Adapting Merry Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein is practically a tradition in Hollywood. As is the freedom in adapting it: Consider the Universal Monsters’ classic, which turned the original’s well-spoken creation of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein into a grunting monster with neck bolts, to making of him a comedic figure (Young Frankenstein) to transforming the whole tale into a cheesy supernatural action flick (I, Frankenstein). Adaptations of the novel have always been as much a reflection of the time as of the source material.
This is why the timing of Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-nominated Frankenstein and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is such a godsend. Both adaptations are deeply concerned with pressing issues and tackle them from different angles—specifically, they are products of the post-#MeToo era and the increasing cultural divide between men and women. Frankenstein explores how toxic masculinity passes from father to son. The Bride! is a feminist reimagining of The Bride of Frankenstein, which explores how society can frame female victims as “monsters” and how women can retake that very label to empower themselves.
Unfortunately, both Frankenstein and The Bride! reflect and reinforce some of the most unhealthy stereotypes of both sexes—specifically, they conflate masculinity with its “toxic” variety and femininity with a complete lack of agency. This makes for good mirrors of the presuppositions of our age but poor roadmaps for getting beyond them.
Frankenstein focuses on how Victor’s childhood abuse by his father shaped him into the kind of man who abuses his own creation. Victor’s father was not often around. And when he was, he was cold and regularly punished him physically and verbally to push him to greatness. By contrast, Victor’s mother was warm and loving, and Victor loved her in return. When she died, he dedicated his life to finding a cure for death . But when Victor finally brings his revivified creature to life, he “raises” him in the only way he know how, which is to do what his father did: abuse and abandon him. By contrast, it’s Victor’s brother’s fiancée, Elizabeth (played by Mia Goth, who also plays Victor’s mom), whose warmth and love actually bring out the best in The Creature. When she dies at the hands of people trying to kill The Creature (Jacob Elordi), The Creature dedicates himself to avenging her death by punishing Victor (Oscar Isaac). But as soon as Victor acknowledges his “sin” and asks for forgiveness, The Creature is able to forgive and find peace.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! takes place over a hundred years after the events of the novel. The Creature—having taken his father’s name “Frankenstein”—asks a mad scientist, Cornelia Euphronius, to reanimate a woman to be his bride. They pick a dead woman who happens to be possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley. This woman, Ida, was murdered for trying to expose the criminal activity of a gangster who was famous for cutting the tongues out of women. When Frankenstein kills men who try to assault Ida, The Bride goes on the run with him, which leads them on a crime spree that ends up killing more people. One of the cops assigned to chase them discovers who The Bride was in her previous life and admits to his partner that he was the cop who brought her on to get info on the misogynistic gangster. But then he left her high and dry after the case was shut down (but not before sleeping with her). He ends up resigning but picks a female partner as his replacement. She and Cornelia team up to keep the police away from Frankenstein and Ida/The Bride to give them their happy ending. And an army of women inspired by The Bride go off and kill the gangster, vigilante-style.
Both these movies ask how monsters are made. And in both these cases the answers are the same: men. In Frankenstein, it’s Victor’s father who made the scientist a monster, and he in turn makes a monster from whatever monster is trapped inside of him. Likewise, in The Bride! it’s men—whether gangsters, cops, whomever—who inevitably victimize women.
In both stories men are responsible for their wickedness because they have agency, whereas women are not blameworthy because they do not. Victor’s mom and Elizabeth have little control over their circumstances since they live in a society ruled by men. But Victor is one of the “rulers” and so must apologize to The Creature for his violent acts. Ida/The Bride and assistant detective Myra Malloy likewise have little power in a male-dominated society. So they never have to apologize to anyone when they lie or kill. These acts are portrayed as justified in order for women finally to attain agency in their lives.
This follows the contemporary trend for how male and female antiheroes are portrayed in movies and TV. Male antiheroes might be sympathetic but are still portrayed as fully responsible for the evil they do, and catharsis occurs when (or if) they get their comeuppance. Think of The Godfather, The Wolf of Wall Street, Fight Club, American Psycho, Breaking Bad, or The Joker and its sequel (something the director of both Joker films made sure he emphasized in that sequel after the first film gained the titular clown too many fans). But female antihero stories far more often fall under the Female Avengers/Rape and Revenge structure, where women have been victimized by men and therefore their violence is justified to attain some level of control. Think Thelma and Louise, A Promising Young Woman, Poor Things, Midsommer, Blink Twice, and the like. Professor Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous Feminine, argues that the new wave of “feminist horror” is an expression of women reclaiming their agency.
And yet it’s far from true that women have no agency in society or power over men. For example, women are more likely to have a college degree than are men and in some cases are starting to overtake them handily in culture-making institutions. Women are the vast majority of teachers, which gives them power over men in determining whether they rise in society—one of the reasons young men aren’t succeeding in school. Studies show that schools are increasingly pursuing pedagogy geared toward women’s learning styles and how grading bias against boys also plays a role in holding young men back. Even so, the stereotypical notion that only men have power is itself so powerful that the World Economic Forum records men falling behind on a given metric as gender parity.
Hollywood’s incessant portrayal of “powerful but wicked’ men and “good but helpless” women reflects an even deeper bias: Both sexes consistently have a more favorable view of women than men. But it’s a favorable view that’s often infantilizing. Feminist journalist Louise Perry explains:
If we run with this model, then the simultaneous elevation of and condescension towards women makes immediate sense. Because while we all adore our children, we don’t respect them. Children are loveable and precious. If asked to choose between saving an adult and a child stranger, research participants will consistently opt to save the child. But children are also (correctly) regarded as incapable of self-governance. To return to Saudi Arabia for a moment, Caplan notes that “until recently, every Saudi woman had a male ‘guardian’—typically a father, husband, brother, or uncle—who could legally forbid her to work, travel, or marry.” At the risk of stating the obvious, what such a system does is offer women the same legal status as children. Our own Western legal systems did the same thing until relatively recently, and the instinct to regard women as childlike persists still.
This infantilizing view is all over movies like The Bride!, in which Ida kills at least some people without just cause but is excused for it, and vigilante behavior to create social change is extolled, even though it typically makes things worse. Yet such tales—think also feminist films like Barbie and Poor Things—also express a bias in favor of female superiority such that women should be in charge of things. These films make it clear that women are miles more competent and wise than men and that the world is much better when they’re in charge. Movies like Frankenstein go further. It doesn’t just blame “men” for the problems of the world but specifically masculine personality traits and parenting styles. Men are much more likely to use a “tough love” style of parenting, which research increasingly shows is vital for helping kids build confidence and adult competence. (In fact, many suggest that a huge part of the crisis of socialization among young people is lack of masculine-style parenting.) That is not to say that women’s more nurturing style of parenting is not also needed, but Elizabeth’s tenderness, for example, is shown to be the only thing that is needed.
This is a disastrous, even toxic, mix for male-female discourse and for society. Reinforcing a social script that says women are never to blame for the bad they do but should be in charge doesn’t create good, responsible leaders but definitely generates resentment in men. This is not, needless to say, a productive way forward for both sexes to employ their gifts together. Frankenstein and The Bride! may want to explain where monsters come from, but if their assumptions are used as a map to a better future, they likely will only create more of them.
