A DIFFERENT
TAKE ON
FRANKENSTEIN
Most fi lm adaptations of Frankenstein
have jettisoned the novel’s epistolary
format and narrator, along with most
of the work’s emotional depth. Kenneth
Branagh’s 1994 version, which he both
directed and starred in as the doomed
scientist, took a very different approach,
as Sorcha Ní Fhlainn points out. “All the
Hammers completely run away with it
and go in very different directions! There
are some great ones, especially 1957’s
The Curse Of Frankenstein. What I like
about the Branagh one – and I don’t
think it’s a particularly great fi lm – is
that it’s very fl eshy, it’s very sticky, and
it’s very homoerotically charged. Lots
of adaptations have tried to avoid that,
but there’s that great sequence where
the creature’s been tipped out of what
is essentially a birthing vessel full of
amniotic fl uid, and Frankenstein grasps the
creature’s body. They’re grappling in this
amniotic fl uid for about 40 seconds, and
you’re just thinking ‘what a strange choice
it is for a Hollywood production’.
“You can see how a man cannot cope
with the physiological bonds that birth
requires, that the creature – this overgrown
baby, as played by Robert de Niro – can’t
be nurtured by this man. It’s all written
into this steampunky mise-en-scène that
Branagh works quite hard at to make it
seem hubristic and ridiculous. It was made
during that early-Nineites Hollywood
Gothic period, when Dracula (1992) was
reinvented. They were trying to make
literature fun again for people who they
thought wouldn’t read the book! It does a
good job, but it’s very in tune with Nineites
politics around coding representations
of male desire, without necessarily being
something really taboo.”COMPLETE GUIDE
MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN
W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K |^083
“IN A WAY [MARY SHELLEY] HAS
BIRTHED THE IMAGININGS OF
MODERN SCIENCE FICTION”
DR SORCHA NI FHLAINNthat its author was identifi ed. The book was
a collaboration with Bysshe Shelley, who
enthusiastically supported his lover’s work, but
the full extent of his involvement remains unclear.
Ní Fhlainn cautions against misattribution: “I
don’t want to give him too much credit, but
Bysshe Shelley really does help her fi ne-tune her
work in a way that it’s ready for publication, as
all good writers have good editors.”
Frankenstein tells the story of the brilliant
scientist Victor Frankenstein, whose hubristic
creation of a man built from human remains
leads to the utter destruction of everything
he has ever loved. The ‘monster’ is no mere
shambling zombie, but a being haunted by a
yearning to experience all that human life has
to offer. When his attempts to fi nd friendship
and love are rebuffed, not least by his appalled
‘father’, the tragic creature exacts terrible
retribution. Drawing on the Ovidian myths of
Prometheus and Pygmalion, in which humanity
is shaped from clay and a lover is conjured from
a sculpture, Frankenstein unites timeless fears
of social rejection, unnatural power and the
existential shock of reproduction. Its impact is as
devastating today as it was on its publication.
Ní Fhlainn and her colleagues were thrilled
by the reaction to events planned for the book’s
bicentenary in 2018. “We had anticipated
that there was going to be a celebration within
the community, but the extent of it was quite
extraordinary. The second you thought that
people had kind of acknowledged it and wanted
to move on to whatever else was going to be
preoccupying the Gothic world, we came back
to Frankenstein! I suppose it’s the fact that the
metaphor of Frankenstein and the reawakened
dead is so potent. It’s not going away anytime
soon. It just is a question of to which era you’re
applying it. Frankenstein contains so many
of the fl eshy horrors of undeath. The clean,
stripped-down, aristocratic version of that, which
would be the vampire, has waxed and waned
just as much as the reanimated undead. With
Frankenstein, though, the really interesting thing
is that it comes back as the horrors of not dying.
Death is not the end. That’s both a blessing, if
you’re terrifi ed of death, and really horrifying,
if you’re enslaved: whether you’re enslaved to
corporate capitalism, or you’re enslaved to a
person, or a thing, or an idea, or an ideology.
So we feel that we’re never going to truly
escape the horrors of the present, because
we’re trapped in it. It’s a perfect moment for
Frankenstein to really be revived.”
She expands on the visceral horror of Mary
Shelley’s creation. “The emotional horror of
Frankenstein is the isolation. The isolation, theMary Shelley had a
life full of tragedies.A DIFFERENT
TAKE ON
FRANKENSTEIN
Most fi lm adaptations of Frankenstein
have jettisoned the novel’s epistolary
format and narrator, along with most
of the work’s emotional depth. Kenneth
Branagh’s 1994 version, which he both
directed and starred in as the doomed
scientist, took a very different approach,
as Sorcha Ní Fhlainn points out. “All the
Hammers completely run away with it
and go in very different directions! There
are some great ones, especially 1957’s
The Curse Of FrankensteinThe Curse Of FrankensteinThe Curse Of Frankenstein. What I like. What I like
about the Branagh one – and I don’t
think it’s a particularly great fi lm – is
that it’s very fl eshy, it’s very sticky, and
it’s very homoerotically charged. Lots
of adaptations have tried to avoid that,
but there’s that great sequence where
the creature’s been tipped out of what
is essentially a birthing vessel full of
amniotic fl uid, and Frankenstein grasps the
creature’s body. They’re grappling in this
amniotic fl uid for about 40 seconds, and
you’re just thinking ‘what a strange choice
it is for a Hollywood production’.
“You can see how a man cannot cope
with the physiological bonds that birth
requires, that the creature – this overgrown
baby, as played by Robert de Niro – can’t
be nurtured by this man. It’s all written
into this steampunky mise-en-scène that
Branagh works quite hard at to make it
seem hubristic and ridiculous. It was made
during that early-Nineites Hollywood
Gothic period, when (1992) was (1992) was
reinvented. They were trying to make
literature fun again for people who they
thought wouldn’t read the book! It does a
good job, but it’s very in tune with Nineites
politics around coding representations
of male desire, without necessarily being
something really taboo.”COMPLETE GUIDE
MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN
WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
“IN A WAY [MARY SHELLEY] HAS
BIRTHED THE IMAGININGS OF
“IN A WAY [MARY SHELLEY] HAS
BIRTHED THE IMAGININGS OF
“IN A WAY [MARY SHELLEY] HAS
MODERN SCIENCE FICTION”
DR SORCHA NI FHLAINNthe full extent of his involvement remains unclear.
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