Pop Culture Cabaret: The Frankenstein Aesthetic

(Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster in Bride of Frankenstein. Image via Wikipedia.)

If I asked you to picture Frankenstein's monster, odds are you'd conjure up an image of a flat-headed giant with green skin and bolts sticking out of both sides of his neck. This is the way that he has been portrayed in mainstream media for decades, and it's the image that most of us have grown comfortable with. As a matter of fact, I myself accepted this image as canon until very recently, when I started reading Mary Shelley's gothic novel, Frankenstein, for myself.

Shelley describes in detail the horrific visage of the monster, which causes his creator to flee in fear.

“His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips” (p. 55).

So, if the common conception of the monster's aesthetic did not come from Shelley herself, then where did it come from?

Film adaptations of Shelley's novel have been produced as far back as 1910, when Edison studios released the 16 minute silent film, Frankenstein. The film that really caught on, however, was released in 1931 by Universal Studios.

(Charles Ogle as the monster in 1910. Image via antifilmschoolsite.wordpress.com)

Universal Studios produced Frankenstein after receiving such dramatic success with their adaptation of Stoker's Dracula. Originally, the role of Frankenstein's monster was meant for Bela Lugosi, the Dracula star, under director Robert Florey. Both actor and director were replaced, however; James Whale took over as director, and Boris Karloff was chosen to play the monster.

The Frankenstein aesthetic is mostly attributed to Jack Pierce. Universal Studios hired this master makeup artist after the death of their own Lon Cheney, Sr. The look was achieved with hours of intensive labour and experimentation. Supposedly the idea behind the flat head was to convey the infamous doctor's building process: cutting the top of the head and then stretching the skin over the brain. This giant forehead was created by piling cotton on top of the actor's head. In order to attain the monster's cadaverous facial structure, Karloff removed his dental bridge.

(Karloff as the Monster. Image via dailygrindhouse.com.)

Universal Studios followed up with many sequels, only two of which featured Karloff as the monster: Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein. The final film, released in 1948, was Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein, a campy horror/comedy which includes Dracula and the Wolf-Man as well as Frankenstein's monster. This was actually one of the first horror films I ever saw, and despite its light-hearted nature, Frankenstein's monster actually scared me quite a bit! I think that this long line of films reinforced the Frankenstein aesthetic created by Pierce. This particular make-up look has appeared in other media, such as the television program The Munsters, in which the character Herman Munster bears an almost identical, albeit friendlier, resemblance to the original Pierce
creation.