FRANKENSTEIN NORMALIZED

Lana and Lilly (formerly Larry and Andy) Wachowski.

 

Mary Godwin Shelley's 1818 novel, The Modern Prometheus (a.k.a., Frankenstein), was remarkable on many levels. For one thing, it was published one year after the death of Jane Austen (1775-1817), whose breakthrough success as a female author was founded on romanticizing the mundane intricacies of the British class system, as experienced by middle-class women. 

Frankenstein is a horror story about newborn Science, largely centered on the popular sciences of its time: Anatomy, Physics and Chemistry. Shelley's world was not peopled by uniformly trained and certified physicians. Universities of the period did not boast shiny science centers. Higher education was still based in language, literature, culture and history, with an enthusiasm for Archeology, in particular. Charles Darwin was only 9 years old when Frankenstein was first published. 

Today we live in a world where Victor Frankenstein would seem commonplace. He would most likely live in the form of a plastic surgeon or an experimental geneticist or an experimental virologist. While he could well still be mad and driven to push against every boundary of Nature and Decency, his work would be unremarkable, unless it caused a global pandemic. In fact, rather than being forced into covertly paying for illegally retrieved corpses, he might well work on government grants or be paid by wealthy celebrities to cut and alter their flesh.

Shelley's book has been celebrated over the 200 years since its publication and has been exploited by other art forms. Mary Godwin Shelley herself was rather conservative, despite being a successful feminist pioneer in Literature. The longevity of her story and its adaptation by those with enthusiasm for The Gothic would most likely amuse her. 

Mary's stepsister, Claire Claremont, was knocked up by Lord Byron. Mary disapproved. Percy Shelley, Mary's husband, was an effete and promiscuous pansexual, who often left Mary behind to explore his taste for debauchery. Percy Shelley claimed authorship of The Modern Prometheus for its first published edition, since he needed money badly, due to his propensity to live above his means. He left Mary with four children when he died six years after their marriage. This speaks to her conservative loyalty to an undeserving mate who was a bad provider.

Our contemporary Frankensteins have grown up in a world of prosperity. supported by the spread of white-collar capitalism globally. Like Mary Shelley, those capitalists who have developed today's wealthy societies are by no means edgy, except for the few IT geniuses among them. Banking, investing, insurance and property development form the financial foundation of artistic license in the humanities and experimentation in sciences. 

It is impossible to say whether Mary Shelley's monster and its monstrous creator have somehow infected the consciousness of the human species. It is more likely that Mary Shelley saw the dark side of human inquisitiveness, combined with the bone-deep fear of death, experienced at some point by all mortals. Playing along the tightrope that joins those two forces has advanced humankind in many ways. It is also reasonable to question whether we have reached a point in our evolution where mortality and respect for all that is natural no longer restrain inquisitiveness in favor of more traditional vales.

The marketing of immediacy, youth, sexuality, popularity and identity have left many in our modern and affluent societies dissatisfied with the lives given them by their birth parents. The reactions vary from demanding gender reassignment to burning down cities in the name of a some deserved and withheld equity. Working within an ethical social context with what Nature has bestowed is no longer acceptable to many who have discovered the disruptive power of entertaining on YouTube or bullying as part of a faceless mob. 

Unlike Victor Frankenstein's Modern Prometheus, today's monsters of social disruption and chaos are recreating themselves in that image voluntarily, despite living in a time of unprecedented human opportunity for success and prosperity. They are energized by the lightening of mob violence and cancel culture. They are determined to reshape society in their image, without actually sharing a common image or individual self-images with which they are truly satisfied. 

There are no enraged global villagers willing to drive these monsters from our midst. In fact, these monsters are supported and exploited by those in power for political gain. Their destructiveness is reshaped into admirable social activism by the cynical forces who exploit them. Frankenstein normalized ... and emboldened.