It was really good. Like I really liked the book. Like, I don't like the main character. It kind of sucks -
No, he's horrible.
But like - it sucks that history remembers like, oh yes, Frankenstein's monster instead of like another name. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, it's, it's kind of a shame.
You know what also sucks? Alright, I really hate when people refer to the snowman as frosty because frosty was actually the scientist who created the snowman, not the snowman itself.
Wait, is that true?
No, I'm doing a bit because we're talking about frosty and Frankenstein today.
Hi, I'm Juliet.
I'm Katherine.
On this episode of I'll Be Pod for Castmas: We're talking about "Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley, through the lens of the song, Frosty the Snowman.
We are. Can you remind me why we're doing this?
Partly because it's the premise of I'll be Pod for Castmas.
Oh, yeah.
So part of the idea of I'll Be Pod for Castmas is exploring, analyzing and unpacking different parts of Christmas media through the lens of classical literature. By thanks to a donation incentive, we need to do a Halloween episode. And so we're going to be looking at a piece of classic literature that's very Halloween-y: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, through the lens of a piece of Christmas pop culture: Frosty the Snowman.
Yes, I love it. Let's get started.
If you think about the cultural idea of Frankenstein, especially before reading this book, what do you picture?
So pretending I haven't read Mary Shelley? I hear Frankenstein and I see that green monster with the bolts in his neck, Boris Karloff that's movie adaptations. I think about like, science as a cautionary tale and like the evil scary monster that the mad scientist creates, and it's alive and all of that good stuff.
So Mary Shelley's book, it actually hand waves a lot of that mad scientist science part. You know, the flipping of the big switches, Igor going and getting the brain and the lightning, none of that's here at all. In like the history of science as an academic discussion gets plenty of time for the actual biology, chemistry or composition of a living person from parts of cadavers is skipped over. The spectacle of a lot of adaptations is often pointing to the wrong place.
Right. So in a way, it's a little bit closer. The Mary Shelley's book is closer to kind of the logic behind Frosty the Snowman, because that also kind of has a lot of that hand waving away the logistics of like, how things are created. How does it go?
Oh, sure. There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found for when they placed it on his head, he began to dance around. And like Frosty the Snowman is not a cautionary tale about putting hats on snowman, or you'll be playing God. And neither to me is Frankenstein. Really, though I know that's a really common reading of the concept.
If you like google "What's the theme of Frankenstein?" It's along those lines of be careful about doing science and the ethical implications of what you're doing. And I think it's fair to read it in that way. And to say that like maybe that's when Mary Shelley was intending. She did call it a Modern Prometheus, which is a reference to a Greek mythology that's kind of about the dangers of like humans trying to have the power of God. odds. And like, that's all well and good. That's a valid reading. But I would argue that we're reading this book in 2022. So we have about two centuries of scientific advancements since Mary Shelley wrote it. So it's almost like, too late.
If you're reading this, it's too late.
It's too late to say, Oh, be careful about your science, because we already have the science. So, I mean, like, kind of the first thing that comes to mind is like artificial intelligence, like we have sort of this not quite human, but capable of pretending to be human type. Things fairly common in
you know, like, Oh, I'm doing this modern Frankenstein. Is it? Isn't it interesting? It's about this AI?
Yeah. And, I'll be honest, I'm not really interested in talking about AI. Like, in general, but especially for this if that's okay. Unless you're really interested in AI, we can. We can go there. But
no, I think we can really focus on what we're able to unpack by using this lens of Frosty the Snowman.
Right. And so if we're thinking about Frosty the Snowman, and we're looking at Shelley's text in both cases, it's like, Okay, we have frosty or we have this creation by a human that is human-like... it's a it's a creature. And it acts like a human and it exists, we're not going to worry about the logistics of how it's here. Just, it's here.
What is we see already created: now what? Right? Yeah,
do we - how do we respond? Do we dance and play around with them? Or do we run away screaming?
This is a great segue into giving some summary of the book for those who need a refresher or who haven't read it.
That's a great idea, especially because the book is so different from a lot of those adaptations in sort of a cultural idea of like, what I can sign is, um, so how about I give a quick recap of the book, and then you give a quick quick recap of Frosty the Snowman.
Sounds great to me.
So, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein actually begins with a guy named Walton, who is on a journey north writing letters to his sister. (mm whatcha say plays). And he comes across this man dying on the ice. This man is Victor Frankenstein. He's the scientist who has discovered the secret of life. And as we said, there's not a lot of like, the book kind of glosses over that because he's like, Oh, it's too dangerous to tell you how this happened. But I created a being using the parts of dead humans and brought it to life and now like we're having some problems with this, this creation. So Victor, originally the the being that he creates runs away. Victor's family thesis, these mysterious tragedies like the death of his younger brother, and about halfway through the book, Victor tells Walton about how he encountered the Being and the Being came to Victor to tell him what happened ever since, you know, You created me dad and I went off into the world. So the Being narrates how he learned to speak and learn the language by observing this family the delay see family, who have their own tragic follow from nobility backstory. She becomes really fond of this family kind of has this like parasocial relationship with them. And when he tries to introduce himself to them and befriend them, they totally freak out because he looks ugly. And so they're really mean to him, they freak out, they move. The beginning realizes like, Oh, I'm this ugly monster. Nobody's ever going to be friends with me. I'm very lonely. So he goes back to Victor and says, Hey, can you make another person like me? So I'm not so alone? Victor is like yeah, no problem, and then he changes his mind. So he like starts to build a like a wife for the Being and then destroys her; the being retaliates by killing Victor's fiancee. So now Victor is the one looking for revenge. And he goes off into the tundra. Trying to, you know, hunt down the being and kill him and that's when kind of the book starts sort of wrap up because that's How Walton has discovered him Victor dies Walton has this interesting altercation with the beginning so we know like okay Victor wasn't just making this up like this is a real thing but the kind of like the just that's the that's the the the big plot points of Frankenstein so just so we're all on the same page. You have less to explain, Juliet. It's an interesting book because it's there's these layers of narrating you get like the being is talking to his creator who's talking to Walton who's writing these letters. So it's really cool that like, I think a lot of time slow. The adaptations of Frankenstein don't do justice to that really interesting like layering that effect.
There's also layers to the Frosty the Snowman song, we're not getting a direct account, it's all "they say." Here's the song: Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul, with a corncob pipe and a button nose in two eyes made out of coal. Frosty the Snowman is a fairy tale. They say he was made of snow, but the children know he came to life one day, there must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found for when they placed it on his head, he began to dance around. Oh, Frosty the Snowman was alive as he could be in the children's say he could laugh and play just the same as you and me, are Frosty the Snowman knew the sun was hot that day. So we said, let's run and we'll have some fun now, before I melt away, down to the village with a broom stick in his hand running here. They're all around the square saying Catch Me If You Can. He led them down the streets of town, right to the traffic cop. And he only paused a moment when he heard him holler stop. Oh, Frosty the Snowman had to hurry on his way. But he waved goodbye, saying "Don't you cry! I'll be back again someday."
Yayyy. I think it's important that we're acknowledging that we're getting these different layers of narration, because who's telling the story shapes what we know about it, and like, how we react to it. So like, I think it's really interesting that we get Walton point of view and Victor's point of view to people who are very, not sympathetic towards the being and then we get the beings point of view. And, and by the way, I I've intentionally been saying, being instead of monster, because it's like, a little bit less loaded. Are you okay with that?
Yes, I think especially that, I want to be clear that we are both especially sympathetic to the Being, I want to be clear that the being may be put outside like "the set of {Human}", but we're not putting him outside "the set of {Person}". The being is just the most appropriate, neutral name available to us. While he is seen as monstrous it's pretty clear that he was not always and only a monster. If you think of him as a monster at all,
yeah, no, I don't think of him as a monster at all. I think he's considered a monster, by the characters in the book. And perhaps that's why he becomes one but it feels still understandable why he's doing what he's doing. Because he's, when we get his point of view, we see he's fundamentally just a really lonely person. He wants to feel connected to others. He wants people who will love him, he wants to love people like she has such genuine affection for the delay see family when he first encounters them. Like even helps in with their chores and brings woods to them so they don't have to. And yet, when he tries to approach them, they just like immediately on seeing him freak out and reject Him. And it's that rejects rejection like that refusal of seeing him as a person. That's what starts him on the path towards violence.
Yes, and I want to bring in a little bit more of our lens here, where the snowman is described as being as alive as he could be, like, right and I really think that wording is interesting the idea of being as alive I guess you could be, because the beating is also as alive as he could be. We're all socially creative as part of being fully realized as people and the being, he wants to be more alive, not in the sense of not dead, but in the sense that to completely deprive a person of socialization is to deprive them of the fullness of being alive, but he's denied the social recreation, the opportunities to be alive, the being takes the opportunity to be as alive as he could be, despite all of that.
So what is the book saying about opportunities for fully realized lives that are denied? There's a lot that what you said opens up like it makes me think about imprisonment and the cruelty of depriving people of human company by putting them in isolation, but then it and like that's one direction we could go but I think the book is Felixstowe, Lacey's father in law. Oh, totally. I have a little bit more interested personally, in maybe looking at a different way of a fully realized life being stifled. Not to make everything gay, but everything is gay jewel. Yeah. Can we talk about the constant homoerotic subtext of this book? Oh, my God,
there is so much of it. I know we say this about every text we read, but oh my God, there's so much constant. Hola, romanticism.
Yeah, like I usually say, oh, that book wasn't gay enough. But this one is like this is just about gay enough.
And I kinda want to parse out the difference there between like homoeroticism and Homa romanticism. This book is not really about bodies. It's not about their bodies. It's about companionship. This all seems like seriously uninterested in bodies. Even grotesque ones, like the beings or even beautiful ones, we get a lot more about people, this book seems much more interested in persons when it could so easily have been all about bodies instead.
So you're saying Homer, eroticism would be like the body Homer romanticism is the, the companionship.
If you read Moby Dick, it's very easy to get oh, how much have other men's bodies is like, relevant and recognized and just straight up in the text. Whereas the ardent desire for the company of other men in particular in the way that fulfills specific men you fulfill as Walton fulfills Viktor, the way they look to other men for that kind of bonded companionship doesn't ever seem to be through the lens of admiring bodies in that way.
Yeah, there's a lot of friends language. And yeah, like the emphasis on companionship and company. And that's really interesting, especially when we think about the main body of the book, which is the being cuz we're told that he has an ugly body, and that's the source of a lot of his unhappiness, but we don't really get a description of like, like a really vivid, detailed description of what the being looks like, we just get a lot about how he feels ill and alienated because of his body.
And I think with the idea of being alienated because we're your body, it'd be interesting to read the story with a trans lens, because so much of what we know about the beings body is directly through his own experience of dysphoria. I mean, I really think that is the right word for the experience that keeps being relayed to us. Also, I don't mean to make everything about Paradise Lost, but -
But there is a direct reference in Frankenstein to the part of Paradise Lost where Eve admires and understands her form in a reflection? The Being has a really similar moment, which I want to read it out loud. This is the Being speaking, he says: "I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers their grace, beauty and delicate complexions. But how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent Pool. At first I started back and able to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror. And when I became fully convinced that I was in reality, the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification."
Aww,
I know!
And he calls himself a monster, not because of doing anything monstrous. But because that's how he's perceived. And because he literally learns to read and gets his understanding of how the world works. This is wild, if you haven't read this story, he learns to read and gets his understanding of how the world works by reading Paradise Lost.
Yep.
He thinks of himself as a monster because he sees the way he is treated in, he's afraid that he must therefore be Satan. He seeks out Victor his creator, because if Victor can make an Eve for him, then he's Adam. But if Victor doesn't, then he Satan, that's the structure of the world to him.
Love, I love that how you put that because, like, how he fits into the world depends entirely on how Victor and other people in general treat him like, the other characters dictate the story, and he will fit himself as needed based on that. So for me, I think the tragedy of the story is ultimately the inability of Frankenstein and The delay seas and, and all of the characters really to empathize with them and to see him as a human because it's the only way he could be a human is if they see him and say, Yes, you are similar to me.
Which our similarities are more similar than our differences? Yes.
Like we are similar enough that we can be companions to each other and that you are worthy of some decent, some basic decency and respect.
So Juliet, I have a question for you. Bringing this back to Frosty the Snowman we have "Frosty the Snowman was alive as he could be. For the children's say he could laugh and play just the same as you and me." Why is it that the children embrace frosty as just the same as you and me? But in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Nobody, not even the children can embrace the Being in that same way.
I think...
I think it's time to talk about class.
Oh,
oh, you actually have an answer for my question! Tell me more, Juliet.
Okay. So this is an idea where I'm working with this is -
Yeah, I'm so interested! Sorry. Go ahead.
So I think there's a way to do a class reading of this that actually holds up pretty well. The component parts the children have to put together to make Frosty the Snowman are an old silk hat coal a corncob pipe there's even a cop trying to stop them I mean, the children are coded as working class in the snowman they're creating is of a kind with them is equal to the creator the creation is equal to the Creator.
In terms of class Yeah.
When When Victor Frankenstein is creating the being, the Being is ostensibly made by Victor Frankenstein, from lower class people's body parts from you know, parts derived from a potter's field from poppers grave, a common grave. In there's this contrast, here were even the child that we see encountered in the story of Frankenstein is William Frankenstein. That's Victor Frankenstein, younger brother who is like a noble child, a child raised to be spoiled in the upper class. I when he encounters the Being, and he's literally like, "Wait till I tell my father about this!!", like, and it also is tied into the idea that like that child has a different way of viewing the world. Based on stories he has been told. He sees himself as a prince as young princeling, and therefore sees the being as an ogre. Based on stories he's been told based on likely, you know, fantasy stories he's been able to read as this young, little princeling.
He doesn't have a question of am I Adam? Or am I Satan, he knows who he is. He's the, he's a spoiled Prince.
Right and bringing the idea of both William Frankenstein, the the child and the being are impacted by these, the stories they have read and what they've been trained to see, you know, to see oneself as better than the other people you encounter, or to see yourself as loathsome compared to Other.
Super interesting. That also makes me think about the de Lacey family. Because when they're first introduced, there, were meant to understand them as a low income family. But it's interesting because the being does not know what that means. So the first time the beginning encounters the de Laceys, he's like, "Whoa, these people haven't made, they have a structure that keeps them safe from the rain, and they have fire and food. And I don't know why they're crying all the time." And then, after observing them and starting to learn the language, he comes to realize that they're unhappy because they live in poverty, which is a totally new idea to him. And, but then, like, later, with this, we find out like, don't worry readers, they're not really poor. They have good reading. There's kind of that like Oliver Twist thing, or it's like, you can't let your readers actually empathize with a poor character. They have to be related to someone rich, so we know they're a good stock. So yeah, do you want to talk about the de Lacey's backstory?
So the backstory on the Delaceys: a story within the story. So we begin with Felix de Lacy, his sister, Agatha and his father, who is a French aristocrat. A corrupt judge places a Turkish merchant in prison sentenced to death. On the day his daughter Safie has arrived from Constantinople. It's obvious that this is an act of corruption and prejudice and Felix responds honorably trying to find some way to speak to the merchant who is in an isolated prison cell. As we mentioned earlier, you're deprived of human contact. Felix eventually figures out a way to speak to him through greeting the cell came each night to try and accompany and comfort him and find some way of securing his release. This merchant is of course incredibly thankful and offers a huge reward which Felix rebuffs in the course of this process he meets Safi in the two seem to fall for each other. Safie's father is all too happy to promise Felix that they will be wed as soon as he's made safe and out of France, Felix and Safi developed ways of communicating by letters despite not sharing a common language. These very letters are how the being comes to learn the details of the story that he couldn't glean from watching the delay season there poor cottage, he then gives the letters to Victor who eventually gives them to Walton. On the night before the execution is to take place, Felix puts into action, his elaborate plot for freeing the Turkish merchant, and it works! Except after the fact though the merchant is freed and successfully out of the country. Felix's plot is discovered and his father and sister are thrown into prison because, you know. Felix leaves Safie and her father to return to Paris and throw himself before the court to free his father and sister. The judges remain as corrupt as ever, and the best they can do is be exiled, where they find a rural cottage in Germany, where the being encounters them. Because of the diminishing of the police's fortunes Safie's father now refuses to let her marry Felix, but eventually Safi escapes to track down the de Laceys in Germany and reunited and with the wealth she brought with her they're able to live a charmed rustic life even the like very pastoral de Laceys -
Yeah!
actually turn out to just be like temporarily inconvenienced European nobility like while they really poor like actually working for their food that they're occasionally giving up meals to you know, allow the the elderly family to eat. They're not actually living in poverty because they're poor, but because they had this like double crossing fall from grace. It is also a really weird aside in the story that like, ends up feeling more like a like a Rafael Sabatini or Alexander Dumas story a little bit i with a vengeance double cross A betrayal within the delay sees story or something the being is witnessing and using to inform his model of the world and the potential cruelties available to man, this lesson in subtlety and skullduggery proves a useful skill later in his vengeance against his creator.
I think it's cool that that's yet another layer of narration, because the story this, as you said, it's kind of a weird aside, it's substantiated with letters from the Felix de Lacey, that themselves provide yet another layer of narration, and you have the letters within the stories within the letters.
And again, it's like that those letters, because somebody from a noble class has asserted that the story is true. That's what kind of adds a level of verification that Walton seems to need to believe the story.
And so we ended up with this, this situation where, everywhere the being turns, there are these like, glorified noble people who view him as the worst thing that they've ever encountered in their entire life. It's like, oh, yeah, but how many of those people would also treat just any like reasonably ugly working class person the same way?
I don't think we would have gotten into this realization if we had it had Frosty the Snowman to help us out. I love that. Thank you for putting that together, Juliet. Uh, huh. Really interesting.
And while Frosty the Snowman had to hurry on his way, he did wave goodbye, saying, Don't you cry. I'll be back again someday.
So our next episode, we'll shift gears and use Frankenstein as a lens to discuss Frosty Returns, which is the Made for TV animated special in the 90s. That's a sequel to The 1969 Made for TV special. Both of which pretty much defined by childhood. So I'm excited.
I am too! You can find me Juliet on the internet at @mousewifegames if Twitter is still up at this point, but more than likely @ follypersist on tumblr and @folly on co host.
I'm Katherine but you really don't have to find me on the internet. Um, however, you can find the show at @Christmas on co host and wherever podcasts are bound. Until next time, happy Castmas to all!
And to all, a pod night.
Four. 815 1623 42
Andrew Andrew What are you doing?
Oh, hey, Marn. So I'm playing through an alternate reality game, and there's a number station puzzles that we just can't solve. Uh huh. Yeah. So I tried everything else. And I figured that the best way to solve it would be to get into its head and think like a number station. I've been saying numbers into microphones for hours.
Okay, well, I think I have a better idea. What's that? You could just listen to the ARGonauts podcast every two weeks, I could let you know the ins and outs of old args and give you a deep dive on how they were created.
Do you think we could like have a nuanced discussion about game making philosophy and how cultures around games have changed as well?
Yeah, and you can definitely continue to fail to solve old args along the way.
Well, it sure would be cool. If that was a podcast, you could find among with a bunch of other great shows over on the Moonshot Network.
You know what, it sure would?
Well, cool, thanks for the invite. Anyways, I'm gonna get back to this though 23. 19.
