How do you run a Frankenstein book/film discussion group?

 It helps if you have a dark and stormy night—but in our case we met on a cloudy October afternoon in the meeting room of the Menlo Park Public Library.

It also helps if you have funding for film/book discussions.  That was provided by friends of the late Menlo College theatre/literature professor, Dr. Al Jacobs, who loved and studied the horror genre.

Last year, before Halloween, we read and screened Edgar Alan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher .Usher turned turned out to be a great short story and not so great movie. This year we went with a great movie, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and a great, though, difficult to read book, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818).

Just so you know, 35 people showed up, which we think is a pretty good crowd on a fall Sunday with lots of competing entertainment options. The youngest audience member was eight years old, there were a few teens, there were some parents with their kids and there were our core group of seniors.

 It was reference librarian/filmmaker Nick Szegda's idea to screen and discuss the 1935 (black and white) James Whale film Bride of Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester.  This turned out to be a brilliant programming decision for three key reasons:

1) B of F is a fabulous film for children of all ages. While in the thirties it may have been scary, our audience was laughing all the way through. When the mad scientist Dr. Pretorius decides to fly kites in a storm brewing outside the castle to harness the electricity that will bring life to the monster bride—our Silicon Valley sophisticates balked at the physics and chemistry. And, of course, they had questions about the special effects--which were pretty good for 1935.

2. While few in our audience had seen the original B of F, most had seen Mel Brook's 1974 parody of it—Young Frankenstein. Watching the poignant scene in B of F where Frankenstein is befriended by a blind hermit, one viewer said, "I almost cried..... but then I remembered how Mel Brooks had a field day with this!"

Others recalled a Saturday Night Live "Succinctly Speaking" sketch featuring the film characters of Frankenstein (Phil Hartman), Tonto, (Jon Lovitz) and Tarzan (Kevin Nealon) all barely and often nonverbally communicating with growls, grunts and jungle calls.  Here is the link to the 1987 transcript—unfortunately no YouTube for this.

      http://snltranscripts.jt.org/87/87hspeaking.phtml                                                                                 

3)Last but not least, and perhaps the most important factor for discussions--Bride of Frankenstein is only 75 minutes long!  

 This leaves plenty of time for viewing and discussion.  Menlo Park's favorite reference librarian, Nick, (this has been documented by San Francisco Magazine) has a MFA in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts and he has made a film or two, so he ably led us in analysis and discussion.

  Don't have Nick?  You can screen the film and learn tidbits here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026138/trivia

                                                 

 Looking for more scholarly yet accessible analysis of the fictional and cinematic Frankenstein?   

Click below to get the article, "It's alive": Frankenstein's monster and modern science by Tina Pamintuan, published in Humanities magazine on September 1, 2002.

http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2002-09/itsalive.html

 Need more inspiration? Check out a program commissioned a few years back by the American Library Association and the National Library of Medicine. Libraries and colleges across the country offered up “Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature” which focused, among other things, on "the evolution of the monster as a cultural myth, and the novel’s relevance to current bioethical dilemmas."
 

Using this model, the Booth Library at Illinois University, treated  academics to a program entitled What Lurks Around the World—a roundtable discussion (by invitation only) in which students and faculty from around the world gathered to discuss, "what is frightening in their culture."  Maybe it was less frightening to make this an invitation only event? Who knows who or what might have emerged otherwise?

That same month, two Booth librarians presented a program called Frankenstein's Daughters: Women Science Fiction Writers. While noting that Mary Shelley' may well have written the first true science fiction novel in 1818, we should also celebrate more contemporary women writers including Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler and Tanith  Lee. 

You can find more inspiration by downloading the entire month-long program guide,here:

http://www.library.eiu.edu/exhibits/frankenstein/program 

 

                                                                    

 At Menlo Park Library, we had literature /theater professor Dr. Joan Marx share ideas on why and how the horror genre appeals to so many people—especially teenagers. She presented her own theories as well as those of the late Dr. Jacobs.

 Deconstructing Frankenstein

And then, of course, there was me talking about the book. Honestly, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a tough read—a story within a story set on a ship exploring the polar north. This year it was assigned to honors high school students in Menlo Park for summer reading. I am not sure this was a good choice.  I , for one, struggled with the wordiness and vocabulary. So let me break this down for you, as I did for the Menlo Park audience. Our main characters three stubborn men:  One is intrepid, Darwinlike explorer Robert Walton, a brave, self satisfied yet lonely British "gentleman" searching new artic passages. The other is self-important and at times cowardly scientist and benefactor of the poor, Victor Frankenstein—who has created our third character "the monster". 

Did I mention that you have to read about fifty boring pages of letters from Walton to his sister back in England, before we even get to Frankenstein and his creation? I perked up in the final chapter, though, when the monster finally appears and speaks! And the fictional monster is articulate! So my suggestion for the book/film discussion is to summarize the plot as I did, and then have readers focus on that last chapter. There are a lot of free online editions of Frankenstein—and you can get chapter 24 by clicking here:

http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/chapter-24.html 

 Need a sample right now?  Here is Walton writing to his sister about the monster's approach: 

 "I am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the breeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again; there is a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin where the remains of Frankenstein still lie. I must arise and examine. Good night, my sister.

Great God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the remembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to detail it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete without this final and wonderful catastrophe. "

                                                           

 

Here are some interesting tidbits to tell your audience: 

Mary Woolstonecraft, the British daughter of intellectual freethinkers--was eighteen years old and hanging out with her (then) married lover the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and poet Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland. To amuse themselves during the rainy summer of 1816, the three read German ghost stories and Byron proposed a contest to see who could write the most frightening supernatural tale. Mary won and Frankenstein was published in 1818.  I imagine that Frankenstein has a German name because they were already reading German ghost stories. Or maybe they thought it would be disloyal to the British Empire to give the monster a British name, like, for example Murgatroid. Could the monster have been French? I think not. Maybe the gutteral grunting sounded German? Certainly this is grounds for discussion.

In any event, Mary married Percy Shelley after his wife drowned herself in despair over their affair. Poet Shelley died in a boating accident in 1822. Mary Shelley had one surviving son by him and she lived until 1851.

The name Frankenstein was given to the monster's creator and never to the monster himself—although most of us today think of it as the monster's name—and forget the creator.

There is a great 1998 film called Gods and Monsters about the life of director James Whale, who was openly gay in Hollywood in the 1930s. This is a fictionalized  account of Whale's last years, starring Ian McKellen as Whale and Lynne Redgrave as his housekeeper.

                                                                      

 Here are ten discussion questions for the novel and the film: 

The term gothic is often used to describe the Frankenstein story. What are the elements of a gothic novel or film? 

Where does the term come from? Mary Shelley's original title for the book is Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

What was the myth of Prometheus and why do you think that Shelley includes it in her title?

 If a scientist of the caliber of Victor Frankenstein were alive today, what medical ethical issues might he face? 

We laughed when we viewed the Bride of Frankenstein film today. Do you think that audiences laughed as much in 1935?  

Have you seen the film Young Frankenstein?   If so, were you thinking of it when you saw Bride of Frankenstein or read the novel Frankenstein? How did seeing the parody affect your experience of seeing the original? Do you want to go back now and see Young Frankenstein again?

What are the differences between viewing a horror film together in a meeting room or movie theatre vs. viewing it alone at home? 

We don't know the exact details of how Frankenstein was created but Mary Shelley does share some of the biological and physical scientific theories and science research methods of her day. What were they? 

Compare the monster of the film to the monster of the book. 

Gothic elements continue to appear in contemporary writing and films. Can you give some examples? What do we mean when we talk about Southern Gothic?

If you decide to try all or part of this at home......let us know!  Or launch your own horror story writing contest!

Happy Halloween!