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THE ADAM OF YOUR LABORS, AKA. FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER/ 2011
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Prints on paper: Portraits 2 | | Medium: | Giclée on Japanese matte paper | | Size (inches): | 16.5 x 11.7 (paper size) | | Size (mm): | 420 x 297 (paper size) | | Edition size: | 25 | | Catalog #: | PP_0189 | | Description: | From an edition of 25. Signed, titled, date, copyright, edition in pencil on the reverse / Aside from the numbered edition of 5 artist's proofs and 2 printer's proofs.
Frankenstein's monster -
Frankenstein's monster (also called the monster or Frankenstein's creature) is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name. He does call himself, when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the "Adam of your labours". He is also variously referred to as a "creature", "fiend", "the demon", "wretch", "devil", "thing", "being" and "ogre" in the novel.[1]
The monster's namelessness became part of the stage tradition as Mary Shelley's story was adapted into serious and comic plays in London and Paris during the decades after the novel's first appearance. Mary Shelley herself attended a performance of Presumption, the first successful stage adaptation of her novel. "The play bill amused me extremely, for in the list of dramatic personae came _________, by Mr T. Cooke,” she wrote to her friend Leigh Hunt. "This nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good."[2]
The name of the creator—Frankenstein—soon came to be used to name the creation. That happened within the first decade after the novel was published, but it became cast in concrete after the story was popularized in the famous 1930s Universal film series starring Boris Karloff. The film was based largely on a play by Peggy Webling, performed in London in 1927.[3] Webling's Frankenstein actually does give his creature his name. The Universal film treated the Monster's identity in a manner that reflects its resemblance to Mary Shelley's novel: the name of the actor, not the character, is hidden by a question mark. Nevertheless, the creature soon enough became best known in the popular imagination as "Frankenstein". This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of "Frankenstein" as well-established and not an error [4] [5] [6].
Appearance:
Shelley described Frankenstein's monster as an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m), hideously ugly creation, with translucent yellowish skin pulled so taut over the body that it "barely disguised the workings of the vessels and muscles underneath"; watery, glowing eyes, flowing black hair, black lips, and prominent white teeth. The monster attempts to integrate himself into human social patterns, but is shunned by all that see him. This feeling of abandonment compels him to seek revenge against his creator. A picture of the creature appeared in the 1831 edition. By the time the 1831 edition came out, however, several stage renditions of the story had popularized the monster. Early stage portrayals dressed him in a toga, shaded, along with the monster's skin, a pale blue. Throughout the 19th century, the monster's image remained variable according to the artist.
The most well-known image of Frankenstein's monster in popular culture derives from Boris Karloff's portrayal in the 1931 movie Frankenstein, with makeup created by Jack Pierce. Karloff played the monster in two more Universal films, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein. Lon Chaney, Jr. took over the part from Karloff in The Ghost of Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi portrayed the role in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and Glenn Strange played the monster in the last three Universal Studios films to feature the character (House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein); but their makeup replicated the iconic look first worn by Karloff. To this day, the image of Karloff's face is owned by his daughter's company, Karloff Enterprises, which is the reason Universal replaced Karloff's features with Glenn Strange's in most of their marketing.
Since Karloff's portrayal, the creature almost always appears as a towering, gruesome figure, often with a flat square-shaped head and bolts to serve as electrical connectors or grotesque electrodes on his neck. He wears a dark suit having shortened coat sleeves and thick, heavy boots, causing him to walk with an awkward, stiff-legged, crude gait (as opposed to the novel, in which he is described as very flexible and much faster than a mortal). This image has been used as the basis for several other fictional characters.
In the 2004 film Van Helsing, the monster is shown in a rather somewhat modernized version of the Karloff design. He is 8 to 9 feet (240–270 cm) tall, has square bald head, gruesome scars, and pale blue skin. The electricity is emphasised with one electrified crystal in the back of his head and another over his heart.
Personality:
As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional creature whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself. The novel portrays him as intelligent and literate, having read Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. He is driven by despair and loneliness to acts of cruelty and murder.
From the beginning the monster is rejected by everyone he meets. He realizes from the moment of his "birth" that even his own creator could not be around him; this is obvious when Frankenstein says "…one hand was stretched out, seeming to detain me, but I escaped…"[7] Upon seeing his own reflection, he realizes that he too cannot stand to see himself.
Yet, in the 1931 film adaptation, the creature is depicted as mute and bestial, unlike Shelly's original character which is very intelligent. In the subsequent sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, the creature learns to speak and discover his feelings, although his intelligence and capacity of speech remains limited. In the second sequel, Son of Frankenstein, the creature is again rendered inarticulate. Following a brain transplant in the third sequel The Ghost of Frankenstein, the Monster speaks with the voice and personality of the brain donor. This was continued after a fashion in the scripting for the fourth sequel Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, but the dialogue was excised before release. The monster was effectively mute in later sequels, though he is heard to refer to Count Dracula as his 'Master' in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
In Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein he is first depicted as mute, clumsy, childish, and nothing more than a servant of the 'evil' Dr. Frankenstein until he befriends the Chipmunks. They teach him how to be a friend and how to be kind to people. At the end of the film, Alvin mentions that they taught him how to talk, and after almost being run over by a tourist bus, Simon says "Too bad you also taught him how to drive."
The creature has always been seen to be a pyrophobic (the fear of fire).
The creature's name:
Mary Shelley's original novel never ascribed an actual name to the monster; although he does call himself, when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the "Adam of your labours". It has become common vernacular to refer to the creature by the actual name "Frankenstein", though this actually happens only rarely on screen.
A joke about the name became the subject of a sketch on Conan. On his various shows over the years, Conan O'Brien has featured a character named "Frankenstein", played by Brian Stack, who is a genial version of the classic Universal appearance of the character. In the March 23, 2011, of O'Brien's TBS show, a viewer criticized O'Brien for calling the character "Frankenstein", when in the original book the creature had no name and Frankenstein was the name of the creator. In response, O'Brien showed a clip of the monster coming to America through Ellis Island in the 1920s. An immigration official reviewing the creature's paperwork tells him that "Frankenstein's Monster" is too cumbersome a name, so he shortens it to Frankenstein. Thus, Conan declares that referring to the monster simply as "Frankenstein" is correct.
In Dean Koontz's Frankenstein series, the monster goes by the name "Deucalion", which he presumably chose sometime in his 200 year existence. The name is a reference to the son of Prometheus in Greek mythology, as his "father", Victor Frankenstein, is presumably the being whom the novel referred to as "The Modern Prometheus".
Many people blame marketing for the mistake of the creature's name. There are movie posters featuring a picture of the monster with FRANKENSTEIN written in bold letters across the neck, which logically leads people to believe that the name of the creature depicted on the poster is named Frankenstein. Due largely to this, the monster is now generally known as Frankenstein.
References:
1. ^ Chris Baldick, In Frankenstein's Shadow, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
2. ^ To Leigh Hunt, 9 September [1823]
3. ^ Susan Tyler Hitchcock, Frankenstein: A Cultural History, NY: WWNorton, 2007
4. ^ Bergen Evans, "Comfortable Words," New York: Random House, 1957
5. ^ Bryan Garner, "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage", New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998
6. ^ "Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of American English", Merriam-Webster: 2002
7. ^ Shelley, 43
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein%27s_monster
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