From the perspective of I, an international student, who essentially knew little about the western literature, Frankenstein is still a symbol of sci-fi novels. To be honest, I am not a big fan of science fiction products (films, books, etc). However, I still have a very strong empathy of Frankenstein's story since I knew it was considered the first novel of this type in the world. So I would say, like most of the people who are not interested at sci-fi novels, it is very normal for me to confuse the famous Frankenstein and his "monster" before I took this class.
Actually, in my opinion, it is not even a story of a "monster". Because Frankenstein's product is more like a reborn person. He has both body and mind and does things with his emotion. So the reason why Frankenstein's product was always described as a green-skin, disgusting and creepy monster may be from the origin version of Frankenstein film. It was the first time that the "monster" was defined visually. From then on, it was always referred to a monster instead of a human. Considering that Mary Shelly is a female writer, which means the novel was written from a different perspectives of most of the novelists at that time, she granted more human characteristics onto the "monster". In other word, he behaves very alike real human.
While reading the book, the story of "monster" looks complex and we can easily understand what exactly it is based on the narration and context. But if we are seeing the film, the truth is hidden inside. We can not read characters' mind and what we can really "read" is what they have there on the screen. Visual art can transform the plain words into realistic graphics while it sometimes leaves us biased impression of the characters, for instance, Frankenstein's "monster". I would say, everything has a mask on their face in the films. How could it be possible that an ugly monster have a bright heart on the screen?
Comments
Post a Comment