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And what was I? […] When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all man fled and whom all men disowned?1

If Frankenfiction is the monstrous, hybrid offspring of remix culture and adaptation studies, as I argued in the introduction, my next step must be to establish what it means to call something a ‘monster’ in this context. In Western popular culture the monster has become a mainstream symbol, which ironically makes it more difficult to locate and classify in fiction. As Marxist critic David McNally writes, ‘it is a paradox of our age that monsters are both everywhere and nowhere’.2_{This chapter examines three works of Frankenfiction that} identify themselves as adaptations of literary monsters, actively attempting to breathe new life into classic symbols of monstrosity, while also straining our established definitions of adaptation and the monstrous. Like many

contemporary texts, Frankenfictions adapt familiar monsters, but they do so differently than most other mainstream adaptations. This difference is not only in the types of monsters that are depicted, but rather in the way multiple depictions of monstrosity come together in a politicised gesture.

If we define Frankenfiction as a mashup of historical monsters, with a metafictional interest in its own parentage that also aligns it with adaptation, we could take any number of contemporary texts as case studies. Many films,

1_{Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus (London: The Folio Society, 2015}

[1831]), p. 116.

2_{David McNally, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism (Chicaco, IL:}

novels, and television series have pilfered the past for their monstrous

adaptations, especially in recent years. In 2014, Universal Studios announced plans to reboot its own monster movies of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. 2014’s

Dracula Untold failed to garner critical support, and was subsequently excluded

from the official Universal Monsters Cinematic Universe, but the franchise re- launched with The Mummy in 2017—another critical flop.3_Undaunted, Universal announced (in a statement later retracted) that The Invisible Man would follow in 2018, and a series of additional films are still in production.4

Other texts draw inspiration directly from the penny bloods, penny

dreadfuls, and Gothic novels of the nineteenth century. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde (1886) has had at least three serial television adaptations in the

last decade—the BBC’s Jekyll (2007), NBC’s Do No Harm (2013), and ITV’s Jekyll

& Hyde (2015)—as well as numerous adaptations and character cameos in

other media. Frankenstein (1818), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Dracula (1897), and even Carmilla (1872) have attracted renewed interest from storytellers, though naturally most of these texts have never truly fallen into obscurity.5

3_{Laura Bradley, ‘Universal Invented Movie Universes; Why Are They Having Such a Hard Time}

with Them Now?’, Vanity Fair, 13 June 2017

<https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/06/the-mummy-dark-universe> [accessed 4 August 2017]; Anthony D’Alessandro, ‘“The Mummy” Will Lose $95M: Here’s Why’, Deadline, 19 June 2017 <http://deadline.com/2017/06/the-mummy-tom-cruise-box-office-bomb-loss- 1202114482/> [accessed 4 August 2017].

4_{[Anonymous], ‘Universal Pictures Unveils “Dark Universe” with Name, Mark and Musical}

Theme for Its Classic Monsters Series of Films [NEWS]’, Dark Universe, 22 May 2017 <http://www.darkuniverse.com> [accessed 4 August 2017].

5_{For just a small sampling, consider the USA network’s made-for-television Frankenstein}

(2004), the 2004 Hallmark miniseries Frankenstein, Bernard Rose’s FRANKƐN5TƐ1N (Alchemy, 2015), 20th_{Century Fox’s Victor Frankenstein (2015, dir. Paul McGuigan), Dorian (2004, dir.}

Brendan Dougherty Russo), Dorian Gray (2009, dir. Oliver Parker), and four films called The

Picture of Dorian Gray (2004, dir. David Rosenbaum; 2006, dir. Duncan Roy; 2007, dir. John

Cunningham; 2009, dir. Jonathan Courtemanche), the BBC miniseries Dracula (2006), Dracula

Reborn (2012, dir. Patrick McManus), Dracula: The Dark Prince (2013, dir. Pearry Reginald Teo), Dracula Untold (2014, dir. Gary Shore), NBC’s Dracula (2013–2014), The Unwanted (2014, dir.

Brent Wood), The Curse of Styria (2014, dir. Mauricio Chernovetzky and Mark Devendorf), and the YouTube webseries Carmilla (2014–present).

While I could apply many of my conclusions about monsters and

Frankenfiction to these direct re-imaginings of classic texts, most fall a little too neatly under the model of binary, novel-to-screen adaptation to make them interesting case studies. In large part, they also fail to do anything ‘monstrous’ or politically subversive with the old monsters they appropriate (the webseries

Carmilla is one notable exception). For this reason, my attention is focused on

another kind of monster adaptation that has also become popular in the twenty- first century, and which locates itself more clearly in the ambivalent aesthetics and politics of Frankenfiction: the monster mash. Films and shows like Van

Helsing (2004), Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole (2010–2012), Once Upon a Time

(2011–present), Hotel Transylvania (2012), I, Frankenstein (2014), Penny

Dreadful (2014–2016), and even Monster High (2010–present), or book series

like Anno Dracula (1992–present), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999–present), or Terry Pratchett’s Discworld (1983–2015), have helped popularise this genre, which builds new stories through the amalgamation of well-known literary texts and monsters.

Though the type of monster (or combination of monsters) introduced in these texts may be relatively new, the monster mash has its roots in the older ‘crossover’ narrative.6_{The Victorians themselves produced many texts that} featured an eclectic assortment of literary and historical figures, just as they gave birth to many of the monsters, both real and fantastical, that have since dominated the popular imagination. Jess Nevins points to Mary Cowden Clarke’s Kit Bam’s Adventures; or, The Yarns of an Old Mariner as ‘the first modern crossover, in which characters from different creators are brought together in a story by another creator’, published in 1849.7_{Further nineteenth-}

6_{See Jess Nevins on the history of crossover fiction in Heroes and Monsters: The Unofficial}

Companion to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Austin, TX: MonkeyBrain, 2003), pp.

175–84.

century crossovers of this type include Henry Lee Boyle’s Kennaquhair, A

Narrative of Utopian Travel (1872) and John Kendrick Bangs’s The Houseboat on the River Styx (1895) and The Pursuit of the Houseboat (1897).8_{The use of} existing characters and intellectual properties has been the strategy of many an author and film studio ever since.

The League comics are in part indebted to Philip José Farmer’s novel The

Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973), which—through embellishment and fantasy—

claims to reconstruct the true story behind Jules Verne’s Around the World in

Eighty Days (1872).9_{Farmer’s extended Wold Newton universe has also been} cited as an important influence on Kim Newman, both by the author and by others.10_{A favourite childhood text of John Logan, Penny Dreadful’s writer and} showrunner, was Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), which unites the fictional Sherlock Holmes with his historical contemporary Sigmund Freud.11_{Likewise, the Universal monster crossovers have the same general} premise as Penny Dreadful, the League comics, and Anno Dracula, though as I will argue the latter claim a different, more political agenda.

One could also categorise these monster mashups as adaptations, but their pluralistic approach to source texts immediately foregrounds the non-binary structure of adaptation and remix in general. Instead, I would argue that they are better described as complex additions to the ‘storyworld’ of each of the literary monsters they adapt—a more recent storytelling tactic that prioritises the creation of unique, fantastical worlds as well as plot and characters, and ‘shifts the focus from the more traditional literary notion of narrative closure to

8_{Nevins, Heroes and Monsters, pp. 178–79.} 9_{Nevins, Heroes and Monsters, p. 184.}

10_{Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things (London: Headline Review, 2007), p. 5, author’s introduction;}

Troy Rodgers and Kim Newman, ‘Interview—Kim Newman’, SciFiFx.com, 8 April 2013, para. 23 <http://www.scififx.com/2013/04/interview-kim-newman/> [accessed 13 January 2017].

11_{Sam Thielman, ‘Penny Dreadful Creator John Logan Explains Why He Loves Monsters’,}

AdWeek, 27 June 2014, para. 7 <http://www.adweek.com/news/television/penny-dreadful-

the open-endedness of serialization’.12_{Dan Hassler-Forest describes this} increasingly prevalent approach as one ‘in which a potentially unlimited

number of narratives can take place, but this storyworld will always by its very definition exceed in scale any single representation of it’.13_{In other words, in a} culture where Frankenstein’s monster (for instance) has transcended any single text and become a popular myth, a work that utilises the character in a new context can be seen to build onto that tradition, rather than overwriting or even re-writing it. The monster mash takes this process one step further by tying multiple traditions or storyworlds together.

The three texts I will examine in this chapter each use Bram Stoker’s

Dracula (1897) as a touchstone, weaving in characters and themes from other

nineteenth-century texts, and from twentieth- and twenty-first-century criticism. In Anno Dracula—the first in a series of alternate history novels by Kim Newman, first published in 1992 and re-issued in 2011—vampirism becomes a metaphor for the state of human society under capitalism:

specifically, Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The monsters in the ongoing comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (written by Alan Moore and drawn by Kevin O’Neill since 1999) are transformed from the British Empire’s social outcasts into twenty-first-century superheroes. Finally, the premium television series Penny Dreadful (2014–2016) uses a potentially subversive premise—the idea that all of us are monsters, and that we can find strength and solidarity in our monstrosity—to interrogate the assumption that monstrosity is something we can choose. All three texts indicate that the twenty-first- century’s definition of a monster is subtly different from that of the nineteenth century, or even the twentieth. They also allow us to explore the validity of

12_{Dan Hassler-Forest, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics: Transmedia World-Building Beyond}

Capitalism (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), p. 8.

scholarly claims that the monster has lost its transgressive potential in

contemporary Gothic culture. As I will demonstrate, the way these texts draw in multiple historical monsters to construct their own monstrous communities allows the monster to reclaim some of its social symbolism.

From ‘Miserable Wretch’ to ‘Modernity Personified’: Defining the Twenty- First-Century Monster

‘The British Empire has always encountered difficulty in distinguishing between its heroes and its monsters’,14_{reads the opening preface to The League of}

Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume I. This statement is ambiguous. On the one

hand, it might positively signify that Britain finds its national icons among the traditionally monstrous or other (the foreigner, the woman, the working class subject, etc.), as well as the traditionally heroic (the white, Western male). This reading is supported by the fact that the fantastical monsters that make up the titular League are all drawn from popular Victorian fiction; though they are monstrous in numerous ways, they have all become icons of mainstream British culture.

The more convincing interpretation of this citation, however, is that from the Edict of Expulsion banning Jews (1290–1657), to the policies and

repercussions of colonialism, to post-Brexit racial tensions, Great Britain (like many empires) has historically demonised and excluded the people it might better have embraced and valorised. This reading is also borne out by the graphic novel’s plot, in which the League is only tolerated by the English government because of the service its members provide as supernatural defenders. In a later instalment set in 1958 (but based on George Orwell’s

1984), the members of the League actually become government fugitives,

14_{Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume I (New York:}

categorised as ‘unpersons’.15_{This provides an excellent illustration of how} Frankenfiction politicises monstrosity, linking fantastical monsters to historical otherness. The specific social symbolism these monsters evoke, however, is a relatively recent addition to the monster’s long legacy in popular culture.

The monster is an instantly recognisable figure in contemporary culture and criticism—a fact that is quite remarkable given the wide variety of the ‘monsters’ being represented. There are medical monsters like the giant, the madman, or the conjoined twin, social monsters like the foreigner, the homosexual, or the transgressive woman, and fantastical monsters like the vampire or werewolf. Sometimes the metaphors that describe these monsters overlap, until the fantastical and physical monsters become one and the same. In the case of a text like Frankenstein, which has accrued many adaptations, even a seemingly singular monster can become endlessly plural in its meanings. This is how the ‘miserable wretch’ of Shelley’s novel can become ‘modernity personified’ in the television series Penny Dreadful.16

That we can speak generally of ‘monsters’ at all indicates their

prominence as contemporary symbols, but due to the large variety of monsters in twenty-first-century culture, a more specific definition is needed before we can analyse their functions or significance in the case of Frankenfiction. Any cultural figure that persists for as long as the monster—with its etymological roots in classical antiquity, deriving from the Latin monstrare (‘to

demonstrate’), and monere (‘to warn’)—can be expected to undergo many changes in symbolism and representation over the years. Before we can engage with the monstrous historical mashup that is Frankenfiction, we must engage with its representations of the historical monster, and before we can do that, we

15_{Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (New}

York: America’s Best Comics, 2007).

16_{Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 98; Dearbhla Walsh, ‘Resurrection’, Penny Dreadful, episode 1.3}

must locate the monster’s evolution and emergence into twenty-first-century Western culture. My first task, then, is to define the kinds of monstrosity this thesis is concerned with.

In the introduction to their 2013 collection Monster Culture in the 21st

Century, Marina Levina and Diem-My T. Bui suggest that ‘monstrous narratives

of the past decade have become so omnipresent specifically because they represent collective social anxieties over resisting and embracing change in the twenty-first century’.17_{As the essays in the collection explore, the monstrous} change that is alternately resisted and embraced sometimes relates to identity (us versus them), sometimes to technology (hubris and hybridity), and always to territory (spatial, temporal, national, or experiential). For Levina and Bui, monstrosity has ‘transcended its status as a metaphor’ to become our culture’s dominant mode of expression.18_{The monster no longer needs to be ‘de-}

monstrated’ or explained to contemporary audiences—its presence speaks for itself.19

Fred Botting, in contrast, has argued that monsters represent the limits of social transgression, and that, in the twenty-first century, this limit is

increasingly meaningless.20_{Rather than lonely, abnormal, or evil, monsters in} popular culture are now typically friendly, optimistic, or sympathetic. As Jeffrey Weinstock argues, ‘the overall trend in monstrous representation across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first has been toward not just

sympathizing but empathizing with—and ultimately aspiring to be—the

17_{Marina Levina and Diem-My T. Bui, ‘Introduction: Toward a Comprehensive Monster Theory}

in the 21st Century’, in Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader, ed. by Marina Levina and Diem-My T. Bui (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 1–13 (pp. 1–2).

18_{Levina and Bui, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.}

19_{Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. by}

Richard Howard (London: Routledge, 1967), pp. 68–70.

20_{See especially Fred Botting, Limits of Horror: Technology, Bodies, Gothic (Manchester:}

monster’.21_{This indicates that monstrosity, at least in terms of behaviour}

outside of established social boundaries, has been normalised and appropriated by mainstream culture. One might argue that this increased empathy for the monster can be a subversive tool, advocating the broad-scale social acceptance of otherness. Conversely, we might suggest that the twenty-first century

fantastical monster’s lack of a culturally transgressive impulse means that its ability to serve as a progressive tool has been dramatically reduced. If the monster is always ‘us’, it cannot clearly point the way to difference and transformation, as it has within feminism, disability, and race studies. Jack Halberstam’s foundational study Skin Shows (1995), for instance, explores the link between monstrosity and race,22_{and Rosi Braidotti examines the}

intersection between the monster and the feminine.23_{Margrit Shildrick has} spent much of her career working on questions of phenomenology and

embodiment, specifically as they relate to the monstrous, abnormal, or disabled body.24

As Botting suggests, however, popular horror ‘relies on an increasingly fragile and insubstantial opposition between human and Gothic monster’.25 Though the ‘vegetarian’ vampire Edward Cullen, from Twilight (2005), is perhaps the most recognisable example of the loss of a horror of alterity in the twenty-first-century monster, he is by no means the only example—not even if we focus solely on the vampire. The origins of the all-too-human monster can be

21_{Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, ‘Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture’, in}

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. by Asa Simon Mittman and

Peter J. Dendle (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 275–89 (p. 277).

22_{Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham, NC:}

Duke University Press, 1995).

23_{Rosi Braidotti, ‘Mothers, Monsters, and Machines’, in Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment}

and Feminist Theory, ed. by Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 59–79.

24_{Margrit Shildrick, Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self (London: Sage,}

2002), p. 6.

25_{Fred Botting and Dale Townshend, Twentieth Century Gothic: Our Monsters, Our Pets, Gothic:}

traced back to such sympathetic vampires as Louis from Anne Rice’s Interview

With the Vampire (1976), and the character of Angel in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and self-titled spinoff Angel (1999–

2004). Books such as Liza Conrad’s High School Bites (2006), Douglas Rees’s

Vampire High (2010), and Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series (2007–

2011), as well as shows like BBC Three’s Being Human (2008–2013) and The

Vampire Diaries (2009–2017) on the CW network, also featured friendly,

‘everyday’ vampires as objects of desire and normality. Notably, these monsters are overwhelmingly white, affluent, and educated.

In our twenty-first-century culture of friendly monsters, the monster is often framed as an ‘average’, liberal humanist individual—a figure which has, of course, ‘historically been constructed as a white European male’.26_This

mainstreaming of the monster arguably weakens the symbolic power of society’s ‘real’ monsters, specifically those whose difference is ‘cultural,

political, racial, economic, sexual’.27_{From another perspective, as Gothic texts (a} categorisation I will defend further in chapter three), Frankenfictions can never be unequivocally transgressive or transformative. After all, as Catherine

Spooner argues:

The history of the Gothic has always been bound up with that of

consumption, from the eighteenth-century association of the Gothic novel with luxury, a product with no intrinsic use value, to the court battle in 1963 between Bela Lugosi’s family and Universal studios over the rights to use the recently deceased Dracula star’s image in lucrative marketing.28

As popular fiction in the age of commercial art, Gothic Frankenfictions are always influenced by their appeal (or relation) to consumers and mass audiences. This is a characteristic I will refer back to throughout the thesis.

26_{N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and}

Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 4.

27_{Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture,}

ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 3–25 (p. 7).

In the fiction of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Gothic primarily served as a politicised (or consciously depoliticised) historical romance, featuring foreign lands and peoples, adventure, and deep, dark

secrets. Its contents were rarely considered ‘serious’ literature, though it did often serve to make readers reflect on contemporary developments.29_{From the} middle of the nineteenth century Gothic took a more familiar turn towards horror themes, specifically the perversion and infection of the ‘normal’. This is

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