“What is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)” Peter Brooks Prepared by: Dr. Kay Picart

Aim: To discuss Brooks’ various characterizations of monstrosity To discuss how the monstrous body is often envisaged in film and dance

Monstrosity “The outcome or product of curiousity or epistemophilia pushed to an extreme that results—as in the story of Oedipus—in confusion, blindness, and exile.” (218)

Monstrosity--2 It cannot be located in “any of the taxonomic schemes devised by the human mind to understand and to order nature.” (218)

Monstrosity--3 It is an “excess of signification, a strange byproduct or leftover of the process of making meaning.” (218)

Monstrosity--4 It is an “imaginary being who comes to life in language and, once having done so, cannot be eliminated from language.” (218)

Questions: Are monsters specifically gendered, raced or classed in Frankenstein? In cinematic depictions of the Frankenstein myth, are monsters raced, gendered or classed?

Evolving Replies According to Brooks A monster is a woman seeking to escape the feminine condition into recognition by the fraternity. (218) A monster eludes gender definition. (219)

Question: How is the monstrous body represented in comedic horror versions like Young Frankenstein and The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Concluding Remarks: “In Frankenstein, language is marked by the body, by the process of embodiment. We have not so much a mark on the body as the mark of the body: the capacity of language to create a body, one that in turn calls into question the language that we use to classify and control bodies.” (220) Question: What implications re. bodily categorization follow from these remarks?