In this blog post, we explore the philosophical question of why the creature created in the movie ‘Frankenstein’ ultimately couldn’t even possess a name.
Do you know who ‘Frankenstein’ is? If you pictured a green monster with a bolt in its neck, you’re wrong. Contrary to popular belief, Frankenstein is not the monster’s name, but the name of the doctor who created it. Dr. Frankenstein, conducting experiments to create new life from corpses, uses a freshly buried corpse and a criminal’s brain to create the monster. In other words, Dr. Frankenstein is the monster’s creator. So what is the name of that creature we mistakenly called ‘Frankenstein’? It has none. The creature is simply the nameless ‘monster’. Contrary to the doctor’s expectations, this ‘monster’ becomes a threat to the village and ultimately meets its end engulfed in flames.
James Whale’s 1931 film ‘Frankenstein’, based on Mary Shelley’s novel of the same name, consistently portrays Dr. Frankenstein in a negative light. All characters except his assistant express skepticism towards the mad scientist’s experiment. The assistant is portrayed merely as someone fulfilling his duty, not as someone who agreed to the experiment. The film begins with the narrator’s words: “Hear the tale of the doctor who sought to create a human in his own image without God’s permission.” When Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment succeeded and he tasted his greatest triumph, the revulsion of those who opposed his work must have reached its peak.
“(The corpse) is alive, alive! Now I know what it feels like to be God…”
The film implies that the doctor’s attitude, invoking God’s name, was the cause that unleashed the disaster of the murderous monster. The scene where the doctor articulates his conviction appears only once, but his statement is profoundly striking.
“Have you never wanted to try something, even if it meant taking a risk? If no one dared to challenge what was dangerous, where would humanity be today? Have you never wanted to see what lies beyond those clouds and stars? Have you never wondered how a seed sprouts from a tree? Have you never wondered how a dark night turns into dawn? If I say such things, people will call me mad. For example, if I were to uncover the secret of eternity, I wouldn’t care if others called me crazy.”
Indeed. Human history has been a history of challenges. There was Magellan, who risked his life to prove the Earth was round, and Galileo, who supported Copernicus’s heliocentric theory despite being branded a heretic. Dangerous challenges persisted, and what was once laughed at as impossible—whether landing on the moon or cloning animals—became achievable. Such challenges sometimes encroached upon the divine. Humans built the Tower of Babel to reach the heavens like gods, and Phaethon sought to fly across the sky like the sun god. Considering the era when advocating the heliocentric theory was heresy, perhaps Galileo too could be said to have encroached upon the divine. In any case, those who encroached upon the divine had to pay a harsh price. Yet today, we can build dizzyingly tall buildings and fly through the sky. These are things unimaginable had we not encroached upon the divine. The realms of God that humans encroach upon have expanded, and they will continue to expand. This fundamental nature of humanity cannot be restrained. Just as Adam and Eve dared to disobey God and eat the apple, humanity has defied God since the beginning and will continue to do so. The monster’s birth was not a ‘curse received as the price for challenging God’.
Then what went wrong to cause the tragedy? A moment’s reflection reveals the direct cause of the monster’s birth: the use of a criminal’s brain. Had the assistant not mistakenly brought the criminal’s brain, had the doctor used a normal person’s brain, the monster might never have been born. Yet this does not absolve the doctor. There is no guarantee that using a normal brain would have prevented the monster’s birth. There was only one way to prove that using a normal brain would create a normal human: more research and experimentation. Advising a doctor who already possessed the technology to create life to conduct more research might seem pointless. Yet, the potential tragedies that can arise when new technology is hastily applied to humans can be seen in the case of lobotomy, first performed in the United States in 1935. Frontal lobotomy, which involves cutting the nerves of the frontal lobe, was actually used to treat brains with genuine abnormalities, much like the criminal’s brain used by Dr. Frankenstein. After it became known that a chimpanzee, which had been violent and emotionally unstable, became behaviorally controllable following a frontal lobotomy, the procedure was applied to humans just three months after the chimpanzee experiment. Subsequently, this surgery was recognized as a groundbreaking treatment and rapidly spread worldwide. However, it caused serious side effects, including death and damage to frontal lobe function. After realizing the severity of prefrontal lobotomy, new surgical methods emerged, reducing its frequency. Today, it is applied only to a very small number of patients. The line, “First they experimented on animals, then they experimented on a human heart, keeping it beating for three weeks,” evokes the three-month chimpanzee prefrontal lobotomy experiments. If Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments were conducted like the early prefrontal lobotomies, countless monsters would be born. Just as prefrontal lobotomy, after extensive subsequent research, is now performed only very restrictively, Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment also required more research into which cadavers should be used and how it should be performed.
His oversight wasn’t merely a lack of research. As mentioned earlier, the monster has no name. This fact is crucial because it means the common assumption that even a monster would have a name didn’t apply. When new life is born, the first thing we do is give it a name. The first human was named ‘Adam,’ and some people even give names to unborn fetuses. The same applies when getting a pet. A name, that is, language, is the medium for the act of assigning meaning. The monster having no name means no meaning was assigned to it. The monster was born without its purpose being known, and thus, deprived of meaning, it simply became a murderer. Despite creating the life he so desired, at the slightest disturbance, the doctor sends the monster bound in ropes to the basement. This is because he did not first contemplate what meaning to bestow upon his creation, or rather, why he created it in the first place. To a creator unprepared for his creation, and thus unprepared to be a creator, the creation is nothing but a terrifying entity. If Dr. Frankenstein wishes to become a god, we can gladly applaud him. However, he simply does not yet understand what it truly means to be a god.
There is no dispute that Dr. Frankenstein’s efforts and recklessness in attempting to recreate life are elements that drive human progress. As Dr. Frankenstein said, it takes courage to take risks and challenge what others deem madness. Yet, regardless of this, applying new technology to humans requires countless repeated experiments, and the significance must be prepared to the extent of giving the monster a name. Had the doctor known this before the monster was born, perhaps a blessed life, not a monster, would have been born.
