Speaker 1 (00:00): Coming up on Art Palace, Speaker 2 (00:03): I think it speaks to today, science done in darkness are non-transparent. I mean, it's important that there's transparency. The algorithms that rule our lives are done in secret. You don't know Google's algorithm? Speaker 1 (00:27): Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Christopher Holland, professor at University of Cincinnati. This episode was recorded live on September 6th, 2018 as part of our moving images film program. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein celebrated its 200th birthday this year, and Chris joined me on stage for this conversation after a screening of the 1931 film adaptation starring Boris Karloff. Speaker 2 (01:14): Alright, so thank you for sticking with us. And so I'm here with Christopher Holland from University of Cincinnati and specifically dap. Correct. What's your full title exactly? I have a couple titles. I'm an associate professor of DAP in the School of Art, and then I'm the director of Licensure for art education. Okay. And so the reason I actually invited you is because one of my colleagues I think had you in class and mentioned that you've regularly used the novel Frankenstein as a teaching source, and so I kind of was curious how you got into Frankenstein and where that started for you personally. Yeah, I think I read it in high school. I think some people have to read it and I didn't really appreciate it, and then I had to read it in a college course that was about how source material was adapted to film and I kind of liked it then, but I still wasn't into it. It was only when I studied philosophy and someone's like, oh, it's like a super deep philosophical novel that I reread it and said, yeah, that's when I got into it. So I used to use it when I taught at Indiana University intro to Philosophy Speaker 2 (02:27): And we would use it to talk about Jean Jacque Rousseau in enlightenment and things like that. So we kind of pulled themes out of it from that. And since I got into the University of Cincinnati, I use it for a class called Philosophy of Technology. So we talk about what technology is, how it's influenced western culture for a long time, and it's a very sort of technologically forward thinking novel. If you think about what's in it, bioengineering, life sciences and even some sort of social science in there about society being good. Are you innately evil? Are you innately good? There's a lot of deep themes in it from all angles. Yeah, actually I reread the book before this and I had read it probably 10 years ago and it had been a while, but I realized when I first read it, I thought, oh, everybody is so much more familiar with, I feel like the film adaptation of it that has shaped the public consciousness of what Frankenstein is, right? Speaker 2 (03:30): And so this Boris Karloff version of the monster is the, in everyone's mind what Frankenstein is, and then when you read the novel you're like, what is going on? The monster when you finally, he starts talking first. I'm like, wait, he talks, he speaks and then he's so eloquent and talking about reading Paradise Lost and you're just like, this is not what I expected at all. It's such a departure or the movie is such a departure really from the source material. Yeah. I'm curious who's read the novel? So your initial reactions are probably the same as ours? Wow. They totally changed the plot. I mean, they went after the cheap laugh and the cheap gag with American cinema. But for me, the most fundamental thing is the monster and the novel is sort of innately good and he's corrupted by society or here they switch it so he gets the bad brain, so he's innately bad and society corrects him or something like that. Speaker 2 (04:31): I think that's a huge philosophical difference the author was trying to say in the novel, which is she was a student of Rousseau who said famously we're born good. It's society that makes us bad. And there's a bunch of incidents in the novel where the monster encounters, obviously he looks different and he's scary, but it's society that sort of gets him sort of angry versus here where he's sort of got the criminal brain and he's already mad or something like that. Having just read the novel and then watching this, that was one of the first things that popped out to me was that scene with the brain and how much is put on the normal brain, abnormal brain, and we keep going forth and that idea of that's all it is, is just this one thing. And yeah, it's a lot simpler than what happens in the novel where he kind of goes through a hole, that scene or where he's describing watching the family, which kind of becomes in the movie we just watched the sort of very quick scene with Maria that he goes through basically the evolution of all of man. Speaker 2 (05:42): It kind of feels like it's like he's going through all of society up to the present and then is basically when they see him and are prejudiced against him by his looks basically and can't trust him, that's sort of where he turns. So yeah, I had that same exact thought while watching this that just switching it to this very binary, abnormal normal is just way less complicated. Definitely. Yeah. I think too it's relevant for today. I think a debate in our society is are you innately bad? Right? We sort of make the individual be responsible for their failings or is it society, right? The constructions around you that influence you from a young age to adolescents to adulthood? Is that what makes you perform bad acts or something like that? I think our society deals with that even today. So for a 200 year old novel or piece of fiction, it's really like a novella. Speaker 2 (06:40): It's like pre novel, even it's letters and things. I think it's a deep question that we're still wrestling with nature versus nurture, things like that. How does that affect everything? So I teach art education, so a lot of what we talk about is that question, how do you create an environment for someone to succeed or not? And in a novel that's really important because the monster just wants someone to teach him. He wants a father, he eventually wants a wife and things. But I think that's a key element that's missing from the film, but also one that we struggle with in today's world. Yeah. Well that's another idea when you kind of brought up the idea of art education, I'm sure this might be a reason you use the novel as another idea that comes up a lot more I feel like in the novel is the idea of the monster as his creation and the way that kind of relates to art and the art we maybe put out in the world and the things we make and then the consequences that has. Speaker 2 (07:41): So that's a big concept. I feel like that goes on in the novel too. Yeah, for sure. I think it's really, it's not just art, it's all of art science, it's things. I think we've created tons of chemicals, we don't even know what they actually do to the environment. If you're following the recent controversy of Monsanto and Roundup, I mean was that studied long enough to figure out, so someone created something and sort of said, just put it in the environment. Artists do that all the time. Maybe they'll create something controversial, they'll create something what they think is beautiful and put it out there and then consequences happen. And then this city had the Mapplethorpe incident, I would put it that way a long time ago where people didn't like the content of the art, but the artists liked it. And it's sort of all these themes reverberate in different sort of domains of thinking and action, which I think is really interesting. Speaker 2 (08:33): I think that's why the novel just survives. I mean, 200 years is a long time to keep and it seems as you just read it, but every time I go through it, just the themes just keep being relevant, more relevant as our science becomes more and more sort of God-like able to create different things that we couldn't create before, not just a Frankenstein's monster, but genetic engineering. You've all seen dystopian novels or things where in the future we'll create people how we want them, things like that. So in a sense, Dr. Frankenstein is us. Oh, I should mention, I totally didn't explain why I put this painting up behind us too. Oh yes, Lucerne. So yeah, lake Lucerne, one of the reasons I just picked this was because another thing that's sort of different in the novel is the novel really is kind of a globe trotting or at least Europe trotting journey. Speaker 2 (09:29): It kind of hops all over the place, but a big chunk of it takes place in Switzerland here in the movie it's all very kind of Bavarian feeling and it's much more condensed down, but so much of it takes place, I think more lake Geneva than Lake Lucerne. But there's a lot of descriptions of Dr. Frankenstein on his boat out in the lake and the description of these mountains looming around the lake. And that's another thing is this kind of romantic ideas of nature that come up so much in the novel that you're really missing in the movie as well because it's so much more meditative. I mean, you described the way it's written through letters as well. I mean, I don't really envy anyone the task of turning that novel into a movie because really a big challenge. It's not an easy thing to turn into a movie. Speaker 2 (10:22): They're doing very different things. I mean that mood of nature, again, I would argue it's from Rousse who was very into nature. Has anyone been to Lucerne or Switzerland in the winter, right? Summer? Yeah. I mean it is an interesting place to go and just experience in the summer it's nice to get all the glacial melt so you have all this nice turquoisey water and it's all happy, but it is sort of depressing in the winter storms and things of the mountains. But yeah, I think the nature theme is hard to capture with film. It's so much part of the sort of innate part of the novel, especially in the Arctic at the end because the monster and the novel is sort of better than human. So he is got better muscle structure. He he's got a brain of a scientist or something, I can't remember exactly. Speaker 2 (11:16): So he is sort of in the next iteration really. He's not sort of the failings body parts scavenge, he's sort of like an adaptation or a sort of enhancement so he can run faster, jump higher, he's smarter. I mean all these things are part of it and so he can survive harsher climates. So I think that sort of natural part is really important in the novel too that's missing from this particular adaptation. Yeah, yeah, I mean that's definitely a big part of it, him being able to survive the cold and that which sort of bookends the novels of being in the Arctic and him of just being able to survive in that and that idea of the better than human is. Another thing I thought about when comparing these two is I think both the movie and the novel have had really big ripples effects on pop culture in big ways, but I think the movie has obviously affected the horror genre really strongly and I think it's not too hard to draw a lot of comparisons between Frankenstein and Zombies and the Undead. Speaker 2 (12:23): There's a lot more focus in the film on his corpse nature, even though that's true in the novel, but it's just not really dwelled upon as much. Whereas the novel as I was reading it recently, I was like, oh, this is Westworld, it's Blade Runner. It's really more about the, like you're saying, above human, the cyborg or something that is, and again, the idea is much more about Frankenstein has created this thing and that's much more of the idea than just the horror of an ugly stupid thing. Yeah, I call it a sophisticated who so you don't know are the bad guys, the society are the bad guys, you or the reader. I mean you're in this convoluted sort of interesting horror. It's not as simple as the novel adaptation. That's why I think Westworld's a good kind of connection there and any movie that's sort of questions like, wait a minute, am I part of the problem here? Speaker 2 (13:24): What I encounter the monster and be mean to him or would I be kind? You think I'll be kind to this, if you saw that, you'd be scared too and you might throw rocks at the wretch as they call it in the novel. But I think we use the word posthuman sometimes to describe what's going to happen as we begin to enhance our own bodies with what's going to begin to happen when we are able to get special glasses to see different sort of spectrum of light and things. And that's sort of part of the novel. They didn't talk about it in terms of robots, but it is more biological, which I think is really interesting. Back to the nature theme very, I dunno, there's not lightning and stuff, but there's like tanks, kind like a female womb comparison. He's birthed in a tank. It's got a bit more, I think of a biological horror, which I think is maybe more scary creeping up on our own society with the way we're beginning to sort of, I don't know, splice our genes gene therapies. Speaker 2 (14:26): So there's a plus to it, which is medical advancement. And then there's this sort of unknown, which I think is what the novel tries to raise. On the one hand, it's great to create something. On the other hand, what happens without the proper reflection and thinking about your creation? Yeah, there's so many things when you just brought up the lightning. There's so many things that are iconic and I think probably a lot of people are like me that you've, your understanding of Frankenstein first through its movie or really more accurately its parodies. And so talking about these adaptations, it's so many levels. I mean, I think I probably understood more about the movie Frankenstein before I'd ever seen it because I had seen it pared and mimicked in so many other things. Even as I was watching it right now, I was just like, oh, it's in Rocky Horror. Speaker 2 (15:16): I was sitting there thinking about all these other things that are like, oh, I never thought about the whip scene. I was just like, oh, it's just like when Franken ferer comes and whips rock rocky. And so you're used to seeing all of that, but then when you read the book, you're kind of shocked by all the things that aren't there. You're like, wait, there's no here Fritz. In our mind it's ego. Or even though that happens much later, there's no lightning. Even the, that's another big thing about just sort of how they spend time differently. I think it's really shocking to read the book and realize that the creation of the monster and the birthing of the monster is like that. It's just, it happens and you're almost like, wait, did I miss something? Are there pages missing in my book? Because you're used to imagining this big drawn out thing with the lightning and all of that, and then it's just kind of very much like, yeah, I made the monster, and then the monster's gone almost immediately the monster disappears. Speaker 2 (16:18): And then, so it's totally a different pacing and sense of the narrative in that sense as well. Yeah, I think the author, Mary Shelley did a brilliant thing not trying to describe with some sort of contemporary scientific process. She sort of just has it happen. So 200 years later, it's the black box. We can imagine how it happens with our current ideas of how things could be, I dunno, created like that. And then the second thing, yeah, the pacing I think in the novel is really interesting, this dread all the time because the monster disappears, but then it appears at certain points. I don't want to give it away for those who haven't read it, but that's a huge part of this tension that it's there but not there. And I think that was also brilliant by the author to sort of create this horror tension of like, is it going to come at any time? Speaker 2 (17:10): It could just be there. And I think that's really missing from the film adaptation. There's an element of that in the house at the end where he strangles the bride to be, I forgot Elizabeth. Elizabeth, sorry. Yeah. But the whole novel is deep with this dread, which I think is really important and it's hard to capture in film maybe. Yeah. Although, I mean, I can imagine there's so many scenes that in the book that stick out to me of him seeing the figure just in the lightning flash and stuff that do feel really cinematic, even though to me. But you can imagine how that could translate really well. I'm assuming you probably have watched basically every adaptation of this. I've watched quite a bit. Yeah. My favorite was the Robert De Niro one. Yeah, the Kenneth Brenna. Yeah, that was as close as I think they kind of got to the novel. Speaker 2 (18:05): Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. I lost count. There's like 20 something I think maybe more over the years of just as I was sitting here, I realized too when the credits came up too, it says adapted from a play. So the version we just watched is not the first film version of Frankenstein either, and then it's adapted from a stage version, which I think that's another thing when you watch an old movie like this, it becomes really clear. Oh yeah, there is that sense of, it's still very much like watching a play that's filmed, especially in the way when it becomes immediately obvious too, is there's no music, there's no score. It's just as if you were sitting in a theater and every moment is not scored for you. Yeah, I think that's really cool. I mean, so much of current contemporary cinemas is so manipulated with the audio and to have that sort of still have an element. Speaker 2 (18:58): I mean, granted, someone mentioned this sort of rag doll effects, but I think given the technology at the time, it still has a bit of horror in it that audience find interesting even today. Well, I think there's so many things that look really, really great in it too. When I was watching it, I mean especially I kind of like that artifice of seeing those painted backdrops and things, but I mean those scenes, especially at the end during the chase I think are beautiful. And the shot of the windmill on fire, all of that is really beautifully shot. So I mean, I can understand having to translate that novel into film, you are looking for more stuff to happen probably. And the novel just is so much in Frankenstein's head and then the monster's head, and it's all about thought. So I can understand sort of distilling it down to something that's a little more like, okay, we need things to happen. Speaker 2 (19:56): It's kind of like Dune the novel Dune, another sci-fi novel that's very cerebral, and you hear the thoughts of everybody every time someone's tried to adapt that. It's been an interesting love hate thing. I think the same thing with Frankenstein. I mean, there's so much in it that's just you get reading that you can't just sort of put on film or else we'd be here for six hours watching this slowly paced thing unravel where this guy's, I don't know, talking about his thoughts or something. And then the other conditions of the film, the commercial conditions. So you have to get people to want to see it. So I think there's a lot that translating the novel to Hollywood, so to speak. You just have to make compromises and that's what we have. But yeah, the classic neck things, that's really funny. I think just seeing it Boris with that on is really cool. Well, we can open it up, see if anyone else has any questions so you guys can join the conversation. But I think I had a question down here first and then I'll come back to you. Okay. Speaker 3 (21:07): Was the movie set, did it try to depict Germany of the 1920s and thirties or Germany of the 18 hundreds? I was a little confused by the costumes and so forth. Speaker 2 (21:20): Yeah, that's a great question. That is something that I was reading is really weird, and it is kind of like this alternate almost universe where the costuming is very 1930s, but then the technology and everything feels kind of more 19th century and especially when we get to that scene with the Bavarian villagers and everything feels a lot older. So it is a really strange sense of time. Speaker 3 (21:49): My other question was, rather than that, the creators of the movie kind of went for the cheaper or easier route of creating the monster like that perhaps they were actually changed it to reflect the scientific thinking of that day, because as I understand it, in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, there was the thinking that criminals were born that way and there's a lot of eugenics and you could identify who would be incredible by their appearance, their ugliness, things like that. And so perhaps they changed the script from projecting of society causing monster to be bad, to reflect the scientific thinking that he's got a damaged brain, a criminal brain. Speaker 2 (22:43): Yeah, I would agree with that a hundred percent. I was trying to allude to that earlier with the idea that, are we born good? How does that develop? I think that's definitely true of the time as eugenics behaviorism, they're all sort of coming to the fruition in the early 20th century. Speaker 4 (23:02): I think the most startling thing I saw during the movie was I kept going, expecting putting on the Ritz at some Speaker 2 (23:08): Point, Speaker 4 (23:10): And then when I saw the abnormal, I kept thinking, Abby Normal, and it's been years since I read Frankenstein, but in the back of my head, it was just like this massive worldwide revenge fantasy. It seemed like the creator had no responsibility to his creation and his creation exacted this horrendous removal of everything that this guy's life had. I don't know. What's your feeling about it as far as revenge responsibility of the creator? I think there's some things that are kind of going on with Westworld and some of the other things that are similar, but I'd like you to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on that. Speaker 2 (23:53): Yeah, I agree. I think one element we didn't talk about is sort of this, there's a religious undertone versus sort of a scientific undertone. And in when the novel was written in 1818 or 1816 roughly, that was huge. The enlightenment is coming into fruition. All these scientific discoveries are sort of undercutting the narrative of the Christian world. And one of the big ones is that the creator, if we're saying there's no creator, then we're on our own. So I think that's a huge element of it. And then the revenge is also really interesting because it's sort of very sophisticated revenge. It's not sort of random, and I think that's what the sort of terror or the tension of the novel, that's really good and hard to capture it. So it just shows how the monster is actually a very intelligent, not super being, but he's able to sort of understand what's going to hit Dr. Speaker 2 (24:48): Frankenstein because remember, he really wants him to create a mate because he feels like he's this alone. There's no one else like me. I'm the next generation, I'm the next iteration of human beingness. So actually in the novel, he starts to do it and then I won't give it away, but it doesn't end up working out. And then it's even more revenge. It gets even more. So he still has, even though he's beyond human, he still has some certain human traits and maybe revenge is one of the bad ones he keeps, but it's also enhanced. He can't just jump higher and think longer or whatever. But even his revenge is enhanced in a sense. So I think all that's at play in the novel, and it's really just a great read to reread even, especially given today's sort of ideas about science and our developments about genetic engineering and things like that. Speaker 4 (25:42): Also, as far as the film adaptation, I dunno if you've ever seen Penny Dreadful before? Speaker 2 (25:47): I haven't. Speaker 4 (25:48): Okay. Speaker 2 (25:49): The Speaker 4 (25:49): Depiction of the monster and the relationship to Frankenstein, it's probably the best I've ever seen. Speaker 2 (25:54): Oh, I'll have to Speaker 4 (25:54): Check that out. There's worth all the werewolves and everything else to go Speaker 2 (25:58): Through. That's good. Thanks. Speaker 5 (26:02): The film adaptation, the only thing I ever found that was a similar was the title. It has nothing to do with a book. The book doesn't illustrate anything in this. You have to take this in a historical context. 1931, you're at the height of the depression. The country is going down to tubes and people were looking for pure escapism, Speaker 2 (26:21): And Speaker 5 (26:22): This filled the bill, this in Lely and Universal, which were going out of business until these films hit a niche with a public and brought people into the theaters to purely get away from their lives. And that's what this is. I think, to try to have this even begin to explain the novel is not a connection at all. This was pure escapism. This and a whole genre of universal horror movies that came after this. Those lifted those people out of their daily depression. I want to say one thing I would say for your students here, I think you as a professor and an educator, you have a responsibility to have them work through the dangers and pitfalls. For those of you who are contemplating grave robbing as a career choice, Speaker 2 (27:19): I can just go ahead and pass it that way. Speaker 6 (27:21): So I just kind of have a comment about the film adaptation, especially this whole preconceived notion of whether he's a criminal or not with his brain. I still feel that the director put societal norms on him because immediately he was good. He sat, he listened, he just didn't like fire. He was just trying to survive. And the doctor was just like, oh, you stole a criminal brain. So they started treating him differently. They started whipping him. They started chaining him up, and I feel like they created the monster still, even in the film version, it wasn't him, and he just didn't understand. And I think that's really what the true monster was, is the misunderstanding of what was going on Speaker 2 (28:10): As a future educator. I mean, everybody is recoverable no matter what. I mean, we can always work and work with people. We shouldn't prejudge them because they're labeled criminal brains. That's a really astute catch, Ryan, and I think that was something else I wasn't bringing up earlier, but I think is a fair thing to bring up about the director is also I think knowing that he was gay and bringing in that, I mean, as a gay man watching it, I am constantly going like, oh, Dr. Frankenstein is very queer coded to me. And there's a lot of scenes where that scene where he's talking, I think with his professor about, haven't you ever wanted to do something crazy or something? And I was like, this is so gay. Speaker 2 (29:03): And the idea of the abnormal brain, and again, talking about the, the word homosexual was created as a pathology. And so it comes again from that time of putting people in those kind of boxes where you're not just a person who commits a crime, you are a person who you're a kleptomaniac, right? That is a part of your identity now. And so I think that's another thing that I do think is really interesting to read the movie. And again, when I'm making that comparison with Rocky Horror, I'm like, well, that's where it's coming. I mean, obviously there's so many things that the monster that you've created, and when the monster's destroyed, he gets happily married. Right? Yeah. That Speaker 6 (29:51): Actually makes me think of another Speaker 2 (29:53): Point I was going to have. Speaker 6 (29:54): What the other person said about, I think of the time Frankenstein didn't have any responsibility for his creation, is that a reflection on our ideas of that we're not responsible for the things we create, like the atom bomb and stuff like that. So that was a good comment that yeah, I felt like Frankenstein didn't get in any trouble. He was really Speaker 2 (30:19): The one who murdered Speaker 6 (30:20): People, created the monster. Speaker 2 (30:22): Yeah. I mean, you could make that connection. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't think so. And he asked just because it wasn't on Mike, Speaker 6 (30:31): Whether Speaker 2 (30:32): The crowd understood that Frankenstein had created the monster. Speaker 6 (30:36): Yeah, it is really unclear Speaker 2 (30:38): Whether they Speaker 6 (30:38): Do Speaker 2 (30:39): Understand that. And I kind of had the same thought you did. I shouldn't be talking on two mics, but the idea of that responsibility did seem a little odd. When Frankenstein is in the angry mob. It's like, wait a minute. You don't get to be there. You don't get to be in the angry torch mob. Yeah. I think it speaks to today, science done in darkness are non-transparent. So things we're creating in labs all over the world. I mean, it's important that there's transparency. Even artificial intelligence, a lot of the leaders of that science want it out in the open. The algorithms that rule our lives are done in secret. You don't know the Google's algorithm. I mean, it has a parallel to genetic engineering. If it's done in crazy windmills in the middle of the Alps, who knows what's going to happen. But if it's done in the light of day at a university where people can see if the ethical responsibilities are there with the research, I think that's important too. Speaker 2 (31:36): So yeah, responsibility on us or me as a person at an institution, a university is important for transparency, but also I think just morally, ethically, things like that. But back to the pathology, homosexuality, it's funny too that they used shock therapy that was a therapy to cure this sort of abnormality that they labeled in complete eugenics, kind of bon science era. And I think a lot of the, now that you said that, I'm like, yeah, you're right. There's a way to watch this with a really interesting lens that I think even makes the film maybe more interesting to us today than it might've been before you mentioned that. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other questions or comments? Oh, one back here. Speaker 6 (32:24): I just wanted to see what you guys thought about the impact of some of the visual things in this movie as far as the art and just some of the things you see in it are so iconic that you're still seeing those types of things today in a lot of horror films and art and imagery, the way the cemetery looks at the beginning, and then you've got the skeleton with the sword. You wouldn't see that imagery in an actual cemetery, but you see it all the time in horror films and just the torch mob. We are still seeing things like that and just the way the dungeon type sets look and the windmill and everything. If you remember the movie Van Helsing, they did the whole flaming windmill at the end of that. And I think the impact of the visuals of a lot of the universal films were so influential, and we're still seeing that today. So I just wanted to know what your thoughts were. Speaker 2 (33:33): Yeah, I think it's very true. I think we're at a point too where it's cool and clever to subvert those go-to imaging or go-to tropes of horror films or any type of film genre. And I think, yeah, it's just part of the history of film, and it comes from plays and stage sets, and it's just, yeah, it's very interesting to trace all that imagery back. And then in art, it's really interesting too, because a lot of the imagery comes from medieval art or gothic art, things like that horror kind of thing. When I was watching it, especially the cemetery scene at the beginning, I picked up on that look too, which to me had a lot of inspiration from earlier German expressionist silent films. That was the big thing I kind of noticed like, oh, obviously all of the diagonals in the movie, it's really diagonal heavy. Speaker 2 (34:23): That's one of the things I love about the laboratory set is it's like there's no right angles anywhere. It's all weird angles. That beautiful shot of Dr. Frankenstein looking down from that window and that just weird overhang, it's so bizarre. The architecture of it almost doesn't make sense when you try to figure out how does this even, it's hard to even get a grasp on it. So yeah, I think you're spot on. And one of the things too, I think we are talking about how the monster and this version of the Monster has become the public consciousness version of the monster. And I think part of it is on the strength of its design. It looks so good. And I think that's something the novel doesn't really spend a lot of time describing. I mean, it doesn't give us a really great good image, but I mean, there's a lot of, I feel like horror adaptations that movies are visual and books are not. Speaker 2 (35:23): And so I think it's common for the movie adaptation to have to figure out, well, we have to show something, so we better make it look really interesting. I remember reading The Shining and Going, it was the same thing, where's The Twins? The Hedge Maze? All of the things I love from The Shining are not really in it. And it's one of those things where I feel like Kubrick's vision and adaptation of that is to me more interesting than reading the Source novel, just because the imagery is so evocative. And also, he doesn't really explain any of it. He just lets it be mysterious. So he'll take some things from the book and then just never explain it. So we have another comment, and this might need to be our last one for the evening. Speaker 4 (36:09): Just a question, I don't know. It may be something in trivia. It can probably look up on Google, but there was a Spanish version of Dracula in 1931. I don't know if there was ever a Spanish version of Frankenstein was there. Speaker 2 (36:23): I don't know. Speaker 4 (36:24): But it actually had different actors. Actually, the Dracula one actually had the same sets, except they did it at nighttime and it was completely different cast. Speaker 2 (36:33): Oh, interesting. Speaker 4 (36:33): And it's interesting because the sexuality of that particular film, when you see it between the LL Goi one, it's completely different. The pacing's different. It's almost like a completely different film. So if you get a chance, keep an eye out for that one. I don't know if there's a Frankenstein version. I kind of doubt it though. Speaker 2 (36:51): Yeah, I'm not sure. But it isn't worth noting just kind of discussing the sexuality and things that this movie is pre Hollywood code too. So they were getting away with some stuff in this movie that would not have flown just a few years later. So a lot of people were pretty horrified by the Lake drowning scene. And even I read the line where he says, now I know what it feels to be. God was pretty controversial, and that probably would not have been allowed years later. Well, thank you so much for joining me tonight in this conversation, and thank you all for coming. Thanks. Speaker 1 (37:44): Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. General admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking. The special exhibition on view right now is Collecting Calligraphy Arts of the Islamic World. If you've ever wanted to improve your drawing skills, sign up for our studio class on drawing. It meets Thursday evenings in the month of October and is open to people of all ages and abilities. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Efron Music by Al. And always, please rate and review us. It really helps others find the show. I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.