For all that may be said about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), one thing is clear within popular culture: the story of Creator and Creation is an imaginative engine for adaptations and appropriations. But, we can also extend this scope to the novel itself as both an adaptive and appropriative text. Indeed, as Julie Sanders suggests in Adaptation & Appropriation, "[A]daptation and appropriation is inevitably interested in how art creates art, or how literature is made by literature" (1). This is made clear in Frankenstein with both the subtitle, which refers to the myths of Prometheus found in Ovid's Metamorphosis, and Mary Shelley's invocation of texts within the narrative; after the Creation teaches himself to read, write, and speak by observing the De Lacey's, he reads Plutarch's Lives, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. These texts play a pivotal role in the Creation's education, and he uses them as a means to justify rebelling against his Creator.
Victor Frankenstein’s failure to anticipate his inability to control his Creation has become a source of inspiration for artists across representational mediums. Reading the novel a little closer, too, Victor’s apocalyptic vision, should he create a female companion for the Creation, operates as a springboard for many horror films and/or dystopic Frankensteinian variants, including Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. From Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (and Stanley Kubrick's filmic adaptation) to Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later film series (including its graphic novel spin-offs), to the video games Final Fantasy VII and Bioshock, and many more in various textual mediums across time and cultural, it seems that we cannot escape this narrative. In “Facing the Ugly: The Case of Frankenstein,” Denise Gigante discusses how the Creation “takes on a life of his own, proliferating wildly and engendering an ever-increasing number of dramatic and cinematic adaptations, ‘hideous progeny’ of the original ‘hideous progeny’” (582). Of course, we add literary adaptations, digital adaptations (including video games and this very project you're reading), and beyond.
It should be noted that the discussion portions in the following material, although not required or necessary by any means, assume readers have at least a basic understanding of what adaptations and appropriations are. (If interested, please see the bottom of this document for resources on adaptation/appropriation theory.) As stated, theory supplements the discussion but is not the driving force of it. This site is designed to offer a not-exhaustive-by-any-means list and discussion of where we encounter the narrative in popular culture. Indeed, it seems that we cannot part from this story, that it has entered consciousness cross-culturally in films, television series, video games, comic books and graphic novels, stage performances, and, of course, literature. Above within the "Items" tab, I have categorized textual examples of Frankensteinian adaptations and appropriative texts--some more obvious than others. And, I also include a separate category for the source-texts from which Mary Shelly draws for Frankenstein. Full versions of texts in the public domain are supplied, as well as movie trailers for films. I hope you find the information as fun as I did when realizing this vast network.
Further Resources for Adaptation/Appropriation Theory in Codex and Digital Forms:
- Julie Sander's Adaptation and Appropriation
- Linda Hutcheon's A Theory of Adaptation
- Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works (Edited by Phyllis Frus and Christy Williams)
- SUB/VERSIONS: Cultural Status, Genre and Critique (Edited by Pauline MacPherson)
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