Frankenstein 1818 or the modern Prometheus

• Prometheus was the titan who gave ‘fire’ to men. He is associated with creation of men; he is associated
with craftsmanship.
• Frankenstein is a scientist who created a creature – the creation of the creature is associated also with
fire.
• Association with Prometheus is important, it rings the bell in terms of this association with fire and the
creation of men.
• The Architecture of the novel the wat in which the novel is structured. Frankenstein begins in epistolary
form with a series of letters which are written by a man whose name is Richard Walton. Walton as you
know is not a scientist, it is an explorer, but he shares his ambition of knowledge with Frankenstein.
Geographical knowledge rather than scientific knowledge. LIMITES AMBITION
• He meets Victor F. at the end of the story. This is an important strategy because it is a strategy often
used in Gothic fiction. Elements of fantastic, that goes beyond the rules that we ruled our world.
• Walton’s story has the function of framing the story in a realistic frame, and in the novel Walton
represents the standard reader /average.
• On the other hand, Walton is also placing the role of representing the reader on the story because it is to
him that Frankenstein is about to tell the story, therefore, Walton plays the role of witness. And makes
the story credible.
• The story is told in the first-person reader perspective narrative voice. The voice of Victor F. the creator
of the story. Narrative flashback. To the beginning. Two Frankenstein old and young.
• Implications of the first-person narrative voice have to do with the fact if you in command of the story,
and you have only one voice you exercise power because you in control of the story.
• It is biases, unreliability, one version of the story- subjective it becomes the truth.
• BUT AS A CERTAIN POINT IN THIS NOVEL MARY SHELLEY DOES SOMETHING WHICH IS
INOVATING THAT IS TO GIVE VOICE TO THE CREATURE. One the most important thinks in the
novel
• We no longer have one truth; we have 2 versions. 2 interpretation of the same reality. That story
subverts the story that is being told. Immediately questions, immediately exercises, breaks the reality that
describes to imposed itself. The power that has being exercised by Frankenstein by telling story of his life
is subverted by the creature.
• As Mary Shelley is female writer contributes to her this sensibility to towards silence others. NOVEL
IS RECEPTIVE by silence others and gives them a voice (the creature) never has a name. IT (pronoun)
represents the way he has been rejected. No gender identity.
• What are the main themes in Frankenstein? Identity/ ambition/ scientific innovation/ creation of life/
transgression/ desire/ what is mean to be a human.
• Enlightenment- men central of the world. Men is a rational creature, what shows that? THINKING-
THOUGHT / LANGUAGE - BEING OF DISCOURSE
• They believe in knowledge, per se, scientific progress. The outcome of science which we see in the
creation of creature, ultimately imposer disorder in the back of society. Destroys society. Consequences.
• Furthermore, Christian imagery Garden of Eden… forbidden tree – tree of knowledge.
• The relation between man and God- exploring emulates this relation. Questions his own existence
(creature) he wants answers.
• Whole question of identity: he is left to wonder the world naked- he can’t speak, barely walk. He is
rejected by society because he is different. Monstrous mean excessive. Becomes an outcast. He learns
things by himself. Read, speak. READ: PARADISE LOST good and evil…. 4 BOOKS. Journal he learns
who he is. Begins to question himself, who he is? What defines as human? However, this is not going to
be enough, he is never accepted, very pessimistic novel.
• Makes the creature resentful. He is never accepted as human being.
• Otherness- the creature. Discrimination.
ADAPTATION – JAMES WHALES (GAZE)
2 important scientific advances. Bring back to life people who were drown.
Inhumanly brought back to life in misery- Lost of the mother very relevant on Mary Shelley’s life.

➢ Electromagnetism- maybe could reanimated / restored life.

➢ 1931- This film is often defined pre-code horror film. Refers to brief era between the adoption of
sound and the reinforcement of the motion picture production called censorship.

➢ Face-code set of rules which were made up in order to control what certain theatres shown. A what
film were about. 3 decades until the 60s. Films often explores subjects which the government was
concerned about, questions of behaviour against the law. Also, women were also threatening by
patriarchal order, questions of drugs, sex etc. Moral code. Haze code??

➢ Crime and immorality could never be portrayed in a positive light.

➢ Two scenes which were censured.

➢ It created a creature who was huge, introducing elements of comedy an melodrama. To balance the
horror of the story. Making the creature OTHER- SILENCE.

➢ How the film begins? The producer introduces the film. Theatrical representation. It stablishes also a
bond between theatre and films. Tension of the epistolary form.

➢ Walton frame creates the illusion of realism

➢ Victor told his story to Walton in order to he might learn something. Entertainment

MAKING THE CREATURE

➢ Idea of the gaze- dominates in the film. Frankenstein gaze we project ourselves on him not in the
creature.

➢ It is set in the actual period that was premiered.

First Clip- Burial ground and the digging out of the coffin. Sense of obscurity and darkness, exaggerated
realism sort to say.
Impressionism- modernist movement (Germany) sense of exaggeration.
Second clip- Dr. Waltman giving a lecture to his students. Lecture is about different types of brains.
Normal vs. Abnormal. Make us think the creature is bad just for the different brain.
We are born good or bad.

➢ Main theme- identity. Shelley is questioning both the cartitial-self ( no se como se escribe lmao) , men
is rational being and the ausonian- self wtf

➢ Man is born and society corrupts them.

➢ Man is born bas depending on the brain.

➢ To eliminate evil, how we do precede? - people have to die, the ones we deem evil have to be
exterminated.

➢ This stigma degenerates for ideological purposes.

Third clip- Dr. Waltman. On the one hand, the character of Elizabeth on the story, and the fact that she
holds a relationship with Frankenstein – incestuous relationship- On the other hand, they used the
influence of German expressionism in that scene as everywhere in scene. It creates gothic bloom MOOD
in the film.

➢ Henry F plays God, which is punished. Look how he puts emphasis on how his hands are creating life
from a dead man.

➢ Close-up of Henry’s insanity even though is a temporary insanity.

➢ He looks into the sky as if he wanted to show God that he can also create life, that he is also
‘powerful’

➢ Frankenstein’s argumentation to justify his interest in knowledge what he wants to know, and he talks
about what eternity is.

➢ The metaphor of darkness and light- the creature was created in darkness let me brig him into the
light.

➢ IT understands – referring to the creature.

➢ Element of tenderness is juxtaposed to his reaction to fire. (creature) scared and afraid because he is
unfamiliar. FIRE becomes a symbol of civilization, human light. Human civilization who the creature
doesn’t belong.

➢ The creature is condemned to this ‘otherness’ because of the abnormal brain that he was created with.

Other clips xd: (sorry)

❖ The creature finds the little girl. She is unprejudiced towards him.

❖ Eradicate the creature, we need to get rid of him.

❖ Fire cross- symbol to the Ku Klux clan. – xenophobe attitude of the mob towards the creature. He is
the victim.

❖ It is interesting the use of symbols of the film. He is eradicated from the world through fire. The
symbol of human civilization.
ENDING- Eradicated the creature and we restore the patriarchal society, very conservative film.
KENNETH BRANAGH’S ADAPTATION 1994

❖ Background- follows Dracula’s adaptation?’

❖ Title: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: how the story has been evolving and transforming itself.
Incorporating elements throughout the different versions since the book was published.

❖ Recognizes his film as an adaptation Mary Shelley. Intermediality it takes us back to this text

❖ Quote of Mary Shelley- something that she says.

First Clip

❖ Voice narrating the story- female voice – Mary Shelley voice.

❖ Walton’s ambition to find the north pole.

❖ We hear the creature (these notes contain a lot of knowledge xd)

❖ It seems like Branagh is trying to tell us that the one approaching is also a monster.

❖ Rationality vs Irrationality

❖ Victor F is the narrator of the story and also the creature. (narrative voice)

❖ The society is the one who corrupts men.

Second clip

❖ The mother is an incorporation that Branagh’s makes. Makin reference of the absence of the mother in
Shelley’s life.

❖ Sense of lost.

❖ Female experience of abandonment that it could be interpreted as the sense of loss in the creature and
also abandonment. This feeling of nobody wants me (QUE SAD)

❖ Question of what makes us human.

❖ Elizabeth- incestuous relationship with Victor F.

Third clip

❖ “Knowledge is power only through god”

❖ Terms of discussion: scientific debate, the role of science.

Fourth clip

❖ Distorts realism (dead of the doctor)

Fifth clip

❖ No dialogue (how he creates the creature)

❖ Magicians’ cape – there is this idea of fantasy and magic.

❖ There is also a kind of physical effort which might remind the act of giving birth
❖ It is also important to highlight that when Frankenstein revived the frog, he did not examine it
carefully. The frog was so strong that it broke the vase. And that had a huge consequence in his
fabrication of the creature. It is great that Branagh introduces this in the film and makes use of the
prolepsis.
Sixth

❖ What he has done?? Asshole

❖ The creature covers up his body as a symbol of shame and Frankenstein’s regret. His appearance is not
pleasant to the eyes, so he is automatically labelled as outcast. And therefore, introduce this debate about
the creature being human or not.

❖ He feels unwanted by his creator.

Seventh

❖ Unwanted and rejected by society): poor little monster bro.

o Da Vinci as a renascence man, whose knowledge has been spread and some how back together
different films.
o Vitruvian man appeared in the movie.
o It seems that what Kenneth is doing is via Frankenstein and by relating him by the traditional thinkers,
people who are really anticipated himself to their times such as Leonardo Da Vinci
Clips
o We have a like a chronological tack of both storied which converge when they meet. We empathized
with the creature.
o The creature establishes a bond with the grandfather whom is blind. Thus, he is being unprejudiced.
o The film humanized the creature, explore the humanity of the creature. What makes us similar. The
creature learns through imitation.
o The diary that has record of how he was created becomes his bible.
o As we look at the creature, we are invited to sympathised with him, and we see his emotions (wounded
human being)
o In this home we have a fire- symbol of civilization, family
o There is always a red element in a white background
o Female companion of the creature. Elizabeth and Justine.
o Burn of the house is a symbol of the power (patriarchal) bringing down.
ENDING
• Use of the staircase in the movie
• Kenneth keeps the narrative frame of the story – per se- how he uses the frame narrative (fidelity to the
novel)
• Metaphor of the ship, which is stuck and how in the ending finally liberates itself and finds freedom. –
compare to Walton, who wants to find this passage through the north pole.
• There is a sense which he needs to move forward, how Frankenstein’s story is going to help him learn
and move forward.
• Going back home a learning from Frankenstein’s story.
• The two being to be part of the same being (the creature and his creator)
• Fire (symbol of purification, birth and sense of life and dead coming together, also present throughout
the novel and adaptation)
THE LONELINESS OF THE CREATURE –
• With the death of his father, his creator. The creature that his existence in this world is meaningless.
YOU EMPATHIZED A LOT WITH THE CREATURE IN THIS FILM
BLADE RUNNER 1982 Director’s cut version
▪ Man vs. Machine-
▪ “This was not called execution. It was called retirement”
▪ 2019
First Clip
▪ Why no execution? To dehumanize them- euphemism- It shows the power of language to construct
language.
▪ The replicants have a date of expiration, so they are objects, they have a planned obsolescence.
▪ We night (great notes xd) fire again but in this film, it gives a sense of an industrialized world.
▪ All seeing eye. How do we distinguish replicants from human? We pass a test to see whether they have
emotions (replicants)
▪ Sense of dark future. Sense of dystopia.
Second Clip
▪ Ad of the Japanese women
Third Clip
▪ The test to the replicants to determine whether they have emotions or not, and also differential them
from human beings. They search for emotional responses to their memories to decide is they are human
or not. So, the relationship between identity and memory can be important too.
▪ How we do relate to these robots?
Fourth clip
▪ The replicants can only live 4 years.
▪ Shade greys – browns (light)
▪ Pronoun IT – renegades Rachel from being a machine.
▪ Scientists is Dr. Frankenstein- the creator of the replicants
Fifth clip
▪ Off world-
▪ Sebastian and his friends – which we identify as machines.
▪ This film is exploring every time the humanity of the replicants
The way we are invited to double project us, we are invited to feel the story by Mary Shelley. We are
invited to project ourselves in the scientist and in the creatures. *Kenneth does this even better in his film
xd* (spilling the tea)
▪ How long do I live? -Leon