This blog is prepared as part of the Thinking Activity: “A Cultural Studies Approach to Frankenstein,” assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. The activity encourages a critical exploration of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through the perspectives of Cultural Studies, particularly its revolutionary ideas, class and social exclusion, race and empire, scientific development, technology, and the novel's continuing influence on popular culture through films, adaptations, and contemporary media.
Frankenstein Beyond the Monster: A Cultural Studies Approach to Revolutionary Births and Popular Culture
Introduction
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is often remembered as a Gothic story about a scientist who creates a living being and then abandons it. However, when approached through Cultural Studies, Frankenstein becomes much more than a story about a monster. It becomes a cultural text through which we can examine class, social exclusion, race, empire, scientific ambition, technology, identity, power, knowledge, and popular culture. Shelley wrote the novel during a period of major political, social, philosophical, and scientific transformation. Her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, were associated with radical political and philosophical thought, while thinkers such as Thomas Paine contributed to contemporary discussions of liberty, equality, and political change.
The novel therefore contains a significant revolutionary dimension. The Creature is not simply an unnatural monster; he is also an excluded and suffering social being whose relationship with society raises questions about oppression and responsibility. At the same time, Victor Frankenstein represents the desire to cross established boundaries through scientific knowledge. The novel's concerns have continued into contemporary culture through films, television, drama, parody, science fiction, and debates about biotechnology and artificial intelligence. Timothy Morton's concept of the “Frankenpheme” helps us understand how elements of Frankenstein continue to circulate and acquire new meanings in popular culture.
Thus, a Cultural Studies approach allows us to examine both the revolutionary origins of Frankenstein and its continuing cultural afterlife.
Part I: Revolutionary Births
1. The Creature as Proletarian
One important way of reading the Creature through Cultural Studies is to understand him in relation to the oppressed and marginalized subject. The Creature enters the world without social status, family, property, education, or a recognized identity. He possesses extraordinary physical strength, but he has no social power. His condition can therefore be connected with the idea of the proletarian, a socially and economically marginalized figure who exists outside structures of privilege and authority.
The Creature initially demonstrates sensitivity, curiosity, and a desire for human companionship. His early experiences suggest that he is not naturally evil. He observes the De Lacey family from a distance and gradually learns language, social relationships, and human emotions. His education becomes especially important because it allows him to understand the society from which he is excluded.
The Creature's condition therefore raises a Cultural Studies question about class and social power. Who receives acceptance, security, education, family, and social recognition? Who is forced to remain outside these structures? Although the Creature is not literally a nineteenth-century factory worker, his position can be read metaphorically in relation to marginalized people who possess little social power and are judged according to the position they occupy within society.
Innocence and Revenge
The Creature's paradoxical nature is central to Shelley's representation. He begins with a desire for affection and belonging, but repeated rejection gradually changes his relationship with humanity. He is simultaneously a figure who deserves sympathy and a figure who becomes capable of revenge.
This transformation creates an important revolutionary tension. On one side, society fears the threatening outsider. On the other, the reader is encouraged to understand the suffering that produced his anger. Shelley therefore avoids presenting revolution or rebellion as completely simple. The oppressed subject may be sympathetic, but the consequences of exclusion can also become frightening.
The Creature's story can consequently be understood as a warning about what happens when society refuses to recognize the humanity of those it excludes. His violence cannot simply be justified, but his development forces us to ask whether social rejection contributes to the creation of the very threat that society fears.
In this sense, the Creature becomes a cultural figure of revolutionary anxiety: society fears the marginalized subject while simultaneously creating conditions of exclusion and suffering.
2. A Race of Devils: Otherness, Race, and Empire
The Creature's body also allows a Cultural Studies reading through the concept of the “Other.” He is judged primarily through his physical appearance. Before other characters know his thoughts, emotions, or moral intentions, they respond to his appearance with fear and rejection.
This illustrates how societies can construct distinctions between “us” and “them.” The “normal” group defines itself partly by identifying another group as strange, foreign, dangerous, or inferior. The Creature becomes an “Other” because his appearance places him outside accepted ideas of humanity and beauty.
The title “A Race of Devils” therefore encourages us to think about how difference becomes associated with danger. The Creature is repeatedly represented as monstrous before his inner qualities are understood. His physical difference becomes a social identity imposed upon him.
Race and Empire
The novel can also be connected to questions of race, imperialism, and colonial power. Victor's relationship with the Creature involves creation, possession, control, abandonment, and responsibility. Victor attempts to exercise extraordinary power over another living being but refuses to accept responsibility for what he has produced.
A Cultural Studies approach can connect this structure with broader questions about power:
Who has the authority to create?
Who has the authority to classify another person?
Who decides what is normal or abnormal?
Who controls the representation of the Other?
What responsibilities accompany power?
It would be too simple to claim that the Creature is a direct representation of one particular colonized group. However, the novel provides a productive framework for thinking about cultural anxieties concerning difference, hierarchy, domination, and exclusion.
These concerns remain relevant today in discussions about race, migration, cultural identity, citizenship, privilege, and discrimination. The Creature's struggle shows how people can be judged according to appearance or social identity before their individuality is recognized.
3. From Natural Philosophy to Cyborg
Scientific ambition is one of the central concerns of Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein wants to discover the secret of life and create a living being. His experiment reflects the intellectual curiosity of his period, when natural philosophy, chemistry, medicine, electricity, and scientific experimentation were developing rapidly.
Victor's problem is not simply that he wants knowledge. His deeper problem is that his ambition becomes separated from responsibility. He becomes fascinated with the possibility of creation but does not adequately consider what responsibilities he will have toward his creation.
This makes Frankenstein especially relevant to modern scientific developments.
Frankenstein and Cloning
Modern discussions of cloning raise questions about creating life through scientific processes. Human cloning is not the same as Victor Frankenstein's experiment, but both can be used to discuss the cultural question of whether scientific possibility should automatically be followed by scientific action.
Frankenstein therefore encourages us to distinguish between:
The ethical responsibility of the scientist becomes as important as scientific discovery itself.
Genetically Modified Births and Biotechnology
The novel can also be connected to discussions about genetic engineering, biotechnology, and genetically modified forms of life. Modern biotechnology gives human beings increasing abilities to intervene in biological processes. These developments raise questions about boundaries, responsibility, consequences, and the relationship between scientific power and ethical judgment.
Again, Frankenstein does not provide direct scientific answers to these questions. Instead, it provides a cultural and imaginative framework for thinking about them.
Frankenstein and Artificial Intelligence
The connection becomes especially visible in discussions about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Victor creates an intelligent being and then struggles with the consequences of his creation. Contemporary discussions about AI similarly involve questions of creation, autonomy, control, responsibility, and unintended consequences.
The comparison should not mean that AI is literally equivalent to the Creature. Rather, Frankenstein functions as a cultural metaphor for a recurring human concern: What happens when something created by human beings develops consequences that its creators cannot completely control?
This is one reason the Frankenstein story continues to appear in discussions of robotics, AI, biotechnology, and emerging technologies.
What Lesson Does Frankenstein Give Us?
The novel does not simply tell us to reject science. Instead, it warns against scientific knowledge without ethical responsibility. Victor's tragedy comes from his inability to recognize the moral consequences of his actions.
The important lesson is therefore not:
“Science is dangerous.”
Rather, the deeper lesson is:
Scientific power must be accompanied by ethical responsibility.
The Creature's Literary Education: Knowledge as Empowerment and Alienation
The Creature's literary education is one of the most important elements for a Cultural Studies interpretation. He does not remain an ignorant being. By secretly observing the De Lacey family, he learns language, social behaviour, and human relationships.
His discovery of books is particularly important. He encounters texts including Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. Through these works, he develops an understanding of history, morality, family, love, society, creation, and rebellion.
His reading of Paradise Lost is especially significant because he compares himself with both Adam and Satan. Like Adam, he is created by another being and desires companionship. Like Satan, he experiences rejection and develops anger toward his creator.
This literary education has a paradoxical effect.
On one hand, education empowers him. It gives him language and the ability to understand and articulate his suffering. Knowledge provides him with a voice.
On the other hand, education alienates him further. The more he learns about human relationships, beauty, family, and belonging, the more clearly he understands that he does not possess them.
Therefore, the Creature's education does not simply make him civilized. It makes him conscious of his exclusion.
This raises an important Cultural Studies question:
Can knowledge liberate a person while simultaneously making social inequality more visible?
The Creature's experience suggests that knowledge can produce self-awareness without necessarily producing social acceptance.
Part II: The Frankenpheme in Popular Culture
What Is a Frankenpheme?
The influence of Frankenstein extends far beyond Shelley's original novel. Its characters, images, ideas, and anxieties have entered popular culture and have been repeatedly reproduced in new forms.
Timothy Morton's term “Frankenpheme” is useful for understanding this cultural process. A Frankenpheme refers to cultural elements derived from Frankenstein that are reproduced, transformed, and applied in different contexts.
For example, when people use Frankenstein-like imagery to describe a scientific creation that becomes difficult to control, they are participating in the cultural afterlife of the Frankenstein story. The Frankenstein pattern can appear in discussions of technology, politics, science, popular entertainment, and consumer culture.
The important point is that a literary text does not remain fixed in its original historical context. It can travel across different media and acquire new meanings.
The First Film Adaptation
The history of Frankenstein in cinema begins very early. Thomas Edison's 1910 film Frankenstein is generally recognized as the first known film adaptation of Shelley's novel.
Later, James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) became one of the most influential representations of the story. Its Creature, played by Boris Karloff, contributed strongly to the visual image of Frankenstein's monster in popular culture.
The film's historical context is important. The early twentieth century was marked by rapid technological development and changing attitudes toward science and industrial modernity. Cinema transformed Shelley's literary narrative into a visual cultural form that could communicate fears about scientific experimentation to a mass audience.
James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935) further developed the story. It introduced new dimensions of creation, companionship, identity, and responsibility.
These films demonstrate that adaptations do not merely reproduce the novel. They reinterpret it according to the concerns and technologies of their own periods.
Frankenstein in Popular Retellings
Frankenstein has been transformed through many genres.
Young Frankenstein
Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974) turns the Frankenstein tradition into comedy and parody. Instead of treating the Gothic material only as horror, it plays with the conventions established by earlier Frankenstein films.
This demonstrates that popular culture can transform a serious literary narrative into another genre while still depending on the cultural recognition of Frankenstein.
Blade Runner
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) is not a direct adaptation of Shelley's novel, but it can be read through a Frankensteinian framework. Its artificial beings raise questions about creation, identity, humanity, mortality, and the responsibilities of creators.
The shift from a reanimated body in Shelley's novel to technologically manufactured beings in science fiction demonstrates how the Frankenstein pattern can adapt to changing technological concerns.
Indian and Hindi Popular Culture
The Frankenstein idea can also be considered in relation to Indian popular culture. Indian cinema has frequently explored questions of artificial creation, scientific experimentation, technology, human responsibility, and the consequences of uncontrolled scientific power.
For example, the Indian science-fiction film 2.0 (2018) can be discussed through a Frankensteinian framework even though it is not a direct adaptation of Shelley's novel. The film explores technological creation, artificial intelligence, robotics, scientific power, and the consequences of human technological intervention. Its use of a scientist and technologically created beings allows audiences to think about questions that are also central to Frankenstein: What happens when human beings create forms of life or intelligence that develop powers and consequences beyond their creators' expectations?
This should not be understood as claiming that 2.0 is a direct Hindi adaptation of Frankenstein. Instead, it demonstrates how the Frankensteinian pattern can circulate within Indian technological and popular-cultural narratives.
Such examples show that the cultural influence of Frankenstein is not restricted to Western literature and cinema. Its central concerns can be adapted to different cultural contexts and technological imaginaries.
How Retellings Reshape Shelley's Message
The continued adaptation of Frankenstein raises an important question:
Why has a novel written in the early nineteenth century continued to influence popular culture for more than two centuries?
One reason is its adaptability. Different historical periods have different technological developments and cultural anxieties, but the Frankenstein pattern can accommodate them.
For Shelley's period, the novel could be connected to debates about scientific discovery, natural philosophy, creation, and revolutionary change. In twentieth-century cinema, Frankenstein could express anxieties about scientific experimentation, modern technology, and the consequences of unchecked ambition.
In contemporary culture, the same pattern can be connected with:
Artificial Intelligence
Robotics
Genetic engineering
Cloning
Biotechnology
Artificial reproduction
Technological autonomy
Scientific responsibility
Thus, adaptations both preserve and transform Shelley's original critique.
Some retellings emphasize Victor's scientific ambition. Others focus on the Creature's loneliness. Some explore the creator's responsibility. Others use Frankensteinian ideas to discuss artificial intelligence or technological control. Parodies such as Young Frankenstein transform the Gothic story into comedy while depending on the audience's familiarity with the Frankenstein tradition.
Therefore, adaptation is a process of cultural negotiation. A new audience takes an old story and gives it new meanings.
Frankenstein, Commodification, and Consumer Culture
The popularity of Frankenstein has also resulted in its commodification. The Creature has become a recognizable cultural image appearing in films, toys, costumes, advertisements, cartoons, merchandise, and other forms of popular entertainment.
This raises the question posed by the activity:
Has the commodification of Frankenstein obscured its original revolutionary essence?
In some cases, popular culture reduces the complex Creature to a simple monster. When Frankenstein becomes only a recognizable commercial image, the novel's deeper questions about class, exclusion, scientific responsibility, race, empire, education, and power can disappear.
However, commodification does not necessarily eliminate the novel's oppositional possibilities. The Frankenstein image can also be reused to question technological power, social exclusion, and systems of control.
Therefore, there is a productive tension between commercialization and cultural critique. Popular culture may simplify Frankenstein, but it also keeps the text alive and allows new generations to reinterpret its concerns.
Frankenstein and the Politics of Representation
Cultural Studies is concerned with representation: how people, groups, identities, and ideas are represented and how those representations influence social understanding.
The Creature provides a powerful example. He is represented differently by different characters. Victor sees him as a horrifying result of his own experiment. Society sees him through his physical appearance. The Creature understands himself through his education and experience of rejection.
There is therefore no single, uncomplicated representation of the Creature.
His story demonstrates that identity is not created only internally. It is also shaped through the ways society looks at, names, categorizes, accepts, and rejects individuals.
This makes Frankenstein relevant to contemporary discussions about marginalized identities. The novel encourages readers to ask whether society's definition of the “normal” inevitably creates an “abnormal” outsider.
Frankenstein and the Politics of Power
Power operates at several levels in the novel.
Victor possesses scientific knowledge and therefore possesses the power of creation. The Creature possesses physical strength but lacks social recognition. Society possesses the power to accept or reject him. Education gives the Creature intellectual and linguistic power, but it does not give him social equality.
This relationship between knowledge and power is important from a Cultural Studies perspective.
Victor's knowledge allows him to create life, but his knowledge does not automatically make him morally responsible. The Creature's knowledge allows him to understand his condition, but it does not automatically give him social power.
The novel therefore demonstrates that knowledge and power are connected but complicated. Having knowledge does not guarantee equality, and possessing power does not necessarily guarantee wisdom.
Is the Creature a Monster or a Product of Society?
The most important Cultural Studies question may be whether the Creature is naturally monstrous or whether society contributes to his transformation.
Shelley does not give us a simple answer.
The Creature begins with curiosity, affection, and a desire for companionship. He becomes increasingly angry after rejection, violence, and abandonment. This suggests that social conditions influence identity.
At the same time, the Creature eventually commits acts of violence that cannot simply be dismissed.
This complexity is important. A Cultural Studies approach should not simply declare either “the Creature is innocent” or “the Creature is evil.” Instead, it examines the relationship between individual agency and social structures.
The novel therefore encourages us to consider both:
How society creates outsiders
and
How outsiders respond to exclusion.
Frankenstein and Contemporary Society
The continued relevance of Frankenstein can be seen in several contemporary debates.
Science and Responsibility
Scientific development continues to create ethical questions about what should and should not be done.
Artificial Intelligence
AI raises questions about creation, autonomy, control, responsibility, and unintended consequences.
Genetic Engineering
Biotechnology and genetic engineering raise questions about intervention in biological life and the responsibilities attached to scientific power.
Cloning and Artificial Reproduction
The possibility of creating or manipulating biological life makes Frankenstein's questions about artificial creation culturally recognizable.
Social Exclusion
The Creature's rejection can be connected to wider questions about discrimination, prejudice, appearance, identity, and belonging.
Technology and Human Identity
Frankenstein continues to ask what it means to be human when humans increasingly create technologies that imitate, extend, or challenge human abilities.
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Conclusion
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein continues to be culturally significant because it can be interpreted at several interconnected levels. As a Gothic novel, it tells a story of creation, isolation, fear, and revenge. Through Cultural Studies, however, it becomes a text about class, revolutionary tension, social exclusion, otherness, race, empire, scientific ambition, technology, knowledge, power, and responsibility.
The Creature's position as an excluded social subject allows us to think about class struggle and the suffering of marginalized people. His treatment as an “Other” opens questions about race, privilege, difference, and belonging. Victor's scientific ambition anticipates contemporary cultural debates about cloning, genetic engineering, biotechnology, artificial births, artificial intelligence, and technological responsibility.
Works Cited
Guerin, Wilfred L., et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 5th ed., Indian ed., Oxford University Press, 2007. “From Paradise Lost to Frank-N-Furter: The Creature Lives!”
Levine, George, and U. C. Knoepflmacher, editors. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. University of California Press, 1979.
Morton, Timothy. Discussions of the cultural reproduction and circulation of Frankensteinian ideas and the concept of the “Frankenpheme.”
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Project Gutenberg, 1993.
Brooks, Mel, director. Young Frankenstein. 20th Century Fox, 1974.
Scott, Ridley, director. Blade Runner. Warner Bros., 1982.
Whale, James, director. Bride of Frankenstein. Universal Pictures, 1935.
Whale, James, director. Frankenstein. Universal Pictures, 1931.
Frankenstein. Directed by J. Searle Dawley, Edison Manufacturing Company, 1910.
2.0. Directed by S. Shankar, Lyca Productions, 2018.
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