Victor Frankenstein’s Environmental Unconsciousness in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (ft. the Issue of AI Consciousness)
Last fall, when I stumbled upon an add for the then-upcoming film Frankenstein (2025), directed by Guillermo del Toro, on Netflix, I was instantly very excited about it – obviously.
Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that I’m a huge Frankenstein nerd. As it happens, I’ve been obsessed with Mary Shelley’s novel and have been studying it academically for over a decade. Heck, I dedicated a whole chapter of my Master’s thesis to it. As recently as last September, I even gave a paper on it during the online part of the British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) PGR & ECR Conference 2025 – Romantic (Un)Consciousness, titled “‘the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was unconscious’: Victor Frankenstein’s Unconsciousness in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” on September 12 (I’ll make the written version available soon).
Therefore, needless to say, I was very much looking forward to watching del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s masterpiece. I went to see it at an actual movie theater, even though I could’ve watched it for free on Netflix from the comfort of my bed, even though cinema tickets are ridiculously expensive in Geneva, and even though I’ve become a quasi-stay-at-home granny ever since I started dating my girlfriend. That’s how enthusiastic I was about this film. So I watched it with a fellow academic/literature nerd friend and my girlfriend on a big screen.
My verdict? . . . Meh.
Let’s just say that, as a standalone film, I really enjoyed it, especially its aesthetics. The cinematography, the sets, the props, and the costumes are gorgeous. The acting is also spot-on, especially on the part of Jacob Elordi, who plays a compelling and moving Creature. HOWEVER, as an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, I found it disappointing, mostly because it seems to me that it oversimplifies, misrepresents, and sensationalizes the complex ethical issues raised by the novel. I am not going to give you a review here, as I intend to (hopefully) write a whole essay on the similarities and differences between Shelley’s novel and del Toro’s film – one day (whenever my chaotic work schedule and my procrastination-prone-yet-to-be-diagnosed-with-ADHD brain allow).
More than the film itself, it is the internet discourse generated by the film that caught my interest. On the topic of said-discourse, I highly recommend you watch Kaz Rowe’s video “The Frankenstein Discourse Is Bad. Let’s Talk About It.” The heated, polarized reactions were a testament to how significant Mary Shelley’s novel remains to this day. So, as any sane, employed person with procrastination issues would do: I decided to participate in the discourse by turning my BARS 2025 conference paper into a theatrical video essay.
Let me introduce it:
One of the main aspects that makes Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818) ever so relevant is its prophetic and cautionary message. The “Frankenstein myth” has become synonymous with a warning against scientific hubris and its potentially catastrophic consequences. So the story goes (spoiler alert), Victor Frankenstein transgressed the boundaries between life and death by assembling a powerful humanoid being from dead body parts, infused it with vitality and consciousness, and then abandoned it out of repulsion, leaving it to wander off on its own, forced to be shunned from any form of society, which drives it to develop raging resentment, ultimately choosing to go on a killing spree to get its revenge on its careless creator. Frankenstein’s tale is especially relevant in our current historical moment as regards the concept of consciousness precisely because of the dizzyingly rapid advance of Artificial Intelligence as a technology that appears to mimic human consciousness. Might generative AI be our contemporary iteration of Frankenstein's conscious hybrid monster?
It’s available on my YouTube channel. I hope you like it!
