Oct 15, 2023
More recently, the tendency to conflate science and fictional agendas has been more actively resisted by researchers.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Taiwan
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Maldives
seen from Germany
More recently, the tendency to conflate science and fictional agendas has been more actively resisted by researchers.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
In Hammer's film series, the scientist, now Baron Frankenstein, was a more compelling character than his creation: driven, ruthless, brilliant. Peter Cushing is shown here in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, 1969, the fifth of seven in the Hammer sequence.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
The most articulate monster yet: Robert de Niro in Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1994.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
Eighteenth-century science made part of its public impact through spectacular lecture demonstrations, most famously depicted in Joseph Wright's characteristically-lit view of an experimental philosopher displaying powers of the air pump.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
An engraving from 1818 showing electrical stimulation of an executed criminal's corpse – the kind of sensational demonstration which Mary Shelley certainly read about and possibly witnessed.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
Boris Karloff's creature in Universal's 1932 movie had – and has – extraordinary screen presence, both as a threat and, as here, through the pathos of his mute appeals to his creator.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
Reports of Ashby and Grey Walter's devices, for example, which show the enduring interest in mechanical creatures, call to mind Jacques Loeb's fascination with the selenium-eyed 'dog' built by J.H. Hammond in the 1900s.³⁴
34 Allen, 1975, p. 78. Note also that in 1956 Walter himself published a sub-Wellsian utopian novel in which, among other things, he predicted a society which had mastered human genetics and ectogenesis.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney
Ambivalence about knowledge is, of course, a staple of myths in many cultures, from Prometheus to the Garden of Eden.
"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney