“His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black and flowing; his teeth 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 shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”
Thus does Victor Frankenstein describe his creation in Mary Shelley’s seminal work. The popular image of a monster created out of stolen body parts and given the spark of life through electricity is thanks to the 1931 film of the same name from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale, with Boris Karloff playing the monster.
Published on January 1, 1818 when Shelley was just 20, Frankenstein was the result of a contest between Mary, her husband, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron to write horror stories. The book tells the story of a brilliant scientist, Frankenstein, who upon discovering how to create life, fashions a man. Repulsed by his creation, he rejects it. The creature, initially benign, turns on Frankenstein when he is rejected by human beings.
There are three narrative strands in the novel. Captain Walton, who is on a voyage of exploration to the North Pole, provides the frame narrative in the form of letters to his sister. There is Frankenstein, telling his horrific tale to Walton, and the monster’s tale.
The monster’s plight is poignant — all he wants is companionship and acceptance, which man is not willing to give. Though he reads and identifies with Milton’s Paradise Lost , the monster doesn’t belong to any place or person.
Though Mary was deeply influenced by Milton’s epic — the epigraph is from Paradise Lost — Frankenstein is apparently quite similar to Shelley, which makes one wonder about the marriage. Fatherhood is one of the main themes of the book. While Frankenstein’s father and the cottagers’ father are examples of good fathers, Frankenstein’s abnegation of responsibility for his creation is most definitely not.
While the novel has all the characteristics of the Romantic movement, celebrating genius and individual enterprise, its Gothic elements as well as technology places it firmly at the forefront of horror and science fiction. The fear of our creations turning on us is a constant trope in both the genres — from machines becoming self-aware in the Terminator movies to the android David in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequels Prometheus and Covenant .
Incidentally, the sub-title of Frankenstein is The Modern Prometheus , based on the myth of the Titan who created humans from clay, taught us to use fire and was condemned to having his liver pecked for all eternity for his pains.
The Cambridge English Dictionary describes Frankenstein as “something that destroys or harms the person or people who created it,” and Isaac Asimov described the fear of robots as the “Frankenstein complex”.
From these esoteric beginnings, in popular culture, Frankenstein (the monster doesn’t have a name and is erroneously called by his creator’s name) has been templated as this gigantic shambling, stumbling creature made of disparate parts with the joins, stitches, nuts and bolts for all to see.
Young Frankenstein (1974), Mel Brooks’ affectionate homage to the Universal films, complete with Igor and machines from the original, was a hoot. Kenneth Branangh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), with Branangh playing Frankenstein and Robert De Niro playing the monster, was earnest. Closest to the novel, featuring Walton and his Arctic explorations, the movie wasn’t much fun.
This image released by Lionsgate shows Aaron Eckhart in a scene from "I, Frankenstein." (AP Photo/Lionsgate, Ben King)
Frank Darabont, who had written the original script, called the film “the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen.” Guillermo Del Toro, who described Darabont’s script as “near perfect”, has always wanted to do a Frankenstein, and apparently already cast the monster. Universal’s fraught Dark Universe was to follow up The Mummy (2017) with Bride of Frankenstein. Originally set for a February 2019 release, the reboot was to be directed by Bill Condon with Javier Bardem as the monster and Angelina Jolie.
I, Frankenstein (2014), written and directed by Stuart Beattie, was fun for Bill Nighy’s teeth-gnashing, while Aaron Eckhart as the monster fights armies of the undead. That he was called Adam recalled the creature’s plaintive “I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel.” And then there is Frank, complete with flat head and bolt in the neck in Hotel Transylvania as Mavis’ favourite uncle. Who would have thought a ghost story written by a teenager would be responsible for two centuries of thrills?
Published - September 10, 2018 03:12 pm IST
