TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF FRANKENSTEIN

This is the two hundredth anniversary of Mary Shell’s Frankenstein.  This story has been interpreted in so many different ways, and portrayed differently in dozens of movies, that we often lose the thread that this was written strictly as a horror story. 

Mary, her lover Percy Shelly and John Polidori, while visiting Lord Byron, decided to have a competition to see who could produce the best horror story.   Mary produced Frankenstein while John Polidori produced The Vampyre – the basis for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

In the book, ‘The monster’ is not some stumbling halfwit with a killer instinct, but an intelligent creature alone and out of place in a cruel and intolerant world.

Scholars continually dissect the story and try to attribute their own interpretation as the meaning that Mary Shelly intended (check out YouTube.)

Any story that has remained a popular icon for two hundred years has to be considered a classic.   The word Frankenstein in now in our lexicon and the story firmly rooted in our culture.    

The real depth to Mary’s story is that it illustrates so many human frailties, it can reach each of us on a personal level. 

There are many analogies that can be made to the story: a creation of man - that loses control of his creation and takes on a life of its own.

The Monster

My favorite representation of ‘the monster’ occurs in Penny Dreadful – available on Netflix. 

You might want to make this one of the books on your bucket list.
the Ol'Buzzard

BEATING OFF THE HORSES

I honestly believe that on one actually gives a crap about someone’s else’s childhood stories, or even life stories, as long as it didn’t mesh with their own. 

Having said that, I was raised in a small Mississippi Delta town that was a clone of Scout’s town in Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird.   My grandmother, who raised me, was born in the 1800’s and was a ‘southern lady’ as in Faulkner’s, A Rose for Emily.   I had no friends who had sisters, so girls (and women) were an exotic mystery to me.   They wore dresses, had long hair, they talked different, they walked different, they would get together and giggled and they had, or would have, tits.   They were these rarified creatures like unicorns and fairies.  If they noticed me at all I would act silly.    Hell, I didn’t even believe girls farted. 

This seems funny, almost ridiculous now, but that’s how it was in the deep south of the 1930’s and 40’s.  Children were taught to be respectful of adults (yes sir and yes ma’am) and especially women.

Women probably don’t want that kind of adoration now – they want to be looked at as equal.  The curtain has been pulled back to expose the wizard – and perhaps that is good – but it has lost its magic. 

Young boys grow up now seeing women with week bladders and pissy diapers dancing around in TV adds; they see adds for feminine hygiene sprays and for feminine napkins and tampons; women seductively lounging on a bed concerned about their husband’s erectile dysfunction; and a women followed around by her intestinal track concerned about diarrhea and gas.

Women in combat, a woman President, women super heroes -   goddess bless um – the world will be a better place with women at the wheel and the old stereotypes broken down. 

BUT THE THRILL IS GONE!

I still open doors for my wife, I view her as a magical being, I feel protective of her, I walk on the street side with her on my arm when we walk downtown – because my grandmother told me a gentleman walking with a lady always walks next to the street so he can beat off the horses.

the Ol’Buzzard