© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 11
There’s something you may need to know. The guy with the stitches round his head, the bolts through his neck and the face like Saturday morning’s hangover was not Frankenstein. Frankenstein was the guy who stitched all the bits together and took a chance with the voltage.
If you can get past the lumbering Victorian prose and all the clichéd Hollywood imagery, ‘Frankenstein’ is the rather cool story of an well-meaning, average-Joe scientist doing what guys who wear lab coats do best: monstrous heresy. Pretty much everything that happens is entirely predictable: a couple of innocent people die because the beta version goes wrong and everyone else gets confused, scared and angry. All that’s needed to update the plotline to total modern-day relevancy is a bit of Republican moralising and a strongly worded statement from the Vatican.
If you can see through the B-grade movie appeal and sidestep all the standard moralizing, ‘Frankenstein’ is also a rather fun allegory for everyday life. If you doubt me, think back to your original first date.
No doubt the excitement caused you to see spots in front of your eyes. You probably knew everything was going to be great, that your love would last forever and that you were going to make babies, hopefully sooner rather than later, and at least every night when you got married, and / or his or her parents allowed you to move in. But the first date probably didn’t work out that way, did it?
Maybe he wasn’t romantic enough, was too keen on the babies bit or got too drunk. Maybe she decided to keep her honour, wanted you to meet her parents or told her girlfriends a joke about your zits. And one if not both of you thought the other was a monster. If it fell apart that way, that’s life. If it did all work out, congratulations on every anniversary, or at least your choice of marriage counselor.
The point about how the first date goes so spectacularly wrong is that we have a way of making people we want out of people who don’t actually exist, just like Frankenstein, and often with far more spectacularly messy results.
The reality of the first date ‘Frankenstein’ analogy is that without the blinding stars in our eyes, we would probably all degenerate into the sort of cynicism that leads to a rapid decline in population numbers. If not for the large amounts of optimism involved, we’d all stay home on Saturday nights and try to avoid the misery of colleagues and associates by staying away from work Monday mornings. Or is that just creeping maturity?
There’s a theory that the need to propagate the species is a genetic trait. It leads into all sorts of avenues, like the need to accumulate and the need to protect other individuals of the same species. Personally, I think Mother Nature has a twisted sense of humour with something against card-carrying misogynists.
When the idealism and the passion subside however, there is a chance to get to know the other party in the relationship. If there is a common bond, then the relationship will endure, provided that the bond isn’t yet more smoke and mirrors.
But there is a different approach that comes from another set of stories. Once upon a time a princess kissed a frog, a prince noticed the beauty of a scullery maid or a man showed kindness to a beggar. And everything turned out all right, except for the wicked stepmothers and evil witches.
Seeking beauty amongst ugliness is apparently perverse, but often sound. With the few standard exceptions, the rule is that everyone has something to recommend them, as long as you can get past the ugly bits.
Tom Waits redefines the idea of a ‘gravel-voice’ to the point where even the gravel might feel offended, yet his lyrics and emotional depth stand out like a beautiful young woman in a town full of aged miners. The dark hours show up the moon and stars. Even politicians have their smiles.
Opposites come in pairs. There is beauty and there are beasts in all of us. It all depends on how you approach the situation in the first place.
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