Beyond Adaptation: Frankenstein’s Postmodern Progeny

Abstract

This chapter examines Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) in order to demonstrate how, despite the film's avowed claim to be faithful to the book, it displays important differences with it which are related to other films, not only previous adaptations of Frankenstein, but also contemporary adaptations of other texts--Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker 's Dracula (1992) in particular. After a brief overview of the Frankenstein cinematic myth, the chapter focuses on the elements apparently restored from the book but in fact transformed after Coppola's example, which turn Branagh's film into a romantic Frankenstein. Then it moves on to outright additions, elements which have nothing to do with the book but ultimately point to other film versions of the myth, although reinterpreted and transformed in order to produce a postmodern Frankenstein. The final section discusses the implications of this particular case for a theory of film adaptation and proposes a redefinition of adaptation as cultural intertextuality.