Steve Stranahan’s Blog

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Mechanical Birth

December 7, 2008 by sstranahan2

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Revision:

The film carries the name “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”. But possibly the most significant segment in the novel is interpreted totally different. The novel described the creation of the monster as a scientific experiment. The process seemed more mechanical and more like the invention of something, whereas the film showed viewers a scene that is much more similar to an actual birth.

This particular clip in the movie begins with Victor coming into the laboratory in a rushed demeanor as if he had to hurry to make the monster. A science experiment is not rushed but completed rather slowly. Birthing a child on the other hand, is generally depicted as hectic, similar to this scene.

The film then introduces the audience to the numerous mechanisms used to animate the monster. Ironically, many of these mechanisms represent biological objects and processes. The monster lays on a platform suspended high near the ceiling and is pushed across the room in a rather winding pattern. What is brought to mind is the egg moving through the female reproductive system. Without this comparison, this mode of translocation makes no sense. The monster is then lowered into a large vat of actual amniotic fluid. This is quite significant because Victor did not use amniotic fluid in the novel version. Another connection the vat of fluid has to the birthing of an actual baby is that it acts as a makeshift womb for the monster during animation, similar to the womb a baby has during development. A flame is set directly under the steel womb. Not only could the audience interpret this as the warmth of a human womb, the flame could represent life. The novel version of the creation scene is colder, as though he was engineering some lifeless invention. The flame in the film shows that the scene is more about life than creation.

Wires are connected to the monster while it is inside of the metallic womb. These wires are to give life to him. In the reproductive process there is a homologous structure called the umbilical cord with provides nourishment for the fetus.

The climax of the scene is where Victor opens a long tube that releases electric eels from a large bag of water. The metaphor is almost obvious. The large bag containing the water and eels creates the illusion of a scrotum releasing sperm, and the long tube is similar to a penis. The resemblance between these specific mechanisms and the male genitalia is uncanny. Not only do the eels share physiological features with sperm, they also have the same function. Sperm fertilizes the egg; the eels bring life to the monster.

After electricity courses through the dead tissue, the monster is born. He forces his way out of the steel womb like a baby from the vagina. He is hairless, naked, and incapable of everything an adult could do. He is covered in amniotic fluid and has trouble breathing at first; gasping for air and spitting up fluids. Like an infant he stumbles while trying to stand, and ultimately fails to do so.

The creator of this film, Kenneth Branaugh, must have made this scene in his own image because of the blatant deviation from the novel. The creation of the Frankenstein monster is not an inventor and an invention; it is a parent and a child, an actual birth. Is it an effective way to interpret the novel? This analysis would support Branaugh. The monster is an outcast. He is rejected from those he admires and loves. Like an angry teenager, he takes it out on his parent. His immediate anger is towards Victor. One gets the image of an adolescent screaming “I hate you!” to a parent simply because they are the reason he exists.

The monster forces Victor to make him a bride lest he kill more innocent people. Victor finally decides to appease the monster since there is no other way to stop the monster’s rampage. This ultimatum gives me the impression of a child having a temper tantrum over a toy or some candy that he wants. Victor realizes that the two monsters could possibly mate and create a new breed of unstoppable killers, so he destroys the bride before he animates it. This of course causes the monster to get even more upset because he waited and waited for a companion and ultimately didn’t receive one. The monster says that he shall be with Victor on his wedding night. Victor does not foresee that the monster will take the same thing from Victor that Victor took from him. The monster takes the life of Victor’s love, Elisabeth. I see this as the monster saying, “If I can’t have something, neither can you!” It is something that I would do as a child. My parents would take me to places where I didn’t have fun and I would make the trip miserable for them too, just to say I’m taking you with me.

Later in the film, the monster is seen standing over the dead Victor. He is crying and Walton inquires the monster to tell him why he weeps after getting what he wanted. The monster says that it is true that he wanted revenge for his miserable life by making his creator just as miserable; yet Victor was still his father. The monster actually refers to Frankenstein as his father. One could argue that even an angry adolescent doesn’t want to do real harm to their parent, no matter how angry they may be.

The director’s vision to make the creation scene into more of a real birth is an adequate depiction of the entire novel. The relationship between Victor and the monster is much closer to a father and child rather than an inventor and an invention.

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Former Copy:

The film then introduces the audience to the numerous mechanisms used to animate the monster. Ironically, many of these mechanisms represent biological objects and processes. The monster lays on a platform suspended high near the ceiling and is pushed across the room in a rather winding pattern. What is brought to mind is the egg moving through the reproductive system. Without this comparison, this mode of translocation makes no sense. The monster is then lowered into a large vat of actual amniotic fluid. This is quite significant because Victor did not use amniotic fluid in the novel version. Another connection the vat of fluid has to the birthing of an actual baby is that it acts as a makeshift womb for the monster during animation, similar to the womb a baby has during development. A flame is set directly under the steel womb. Not only could the audience interpret this as the warmth of a human womb, the flame could represent life. The novel version of the creation scene is more cold as though he was engineering some lifeless invention. The flame in the film shows that the scene is more about life than creation.

The climax of the scene is where Victor opens long tube that releases electric eels from a large bag of water. The metaphor is almost obvious. The large bag containing the water and eels creates the illusion of a scrotum releasing sperm, and the long tube is similar to a penis. The resemblance between these specific mechanisms and the male genitalia is uncanny. Not only do the eels share physiological features with sperm, they also have the same function. Sperm fertilizes the egg; the eels bring life to the monster.

The creator of this film, Kenneth Branaugh, must have made this scene in his own image because of the blatant deviation from the novel. The creation of the Frankenstein monster is not an inventor and an invention, it is a parent and a child, an actual birth. Is it an effective way to interpret the novel? This analysis would support Branaugh. The monster is an outcast. He is rejected from those he admires and loves. Like an angry teenager, he takes it out on his parent. His immediate anger is towards Victor. One gets the image of an adolescent screaming “I hate you!” to a parent simply because they are the reason he exists.

In this revision, I wanted to expand on the conclusion that the film version depicted the creation scene appropriately based on my interpretation of the novel. What I have learned most in this class is how to elaborate my ideas, and how important that elaboration is in making my points. A lot of elaboration went into my point in this essay which I believe made it a much stronger piece of writing.

Posted in Comppost, final project, frankenstein | Leave a Comment »

Patchwork Girl Writing Project

November 21, 2008 by sstranahan2

Patchwork Girl is a novel in the form of a hypertext. The creator, Shelley Jackson uses an interface requiring a great amount of navigation by the reader. The idea of a hypertext is to have an abundance of information at your fingertips. Hypertexts are meant to be social. Birkerts goes so far as to say that they are too social “The decline of the prestige of authorship-something all writers feel and lament-has much to do with the climate of our current intellectual culture in which all manifestations of author-ity are seen as suspect (Birkerts 158). Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl is a failure as a hypertextual novel. Birkerts says that hypertexts are too social but I say that a social network is necessary for a hypertext, and Patchwork Girl is not social enough. It was made before its time. The proper technology had not been made to create the necessary social environment.

Hayles has described hypertexts to be very interactive when she says “…creates a multiplicity of reading paths through an unusual physical form that allows the reader to fold diagonally cut leaves to obtain different combinations of text and image (Hayles 26).” In other words, hypertexts lead to more reader interaction. Patchwork Girl is no exception, especially with the interface. Patchwork Girl is a medium that causes the reader to have more of an involvement in the direction of the text. Each page has links to other pages. There is no obvious linearity to the novel. There is a story line embedded in the interface. Therefore it is the reader’s goal to successfully navigate through the interface and find the story line. This kind of interactive environment is similar to a video game.

However, the most successful video games are those with a network so that players, or readers in this case, can aid each other in progressing through the game. Take for example the game World of Warcraft. This game is played by millions of people all over the world. Not only do these people play the game together, there are forums and in-game chat screens. This form of networking allows players to learn together. Patchwork Girl offers the reader no social network, which is unfortunate because the interface is confusing enough to warrant in-text help from other readers. In an in-game chat screen the player is able to type in a question that everyone else in the game can read. The other players are then able to either send a personalized message to the person with the question or type a response into the chat screen so that everyone may see it. Furthermore, feedback could come from everyone else who wants to put in their two cents. The original answer could have been wrong and someone else has better information. This is the networking that Patchwork Girl is lacking as a hypertext. When I was attempting to read Patchwork Girl for the first time, I failed to even make it past the first “page”. Two days later in class, someone told me that my problem was that I kept clicking on the title of each link instead of the link itself. By clicking on the title, I was opening a window containing no data, a blank screen. There were several delays in my reading because I needed help from someone else, and I needed to wait until class to ask. There were many others who experienced the same amount of frustration as I did. If there was a way for readers to collaborate while reading the hypertext, these delays wouldn’t happen.

Each person is able to go in any direction in the text. Therefore it is unlikely that a group of readers will not follow the same path of reading, similar to a video game and other interactive media. A reader could miss an important textual experience or link because of the free interaction. A player in a video game could miss out on an aspect of the game because it is not necessary. With a social network, a gamer will learn from other players about mini games, fun events, or other aspects that would make the game more fun. Patchwork Girl does not have this network, so important windows are overlooked because the reader is not forced to read the entire text linearly. When the reader can read the hypertext in any order, information will be lost unless it is pointed out to them in collaboration.

What I would change about Patchwork Girl would be an online connection. Readers could login and read the novel just as they do now, only much more effectively. One person could say, ”hey have you read the graveyard section yet?” Maybe the other reader had never seen the link to that particular section. Thanks to his fellow reader, he didn’t miss anything. Readers could also share their perspective on the novel right there while reading it. Collaboration is key for the understanding of a hypertext novel.

Self Evaluation: I believe that I supported my case very well in this essay.

What I believed this essay lacked was a strong connection to video games. I believe that it is very related, but it was a stretch to work it into the theme.

This work is done under the WC honor code.

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final compost for writing project 4

November 10, 2008 by sstranahan2

What i am interested in writing about is the fact that patchwork girl is not social enough for the format. the technological medium is most effective when collaboration is introduced. The internet is very social, if patchwork girl had been developed later and for an online audience, the hypertext would have been much more successful.

Birkerts says that hypertexts are social. infact, he says they are too social. but this text is not social at all. it actually causes us to be less social. we have to use our computers to read it and most of us cannot read it in a group either if we do not have a laptop or if we dont bring it to class. Some people say that it is similar to a video game. i know video games and that is not one. patchwork girl has an interface resembling some computer games. but a characteristic of many successful computer games evoke collaboration. some games have millions of people logging in, interacting with each other. if patchwork girl had this quality it would be easier to read and much more desirable. if you didnt understand something, you could just type your quiry into a chat window, and someone would try to help you. discussions and debate would start between people and true collaboration would form. that is how patchwork girl could have beensuccessful.

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Abominable Patchwork Girl

November 7, 2008 by sstranahan2

patchwork girl is to me very unique. the layout is quite fustrating and causes some people to miss the story all together. the story is weird too. so this girl mary makes a monster like frankenstien did and they reunite in an amicable nature. then they sew pieces of each others skin to the other person and go their separate ways. well im not going to retell the story, but it seems that the monster turns out to be a lesbian. is this an abomination? gayness? is this whorish lesbian lifestyle to be compared to the bloodlustful actions of the Frankenstein monster?

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now i get it

October 31, 2008 by sstranahan2

At first I thought this was a totally useless reading. but after getting into story and learning how to use the software, patchwork girl seems very interesting. the initial frustration reminds me of how the Frankenstein monster must have felt. he was just presented with this body that he had no knowlegde of. As time goes on, you learn more and more about each body part, each little story.

Reading this also made me realize that Victor would take all of these body parts and see them simply as resouces, or ingredients. the fact is, the body parts he took had a past to them that he neglected. What Victor took for granted, a monster would cherish. At least in the film, the monster says that he doesnt learn anything, he just remembers. strong parts were used to make every part of him, including the brain which gave him his many attributes.

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patchwork girl is annoying

October 27, 2008 by sstranahan2

i dont even know how to use this thing. this form of technotext is much less appealing because you have to skip round and search for certain pages. its not linear like a book. the first time i tried to use it i couldnt even figure it out, there were just blank pages and random phrases with pictures.

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Project 3

October 27, 2008 by sstranahan2

The film then introduces the audience to the numerous mechanisms used to animate the monster. Ironically, many of these mechanisms represent biological objects and processes. The monster lays on a platform suspended high near the ceiling and is pushed across the room in a rather winding pattern. What is brought to mind is the egg moving through the reproductive system. Without this comparison, this mode of translocation makes no sense. The monster is then lowered into a large vat of actual amniotic fluid. This is quite significant because Victor did not use amniotic fluid in the novel version. Another connection the vat of fluid has to the birthing of an actual baby is that it acts as a makeshift womb for the monster during animation, similar to the womb a baby has during development. A flame is set directly under the steel womb. Not only could the audience interpret this as the warmth of a human womb, the flame could represent life. The novel version of the creation scene is more cold as though he was engineering some lifeless invention. The flame in the film shows that the scene is more about life than creation.

The creator of this film, Kenneth Branaugh, must have made this scene in his own image because of the blatant deviation from the novel. The creation of the Frankenstein monster is not an inventor and an invention, it is a parent and a child, an actual birth. Is it an effective way to interpret the novel? This analysis would support Branaugh. The monster is an outcast. He is rejected from those he admires and loves. Like an angry teenager, he takes it out on his parent. His immediate anger is towards Victor. One gets the image of an adolescent screaming “I hate you!” to a parent simply because they are the reason he exists.

Posted in Comppost, frankenstein | Leave a Comment »

Confused about Hayles

October 10, 2008 by sstranahan2

Hayles is confusing me with her material metaphors. Is she saying that we use forms of technology to make an experience more realistic? I do understand the example she gives with the CEO using cameras and monitors to make it seem like the other members of the board are in the boardroom. could another example be a steering wheel for a video game? Neither of these examples have alot to do with reading or writing literature.

I do however think that this is the most interesting idea i have read in Writing Machines so far. I just wish i understood it better. Would a material metaphor be anything that creates a sense of reality or does it have to be something between computers and literature that makes us think of it as more real?

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Frankenstein Monster Story

September 19, 2008 by sstranahan2

This book is nothing like any of the movies that i have seen about it. In all the movies, except “Young Frankenstein”, the monster is just a lumbering, moaning eyesore that mindlessly wanders once it leaves the castle in which it was created. In this book, there is no castle with a laboratory inhabited by a mad scientist screaming “ITS ALIVE!!!” In the 10th chapter, Victor is walking along a glacier and notices his creation pursuing him. The monster is characterized in the novel as agile with better joints than most man. This contrasts from the movie versions because in film, the monster is depicted as zombie-like; moving slowly, stiff and with difficulty.

I enjoyed the monster’s tale about living in a hovel and watching his three neighbors. This totally deviates from the movies I have seen. This never happened in any of them. Here’s an interesting thought, I feel as though i can sympathize with Birkerts a little now. In film, this tale would not be as appealing as a monster acting like a monster instead of acting like another person. The demand people had on the media at the time resulted in change of the plot at the expense of the integrity of the novel. the entire plot has changed. If you ask anyone who has not read the novel what it is about, they will most likely say that it is about a mad scientist making a monster that terrorizes a village or something. And furthermore, if you ask the same person who Frankenstein is, they will most likely say that he is the monster! maybe i should rephrase that, they will say that Frankenstein is the 8 foot tall monster. That is the picture that everyone associates with the name Frankenstein.

The use of Intertextuality has several uses in my opinion. the first that came to mind is the proof that the monster has become literate and for the most part educated. he uses several texts to describe his surroundings, himself, and also to just name texts that he read along with the girl Safie, who was also trying to learn English. Intertextuality is also useful in making familiar comparisons for the reader. For example, when Victor was describing his creation as it awoke for the first time he said that even Dante could not imagine the horror. He could have just said how ugly the creature was in detail. But anyone who has read the inferno, understand that the creature is beyond mortifying, even worse than those horrors described in Hell.

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Writing Assignment 1 Final Draft

September 11, 2008 by sstranahan2

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Reading and writing have been very personal experiences to me. Personal but not isolated. And technology has been a major facilitator throughout my reading and writing career.

When I was a young boy, my father would read to my brother and I before we went to bed. I can’t say that I remember many of the books he read, it was a long time ago. But I do remember that one time he read Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Raws. That was the first time I ever saw my father cry. It was then that I realized that reading can be a very personal undertaking. I am not what you would call a social reader. I never read a novel for some book club or to discuss the novel. Reading has always been something that I kept pretty close to the chest. When I read a book, my objective is to gain a better awareness of something or of myself. I have read books based on the Bible, with scriptures and encouraging statements to help me through hard times. Like many people my age, I went through the whole fantasy phase. Harry Potter and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings allowed me to escape from my life and take on adventures. All of these experiences are very personal to me.

Reading can be personal without being an isolated practice. There is a lot to be said for discussion of the written word. I think that literature is another way for people to bond. Similar to the way my father would bond with my brother and I. As he would read, we would all experience the same emotions, we shared an involvement with the characters and plot. These times were very important to me because otherwise, I may not have been as close to my father.

A friend of mine who I went to high school with would read books for humor and inspiration. He had a zeal for science fiction. Never had I seen him so excited as when he would read a novel that suggested a theory or philosophical question that he had never heard before. I also have a love of science, though I was not as ardent towards the theoretical perspectives. Yet we still spent much time discussing (and arguing) endless possibilities. One of his books of choice was Timeline. The idea of quantum physics was the only thing he talked about for months. My friend would talk to everyone about it, some people were annoyed, others would jump right into the conversation. He made life-long friends that had just as much passion for physics as he had. In his senior year of high school, my friend won physics award for highest GPA in the class. To this day he is studying physics in college. I have to wonder how his life would be different if he had not gained his interest from science fiction novels.

Birkerts, an author who has written about how technologies corrupt the integrity of the written word, also wrote about how reading is to be an isolated event (Birkerts 6). I have to disagree with him. Reading brings people together, inspires our imaginations, and broadens our perspective. Our technologies facilitate the benefits of reading. Why would he despise anything that allows people to learn faster? The internet for example is a fantastic tool often used for the practices of literature. There is sparknotes, a very popular way to study and understand a book in a condensed format. Birkerts would probably say that this is cheating, you are not really reading the book, this makes people stupid. Well it doesn’t make me stupid to lookup resources such as sparknotes, it makes me pretty smart actually. In ninth grade, I had to read the book Great Expectations. I really could not focus on the book long enough to finish a page at a time. So I Googled the book and I found a resource. The website told me what was going on in the first chapter and suddenly everything started to click for me. Then I went back to the novel and started over and realized that I was really able to get into the story and I understood the plot much better.

I do however agree with Birkerts on one level. In my experience with fiction and technology, overindulgence with stimuli of the digital nature tends to hinder the imagination and possibly the reader’s ability to appreciate what they are reading. Take for example one of my experiences. When I was younger, I tended to watch way too much television and I played far too many video games. I had little to no literary stimulation. So when I was forced in English class to read fiction, I was really only staring at words on a page. I had become lazy with my imagination. It took a great deal of mental energy to force myself to see the story instead of black and white. Now, I have a more healthy balance of digital and literary stimuli which has helped me get my imagination back. Birkerts told a story about how a class of undergraduates he was teaching told him that they could not get into the reading of the novel they were studying. His understanding from this was that his students’ (and my) whole generation had been corrupted by technology. He believes that technology and literature shouldn’t mix at all. This, in my opinion is an overreaction to having a class full of people who are incompetent when it comes to literature, and/or his students not liking the book he assigned.

Reading and writing should be a way for people learn more about their own interests. A way for people to bond. An escape valve for those who need to escape their reality, even if just for a moment.

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Steve Stranahan’s Blog

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Mechanical Birth

Patchwork Girl Writing Project

final compost for writing project 4

Abominable Patchwork Girl

now i get it

patchwork girl is annoying

Project 3

Confused about Hayles

Frankenstein Monster Story

Writing Assignment 1 Final Draft

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