We are the Panlipunang Agham, Teknolohiya at mga Aplikasyon (PATA) Team. A group that creates awareness of the links between science, technology and the society.
The monster of Frankenstein is a favourite when Halloween
season begins. Truly the hideous sight out the monster, which is composed of
various dead body parts, assures screams and similar reactions from children to
adults. Who would want to be in the same room with someone who is in a way “resurrected’
from the dead?
For some, it is a depiction of an experiment gone awry. For
others, it signifies an abomination or something that does not deserve to live.
It is nothing but a creation of man that had unforeseen and detrimental consequences.
What people have not considered in this equation is, “who is the real monster
in this situation”? Is it the monster that was accidentally brought to life
and, finding the workings of his newly discovered world, brings more harm than
good to others? Or is it Dr. Henry Frankenstein who did not consider any
possible negative implication and just went on with conducting his experiment?
In this case, I chose the latter as the real monster in this
movie despite his creation as the one possessing a horrific appearance. This is
because being a monster is not determined by looks alone. Sometimes, it is seen
by how we think and how we act regardless of what the consequences may be. I do
not think that a botched experiment can be used as a justification for Dr.
Frankenstein’s otherwise good intentions on bringing about scientific
breakthroughs. In my opinion it is his playing god, the refusal to accept his
limits as a man that made him the real monster in this situation. The creature,
despite his unintentional murders of the other characters, had little to do
with it. It was even the victim of the whole set-up. It was brought to life by
someone who was propelled by self-interest masked behind good intentions of
progress. This is why today we must also be wary of the implications of the
various developments around us because these may lead to harmful consequences
if we are not careful enough.
Once upon a time, a man Desired to build His own man-made human. So They gather and put together different body parts of dead people and formed a body. With a click of THEIR buttons and a strike of a lightning, Frankenstein was born.
Yet people never saw him as one of them. Frankenstein is a monster in THEIR eyes, a freak that would do no good for them. A creature built from remains of dead people is not only gruesome, but a sin to the God, disrespecting what He has given us naturally. No one accepted Frankenstein Because no one would like THEIR dead relative's body parts to be used to Create an artificial life. It is a way of manipulating life and going beyond what a natural man would do.
Science is important and knowing what we can Achieve through the use of this field of study is essential and beneficial, yet not all deed we assume to be Useful was good and acceptable to the human race. Science has given us the Ability to Create our own machineries and choices to aid our daily life but help its always have something in return.
Positive or negative effects, we Should know when to stop or to continue When experimenting. Yes, we have infinite ways and chance of increasing the quality of our lives, but we Should also know how to define our boundaries and limitations not to hinder us from doing things but to show us that we are still human being that can not possibly do everything . We will always have imperfections. Making the monster dumb and not able to carry out a decent conversation shows that an artificial man-made life is never as good as its original. It would always have its limitations. But always remember, that these beings, even though not real still have THEIR own thoughts and also knows how to learn to cope up with the world and to hurt the world has already been too bad with him.
How discontented could we be in this world? We, as a people, always aspire for greatness. Our greatness comes with the discovery of new possibilities, innovations, approving or disproving myths, acquiring intense knowledge and most especially trying to make the impossible incredibly possible. We actually see this in the movie Frankenstein, which makes us know that even in movies we can recall this aspiration. Frankenstein is a monster made in the movie. He is a monster made from cut and connect body parts from different cadavers that was brought to life by electricity from lightning. With him living and wandering the woods as a newly created being, no one knew how he came to be. He turns to be so scary and becomes a threat to all the people around him and somewhat alienated from the life he was supposed to live so happily. It is a saddening fact in the movie¸ Frankenstein lived in misery and was totally misled. He did not do anything to deserve that kind of life. Even the scientist who has put him to life was so careless. The scientist was undeniably selfish. He was self-gratifying; he pushed people to work on his immoral work which experimented on dead people’s bodies, and so on. This scientist perhaps is the model of an evil doctor and who needs some knocking of senses.
I believe that scientists should always have the sense of responsibility in what they do. They have to respect the natural way of life and must see to it they follow the natural law. They also have to sense how what they are doing will affect the surrounding and the society. For scientists, new technology must not only be beneficial for the society but it should also be done according to ethics.
I think Frankenstein just tells us that scientific endeavours must always cling to moral standards. We are not gods who create life, we are just mere instruments to make others see the beauty of the natural way of life. Because of this movie, I realized how joyful I am to see things in a perspective that I was created naturally by a supreme-being that envisioned me to grow and live happily and not as His experiment but for beautifying the earth. This is what greatness is about. Greatness is not only about discovering new things but also it is about taking part on sharing in the wonderful and natural world we are living in just by allowing things to happen naturally and not us playing gods ourselves.
Hey guys! Happy happy belated Valentine's day to all of you. I'm so apologetic right now that I made this video for all you girls out there.
Whether you were out on a date with your loved one (or ones, ehem) or were locked away in your room, eating ice cream, reading internet posts and watching anime, I hope you had fun on that day, on your own special way. Though, "survived" would probably be the operative term considering what happened during my Valentine's day. Traffic was awful, didn't you think so? I spent around an hour commuting from UP to SM North. Luckily our cousin was there and treated us at Tokyo Tokyo (hurray!). Anyway, how was your V-day experience? Comment it below! :3 Anyway, don't you think calling it V-day is like similar to D-day? Makes it scary when you think about it.
Anyway! Enough with the chitty-chatty long intro. That's enough effort, I guess. This is a blog anyway. Even our old friend Frankenstein's monster got a bride for a gift. I'm sure we can't have mail-order brides here (or can we?) so he really has that going for him. But maybe he doesn't since he scared the crap out of his surprisingly fashionable wife. It's like screaming that women, as society dictates, whether organic or synthetic, are scared of ugly, disfigured men. The giant nuts and bolts probably just amplifies the terror it experienced. I'm having a dilemma here anyway. I already called it "it", but should it be called a "she"? Should only organic lives be addressed in a gender-sensitive manner? Calling it "it" is discrimination, but I'm not really sure if it has the same rights that we have. To begin maybe, we should determine if it can be categorized as a human being or some other creature. I can see a lot of arguments that could come from both sides. Unless the Church enters again with their rock hard ideologies, telling the masses that something synthetic and, what more, is developed from rotting carcasses/cadavers is an abomination and should not be called human. Seriously. They're like old, white, senile women. Once they have a stand, they will readily cast it into rock and start feeding it to people, especially onto the non-consenting ones. They will tend to ignore the facts and get mad at and persecute people who got the logic perfectly, but whose principles and theories do not align with their ideologies. But anyway, this CAN be an INTERESTING debate in class. It's not like I'm implying anything. *wink wink* Just saying. LOL.
That was all ranting up there. Don't worry about catching my train of thought. I purposefully ingested an icy chocolate milk box as a fuel for the train. Can't catch it myself. You can try if you want. Anyway, aside from the fact that Frankenstein's monster and her bride were parts from different people just stitched together, I was more curious about the little creatures that Victor's mentor created. Totally miniature beings. They're more exciting and appealing to me since they were apparently more perfect and capable of good reasoning and speech. In contrast with the monster that only knew a few nouns + good and bad and the bride who just screamed her lungs out in protest about the whole idea of being given a hideous monster as a friend. Anyway, interestingly, the miniatures humans have been given various roles already. I do not understand how that even happened. More importantly, how were they created? I can't imagine gene splicing as a part of the process, considering that at the time, even gene splicing was still inconceivable. Still, it is commendable that they were able to have wild imaginations, which surely inspired scientists and writers of future generations.
Anyway, if there was any monster that would gain any favor from the audiences, it would probably be this guy. Yes, this is the monster. This is the monster from the movie (Now Showing in Theatres Nationwide) I, FRANKENSTEIN. Contemporary society has this MegaTrend going on. They're trying to make scary monsters (and nice sprites, get it?) of the past look attractive by turning them into eye candy. Take for example, witches, who for centuries have been burned and persecuted. They have been turned into beautiful maidens by movies and animations. Special mention, *drum roll* tuturu! HARRY FREAKIN' POTTER. Witches, you say? I see EMMA FREAKIN' WATSON. That's who. Blame Rowling for all this. Actually, no. Don't. Rowling is actually a great person. She introduced us to the wonderful wizarding world. Anyway, witches are still people, so who are we kidding? It's those fairy tales that tell us that ugly people are evil, since they're usually witches. That's why when we grow up, let's keep everything fair. Let's not describe witches as ugly. That's RACIST. You wanna blame someone? Blame Meyer. Yeah. That's who. The creator of Twilight and 108 year old white hot sparkling virgin vampires. I mean, man, seriously? 108 year old vampires are supposed to be scary, blood-sucking creatures and all. And she just ruined our childhoods by adding the "white, hot, sparkling, virgin" series of implicit descriptions. I mean, white and hot should probably be okay, since that's part of our MegaTrend right now, but seriously? Sparkling vampires? What, is he the descendant of Tinkerbell or something? Get it straight Meyer. Not to mention that he's a virgin. Now he's got some issues there. Maybe he's a sociopath. Make sure he doesn't get your number. If you're Bella-like. Or if you actually inject perfume into your bloodstream. He probably won't accept your offer of sex, but he'd probably shower you with his glamorous sparkling skin to death. Or carry you off to forests like King Kong in New York.
Anyway, back to Frankenstein's monster. This is probably reflects our view of our current scientific capabilities as a species. Back then, at the time of Shelley, they just thought of patching him up and running really high voltages through him with the help of lightning charges. Now, they had a good job of patching him up, maybe with some plastic surgery or tissue reconstruction. His superhuman strength and immortality (since, well, he's already dead, what's the point of dying when you're dead) was retained. I don't know why, but monsters usually possess superhuman abilities, and that's usually annoying. Vampires, for example. They drink other people's blood. Big deal. It's not like drinking blood will make you stronger. But maybe it's connected to the fact that they're already dead. Yeah. That's probably it. Since Frankenstein's monster is already dead, speaking of his body at least, he probably doesn't experience the normal restraint of force that live humans experience. See, we always just use 1/3 of our full strength, even if we seemingly exert our greatest effort. But, with the help of adrenaline, the limit is lifted, allowing is to at exert a force of at least a ton on objects. With the lack of impulses to restrain this, his body is probably always working at full force. Thus, enabling him to have superhuman capacities. If this was not the explanation, I don't know what is (yet). Since getting the energy or strength out of nowhere would actually be out of the realm of science, and we all know that Frankenstein's monster was created using science and should therefore abide by the laws of science. Considering all that anyway, and his unbelievable fortitude + his really tough skin, he might have been able to survive the explosion in the climax of the movie. If he did, what do you think happened to him? That's a question for another time. ;)
The book and film on Frankenstein greatly shows how
addictive and powerful science can be. It is so influential it can even take
over your humanity and morality. Although it is very beneficial and historical, it can also bore evil, obsession, and irresponsibility. In the story of Frankenstein, we learn the importance of moral responsibility.
The story showed that Victor Frankenstein is an embodiment
of the philosophy that we make our own heaven and hell. He created a huge but ugly
creature, and upon giving it the breath of life, he realizes this creature is
too horrible to accept. He took no responsibility in trying to fix his actions
or take care of the creature. He was responsible for his creation as a father
is for his child, but only tried to escape the creature. Because of this, the
creature has been left to try to either become part of society, or to live
alone in hiding, suffering, and pain. This outcome made me question an allegory
in life: Is what is good must also be beautiful? I’m certain Victor never
intended to make evil out of his experiment, since his creation was purely a
showcase of his brilliance. But the ugliness that came out of this brilliance
affected Victor’s integrity. His unwillingness to either accept the creature or
at least comply with his requests prompted the abandoned creature to turn to
vengeance and violence.
The difference between the movie adaptation of the monster and
in the book is that the monster was able to carry a decent conversation. The
monster was made dumb probably to add humor to the scenes and to show growth
and development within the monster’s mind, since by the end of the film, the
monster was smart enough to ask Victor to make a bride for him. Although the
film and book was mostly a horror genre, adding humor made it more interesting.
The monster’s intelligence development also added more importance to moral
responsibility when it comes to science. You never know how big a mistake can
turn out to be, so you must handle this mistake while it’s still early.
Through the story of Frankenstein, we learn that we can't take on
the role of God. Victor tried to create life from death and the consequences
were deadly and disastrous. He tried to defy the natural order, just like how
science questions everything, rules over every explanation, and tries to make
the impossible possible. The scientific researches and their successes, although
beneficial, still have serious implications and must be handled responsibly.
Defying this rule would result likely to what happened to Victor.
