By George daniel lea “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?” - Frankenstein, or The Moden Prometheus. Mary Shelley I consider myself fairly unflappable when it comes to the raw sewage the British tabloids generally wallow in, that they force feed to the nation, that they hurl into our faces, all the while insisting that it is the ambrosia of truth. From stories designed to incite racial and tribal hatreds to homophobic screeds, from deliberate attempts to sew divisions between class brackets and varying standards in education, the likes of The Sun, The Daily Mail et al are depthless and entirely without scruple when it comes to the poisonous, cancerous, sceptic filth that they pump into culture, their willingness to do so only equalled by their readership's unthinking inclinations to devour it. We accept this hideousness as a matter of course, as part and parcel of culture, because, for many of us, it is what we have become used to, what we grew up with; monolithic in the way of the sky being up and the soil being down. “The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.” - Frankenstein, or The Moden Prometheus. Mary Shelley For the most part, I don't waste time or energy concerning myself with it any longer; neither the publications themselves nor the readership that are willing to bloat on their poison are worth the expenditure. However, a recent effort by The Sun I have to applaud, in that it succeeded in making my jaw hit the floor in utter, appalled incredulity: Initially, I laughed, presuming, naturally enough, that the article was one of the many parodies or satire pieces at The Sun's expense, poking fun at how little regard it has for its reader's intelligence and critical capacities. However, laughter soon gave way to a kind of polluted awe upon researching the article and finding it not to be satire or parody (evidence, in fact, that such things are impossible when it comes to the likes of this foetid rag), but a genuine article. I'm refering, of course, to the recent idiocy penned by self-proclaimed “journalists” (yes, it actually took two people to write something that has less meaning, sincerity and genuine grasp of its own subject matter than what I scrape out of the cat's litter box every morning), Gary O'Shea and Thea Jacobs (links below) provocatively entitled Flakensteins. “Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!” - Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley. Unlike O'Shea and Jacobs, who, judging by the article, have never actually read Mary Shelley's epoch-making work of science fiction horror, humanitarian metaphysics and despairing cultural commentary, those of us who adore horror, science fiction and literature in general celebrated this January, which marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus); a work that is enshrined not only within the annals of horror literature, but literature in general; one of the most iconic, enduring and powerfully complex pieces in the history of fiction. But what do these journalistic equivalents of drunken, slurring thugs do to celebrate that milestone? Do they pen a piece considering why it has endured for so long, why it is still studied at every level of literature, from high school to university and beyond? Do they attempt some sort of analysis as to its cultural significance, its moral complexities, the extremely problematic metaphysical questions it poses and the relevance it still has for scientific inquiry? Do. They. Fuck. Instead, they commit the journalistic equivalent of drunken desecration; they slam through the doors of the temple, the museum, they scrawl illegible, barely coherent nonsense over the paintings and icons, smear their own shit across the frescoes and tapestries, wipe their drooling faces and sore-pocked arses on the masterworks of literature: Flakensteins: an article in which, rather than celebrating this peculiar work of British fiction (ironic, given the superficial, faux nationalism this rag constantly invokes as a means of making its readership sit up and drool like Pavlov's dogs), they use it as a means of assaulting students and academics for comprehending one of the most superficial implications of the text itself; a reading so overt that children who aren't even in highschool understand it: “Frankenstein has been dubbed 'misunderstood' by snowflake students who see the monster as a victim.” Flakensteins, The Sun, 05/03/2018 This is not some liberal, PC contrivance, some post-modern, political reading designed to push any kind of agenda: this is overt within the text, for anyone that has bothered to actually read it: “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley. The entire purpose of the text is an examination of what it means to be human, to be sentient, to have a soul and animus and life; the “monster” is the perfect vessel for those considerations, and, as those of us who have read the fucking book know, this is the entire point: he is not some lurching, grunting, mindlessly violent entity; he is a victim, of his creator, who had no right to impose unwanted and cruel consciousness on him, then to reject him for his imperfections: a sublimely complex exmaination of the fundamental evils that are part and parcel of conscious being; of the tensions that exist between creators and their creations, between parents and children, between God and man, between science and metaphysics... “Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.” Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley. But, of course, the “journalists” are aware of this. I lambast them for not understanding, for not having read the text (or comprehending it if they have), but I doubt that's actually the truth. That would simply make the article an act of pure ignorance and presumption. No; this is an entriely conscious act of desecration, of cultural vandalism, and a profound, multifarious insult not only to those of us that love the text, but to The Sun's own readers: What O'Shea and Jacobs are effectively saying to you is: we know that you are too illiterate and incurious to go and read the text yourself, that you will simply swallow the tribal, rabble-rousing swill we are raping it in order to manufacture: we believe our readers are fucking idiots, without even the sufficient curiosity or capacity to download an e-copy of the book or to simply look up quotes from it on their mobile phones. But, beyond that, it is an act of the most thuggish vandalism and desecration: As a lover of horror and of literature, as a writer of fiction directly inspired by the likes of Mary Shelley, this wanton, drunken, lurching, inarticulate vacuous assault upon literature and literacy themselves is disgusting conduct, especially from individuals that DO have the capacity to sit at their keyboards and actually type semi-coherent sentences, and who therefore benefit themselves from some degree of literacy and education. It is a promotion of the most vile ignorance; a condemnation of critical capacity, as though actually engaging academically with a work of fiction is somehow a confection of liberal elitism, instead of what stories are, how and why they function. Well, I say to O'Shea and Jacobs: you might feel insulated in your blithe ignorance as you rampage through our gardens and our temples, as you smear your filth across our sacred texts and artefacts, but believe me, there are no melting snowflakes here; you have trespassed where you have no business being, and invited others to do so. That you are paid to do so is one of the most flagrant examples of society's sickness I have ever seen. You want to appeal to the “torch and pitchfork” crowd? Fine. Let's see how you feel when you are cast in the monster's role, when you are the grunting, unthinkingly violent and vandalistic thing you clearly wish your readers to believe of the monster, despite all literary evidence to the contrary. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” - Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley. To my fellow lovers and creators of horror, of science fiction; of literature in general, I urge you to be angrier about this, to throw these trespassing, drunken vandals out of the gardens, out of the temples, leave them exiled and excommunicate, until they can comport themselves with some degree of dignity and grace. And finally, to everyone reading this, please go and read the book, and make up your own damn minds. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5732932/snowflake-students-dub-frakenstein-misunderstood-victim/   HORROR FICTION REVIEW: THE HOUSE OF NODENS BY SAM GAFFORDComments are closed.
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