Week 1: Frankenstein

After having never read Frankenstein, I was quite surprised as to how different the monster was compared to what I had expected. There are countless adaptations of the story portrayals of the monster but I’m not sure any of them come remotely close to it. Frankenstein’s monster is almost always a mindless, green, groaning monster with bolts sticking out his neck that wants for nothing but to kill people. In Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein the monster is actually smart and originally has no intention of killing and believe it or not, he just wants to fit in. But it doesn’t matter how smart the monster is or how he even saves a girl from drowning. He’s ugly, so he’s a monster.

I don’t know if it was Marry Shelley’s intention of making the reader feel for the monster or not but damn, I couldn’t help but feel terrible for the guy (although I’m always guilty of favoring the monster characters) Of course until he started killing people…. It was actually harder for me to relate to Dr. Frankenstein. He did things that seemed downright selfish and he never cared for his own creation. He spent most of the book complaining about his life and never really took any action to fix anything.

A funny spin on the concept of a monster being rejected by the world is in the animated movie, A Monster in Paris. Set in 1910 France, a harmless flea is accidentally transformed into a monster. Emile, a shy movie projectionist who also plays the role of the gothic heroin, finds that the creature isn’t so threatening and he actually has an incredible singing voice!

The movie pays homage to stories like Frankenstein and The Phantom of the Opera where the monster turns out to be what we don’t expect. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Francœur, (the flea monster) has no intention of harming anyone but because he is a hideous bug-man, he is considered evil. In the end it is the greed and selfishness of people that turn out to be the real monsters.