Sunday, February 14, 2016

Frankenstein

Frankenstein

            Because I had never seen Frankenstein before, I had a lot of initial reactions to the 1931 version of this film. First of everything, I knew the premise of the story; that a scientist cut up different body parts from dead people to create a new body and used electricity from a storm to wake the “person” up. I had no idea that the scientist’s name was Frankenstein. I thought that the movie named the monster Frankenstein. The parallel that we made in class between the monster and the scientist, obviously, made me understand that this was in fact not the case, but also got me thinking about the way our class thought through the relationship with Frankenstein and the monster.
            It was interesting to me that our class discussed the two as similar and always came back to the topic of nature versus nurture. I think that this movie does a good job of implying that the monster will become evil through the warnings of Frankenstein’s mentor, Dr. Waldman and through the scene where Fritz steals the murderer’s brain. I believe that people cannot be born evil. In my opinion, society and the upbringing a person has molds them into either honest, ethical people or complete psychopaths.  The way the monster is treated in the movie, being locked up and tortured with fire, has a lot to do with how he acts and becomes towards the end of the movies. He is angry and aggressive towards the people that treated him in such terrible ways. You can see that the monster could become a loving person if treated the way the little girl treated him. Through kind gestures and explanation, the monster could potentially be a fully functioning person in society, and a kind one at that. Nurture has a huge role in the way that people end up living the rest of their lives and I feel that the monster was misunderstood.
            I also think this movie had some weird plot holes and inferences. For instance, in the scene where the monster attacks Elizabeth and supposedly rapes her, I believe is far fetched. For one, there is not enough time in that scene for a rape to happen and for two; Frankenstein doesn’t even understand simple things like sunshine. How is he supposed to use know how to even use that part of his body? Also, if we talked about the parallels between Frankenstein, the monster and the director all being gay and having gay tendencies, why would the monster want to rape a woman? Far fetched.

            This movie was interesting and I could see how it would be really entertaining and scary in 1931, but now, after so many people have taken it apart piece by piece to analyze it, it just feels like another film to study and learn from. I never thought of Frankenstein of a movie that had so many hidden themes and meanings, but it was exciting to learn all of the perspectives that other student in the class had.

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