Cultural Studies in practice: ‘Frankenstein’

       Assignment

Cultural Studies in practice: ‘Frankenstein’

Name: Kaushal Desai

Department: M.A. English department

Semester: II

Roll No: 14

To be submitted to: The Department of English,

                                M.K. Bhavnagar University

Table of Contents

Sr. No.	Title	Page No.
1.	Preface	3
2.	Frankenstein, Innocent child or Monster?	4
3.	The Modern facts	5
4.	Frank-N-Further: The Creature Lives!	6
5.	Revolutionary Births	6
6.	The creature as proletarian	7
7.	A Race of Devil	7
8.	From Natural Philosophy to Cyber	8
9.	Archetype of Frankenstein in popular culture	9
10.	Fiction	9
11.	“Frankenstein” on the stage	9
12.	Film Adaptations	10
13.	Television Adaptations	10
14	Conclusion	11
15.	Bibliography	11

◙ Cultural Studies in practice: Frankenstein

→ Preface:

          Mary Shelley’s Sci-Fi adventure, thriller and dramatize the novel in that one can do the thing which challenging the God’s creation, the cultural sign and its major aspects. In this novel we come across with mythical story or we can say culture tale like “Prometheus”, “Narcissus” and “Paradise lost”. Mary Shelley has presented very fruitfully and with appropriate facts. Her novel has morphed into countless forms in both height brow and popular culture. Her creation teaches us not to underestimate the power of youth culture. It is truly captivating powerful novel that analyzes ‘Monstrosity’ with regard to ‘humanity’. However without a sound understanding of the context, in which the text was written one couldn’t completely comprehend the themes, ideas and references did not present nor can the apparent link between monstrosity and humanity be completely fathomed.

          In the novel Victor Frankenstein is the first character, who makes a cultural discourse and who occupies our attention, a character for whom his desire to create life is everything while to accept that life is not important. For him the creation ‘Monster’ is not his child and responsibility now. In below given quote we can see his hunger for knowledge and to create a life through that knowledge:

“The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were earliest sensation I can remember”

                Humanity which sees the moral or ethical consent of the novel and by this I also want to prove my point that why Marry Shelley wants to create a male monster? But by this regard I can say through observing all aspect the aspects of novel and its study that I have, and naturally this clear when its shows the power of men and in other hand the ugliness of the monster that she wants to show and also we can say in cultural studies of this novel that, “A message on the Irony and Danger in the Quest for power” cause the generation is what that creates or challenge.

Frankenstein, Innocent child or Monster? :

Firstly we cannot say clearly but by the further reading its shows the harsh face of society and its look towards the “new born baby” by that the situation starts that also shows the other facts and the influenced by the Romantic period, the scientific inquiry of her time, and her own life that’s also examination point here. By investigating the novels scientific and philosophical context one can discern the reason behind Mary Shelley depicting the creature’s creation and development in the manner she chose to researching into the literary context provides one with superior appreciation of inter- textual references, the style in which the novel has been written and the novel’s secondary title ‘The Modern Prometheus’. Similarly an understanding of the historical context grants one the ability to identify the allegory of the industrial revolution.

The creation was made of human parts. It was in essence human can on judge this as being monstrous. Bearing in mind that the historical context and allegory of the industrial revolution. Electricity was another monumental scientific discovery of the time. One those many viewed with awe and wonder. The creature saw characteristics of himself in both Adam and Satan. Just as human that created the monster. Victor can be seen as the god who has created Adam and Eve and Satan. In Milton’s paradise lost’ god created all human being but some human did not under control of him so god departed them and theme they had become Satan. In this epic we can see Satan wants to be king. The same thing happened in the present novel victor Frankenstein has made the monster and then he wants to become the emperor of world.

Victor Frankenstein can be seen as the modern Prometheus. Again, with greater knowledge of the context the “spark of being” is further clarified. Shelley ideally represents electricity as the modern heavy fire”. The main influence on Frankenstein avoid had been through the presentation of the Promethean legend. The individual and his quest can be interpreted as Frankenstein or the creature whose journey to achieve revenge. But after all majority people see a monster looks on Frankenstein.   

The Modern facts:

What is today’s generation see towards this creation? The answer is maybe a irony and power. With regard to the text “historical context”, Frankenstein is interpreted as allegorical of the industrial revolution. Hence, from the knowledge of the novels scientific context one experiences a greater understanding of firstly where the text predominant idea had its origin, and also elucidates the creation. As it was human influence that converted the creature into an “evil” being. Some negative aspects can be seen as monstrous if they resulted from humans from the texts scientific context one can see that victor Frankenstein achievement was the objective for many scientists of that time. References to Milton “paradise lost” reoccur throughout the novel. Sound knowledge of paradise lost one is able to identify the parallels between paradise lost and Frankenstein. However the Gods Frankenstein punished Prometheus was punished by his own creation.

Frankenstein’s rejection of his Monster can be interpreted to be a representation of man being ironically disgusted at sin his own sin. He can be likened to a man who has condemned fornication in public. He keeps going to motels and sex clubs in secret. What Frankenstein created in his Monster is in one way a mirror of his own soul. He made the Monster through his rejection, not through the lab experiments. His ‘evil side’ was transferred or loneliness. Frankenstein and Monster were both lonely in the world.

Actually some facts we can find that Mary Shelley presented her views that can be a matter but how she think of writing a novel like this? According to me, I can say that her time is the substance here. Or the facts of cultural aspects and society’s dark side or one can say a evilness that shown. The novel starts with letters and in which we observe that Mary Shelley is outsider of the novel. The novel itself begins with a series of letters from the explorer Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville. Walton, a well-to-do Englishman with a passion for seafaring, is the captain of a ship headed on a dangerous voyage to the North Pole. In the first letter, he tells his sister of the preparations leading up to his departure and of the desire burning in him to accomplish “some great purpose” discovering a northern passage to the Pacific, revealing the source of the Earth’s magnetism, or simply setting foot on undiscovered territory.

Frank-N-Further: The Creature Lives!:

Mary Shelly’s Creature in Frankenstein is paradoxical. One can say that Frankenstein is a not monster but a made a warrior who is brave and strong person but in the way of the novel we cannot say anything like this when Mary Shelley writes like this;

“…its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy, daemon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did that idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my teeth chattered, and I was forced lean against a tree for support. The figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom.”

                                                                                                                              (Shelley, 64)

 On the one hand, they transgress against “the establishment.” On the other hand, we are reassured when we see that society can capture and destroy monsters. Shelly’s creation teaches us not to underestimate the power of youth culture.

As I can more interrupt something in this matter I would like to give example of ‘Theory of Frankenstein’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’. Moreover, Cultural sign in Frankenstein made to be a Frankentheme and the heart of the novel irony. How the Victor creates a way of live, and how the Frankenstein throws any as a orphan and suffering from society’s cruelness. Even Victor’s reliance upon defensive idealization represents one the major narcissistic feature of his. He repeatedly makes one statement about his childhood that;

“No human being could have childhood passed a happier than me”

                                                                                                                  (Shelley, 24)

      

Revolutionary Births:

Hardly a day goes by without our seeing an image or illusion to Frankenstein, from CNN descriptions of Saddam Hussein as an “American-created Frankenstein.” Born like its creator in an age of revolution, Frankenstein challenged accepted ideas of its day. As it has become increasingly co modified by modern consumer culture, one wonders whether its original revolutionary spirit and its critique of scientific, philosophical, and political and gender issues have become obscured instead its continuing transformation attests to its essential oppositional nature. Hardly a day goes by without out seeing an image or allusion to magazine articles that warn of genetically engineered “Frankenstein”, test-tube babies, and cloning.

    

The creature as proletarian:

                       

            We recall from earlier chapters that Mary Shelly lived during times of great upheaval in Britain, not only was her own family full of radical thinkers but she also met many others such as Thomas Paine and William Blake, P.B.Shelley was thought of as a dangerous radical bent on labor reform and was spied upon by the government. Shelly also met many others such as Thomas Paine and William Blake. Mary Shelly’s Creature and moral paradox, both an innocent and cold-blooded murderer. Not only are the eternal questions about the ways of God and man in Paradise Lost relevant to the Creature’s predicament, but in Milton’s epic poem, as Timothy Morton puts it, as a “seminal work of republicanism and sublime that inspired many of the Romantics.” We can take help of the example from Milton’s “paradise lost”. In this epic God governed Satan. He thought it is better to rule in hell rather than heaven.

A Race of Devil:

Frankenstein may be analyzed in its portrayal of different “races”. Though the creature’s skin is only described as yellow, it has been constructed out of a cultural tradition of the threatening ‘other’ or giant, gypsy or Negro.

        Though the abolitionists wished to portray the black man or woman as brother or sister, they also created an image of the African as a childlike, suffering and degraded being. 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. The labors are not educated people and this concept we can see in the present novel.

From Natural Philosophy to Cyber:

       Today in the age of genetic engineering, biotechnology and 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 Shelley attended public demonstrations of the effect of electricity on animal and human bodies, living and dead. Has science gone too far? According to cultural critic Laura Kranzler, Victor’s creation of life and modern sperm banks and artificial wombs show a “masculine desire to claim female productivity” (Kranzler 45). 

‘Luigi Galvani's frog leg experiments’

Actually today we are constantly confronted with new developments in fertility science and new philosophical conundrums that result from genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, cloning and the prolongation of life by artificial means. Couples taking fertility treatments sometimes have to face the difficult choice of “selective reduction” or the possible adverse results of multiple premature births. People wonder, has science gone too far? According to cultural critic, victor’s creation of life and modern sperm banks and artificial wombs show a masculine to claim female reproductively”. “Frankenstein” and its warnings about the hubris of science will be with us in the future as science continues to question the borders between life and death, between viability and selective reduction between living and life support. We can take example of a doctor who lives in Anand. He knows about the surrogate mother.

Archetype of Frankenstein in popular culture:

Timothy Morton uses the term Frankenstein, drawn from sonic elements of language, as used in structural linguistics and visual elements as “elements of culture that are derived from “Frankenstein”. We end with a quick look at some of the thousands of retelling, parodies and other selected Frankenphemes as they have appeared in popular fiction, drama, film and television. 

Fiction:

           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”. The first story about a female monster is French author Villiers de Lisle Adam’s “the future Eve”, an 188 novelette not translated into English until fifty years later, in which an American inventor modes on Thomas Edison makes an artificial woman for his friend. Jack London’s early story, “A thousand Deaths” (189), is a gruesome science fiction tale of a scientist who stays at sea on his laboratory ship, repeatedly killing then reviving his son, until the son has enough and kills his father.

“Frankenstein” on the stage:

From his debut on the stage, the creature has generally been made more horrified and victor has been assigned less blame. Most stage and screen versions are quite melodramatic, tending to eliminate minor characters and the entire frame structure in order to focus upon murder and Mayhem. Dramatist would not want to try for all of the complexities of the novel. In stage versions only a few key scenes, the creation of the creature are used. On the nineteenth century stage, the creature was a composite of frightening makeup and human qualities. He could even appear clownish, recalling Shakespeare’s Caliban.

      The first theatrical presentation based on “Frankenstein” was “The fate of Frankenstein” by Richard Brinsley Peak; performed at the English Opera House in London Mary Shelley herself attended the play and pronounced it authentic. But this “serious” drama immediately inspired parodies, first with “Frankenstein” in 1823, a burlesque featuring a tailor, who as the “Needle Prometheus” sews a body out of nine corpses.

Film Adaptations:

          In the “Frankenstein omnibus” readers can study the screenplay for the 1931 James whale film “Frankenstein”, the most famous of all adaptations. It was loosely based on the novel with the addition of new elements, including the placing of a criminal brain into the monster’s body. Thomas Edison in 1910, a one, however produced the first film version of “Frankenstein” –reel tinted silent. Early German films that were heavily influenced by this “Frankenstein” were the cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1920). The golem (1920) and Metropolis (192). In whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) there is a return to the frame structure but this time we begin with Mary Shelley discussing her novel with P.B.Shelley. She is played by Elsa LAN Chester, who also plays the female creature, with her during black eyes an queen; this one tends toward comedy, parody and satire rather than pure horror.

Television Adaptations:

 

“Frankenstein has surfaced in hundreds of television adaptations, including “Night Gallery, The Addams family, The Munster, star trek. The next generation, notable television creatures have included Bo Swenson, Randy quad, David Warner and Ian Holm. Perhaps the most authentic television version was “Frankenstein” The true story (192) with script writing Christopher Isherwood and acting by James Mason.

♀ To be Conclude

            I just want to say that it’s really interesting to study with the purpose of cultural facts and the result is as we discussed a lot and we get the decode of this novel’s study with Cultural aspects.

Bibliography

 

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Vol. I. n.d.

 

Frankenstein. By Mary Shelley. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. Perf. Tom Hulce, Ian Holm, John Cleese, Aidan Quinn Robert De Niro. Prod. Francis Ford Coppola. 1994.

"Theory of Frankenstein." www.studyguide.com.