このレッスンの実行方法

レッスン16は10本のビデオレクチャー（レクチャーのテキストがビデオレクチャーの下に記載されています）と8本の動画で構成されています。
このレッスンは、ページをスクロールダウンしながら最初から順番に動画を見たりテキストを読んでください。

Part One
All the way back in our first lesson we talked about how horror is associated not with just fear, but with shock, surprise, repulsion, and disgust. I am sure you also remember me using Nosferatu and Phantom of the Opera to demonstrate to you the audience’s desire both to see and not see the monsters. The films are also perfect examples of what we call “the reveal” …the moment when we first see the monster. When the young real estate agent in Nosferatu first sees the vampire outside his bedroom he reacts with shock, revulsion, and horror. He wants to run away, but he can only hide under the bedsheets. His reaction is one of complete horror because his host has suddenly grown long claws and pointed ears and hideous rat-like fangs. Yet, we had already seen Count Orlock and we were already disturbed by his strange looks earlier in the film. His vampire appearance is not so very different, just more extreme.

Part Three
It is more than just a great mime performance, though. In your homework, you read the story (probably apocryphal) of Lon Chaney picking up a hitchhiking Boris Karloff and advising him to find something “only he could do”. Well, Karloff didn’t take Chaney’s advice because of what Karloff is doing in this scene …especially in that remarkable close-up of his hands is something only Lon Chaney could do…at least until Karloff came along and imitated him. That is what I believe he is doing in this scene. I truly believe that Boris Karloff is asking himself the question: “how would Lon Chaney have played this?” and then he gives a performance which is, frankly speaking, as good as any Chaney ever gave.

Part Four

As to why they shut out the light, I do not have an answer myself. I have never yet been able to completely understand why they shut out the light. What is easier to understand is what happens once they shut out the light. Frankenstein tells the monster to “go and sit down”. As we have said before, Frankenstein is always telling other people to sit down so they will be in a subordinate position to him. It is like his control of when and how to bring the monster into the light. Yet, Frankenstein is pleased that the monster understands his commands, or perhaps pleased that he both understands and obeys them. he says, “It’s wonderful!” But, the monster still wants the light and he gestures in that almost infantile way to communicate what he wants. Surely, any of us can understand the monster’s desire to reach towards the light and away from the darkness. It is basic human instinct. Why would Frankenstein and Dr. Waldman suddenly deny the monster something any human being would want? Is it because they do not think of him as human…or is it that the very humanity of the monster disturbs them? I don’t know.

It is at this moment that we reach a turning point in the film. Fritz comes into the room with his torch and this time the monster reacts like an animal with an instinctual fear of fire. Rather than trying to quiet the monster by removing the torch and talking to him (and remember the monster has shown he understands language), they immediately try to subdue and restrain him, like an animal. They knock him out and drag him to the basement…away from the light.

Part Five – Frankenstein is losing control, not only of his creation but of himself as well. He is at a loss. He does not know what to do. Dr. Waldman tells him to destroy the monster “as you would any savage beast”. Dr. Waldman sees no humanity in the monster at all, (or he refuses to see it). But Frankenstein replies that killing the monster “would be murder”. Murder, of course, refers to the willful killing of a human being, not an animal. Human or animal? Frankenstein is not at all sure what he has created. In fact, he does not even seem to know how to talk about his creation. When the monster first moves after being brought to life, Frankenstein shouts “It’s alive”…It. Later he says “He’s only a few days old…wait until I bring him into the light”. Which is it to be, an “it” or a “he”? After the monster is taken to the dungeon-like cellar, Frankenstein says, “Oh, come away and leave it alone”. Sometimes, when the monster pleases him or obeys him, Frankenstein uses “he” and sometimes when the monster displeases him or disobeys him he uses “it”. But not even this is consistent. Finally, remember that when God created man he gave him the name “Adam”, but Frankenstein never even gives his creation a name, (many people mistakenly think that the monster is named “Frankenstein”, but that is the name of the man who created him, the monster remains nameless).

Part Six – Here is a problem with the definition of “monster”. According to most philosophers, animals cannot be evil because they do not have the human ability to choose their actions based on knowledge. Adam and Eve stole the knowledge of good and evil by eating the forbidden fruit. This is what separates us from the animals, our knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong. According to the Bible, man is free to choose between good and evil. An animal does not choose, it merely acts on instinct. Therefore, there is no such thing as an evil animal. Animals do very cruel things to be sure. Spiders suck the blood from their still living victims. This seems very cruel, but the spider cannot be called “evil” because it is doing exactly what a spider is supposed to do. When a shark eats a human, it isn’t doing so because it is evil, it is doing so because the human is food. Only humans are capable of conscious acts of cruelty or acts of evil. Humans are evil or cruel, not from instinct, but from choice. Here is an example.

Part 7 – Fritz is himself a kind of monster, a hunchback like Quasimodo. Perhaps like Quasimodo, Fritz has been bullied and abused by people his whole life. Frankenstein certainly bullies Fritz. But unlike Quasimodo, Fritz is not basically kind and good. The abuse he endured has turned him cruel, even evil.

Fritz is like the Phantom, Erik, who said, “If I am a monster it is because men have made me that way”.

Fritz obviously enjoys torturing the monster, but he apparently got too close and the monster gets a hold of him and strangles him with his own whip. If the monster is only an animal we cannot not call this a murder, but if the monster is human we have to ask ourselves, “Is this a murder?” Is it? If the monster were arrested and taken to court to stand trial for murder would you say he was guilty or not guilty? The monster also kills Dr. Waldman. Would you say he was guilty or not guilty in that case? Write your thoughts down for both cases in your notes.

Part Eight
In a court of law, any good lawyer would offer the following defense for the killing of Fritz. Fritz had the monster chained up and was torturing him with a whip and with fire. To stop the torture the monster acted in self-defense. Similarly, Dr. Waldeman had promised that the monster would be “painlessly destroyed” but he drugs the monster into unconsciousness and then begins a “dissection”. But “dissections” are carried out on dead specimens, not living ones. What Waldman is really doing is performing a vivisection. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about vivisection:

Vivisection (from Latin: vivus — “alive,” and sectio — “cutting”) is defined as surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. Human vivisection has been perpetrated as a form of torture. (emphasis added).

Human vivisection is itself murder. The monster kills Waldeman as he makes his first surgical incision. Again, I would argue that killing Dr. Waldman was an act of self-defense. Every court in the world accepts self-defense as a legitimate legal defense against the charge of murder. If you kill someone who is trying to kill you or do you serious physical harm, it is not murder it is self-defense.

But let us recall that the monster kills a third person as well, little Maria. 

Part Nine
The little girl Maria is left alone by her father who goes off to work. The monster comes out of the forest and Maria sees him. What does Maria see? At first, she is shocked to see a stranger, but children see differently from adults. When the adults look at the monster they are afraid of him because he is big and ugly, but Maria sees what he really is…at least what she believes he really is…another child. She is completely unafraid of him. She does what children do when they meet other children, she invites him to play. But the monster does not know how to play. He was never taught how to play. In fact, he was never taught anything except to sit down when told to do so. His whole life up until this moment has been about being knocked out, drugged, chained, tortured with fire and a whip, and cut with surgical knives. His creator once showed him the light, but that was quickly taken away from him. After that, his only experiences have been with darkness and pain.

Part Ten – James Whale and his writers radically changed the story from the original. In the book, the monster kills a number of people in order to take revenge on Frankenstein for creating him and then rejecting him. In other words, the monster is evil in the book. But not in the movie. In the movie, he does become violent and dangerous, but that is because of how others have treated him. In fact, he only kills in self-defense or by accident. The mayor said that he would see that “justice” was done, but when he sees the monster he shouts, “There he is, the murderer”. The monster has yet to even be charged with a crime, yet rather than try to take the monster prisoner, the mob of villagers burn the mill with the monster inside. It is a horrible death, especially so since the monster’s greatest fear is fire. He must have died in great fear and agony…but that was what his whole brief life was in any case.

I am going to conclude this lecture by pointing out something about the final image in this scene. The villagers are burning the monster to death in the windmill. Please look at the image carefully and try to guess what Whale was doing with this image.