Tuesday June 16 * 8pm
REGISTER TO RECEIVE ZOOM LINK: https://withfriends.co/event/4632321/
Frankenstein: Monster, Myth, and Meme
On June 16, 1816, Mary Godwin (later Shelley), not quite 19 years old, awoke with a start from a restless slumber. A powerful vision had come to her: an artificial man who terrified his creator, a being neither living nor dead, made not born, the awesome power of science unleashed in monstrous form. For 200 years, her nightmare has continued to disturb our sleep, expanding its influence with each new frontier of human knowledge and each innovation in the media of art-- from the indelible image of Boris Karloff as the Creature to the sci-fi rhapsodies of Blade Runner and The Terminator, from Frankenweenie to Frankenfoods. Somehow, an untested writer, trying out her powers, conjured up a modern myth, encapsulating our shifting cultural perspectives on soul and selfhood, genius and destiny, man's place in nature and women's place in a world dominated by men--and somehow we keep returning to her creature to express our fears and concerns regarding these themes.
This illustrated talk begins with the origins of Frankenstein in the revolutionary ideas of European Romanticism and traces the myth through 19th-century politics, 20th-century film and popular culture, and the 21st-century terror of an apocalyptic end to the modern idea of progress.
About the instructor:
Bernard Welt is Professor Emeritus at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University (Washington DC), where he taught courses in the history of cinema, film theory, and the evolution of representations of sex in American cinema. He is the author of Mythomania: Fables, Fantasies, and Sheer Lies in American Popular Art and of essays on film, books, theater, and visual art in many journals and magazines, and serves as the Vice Editor of Straight to Hell: The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Writing and a Lambda Literary Award nomination.
A Co-Production of Rhizome DC and Home School at Revolve: http://www.revolveavl.org/home-school
Thanks to the generosity of Dr. Welt all proceeds will be split by Rhizome DC and Revolve AVL. Please donate if you are able. (It is not necessary to donate in order to participate - just enter $0 when asked for contribution amount.)