I wanted to draw your attention to a series of events taking place all over campus this Tuesday, March 7, for Baruch’s inaugural Art-a-thon. If you have some free time in your schedule, any of these events could qualify as a cultural event for your optional extra credit assignment. (See the syllabus for details on how to get full credit.)

In particular, I want to invite you to stop by the event I’m organizing: a marathon reading of Frankenstein. The event commemorates the 200th anniversary of Shelley’s writing of the novel, which she finished in 1817 and published in 1818. We’ll be in room VC 14-267 for most of the day, taking turns reading. Drop by whenever you like and for as long as you like. You can read just a sentence or a whole chapter. We’ll have refreshments on hand and pizza around lunchtime. Bring friends! It’ll be fun.

The full schedule is posted below. Let me know if you have questions!

ART-A-THON Schedule of Events

Weissman School of Arts and Sciences

March 7, 2017

PLAY THE BLUES IN ONE SIMPLE LESSON (Prof. Anne Swartz)
9:00 am – 11:00 am VC 7-140 and VC 7-136

MARATHON READING OF FRANKENSTEIN (Prof. Stephanie Insley Hershinow)
10:00 am – 4:00 pm VC 14-267

TYPEWRITER RODEO (Prof. Mary McGlynn)
11:30 am – 1:30 pm VC 7-244

 ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE: EXPERIMENTS IN COMMUNITY
11:00 am – 2:00 pm Baruch Performing Arts Center

IMPROV THEATER SESSION (Prof. Debra Caplan)
11:10 am – 12:10 pm Mason Hall, 17 Lexington Avenue Building

PUBLIC LECTURE ON EDWARD HOPPER (Prof. Gail Levin)
11:10 am – 2:00 pm VC 8-210

BOOK MAKING (Prof. Allison Curseen)
11:30 am – 2:30 pm VC 7-244

A SURPRISE Event by Dr. Aldemaro Romero,
Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences
12:00 pm Corner of 24th Street & Lex
Learn about it at #BaruchArtathon

POP-UP MAKERSPACE (Prof. Zoe Sheehan-Saldaña)
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm VC 2-140

POP-UP EXHIBITION: OBSESSIONS (Prof. Katherine Behar)
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm New Media Artspace (Library Building)

WHAT’S IN A SENTENCE? (Profs. Gerry Dalgish and Tim Aubry )
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm VC 7-238

PLAY THE BLUES IN ONE SIMPLE LESSON (Prof. Abby Anderton)
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm VC 7-140 and VC 7-136

HOW TO READ A SONNET (Prof. Laura Kolb)
2:15 pm – 4:15 pm VC 7-238

STUDENT POETRY READING (Profs. Grace Schulman, Ely Shipley, William McClellan, Rick Rodriguez)
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm 17 Lexington Ave. Bldg., RM 903

PERFORMANCE of THE CASTLE (Prof. Erec Krebs)
6:05 pm – 9:00 pm VC 7-150

The Prestige is a film from 2006 directed by Christopher Nolan taking place in 1900s England about two rival magicians who spend their lives in pursuit of outdoing the other’s latest illusion.  The main trick that they competed over was the illusion of vanishing and reappearing.  The two magicians of this rivalry are Robert Angier (played by Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden ( played by Christian Bale).  One night, Borden showcases a new trick with two doors on either side of his stage.  Right before he walks into one door, he tosses a rubber ball toward the other door, where he reappears and catches the ball.  After seeing this trick, Angier visits Nikola Tesla in America(played by David Bowie) and asks him to build him a machine to clone himself in hopes of copying and beating Borden.  During their conversation, Angier asks Tesla ,”Well hasn’t good come form your obsession?”  Tesla responds, “Well at first…but I followed them for long.  I am their slave and one day they will choose to destroy me.”

The theme in Tesla’s conversation with Angier alludes to the theme of Frankenstein’s conversation with  Robert Walton. Frankenstein warns Walton of his venture,”Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge” (53).  Frankenstein recognizes Walton’s passion for knowledge and hopes to save him from his own downfall by sharing his own story.  Likewise, Tesla tells Angier,”Go home, forget this thing.  I can recognize an obsession, no good will come of it.” Both Tesla and Frankenstein use their experiences to warn their predecessors of what may come for them if they choose to continue their ways.

The lesson to be taken away in the The Prestige that also translates to Frankenstein is that life is sustained through birth and not through creation.  To perform his trick with the aide of his new machine, Angier would  create a copy of himself and then drown his original self in a water tank through a trap door underneath the stage. However, Borden’s method was much simpler.  He had a twin that would play the part of his clone.  Bordern’s method was sustainable, while Angier’s method came at the cost of a trip to see Tesla in America and constantly having to drown his original self after creating a clone. Borden’s method was natural and pure, while Angier’s method was unnatural and ultimately self-destructive.  In Frankenstein, Frankenstein uses  various body parts to create an unnatural lifeform which ultimately leads to the death of his family members and his own demise.  Rather than focus on building his relationship with his family and protecting them, Frankenstein becomes sidetracked with his pursuit of “the secret of life.”  Angier, with his constant pursuit of amazing his audience, ends up sacrificing his own mental well-being by dedicating his life to beating Borden.  Both Frankenstein and Angier had personal agendas that was beyond what was natural and within their grasp.  Their stubborn actions made the product of their passions take a hold of them instead.  

The adaptation chosen in comparison/contrast  to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is a mini screenplay called Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, created and directed by Paul Merelle on February 14th, 2016 with Assistant Director Nathan Marx. This video depicted two young boys trespassing into  a cemetery to kidnap a dead corpse . The two young boys decided to proceed by experimenting with this dead body, and suddenly the  deceased human comes  back to life. The human being seemed to have no soul.  Has the alive human being finished where he left off in his life? What I find interesting watching this video is, the two teen boys seemed to have planned it out  but at the same time didn’t know what to expect. Although, they disappeared afterwards we don’t know what their reaction was. Were they frightened and just ran away? Did they watch from afar to see what would happen once the human becomes alive again?  what I also found interesting was, the human being rising from his bed and walks out of the room as if he knows where he is going even though he seem to not have a soul in his body. He walks to a place which seemed familiar but then all of a sudden he’s helpless and clueless not knowing what to do.

This adaptation is true to the novel because they both demonstrate creating a creature and bringing back life to the dead and leaving it go about on it’s on without any sense of direction. The differences between the novel and the screen play is Victor created an actual creature and the two teenage boys dug up a dead body from the grave. Bringing life into this world means to care for it, train and nurture it properly. It is almost similar to a mother and father creating a life , the mother giving birth and making sure to take proper  care of the newborn child.  In Shelley’s book chapter 4 page 51, Victor says, “Whence , I often asked myself , did the principle of life proceed? it was a bold question , and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted , if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our enquiries.” This particular quote makes me wonder if Victor valued life in general. Perhaps the way he treated the creature by avoiding it happened to him in real life. is there a life after death?

https://youtu.be/cosd_X-E5-M

When I was growing up, we had the DVD of Edward Scissorhands in our home. Although I haven’t seen the film in years, many different aspects of Mary Shelley’s novel reminded me of this Romantic dark fantasy film. Edward Scissorhands was released in 1990 and directed by the famed Tim Burton. For those who don’t know, his style is very dark, gothic, and spooky- just like Frankenstein. The plot of the film Edward Scissorhands is essentially about an old inventor or “mad scientist” who forms this creature with scissorblades instead of hands. His creature died before completing and raising him. Edward eventually is found by a nice family who takes him in. Edward seems like a dangerous being but we soon see how compassionate and kind he is. He ends up falling in love with a woman named Kim, and discovers that he can use his bizarre feature for something beautiful and positive- cutting and carving bushes. Unfortunately, things changed for the worse when he accidentally causes troubles in the town.

It is pretty evident how many similarities there are between these two brilliant tales. Tim Burton and Mary Shelley’s texts both present the idea of a vicious society in which prejudice and acceptance are constant struggles.

The style of the stories are similar as in they are told within frames. In Edward Scissorhands, the grandmother is telling a story to a young girl.

Both scientists had principled intentions in creating this being. Similarly to Victor, Edward’s creator wanted a sort of companion, someone he could treasure, nurture and teach. Victor implied his reason for creating by saying that he wanted to have “a new species [that] would bless me as its creator and source”. (54) Contrastly, Edward Scissorhand’s creator instilled a sense of acceptance from the start- and Edward Scissorhands was able to function within society. Edward felt love and therefore he differed from the creature in Frankenstein with his emotional stability. I believe both these works had this notion of putting something in a certain unfamiliar and uncomfortable environment and both creatures returned to their original familiar state.

The second similarity is that both creatures lived the first part of their lives in total isolation. Frankenstein’s monster was abandoned and on his own, as was Edward Scissorhands when he lived in his creator’s house for years before being found. This time of isolation had a large impact on their interactions with other humans.

A symbol that appears in both tales is that of snow and ice. In Frankenstein, Victor gets stuck in the mountains full of snow/ice and find the creature in the ice. Ice is a restriction and obstacle, yet it brings Walton, the creature and Victor together in different scenarios. In Edward Scissorhands, he discovered the beautiful sculptures he could carve from ice with the thing that made him look so evil. With this, he made a lasting positive impact and the snow brought him closer to society.

Edward Scissorhands and Frankenstein were written in very different time periods, however, society is vicious in both. This provokes the readers and viewers to reflect on common discourse and issues in society today.

Googling modern revisions of Frankenstein exposed me to hundreds of Frankenstein references–some that I wish I had never even come across. I even came across a television show that referred to a Frankenstein-like creature as its creator’s sexual partner, but the one that appealed to me was my old, fond memory of the story of “aggressive creations” in the book, Jurassic Park. In Jurassic Park, a park was built with manmade Dinosaurs, in which a diverse group of people came forth to this park and ended up fighting for survival; the dinosaurs were left roaming around the place like roaches.

Jurassic Park is clearly extremely inspired by Frankenstein because it’s about monsters that are created by humans that take over a world in which they are a threat to everyone that has significance to their creators. In Frankenstein, it was as if all of the creations’ family members had to be killed since they had some importance in his creator’s life. There seems to be a lot of jealousy involved, whether it’s made apparent or not. In Jurassic Park, everyone relevant to the dinosaurs’ creators seemed to be at risk of the dinosaur’s wrath. It’s apparent from analyzing both of these texts that authors love the idea of creations being so advanced that it poses a threat to more than just their creator; we seem to see a common trend here. We see that both the monster and the dinosaurs seem to want to take over something that existed before they did, and they feel the entitlement to ruin the lives of someone who gave them a chance at life. This entitlement makes it evident that they feel as though since they are out of the ordinary, they are supernatural. The way the scientists in Jurassic Park did their research in contaminated waters is the way that Victor Frankenstein found used body parts on many different occasions to find what would be perfect for this unethical and incredibly scary creation. Both Victor and the scientists are reasons why their loved ones are at risk, indirectly, because they end up creating these monsters that are granted with too much power for their own good. This clearly was no creator’s intention, which was made clear as Victor thought to himself, “Two years had now nearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and this was his first crime?” (77) It was so heartbreaking for Victor to accept this, the way it would be for a parent to accept that their child committed a murder. In Jurassic park, like Frankenstein, the dinosaur’s actions are absolutely unpredictable and beyond what a human can prevent or control. Clearly, when someone is granted so much power without having to work for it, it’s just creation-nature to take advantage of the fact that they can move mountains and cause havoc, somehow. Everyone just wants to make an impact in some way or another, but these creations are aware that their impact can be absolutely detrimental.

The Bride of Frankenstein is one of the most successful sequels to Mary Shelley and her famous story of Frankenstein. There were other sequels and more moder verisons of the story but both James Whale; who was the director and especially John L. Balderston; who wrote the movie, decided to shake things up and create a horror and sci flim where the monster gets a love interest.

Despite what may have happened in the original movie, in this verison Frankenstein and the monster end up being alive. It starts off with Mary Shelley herself claiming there is more to the story and it automatically takes us back to the last scence of Frankenstein (1931). The father of the girl who was drowned by the monster, wishes to see the bones of the monster, but ends up falling into a pit that little does that the monster is still living and would soon strangle him. Frankenstein is found and returned to Elizabeth and with a little care, is well again. He becomes caught up in the fact of that he can try again once more. Elizabeth is not so fon dof the idea and starts to think that this time around, things will not end up so well for Frankenstein. Frankenstein and his mentor are reunited again and start looking for parts for the mate. The monster ends up saving a woman, the woman and her screams are heard by two hunters and automatically come to her rescue. Long story short, the monster kills the hunters and escapes the woods. Fast forward a bit, Frankenstein does not wish to continue on with the idea of the collaboration to make the monster a mate and his newly wife Elizabeth is kidnapped and used to mak Frankenstein do his part. Of course, Dr. Frankenstein works hard and hard enough to make The Bride of Frankenstein an actual creature. The monster when seeing his bride, automatically feels a connection and his first word is Friend? but the bride ends up rejecting him. The monster becomes emotional and claims that his bride hates him. Frankenstein and Elizabeth fleed the scene knowing that this cannot end well and the monster ends up pulling a lever and is the cause of the destruction of the tower and lab.

The similarity between the two, would be obivously be that once again, Frankenstein was not so successful. Even though this time around, the body parts chosen were not specifically chosen but one thing that was missing was naturing them and having Frankenstein tell them its okay and a sense of comfort to the monsters. Just like in the first, Frankenstein runs away from the creations instead of actually taking as much effort as he did to make the creatures but instead to show them whats right from the beginning and most likely, this story could have had a different turn out if the bride felt comfortable from the start of her being alive.

A modern revision of Frankenstein that came out not too long ago is the Disney movie called Frankenweenie. Even though this movie came out in 2012, which I consider modern, it still holds some of the similar concepts that Mary Shelley used in the book Frankenstein that we’re reading in class. Frankenweenie’s approach to the story is slightly different than Mary Shelley’s because of instead of “creating a human” it’s based around “reviving a dog that has passed away”. The movie is basically about a boy named Victor Frankenstein that doesn’t really get along with others but his dog, Sparky. In the movie, Victor wants to participate in the science fair at his school but in order to get his father’s permission to do so, he needs to play baseball. With this being said, during a game, Sparky chases the ball and unfortunately gets hit by a car which ultimately leads to his death. Since Victor learned about the effects of electricity and how it potentially brings animals back to life in class. He decided to try it on Sparky one night using lightning. When Victor’s experiment actually worked and he brought Sparky back to life, one of his classmates, Edgar, actually finds out about what Victor has accomplished and blackmails him in order to find out how he did it. Once Edgar learns how to do it, he doesn’t keep it a secret. In fact, he tells the rest of his classmates which caused many students to revive the dead and use these experiments as submissions for the science fair. This ultimately doesn’t end well because most of the students have created monsters that are now roaming around the town.

What’s interesting about Frankenweenie is that although the concept is a bit different at the end it displays the same message in a different way. The little differences that the movie has from the text are mostly done so it can be appropriate for the age group of the viewers. Being that Frankeweenie is a Disney movie, mostly children are going to watch it and changing it to a movie that begins with the “happiness of bringing a friend back to life” rather than the “guilt of creating a monster” is smart. The reason being because it has a smoother transition into the problems that will occur in the movie than can relate to the book.

In both the book and the movie the Victor’s are guilty in my opinion. And that’s how I feel that they relate to each other in modern time. In both situations, they didn’t take control of the situation and that’s why in the book for instance, in one of the many situations, it led to the creature killing Victor’s brother. For example, “The filthy daemon, to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother?” (83, Shelley) When he says “to whom I had given life” it immediately shows that it’s his fault that his brother died. He created the monster and not only did he let the monster escape. He also didn’t educate the monster to follow orders, in other words, he didn’t take control of the situation because if he did his brother would be alive and the monster wouldn’t be aggressive. In Frankenweenie, Victor didn’t control the situation because he let himself get blackmailed. Which lead to chaos in his city with all the dead creatures coming back to life. Both of these stories display the same message of taking the blame for what you’ve done.