Harvard throws a ‘Frankenstein’ party
He’s been a Hollywood favorite for decades. Inventor Thomas Edison helped bring him to life on film in 1910. Horror icon Boris Karloff gave the monster a jumble of reanimated body parts ready to wreak havoc, an indelible look and feel in 1931. Mel Brooks’ comic genius turned him into a debonair dandy in tails and top hat in 1974. Yet the range of screen interpretations only hints at how Mary Shelley envisioned her creation in her 1818 novel: as a creature struggling to comprehend his own existence who is desperate for companionship and acceptance. Frankenstein’s monster is 200, and in the coming days a series of Harvard events will shed some light on the lasting appeal of one of the greatest inventions in popular culture. In honor of the novel’s bicentennial, Harvard is sponsoring Frankenweek at Harvard, to include a public reading, a demonstration of some of the science experiments that sparked...