Content area
Full text
Movies speak mainly to the eyes. Though they started talking in words some seventy years ago, what they say to our ears seldom overpowers or even matches the impact of what they show us.1
[T] hey brought out Frankenstein at the Lyceum ... and [they] vivified the Monster in such a manner as caused the ladies to faint away & a hubbub to ensue.2
This essay proposes to read one more time the issue of homosexuality in Mary Shelley's first novel, Frankenstein. In order to offer a new angle on the homosexual component of Victor Frankenstein's relationship with his creature when next teaching this most canonical Romantic novel, this essay considers Shelley's work alongside four film adaptations: James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, Whale's 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein, Richard O'Brien's 1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Kenneth Branagh's 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.3 These films present their audience with original readings of their source material, readings that can be questioned with regards to their lack of truthfulness to the original work's themes and characters.
Obviously, the notion of presupposing knowledge of the author's original intention on my part, and thus arguing for subsequent misreading of her work by these three film directors, is quite problematic in itself. This essay is not intended to contribute further to the debate of adapting a novel into another medium, and it argues instead for the fluidity of Shelley's novel, particularly around the issues of sexuality and masculinity as found in Victor's and Walton's scientific endeavors. This fluidity is however limited in all four films under consideration because of directorial decisions that restrict and potentially misinterpret Shelley's work. The creation scene in particular in Whale's and Branagh's films demonstrate the extent of one such reading involved in these film adaptations in light of what Shelley's novel actually presents to the reader. O'Brien's film, on the other, takes on the sexual content of Frankenstein full steam, and it presents the audience with probably the most daring interpretation of the sexual politics of the novel, a treatment of Shelley's story that arguably enriches in turn any reading of the sexual aspect in Frankenstein.
Although science seems to be the unifying principle behind the main story of the novel and most film adaptations, this...