The
adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Bride of
Frankenstein came to me as a shock. It was not so much the effects, the
black-and-white, or the acting that was out of the ordinary, but it was the
characterization.
We are plagued with movies that are anthropomorphic in
nature, but the Bride of Frankenstein
posits a very unique case. We all know of the Monster’s history, from Dr.
Frankenstein’s creation of him to his capture and eventual escape. It is this
perception of the character as an untamed, un-human monster that permeates popular opinion. However, the movie gave us another
side of him – the one that is only looking for a companion. Is that not a human
need?
When the blind man took him in, I was afraid for the man
but the Monster, if he is still to be called so, exceeded my expectations. He
did not only welcome the man’s companionship; he tried to please the man in the
simplest of things. Is it not a human act to feel empathy? To me, this genuine othering, leading up to his longing for
a friend when Dr. Pretorious offered
him, is enough sign of his humanity. Especially when rejection came, his reaction
was that of a human in actual despair and loneliness.
This says so much about society’s conception of right and
wrong, of normal and abnormal. Should anyone (or anything) fail to meet its
standards, it is immediately ostracized, without aiming to understand or dig
beyond the surface of apparent monsterhood. The movie made the monster dumb because
ostracizing the Monster would require a lack of communication between him and
the humans. It worked, because the more human side of the Monster came out only
when he was already communicated to by someone patient enough to see him more
than a monster.
As a whole, The Bride
of Frankenstein gives us a clear representation of man, both at his most
brilliant (as in the scientists’ feats) and at his most desperate (the Monster),
and how Monster transforms into man through love.
Christine Joy L. Galunan
2013-50860
2013-50860
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