Mary Shelley’s ‘Hideous Progeny:’ Readaptation and (Textual) Deformity in Two Recent Frankenstein Films

ABSTRACT In this article, I discuss two recent films, Frankenstein (Kevin Connor 2004) and Victor Frankenstein (Paul McGuigan 2015), in terms of how they represent disability for mainstream television and cinema spectators. Using a critical framework that blends disability and adaptation studies, I analyse both films from a ‘crip’ perspective – that is, by interpreting how they propagate or resist the able-bodied assumptions upon which many Frankenstein narratives are based. As screen readaptations, I explore how Connor’s Frankenstein and Victor Frankenstein reflexively engage with this historical legacy, whilst providing textually ‘deformed’ versions of the story for contemporary audiences. More specifically, my analysis illustrates how the visual depiction of the Creature in Connor’s Frankenstein serves to maintain a non-disabled gaze. Although the film subverts the typical conflation of a character’s atypical body with a malevolent disposition, it does not, in fact, disrupt the longstanding ableist paradigm that views disability as monstrous. In contrast, Victor Frankenstein, although witness to the visual erasure of Igor’s physical deformity from the cinema screen, nevertheless provides a critical exploration of the disabled individual’s social exclusion and oppression by foregrounding Igor’s subjective voice.