Customer Reviews

Frankenstein: A Cultural History

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For 191 years, Frankenstein's hulking monstrosity could be found, not only in our nightmares, but also on bookshelves, comic-book racks, theater stages, movie and television screens, as well as toy-store shelves. The monster indeed cast quite a long shadow across our popular culture and literary historian, Ms. Hitchcock (Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London), does a Herculean effort to enlighten the reader to the many facets and incarnations of the monster- from Shelley's original novel, to Karloff's tragic portrayal, to Dick Briefer's 1950's horror comic The Monster of Frankenstein and beyond.

Frankenstein: A Cultural History is a comprehensive and entertaining account of Shelley's infamous literary creation, and serves as a testament to the popularity of that, in Shelley's own words, "hideous phantasm of a man."

The monster lives! Truer than any proclamation on a theater marquee, Frankenstein's monster still walks among us as it has for almost 200 years since it was first created. Susan Tyler Hitchcock, who last traced literary history in _Mad Mary Lamb_, has been on the lookout for the monster for the past twenty years, and now has written _Frankenstein: A Cultural History_ (Norton). "My guiding assumption has been that the monster's story says something important. Otherwise we would not keep telling it." The retellings are not just movies, although these do keep coming long after the archetypal films of Boris Karloff. Hitchcock traces the story in stage plays, television comedies, pulp novels, comics, plastic models, and breakfast cereals. The monster has risked being trivialized ever since its inception, but especially in our scientific age, it keeps scaring us with intimations that we may know too much for our own good.

Mary Shelley produced an original story but one not without its antecedents. Shelley subtitled her story, published in 1818, "The Modern Prometheus", drawing on the legend of the god who suffered for giving humans fire. She also drew upon the science of the time that was investigating how bodies twitched when sparked with electricity. Immediately after her novel was published, there were stage productions that introduced business that was not in the novel, like the bumbling laboratory assistant, electrical reanimation machines, a monster mute except for grunts and groans, an angry crowd seeking the monster and its creator, and a cataclysmic ending of them both at the climax. It was in 1931 that "something irreversible happened to Frankenstein", the film from Universal Studios. It "... locked in new and indelible imagery for the Monster. It had so wide and powerful an influence that ever since, renditions of the story have either depended on, ricocheted off, or actively defended against associations with it." The reputation of the Shelley novel had gone into decline (more in the ascendant now with appreciation of the romantic movement and of women authors) and few knew of the original story, but everyone came to know the monster as portrayed by Boris Karloff. Karloff's image (with its sutures, bolts in the neck, and square-topped head, all developed by makeup artist Jack Pierce) is the image even for those who haven't seen the old movies.

Frankenstein, along with Dracula, rescued Universal Studios and sparked endless remakes and sequels. They became standards of television in the 1950s, when Universal's horror library was marketed to local television stations, which in turn made programs of them called something like "Thrill Theater" or "Creature Feature", hosted by a local ghoul like Vampira or M. T. Graves. The broadcasts were pitched to adults, but they became a staple of adolescents who were potential audiences for new films like _I Was a Teenage Frankenstein_. When we were making our first voyages into outer space, _Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster_ came in 1964. In the movies, German scientists might make the life force of the monster which might be irradiated in Japan. Dr. Frank N. Furter was the demented host in _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_, singing, dancing, and bent on making Rocky, a creature that would satisfy his every sexual need. Commercial applications multiplied: General Mills brought forth Frankenberry cereal and a beer-and-hot-dog franchise trademarked the name "Frank 'n Stein". It's all here in Hitchcock's entertaining compilation, and it is all fun, except that the horror never goes away. Shelley's ambiguous creature is still around to scold us when we fret that we might be tampering with nature without knowing what the future might bring. Genetic modification may never recover from the etymological sneer "Frankenfood" coined in 1992 for modified crops, and there are also now "Frankenpigs" (although I think surely someone could have done a catchier neologism with "Frankenswine"). We are not about to stop our tampering, and so the monster will never be slowed by trivialization or commerce. It will haunt us forever.

Frankenstein and Dracula were born on the same night -- sort of. The story of how Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron's physician, John Polidori, spent an evening in the Villa Diodati, which resulted in the creation of these two seminal horrors has been told often enough, but probably never as well as Ms. Hitchcock does. After that, she goes on to discuss the book, and the frequent reiterations that have helped the Monster adapt to changing social mores and cultural needs. She writes well, and for the most part accurately, making this small cultural icon a fascinating subject.
If there is a flaw to the book, and I can't say for certain that there is, it seems as if Ms. Hitchcock has focused narrowly on her subject, and may, perhaps, have accepted general opinions regarding subject that were merely peripheral to the primary theme. A case in point is her dismissal of Lord Byron's treatment of his illegitimate daughter Allegra Biron (Byron chose this spelling as a way of aknowledging parenthood without confering legitimacy.) Ms. Hitchcock seems to accept the conventional wisdom that Byron was unfeelings and uncaring, as tossed the poor child aside to be raised by a group of Italian nuns -- an opinion which is largely trounced in Doris Langley Moore's "Lord Byron -- Accounts Rendered". I have no convenient way of testing other minor details -- and it's hard to say whether this type of thing really matters given the focus of the book.
Since most people haven't read the original novel (it's not an easy read) Ms. Hitchcock gives an excellent understanding of Ms. Shelley's inspiration and creation, and her discussion of the subsequent interpretations of the work is lively and interesting. This is a good academic work suitable for casual reading, and probably a must read for fans of horror movies and horror fiction.

Hitchock has provided us with a concise, entertaining, fresh new perspective on one of the most famous monsters of all time. My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this book and read it aloud to each other (a la the story tellers gathered at Villa Diodati that fateful summer.) The book follows a linear timeline starting with background and a lovely biographical portrait of Mary Shelley. Hitchock demonstrates excellent research and analysis on the reception and cultural influence of the novel. One of the best Frankenstein books I have ever read, and I've read a few! This book is not merely for the literary scholar but can be enjoyed by anyone who has an appreciation for the novel, history, and/or culture at large. I highly recommend this book! Thank you, Ms. Hitchock, for such a great read :D

When I was around 8 or 9 years old I had an interest in movie monsters - never mind that I hadn't even seen the movies. This was back in the mid to late 70s before VCRs and "On Demand." I remember trying to stay up late Friday nights to watch "Nightmare Theater" but usually too afraid to stay up alone. As a teenager I read some of the books that inspired those movies and I recall being disappointed with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - not so much like the movie's story. But what makes Mrs. Hitchcock's cultural history interesting is that she presents all the different iterations of the story, how they changed the story, and how it's become a part of our culture.

Starting with the author, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who was 18 years old and pregnant with her second child by author Percy Shelley (who had abandoned his wife and 2 children - he finally married Mary after his wife killed herself), Mrs. Hitchcock explains the background of the story, how it began and the influences that shaped it: Milton's Paradise Lost, a growing knowledge of anatomy, the popular experiments using electricity to animate dead bodies, etc. The various stage productions that soon followed modified it by adding the creepy assistant and the idea of lightning bringing the creature to life. Soon politicians were evoking the name, and it didn't take long before the name had become blurred in the public conscious: was Frankenstein the doctor or the monster? But actor Boris Karloff gave us the most enduring image in Universal's tremendously successful 1931 film and spawned a whole host of sequels.

A very interesting book - I was looking for something "different" - filled with photos and illustrations that discuss the ways Frankenstein has become a part of our culture, right up to today when the name is invoked in scientific issues such as cloning and genetically-modified foods ("Frankenfoods"). Should be of interest to those interested in literature (the book finally gained literary respect in the 1970s and 80s), modern culture, or just the monster himself.

Susan Tyler Hitchcock has produced a wonderful study on one of horror's greatest icons Frankenstein.

Starting with his invention by the young Mary Shelley before her marriage to Percy Shelley when she was just 18, Hitchcock traces the development of the Frankenstein phenom all the way up to its present time.

Along the way, Hitchcock thoroughly treats Frankenstein's various incarnations along the way on stage, in the movies, television and later in comic books and pop culture items.

With each incarnation it's interesting to see the way then contemporary story tellers retold the tale with an eye towards the issues and science of their times.

Like his cousins Dracula, the Mummy and later the Wolf Man Frankenstein was recruited to either assuage or tease out our deepest fears giving us either a good scare or a timeful laugh.

We can only hope that were he to actually come to life, he would simply and tersely observe all that's been made of him and say: "Good!"

Hitchcock's book is infectiously readable. I'm a big fan of Frankenstein (novel, movie, mythology) and have to say this book does not disappoint. Hitchcock's book is well-researched and even entertaining. What fascinated me most was all the parallels she was able to find, some obvious, some innovative, to what culture and society has created since Shelley's 1818 publication.

Like the Frankenstein Monster himself, Mrs. Hitchcock's book is a patchwork quilt that is fascinating....but flawed. The book starts surely and slowly enough with an even-measured recounting of the famous genesis of the novel and continues its leisurely pace whilst covering early stage productions and the early movies....but somewhere along the way there comes a sense of a "hurry-up-and-finish" to the narrative. We speed through many usages and adaptations of the famous novel, with too-much undeserved attention paid to in-depth detailings of various comic books and political cartoons....yet for some bizarre reason Mrs. Hitchcock completely ignores mention of three of the most faithful filmed adaptations of Mary Shelly's jewel: the 1973 Dan Curtis production, the 1977 "Terror of Frankenstein" directed by Calvin Floyd and the most recent (and perhaps best in terms of faithfulness to the novel) Hallmark Entertainment's wonderful "Frankenstein" of 2004. Why these are not even mentioned is a complete mystery to me. And no mention is made of the controversial multi-million dollar Broadway musical that opened and closed after one night's performance: readers would have liked to have known of it. There are also errors herein that make me wonder how the writer of this book (who maintains a blog on the Monster!) could have made them. Some of the ones I've caught are as follows: she offers Boris Karloff's height as 6'3" (without the Monster's boots!)...and yet in dozens of other references I've discovered his height as being 5'10-11". To continue: in "Bride of Frankenstein" she has us believe it is the old man's son who disrupts his and the Monster's idyll, when in fact it is two strangers asking for directions who disrupt the cozy scene. (That is why the old blind man is a hermit - he has NO ONE...until the Monster becomes his only friend, however briefly.) She also claims that in "Bride" the Monster "dances". Well, if sitting on a stool and moving briefly to the violin tune that the old hermit is playing constitutes "dancing" then I don't know what dancing is! On page 201, she claims that Lionel Atwill played Inspector Krogh in "Bride" when anyone who is truly in the know with regards to Universal's Frankenstein series knows full well that he played that role in "Son of Frankenstein"...and only there! These are some of the errors I know of; but what of those I do not? Cause for concern. As to the illustrations in the book, some are quite good and edifying - but why have a lousy picture from "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster" and not a single one of the "Bride of Frankenstein"? Again, the book begins engagingly - and then it seems as if Mrs. Hitchcock's candle began burning rapidly - and the last two-thirds of the book become a roller-coaster ride with much....much missed along the bumpy ride! A side note: kudos to the Evan Gaffney Design for the eye-catching dust-jacket!