“The two monsters of the Enlightenment, now immortalized on cereal boxes, also portray two phases of the Enlightenment as it actually got implemented, as opposed to what it proposed. Frankenstein epitomizes phase I of the Enlightenment project — the early, ostensibly altruistic, optimistic phase, when the revolution, no matter how horrific its execution, still seemed plausible as a way of bettering mankind. This is the electricity phase, the phase of youthful energy, captured in Wordsworth phrase, ‘Bliss was it that dawn to be alive. But to be young was a very heaven!’ Dracula was phase II of the Enlightenment — the syphilitic phase, the disillusionment phase, when blood has been not only shed but polluted, generally by venereal disease as the logical consequence of sexual liberation.”
Dr. E. Michael Jones
“Monsters from the Id; the Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film” – pg. 62
One of my current reads is E. Michael Jones “Monsters from the Id; the Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film.”
It is Jones’ premise that the whole Horror Genre (Novel and Films) arises from the failure of the promises of Modernity to give what it held out. Jones contends that the monsters — from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (the first), to today’s slasher movies — are all a consequence of the Monstrosity reality that the Enlightenment has created with revolutionary politics, materialistic scientism, psychological manipulation, and sexual liberation. Jones contends that Monsters and Horror are the outward manifestation of a people’s inward, though verbally un-confessed, realization, that Modernity itself is one giant horror reality show. For Jones then, the Modernity project and the Horror genre are two sides of the same coin. Or perhaps better put, the Horror genre is incarnated expression of a real, though consciously suppressed, understanding that the Modernity project is one long Horror film.
Like Dr. Frankenstein’s promise to create life, so Modernity promised to create Utopia but the consequences of both have instead been a Monster that destroys everything in its wake.
Jones starts by telling the story of Mary Wollenstonecraft and the wreckage of her life as she chased the Enlightenment promise. He then teases that out as applied to Wollenstone’s daughter “Mary Godwin,” as the companion of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Jones contends that Mary Shelley’s creation of “Franknstein” was a reflection of her Bohemian lifestyle with Percy Shelley.
If Jones is correct, then we would have to conclude that the creation of the Brutlyn Jenner Monster is just the latest episode of reality as Horror show. Modernity, like Dr. Victor Frankenstein of old, has created something they would insist is akin to real life. Like the Frankenstein of old, Brutlyn is composed of unreal and dead parts. Frankenstein was put together by old body parts. Brutlyn, as the new Frankenstein, is put together with the unreal parts of photo-shop, make up, lighting, and surgery. If electricity as technology is what brought Frankenstein to life then media coverage as our modern technology has given life to our new Monster, Brutlyn.
That Modernity has been one long episode after another of Horror film incarnation can be seen in a casual look at Paris in the 1790’s, Berlin in the 1920’s, Communist policy following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, or America following its 1960’s sexual revolution. With each incarnation both Frankenstein and Dracula appear and the victims of these blood thirsty Demons are the broken families, the children who now think horror show reality is the norm and so keep the show going when they become adults, the women who are casually used and tossed away, and the men who have become divorce fodder for the liberated woman. Western culture, thy name is Stoker, Shelley, Stevenson, King, and Barker.
“Like Mary Shelley we too are the captive of two contradictory imperatives: We as a culture can’t disavow the Enlightenment, especially its commitment to sexual liberation, and at the same time, we can’t deny that people get hurt when they act on these imperatives. In fact, people die when they act on them, no matter how altruistic their intentions are.”