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Hello, and welcome to this episode
of Superhero Ethics. One of the oldest

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works of science fiction. Many people
would call it the first work of science

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fiction, and a story that has
been told and retold and retold again,

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both under its actual name and in
other versions, is the story of Frankenstein

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by Mary Shelley. In just a
few weeks, we have yet another Frankenstein

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movie coming out, Lisa Frankenstein,
as I've come to understand, this is

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a was now being referred to as
a coming of rage movie, in the

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same idea as Megan's Body and other
things like that. I don't know too

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many of the details, but it
was a good reminder to me that Frankenstein

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is such a foundational story for so
many of the kind of things we talk

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about in this podcast. I had
never actually read the book. Denie out

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written the Star Wars. We keep
finding new things she has expertise in,

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but she mentioned that she had done
her doctoral work in the literature of eighteenth

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and nineteenth century England, particularly in
terms of comics and the like, but

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also had a lot of experience with
other parts of literature, and so when

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I said, hey, I would
actually love to do something on the book

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Frankenstein, Danielle was willing to step
up. So Danielle, thank you so

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much for being here. Yeah,
thanks for having me. I love Mary

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Shelley. She's actually has a little
section in my thesis, not for Frankenstein

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but one of her other works,
The Last Man. But I read Frankenstein

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first when I was like sixteen years
old, and I don't know if I

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appreciated it as much as I should
have back then. But the more I

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interacted with it, the older I
got, the more I understood some of

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the themes a little bit better,
and I really enjoyed it now. Nice

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Well, and for those of you
who haven't read the book, don't worry

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about it. This is kind of
going to be two things. One is

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it's going to be an introduction to
the book itself and the very I mean

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it is a book tailor made for
superhero ethics. It's very much an exploration

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of scientific ethics and all sorts of
things around that and you know, questions

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that are fundamental to science fiction in
general. But also we're going to talk

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about why is it that? Because
I had always gotten a sense that the

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story is misunderstood, but reading the
book, it was vastly different than even

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I was expecting, and so we're
going to talk a lot about why that

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is that this book is so different
than how it's perceived in general culture or

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even by those who think they're kind
of doing more like accurate takes on it

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and stuff like that. So,
Denia, let me first get started with

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tell us a little bit more about
your background with the literature of this period

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and works like Frankenstein. Well,
I have an undergrad degree in English literature

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and a lot of the classes I
took for that were eighteenth nineteenth century British

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literature, and then I have a
master's degree in book publishing and my project

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for that was actually doing an edited
version of an eighteenth century novel, British

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novel that came out. And so
even though it wasn't Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or

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any of her works at all,
it was from an earlier period, it

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did get me into the art of
kind of revitalizing old texts and dealing with

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them and how to how to explain
them, I guess in a way that

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the modern reader would understand. And
then my PhD thesis was on the literature

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of that period from a more visual
perspective, but I did have to interact

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with some of the textual aspects of
it and how the textual and the visual

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kind of meet in the middle.
And so when I say that I dealt

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with Mary Shelley a bit for my
thesis. It was because the periodical that

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I centered my thesis around called The
Glass Looking Glass. It was a character

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periodical and a visual caricature. So
it was kind of like the early comic

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strips, and one image they have
in there is an image making fun of

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Mary Shelley's the Last Man, and
in the process they end up making a

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lot of racist using a lot of
racist stereotypes because they have a black woman

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depicted as the last woman instead of
the last man. And it was just

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a job, a job at multiple
different people and things, And that's kind

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of got me more involved in Mary
Shelley's life. I can see that,

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yeah that and tell us a little
bit about her. Yeah, well,

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what to say about Mary Shelley other
than she was It should be considered still

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to this day, the mother of
science fiction. This is one of the

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if not the earliest, examples of
a science fiction book, and it pains

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me every time I see people say
that some man who came along later was

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actually as the father of science fiction, Like, yeah, maybe, but

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she was the mother and she came
first. And what's so interesting about her

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life, I think is just that
she surrounded herself by literary people, and

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her husband was Percy Shelley, and
her friends were like Lord Byron and several

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others who were very literally her father
himself was also her mother was one of

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the early feminists of the age,
and she came from a very literate background

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and she continued that throughout throughout her
life. But her life is just I

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don't know it it's kind of sad. I mean, people know, I

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don't know. People know that Percy
died in a shipwreck and she had children

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with him who also died. I
think they only had one surviving child.

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But he also their relationship was very
like open kind of and are there's some

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confusion about how happy she was about
that, whether or not she liked that,

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or whether or not she didn't,
and whether it was him kind of

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controlling that and wanting to live that
life and forcing it on her, or

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whether she went along with it willingly. And there's a book I read recently

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called Mary or the birth of Frankenstein, and it's kind of a fictionalized account

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of her life during the time where
Frankenstein was conceptualized, and it is kind

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of told the perspective of when she
was younger and then when she was coming

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up with Frankenstein. And it's very
interesting. I learned a lot about her

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that I didn't know, but it
all comes to the point of her life

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just being remarkable but also tragic.
Yeah, and I think that's reflected so

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much in Frankenstein. One thing,
I know much less about her than you

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do. But first, one thing
just not kind of help groundless for people

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when the age we're talking about is
kind of the early part of the nineteenth

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century. The book is first published
in eighteen eighteen. And one thing I've

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got to know Aboutter is not only
is she the mother of science fiction,

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but in many ways she's kind of
the original Goth. I mean, forgetting

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about the Goth tribes. She was
deeply fascinated by death. As you pointed

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out, there are a lot of
different stories about her sexuality and how much

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was her choice and how much was
others. But one of the prevailing stories

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about her, and I don't know
if this is historically exactly accurate, but

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I think the fact that it was
considered a very believable story says a lot

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of her interest in death is that
she had her first sextual encounter in a

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cemetery on her mother's grave and spoke
positively about it, like it was not

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meant as a like, you know, get back in her mother, but

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a communing with of some sort.
And I think that really comes out in

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this book, because obviously this book
is very much about the attempt to overcome

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death and what that means and the
ethics of that and things like that.

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And one of the things I think
that it's sort of weird because I want

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to talk about the book, and
I want to talk about the book and

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about the conversations around the book,
and so part of me feels like we

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should just get to explaining the book
itself, and I want to start with

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this because I think there is so
much confusion about it, and tell me

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if I'm correct in this. One
of the things that I think really marks

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the book is, for the most
part it is told from Frankenstein's perspective sort

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of. It is a collect The
book is, in theory a collection of

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letters in which a British sea captain
is writing to I think his sister,

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and then he explains how bored he
is, how much he wants a true

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friend, and then he explains that
this guy Frankenstein comes along, and then

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he writes this like two hundred page
letter in which he says, and now

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here's everything Frankenstein told to me.
And in the course of that, Frankenstein

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dictates word for word letters that were
written to him. So there are letters

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within letters within letters within this book. But I and you know, one

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of the biggest questions there's always about, like who is the monster in this

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book? Is it the monster that
Frankenstein creates with monster there in quotes,

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or is it Frankenstein himself? And
I was really trying hard to try and

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read this through the eyes of someone
writing it at the time, not as

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I would look back on it now. But obviously I can't separate that bias

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out entirely. But where I'm going
all this is that it feels to me

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like one of the main points of
the book is that Frankenstein is himself a

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deeply unreliable narrator, and as the
reader were meant to not only judge Frankenstein

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by what he actually says, but
to pick up all of the clues and

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to figure out there's a lot of
ways in which his descriptions of things,

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particularly the morality of it, are
things that we shouldn't necessarily take word for

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word because we are supposed to be
seeing the flaws in him and his you

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know, mego media is the wrong
word, but you know, just his

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his very kind of self serving version
of the narrative in some ways. Is

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that accurate? And is that fit? Kind of uh? Is this a

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literary style that would have made sense
at the time or was this kind of

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a really revolutionary thing? I think
it's it's kind of both. Well,

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I can't answer this without going back
to the fact that or stating the fact

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that Frankenstein was published anonymously at first, and so I think a lot of

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credit was given to Percy and people
didn't really know like it was. It

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was confusing at first, And sorry, I lost my train of thought just

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on that quickly. I'm correct,
that was not uncommon, like Jane Austen

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also was published anonymously, right,
because the idea of a woman writing these

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things was not well regarded at that
time. No lots of women published under

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their own names. But you did
have occasionally at times it would be published

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just anonymously for various reasons. And
so occasionally you'd have a female author who

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chose to publish anonyously, and you
also have male authors who did the same.

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So, for example, there's a
book that came out in early nineteenth

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century before Frankenstein, called the Scottish
Chiefs, and that was published anonymously,

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and the person who got credit for
it, or the person that people tried

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to put the credit on, was
Sir Walter Scott. And then eventually Jane

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Porter, who was the actual author, she had the book published again under

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her name, and then of course
then it started getting a lot of criticisms

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that it didn't get when Sir Walter
Scott was thought to have been the writer.

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So you have a lot of various
reasons for doing it. But there

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were other female authors who published under
their own names. It just you know,

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there were given takes to it.
Yeah, and some of them did

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make have a little bit of a
career out of it too, But yeah,

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so he was various off of that. But with Mary Shelley, to

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go back to the original point is
that it was kind of revolutionary, and

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it was also pretty standard. A
lot of early nineteenth century novels deal heavily

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with letters, A lot of Jane
Austin novels deal with letters, and so

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that kind of meta style of like
what is a letter what isn't is pretty

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common for the time. But the
perspective is interesting, and I would I

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don't know if I would say that
that in itself is revolutionary, but I

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do agree with your point of it
being that he is an unreliable narrator,

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and I think that that's absolutely the
truth because I think even through his narration,

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even though it's biased and unreliable,
you can still tell that the monster

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isn't really a monster, like he's
a monster in name, but he's also

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a human. He's this he's this
being that has been created and then been

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left tiffined for himself and with no
care, no guidance from his creator,

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and he loves his creator when he's
first welcomed into this world, and to

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see his creator absolutely terrified of him
and not wanting to have anything to do

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with him is uh is I think
the revolutionary part of this story, and

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you can you can see that so
much in the narration, even when it's

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not from his perspective, and that
to me is very very Mary Shelley and

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her her her pain and a lot
of her experiences coming through that monster.

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It's like, you've created this thing. And I, now, this is

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my own interpretation of it. I
don't really I haven't read a lot about

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you know, criticism about you know, literary essays about Mary Shelley's works,

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But I do you see it as
kind of like reflective of her relationships with

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other people in her life, Like
maybe she viewed herself a little bit as

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the monsters, like you created this, you created me, and you've just

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left me to go and no one
to care for me. And then there's

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also theories about it being partially about
her child, who died when she was

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just an infant, and how like
she's created this thing and it's just gone

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off and she spends the rest of
her life like kind of looking for it

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and never finding it. Yeah.
Well, so let's go into the actual

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story itself, and I'll kind of
give my best version of a brief summary

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of it, and then we can
talk about these details for sure. So

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because I think as you listen to
this, for those of you who haven't

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read the book, if you mostly
know the story through like the original movies

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or some of the kind of parody, or you know, like versions of

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it, like Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein
by the Great mal Brooks, or you

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know, other ways, when the
story has been reached, hold again and

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again. Some of this is gonna
sound familiar. Some of this may sound

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very different. So we open,
as I said, with this Captain Walton,

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who's who has been writing letters to
his sister. He encounters this person

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who uh not to like the third
letter about him. Do we learn that

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he is actually doctor Frankenstein, or
he's not a doctor, he's a student

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Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein, who is
German Austrian. He's from Geneva. He

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has been he was very smart.
He grew up in kind of a nice

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middle class home. And he's very
interested in He's kind of like the bad

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boy scientist of a more modern sci
fi story, you know, in that

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he is very bored by conventional study. He wants to study the unconventional.

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And among other things, he's very
interested in death. And he believes that

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he can he can undo death.
He comes to believe that. And and

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here's some ways where it's interesting how
this is both kind of the creation of

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science fiction, but there are a
lot of science fiction that clearly haven't been

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invented yet. Because I was expecting
like multiple chapters on him trying to figure

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out a way to do this and
then there being problems and there being that

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one great breakthrough moment where he figures
out how to do it, and is

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he's so nervous and will it happen? There's none of that. There's none

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of the like he admits that he
basically sows this body together from body parts

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found in graves, but that's done
very it's a very kind of blinking.

212
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You miss it when you think about
the real horror of that. And there's

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no egor there's no like bolt of
lightning that has to hit the machinery to

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power everything all that. Apparently in
later additions to the stories, he just

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doesn't and according to his narrative,
he attempts to make a human being that's

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even more beautiful than the normal human
being, Like he doesn't make this to

217
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look monstrous, and it is when
he creates that human being, although who's

218
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like even more and is also like
much much taller than the average human being.

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The being comes to life, and
it opens its eyes, and it

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is simply by looking at its eyes
and seeing this like yellow, and then

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he casts it very sort of demonic, devilish light that he immediately knows it's

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a monster and he immediately runs away. I think we're supposed to what you

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just said kind of reinforces this think
that, like, how could you do,

224
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like how we're supposed to judge him
in that moment, Like, how

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could you possibly think that, like
just because of the color of its eye

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it was a horrible and monstrous et
cetera. And here again if you're expecting

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that, Like so the monster breaks
out and tries to fight him. No,

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like, the monster doesn't appear again
until two years later, when he

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is he was studying somewhere else,
but he's gone back to Geneva to be

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with his family, in part because
one thing they've found out is that his

231
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little brother has been killed, and
he's a good friend of the family named

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Justine Is. Everyone thinks that she's
committed the murder. There's some stuff about

233
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how she is described that really I
think is not necessarily social commentary as much

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just we can read it as a
huh, those were the times, I

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guess because she's from a poorer family
and she's taken in kind of like a

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ward, but is also been expected
to be a servant, and that's treated

237
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as very charitable that they train her
to be a servant. And I was

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reading that today, like at some
level at charity slash child labor who goes

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okay, fine, but she is
believed to be the murderer. Meanwhile,

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there's a character named Elizabeth who is
has also been adopted by the family and

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raised. In the original version of
the book, she is his cousin,

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which again is sort of a like
interesting eyebrow raising today because his mother explicitly

243
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says he wants these two to grow
up and be in love and be married

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to each other. Apparently, in
later versions published a few years later,

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the fact that she was a cousin
is removed, So this was You can

246
00:19:03.960 --> 00:19:06.720
say whatever you want to say about
that, but the point is that the

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cousin's very upset. He is,
like Paramour in the future, is very

248
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upset, and Frankenstein is the only
one who realizes that this murder must have

249
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been committed by the monster, and
so he goes through things he thinks about

250
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telling someone. He doesn't think anyone
will believe him, and so Justine winds

251
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up being executed because there's nothing that
she can do, and there's some harrowing

252
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stuff about how much the church harasses
her during this, forcing her to confess.

253
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But he does nothing. He goes
to try and continue his studies,

254
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but he's haunted by this, and
eventually he is he comes into a confrontation

255
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with the monster. And if you're
expecting now the Frankenstein monster that goes like,

256
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GA, you know, I help
me, that is one hundred percent

257
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not what it is. The monster
is incredibly eloquent, speaks in just as

258
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many Why use one word when you
can use five phrases that Frankenstein himself uses,

259
00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:07.880
which I have a question later about
if this is a Charles Dickens kind

260
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of thing of you get paid by
the word, or that's just the style

261
00:20:11.960 --> 00:20:15.160
of the times. But he's very
eloquent, and he really kind of lays

262
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out this case against Frankenstein of as
you said, I woke up and I

263
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loved you and I wanted to love
you, but you abandoned me. And

264
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then he tells this harding story of
how he went off into the woods to

265
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try and hide, and he eventually
sort of found this family. And apparently

266
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he has like plus twenty on his
stealth roles as well as plus twenty five

267
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on his eavesdropping rolls because he's able
to hide from this refugee family. While

268
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listening to all their conversations we learn
in incredible I think, very unnecessary,

269
00:20:45.960 --> 00:20:52.680
but maybe it's important be foreshadowing detail
detail about why this family of refugees and

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that there's a blind old man,
and that Frankenstein's creation starts to think that

271
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if I can talk to that blind
man, he will be able to help

272
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me, because I've come to think
of all these people as my friends.

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He won't see my monstrosity. He'll
be able to see past that and see

274
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the real me, see that I'm
not a monster, and hopefully that I

275
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will be fine. And he has
a good conversation with the father. They're

276
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almost about to break through when the
son comes back in and just goes like,

277
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oh my god, this is a
monster. He's attacking my father.

278
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What can I do? And franken
Stin's creation makes a point to say that

279
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he does not fight back. He
just goes off into the you know,

280
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he hides. He takes the blows, but it's a real sort of mental

281
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shattering moment for him, and so
he goes off into the woods and resolves

282
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that he will have revenge upon Frankenstein. And at this point now we have

283
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not only the first science fiction and
the first goth but also the first villain

284
00:21:49.039 --> 00:21:52.799
origin story where we have a lot
of sympathy for the villain. But he

285
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then goes off the Deep Bend and
he goes to Frankenstein, and at the

286
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end of this he says like,
I will I will stop killing your family.

287
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I will stop targeting you if you
will just make me a partner,

288
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make me a wife, another dead
creation like me that you bring to life,

289
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and then the two of us will
go off into the wildness of the

290
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world, never to be seen by
mortal man again, and everything will be

291
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fine. And Frankenstein almost creates this
creature, but then he sees the monster

292
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the creation again at the very end
decides he can't destroys the body, at

293
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which point Frankenstein's creation is like,
Okay, well we can't do this,

294
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and more people are killed, and
eventually they chase each other around the world.

295
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Eventually we get to the Arctic Circle, which is where Frankenstein finally meets

296
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Walton and the circle has now come
all the way around, and tells Walton

297
00:22:48.279 --> 00:22:52.160
the whole tale and says, I
am about to die, but you must

298
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finish off the monster, and in
classic eighteenth century literature style, Frankenstein our

299
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nineteenth century literature style, Frankenstein then
just dies of exhaustion, a broken heart,

300
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whatever you want to call it,
being a wronged woman. I think

301
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it's another description of that disease in
nineteenth century literature. And then the monster

302
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winds up killing himself as well,
And so Walton is now relaying this whole

303
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sad, tragic story to his sister. Did I miss out on anything?

304
00:23:19.799 --> 00:23:23.640
Is that a very good A lot
of details I missed, obviously, But

305
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:26.359
does that think it gives a clear
picture of the story? No, that's

306
00:23:26.440 --> 00:23:32.440
a really great summary. Yeah.
Yeah, So let me just start with

307
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kind of the more lighthearted question and
then get into the actual details of it.

308
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This book is incredibly wordy. None
of it feels to me the way

309
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actual people would talk to each other. And I don't know if that is

310
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just because those were the dialects and
the sort of linguistic tropes people used at

311
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the time. Or to what extent
it was somewhat expected in literature, either

312
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because literature were supposed to be more
high minded and more like poetic, or

313
00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:03.559
because of the sort of Charles Dickens
way. It's being published in periodicals and

314
00:24:03.559 --> 00:24:06.839
people are being paid by the word, so they add as many words as

315
00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:11.200
they can. Yeah, I think
it's a little mixture. It's definitely like

316
00:24:11.240 --> 00:24:15.880
her style of writing. The wordiness
is not uncommon during the nineteenth century.

317
00:24:18.119 --> 00:24:22.799
It was just like that. And
how much it has to do with it

318
00:24:22.920 --> 00:24:27.119
needing to be wordy to fill space
and also to depending on how they would

319
00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:36.680
get paid, is up to debate. But I do know that serialized publishing

320
00:24:36.839 --> 00:24:41.119
was very popular during that time,
and so what you would have is either

321
00:24:41.400 --> 00:24:47.559
like with Dickens, sometimes it would
originally be published in periodicals short sections and

322
00:24:47.559 --> 00:24:51.880
then eventually put into books. Other
times it would be published in volumes.

323
00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:56.680
So like the Scottish chiefs I mentioned
earlier, has nothing to do with this,

324
00:24:56.880 --> 00:25:00.640
but it was published within like three
or four volumes, and the amount

325
00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:03.240
of volumes. What's interesting during this
time is the amount of volumes could change

326
00:25:03.759 --> 00:25:10.319
per edition, so like a first
edition of something the first time it was

327
00:25:10.359 --> 00:25:14.319
printed could have two volumes, and
then when it's published a second time it

328
00:25:14.319 --> 00:25:17.559
could have three, and so on
and so forth, and things would change

329
00:25:17.599 --> 00:25:22.599
between them as well. It's not
as it wasn't as kind of standardized as

330
00:25:22.599 --> 00:25:26.880
it is now. And yeah,
so it really is up to debate.

331
00:25:26.920 --> 00:25:32.519
But I will say the dialogue itself
is not that different from other works of

332
00:25:32.599 --> 00:25:34.000
the time, so it really is
just kind of like, you know,

333
00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:38.720
it's a product of its time.
Okay, that makes sense. That makes

334
00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:42.200
sense. So what do you think
Mary Shelley is saying with this book?

335
00:25:45.720 --> 00:25:48.519
Well, I am always struck when
I first read it, I guess,

336
00:25:48.599 --> 00:25:52.079
or maybe like the second time when
I actually kind of understood it a little

337
00:25:52.119 --> 00:25:57.640
bit more. I'm just always struck
by how tragic the monster or the creation's

338
00:25:57.720 --> 00:26:03.799
life is and how how prominent that
is to the story. And you can

339
00:26:03.839 --> 00:26:08.079
just feel like the sadness of it. And if you see, there are

340
00:26:08.559 --> 00:26:14.359
play's theater adaptations of the book,
and probably the most well known is the

341
00:26:14.359 --> 00:26:18.279
one with Benedict Cumberbatch. He and
I forget the other actor's name, but

342
00:26:18.359 --> 00:26:25.319
he also played Sherlock in the US
elementary show. They switched roles like every

343
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:29.279
night, so one night one of
them would play the monster. The other

344
00:26:29.359 --> 00:26:33.599
night the other one to play the
monster. And that was probably for me,

345
00:26:33.720 --> 00:26:37.279
the first time that I really hit
like got the emotional aspect of it

346
00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:40.400
to the extreme that I did.
Is but they're all they're using the same

347
00:26:40.440 --> 00:26:44.640
stuff from the book, so it's
it's all there. Yeah, It's just

348
00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:48.039
the monster's life is so tragic,
and I really think that he is the

349
00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:53.599
like truly kind of like a not
really a villain of this story. He's

350
00:26:55.319 --> 00:26:59.559
he's the product of his creation,
of his creator. Truly, I think

351
00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:04.240
he is maybe Frankenstein sees the worst
of himself in this and he can't face

352
00:27:04.279 --> 00:27:11.880
it and that's why he abandons it. And that it maybe like the creation

353
00:27:11.079 --> 00:27:15.079
is a reflection of ourselves, and
originally it is the most pure reflection of

354
00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:18.839
ourselves. And I think maybe that
is a little bit of what she's getting

355
00:27:18.839 --> 00:27:26.759
at, maybe a little like self
reflection and how we can take all of

356
00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:30.480
our trauma and all of our the
things that have happened to us and create

357
00:27:30.559 --> 00:27:33.839
something like that and view it as
a monster, but it's not really a

358
00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:37.279
monster if it's a part of us. Yeah, Yeah, I mean,

359
00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:45.480
one thing I'm really struck by is
I think how Frankenstein himself, Victor is

360
00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:48.880
so self delusional really in a lot
of way, not in a kind of

361
00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:53.359
like he's seeing Little Green Man or
something, but in terms of he frames

362
00:27:53.519 --> 00:27:57.240
things where you know, it's if
anyone's had the experience We're talking to a

363
00:27:57.319 --> 00:28:00.480
friend and you're like, oh my
god, can you believe what my girlfriend

364
00:28:00.680 --> 00:28:03.559
just did to me? All I
did was like, you know, leave

365
00:28:03.599 --> 00:28:07.599
her by the side of the road
with all of her clothes and drive off.

366
00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:10.000
And now she's so mad at me, and I just don't get it,

367
00:28:10.039 --> 00:28:12.480
and you're like, dude, of
course they're mad at you, and

368
00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:18.440
like to me, he tells this
harrowing story of how you know, his

369
00:28:18.680 --> 00:28:26.480
creation is very clear, clearly saying
I only became vicious and murderous because of

370
00:28:26.480 --> 00:28:30.559
all these things that happened to me. But the thing that's so by that

371
00:28:30.759 --> 00:28:36.279
understanding, like this seems a pretty
clear like nurture verse nature idea. So

372
00:28:36.400 --> 00:28:41.960
by that understanding creating this bride of
Frankenstein, which is a very misnomer and

373
00:28:41.079 --> 00:28:45.599
kind of shows already the like we're
calling Frankenstein the wrong thing, let alone

374
00:28:45.640 --> 00:28:49.519
all the gender politics of I'm creating
a female version of you. So of

375
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:52.240
course she's gonna fall in love with
you, and of course she's gonna go,

376
00:28:52.319 --> 00:28:55.519
I want to go off in the
woods with you. But putting all

377
00:28:55.599 --> 00:29:00.000
that aside, there's absolutely no reason
to believe that he create this second,

378
00:29:00.559 --> 00:29:06.039
you know, creation that she will
turn out to also be murderous, especially

379
00:29:06.079 --> 00:29:08.880
if she has shown love and welcoming
acceptance from day one. And yet he

380
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:15.960
can't think that way because his whole
model of his own goodness is predicated on

381
00:29:15.079 --> 00:29:19.480
the idea that he recognized the evil
in this creature, not that he had

382
00:29:19.519 --> 00:29:22.960
anything to do with it. And
I just thought it was so striking that

383
00:29:22.079 --> 00:29:26.440
he can't he in a way that
I think is very familiar to a lot

384
00:29:26.440 --> 00:29:29.319
of us, and I know I've
been guilty of this at times, and

385
00:29:29.599 --> 00:29:32.400
a lot. I think it's a
very big part of gaslighting, for example,

386
00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:37.119
like often the people who are the
best gaslighters the first person that gaslighters

387
00:29:37.160 --> 00:29:40.640
themselves. And that feels what Frankensin
is doing here. You know that he

388
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:45.960
cannot allow the overwhelming evidence in front
of him to convince him that maybe he

389
00:29:45.079 --> 00:29:48.400
was wrong that night to run out. Yeah, I agree, And that's

390
00:29:48.440 --> 00:29:56.039
why I kind of hold so much
with the idea of the creation being like

391
00:29:56.559 --> 00:30:00.319
an intricate part of ourselves, of
being a meta for for the for the

392
00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:06.079
what we create from our pain and
our experiences, and if we just abandon

393
00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:08.440
it, like what does that do
to the world. It's here to our

394
00:30:08.519 --> 00:30:14.000
world anyway, and just on a
much you know, larger scale. But

395
00:30:14.839 --> 00:30:22.240
I love the the fact that when
the creation wants a company, he wants

396
00:30:22.480 --> 00:30:26.240
a bride, he wants he wants
a partner, because the first place he

397
00:30:26.319 --> 00:30:33.079
goes when he runs off is to
the little farmhouse where they don't know he's

398
00:30:33.119 --> 00:30:37.279
there, but he's watching them.
And that's what he sees is is love,

399
00:30:37.839 --> 00:30:42.160
is acceptance? Is this yeah,
this family unit? And he wants

400
00:30:42.279 --> 00:30:47.400
that. And I think that's why
he's so determined that his happiness will come

401
00:30:48.200 --> 00:30:52.240
from from that. But he's seen
that it can't come from regular people,

402
00:30:52.400 --> 00:30:55.200
regular humans, because they don't like
the way he looks. They're scared of

403
00:30:55.319 --> 00:30:57.240
him, right, So it has
to come from someone who looks like him,

404
00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:03.680
or who who has the same you
know, quote unquote abnormalities as him.

405
00:31:04.519 --> 00:31:08.880
And and because then he'll be accepted
automatically, because he'll accept her and

406
00:31:11.119 --> 00:31:14.799
and yeah, and so I I
love that that that it makes sense that

407
00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:18.599
that is what he would want and
and just not think of anything else because

408
00:31:18.640 --> 00:31:22.279
of course, like these people don't
accept me, these humans don't accept me,

409
00:31:22.440 --> 00:31:26.839
but that this person who is created
literally in my image, you know,

410
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:32.359
my as like me, then will
accept me, which ironically was probably

411
00:31:32.400 --> 00:31:37.680
also what Frankenstein was thinking and creating
it. And that he would could play

412
00:31:37.759 --> 00:31:41.720
god and this creature would would bow
down to him and he probably would have

413
00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:45.599
if he had stayed. Yeah.
Well, I love that point, particular

414
00:31:45.599 --> 00:31:51.839
about the wife because when when the
simple fact that we're like going back and

415
00:31:51.880 --> 00:31:56.440
fortune call it Frankenstein's monster, of
Frankensin's creation is I think also brilliant of

416
00:31:56.480 --> 00:32:00.880
Mary Shelley because, much to my
frustration, he's never given a name,

417
00:32:00.799 --> 00:32:05.000
you know, and I almost said
it's because I think that's often how we

418
00:32:05.079 --> 00:32:08.640
describe it. It's the monster,
but he is a sentient being. He's

419
00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:14.079
a person in that regard, if
not human necessarily, and to not name

420
00:32:14.119 --> 00:32:15.480
it it's so frustrating to talk about, but I think that's part of the

421
00:32:15.519 --> 00:32:21.440
whole point. But to get back
to it, the little cottage that he

422
00:32:21.519 --> 00:32:24.559
goes to he sees a family.
It's a multi generational family, and he

423
00:32:24.680 --> 00:32:30.400
sees that there's a young man and
a young woman who are family and that

424
00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:34.519
they love each other, their their
husband and wife, and also there's a

425
00:32:34.559 --> 00:32:37.640
father figure and the father loves loves
loves them, and there's also a sister

426
00:32:38.359 --> 00:32:44.279
who's involved there as well. And
and so I think for Frankens for for

427
00:32:44.519 --> 00:32:50.119
Frankenstin's creation, part of why he
fixates on a wife is that at first

428
00:32:50.160 --> 00:32:54.359
he was also thinking a father could
love me and Frankenstein is He very explicitly

429
00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:58.720
says, Frankenstein, you are my
father, and his father rejects him.

430
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:01.440
So of course horse the wife would
be the only thing that would be left

431
00:33:01.480 --> 00:33:07.119
there, you know. Yeah,
yeah, and he it's something that or

432
00:33:07.240 --> 00:33:09.599
she would be something that he could
help create, not something that was helping

433
00:33:09.680 --> 00:33:15.000
create him. Right. Yeah.
He could be a little bit God as

434
00:33:15.039 --> 00:33:17.279
well here and it's a very much
like you know, God creates man,

435
00:33:17.440 --> 00:33:22.640
Man creates woman kind of thing,
ye, with all the parts of that

436
00:33:22.079 --> 00:33:27.319
and giving me well, actually let
me ask you that. Do you think

437
00:33:27.400 --> 00:33:30.480
that? Was also something Mary Shelley
was trying to comment on, especially this

438
00:33:30.599 --> 00:33:32.839
idea of like, of course,
like first of all, the very idea

439
00:33:32.880 --> 00:33:37.279
that Elizabeth and Victor would grow up
and thus just by definition, wind up

440
00:33:37.319 --> 00:33:42.200
in love and marry each other,
and we never hear a word about Elizabeth's

441
00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:45.440
agency and all of that. And
also this idea that they could create another

442
00:33:45.759 --> 00:33:51.880
version of Frankenstein who would want to
go off and marry him and live happily

443
00:33:51.960 --> 00:33:55.079
ere after with him, and her
agency is never considered in that. Is

444
00:33:55.160 --> 00:33:58.759
that just the times or do you
think Mary Shelley is making an intentional point

445
00:33:58.799 --> 00:34:04.680
there. It's always difficult to tell, because one thing I've learned throughout my

446
00:34:04.839 --> 00:34:12.519
studies of you know, gender throughout
history and ideology or ideologies and discussions about

447
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:16.280
that, is that a lot of
times we tried to exert our own opinions

448
00:34:16.360 --> 00:34:22.800
about gender relationships from today onto what
people were commenting on back then, and

449
00:34:22.920 --> 00:34:29.719
it wasn't necessarily always the case.
Sometimes it was. But like Mary Shelley

450
00:34:29.880 --> 00:34:36.280
loved Percy. Yeah, I don't
understand it, but she loved him,

451
00:34:36.599 --> 00:34:42.320
and even when he wronged her,
even when people gave him credit over her,

452
00:34:43.199 --> 00:34:46.039
she loved him. And you know, there's there's a lot to be

453
00:34:46.119 --> 00:34:49.719
said for that. There's a lot
to be said for the fact that there

454
00:34:49.760 --> 00:34:54.119
are heavy rumors that she was also
involved with women and when the relationship was

455
00:34:54.159 --> 00:35:01.039
open, and so it's difficult to
tell whether or not she was commenting on

456
00:35:01.159 --> 00:35:07.480
that. I do think that an
interesting fact of her writing is that two

457
00:35:07.559 --> 00:35:10.440
of her most popular books, Frankenstein
and The Last Man, are from the

458
00:35:10.519 --> 00:35:15.239
perspective of men. Oh. Interesting, her most famous works aren't from the

459
00:35:15.280 --> 00:35:19.480
perspective of women, and I actually
don't know if any of her works are

460
00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:22.559
from the perspective of women, and
so I don't really know what that's as.

461
00:35:22.599 --> 00:35:27.679
Again, I've not read much into
the literary criticism of that, but

462
00:35:28.400 --> 00:35:31.800
I think it's it says a lot
maybe about how she viewed life m h

463
00:35:32.440 --> 00:35:35.760
for sure. Yeah, and that's
what I expect. Like I said,

464
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:37.880
kind of why I asked you is
because, yeah, I want to believe

465
00:35:37.960 --> 00:35:43.400
Mary Shelley is this like suber proto
feminist in that regard, But it doesn't

466
00:35:43.639 --> 00:35:46.639
like that kind of story of you'll
grow up with your ward and you'll expect

467
00:35:46.639 --> 00:35:49.840
to be fall in love and married, I know is very common of the

468
00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:52.280
time, and so I think it
is, you know, always important to

469
00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:57.079
recognize like a story can be really
progressive in some ways, but also in

470
00:35:57.159 --> 00:36:00.719
other ways just be reflecting the things
that no one would think about but today

471
00:36:00.760 --> 00:36:07.519
we would be horrified by. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Talk also

472
00:36:07.599 --> 00:36:12.239
about the book in terms of its
like we said about how science fiction,

473
00:36:12.320 --> 00:36:15.719
and I think it clearly is,
and that it's a story. To me

474
00:36:15.719 --> 00:36:19.519
at least, I've always thought of
that part of science fiction is you posit

475
00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:24.039
a scientific possibility that doesn't exist in
our own world and then ask questions about

476
00:36:24.039 --> 00:36:27.079
what would happen if that was true, you know, like what if we

477
00:36:27.159 --> 00:36:30.320
could go to Mars? What if
we could you know, control the way

478
00:36:30.360 --> 00:36:32.599
people think or whatever it is.
And in this it's like, you know,

479
00:36:34.480 --> 00:36:36.800
what if we could do this thing? What if we could bring you

480
00:36:36.840 --> 00:36:42.280
know, create life out of death? And so again, through my modern

481
00:36:42.360 --> 00:36:45.119
eyes, I want to look at
this and go, well, this is

482
00:36:45.159 --> 00:36:49.440
written at the time when the Industrial
Revolution is really taking off, when a

483
00:36:49.519 --> 00:36:52.679
lot of people in Mary Shelley's own
England but also throughout the world, but

484
00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:57.559
especially in England, are really horrified
by scientific progress and the way, you

485
00:36:57.599 --> 00:37:00.840
know, all the smoke and the
mills, and think about the poem New

486
00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:06.000
Jerusalem. It's written at this very
time, you know all about how England's

487
00:37:06.039 --> 00:37:08.920
green and pleasant land is being ruined
by industry, and a lot of the

488
00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:13.039
works about like what industry does to
workers and stuff like that are happening,

489
00:37:14.159 --> 00:37:16.320
and so to me, it's very
easy to read it in a like the

490
00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:22.199
line that keeps coming to me is
from doctor Malcolm from Jurassic Park of just

491
00:37:22.280 --> 00:37:23.960
because they could do a thing,
they never asked if they should do a

492
00:37:24.039 --> 00:37:29.000
thing. And it feels like that's
part of what Mary Shelley is saying,

493
00:37:29.119 --> 00:37:32.599
is that part of Frankenstein's problem in
his conceit is that he never actually asked

494
00:37:32.679 --> 00:37:37.480
should I do this? And he
never prepared for the potential consequences. How

495
00:37:37.599 --> 00:37:39.639
much of that do you think is
accurate? And how much of that is

496
00:37:39.719 --> 00:37:45.280
me wanting to read back into this
sort of like proto you know, scientific

497
00:37:45.320 --> 00:37:50.280
critique. Oh, I think it's
very close. So during this time,

498
00:37:50.800 --> 00:37:54.159
I actually have probably was starting to
build up at this time. It didn't

499
00:37:54.159 --> 00:37:59.639
really get to it's like true fruition
until probably like eighteen twenty eight, eighteen

500
00:37:59.679 --> 00:38:02.360
thirty. You have this idea of
the March of intellect, which is a

501
00:38:02.480 --> 00:38:09.239
direct response to the burgeoning technology of
the time, and the growing industrialization,

502
00:38:09.440 --> 00:38:15.559
like you said, urbanization, all
this stuff. You have these products that

503
00:38:15.800 --> 00:38:20.440
to us are like what even like
that doesn't do anything, But to them,

504
00:38:21.039 --> 00:38:23.880
we're revolutionary and we're changing like the
very scope of things. Kind of

505
00:38:23.920 --> 00:38:28.360
similar to the way that AI is
changing things today, I would say,

506
00:38:28.440 --> 00:38:35.639
is how these in how industrialization was
changing things at that time, and you

507
00:38:35.800 --> 00:38:40.000
have this fear of what that will
do, But you also have the fear

508
00:38:40.559 --> 00:38:47.760
of the upper classes that education is
going down the ladder, the social ladder.

509
00:38:49.320 --> 00:38:52.559
Education is being provided to people who
it wasn't provided to in the past.

510
00:38:53.239 --> 00:38:58.559
And the part of the march of
intellect was also like what happens when

511
00:38:58.639 --> 00:39:01.519
these people when not the right people
have access to this education, to these

512
00:39:01.639 --> 00:39:07.159
means that are beyond them and and
stuff like that. So this is all

513
00:39:07.199 --> 00:39:15.000
starting around this time that Frankenstein is
being written and published. And also at

514
00:39:15.039 --> 00:39:22.159
this time you have Grave Robberies,
which very very popular and for scientific furthering,

515
00:39:22.119 --> 00:39:25.880
you know, like whether whether or
not it's it's it was ethical,

516
00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:31.159
which it wasn't. I mean,
you know, but you have scientists or

517
00:39:31.280 --> 00:39:38.719
doctors who need to practice what they're
doing and who or who want to further

518
00:39:38.840 --> 00:39:45.960
their own education or want to further
their own ego paying grave robbers to bring

519
00:39:45.039 --> 00:39:52.000
them bodies from graves fresh bodies.
Wow. And like in my periodical that

520
00:39:52.039 --> 00:39:59.960
I studied, there were caricatures of
this of grave robbers sneaking into to cemetery

521
00:40:00.320 --> 00:40:06.079
and people used to camp out at
freshly doug graves. People whose family member

522
00:40:06.119 --> 00:40:08.800
had just died. They would camp
out there for a few days to make

523
00:40:08.840 --> 00:40:14.199
sure that the body wasn't stolen,
if they could do that, if they

524
00:40:14.199 --> 00:40:19.599
could sacrifice the time to do that, and any graves that weren't being protected,

525
00:40:20.159 --> 00:40:24.440
usually sometimes the body would end up
being taken and sold to for whatever

526
00:40:24.559 --> 00:40:28.920
means it was being used for,
usually scientists, like I said, And

527
00:40:29.079 --> 00:40:35.199
so the idea of for doctor Frankenstein
taking fresh bodies, cutting them up,

528
00:40:35.639 --> 00:40:38.840
piecing them together is very reflective of
the fear at the time of this,

529
00:40:39.159 --> 00:40:43.599
Like people didn't want this to happen, and they were seeing it happen,

530
00:40:44.199 --> 00:40:51.119
and it was also this they didn't
understand what was being done with the bodies,

531
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:54.480
and so they feared it. And
of course there's the whole ethical thing,

532
00:40:54.559 --> 00:41:00.800
like I said, is wrong anyway
to do it without permission, But

533
00:41:00.039 --> 00:41:02.599
still there was this whole other fear
of like what are they doing with it?

534
00:41:02.719 --> 00:41:07.559
What's what's going to happen? And
again the periodical I studied there was

535
00:41:07.960 --> 00:41:12.480
in the same kind of series as
the Grave Robberies. There was one where

536
00:41:12.519 --> 00:41:20.159
they they show surgeons surrounded by creations, so you have you have like a

537
00:41:20.360 --> 00:41:24.840
dog with another animal's leg or another
animal's head, and they're all walking around

538
00:41:24.960 --> 00:41:27.840
and then it's kind of like,
what's net what are they going to do

539
00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:30.039
the humans next? As a human
on the table next, what are they

540
00:41:30.079 --> 00:41:34.519
going to do with him? And
in my mind, like all of this

541
00:41:34.760 --> 00:41:40.360
with the creation of a new being
is very reflective of the conversations that were

542
00:41:40.400 --> 00:41:45.079
happening around that at the same time. Well, and it's funny how much

543
00:41:45.199 --> 00:41:50.840
that specific dynamic now like this book
has put its stamp on that because just

544
00:41:50.880 --> 00:41:52.880
an example, a couple of months
ago, I have a car that's very

545
00:41:52.920 --> 00:41:55.840
beaten up that decided we're going to
drive into the ground. It's been totaled

546
00:41:57.079 --> 00:42:00.159
like the andinrd's fine, but the
body is terrible. And I took to

547
00:42:00.159 --> 00:42:01.079
a mechanic at one point the guy
was like, yeah, look, I

548
00:42:01.119 --> 00:42:05.159
could replace a lot of those side
panels that are damaged, you know,

549
00:42:05.320 --> 00:42:07.760
And what he said literally was they'd
probably be different colors, so it looked

550
00:42:07.800 --> 00:42:10.079
like a Frankenstein in a car.
But I could do it, you know,

551
00:42:10.199 --> 00:42:15.880
because what he meant was like taking
pieces of different entities and stitching them

552
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:19.920
together to make something that looked okay, like giving a dog and a leg

553
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:22.599
from a different animal. So it's
fascinating how much that word has kind of

554
00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:25.960
entered our idea. Yeah, it's
like, I don't know if you have

555
00:42:27.039 --> 00:42:30.039
you seen poor things? Yeah?
No, I haven't heard really good things.

556
00:42:30.199 --> 00:42:35.719
It's kind of I've not read the
book, so I don't know exactly

557
00:42:35.800 --> 00:42:40.119
what Alistair Gray's influence was, but
it does seem like Frankenstein was an influence

558
00:42:40.159 --> 00:42:45.679
on on that story as well.
It's kind of similar things. I can

559
00:42:45.719 --> 00:42:47.440
see that. I can always see
that, and I want to talk about

560
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:51.639
him becoming an influence on other things
in just a second, but I just

561
00:42:51.719 --> 00:42:53.880
want to ask a little bit more
about the kind of classest idea you were

562
00:42:53.920 --> 00:43:00.679
talking about, Like we can't let
those people get the science. This isn't

563
00:43:00.719 --> 00:43:02.360
meant as an attack on Mary Shelley, because again, creature of her times

564
00:43:02.400 --> 00:43:06.679
and all that, But are you
saying, you can think if there was

565
00:43:06.679 --> 00:43:07.840
an element to that, that part
of the idea is supposed to be that

566
00:43:07.920 --> 00:43:15.159
Frankenstein himself is not sort of like
a classically educated noble bearing and so oh

567
00:43:15.280 --> 00:43:20.039
no, okay, she's meaning as
a critique of that. Okay, yeah,

568
00:43:20.119 --> 00:43:22.360
yeah, I don't I don't really
think. I don't think that because

569
00:43:22.920 --> 00:43:25.760
at the time, the surgeons who
were doing this were well known and well

570
00:43:25.800 --> 00:43:32.840
renowned surgeons who had very big egos. I can't there are some letters I've

571
00:43:32.920 --> 00:43:37.039
read of surgeons talking about what they're
doing and just like they really did,

572
00:43:37.119 --> 00:43:42.840
a lot of them viewed themselves as
God during this time where so little was

573
00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:46.639
known, and so every discovery is
like a it's a boost to your ego

574
00:43:46.719 --> 00:43:51.320
because no one knew it before.
But yeah, usually it was all the

575
00:43:51.400 --> 00:43:59.360
ones I've read were about like well
renowned surgeons. Okay, Well, certainly

576
00:43:59.400 --> 00:44:02.000
this idea of Wasians who think they
are God is one that was left long

577
00:44:02.039 --> 00:44:05.639
ago in the eighteenth century, so
nineteenth centuries, that's could don't have to

578
00:44:05.679 --> 00:44:08.920
worry with that anymore. Well,
so let's talk about how differently this movie

579
00:44:09.039 --> 00:44:12.800
is now when this book is now
understood, Because, as I said,

580
00:44:14.119 --> 00:44:17.920
I think if you ask people what
they visualize when they thee's Frankenstein, you

581
00:44:19.000 --> 00:44:21.920
know, they see the monster that's
been stitched together. They see, you

582
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:25.880
know, the the old European castle
and the lightning bolt striking to like light

583
00:44:25.960 --> 00:44:30.039
everything up. They see the like, you know, kind of mumbling.

584
00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:34.039
It's kind of a zombie creature that
can barely speak, let alone be as

585
00:44:34.079 --> 00:44:38.599
eloquence as in this book. And
they call the creature of Frankenstein. Where

586
00:44:38.639 --> 00:44:42.480
do you think all this comes from? How is it that the sort of

587
00:44:42.519 --> 00:44:46.280
popular media image that we've had for
I think the first Frankenstein movie was made

588
00:44:46.360 --> 00:44:52.039
around like the early nineteen twenties,
so like almost one hundred years if not

589
00:44:52.199 --> 00:44:55.400
probably more in terms of like stage
plays and stuff, has gone so different

590
00:44:55.440 --> 00:45:00.400
from the book. You know,
I really don't know. I don't know

591
00:45:00.519 --> 00:45:07.480
what the first adaptation was that changed
it so drastically. If it was a

592
00:45:07.599 --> 00:45:15.320
movie, I imagine that they needed
they needed that scare, they needed that

593
00:45:15.559 --> 00:45:19.880
thrill, especially when you know,
I guess back when the first movie adaptation

594
00:45:20.119 --> 00:45:25.679
was made, it was very visual, relied heavily heavily on the visual aspect

595
00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:30.119
of it, and so they needed
something to do with that, and also

596
00:45:30.199 --> 00:45:38.480
there's the in when would this be
late eighteen hundreds, eighteen eighties nineties,

597
00:45:38.639 --> 00:45:44.800
you have Penny Dreadfuls, which are
I don't know if anyone's seen the show

598
00:45:44.920 --> 00:45:51.039
Penny Dreadful, it is basically adapting
that. There were these little mini periodicals

599
00:45:51.079 --> 00:45:53.920
like Penny periodicals is what they were
called, and they have stories in them,

600
00:45:54.119 --> 00:45:58.800
different stories, and a lot of
them were They weren't always this,

601
00:45:59.039 --> 00:46:02.639
but sometimes they would be scary stories, horror stories. And I don't know

602
00:46:02.719 --> 00:46:10.239
if maybe some of those adapted Frankenstein
or something similar to Frankenstein and turned it

603
00:46:10.360 --> 00:46:15.360
into what we began to see more
of in the twentieth century, But I

604
00:46:15.400 --> 00:46:21.719
don't know. It's one of those
things where it's like people become so fascinated

605
00:46:21.800 --> 00:46:24.280
with the idea of this creation and
become so afraid of it again. Like

606
00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:28.519
I guess it fits in well if
when you think back to like the grave

607
00:46:28.599 --> 00:46:30.840
robberies and people being afraid of what
was being done to those bodies, then

608
00:46:30.880 --> 00:46:36.320
it actually does fit in quite well
with with where Frankenstein comes from. It's

609
00:46:36.400 --> 00:46:39.400
just a different type of fear you
have there, a fear of the unknown,

610
00:46:39.559 --> 00:46:45.440
of bringing someone back to life is
now viewed as like fearful instead of

611
00:46:46.400 --> 00:46:50.800
or maybe viewing it the way Frankenstein
viewed it, instead of the way that

612
00:46:50.960 --> 00:46:54.280
Mary Shelley viewed the process. Ye, well, and there's a weird sort

613
00:46:54.320 --> 00:46:58.880
of mena narrative there, I think
of. Mary Shelley is trying to write

614
00:46:58.880 --> 00:47:04.440
the story about how what we visually
think of as frightening isn't necessarily what we

615
00:47:04.519 --> 00:47:07.199
are scared of what we think of
as frightening from what we first learned,

616
00:47:07.239 --> 00:47:09.199
Because yeah, I can very much
understand it being like, you know,

617
00:47:09.559 --> 00:47:14.480
what's more frightening than a sexually active
or independent woman in the early nineteenth century,

618
00:47:14.639 --> 00:47:17.480
let alone today, you know what's
more frightening than a woman who's writing

619
00:47:17.480 --> 00:47:22.360
about death instead of these like,
you know, nice romances and things like

620
00:47:22.480 --> 00:47:25.840
that. And so for today and
today be like, no, we very

621
00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:30.719
quickly go back to the scary thing
is the monster, and that's what it's

622
00:47:30.719 --> 00:47:35.039
all about. And then so when
Frankenstein shows up, it's this monster zombie

623
00:47:35.119 --> 00:47:39.880
kind of creature. It's and I
brought out Jurassic Park again, and I

624
00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.679
remember reading some things that Michael Crichton
had talked about the original author of the

625
00:47:44.719 --> 00:47:47.760
book where he had said he was
a little like he loved the movie obviously,

626
00:47:47.800 --> 00:47:51.480
and I'm sure he loved the paycheck
the movie helped get him, but

627
00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:55.840
that in his work, like the
scary part is not supposed to be the

628
00:47:55.920 --> 00:48:00.760
dinosaurs themselves. It's supposed to be
these scientists who the dinosaurs without any thoughts

629
00:48:00.840 --> 00:48:07.760
to their ethical consequences, and which
I think, I mean, I've never

630
00:48:07.800 --> 00:48:12.119
actually thought about this before, but
I think it is very much a Frankenstein

631
00:48:12.239 --> 00:48:16.519
story. You're bringing things back from
the dead quite literally, and in a

632
00:48:16.679 --> 00:48:23.280
book that can come across, but
on screen, an ethical philosophical concept is

633
00:48:23.400 --> 00:48:28.599
never going to appear as scary as
the ten foot tall creature that's reaching out

634
00:48:28.639 --> 00:48:30.679
to get you, you know,
and it's it really feels like it's a

635
00:48:31.360 --> 00:48:36.039
and that that happens all the time
that you have. Another resaon that I've

636
00:48:36.039 --> 00:48:38.320
talked about a lot in this podcast
in reachent episodes is the Goji ra the

637
00:48:38.400 --> 00:48:45.599
Godzilla movies where not in terms of
being scary, But the original concept of

638
00:48:45.599 --> 00:48:49.719
the movie was meant to be a
story about post war Japan and the atomic

639
00:48:49.840 --> 00:48:53.840
bomb and the horrible things the Americans
did and coming to terms with the nuclear

640
00:48:53.920 --> 00:48:59.039
age, and then within like three
or four movies, you're just getting movies

641
00:48:59.079 --> 00:49:01.679
of a guy in a rubber suit
smashing buildings and being scary, and those

642
00:49:01.719 --> 00:49:05.599
are fun movies, but they kind
of completely missed the point. And I

643
00:49:05.599 --> 00:49:07.480
think it's kind of similar thing happens
here. Yeah, I agree. I

644
00:49:07.559 --> 00:49:17.840
think that we started viewing Frankenstein's creation
the way that Frankenstein viewed him, and

645
00:49:19.400 --> 00:49:22.800
and then that just kind of became
the new normal. And so, like

646
00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:28.079
you said, it is quite quite
meta that. Yeah, it's almost like

647
00:49:28.159 --> 00:49:32.719
we're taking doctor Frankenstein for his word
at everything and now are viewing the story

648
00:49:35.559 --> 00:49:44.280
through his biases instead of through a
more philosophical and theoretical aspect. But I

649
00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:47.119
just it's it's still so fascinating to
me that the monster has become known as

650
00:49:47.159 --> 00:49:55.760
Frankenstein. Ironically, I think the
adaptation that gets it the closest in terms

651
00:49:55.840 --> 00:50:00.760
of of the longing there and the
idea that this is your creation and you

652
00:50:00.800 --> 00:50:06.840
should love it, is Young Frankenstein. Yeah. I was just thinking that

653
00:50:07.960 --> 00:50:13.000
I love that movie, by the
way, but there is the whole idea,

654
00:50:13.079 --> 00:50:15.599
like, except he doesn't abandon him, so maybe, like I feel

655
00:50:15.639 --> 00:50:19.960
like young Frankenstein is the like what
if of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein. What

656
00:50:20.119 --> 00:50:24.639
if doctor Frankenstein hadn't abandoned his creation? What would that have looked like?

657
00:50:24.760 --> 00:50:34.880
What if they'd had a loving relationship
father son relationship or brotherhood relationship and with

658
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:40.039
a bit of comedy added to it? Hold on looking up something quickly.

659
00:50:42.360 --> 00:50:45.239
Oh, yeah, no, I
think you're right. I think it is

660
00:50:45.440 --> 00:50:50.039
in many ways very much a more
accurate retelling. You know, it's very

661
00:50:50.079 --> 00:50:52.840
much satire. Although again it's like
I think, in many ways because it's

662
00:50:52.840 --> 00:50:57.639
the one I probably saw the most
growing up, you know, child of

663
00:50:57.639 --> 00:51:00.400
a Jewish father and living in New
York City where mel Brooks is basically like

664
00:51:00.679 --> 00:51:07.400
a household god, you know,
so the visuals of it, the black

665
00:51:07.480 --> 00:51:10.880
and white castle, the mad scientist
hair, the lightning egor, all of

666
00:51:10.920 --> 00:51:19.679
these things really strike me. And
you're right in that the creation the monster

667
00:51:20.119 --> 00:51:23.079
is very lonely and is very sad. But what's interesting is that that's also

668
00:51:23.119 --> 00:51:28.000
where the like I can only speak
in mumbles and grumbles comes from. And

669
00:51:28.079 --> 00:51:31.000
granted in the book that is true
at the beginning, but he learns to

670
00:51:31.000 --> 00:51:36.639
be incredibly eloquent within about two years, and I would actually say I think

671
00:51:36.679 --> 00:51:40.760
the only other version I've seen where
I don't think we have ever really focused

672
00:51:40.840 --> 00:51:45.159
on who created this creature. Those
probably totally in one or two stories.

673
00:51:45.039 --> 00:51:52.159
But a Frankenstein Monster analog where I
think it's sadness and loneliness and sort of

674
00:51:52.199 --> 00:52:00.440
it's being misunderstood is often dealt with
is Solomon Grundy from the Batman stories,

675
00:52:00.559 --> 00:52:05.360
particularly from Batman the animated series,
where Grundy is an antagonist. But I

676
00:52:05.400 --> 00:52:07.679
think one of the things that really
makes Batman so wonderful, especially in the

677
00:52:07.719 --> 00:52:15.400
animated series, is that he's often
able to identify with his with his villains,

678
00:52:15.599 --> 00:52:17.960
and particularly in terms of him feeling
very much like an outcast because no

679
00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:22.039
one understands him and he's an orphan
in all of this, he can really

680
00:52:22.079 --> 00:52:25.840
relate to Grundy. And granted,
Grundy is still the very monosyllabic, you

681
00:52:25.880 --> 00:52:28.960
know, not very smart, does
what other people tell him to do,

682
00:52:29.079 --> 00:52:32.480
and we'll do terrible things unless someone
stops him, but there's still a deep

683
00:52:32.559 --> 00:52:36.880
sympathy for the character in a way
that feels very authentic to this part of

684
00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:40.280
this kind of telling the story.
Yeah, yeah, I've never really watched

685
00:52:40.400 --> 00:52:44.639
much of the Batman animated series,
so I don't really know much about that

686
00:52:44.800 --> 00:52:49.559
character. But yeah, the sympathy
is always key for me. If it's

687
00:52:49.639 --> 00:52:53.239
not there, then it feels like
it's just a story meant to scare you

688
00:52:53.360 --> 00:52:58.119
instead of a story meant to ask
you to be a bit more introspective,

689
00:52:58.400 --> 00:53:01.280
which is why I always heavily reck
commend the plays because, like I said,

690
00:53:01.400 --> 00:53:05.119
like they're so good, and I
think the bended at Cumberbatch one.

691
00:53:05.159 --> 00:53:08.800
You can get recordings of okay,
but it's so good, and I recommend

692
00:53:08.880 --> 00:53:15.559
watching like both, like the two
versions of it, so they when they

693
00:53:15.599 --> 00:53:20.239
switch roles. It's just it's amazing. It's it's incredible acting, it's incredible

694
00:53:20.239 --> 00:53:23.679
storytelling, and the emotion is really
there, and it's amazing what you can

695
00:53:23.760 --> 00:53:28.519
get different from different actors in it, and you get to see it in

696
00:53:28.559 --> 00:53:31.199
the same production, which is really
cool. I have to say, I'm

697
00:53:31.239 --> 00:53:35.719
sure so much of it is good
and probably award worthy, but just from

698
00:53:35.840 --> 00:53:38.800
hearing about it, I hope many
awards went to or accolades at least to

699
00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:44.760
the makeup and costuming department, because
I can't imagine having to make up the

700
00:53:44.880 --> 00:53:47.760
same people for two different roles,
going back and forth every day, you

701
00:53:47.800 --> 00:53:52.400
know, and having I'm sure just
two different sets of the same costume made

702
00:53:52.400 --> 00:53:54.199
and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting seeing

703
00:53:54.360 --> 00:54:00.119
Frankenstein and Frankinstein's creation in that,
like in a more realistic mode and not

704
00:54:00.599 --> 00:54:06.599
not the you know, elongated head
kind of and and the screws and everything.

705
00:54:06.760 --> 00:54:12.880
It is really just there's a his
face is disfigured because it's it's stitched

706
00:54:12.920 --> 00:54:16.079
together, and so there's like a
long gash, a crow like diagonal gash

707
00:54:16.119 --> 00:54:21.800
across his face that's been stitched together. There's a few gashes everywhere that have

708
00:54:21.920 --> 00:54:24.599
been also stitched together. And it's
interesting to see it that way because I

709
00:54:24.599 --> 00:54:29.719
think it garners more sympathy in the
viewer, which is interesting in itself and

710
00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:34.079
telling in itself. But yeah,
it's just it's interesting to compare that to

711
00:54:34.199 --> 00:54:37.559
the cinematic interpretations that we see.
Yeah, very much. So, I'd

712
00:54:37.599 --> 00:54:40.800
love to see that. And really
it has been done on stage number of

713
00:54:40.840 --> 00:54:45.599
times and other versions too. Yeah. Two last kind of questions about the

714
00:54:45.639 --> 00:54:47.519
setting itself, and then we'll wrap
up and do some quick bonus content on

715
00:54:47.559 --> 00:54:54.960
a very different topic. When Oh, what was I gonna ask? So

716
00:54:54.960 --> 00:55:02.519
I related to what you said there
about the So the first is when I

717
00:55:02.679 --> 00:55:07.840
think of when I think of the
Frankenstein story, because it is about bringing

718
00:55:07.880 --> 00:55:12.679
a creature back to life. I
think today is very associated also with zombie

719
00:55:12.760 --> 00:55:17.840
stories, and like there's I've seen
some like descriptions of like that. The

720
00:55:19.000 --> 00:55:23.559
zombie story has sort of two origins. One is the kind of mad scientist

721
00:55:23.880 --> 00:55:30.639
doctor Frankenstein kind of idea, and
the other is the kind of uh Caribbean

722
00:55:30.719 --> 00:55:36.280
spirituality voo done what was often referred
to as voodoo. That's an inaccurate term

723
00:55:36.920 --> 00:55:40.960
sort of like I think very like
you know, anglicized and you know,

724
00:55:42.119 --> 00:55:47.400
horrified versions of these this folklore from
Caribbean indigenous populations about you know, raising

725
00:55:47.480 --> 00:55:52.599
the dead or in many cases I
think not necessarily indigenous, but African slaves

726
00:55:52.639 --> 00:55:58.159
who are brought over and then mixed
with indigenous stories. To your knowledge,

727
00:55:58.639 --> 00:56:04.360
would what awareness of those stories have
gotten to someone like Mary Shelley by that

728
00:56:04.440 --> 00:56:07.199
point? Were they aware of like
what a word like voodoo or you know,

729
00:56:07.599 --> 00:56:12.280
the idea or the word zombie or
any of these kind of stories.

730
00:56:12.599 --> 00:56:15.119
I'm sure there have been stories of
people coming back from the dead since you

731
00:56:15.159 --> 00:56:17.920
know, time memorial, but those
kind of framings of the stories. Do

732
00:56:17.920 --> 00:56:21.400
you know if that would have been
a part of Mary Shelley's world at all.

733
00:56:22.079 --> 00:56:27.639
If it was, it would have
been heavily heavily anglicized. And what

734
00:56:27.760 --> 00:56:34.920
I mean by that is it would
have been told through British interpretations of it

735
00:56:35.679 --> 00:56:43.159
and from explorers or from colonizers,
from military people, and it likely would

736
00:56:43.159 --> 00:56:50.079
have been heavily heavily racist. And
I'm trying to think. I mean,

737
00:56:50.119 --> 00:56:55.239
you have, like you have afro
Been who wrote forget what it's called.

738
00:56:57.880 --> 00:57:02.599
She wrote a book about an African
man and I think he was from slavery

739
00:57:02.679 --> 00:57:07.840
to freedom or something. And that
was even that, even though it was

740
00:57:08.039 --> 00:57:10.719
you know, there are arguments as
to how well intentioned it was meant,

741
00:57:10.840 --> 00:57:17.760
but even that is heavily heavily racist, heavily stereotypical. And all these stories

742
00:57:17.840 --> 00:57:22.440
like they would get stories from the
continent of Africa, from the you know,

743
00:57:22.559 --> 00:57:29.320
South America and North America about these
people and about these communities, but

744
00:57:30.159 --> 00:57:34.400
they would not be told from those
people. Yeah, of course, yeah,

745
00:57:34.519 --> 00:57:38.159
So so to what extent, I'm
not sure. And it might have

746
00:57:38.239 --> 00:57:43.239
come like, you know, like
down the pipeline or something. But right,

747
00:57:43.400 --> 00:57:47.599
but yeah, and the other one
is and the other question I had

748
00:57:47.679 --> 00:57:51.239
for you, You know, that
totally makes a lot of sense about what

749
00:57:51.280 --> 00:57:54.480
I expected. And the other question
I had for you is, again,

750
00:57:54.519 --> 00:57:59.800
we talked about this as modern science
fiction, but it is very different than

751
00:57:59.800 --> 00:58:01.559
I think what a lot of people
think of a science fiction today, in

752
00:58:01.599 --> 00:58:07.639
part because the trope has grown and
evolved and developed. And one of the

753
00:58:07.719 --> 00:58:12.480
things I think that my probably might
throw people is there's very little actual science

754
00:58:12.519 --> 00:58:15.719
in the book. Like there isn't
any actual description of like you have this

755
00:58:15.960 --> 00:58:21.480
chemical and that chemical or this dow
Hickey or I've marshaled the power of the

756
00:58:21.599 --> 00:58:27.880
lightning or whatever I'm gonna curious to
whatever. You know, how much of

757
00:58:27.960 --> 00:58:30.119
that is just again that was how, you know, because she was inventing

758
00:58:30.159 --> 00:58:35.039
a genre. There's nothing like else
that was like it. And when it

759
00:58:35.199 --> 00:58:37.880
is that, the need to not
only say, oh, hey, this

760
00:58:38.000 --> 00:58:42.039
cool scientific thing has happened, trust
me, and let me tell a story

761
00:58:42.119 --> 00:58:47.800
in that world sharks to become it's
incumbent upon the author to explain the science

762
00:58:47.920 --> 00:58:52.039
to you and the pseudoscience in a
way that you believe it. I think

763
00:58:52.119 --> 00:58:57.960
it's it's a product of its time
and that they didn't have the information available

764
00:58:58.039 --> 00:59:00.639
to them of you know, just
randomly like can google, what do you

765
00:59:00.760 --> 00:59:05.599
need to do this scientific procedure?
How likely is this to happen? And

766
00:59:05.760 --> 00:59:08.079
you have someone's written an essay about
it, someone's written an article about it,

767
00:59:09.039 --> 00:59:12.679
and there's pictures and diagrams and all
this stuff. They didn't really have

768
00:59:12.800 --> 00:59:15.880
that back then at all. And
if they did in the form of you

769
00:59:15.960 --> 00:59:22.239
know, actual written things, then
that was heavily gate kept to scientific journals

770
00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:29.159
or medical journals to the people who
went to university, who worked at university.

771
00:59:30.840 --> 00:59:37.559
The University of Glasgow has a museum
called the Hunterian Museum and it's been

772
00:59:37.599 --> 00:59:40.920
around for hundreds of years. It
was around during the early nineteenth century and

773
00:59:42.360 --> 00:59:46.280
at the time it's open to the
public now and back then it was also

774
00:59:46.360 --> 00:59:52.119
open to the public, but it
became so busy because so many people were

775
00:59:52.199 --> 01:00:00.039
going and it was It's a museum
that has preserved like human organs and and

776
01:00:00.280 --> 01:00:02.800
you know, quote unquote abnormalities that
have happened in animals and other things,

777
01:00:02.840 --> 01:00:08.119
and so it's very kind of grotesque
and appealing to people to see because they've

778
01:00:08.159 --> 01:00:13.559
never seen it before. And so
this museum would be open to the public,

779
01:00:14.079 --> 01:00:17.920
it would become so busy that students, I guess would complain that they

780
01:00:17.960 --> 01:00:22.639
didn't have access to it and they
needed it. And so the first people

781
01:00:22.719 --> 01:00:27.440
they cut off from going were people
in work clothes, and they had to

782
01:00:27.519 --> 01:00:30.880
pay to get in. It wasn't
free. So these work these people would

783
01:00:30.360 --> 01:00:34.599
save up their money to be able
to afford to go for the afternoon or

784
01:00:34.639 --> 01:00:38.039
something, but they said, like, if you are in work clothes,

785
01:00:38.119 --> 01:00:42.440
you can't come in. And those
were the first people not allowed. And

786
01:00:42.559 --> 01:00:46.119
even though people went who weren't students, who weren't also workers, and so

787
01:00:46.280 --> 01:00:52.880
they they got to keep going.
And so you have there's a lot of

788
01:00:52.920 --> 01:00:58.679
debate about the what was available to
whom because also at this time you have

789
01:00:58.840 --> 01:01:04.639
public lectures, public mathematics and science
lectures that are being given and people of

790
01:01:04.679 --> 01:01:12.119
all genders and all backgrounds are allowed
to attend. But again is kind of

791
01:01:12.119 --> 01:01:15.000
the same issue. The first people
who get kicked out are the people who

792
01:01:15.719 --> 01:01:19.719
supposedly don't belong there in the first
place, and so it just it wasn't

793
01:01:19.920 --> 01:01:22.760
available the way it is today.
But also I think there was more of

794
01:01:22.840 --> 01:01:27.760
a focus on telling the story,
like getting to the heart of the story,

795
01:01:27.880 --> 01:01:30.880
like you said, I think you
brought that up, rather than dealing

796
01:01:30.920 --> 01:01:36.360
with the frilliness of this is exactly
how it has to happen, like it

797
01:01:36.480 --> 01:01:38.679
has to be believable. It didn't
need to be believable for Mary Shelley,

798
01:01:38.880 --> 01:01:43.199
it just needed it was the means
to tell a story, to tell the

799
01:01:43.679 --> 01:01:46.280
actual story that she wanted to.
Well, that makes a lot of sense,

800
01:01:46.400 --> 01:01:50.599
especially when you think about like this
is just the beginnings of the scientific

801
01:01:50.639 --> 01:01:53.920
revolution and the industry against the industrial
evolution and that kind of thing in which,

802
01:01:54.559 --> 01:01:59.519
you know, mass understanding of science
is still very small, and so

803
01:01:59.599 --> 01:02:04.519
the idea that most readers would have
any kind of knowledge of death and things

804
01:02:04.599 --> 01:02:07.079
like that, you know, in
the way today it's like, oh,

805
01:02:07.199 --> 01:02:09.480
well, I watched a five minute
YouTube on aerodynamics, so I can tell

806
01:02:09.480 --> 01:02:13.119
you why this space battle didn't make
any sense, you know, in the

807
01:02:13.239 --> 01:02:16.320
Star Wars thing or whatever. It
is. Her other book, which I've

808
01:02:16.400 --> 01:02:22.519
studied a little bit more, The
Last Man, is about a global pandemic,

809
01:02:22.599 --> 01:02:28.679
is published in eighteen twenty five and
is about a disease that spreads and

810
01:02:29.239 --> 01:02:35.760
kills everybody except for one man at
the very end, and there's not really

811
01:02:35.840 --> 01:02:37.840
much. So there's a little bit
of explanation about how it got passed on

812
01:02:38.039 --> 01:02:42.320
and everything, but as far as
like the details you would expect today,

813
01:02:42.440 --> 01:02:44.880
Like today, I feel like we
need to know everything, like how did

814
01:02:44.920 --> 01:02:49.880
it, what's the scientific name of
this disease? You know which scientists were

815
01:02:49.920 --> 01:02:52.559
working on it, and all of
this. It's the same in that she

816
01:02:52.719 --> 01:02:57.360
doesn't care, and she doesn't expect
the reader to care. She expects them

817
01:02:57.400 --> 01:03:00.559
to care about the heart of the
story, the narrative. And I have

818
01:03:00.639 --> 01:03:06.480
to say, as someone who has
a you know, liberal arts humanity's love

819
01:03:06.679 --> 01:03:09.960
of science fiction, that's perfect for
me, you know, like when I

820
01:03:10.039 --> 01:03:17.119
watched Our Trek, I want to
engage in philosophical discussions over is data a

821
01:03:17.239 --> 01:03:22.239
living being that has sentience and thus
has rights, and whether his brain is

822
01:03:22.360 --> 01:03:28.840
neutrino or reverse neutrino or you know, whatever's neural hatterns. I just don't

823
01:03:28.880 --> 01:03:31.000
care about it, and total respect
for those who are focused on those details.

824
01:03:31.679 --> 01:03:37.400
And I think in some cases the
science details become very important. But

825
01:03:37.519 --> 01:03:40.199
yeah, to me, the main
thing that is that I love about science

826
01:03:40.239 --> 01:03:45.719
fiction is its ability to raise those
questions. And with that I wanted to

827
01:03:45.800 --> 01:03:46.880
close. I'm gonna give you a
chance to say any the last things you

828
01:03:46.920 --> 01:03:50.079
want to say, but I wanted
to close with one quick quote from the

829
01:03:50.119 --> 01:03:54.480
book that I thought was very interesting, given that it seems so clearly attempting

830
01:03:54.559 --> 01:03:59.079
to raise these kind of issues,
which and this is from the forward by

831
01:03:59.119 --> 01:04:03.840
Mary Shelley, that any inference justly
to be drawn from the following pages as

832
01:04:03.960 --> 01:04:12.159
prejudicing any philosophical direction, There's nothing, And she's saying like, this is

833
01:04:12.199 --> 01:04:14.960
what the book is not supposed to
do. And one of the things she

834
01:04:15.039 --> 01:04:18.239
says is of what she ends it
with is nor is any inference justly to

835
01:04:18.320 --> 01:04:24.559
be drawn from the following pages as
prejudicing any philosophical doctrine of whatever kind.

836
01:04:25.760 --> 01:04:28.280
Which I don't know if that's again
just kind of a part of the style,

837
01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:30.639
or if it's meant to be tongue
in cheek, or if it's meant

838
01:04:30.679 --> 01:04:32.519
to be a like, no,
I'm just a little lady writing a book.

839
01:04:32.960 --> 01:04:36.599
But like she's saying, this is
just a story. Don't think there's

840
01:04:36.599 --> 01:04:41.840
any philosophical arguments being made here.
And that's clearly exactly not the case.

841
01:04:42.280 --> 01:04:47.960
Yeah, it was kind of a
safeguard. I think it's like like caricaturists

842
01:04:48.280 --> 01:04:51.639
a lot of times would be like, this isn't what it is like,

843
01:04:51.679 --> 01:04:55.559
we're not making fun of anybody.
We're just we're just telling a little joke.

844
01:04:55.679 --> 01:04:59.920
It's not we're not actually making any
deep social commentary. And when actually

845
01:05:00.039 --> 01:05:04.000
they were, and it's at that
time you kind of have like a thin

846
01:05:04.119 --> 01:05:12.840
line between what is just a book
and what's rousing too much interest in something

847
01:05:13.280 --> 01:05:19.400
or or too much anti whatever is
being discussed at the time that was important

848
01:05:19.400 --> 01:05:24.079
to the government or or it's a
society, and and so you do a

849
01:05:24.119 --> 01:05:29.880
lot of times have authors or artists
have that little safeguard just like, yeah,

850
01:05:29.920 --> 01:05:32.880
it's not doing any of this,
even though it actually just tell the

851
01:05:32.960 --> 01:05:38.960
story. Chill out it, Danielle, this has been fantastic as always.

852
01:05:38.960 --> 01:05:41.639
Any last comments you want to make
about this work, Well, I do

853
01:05:41.719 --> 01:05:45.960
want to say I mentioned a book
earlier called Mary or the Birth of Frankenstein,

854
01:05:45.039 --> 01:05:49.440
which is a fictionalized account of her
life around the time that she conceptualized

855
01:05:49.480 --> 01:05:55.880
Rgstein. It's by Anne Eckout,
and I would highly recommend if anyone's interested

856
01:05:56.119 --> 01:05:59.119
in a little bit more about Mary
Shelley's life. To read that, again,

857
01:05:59.199 --> 01:06:01.079
it is fictional line, so there
are a lot of liberties taken.

858
01:06:01.519 --> 01:06:04.840
But it was really interesting to me, and it made me want to go

859
01:06:04.960 --> 01:06:12.840
back and reread Frankenstein to see if
seeing her story through this perspective, even

860
01:06:12.840 --> 01:06:20.719
though it's fictionalized, made me think
of Frankenstein any differently. Yeah, No,

861
01:06:20.960 --> 01:06:24.760
I love that. I definitely we'll
have links to that work as well

862
01:06:24.760 --> 01:06:29.480
as hopefully if we can find the
bencumber Batch Frankenstein a recording of it,

863
01:06:29.519 --> 01:06:31.280
we'll links to all that in the
show notes. We'll links to all the

864
01:06:31.360 --> 01:06:34.400
awesome things that Danielle does. Because
she's been on this podcast never time,

865
01:06:34.519 --> 01:06:40.360
she's done a lot of writing.
Her tweets and tiktoks alone are definitely worth

866
01:06:40.400 --> 01:06:43.400
follows. You definitely check that out, and we want to know what you

867
01:06:43.480 --> 01:06:45.920
think. Let us know if you
want to email us, contact us in

868
01:06:45.920 --> 01:06:47.880
any way all the innivasion of the
show notes. We love your feedback.

869
01:06:47.920 --> 01:06:53.199
We'll discuss it on a later episode. Danielle is first and foremost because he's

870
01:06:53.199 --> 01:06:55.199
I understand her a Star Wars fan, and we're going to have her on

871
01:06:55.320 --> 01:06:59.400
to talk about the bad Batch many
times. The bonus content is gonna be

872
01:06:59.400 --> 01:07:01.480
a little quick tocussion about what we
know about season three coming out soon.

873
01:07:02.239 --> 01:07:04.280
For those of you who are members, and if you're not a member,

874
01:07:04.400 --> 01:07:08.119
this is a great time to think
about becoming one, or i should say

875
01:07:08.199 --> 01:07:11.000
a great time to become one.
It's only five dollars a month, fifty

876
01:07:11.039 --> 01:07:14.880
five dollars for twelve months. You
get bonus content, you get ad free

877
01:07:14.960 --> 01:07:17.719
content, and now we're recording entire
episodes that are just for members. If

878
01:07:17.719 --> 01:07:23.440
you like book discussions on the Star
Wars Generation podcast, we're doing whole episodes

879
01:07:23.440 --> 01:07:27.800
about Star Wars books. We're gonna
actually start doing them about full books over

880
01:07:27.880 --> 01:07:30.360
on this side too, probably,
although we have a couple other great book

881
01:07:30.360 --> 01:07:33.360
discussions coming up just for everybody.
But we're gonna keep putting out more and

882
01:07:33.440 --> 01:07:36.639
more bonus content just for members,
So please think about becoming a member.

883
01:07:36.639 --> 01:07:39.960
It's great with support this podcast,
great to support all the things we do.

884
01:07:40.960 --> 01:07:43.320
For the members. Thank you so
much, and we will be back

885
01:07:43.360 --> 01:07:45.519
to you in a second. For
everybody else, thank you so much for

886
01:07:45.719 --> 01:07:46.199
tuning in. We have spoken