Case Study: Week 15:
Contemporary Renditions of the
Frankenstein Myth
Draft Written by: Jason McKahan
Edited by:
Dr. Kay Picart
Web Design by:
Michaela Densmore
Edited by Dr. Kay Picart and Michaela Densmore © 2001
Introduction
• The aim of this lecture is to focus on
the treatment of the Frankenstein
myth in more recent films, Frankenstein 1970 (Koch 1958) and Mary
Shelley’s
Frankenstein
(Branagh
1994).
• In specific, we aim to examine how
these films illustrate the changing
visualization and narration of the myth.
Frankenstein 1970
• As Picart notes, Frankenstein 1970
(Koch, 1958), is a particularly interesting rendition insofar as it problematizes the process of capturing
Frankenstein on film.
Frankenstein 1970
• The film begins with what appears to
be another version of a Frankenstein
film.
• A montage sequence builds tension by
cutting back and forth between a shot
of a blonde woman as she runs
through the woods screaming and the
legs and clawed hands of a monster
who chases her.
Frankenstein 1970
• She repeatedly stumbles and runs into
a lake in an attempt to evade the
monster.
• The monster follows her into the lake
and begins to choke her, pushing the
woman under the water.
Frankenstein 1970
• However, we soon learn that this is
only the scene of a Frankenstein
movie production, when the male
director’s voice calls “Cut!” and the
next shot reveals a film crew on the
shore.
Frankenstein 1970
• Thus, as Picart argues, from the
opening, Frankenstein 1970 seems to
be a meta-fiction on the making of
Frankenstein films and contains
caricatures of those involved in such a
production.
Frankenstein 1970
• First, there is the mad scientist who
appears
as himself, with
his
obsequious servant.
• Second, we see the rest of the crew,
an arrogant and profiteering director,
an artsy cinematographer and a
blonde actress, who becomes a
sexual object/victim of the film within a
film.
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart observes that the obsessive
media commercialism that undergirds
such renditions of the Frankenstein
myth ultimately is parodied by the
plodding slaughter of the crew by the
monster.
Frankenstein 1970
• In the first scene, the director, Douglas
Roe, asks the cinematographer how
the first scene looked, to which he
responds, “Like a Rembrandt.”
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart maintains that this is an absurd
comparison because they equivocate
their B-film work with the aesthetic of
Baroque painting, in a manner not
unlike
Hollywood’s
commercial
plundering of Shelley’s Romantic
novel.
Frankenstein 1970
• Likewise, exploitation of women as
victims in the Hollywood narrative is
parodied by the blonde actress, when
she glibly remarks, “How I suffer for
Douglas Roe, Madison Avenue and all
those lovely sponsors,” and continues
to recall her victimization by celluloid
Indians, wild expeditions and now,
“200th Anniversary of Frankenstein.”
Frankenstein 1970
• In addition to this exploitation, Picart
comments how the director has his
own sexual designs on her and that
her fate as an actress is fairly obvious,
given the sacrifices of youth and
beauty for an all too brief stint of
celebrity.
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart points out how Frankenstein
1970 is absorbed in clichés of Germanic references found in the film
adaptations of Frankenstein.
• The actor who plays the monster
cannot speak English, but has to be
given directions in German by Baron
Frankenstein’s servant, Schuter.
Frankenstein 1970
• The actor’s first name is “Hans”, and
his last name is allusive to the Nazi
head of the Gestapo, the Waffen-SS
and organizer of the mass murder of
Jews in the Third Reich, “Himmler.”
• In fact, the conflation of Nazism with
the Germanic is further brought out by
the previous circumstances of Baron
Frankenstein.
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart calls attention to the baron’s
“hideous physical disfiguring,” a result
of his having been tortured by the
Nazis, with the exception of his hands,
which they kept unblemished as they
attempted to force him to participate in
their maniacal surgical procedures.
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart also notes that the Germanic
specter haunts the film and eclipses
the repugnant experiments of the
baron.
• Although the baron did not give into
the Nazis, he nevertheless represents
that same militant ruthlessness.
Frankenstein 1970
• This connection between the monstrous and German Fascism highlights
the American essentialist thought
concerning Germans as a whole following the Holocaust.
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart sees this as a parallelism
between the baron and Nazism, as far
as his malformed corpus is a rebirth of
Nazi brutality and the baron himself
recognizes his national kinship with
the regime.
• “They believed in one thing. I believed
in another. But they were running the
country. That was my misfortune.”
Frankenstein 1970
• The interior of the castle functions for
the director, Douglas Roe, as a live set
for his fetishism of Hollywood realism.
• Before the crew returns from the shoot
in the forest, we cut to the interior as
the baron and his friend, Wilhelm
Gotfried, discuss the annoyance of the
ever-present film crew.
Frankenstein 1970
• This sacrifice of privacy is made to
sustain the dwindling fortune of the
Frankenstein estate and purchase an
atomic reactor for the baron’s lab.
• Note how Cold War anxieties of
nuclear paraphernalia renovate the
technological shadow in this version –
it is in no way made apparent just how
the reactor is employed!
Frankenstein 1970
• Picart is particularly interested in this
scene to the extent that it “highlights a
disagreement concerning Frankenstein’s character.”
• Whereas Gotfried represents the
baron as a martyr, who survived the
menacing presence of the Nazi
regime, the baron mockingly recalls
his “Victory” of retaining his surgeon’s
hands.
Frankenstein 1970
• Although Gotfried stresses the baron’s
steadfast mind and spirit, the baron
accentuates his bodily suffering and
resultant deformation.
• Picart reasons that the baron realizes
the futility of the mind/body split, which
figures prominently in the Frankensteinian monster of the novel, but is
rendered inoperative within the cinematic adaptations.
Frankenstein 1970
• However,
Gotfried
steers
the
conversation to the subject of Frankenstein’s secretive experiments, as
Picart posits, as if to “awaken Frankenstein’s conscience, and to save his
tortured friend from himself . . .”
Frankenstein 1970
• The next scene repeats the metanarrative function in that we observe
the baron narrating the history of his
ancestors, while he paces about the
family crypt, only to be reminded that
the crew is present and that they are
merely rehearsing a scene for the film.
Frankenstein 1970
• While the realism of the scene pleases
the director, Roe, this same effect
causes Caroline to scream, and
petrifies Hans.
• We, the audience, sense that it is pure
biography.
• Picart considers the function of Roe as
the comforter of Caroline (as victim).
Frankenstein 1970
• This is juxtaposed with the cynicism of
Judy, Roe’s divorcee and script
supervisor, in her mocking of Roe’s
new infatuation with Caroline:
• “Judy
is
the
most
cruelly
circumscribed by this iteration of the
Frankenstein narrative, and occupies
the position of the female-asmonstrous, the shadow formed from
the conjunction of the feminine and
the monstrous.”
Frankenstein 1970
• Finally, Picart draws an appealing
parallel between Roe and the baron,
even though handsomeness and
disfiguration are perhaps contrasted.
• Roe is “manipulative, domineering,
and thoroughly obsessed with anything that will enable him to maximize
the economic and prestige-related
benefits of creating a television production.”
Frankenstein 1970
• Similar to Frankenstein’s creation of
beings lingering between life and
death, Roe participates in an act of
film production between reality and
fiction.
• Picart reads the film production in
relation to male birthing, relating how
one crew member says about the film,
“Okay, it’s your baby.”
Frankenstein 1970
• Lastly, both the baron and Roe share
an infatuation with the blonde actress,
“a woman who ‘sacrifices’ herself
upon the high altar of commercialism
and celluloid fantasy.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• The next film we will critique is Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein (Branagh
1994), one of the most recent renditions of the Frankenstein myth.
• If Frankenstein 1970 identifies monstrosity with Fascism as a Cold War
text, then we will see the attempt in
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to
equalize gender within the context of a
postmodern dialogue.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is of
particular interest to Picart because it
attempts “to visualize what resists
visualization in the original novel.”
• In James Heffernan’s words, Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein “prompts us to
rethink [the monster’s] monstrosity in
terms of visualization: how do we see
the monster, what does he see, and
how does he want to be seen?”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• In addition, Picart finds this film an
interesting work with which to analyze
representations of the “three shadows
that hover between appearance and
disappearance.”
• By way of concluding our study of the
horror genre, we will examine the
evolving thematics of the Monstrous in
relation to gender and technology.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• In an early scene in the castle
ballroom, we, the spectators, view
Victor
and
Elizabeth
gracefully
dancing.
• If we compare the Universal series
representation of Elizabeth to this
scene, we will find a stark contrast
between
those
domesticated,
essentially a-sexual women and this
apparently strong-willed and passionate Elizabeth.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart observes a clear revision of the
original novel in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in that equal gender relations between Victor and Elizabeth are
sought in this cinematic version.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart quotes Branagh’s conscious
decisions
concerning
gender
representation:
• “We couldn’t be strictly authentic to
the period, because I wanted to say at
every stage: These two people are
equal.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• However, it does not seem clear
exactly what Branagh means by
“authentic to the period.”
• Does he mean to the Romantic
(Shelley’s) period or the period of
Universal’s patriarchal representations
of gender relations?
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• What is clear is that for Branagh,
equality adds up to substituting
repression with a contrived “individual
consent” to patriarchal dominance in
Elizabeth’s character.
• For instance, of their parting Branagh
states, “She allows him to go off,
because that is what he needs to do.
It’s not what she needs-she wants to
stay at home” (Picart’s italics).
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Even if we concede that Elizabeth
truly desires this domestic role, it is
clear that she is diminished into a
peripheral companion of Victor, the
active male, who “makes things
happen” and is central to guiding the
narrative.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart takes this recreation of
Elizabeth’s character as a possible
substitute for the novel’s role of Henry
Clerval, who functions “as Victor’s
genuine and spiritual complement. . .”
and “nurses him back to health when
he is on the verge of madness and
death.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart argues that this results in a
“stronger female character, and thus
enables a shadow of Baubo’s
repressed myth of female erotic and
reproductive power to emerge.”
• Simultaneously, it reduces Henry’s
character to a comic sidekick, whose
failures at the operating table reinforce
Victor’s brilliance and erases the
homoerotic tensions of the original
novel.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Finally, Picart observes that the
attempt to empower Elizabeth’s character is ultimately undermined by the
parthenogenetic myth.
• Elizabeth is excluded from the male
self-birthing and is doomed to die
twice – her second death, a suicide,
much like Christina Kleve’s in
Frankenstein Created Woman, is her
only “choice.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• During the parthenogenetic birth, we
see Victor’s laboratory at last.
• Its birthing apparatus consists of a
scrotum shaped sack full of electric
eels that will later be released into the
womb shaped sarcophagus in which
the monster lies.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart interprets this sarcophagus, a
metal “womb” in which normally
corpses are laid, as a fitting visual
appropriation of the nurturing power of
the womb.
• She then proceeds to claim, “the
hyperbolization of the power of the
scrotum . . . ironically capitulates to the
ancient belief, articulated by Aristotle,
among others, that the woman is
simply a warm vessel that provides
nutrients, rather than contributes to, the
generation of the child.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Thus, the apparatus conceals the
feminine mythic counterpart, the
scandal of Baubo’s ana-suromai, and
stresses the male dominance in the
parthenogenetic birth.
• This particularly masculine selfbirthing is further highlighted in the
sequence in which Victor brings the
monster into life.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• He enters the scene wearing a redorange cape and resembles Merlin the
Magician.
• This sequence is erotically charged to
the extent that Victor removes his
cape to reveal his muscular form and
release the sperm shaped eels from
the scrotum shaped container into the
womb shaped sarcophagus.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Reminiscent of Frankenstein (1931),
Victor peers through the porthole of
the apparatus and cries, “Live, Live,
Live!”
• After Victor has assumed that the
experiment is a failure, we see the
hand of the creature move, and when
the sarcophagus begins to shudder,
Victor utters, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• However, this scene radically
differs from the 1931 version
in its bare analogue between
the parthenogenetic process
and human birthing.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• As Picart observes, the lead bolts of
the sarcophagus burst free and Victor
slips in amniotic deluge that shoots
forth from the artificial womb: “an act
that simulates a pregnant woman’s
loss of amniotic fluid that initiates
labor.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Furthermore, Picart notes: “In a
riveting revision [of the original script],
the film has Victor pushing fluid out of
the creature’s lungs by pushing
against his chest—a procedure done
to newly born babies by holding them
upside down to drain any fluid
remaining in the lungs.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• However, Picart stresses that rather
than stressing the wondrous phenomenon that these parallels to natural
birthing might suggest, this sequence
is from a particularly masculine point
of view and expresses an ambivalently
misogynistic repulsion with the
process of birth.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• The second birthing is that of the
female monster, Elizabeth-Justine.
• Picart comments that this second
parthenogenetic sequence duplicates
the first with one major exception:
the surging of the eels from the
scrotum shaped container into the
womb shaped sarcophagus: “. . .
[this] powerful visual cue [is] kept
harnessed within the realm of the
birthing of the male creature.”
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Another difference from the male
birthing that Picart detects is the
demented waltz of Victor and
Elizabeth-Justine, during which closeup flashes of Victor and Elizabeth’s
earlier waltz are intercut.
• However, soon the dissonant waltz
music abruptly stops as Victor notices
the presence of the male monster.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Now a rivalry between the creator and
the monster arises.
• Whereas Victor claims possession of
the female monster because she
remembers his name, the monster
declares ownership derived from their
physiological affinity and method of
birth.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart sees this sequence as an
extension and revision of Whale’s
Bride of Frankenstein.
• First, the “bride” once again wears a
wedding gown resembling a soiled
shroud.
• Second, the female is again trapped
between two men who attempt to
control her.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• However, Picart distinguishes these
similar sequences to the extent that
Elizabeth-Justine is truly hideous, as
opposed to the mixture of beauty and
the grotesque found in the Bride of
Frankenstein.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• In addition, unlike the female
monster’s clear rejection of the male
monster in Bride of Frankenstein,
Elizabeth-Justine’s choice is more
ambiguous.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• However, Elizabeth-Justine, looking at
her scarred hands and feeling her
face, soon realizes what Victor has
done and her knowledge leads to her
self-destruction
(the
narrative
ritualistically demands this).
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• Picart argues that although Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein most endows
the shadow of the female creature
with some degree of freedom and
sympathy, it still relegates the monstrous female to the sphere of the
inarticulate and powerless.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• It is also noted by Picart that the
potential reproductive power of the
female monster is never a focus in the
film; rather, she is the object of erotic
desire, as in the Hammer series.
Evolution of Frankenstein Films
- Conclusion
• Our study of the generic evolution of
the horror genre, specifically the
Frankenstein myth, provides insight
into the simultaneous affirmation and
negation of ideological progressivism
and conservatism.
Evolution of Frankenstein Films
- Conclusion
• To close this section, it is important to
note that what Part III of this course
has aimed to convey is that the
evolution of the cinematic Frankensteins both reveals and conceals anxieties of gender and technology that
are mythically negotiated by framing
and generating three “shadows.”
Evolution of Frankenstein Films
- Conclusion
• The first type is the feminized or
inferior shadow (hyper-domesticated
Elizabeths and absent mothers).
• The second type is the monstrous or
overdeveloped shadow (the male
creature as a voiceless brute, unlike
the novel).
Evolution of Frankenstein Films
- Conclusion
• Lastly, the third type is an intricate
conjunction of the first two: the
shadow of the female monster or the
female / feminine-as-monstrous (the
short-lived female monster and the
sexual or aggressive female).
• The female thus becomes a triple
threat: as female, as the unnaturally
birthed, and as the potentially
pregnant.
Evolution of Frankenstein Films
- Conclusion
• Thus, this course closes with a study
of Frankenstein films as a more specialized topic to which earlier tools of
film critical analysis, which are
pertinent to the characterization of the
ideological representations of gender,
race, class and sexuality in popular
Holly-wood film, are applied.
Evolution of Frankenstein Films
- Conclusion
• As such, it serves as test case for
whether all the prior tools of analysis
have been incorporated into a viable
vocabulary and whether a general
methodology for analyzing the conventions of classical Hollywood cinema has been integrated into the way
in which we, audience, consume films.
Final Words from
Your Instructors
• We hope you have enjoyed our
quick
run
through
the
essentials of film form and
theory, and that viewing films
from now on will still be a
pleasurable, but not uncritical,
process.
Final Words from
Your Instructors
• And like all good movies, this course
come to an end . . .
• “. . . And . . . CUT!”