Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Abbott, Stacey

Titel

A symposium on Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and women in sf

Ist Teil von

• Science fiction film and television, 2018-06, Vol.11 (2), p.157-176

Ort / Verlag

Liverpool: Liverpool University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Since J. Searle Dawley’s adaptation of Frankenstein for Edison Studios in 1910, cinema – and subsequently television – has demonstrated a continued fascination with Mary Shelley’s creation.Frankenstein has been adapted (James Whale’s Frankenstein 1931), parodied (Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein 1974), copied (‘Some Assembly Required’, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (22 Sep 1997)) and domesticated (The Munsters1964–6). Through these stories, Shelley’s tale of scientific hubris and masculine desire to co-opt the power of woman and God to create life continued to inspire horror, tears and laughter. In 2013, the Canadian production company Temple Street, in collaboration with BBC America, launched a television series, Orphan Black (2013–17), equally preoccupied with these themes but updated to twenty-first-century concerns about human cloning, cyborg technology and biocapitalism. Significantly, the series negotiates these themes at a formal as well as narrative level. Created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett, and starring and executive-produced by Tatiana Maslany, this series tells the story of a woman, Sarah Manning, who discovers that she is the product of human cloning when she comes face-to-face with a group of identical clones...Through these women, the series picks up Shelley’s preoccupation with the dangers and effects of unchecked scientific experimentation while raising ethical questions around the commercial exploitation of cloning and genetic modification. Importantly, it builds upon Frankenstein ’s study of the nature of humanity in the form of the Creature, now expanded to explore and negotiate fluid notions of identity, sexuality, gender and biology.