Thoughts on Frankenstein and Del Toro's version below, as a queer person and a lifelong weirdo:
I read Frankenstein for the first time when I was 16 or so. I'd dealt with a lot of trauma in my life at that point: chiefly of the Catholic and medical variety. I remember finishing the book at 1 am in my bedroom and putting it down and sobbing, because at last, at last, there I was. It was instantly my favorite book of all time. (Of course, I love Phantom. If you've followed me long enough, that should be uhhhh...patently, pathologically obvious. But Frankenstein rattled my soul and stayed there.)
I saw myself in Victor--incredibly ambitious, never satisfied, often punished for asking relentless questions and then asking them even harder as a result.
But I remember crying and crying because I was the Creature. I'd never, ever felt so seen in my life before, ever. (Not even by my own parents, who are flawed like all parents but absolutely loving and supportive.)
So much of what the Creature said could've been straight from my mouth--albeit worded with more eloquence than 16 year-old me could've mustered.
(Although, quickly, I would like to state here for the court that, unlike the Creature, I have never murdered anyone, so. You know. The similarities did end at that point.)
(Also at the part where he's made of dead people. To the very best of my knowledge, I am not made of dead people.)
But I have always felt wrong. Intensely awkward and misplaced in my own body. Mine was a body that felt in constant revolt against me, since birth. I was an emergency birth and almost died. I grew up in and out of hospitals with constant medical issues. I was a sick kid, and yes, it is very "ha ha hee hee, Victorian consumptive" funny and on-brand of me, but it was also terrifying.
I remember being five years old, on month two of a long stay in the hospital for a rare and severe case of pneumonia, when every breath sent knives scratching and stabbing at my lungs, and thinking, "Why does my body hate me?"
And that was the way it went on and off through childhood. My body and I were at war. Constant, constant health issues. Constantly confronting the possibility of death from as early as I can remember.
Then came Catholic school. Incredible aesthetic--the Catholic-to-goth pipeline is so real--but it left deep and lasting physical and psychological trauma. I was eight years old, white plastic rosary in hand, kneeling and on my sixth Hail Mary out of ten ordered by the priest (who, by the way, is one of many currently in jail for the exact reasons you think) for my transgressions against God for daring to ask questions in class, my knuckles still bearing the phantom sting of Sister Catherine's ruler. I stared at the massive gaunt and bloodied Christ on the cross hanging like an albatross over the altar and thought, "God is not in this place. People have chased Him out. There is no God here."
And then there was That Other Thing.
I've known something was Strange™ with my gender ever since I can remember--since before I had words to explain it. One of my earliest memories was at my 4th birthday party. I remember looking down at my beautiful dress, the red tulle and lace and frills, and feeling so beautiful. I also remember looking at my small, white, soft little girl's hands and feeling profoundly confused because--as genuinely weird as this sounds--four year-old me thought, "I'm used to them being adult hands, and a man's adult hands."
There was the "always dressing up as male characters for Halloween" thing. The, "No one wants to play the male role in school plays, so I'll do it!" thing. The constant dreams in which I was a man and comfortable and able to exhale and move through the world without my jaw clenched and shoulders hunched thing (I still have these dreams multiple times a week). A deep, desperate wish that I'd one day wake up with those adult man's hands again. (I don't even know what "again" meant. I just strongly recall times as a little kid thinking about "again." I still have no idea what I was referring to, and I don't think I did when I was little, either.)
When puberty hit--female puberty--it wasn't fun (though is it fun for any of us?). It was extra not fun because I woke up one day with swelling hips. And a butt. A capital B butt. And boobs. Why were those there? I didn't want those. Jesus, come on, I thought, give all this to someone who wants them. Why was my body revolting against me again? What was this? What went wrong?
There were many times when I felt beautiful. Never feminine, really, just beautiful in a feminine way. I didn't always look feminine, either. I was mistaken for a boy easily, particularly when I dressed like one. (I still am.) And I loved it. (I still do.) I could breathe when that happened.
I knew about transgender people, but this was the 90s and early aughts. You could know about them, but you didn't talk about them. And I knew about gay people. (And I knew by roughly age 12, though I wouldn't admit it to myself, that I wasn't straight, either). But you didn't talk about them. You joked about them.
I was terrified of Whatever-This-Was. You did not talk about that back then, just like you Did Not Talk About mental illness or trauma or anything else unpleasant. I'd hear, "You won't get a job. People will want to hurt you. You will be an outcast. Do not say anything."
For someone who already had felt (and, very often, was treated like) an outcast most of my life, here were yet more things to guard with the paranoid secrecy of a tyrant.
"Okay," teen me thought. "There all these awful, wrong things about me. Chronic illnesses, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression and severe anxiety. This weird...man thing. Wanting to kiss a woman on the lips, like a man does. I am overly passionate and sensitive and very weird. Do not let anyone know. I am in danger because I am wrong, too much, and I do not fit. Keep it quiet. I love masks, right? I need to develop one fast for my own safety. I just want peace. I just want to exhale. The mask will help."
It did. Or, I should say it helped everyone else. I was pleasant and over-performed femininity sometimes, particularly when I was nervous. The world seemed to approve. I was safe. No one would know about all the Stuff inside this way, right? Phew.
"Phew" didn't last, obviously. All that I thought was "monstrous" and wrong was still there and louder than ever. I'd resigned myself to lifelong, low, simmering paranoia that I would be found out if I didn't play a more acceptable part to perfection.
And then along came (ZEUS!) Frankenstein. I'd been enraptured with the dead my entire life. My first book on mummies was given to me for Christmas aged four. I'd pour over the photos of the bodies. All of my heroes growing up were dead: Victorians and historical figures and famous, long-dead entertainers. I felt more at home in 19th century gothicism than anywhere else.
And for the very first time, there was someone, monstrous and dead and furious, hiding nothing and raging at his creator for making him so. He wept over nature, too, and it wasn't stupid or ridiculed--he meant it, too. He felt himself monstrous and misshapen and staring from the outside looking in, always. He was a composite of all the dead things before him, and he may have thought nothing of it--may even have thought it was beautiful--until others hated him for it and told him to hate himself for it.
I saw myself in him. "Did I ask thee, Maker, from clay to mold me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?"
Unlike the Creature, I was unbelievably fortunate to eventually find lifelong friends who also felt like this. Who saw me for who I was (and even "found out" that Horrible Terrible Thing I was hiding and didn't care and went, "Well, duh, we knew immediately and thought it was fine.") Who also saw themselves in Shelley's Creature. In our intensely uncomfortable awkwardness, we found each other, and it was (and still is, since I'm still exceptionally close with many of them today) an incredible blessing.
The older I got, the more and more I found myself in the novel. The idea of creating yourself, of creating life, of creating manhood, of celebrating the miracle of that alchemy and of your sensitivity and vibrancy of soul only for the world to want you dead for it, hit right where it hurt the most.
Obviously, we can't say this is what Shelley had in mind. (She had other, equally important things in mind when writing it.) Who knows? But Frankenstein is a catharsis for so many queer people for a reason.
To be both creator and creation and for it to feel glorious and then suddenly, horrifically wrong solely because the world tells you it is so--ouch.
Del Toro's adaptation hit me like a lightning bolt (ha ha. Ha haaa). It's an adaptation and an interpretation, not wholly faithful to the book, but who wants that, really? Because it kept the soul of the book. It centered the sacredness of being, the sacredness of monstrous differences and of the ways in which our bodies betray us and we seek to correct it--through the violence of creation, of self-love, of self-hatred, of communion with nature until we no longer exist in our bodies but are instead part and parcel of the mountains and air and trees. (This is one of the reasons I love the outdoors. I don't have to exist as myself--I can dissolve into where and what I'm supposed to be.)
"To you, I am obscene, but to myself, I simply am."
And there, again, I see myself and it feels stupid and self-indulgent (we mustn't do that, ex-Catholic!), but the love I felt for the Creature reading the novel for the first time, the love I feel for this iteration, feels almost like a healing love for myself. All of his scars and wounds feel like my own from a lifetime of traumatizing, serious medical issues. His haphazard construction is still beautiful. Perhaps mine is, too, even though it's not what I wish it was.
I am not in a space where I can get to where I dream of being. It isn't safe. I don't believe I'm a coward for placing peace and safety above everything else, although I feel like one sometimes. But I've always had to find ways to protect peace, whatever that means. I've experienced so much trauma. I don't know if I have the space for even more. I am very, very tired and just want to enjoy my life. It's so short and things are so scary right now globally. I want to eke out the joy I can while I can.
And personally, my identity is so malleable that making any sort of concrete choice feels unwise in the long run, anyway. "I contradict myself, I contain multitudes, etc etc." Humans should be shapeshifters, really, since that's inherent in our nature: the infinite contained in the finite. That's something I'll take up with my Creator, perhaps. A note to put in the complaint box.
It aches, it's the good, sweet agony that never quite leaves you even though you may leave Catholicism, but it is what it is. We're scarred and sore and beaten and ugly and weathered in the most extreme environment on earth, railing at our forebears and at God and at ourselves. There may be understanding and compassion, and there may not be.
But in the end, my son, what recourse is there but to live?
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
ellievsbear
pixelskylines
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
titsay
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
