Frankenstein

They say man made the monster, but that’s not due to the creation, instead it’s due to the perception and treatment of the creation. For my first real “project” of my junior English class, we had to write an essay based on one of the books we had to read for summer reading. But me, I never do summer reading, I always make it up. But this time, I didn’t know there was an exact list of books I needed to read. So when it came time to choose the book “I read” over the summer, I picked Frankenstein because it was the only one I was slightly familiar with. With some luck on my end, and googling small things about the book while writing the essay, I ended up getting an A on it, hehe. My essay though, it heavily focused on the idea of how monsters aren’t born, they are instead created. And in this case, the monster was created by society in this story. By now we’ve heard how corny it is to be like “oh society makes me evil this-and-that” but for the case of Frankenstein, book and movie and other forms of media, that couldn’t be anymore true and really the first case of that idea being presented in its full form. Because imagine you were the “monster” in this case, recently born, pretty much brain dead and have child-like tendencies, and just based off a few mistakes, you are hunted down and murdered. Now I’m not totally casting aside what the “monster” did, but because of how he was treated lead to those events which happened. Whoever the actor is, as he wasn’t credited within the film itself, he actually did such a great job playing the role of The Monster. It’s mostly because of how human he feels even when it’s presented by others that The Monster should be a thing far from human, so the actor is able to really fight against that stereotype and ideology which is pushed onto him by everybody else. I also really just like the feel of old movies, the style, how open and shut they are, that’s a big problem with a lot of movies today. Sure, you can say this one went a little fast, and I agree with you, but the message and story was still presented perfectly in that time frame. Movies now with a 2+ hour runtime could struggle with their message and story and just end up making the whole thing a slog which results in a low rating on Letterboxd, hehe. Also, it’s such high quality for its time because it utilizes all of its resources for what was there in 1931. On set locations, practical set pieces, no messes of makeup or bad quality effects. It’s really impressive for its time and just a universal success for what it is. Live, laugh, love…the sequence where the father is carrying his daughters corpse in his arms while he goes through the lively festival, it’s truly haunting and really helps bring more to the conversation of who The Monster really is, and if he’s totally in the wrong.