Friday, 19 September 2014

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein


Also Known As:
Unknown ()…
Year:
1994
Countries:
Japan… United States…
Predominant Genre:
Horror
Director:
Kenneth BRANAGH…
Outstanding Performances:
None…
Premiss:
Caucasians fantasize that they can both become god and, thereby, evade the travails of everyday life by simple wishful-thinking.
Themes:
Alienation | Christianity | Compassion | Destiny | Emotional repression | Loneliness | Personal change | Self-expression | Social class | White culture | White supremacy
Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
Frankenstein (1931)…
Review Format:
DVD

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Suitably-melodramatic telling of the ramblings of teenaged author (Mary Shelley) that refuses to explore the issues it raises.

Despite much talk of moral consequences, these remain dramatically unexplored; leaving the audience with little more than entertaining superficiality and absurdly-overstated production design.

The real nonsense here is the White fantasy that they are able to become gods through their technical and scientific obsessions. Despite the fact that science and religion are often in conflict, White science is merely another means of trying to play god.

Given the oblique references to modern scientific achievements, one would have expected Whites to have been more honest about the limitations of the technology simultaneously being exalted and condemned here. The dearth of empathy Whites have for each other is reflected in a White culture that provides little emotional satisfaction for its adherents because of its belief that the soul has yet to be proven, empirically. This is shown here by characterization that never goes below the surface to have a good rummage in the many dark corners of the White psyche.

As the characters here run from emotional experience by so fearing loss that they crave immortality, so this film attempts to reanimate the dead tissue of a hoary old story whose narcissism is resolutely hidden. A fairly amusing and solipsistic waste of talented performers.


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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.