Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is the perfect AI parable
If Shelley’s Frankenstein was a warning to the Enlightenment, del Toro’s is a lament for the Anthropocene
Frankenstein's' monster is portrayed by Jacob Elordi. (Netflix) Two centuries after Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was born during a summer storm in Geneva, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has made the monster human again.
His Netflix adaptation, starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, is all the rage across continents, including India.
In Del Toro’s imagining, Frankenstein’s monster is not a cartoonish Shrek-like green-skinned brute. He is, much to this bibliophile’s delight, a bruised soul stitched together from the tragedies of humanity. If violence defined previous adaptations, this adaptation is rife with self-awareness. In fact, Shelley, who is credited for writing the first-ever work of science fiction, spun a tale of hubris and warned the world of the danger of creation without compassion.
Rather serendipitously, the film has landed in a moment of history when we have created a slew of monsters that cannot be contained (not that we are particularly inclined to try). The most recent of of those jinns that refuse to be bottled is artificial intelligence.
Frankenstein is the perfect metaphor for this monster named AI that is stitched from the works of thousands of unwitting writers and artists, but even though it can talk and think, it remains a hollow phantom of a human being. It is made of human knowledge, but lacks a soul, sometimes lying and hallucinating and bypassing ethics.
Shelley’s warning has turned out to be prophetic, if we cannot love what we make, it may yet turn on us. But, then many are swooning over artificial intelligence, so it is neither here nor there!
Elizabeth lives and speaks
Del Toro’s Elizabeth is not the docile bride-to-be of Shelley’s novel, but an entomologist, a woman of science and conviction who sees through Victor’s arrogance. Shelley’s Elizabeth was silenced by the story’s end, but del Toro’s dies speaking truth to power. It is a rewrite that has divided fans. Some have derided it as “revisionism”, others have called it redemption. I am one of those who approve of this adaptation.
Shelley’s Frankenstein was written in the shadow of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, the great feminist philosopher. However, Shelley’s women were sacrificial victims of male ambition. Del Toro allows them the right to be curious.
But, by turning Elizabeth into the Monster’s ally, del Toro smooths out the moral jaggedness that made Shelley’s novel so haunting. In Shelley’s text, the Monster’s rage is born of rejection, but in del Toro’s, he is coddled by empathy (reminiscent to AI models) . The feminist message remains, but the fury is lost.
The monster for the age of machines
Guillermo Del Toro presents Frankenstein at a exhibition in London. Frankenstein’s’ monster is portrayed by Jacob Elordi. (Facebook/Infernal Visions Ov Hell)
Del Toro shifts Shelley’s 1818 vision into the mid-19th century when the world was mired in war and concerns of the Empire. His new character, Henrich Harlander, a syphilitic arms dealer bankrolling Victor’s experiment, is the 1850s answer to Silicon Valley. He is a man convinced he deserves eternal life because he can afford it.
It is easy to see del Toro’s Frankenstein as a parable for the AI moment. The hubris of men who build what they don’t understand, and the conviction that technology can conquer mortality. In Shelley’s day, that hubris was scientific. However, today, the hubris is algorithmic. The question is what happens when we create intelligence that outpaces us?
In del Toro’s hands, even Victor’s relationship with the Monster becomes an allegory for generational violence that is passed down from fathers to sons, from creators to creations. This is a story of emotional and parental neglect.
We were the monster all along
What makes del Toro’s Frankenstein divisive is that it refuses to punish the Monster or absolve Victor entirely. It stews in the uncomfortable truism that creators are always responsible for their creations, and that the line between monster and maker is a flimsy one.
Shelley’s original novel ended with the Monster disappearing into the Arctic fog, but Del Toro ends it with forgiveness. But, perhaps, an argument is to be made that after centuries of making the monster suffer for our sins, a little mercy is warranted.
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