Media
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. (1818). Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. New York: Simon & Brown.
- iPad/iPhone – Kindle + Other Formats – Read Online Now
- One interesting way to interact with this text is through Frankenbook, an annotated interactive online version that provides lots of extra information and allows for online discussion. (This is not mandatory reading)
Geek of the Week
X-Men Red (Bryan)
- Annual and Part 1
- Part 2 and 3
- Part 4 and 5
- Foxy Jazzabelle, “Why X-Men: Red Is the Comic to Read This Summer,” Syfy, June 26, 2018.
- Ian Cardona, “Jean Grey Couldn’t Have Returned at a More Socially Relevant Time,” CBR, February 12, 2018.
David Cronenberg, The Fly (Twentieth Century Fox, 1986). (Available at Avery Fisher) (Hulu, Amazon, iTunes) (Brendan) **WARNING THIS FILM IS RATED R AND CONTAINS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT. LET KIMON KNOW IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR ABILITY TO WATCH IT.
Theory and Commentary
Hayles, Katherine. 1999. Chapter 10 (247-82) in How We Became Posthuman. Chicago, Ill. : University of Chicago Press.
Significantly, all of these texts are obsessed in various ways, with the dynamics of evolution and devolution. Underlying their obsessions is a momentous question: when human meets the posthuman, will the encounter be for better of for worse? Will the posthuman preserve what we continue to value in the liberal subject? Will free will and individual agency still be possible in a posthuman future? Will we be able to recognize ourselves after the change? Will there still be a self to recognize and be recognized? (Hayles, 281)
or
Gormel, Elana. 2011. Science (Fiction) and Posthuman Ethics: Redefining the Human. The European Legacy 16(3): 339-54.
Additional Materials
Want to see Mary Shelley’s actual manuscripts of the novel Frankenstein? The Shelley-Godwin Archive has them, and they are way cool.
Want to explore the genre of Romance literature more broadly? Romantic Circles is an online scholarly community that focuses on discussions about Gothic novels, early works of horror, and proto-science fiction, among other treasures.
Here is a post from the awesome blog Open Culture about Reading Frankenstein on its 200th Anniversary.
Reading Shelley’s “Frankenstein” plagues me with hypotheticals. What if Victor Frankenstein agreed to make a female for the creature? How would this female creation appear? What if the creation of a female being had failed? How would Frankenstein’s being react? Would she, too, be received with condemnation?
Science Fiction’s murky definition prevails. Is “Frankenstein” a successful fusion of SF and horror?
Enthralled by X-Men Red, I wondered: what does an ideal world look like to Jean Grey? Furthermore, how can Cassandra Nova be a mutant that detests mutants? Is this socio-political commentary?
Does David Cronenberg’s “The Fly” play an intentional homage to Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”?
In “Science (Fiction) and Posthuman Ethics: Redefining the Human,” Elana Gomel proposes an ethical problem in which the question becomes not if the subject can think, but if the subject can suffer. What constitutes as suffering for a machine?
The X-Men Red comics promote several progressive socio-political agendas (that I happen to agree with). When viewed objectively, could this comic be considered leftist propaganda? Similarly, if a different super hero comic became popular and promoted an alt-right political agenda, would it be protested and / or banned in lieu of our current political climate?
In the movie “The Fly”, scientist Seth Brundle (played by Jeff Goldblum) explains to Veronica (Geena Davis) that he doesn’t know precisely how the teleportation device works because it was designed by many engineers and other scientists in a sort of clandestine collaboration, with only Seth knowing the ultimate goal. If this device was invented today, in this way, and was hailed as the greatest invention of the modern age, who would ultimately receive credit for inventing it, and who would own the patent?
In the Frankenstein novel, Dr. Frankenstein immediately despises his creation and is relieved when it escapes. This seems like incredibly contradictory behavior, given the fact that he was utterly obsessed with this endeavor, but once it was finished took no time whatsoever to attempt communication with the creature, or to teach it how to be human, or to observe it in any way. He was just creeped out by it and took off. The fact that Frankenstein conceives his own creation to be a monster / abomination is a projection of his own guilt and shame, clearly. My question is: Why was he relieved and not concerned that others would find the creature and trace it back to him – if not for his own self-preservation? He was manufacturing a human being in his apartment! Surely there were laws against this.
Despite being referred to as a “new species,” Frankenstein’s monster is composed of human body parts. Moreover, his emotional and intellectual qualities are startlingly like our own. With this in mind, do you feel that Frankenstein’s monster would fit under the umbrella category posthuman? Why or why not.
In one of the four novels discussed in Katherine Hayle’s chapter on “The Semiotics of Virtuality: Mapping the Posthuman,” a hyper-intelligent AI is being trained to pass a Masters examination in English literature. As the AI begins to acquire language, the professor responsible for assisting with her training realizes the extent to which human language presupposes an embodied speaker/hearer. If so much of our language is tied up with the concept of embodiment, how would “human” language evolve if new forms of embodiment emerged?
In “X-men Red,” Cassandra Nova infects humans and mutants alike with an amygdala altering substance that makes them fear and hate mutants. Thinking about our current political climate, how would you make sense of this metaphor?
In Frankenstein, the Monster says that people treated him differently (were scared of him) not because knowing that he is dangerous and violent but because he looks terrifying and hideous. Because of the appearance, people wouldn’t give him a chance to listen to him or try to understand him, rather spontaneously consider him as the “other.” From this, what can we reflect on ourselves or in our history, how we have treated other people that “look different” than us? What are some of the biological or sociocultural reasons behind that?
It is dramatized in the novel, but Frankenstein still had a huge attitude change and sudden transition, during the process of creating the Monster vs. the moment he came to life. When building the body from scratch, Frankenstein should have gotten used to looking at him and had a clear sense of his appearance (a hideous body composed of dead body parts) What really has frightened him when the Monster was born?
Why is the Monster the “monster?” What has made him a monster, or is it because the manmade intelligent creature inherently has some sort of uncontrollable (in the negative sense) traits/characteristics?
As I was reading through the theory for this week, Hayes’ diagrams and examples seemed to point towards posthumanity being something grand– something that examined darkness and fear and danger, but something that also in turn would release humans from their previously-held stereotypes and prejudices. In class, we began to touch upon discussion of this with the dissection of Star Trek TNG, but what is posthumanity was not considered so utopic? Also, does a utopic framing of a posthuman world damage the intent of the narrative?
“We ARE The Sentinels”: related to How We Became Posthuman, the section on the anxiety of body boundaries (pg 250-252) reminded me of the young man in X-Men Red who was in the hospital after killing someone because of the Sentinel chip in his brain. Interestingly, his fear and disgust with himself can be seen as a parallel to what happened to Ororo, who has a noted fear of being violated and taken advantage of in the Marvel multi-verse but is made to attack her friends in the same comic. This violation of the human body in both respects drives home the material ‘human-ness’ of the mutants, but also interestingly disrupts the narrative of them as “posthuman.” So where is the actual posthumanity in this X-Men series?
On Hayes’ focus of replication and natural forms of it, I would like to share the link to the TV Tropes site on twin tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwinTropes
As a twin, I notice a societal fetishzation of twins, but I cannot for the life of me understand it. Why are twins seen as posthuman? And if they are naturally-occurring, what does that then imply about assumptions of posthumanity?
In Frankenstein, the creature recognizes that he is something other than human, yet his mind seems to be essentially human. When he sees the cottagers, he finds them pleasing to look at, and then he sees his own reflection and finds it abhorrent. So internally, he views himself as human, and it’s only when presented with external confirmation that he is something else that he suffers a crisis of identity. Is humanity then something that is defined externally/physically? How might that be dangerous? Or is it something that should only be defined internally/mentally, and what does that do to the definition of human?
I noticed a distinct contrast in how Frankenstein’s creature viewed his appearance to how Brundle viewed his as he became less Brundle and more Brundlefly. Whenever he looked at himself in the mirror, I expected him to be horrified at what looked back. Instead, he took his changing appearance in stride and never seemed too surprised, disgusted, or worried about his physical changes. Gomel discusses the human/animal hybrid “acquisition and subsequent loss of self-awareness (344)” and how this form of the posthuman represents an “image of the corporeality of the human subject (352).” Thus, While Brundlefly desires to merge with a human in order to become more human than fly, he still slowly degrades into more of a fly-self than a human-self and adapts to his new body. Since he had merged on the genetic level with the fly and therefore stopped viewing himself as fully human, has he adopted a hybrid-fly-like attitude to his appearance?
In X-Men Red, there was one minor moment that I kept coming back to. In Part I, after Jean saves the young girl from the mob, Kurt comes to teleport her to safety and says “Take my hand. It’s the thing at the end of my wrist. Yeah, it has three fingers, but it’s still a hand.” Coming off of my reading of Frankenstein and viewing of The Fly, I was again struck by how Kurt – who looks decidedly inhuman – still frames his identity in the context of what a human is expected to look like. He, however, has no shame in his appearance, and rather accepts the differences in his physiology versus that of a human. With his statement, is Kurt trying to frame mutants in the context of humanity, or is he positing that both share traits that should not be viewed as differently as they are?
1. Both Frankenstein and The Fly exist at the intersection of science fiction and horror. This was a topic we talked about last week, but it’s been argued that both these works are examples of an additional subgenre, that of “body horror,” as both are interested in the terrifying aspects of the physical aspects of humanity – the decaying or creation of the flesh. This concern with the fleshy, physical aspects of humanity can also be seen in X-Men as well (a series which, at times, has tipped into “body horror” itself). When thinking about science fiction’s concerns with humanity, why do we think these works are routinely fixated on that physical nature? Where does the tension between the physical (or corporeal) and mental/psychological exist in these spaces, and why?
2. The Fly is a classic science fiction story of hubris gone wrong – a brilliant man thinks he can manipulate the laws of the universe (physics in the case of Seth Brundle; biology in the case of Victor Frankenstein), and learns that playing God has consequences. But Cronenberg’s film chooses to combine elements of the Creature and Victor into a single individual. Where might there be antecedents to this decision in Shelley’s novel? For example, where are some instances in Frankenstein where the Creature might be guilty of the same hubris as Victor is?
3. One of the key quotes in The Fly is “I’m saying… I’m saying I – I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.” Is this sense of self-awareness – this ability to be aware that one is thinking, that one has thoughts and an internal life – what sets humans apart from machines? By the end of The Fly, the dream is over – but is the fly truly awake, or is there still something left of Brundle? How does this compare to the Creature’s inner life in Frankenstein? It seems that Victor’s greatest “sin”, such as it were, is not that that he created a life, but that he created a life capable of complex thought and interiority. Do you agree? Why or why not?
My students have been working on Greek myths during our reading and literacy blocks since the beginning of July, and coincidentally we read the Prometheus myth last week. In the Prometheus myth (at least in the D’Aulaire’s Greek Mythology version, the titan Prometheus makes mankind out of clay, but is disheartened that his brother Epimetheus has used all of the “cool” traits in making the animals. He asks Zeus for the fire of the gods to give to the humans, Zeus says no, and Prometheus decides to steal the fire for the humans. He does, and advises the humans to never let the fire die out. He also teaches the humans how to save the best meat for themselves, and how to give the bad pieces of meat as offerings to the gods. As a result of possessing the fire of the gods, the humans develop knowledge. Zeus gets angry (as usual) and punishes Prometheus and the humans. However, Prometheus must have known that this punishment was imminent, because he had the power of foresight. Given this context, and the fact that Frankenstein was originally known as The Modern Prometheus, how do Dr. Frankenstein, Seth Brundle, and Jean Grey play the role of Prometheus in their stories? Additionally, to what extent do the creators become their creations?
One could make strong arguments for similarities between Jean Grey and several of the characters in Frankenstein. When Walton is writing to his sister in the beginning of the novel, he talks about how he deserves to accomplish a great purpose (Shelley 15) and how he’s “occupied in collecting” a team of sailors (19), the way that Jean Grey is gathering a team to help her right the wrongs of the world to give her resurrection meaning. She examines the way the world’s societies have collapsed and been corrupted, in the same way that Dr. Frankenstein examines “the causes of life” and was “forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel houses” learning how “the fine form of man was degraded and wasted” (Shelley 57). Jean’s also very similar to the monster itself, who has been given life from pieces of the dead, and who doesn’t know what to make of the world. In what ways does Jean Grey’s narrative in the X-Men: Red Annual reflect the narrative that Frankenstein’s monster tells about his journey after fleeing the doctor’s house?
Finally, as I touched on in my comments for last week, the sublime seems to play a great part in Frankenstein and X-Men Red. What places provide tranquility for and bring out the humanity in the “monsters” in each of the narratives? Why? What language do the authors use to represent these locations as foreign or surreal?
This week’s materials were a really intriguing combination, although as with any three course offering there were parts to which I were more partial than others.
Taken as a narrative arc, Frakenstein, The Fly, and X:Men Red, if consumed in that order, construct the story of woman’s evolving attempt at saving man(kind) from himself. All three touch on the same three themes: hubris, apotheosis, and the slippery slope between what is “monster” and what is “human.” Both Frankenstein and Seth… I’m just doing that once so it’s clear that I know at least the character’s first name – I will henceforth proceed with calling him Goldblum for the rest of this post – are brought down by their own hubris, both for in some way trying to “play god,” in either an on-the-nose or more deconstructed manner, and at the end of both works the man becomes the monster of their own creation. Shelly tries to warn us – the reader – of the dangers of this masturbatory science (fiction?), Geena Davis (yes, I know her character is named Veronica) tries to warn Goldblum but has to take his ass out anyway. And then in X-Men, Jean Grey apologizes for her “hubris” in trying to save the fucking world in which humans are brainwashed murderers when she – as opposed to the other two emotional idiot protagonists of this week’s material – is the only one running god-mode game and just rose from the dead after shaking off cosmic apotheosis like “what?” Flawless.
Seriously I’ve got no questions or like counter points about the X-Men readings except why can’t we do that every week for everything? And why all the movies (that aren’t Black Panther) gotta be such trash comparative to the spectacular source material? But that’s as controversial as I’m gonna get. I live for X-Men comics yaaas.
I actually hard NOPE’d out of the last 37 minutes of The Fly because it had me in a very kind of way and yeah I know what happens but just like… what was Goldblum’s motivation, meth? Was meth even a thing in 86? I need some historical context because it seemed very METHod acting to me yeah OK that joke was terrible I’ll see myself out…
The novel “Frankenstein” enlight me again. When I was young, I already read this novel. However, I only feel sad about Frankenstein’s monster because of what “he” suffered. The monster is giant, ugly but has good nature. As an old saying: “Men at their birth are naturally good.” If Frankenstein did not go away but stay and educated the monster, perhaps something will change forever. However, after I read once again, I find out I may not buy this thought. The novel was written at the start of the 19th century, so people in the 21st century could not understand the fear of the unknown at that time. Nowadays, people all know it is impossible to make such a monster by some dead bodies and the power of natural energy. Occultism was very popular in the 19th century and many people were the followers of the supernatural power. For example, the fear of we afraid of the alien creatures just like they fear of Frankenstein’s monster. I, like Frankenstein, have no courage to face the monster I created. Who has the courage to face an unknown monster?
In “X-men Red,” mutants want to accept by the human society and trying their best to help people. However, Cassandra Nova infects humans and destroy their goal. However, a man’s wealth is his own ruin by causing others greed. Mutants have the power to endanger human society and their power could cause social instability. It let me think of how human being can stay with the artificial intelligence. In some way, the AI with their body can perform much better than human and their power might overthrow human’s rule, just like the mutant in “X-Men” series. So. is any way can human being stay with another intelligence creatures?
Last class we discussed (or at least Kimon tried to introduce) Star Wars and the question of how much of it was Science Fiction and how much Fantasy because of The Force. While reading Frankenstein I found myself confronted with a similar dichotomy. Frankenstein, according to Brian Aldiss is the first Science Fiction text. However, in spite of the insistent talk about science, reason, and humanism present in its pages, the Doctor cannot stop bringing up “destiny” as an almighty force. Throughout the novel, there is a constant invocation of this supernatural influence and Frankenstein’s free will appears, in fact, constrained. Science and reason have yielded such ‘horrible’ a creation, that a recoil from it into a belief in forces strange to reason seems only natural. Could we say that Frankenstein is truly Science Fiction? Is it a big leap to consider it Fantasy, following its Gothic tradition? Moreover, the monster, if we remember Jameson’s “Radical Fantasy”, is organic; and the process which produced him, completely unknown… Once again, we end up stuck in definitions.
In Frankenstein, The Fly, The Island of Dr. Moreau and innumerable science-fictive texts, the image of “playing god” is conjured when scientists try to innovate or veer from what is considered “natural” humanity and ultimately leads to failure, death, and other, more or less morbid repercussions. While there is more to be said about the ethical applications of fiction to real life, (going back to the basics) what strikes me now is the phrase itself. Does “playing god” inevitably point to the religious/mythical/fantastic origins(?) of SF (though we know SF goes beyond) and what does it say about the science-fictive imagination?
On the intersection between animal/human/machine/alien lies the rich dialectic (but also problematic binary) between the human and the non-human, as seen in Gomel’s article. Discussing racism, sexism, speciesism, anthropocentrism essentially leads to certain hegemonic powers at play—in our text most commonly the human above the Other & the eventual role reversal. How can this human (“real”/non-/post) hierarchy be addressed in realistic terms, i.e. not only in fiction but also considering the nearing AI possibility?
The Hayles reading, specifically the discussions about avatars or digital representations of oneself, made me think a lot about the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero,” in which two old women meet and fall in love as young women in the virtual world of San Junipero, a therapy tool for the living and a sort of afterlife for the dead, since when you die you can be permanently uploaded into the system. It made me question what existence post-death in San Junipero actually is, in a post-humanist analysis; is it an afterlife, a new life, or just a computer simulation of a life with no human-ness left? It’s implied that it’s the same consciousness with all the memories, but the person is nothing more than a hard drive. They can never leave or die, they have no body, and their “physical world” is limited to what is programmed. Is this the new life of a computer program that has been given the memories and personality of these women, rather than an extension of their own life?
At what point does humanity cease to be humanity? Is a prosthetic limb or a pace maker enough to make a person a cyborg? Where’s the line on being a human vs. cyborg? Where’s the line on being a cyborg and being a totally different entity? How does augmenting yourself change the way you relate to the world around you? Would a disabled person with futuristic implants to give them back their “complete” humanity (because of the dehumanization of disabled people as lesser because of the world’s unwillingness to adapt to their different experiences) suddenly be less human again for being partially artificial?
MOTHERS
I know most of us have read Frankenstein to death thanks to school–interestingly, it’s only been banned in South African in 1955 during Apartheid for being “objectionable and obscene”–but I’m a big believer in returning to stories at different points on our lives. My pathway through Frankenstein went from Wishbone’s cute but surprisingly faithful “Frankenbone” episode to clever homages in Rocky Horror Picture Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Penny Dreadful to Barbara Johnson’s feminist essay “My Monster/My Self” to now. While I’m personally interested in Frankenstein for its use of the body and questions of human possibilities/limitations/expectations/abominations, I think the strongest current from Shelley’s lasting creation is its message to mankind as an anthesis to hope which other texts of the time lean into too much. It’s generally a dark, Gothic, gloomy story and that’s okay. Humanity and the human characters in stories don’t always have to come out saved and full of hope in the end. Also, Motherhood (and the lack of it) is another strong thread I’ve started focusing on lately. Mothers don’t exist within the pages which drastically contrasts Shelley’s person life in that she had to deal with her own mother’s early death and herself as a mother who lost multiple children. Death is so obviously alive in Frankenstein, but the theme of mother-creator dealing with death is also embedded yet often ignored by scholars and teachers. If only the literary world in 1818 was more accepting of a female Frankenstein, a mother and creative genius in her own right. And even more, a Frankenstein story with a transgender creator-protagonist would bring a world of contemporary themes and ideas to this classic, too.
MEAT
Thanks for this Geek of the Week, Brendan! I’m immediately turned off by the macho-savior thing going on between Seth, Veronica, and Stathis, but aside from that, top-notch Cronenberg classic that I desperately needed to see at some point in my life. I got super frustrated with the characters towards the end, I mean JUST PUT IT OUT OF ITS MISERY ALREADY! Some lines that stood out to me: “rethinking rather than reproducing…” “body builder, build bodies, take them apart…” “no compassion, no compromise…” “I don’t want it in my body.” “Tests can’t determine anything.” “We could be the ultimate family.” Questions: Why doesn’t Stathis believe Veronica from the start? Where is this almost violent demand for evidence and proof in order to believe something strange is going on coming from? Why is it important to show Seth’s transformation taking him to peak (male) physicality downwards towards useless slab of meat? What’s the importance of Seth’s “relics” in the bathroom and could they have gone further with Veronica finding them rather than Seth mentioning them to her?
MUTANTS
Thanks for this Geek of the Week, Bryan! X-Men Red has been only to-read list for a while, and now I finally have that push to get back into the mutant verse. And I’m really happy with how they’ve rewired classic storylines and character arcs in this series. I look forward to finishing the entire thing! Some thoughts: the power struggles between humans and mutants have obviously changed over the years, with physical powers not necessarily taking the spotlight anymore. The core question, why are humans and mutants so afraid of one another, returns though. There’s obviously no clear answer to this, but it’s interesting to think about a mutant like Jean Grey stripping her most physically powerful asset (the Phoenix force) and still being attacked and abused by humans AND how she’s struggling in this different but similar world with her friends and family taking sides and violating previously understood limitations Xavier set upon the X-Men.
1. Somewhere, I think either the wikipedia article or my edition’s preface/intro to Frankenstein claimed it was classified as a ‘scientific romance’ because the term science fiction didn’t exist yet. Somehow, scientific romance, despite being just as cloudy a category as SF, works for me, especially with Frankenstein. Perhaps this is because of the romantic style being so present in the text, making the read one part adventure/travel writing, one part tragic hero’s story, one pary ghost story, and one part…. well… ‘science-y’ for lack of a better word. Is there room, or really, could there be a useful space for genre ‘modifiers’ like ‘science romance,’ or ‘science tragedy’ or ‘mythological farce?’ Video games make use of this sort of multi-modal genre-ing– i.e. Bioshock– an ‘atmospheric first person shooter/dystopian horror game.’
2. Several of y’all have brought up the question of what would happen if Frankenstein had created the female counterpart to his original creation, and I suppose my question is about narrative structure/interpretive frameworks: Do we, as an audience, believe the monster’s intentions? That is to say, does the monster lie? Is the creature actually malicious, or is it only malicious because it is forced to be due to its circumstances. The creature does not seem to commit violence for violence’s sake, and seems as much to me to be a deific thing, handing down judgements and issues for Victor to deal with– which the latter consistently fails at. His desire for a companion may be selfish, but do we buy it that he would do no more violence? Is the monster a monster of its word? It seems to be, to me, at least more so than Victor.
3. Human-animal hybrids are a common theme in literature, but especially fantasy and science fiction, and I’m curious why creators of these stories select the specific animals in question. Why is Kafka’s subject a beetle, the fly a fly, Frankenstein’s monster stitched of flesh? To what extent are these choices made based on narrative convenience (a fly is just the right size to get stuck in the machine without being noticed, but is the beetle simply for its grotesqueness?)
4. Bonus question: Is there a point after which Jeff Goldblum’s screen presence alone merits a higher rating? Is it /really/ the violence of The Fly that merits its hard R, or is it actually a nod to the actor’s headspinning charm and power? Are we truly concerned with the violence, as a society, or are we afraid of the collective loss of restraint caused by Jeff “Nature Finds A Way” Goldblum?
Reading Frankenstein I started to wonder about the science fiction in this fiction and the story of Daedalus and Icarus. The moral in both stories seem to at once criticize science and present it as dangerous. I wonder why? taking into account the age on which it was written.
Are we afraid of post-human states of existence out of self-preservation or cultural bias?
Is the state of creating something better than ourselves and that bears emotions a horrifying idea in and of itself?