biological
industrial revolution so close on the
heels of the first.
He comes up with a few good tries,
notably a line of food animals that
can live on almost anything... (rancid
cooking oil; crab grass; wet
newspapers... even Liverwurst).
The scavengers are very good at
cleaning up human messes and
greatly simplify the sewage
treatment problems of London and
Paris.
But it turns out that the cutting
edge of science has passed Victor
by. He's greatly respected as the
founder of electro-orthogenesis,
but once he opened the door, there
was no stopping the young turks:
They're a veritable fountain of
alternate monster designs, and they
hit on a very successful competitor
that's less territorial, with strong
herd instincts. It enjoys living
together in tight quarters.
They hardly mind being packed away
into ghettos when they're not needed
for anything.
After awhile Victor is dismissed
as a bitter cranky old man who
hasn't had a good idea in years.
And he just won't let go of that
obsession with strangle-proof
voiceboxes.
A closing quote:
"To examine the causes of life, we must first
have recourse to death. I became acquainted
with the science of anatomy, but this was not
sufficient; I must also observe the natural
decay and corruption of the human body."
"... I was forced to spend the days and
nights in vaults and charnel-houses."
"I paused, examining and analyzing all the
minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the
change from life to death, and death to life,
until from the midst of this darkness a
sudden light broke in upon me - a light so
brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that
while I became dizzy with the immensity of
the prospect which it illustrated, I was
surprised that among so many men of genius
who has directed their enquires towards the
same science, that I alone should be reserved
to discover so astonishing a secret."
"I succeeded in discovering the cause of
generation and life; nay, more, I became
myself capable of bestowing animation upon
lifeless matter."
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