Topic: ‘Frankenstein’: Cultural Studies

Name: Gohil Namrata R.

Year: 2013-14Roll No.: 20M.A. Part: 1

Sem.:2 Submitted To: S.B. Gardi,

Department of English, Maharajakrushnakumarsinhji,

Bhavnagar University. Gujarat(India).

Frankenstein: Cultural Studies - Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley’s Novel has morphed

in to Countless Form

Fiction & Non-fiction Stage Plays

Film Television

Advertising Comic Book

Games cartoons

Academic Study Food(Frankenberry)

Revolutionary Births

Age of Revolution Modern Consumer culture

Frankenstein is “a vital metaphor, peculiarly appropriate to CULTURE dominated by a consumer technology, neurotically obsessed with ‘getting in

touch’ with its authentic self and frightened at what it is discovering.

- George Levine

From CNN descriptions of Saddam Hussein as an “American Created Frankenstein” to magazine articles that warn of

genetically engineered “Franken-foods,” test-tube babies, and cloning.

Creature as Proletarian

Mary Shelley 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.

Percy Shelley was thought of as a dangerous radical bent on labor reform and was spied upon by the government.

In Frankenstein, what Johanna M. Smith calls the “ alternation between fear of vengeful revolution and sympathy for the suffering poor.” illuminates Mary Shelley’s own divisions between fear of the masses.

Like her Father , who worried about the mob’s “ excess of a virtuous feeing,” fearing its “sick destructiveness”.

Monster like the creature Paradoxical

Transgress against “establishment”

Destroy monster by society

Mary Shelley’s Creature is Political and Moral paradox

A Race of Devils

Frankenstein may analyzed in its portrayal of different “Races”.

Mary Shelley’s creature’s skin is only described ‘YELLOW’.

It has been constructed “out of a cultural tradition of the threatening ‘Other’- whether troll or giant,gypsy or Negro from the dark inner recesses of Xenophobic fear and loathing.

- H.L. Malchow

Frankenstein’s “language of racism the dark side of imperialism

understood as social mission combines with

the hysteria of masculism into the withdrawal of

sexual reproduction rather than subject

constitution.”

The Frankenpheme in Popular Culture: Fiction,Drama,Film,Television.

Frankenpheme – a Term.

Timothy Morton

Phonemes (Sonic elements of language,as used in Structural Linguistics) + Graphemes(Visual Elements).

Element of Culture that derived from “Frankenstain”.

Retelling and Parodies.

Speech Parliament By George Canning

…..In dealing with the Negro, Sir, we must remember that we are dealing with a being prossessing the form and strength of a man , but the intellect only of a child……

……Would be to raise up a creature resembling the splendid fiction of a recent romance; the hero of which constructs a human form, with all the corporal capabilities of man, and with the thews and sinews of a giant….

As Popular Culture Frankenstein

Fiction

Film

Drama

Fictions

Frankenstein’s Fictions Peter Haining, editor of the indispensable Frankenstein Omnibus, has called Frankenstein “ the single greaest horror story novel ever written and the most widely influential in its gener”

Herman Melville Short tale “The Bell Tower” was Published in putnam’s Monthly Magazine in 1855.

The First Story about Female Monster is French author Villiers de L’Isle Adam’s “The Future Eva”, .

American Writer W.C. Morrow Published “The Surgeon’s Experiment” in The Argonaut in 1887.

Ficti on

Dramas

In Drama Creature has generally been made Horrific, 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.

No Dramatist would want to try for all of the complexities of the novel. In stage versions, only a few key scenes the Creation scene, the bridal night, and the destruction of the Creature are used.

On 19th Century Stage, the Creature was a composite of frightening makeup and human qualities.

The First Theatrical Presentation based on Frankenstein was Presumption or The Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake, Performed at the English Opera House in London in the Summer of 1823.

Films

In Frankenstein Omnibus, reader can study the screenplay for the 1931 by James Whale film Frankenstein, the most famous of all adaption.

Conclusion

So Frankenstein is regarding famous even today part of Popular Culture.

Thank You