The Cyborg is “the Other;” it embodies all the ideas that do not belong to the West’s traditional ideology of white male supremacy. Harraway’s concept of the Cyborg is a good portrait of post-humanism. His very nature renders any analysis flawed because it cannot be defined. It represents the disappearance of boundaries between the Self and the Other, between the Self and its environment, between nature and culture. It embraces the idea of “every thing” and “every being” as interconnected.
According to Pepperell, the main characteristic of post-humanism is that it does not focus on the human being alone, but on the human being and its environment:
Post-Humanism is about how we live, how we conduct our exploitation of the environment, animals, and each other. It is about what things we investigate, and what questions we ask and what assumptions underlie them. The most obvious manifestations of the end of humanism are those movements that resist the worst aspects of humanist thought: feminism—the movement against the domination of women; animal rights—the movement against human exploitation of animals; environmentalism—the movement against human exploitation of the earth; anti-slavery—the movement against human exploitation of other humans. The fact that all the movements exist suggests the gradual overturning of a human-centred world is well underway. (p.176)
Are We Ready for a New Frankenstein?
What kind of society would be willing to promote enhanced beings? Such a society would necessarily be open to new ideas and change and would be willing to go beyond the traditional representation of the body as sacred. An enhanced being would be superior to natural beings; therefore, such a society would be able to reconcile both enhanced and natural beings only by rejecting the core societal functions of dominance and power relationships. But the relationship to dominance underlies society’s representation of the ideal individual, which in turn structures social relationships in terms of the opposition between the Self and the Other. Therefore, in order to truly embrace enhanced human beings, society must go beyond this dual (Self versus Other) representation of identity.
Going beyond the dual representation of identity as Self or Other is not an easy prospect because most of our values are divided into dual systems, each modeled on a system of representation which strictly opposes what is good to what is bad, denying any possibility of a middle ground. Because the representation of the Self versus Other is based on representations of the good versus bad and the dominator versus dominated, it lacks the middle ground necessary for societal tolerance of enhanced beings. As long as this middle ground cannot be found, any hope of enhancing the human body would be pointless because it would not be accepted by society as a whole. Such a middle ground has not yet been found. Because we have no middle ground, no allowance for “Others,” we realize that any re-creation of life will always be treated as an “Other,” outcast, hated, and oppressed. But, like the case of Frankenstein’s creature, it is in humanity’s best interest to find a place for that “Other,” because if that new life is truly post-human it likely has the ability to do us great deal of good or a great deal of harm.
V
Dr. Frankenstein’s Monster Assembly Kit
19
And We Thought He Was the Monster
MICHAEL MENDELSON
In the end, Baron Frankenstein stands by the door of his son’s bedroom, inside a hallway that is inside of the house (Palace? Castle? We never get to see the outside, but we don’t really need to) that is inside of a well-ordered village filled with people who seem to lead well-ordered lives.
Henry Frankenstein is inside the bedroom being taken care of by his fiancé, soon to be wedded after a slight interruption of an otherwise happy, pricey, and public wedding. Henry Frankenstein is, after all, the son of the Baron, and so he, his wife, and their son (everyone seems to hope it is a son), will occupy an important position in this well ordered village. No doubt there is a happy ending in the offing here.
True, there has been an intrusion into this well ordered and peaceful village, but the problem has been . . . well, let us say “disposed of,” and all is right again. Order has been restored; everyone and everything seems to be back in its proper place. Soon the festivities surrounding the wedding will begin again, the wedding will take place, and the future will, no doubt, wind on in its well-ordered way: Henry will eventually become the Baron, and he will, it is hoped, have a son who will one day be the Baron, and he too will, it is hoped, have a son, and on and on it should go. A happy ending that should be the beginning of a reasonably happy future.
Baron Frankenstein, seeing his future daughter-in-law tending to his son, offers up a toast that sums all this up: “Here’s to a son of The House of Frankenstein!” And so the movie ends. But, as we know, that isn’t the way it begins.
It begins in a graveyard. Then, it shifts to an abandoned watchtower turned into a laboratory, and then comes the monster, and then comes the intrusion from outside the village that wreaks havoc on the inside of the village. But the source of the intrusion, the monster, meets his (its?) end in a burning windmill where the monster is destroyed by the flames.
Or is the monster destroyed? Surely, there’s little room for doubt that the creature in the windmill is destroyed. But is that creature in the windmill really the monster? Henry and the villagers seem convinced that the horror is something that has come into the village from the outside. But maybe the horror is to be found inside the village. Maybe even the real source of that horror comes from the inside. But why do Henry and the villagers think that the creature is the monster?
To Be a Monster, Scene One
Well, he certainly seems to be a monster. To begin with, there’s his appearance, which is almost but not quite human. There is the flat head, the stitched scars on his neck and hand, the protruding bolts on his neck, and the expression on his face. Unlike most faces we encounter, it does not have a wide variety of expressions. In fact there seem to be two main ones: an almost uncomprehending catatonic gaze, and the other one that is notably violent, even ferocious. True, we do see him smile—once. But even then, it’s in a rather disturbing, unsettling context.
And then there are his gangly limbs which are in the right places but do not have quite the kind of proportions we would expect from a normal human being. This odd proportion is highlighted by the ill-fitting nature of his clothing. There is nothing to suggest that either Henry Frankenstein or his assistant Fritz are tailors, so we can only assume that these are the normal clothing of a normal human body, and it is obvious from a glance that they do not fit the way they ought to, and it is not just because the jacket is too small. The legs and the arms just don’t match up the way we would expect them to.
And it is not surprising that the clothes don’t fit quite right and that the arms and legs don’t quite match up, because the body is not a normal body. It is an assemblage of body parts, collected from formerly dead bodies and pieced together by Henry and Fritz in the laboratory, which is itself a rather odd manner and place for a human to come into being, if in fact we still feel comfortable applying the word “human” here. To make all this a bit worse, as if it were not already bad enough, it is conspicuously pointed out that among these various collected body “parts” there is a “criminal brain,” and that cannot be a good thing.
And this being is mute, incapable of uttering anything more than guttural sounds and growls. These noises reinforce our feeling that he is more than a little dangerous and a lot less than what we would want to call “human.”
To Be a Monster, Scene Two
Even worse than the way he looks and sounds is what he does. He kills. Not just once, but three times, and he makes an unsuccessful but very determined attempt at a fourth. His first victim is Fritz, and while it is all done off-camera, the repeated screams make it clear that that it is done in a very painful and unpleasant sort of way. What we do eventually see is an eerily dark image of Fritz and Fritz’s shadow, apparently hanging from some kind of hook. It is a haunting image tha
t emphasizes the disagreeable and grisly nature of his death.
And then there’s Dr. Waldman, who dies by having his esophagus crushed (and, perhaps, his neck broken?) by the creature’s vise-like grip. Once again, not good. Worst of all is the third death. This is where we get that smile. He is playing with Maria, a welcoming young girl, throwing flowers into a lake and watching them float. Then the creature briefly smiles, picks her up, and throws her into the water, thus drowning her. Drowning a little girl is bad; smiling while you do it is evil.
As for that fourth attempt, although it is unsuccessful, it is not for lack of effort. The creature, having carried off Henry Frankenstein (his “father,” insofar as he has one), tosses Henry’s unconscious body from the top of a windmill. Henry hits a blade of the windmill, and then falls to the ground. That he survives is clearly not the intended outcome, and so we can add to the list of the creature’s atrocities “attempted patricide.” It is hard to rank such things, but attempting to kill one’s creator-father cannot be a lot better than drowning a little girl. Dr. Waldman was indeed right when he exclaims early in the film, “It’s a monster!”
Or so it seems.
A Short Intermission
James Whale, like a lot of horror film directors then and now, is engaged in a delicate and artful balancing act. He’s attempting—quite successfully—to provide seventy minutes of entertainment (the standard length of a reel of film at that time) to an audience largely comprised of victims of the Great Depression, arguably the worst economic disaster in American history.
Seventy minutes of diversion and distraction to an audience that can well use it. And not just any old “diversion”: it’s “horror,” a strange and interesting kind of diversion in it’s own right, one that continues to attract and fascinate many of us. However, there is more than diversion and distraction going on. Whale is like many other of the great directors of early horror movies—F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922), Tod Browning (Dracula, 1931; Freaks, 1933), and Karl Freund (The Mummy, 1932; Mad Love, 1935), to cite a few. These directors knew that horror can entertain and distract in its own odd and fascinating way, but they knew that it could also do more. They knew that horror is a vehicle that can be used to make a point. For those who wanted it, the point was there. For those who were not interested, there was still the horror to keep them entertained.
Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) is a prime example of this; one of the very best, I think. Here we have cinematic art in the service of philosophy, a movie that involves a “metaphysics” of sorts. And when I say “metaphysics,” I mean it in the most straightforward sense: the attempt to uncover some “reality” that underlies “appearances”: an attempt to uncover that which actually is the case in spite of how things might seem to us.
Film can be a very effective way to reveal the truth beneath the surface. After all, it is often said that a picture is worth a very large number of words (a thousand seems to be the standard figure). Upon close inspection, Whale’s Frankenstein does exactly that, for here we have a compelling portrayal of the contrast between what seems to be the case and what actually is the case. And when all’s said and done, what is the case is even worse than what seems to be the case.
Not Being Such a Monster After All, Scene One
And what seems to be the case? That he is a “monster,” of course. Upon reflection, however, it’s far from clear that the “appearances” support the “reality” of this conclusion. He, after all, did not choose the way he looks, and even if he did, it’s not clear that the way he looks is enough to support the conclusion that he is some kind of “monster.” A flat head, disproportionate limbs, ill-fitting clothing, odd facial expressions, bolts and scars—these are unusual, perhaps even unsettling at first glance, but they seem hardly enough to deserve the label of “monster.” You might feel initial revulsion, but in the end, a bit of sympathy seems more appropriate.
And he did not choose the “criminal brain.” That was the result of Fritz’s clumsiness (and, perhaps as well, his lack of literacy?), and it is not quite obvious what conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that he has was given a “criminal brain.” Then, as now, the notion of a “criminal brain” is a controversial one, and it appears deliberately ambiguous what Whale might have in mind by including this detail—a detail that’s absent from the original novel which first appeared 1818, before the controversy emerged. There are going to be clues that highlight this ambiguity and suggest that, in spite of what we might think, the “criminal brain” doesn’t explain as much as we might want to think it does.
Not Being Such a Monster After All, Scene Two
And those “clues” are directly related to the second reason he seems to be such a “monster”: the things he does. That he kills. But why does he kill?
He kills Fritz, but Fritz is hardly an innocent victim of some “criminal brain.” From the beginning, Fritz constantly torments him, most notably with fire, something the creature is clearly frightened by. And there’s also the whip. Fritz likes to use the whip. The creature does not like it, not even a little. It does not require great insight for Henry Frankenstein to note that the creature “hated Fritz. Fritz tormented him so!” It’s not a happy episode, but many have done more damage for less reason.
And Doctor Waldman, his second victim, having already uttered, “It’s a monster!” later adds, “Shoot it!” There’s little room for doubt that Dr. Waldman is the one who makes the first move, that he is the one who wants to kill the creature; Dr. Waldman is the one who “picks the fight,” so to speak. And so Dr. Waldman tries, and that is when the creature kills Dr. Waldman—the point at which Dr. Waldman is attempting to destroy our supposed monster by dissecting him alive.
Yes, Dr. Waldman did say he would try to do it “painlessly,” and he does try a few injections. Maybe they are supposed to be lethal, but for whatever reason, they definitely are not. And, if you’re the one who’s going to be dissected, the prospect of injected painkillers is probably going to seem a rather minor point compared to the fact that someone is attempting to cut you into disposable pieces.
More complex and more interesting is the death of the young girl, the one time we get to see that smile. Here again, the context is important. He comes upon her at the side of a lake, and she’s the one (and only) person that greets him without any sense that there is something “wrong” or “odd” about him. And so, she invites him to play, throwing flowers upon the lake, trying to make them float like “boats.” And this is where we get the smile: a response to a brief interlude of acceptance by someone who wants to play, a serene and happy moment in the midst of seventy minutes that are otherwise confined to the range of the somber to the maniacal to the frenzied.
But soon the flowers are all gone, and the creature wants to continue the game. So, with a playful innocence that leads to a clearly unexpected and terrible result, he picks up the little girl, still smiling, and tosses her into the water, assuming she will float just as the flowers did. But he does not know that young girls don’t float, and when he realizes this, he flees. We can clearly see that he is beside himself with horror. In fact, he seems even more horrified than those of us who have just viewed the terrible conclusion of this otherwise almost charming interlude.
And then there’s Henry. It’s no surprise that the creature should want to kill Henry Frankenstein. Henry is the one who brought him into this world. It’s Henry who made him into the kind of creature that he is. It’s Henry who abandons him, and finally, it’s Henry who pursues him, leading a mob of townspeople, trying to kill him. And it is worth remembering that, from the very beginning, it’s Henry Frankenstein who set in motion the events leading to this mess.
The Monster Revealed
And what exactly is this mess? To see that we need to look closer at the “reality” that underlies the “appearance” of what the film presents to us; we need to look deeper at the “metaphysics” of the film.
And no, the real monster is not Henry Frankenstein
. Things are much more complicated than that, and the horror of it all is much deeper than that. Henry is surely part of the horror, but only just a part. And as for the creature, he now hardly seems to be such a monster after all. It is far worse: the creature now begins to seem something of a victim himself, regardless of whether he has a “criminal brain,” if in fact there really is such a thing.
But there’s more to the story here. It’s not just that the creature himself is beginning to seem something of a victim. There is something deeper at work here. Now that we can see the creature in a more sympathetic light, the creature has become a point of contrast against which the reflective viewer can discern where the true monstrosity and horror is to be found. He is an example of what some philosophers like to call “alterity”: true “Otherness,” that which is so different that it cannot fit into any of the categories we use in our daily lives. These contrasts are present throughout the movie. There is, to begin with, his unusual and striking appearance. From the first time we see him in the laboratory to the final time we see him in the burning windmill, there is no getting around the fact that he (it?) looks so different from anything else we have seen before.
Then there’s also the contrast between his environment on the “outside” and the “inside” of the village and the “inside” of the Frankenstein family’s comfortable, somewhat plush dwelling. He comes from an unwelcoming landscape of gothic gray, an abandoned watchtower and a windswept, rain soaked rugged terrain. The village is a place of manmade order and comfort. This contrast is made even more conspicuous in the few minutes that see we him inside the village. Or, to be more precise, inside the Baron’s dwelling, the inside of the inside, so to speak. He just doesn’t fit there, even more than his clothes don’t fit him.
Frankenstein and Philosophy Page 21
