From Paradise Lost toFrankenstein and furter : the creature
lives ! as an elaborated in cultural
studies in practice.
Name : Radha B. Ghevariya
Std. : M.A. SEM-2
Sub : Cultural Studies
Roll no : 22
Topic : From Paradise Lost toFrankenstein and furter : the creature lives ! as an elaborated in cultural studies in practice.
Topic : From Paradise Lost toFrankenstein and furter : the creature lives ! as an elaborated in cultural studies in practice.
Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English
Introduction
# what is culture?
Culture refers to the
cumulative deposit of knowledge ,
experience, belief, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions
of time , roles, spatial relations, concept of universe, and material object
and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
‘ culture’ is the mode of producing meaning and ideas. This ‘mode’ is a
negotiation over which meanings are valid. Elite culture control meanings
because it control the terms of the debate and a culture is a way of life of a group of people the behavior, beliefs,
values, and symbols that they accept. generally without thinking about them and
that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
Culture studies looks at mass or
popular culture and everyday life. popular
culture is the culture of masses. A culture study argue that culture is about the meanings of community or society generates cultural studies
believes that the ‘culture’ of communities includes various aspects like: Economics , Spiritual,
Ideological, Erotic, and Political.
Culture is not natural thing. it
is production and consumption of
culture.emphsis on discourse and textually are at Centre to cultural studies . It
believe that we cannot ‘read’
cultural after only within the aesthetic realm.
#
Manifestation of Culture at different level of depth
Start Hall work has been a trendsetter in cultural
studies and inaugurates the field in
Britain. Hall’s essay of ‘ Encoding and Decoding’ set the scene for
cultural studies of the media . the essay argued about meaning within the texts
songs, painting, and t.v. soupstakes help
of cobles to organize ‘culture’ which makes a society is “ a cultured
society”.
Cultural studies is an academic field of critical theory and literary
criticism initially introduced by British academics in 1964 and subsequently
adopted by allied academics throughout
the world. characteristically
interdisciplinary cultural studies is an academic discipline aiding cultural
researchers who theorize about the forces from which the whole of humankind construct their daily lives.
cultural studies is not a unified theory , but a diverse field of study
encompassing many different approaches, methods and academic perspectives.
distinct from the breath , objective and
methodology of cultural anthropology and ethic studies, cultural studies is
focused upon the political dynamics of
contemporary culture and its historical foundations , conflicts and defining
traits. researchers concentrate on how a particular medium or message relates
to ideology , social class , nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and/or gender, rather than providing an encyclopedic identification categorization or
definition of a particular culture or area of the world.
# History
The term was used by Richard
Hoggart in 1964. when he founded the Birmingham Centre for contemporary
cultural studies or BCCCS. it has since became strongly associated with
Stuart Hall who succeeded Hoggart as
director.
“ Culture is the great help out of a present difficulty,
culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know ,
or all the matter we most concern the best which may thought and compare to
turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stoack nation and habits
which we followed stonchelly but mechanically”
# Culture is divided into three parts.
1)
Barbarians
2)
Philistines
3) Populace
# what is cultural studies ?
Cultural studies explores culture
power and identity. in cultural studies , we analyze a wide variety of forms of
cultural expression such as tv, film, advertising, literature, atr, and video
games. as well as we study social and
cultural practices like shopping and social justice movements.
Culture
has two aspect: the know meanings and directions, which its member are
trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested.
these are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see
through them the nature of a culture:
that it is both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest
individual meanings we use the word a whole
way of life—the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning—the special
processes of discover and creative effort”
# Raymond
William
Cultural studies is an innovative
interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which “culture” creates and transforms individuals
experience , everyday life , social relations and power . research and teaching
in the field explores the relation between culture understood as human
expressive and symbolic activities and culture understood as distinctive way of
life. combining the strengths of the social sciences and the humanities,
cultural studies draws on methods and theories from literary studies,
sociology, communications studies, history, cultural anthropology and
economics. by working across the
boundaries among these fields, cultural studies addresses new question and
problems of today world. rather than seeking answers that will hold for all
time cultural studies develops flexible tools that adapt to this rapidly
changing world.
Mary Shelley’s novel has morphed
into countless forms in both highbrows and popular culture. her creation
teaches as not to underestimate the power of youth culture.
Mary Shelley novel has included
various thing in various ways. Like Universal pictures, stage plays, hummer
films, radio, toys, comics, stage, novels, key chains,
clothing.......etc........
Shelley’s creation teaches us
not to underestimate the power of youth culture.
1)Revolutionary births :
Born like its
creator in an age of revolution ,Frankenstein challenged accepted ideas of its
day. As it has become increasingly commoditized by modern consumer culture ,
one wonders whether its original revolutionary spirit and its critique of
scientific ,philosophical , political , and
gender issues have become obscured , or whether instead its continuing transformation attests
to its essential oppositional nature.
Today, as George Levine
remarks, Frankenstein is,
“ A vital metaphor
, pecuniary appropriate to a culture
dominatedBy consumer technology , neurotically obsessed with
‘getting in Touch’ with its authentic self-frightened at what it is
discovering”
Hardly a day goes by without
our seeing an image or allusion to
Frankenstein , from CNN, description of Saddam Hussein as an “American –
created Frankenstein” to magazine
articles that warm of genetically engineered “ Franken foods” test-tube babies
and donning.
a) The Creature as proletarian :
Mary Shelley lived during
times of great upheaval in Britain; not only was her own family fall of radical
thinkers , but she also met many other such as Thomas Paine and William
Blake. Persy Shelley was thought of as a
dangerous radical bent on labor reform and was spied upon by the government .
In Frankenstein ,Mary Shelley’s own divisions between revolutionary ardor and
fear of the masses.
Who worried about the
mob’s “excess of a virtuous feeling”, fearing its “sick destructiveness” many
Shelley’s creature is a political and
moral paradox , both an innocent and a cold blooded murderer.
Monsters like the creature
are indeed paradoxical. On the one hand they transgress against “ the
establishment” ; if the monster survives he represents the defiance of death an
image of survival , however disfigured . on the other hand we are reassured
when we see that society can capture and destroy monsters.
Such dualism would explain
the great number of Frankenstein amount movie that appeared during the cold
war. But the creature’s rebellious nature is rooted far in the past. In the De
Lacys shed he reads three books,
beginning with Paradise Lost . not only are the eternal questions about the
ways of god and man in paradise lost
relevant to the creature’s predicament , but in Shelley’s time Milton’s epic
poem was seen as timothy Morton puts it , as ,
“ A seminal
work of republicanism and sublime
that inspired
Many of the romantics”
The creature next reads a volume from Plutarch’s lives , which
in the early 19th century was reads as,
“ A classic republican
text , admired in the Enlightenment by such writers as Rousseau”
Goethe’s the sorrows of young
whether , the creature’s third book , is the prototypical rebellious romantic
novel. In short , says Morton ,
“the creature’s literary education is
radical”
But the creature’s idealistic
education does him little good , and he has no chance of reforming society .
his self-education is his even more tragic second birth into an entire culture
impossible for him to inhabit , however well he
understand its great writings about freedom.
b) “A
Race of devils”
Frankenstein may be analyzed
in its portrayal of different “Races” .though the creature’s skin is only described as yellow , it has
been constructed,
“ out of a cultural tradition of the threatening ‘other’-
Whether troll or giant , gypsy or negro- from the Dark inner recess of
xenophobic fear and loathing”
Antislavery discourse had a
powerful effect on the depiction of Africans in Shelley’s day , from
gaudily dressed exotics to naked objects
of pity.
Victor could be read as guilty
slave master .interestingly, one of Mary Shelley’s letters mentions of an
allusion to Frankenstein made on the floor of parliament by Foreign secretary George cunning (1770-1827)
; speaking on march 16,1824. On the subject of proposed ameliorations of slave
conditions in the West Indies :
“ To turn him loose in the manhood of his physical Strengths
, in the maturity of his physical passion,
But in the infancy of his instructed reason would Be to raise up a creature
resembling the splendid Fiction of a recent romance”
But Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
describes the novel as a critique of empire and racism , pointing out that,
“ Social
engineering should not be based upon pure ,Theoretical , or natural –
scientific reason alone…..”
Frankenstein’s ,
“ Language of racism- the dark side of imperials Understood as social mission combines with the Hysteria of macule into the idiom of
sexual Reproduction rather than subject constitution”
The novel is “ written from the
perspective of a narrator from below”
C) From Natural Philosophy to cyborg
Today , in an age of genetic
engineering , biotechnology , and cloning the most far reaching
industrialization of life forms to date
Frankenstein is more relevant than ever.
Development in science were
increasingly critical to study during the romantic period , when a paradigm
shift occurred from science as natural philosophy to science as biology , a
crucial distinction in Frankenstein . as described in Frankenstein :
penetrating the secrets of nature , an exhibit mounted in 2002 by the national
library of medicine , mary Shelley attended public demonstrations of the effect
of electricity on animal and human bodies , living and dead.
The experiment of Luigi
Galvani (1737 – 98) , an Italian physicist and physician who discovered that he
could use electricity to include muscle contractions , were among the
scientific topics discussed in the Geneva Villa by Percy Shelly , Byron and
Polidori.
According to cultural critic
Laura Kranzler , victor’s creation of
life and modern sperm banks and artifial wombs show a “ masculine desire to claim female reproductively”.
Frankenstein and its warnings
about the hubris of science will be with us in the farture as science continues
to question the borders between life and death between “viability” and “selective
reduction” between living and life support.
2} The Frankenstein in popular culture
: Fiction , Drama , Film , Television
Broadly defined
frankenphenes demonstrate the extent of
the novel’s presence in worlds cultures, as the encoding of race and class in the 1824 canning speech
in parliament in today’s global debates about such things as genetically
engineered foods , and of course in fiction and other media.
We end with a quick look at some
of the thousands of retellings , parodies ,
and other selected frankenphenes as they have appeared in popular
fiction , drama , film , and television.
A ) The Greatest Horror Story novel
written
Frankenstein’s fictions
peter hailing , editor of the indispensable Frankenstein omnibus has called Frankenstein ,
“ the single greatest horror story novel ever written and
the most widely influential in its genre”
In renaissance Italy , a scientist constructs
a mechanical man to ring the hours on a bell in a tall tower , but it turns
instead upon its creator. American writer W.C.Morrow published “ The Surgeon’s
experiment “ in the Argonaut in 1887 , in which an experimenter revives a headless corpse by attaching a mental head ; there was a large cancellation of
subscriptions in response . Frankenstein inspired the set of tales published in
home brew magazine called “ the reanimator” (1921-22) by H.P.Lovercraft which
later became a cult classic movie “ Herbert West : Reanimator”(1986) the saga
of a young experimenter barred from medical school , who practices unholy arts on the corpses of human
beings and reptiles.
There is surprisingly amount of
Frankenstein inspired erotica , especially gay – and lesbian – oriented.
Finally , there are the unclassifiable , such as Theodore Leberthon’s “ Demons
of the film colony “, a strange reminiscence of
afternoon the Hollywood journalist spent with Boris Karloff and bela
Lugosi published in Weird Tales in 1932.
B) Frankenstein on the stage
From his debut on the stage ,
the creature has generally been made
more horrific , and victor has been
assigned less blame most stage and screen versions are quite melodramatic ,
tending to eliminate minor characters
and the entire frame structure in order
to focus upon murder and mayhem.
On the 19th century stage the creature was composite of
frightening makeup and human qualities . he could even appear clownish ,
recalling Shakespeare’s caliban .
Mary Shelly herself attended the
play and pronounced it authentic . but this ‘serious’ drama immediately
inspired parodies first with
Frankenstein in 1823 a burlesque featuring a tailor , who as the “needle
Prometheus”, sews a body out of nine corpses.
A play called the man in the moon
was very popular in London during 1847 ;
its script was hamlet with the addition of a new act in which the creature
arises from hell through a trap door and
signs and drinks with the ghost . in more modern times Frankenstein has been a
staple of many stages. Frankenstein and his bride was performed at a club
called strip city in los angels in the late 1950s.
It included songs such as “oh what a
beautiful mourning” and “ ohoul of my dream”. And the rocky horror show with
Richard O’Brien , first performed at the royal court theatre upstairs in London
in 1973, the revived far too many times and filmed as the rocky horror picture
show directed by Jim Sharman (1975).
In it brad and janet have pledged
their love but most encounter the rapacious frank-n-furter . a transvestite
from the planet transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania , who has created a
perfect male lover rocky horror , to replace his former lover Eddie .
After numerous seduction . frank-n-furter
is eventually killed when the servants revolted by the hunchback Riff
Raff. If it were not for VH1 I love the to s series we might all be able to
forget wichiepoo and frank-n-furter .
C) Film Adaptations
In the Frankenstein omnibus the
1931 James Whale film Frankenstein . the most famous of all adaptation . it was
loosely based on the novel with the addition of new element including the
placing of a criminal brain into the monster’s body.
The 1st film version of Frankenstein . however, was produced by Thomas
Edison in 1910 , a one-reel tinted silent. Albert Lavalley explain ,
“ the blindness of the range expressed
toward the Monster and his half human incomprehension of It thus recaptures much
of the bleak horror of the Book . its indictment of society , and its picture
of Man’s troubled consciousness”
Though Branagh tries to stick to
Mary Shelley’s plot , tree-fourth of the way through , the film diverges widely
from the novel and seems most interested in the love affair between victor and
Elizabeth.
And now, just for fun we offer a quick survey of a few other film
version of Mary Shelly’s classic.
·
I was a teenage Frankenstein – U.S.A
directed by Herbert l.stock 1957. A British doctor descended from Frankenstein visits the united states as a university
lecture and lives in a house with labs and alligators for organ disposal ; he
uses young men far parts . the creature kills the doctor’s mistress and other
on campus.
·
Torticola Contre frankensburg – France directed by Paul Paviot 1952
Lorelei , a girl forced by poverty to live with her uncle at todenwald castle
meets a talking cat , a man with a cat’s brain , and a monster called Torticola
whom the doctor has made from corpses.
D)Television Adaptations
Frankenstein has surfaced in hundreds
of television adaptations including night gallery , the Addams family , the
monsters , star trek : the next generation , Scooby-doo , Frankenstein and the
impossible Alvin and the chipmunks , the Simpsons wishbone , and so on notable
television creatures have included bosvenson , randy quaid , david warner and
Ian Holm . perhaps the most authentic television version was Frankenstein : the true story , with script writing by
Christopher Isherwood and acting by James Mason , Jane Seymour , Micheal
Sarrazin and Tom Baker.ein – U.S.A
directed by Herbert l.stock 1957. A British doctor descended from Frankenstein visits the united states as a university
lecture and lives in a house with labs and alligators for organ disposal ; he
uses young men far parts . the creature kills the doctor’s mistress and other
on campus.
·
Torticola Contre frankensburg – France directed by Paul Paviot 1952
Lorelei , a girl forced by poverty to live with her uncle at todenwald castle
meets a talking cat , a man with a cat’s brain , and a monster called Torticola
whom the doctor has made from corpses.
