Frankenstein's Monster Morphs

There have been so many renderings of how Frankenstein's monster looks over time. It is also interesting that the monster's name has become Frankenstein, possibly due to a play on words in which the monster is part of Victor, or maybe it is just out of convenience because the monster was not given a name in the novel. Here are some images of Frankenstein throughout the ages, through art and comics. Here are two examples.


*Closer to the novel Frankenstein, stitched and bolted together - Painting by Gerald Brom entitled "Alone." Brom likens the title of the painting to the monster's words in the novel when he says: “I am an unfortunate and deserted creature; I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth… I have good dispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they ought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable monster.”
*New idea of Frankenstein - Steve Skroce's comic book "Doc Frankenstein" issue #6. Frankenstein gets captured by the "evil Catholic Church of the future" (Skorce) where they attempt an exorcism. Frankenstein then begins his work on a super-weapon to destroy his "clerical captors" (Amacker).

Theoretical Approaches to Frankenstein

While I thoroughly enjoyed reading Frankenstein for the first time, I’ve had trouble jumping into a discussion of the text on the blog; I needed a focus, a perspective: an article to discuss. Thankfully, Dr. Schwartz provided me with such an article. Entitled “Frankenstein, feminism, and literary theory,” this article written by Diane Long Hoeveler not only addresses how feminist writers have approached this novel in a multitude of ways, but also new and developing theories including queer theory and disability studies. Because it may be boring to some to sum up the entire article, I’ve decided to mention a few of the ideas that I thought particularly interesting.

Taking the French feminist approach—that which concerns itself with the masculine-dominated system of language that produces meanings and often times erases women’s contributions—the author views Frankenstein as a prime example of “a specifically feminine form of language…based on female subjectivity:” l’écriture feminine. Readers are able to see this style described in Shelley’s introduction when she describes her creation, Frankenstein, as a “hideous progeny,” her monster that will go forth and haunt the memories of all those who read her work. I found this perspective particularly interesting because calls into question the foundation for the novel’s language, revealing its fragility much like the fragility of the monster’s foundation: Victor.

I also found Peter Brooks’ reading Lacanian reading of Frankenstein fascinating as well. Believing that psychoanalysis was driven by the stages in which one engages in the language process, Lacan believed that all discourse could be understood only through a desirous approach in which everyone becomes engaged in the hunt for unattainable: "a lost and unachievable object, as if moving incessantly along a chain of unstable signifiers without any possibility of coming to any final point of meaning or fixed significance. Taking Lacan’s teachings into account, Brooks believed that the creature’s monstrosity resulted in his inability to engage in “the signifying chain and language.” Because of this, the monster cannot gain meaning, cannot fully become human. Regardless of the monster learning to speak a particular language, it nonetheless experiences extreme alienation because of his origin as “other.”

I’d like to end this particular blog on my favorite approach towards Frankenstein discussed in the article, that of disability studies. According to Simi Linton, disability studies calls into question the “constricted, inaccurate, and inhumane concepts of disability,” particularly the notion that disabilities are primarily medical. Because the monster’s “ugly” appearance and ambiguous gender, one can view Victor’s creation as a disabled figure because it defies Mary Shelley’s society that places value on physical beauty, conformity, and stable, strict notions of gender. Taking a biological approach, Stephen Jay Gould asserted that the explanation for the characters’ rejection of the monster resulted because of a mamalian pattern in which instincts guide us away from the malformed. Arguments such as these add heavily to the nature vs. nurture debate.

While there were more perspectives taken towards this novel described in the article, I found the above-mentioned takes to be particularly provocative to our own approaches towards reading Frankenstein.

Kant's view on aesthetics & the sublime...explained through comic books!

http://io9.com/5416569/kants-philosophy-on-aesthetics-explained-through-comic-book-art

Sorry to overload this blog with videos, but this stuff just keeps popping up everywhere. For anyone who was interested in our discussion of Kant and the sublime, check this video out---the speaker explains Kant's views through comic books, which is both silly and creative. (I know the audio is bad.)

Enjoy!

- Keaton

Sea worms eating the corpse of a seal

http://io9.com/5415620/deadly-worms-and-ravenous-sea-stars-engage-in-a-monster-feeding-frenzy

I figured I'd post this. It's a short video featuring sea worms (and other ocean-dwelling creatures) ripping through the corpse of a dead seal. I think the voiceover mentioned that these worms are almost 3 meters long---WOAH! Try to enjoy; personally, I found it disgusting!

Have a good day!

Romantic Blogging

Honestly, I have been having a hard time blogging about the romantic writings that we have studied. There seems to be a sort of dire disconnect, beyond the immediate removal from time and place, from the piece of literature to the technology, that I can not overcome whenever I sit down to blog. So when my friend said she was going to a seminar on blogging (with free beer), I decided to see if I could gain some perspective.

I thought about the composition of a romantic work and that of a blog; is blogging a forum through which we can truly address our emotions "recollected in tranquility"? I would argue that the very nature of the blogging often deters us from this. Blogs, as I was told, are meant to be malleable and concise because of the media to which they are tied. The nature of the Internet is far removed from knowledge as it had once been viewed. Yet in its essence it is simply a a vast linkage of all material knowledge translated into indecipherable codes in a seemingly unearthly realm (alas Blake would not find full freedom from the material on the web)? So why do people feel they can say all sorts of things on the web that they cannot in their everyday life? And what about that malleable nature of what we post? When we have the ability to monitor who exactly visits our site and can delete whatever critical comments we feel offend us, are we really ever allowing true human discussion and ideas to fully form? As we looked at bodies of text as if they were Frankenstein's monster, when we publish a book, we cannot control it; once it is published, the creation becomes its own entity. With blogs we can shape and reshape our creation over and over (I've edited this three times). We do not have to stick by our ideas therefore we do not let the creation stand for itself. It is as if we are frightened to let it do so anymore.

The Internet seems to satisfy our Manfredian desire to know everything, to have every power at our fingertips, yet we do not want this power to belong to everyone else when it comes to exposing our own ideas. The Internet is certainly out of any individual's control, yet we believe there is some power out there that could send it crashing down (bring the actual world down with it?). Tangible books and hard copies of writing have not really changed format; perhaps they represent Blakeian heaven, and the internet, always changing and remanifesting itself, is his hell. Can one truly get by today without descending into the possible evil of the web? Will this hell devour all the hard-back books that belong to heaven? If this happens, could the internet possibly decay taking all knowledge with it? What type of worm would wriggle through the lines of html and what would come out the other end?

The Capitol Ruins

During my yearly stays in Maryland for Thanksgiving, I remember how much I miss seeing the trees in Fall and moving into winter. I drove by a landscape on a dreary, gray day on the side of a winding road. There were several trees, completely stark, black and set against the overcast, lit, sky. In the midst of these wintered trees stood a smaller tree with brown bark peeling into white. The tree held the same red-orange leaves which blanketed the entire area as well as the receding forest.

At around 5:00pm on Saturday, Renee (friend since 5th grade), Sam (her boyfriend), and I drove to Rock Creek Park and parked near stables which Sam claimed should not have existed in a small park in the middle of D.C. We walked down through a forest (different forest) along the multiple horse trails, finding nobody but ourselves and one passing runner there. We came upon a large puddle of muddy water which surrounded the beginning curve of an open area filled with piles of various items. It was a large ring, a clearing in the middle of the woods. There were large piles of gravel, red rocks, bricks (as one would see on a construction site), and a small forklift, sitting and slightly neglected. To the right of this clearing was what looked like a small city of stacked cement slabs, some decorated with scrolled carvings, as can be seen at the top of some columns on buildings. They were stacked high so we had to climb on them. These large pieces of cement, creating a small, walled city became even more similar to a graveyard when Renee mentioned that these were pieces of the old Capitol building. People had moved the pieces to this clearing after the renovation. We sat on top of the stack, probably about ten feet tall, and watched four deer in the distance. Two of them were Bucks... and had antlers. The hills in the forest cascaded down and we wandered around for a while over there, spotting huge cement cylinders lying on the grass, spots of spanning mud, and a setting sun.

We sat on the bed of Sam's truck and watched the sky turn from gray and blue to dark pink and orange, through hundreds of tall, black, slender trees. There branches crossed and intersected because they were so close together. The cold clung to every bit of the air around us.

Frankie: A Monster?

I am not sure when I first heard of Frankenstein. Perhaps it was looking at the costume provided in Party City’s Halloween Book. Perhaps it was from watching Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein or an episode of one of my favorite cartoons called, Scooby-Doo and the Frankenstein Monster. Regardless of my first introduction to Frankenstein, I have always known that Frankenstein was considered a monster. However, what I learned as a young child was that Frankenstein was often misunderstood; not possessing the same attributes that were typically associated with being a monster. Thus, I always pitied the monster for being brought into the human world but never truly being apart of it.

What I am struggling with while reading this novel is whether or not Frankie (well Frankenstein as a name, sounds really mean, and “it” sounds meaningless; honestly what name would you give?) is truly a monster. As I stated earlier, if Frankie is a monster, then he seems to be one that is misunderstood. Frankie has not committed mass murders in search of food or because of anger issues, nor does he growl, roar, or emit sounds and noises that would definitely identify him as a monster. If Frankie is not a monster then what should we identify him as? While monster, creature, etc. have been used, perhaps Frankie is human or, at the very least, part human. Of course, problems immediately stir from this theory because Frankie was not created in the same manner in which humans were. However, what makes Frankie part human is his actions; he does not eat meat and he is able to think; coming to conclusions about himself, particularly why he is feared.
I think that Frankie’s face, despite the grotesqueness associated with the watery eye and skin color, is also what makes him human. Although Victor believes that this is the one feature that is his flaw, the one thing that makes him appear as something that should be placed within the “other” category, this face could also be the link to being human. If Frankie’s body was not ridiculously large and the face was not flawed, then would Frankie finally be seen as a human? Also, without the speculation of a perfect creation, are humans not flawed in some way? Many humans, I am sure, that were bore doing this time as well, are born with undeveloped limbs, watery eyes, and physical problems. I think that I also can’t fully understand why Victor saw him as a monster due to this flaw.
Maybe the creator has the true flaws. I think it is even safe to claim that all humans are monsters when they see the physical flaws first; judging before knowing. Perhaps this was a message of Shelly.