Artificial Bodies, Artificial Lives: The Monster and His Bride
by Tessa Swehla, Staff Writer
In my first two entries in this column, I have focused on androids in silent films, but this week I will be discussing another kind of posthuman: the cyborg. As I mentioned in my first article, the word cyborg is a portmanteau of cybernetic and organism. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in an article called “Cyborgs and Space.” Clynes and Kline argued that if humans were to explore the reaches of space–as many dreamed during the height of the Space Race–they must be augmented to withstand the various harsh environments they might encounter. To Clynes and Kline, cyborgs represented the potential for humanity to become more than human, to free itself from the barriers of biology and language.
Science fiction had been interested in these ideas since the beginning of the genre. More than 140 years before Clynes and Kline wrote their article, the very first science fiction novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), featured the Creature, a cyborg born of both biology and technology. His creator, Victor Frankenstein, claims that his motivation to create the Creature stemmed from a desire to make the human race better, to learn how to cure disease and defy death. Sound familiar?
However, it isn’t Shelley’s Creature that I’m here to discuss, it is James Whale’s Monster. Frankenstein (1931) is the first adaptation of Shelley’s novel and the most influential version when it comes to film. In the film, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive; my best guess is that someone involved in the script thought that the name Henry was more relatable to US audiences than Victor) creates the Monster (Boris Karloff) out of a desire to create life: “Now I know what it is like to be God.”
Although it is tempting to make the connection to Faust, it isn’t just pure hubris that drives Frankenstein’s obsession but a desire to escape the restrictions of heteronormativity. Whale lived openly as a gay man in Hollywood, something that was unheard of in the 1930s, and his films reflect that queerness. The central tension of the film is between Frankenstein’s urge towards unnatural reproduction and his duty to marry Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) and provide the House of Frankenstein with an heir. When Frankenstein is whisked away by his father (Frederick Kerr), Elizabeth begs him “not to think on those things anymore,” but to think of their wedding instead. The final shot of the film is Baron Frankenstein toasting a “new heir to the host of Frankenstein,” implying that the death of the Monster has rid Frankenstein of his unnatural heir and righted the natural order of heterosexual reproduction.
But it is the Monster that embodies the queer technology of the posthuman. I’ve seen this film (and Young Frankenstein) many times, but it was on this rewatch that I finally realized the significance of the “abnormal brain.” In his lecture, Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) compares a “normal” brain of an average man to the brain of a criminal, arguing that criminality can be reduced to a biological cause. I never paid much attention to this, thinking that the whole brain mix-up was just a way to explain the Monster’s instability. But if we think about the definitions of straight and queer–synonyms for normal and abnormal–and the fact that sodomy laws were still on the books in the US and the UK in 1931, suddenly the abnormal brain of the Monster takes on a new meaning. He becomes the embodiment of queer alienation, the rejection of the abnormal by society. Further than that, he disrupts traditional notions of what it means to be human in European and US thought. Donna Haraway, the infamous feminist cyborg theorist, calls “boundary breakdowns” between body, mind, tools, and nature. The existence of the cyborg poses a threat to the integrity of these categories, categories that are fundamental to Enlightenment philosophy, thereby becoming monstrous. His existence is a crime.
This is Karloff’s best performance and the one he is most famous for. Jack Pierce’s makeup is iconic: the gray skin, the stitching, the exposed bolts, and the bowl cut. Karloff shuffles slowly through each scene, somehow both ridiculous and sinister, his movements stiff and oversized. He cannot speak in this film and instead attempts to communicate via growls, grunts, and screams. It would be easy to reduce this role to excellent bodywork, but Karloff’s true genius is in the little moments where we see the Monster’s pathos peeking through. In one scene near the beginning of the film, the Monster sees sunlight for the first time streaming down through a high barred window in Frankenstein’s gothic laboratory. He raises his arms to the light, trying to grasp it, with an expression of pure joy. It startles Frankenstein, who quickly has the window covered, leaving the Monster dismayed in the dark.
Frankenstein was an instant classic, so popular that Universal decided to make a sequel during its earliest screenings. Now released from the restrictions of adapting Shelley’s novel, Whale doubles down on the queerness in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Immediately after the events of the first film, Frankenstein is approached by Dr. Praetorius (Ernest Thesiger), another mad scientist bent on creating a new monster, this time a woman. Praetorius has been called by film historian Vito Russell “a gay Mephistopheles,” tempting Frankenstein back to his experiments. Praetorius has a different specialty than Frankenstein: he grows organs from dead tissue. This advance in biotechnology is treated as black magic, much like it is in Metropolis. Praetorious even tells Frankenstein, laughing, “we would have been burned at the stake.” Although such technology didn’t exist at the time–the theory of genetics was in its infancy in the early 20th century–it is amazing to think that such questions about cyborg ethics are still relevant in our use of organ transplants, cloning, and other forms of biotechnology.
Of most interest to me in this film is the relationship between Frankenstein and the Monster. In the novel, the Creature is given ample opportunities to confront Frankenstein, but in the first film, there is very little interaction between the Monster and his creator. Bride attempts to remedy that. The Monster, in a scene directly from the book, learns to speak–albeit haltingly–from an old blind man. Karloff’s performance once again transcends here: the Monster’s tears when the man teaches him the meaning of the word friend are truly heartbreaking. But then, he is finally able to speak to his creator. The meeting is poignant. While Frankenstein screams at him to get out, the Monster holds his ground, forcing Frankenstein to confront his unwanted heir.
We don’t see the titular Bride (Elsa Lanchester)–our second cyborg–until the final scene of the film. While The Monster is most associated in the first film with his abnormal brain, the organ that the Bride is most associated with is her heart, the one organ that Praetorius can’t grow. Because she is a woman, her embodiment also defines her: her ability to reproduce and create a new species with the Monster and her ability to comfort him. But, in an ironic twist, she doesn’t want the Monster. He scares her just as much as he scares everyone else–although I privately think that maybe they should have given her a bit more time to adjust before making that assumption. I meant, my girl was three minutes old and communicates through pterodactyl-style screeches. The Monster, though, takes this rejection to mean he will always be alone. He sends Frankenstein away before blowing up the laboratory along with himself, Praetorius, and the Bride. His last words, heartbreaking in their bleakness: “We belong dead.” The last shot of the film is Frankenstein in the arms of Elizabeth, but the restoration of heteronormativity in this film doesn’t feel as triumphant as it did in the first. It’s tragic.
Knowing that Whale himself died by suicide later in life, this scene underlines the self-loathing and loneliness that can come from being abnormal in a world of normal. When your own creator–whether that be a god or a parent or a government–rejects your very existence as unnatural and perverse, it can be easy to internalize those thoughts and lose hope in a future where existence is possible. The suicide rates amongst gay and trans youth are high for this very reason, and pending legislation threatens to return us to the days when being queer was a crime. It’s only through the dismantling of the boundaries between normal and abnormal that we can begin to undo the damage. We must embrace the cyborg to move beyond.
Next month, another iconic android (or cyborg?) in The Wizard of Oz!