Teller Crippen
Professor Cara Tovey
LTGR 270.01
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
- Title: How to Make a Monster with Jeffery Cohen! By Teller Crippen
- Narration: The most interesting topic I remember studying this semester was Monsters. I’m going to be using Cohen’s Seven Theses of Monsters, more specifically his first and third thesis, and explore the similarities between Count Orlock in Nosferatu and Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein.
- Slide 2: Thesis I “The Monster’s Body Is A Cultural Body”
- Narration: Cohen’s first thesis states a monster is born at “metaphoric crossroads” of a specific cultural moment. It personifies uncertainty and typically materializes at points of irresolution in which multiple different paths are present (Cohen, 4). At the time that Nosferatu and Frankenstein were filmed, the world was experiencing a vast cultural transition, especially within the film industry.
- Slide 3: Still from Nosferatu at 21:00 as Hutter Arrives to the Castle
- Narration: Since it was released nearly a century ago, many critics have pointed out anti-semitic attributes within Nosferatu, a sign of the disdain towards Jewish citizens at the time of its creation. For example, Nosferatu the vampire had physical traits such as the size of his nose and powers like the ability to control rats that were meant to create a comparison to Jewish stereotypes. You can see in the still chosen how he stands and the profile shot exacerbates the obvious attention towards his facial features. This exemplifies Cohen’s argument in his first thesis in that the rise of anti-semitism only grew in the following years leading up to Hitler’s emergence, a cultural moment in which a monster emerged so the people could rationalize their fear or hatred, in this instance of the Jewish people.
- Slide 4: Clip from Frankenstein at 28:00-29:10 as Dr. Frankenstein reasons with Dr. Waldman
- Narration: Frankenstein became one of the most popular films of its time, heavy influencing popular culture. It can be argued Dr. Frankenstein’s monster metaphorically represents his own ego and the dangers of pushing the limits too far. At the time in which the film was created, both of those things would easily have fit into cultural and societal fears or anxieties. Lost in his own desires and greed, Frankenstein stops at nothing to create something beautiful and subsequently ends up creating a monster, later realizing that he was responsible for finding it and killing it to bring an end to the havoc it had caused. One could also argue the true monster in the film was Dr. Frankenstein himself after listening to the clip provided.
- Slide 5: Thesis III “The Monster is the Harbinger of Crisis”
- Narration: Cohen’s third thesis on Monster Culture discusses how the nature of a monster is to elude categorization, rational order, and scientific law. “And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions” (Cohen, 6). Essentially the monster disrupts the natural flow of everyday society by calling into question the ‘either black or white’ rationality and evading any classification.
- Slide 6: Scene clip from Frankenstein at 29:12-30:09 When Dr. Frankenstein Discovers the Brain Was Criminal
- Narration: When analyzing Frankenstein using this third thesis, it is apparent that the monster defied scientific law, categorization, and therefore threatens to destroy distinctions. He was created from different parts of deceased humans and reanimated, a scientifically impossible feat, so he also never technically lived nor died at the time of his creation, unable to be categorized as either. Therefore, Frankenstein’s monster threatened distinctions between the living and the dead, human and inhuman, and miracles and mistakes, causing him to be a harbinger of societal crisis. In the scene previously, he discovers he had used a criminal brain, implying the creature would age to become evil in Dr. Waldman’s opinion. Dr. Frankenstein did not seem to matter as it was just another body part he had needed and by then the deed had been done.
- Slide 7: Scene clip from Nosferatu from 55:56-57:20 as Count Orlock Departs the Ship
Narration: In Nosferatu, the vampire Count Orlock is depicted as a harbinger of crisis as well. As mentioned previously, his character was given certain characteristics that played on common Jewish stereotypes at the time due to the rising anti-semitic sentiment in Germany during the beginning of the 20th century. Other than his typical vampire traits that undoubtedly classify him as a monster like living on blood and sleeping in coffins, Count Orlock can be deemed a harbinger of crisis due to the scene in which the audience discovers he transported coffins full of plague-infected rats to Germany, causing many of the townspeople to die. The suspenseful music during this scene also alerts the audience that his arrival will have some negative outcome.This scene can also be linked to the racially motivated conspiracy that the Jewish people were to blame for the start of the plague in that Count Orlock was depicted as not only the monster but a monster resembling Jewish stereotypes.
