Frankenstein’s lasting influence on procreation and creation in sf film

Despite a marked lack of science in the novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is generally recognised as the first sf novel and its impact on the genre cannot be overstated. Scholars often read the text, not surprisingly perhaps, through Shelley’s biography and the philosophies of her well-known parents: William Godwin, novelist and social reformer, and Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). However, the tragedies and losses in Shelley’s life related to reproduction and its consequences, especially the deaths of her two children, remain central to biographical analysis of the work. In addition, as Ellen Moers writes, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother whose memory she revered … had died in childbirth – died giving birth to Mary herself. Surely no outside influence need be sought to explain Mary Shelley’s fantasy of the newborn as at once monstrous agent of destruction and piteous victim of parental abandonment’ (‘Female Gothic’ in Norton Critical Edition of Frankenstein 222). Certainly, what Shelley touched on, perhaps as part of her personal grief, has resounded culturally in ways she could not have conceived.

Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein is the iconic representation of the over-zealous if well-meaning mad scientist – a figure that would find its way into many sf films starting in the 1950s and into the twenty-first century. Yet, the way the book imagines reproduction, creation versus procreation, has had the greatest impact on sf film – and, to some extent, public discourse regarding reproductive technology and who can/should control it. Previously I noted that the novel’s ‘preoccupation with creation and procreation … intersect with [sf film’s] fundamental subject matter … with science and technology, which represents another sort of creative power – one that these texts have traditionally linked to and placed in masculine rather than feminine hands’ and male control remains central in many sf films (‘Not Exactly “Of Women Born”’, Journal of Popular Film and Television 28.4: 177). Even in films like Mimic (del Toro US 1997) and Splice (Natali Can/France/US 2009), in which female scientists are prominently featured and involved in creating the uncontainable progeny of the narrative, male scientists, bosses and partners are essential to the story.

The mythos of unnatural creation and the visual images prominent in most sf films focused on procreation and creation are first found in Shelley’s 1818 novel. The body made spectacle, made grotesque or abject is central to Victor’s studies. He explains to the reader: ‘Now I was led to examine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel houses … I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life’ (Norton Critical Edition 1996 30). The spectacle of birth and death in birth in sf films such as Alien (Scott UK/US 1979) and Species II (Medak US 1998) render the body abject in similar ways. The now (in)famous chestburster dinner scene in Alien is a fine example. The crew of the Nostromo believe the crisis is over as Kane (John Hurt) joins them for dinner, but instead of a congenial crew meal they witness a brutal parody of childbirth. In Species II women who have sex with the alien-DNA-infected Commander Patrick Ross (Justine Lazard) explode in colourful gore and viscera while giving birth to his rapidly growing half-human/half-alien offspring. These are just two examples of many.

What is most significant about these images and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the visceral way they express male fears of reproduction and cultural norms about who should, who does control reproduction. Reproduction and, therefore, women’s bodies have been legislated and controlled by patriarchal institutions then and now. Although the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision was a landmark, issues surrounding reproductive freedom, procreation and creation, like Victor’s hideous progeny, continue to be reanimated in sf film and in public discourse.