In the book Frankenstein, Mary Shelley never gives a name to the monster that is created. Nor does she give a detailed description of the monsters features allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. In my mind, the monster was always changing because as the story progressed my image of the monster would shift to match the mood. This is a drastic change to the early film Frankenstein monster image. In early films, the monster was given the name of his creator and made into a slow green giant. Was this monster one person’s idea of how the monster looked and it caught on or was it a way for filmmakers to hide the seriousness of Shelley's monster.
In the book, Shelley’s monster is an intelligent figure that brings into question what does it mean to be human. The first film adaptation, the monster is green and seems to be slow. That is because the film is a slightly colored silent film that runs for 16-minutes. Kind of hard to represent real world struggles when you can’t speak. It is possible that film makers used the image of the original film to design their monster and gave it the name Frankenstein so the monster wasn’t just a random object in their plot.
In a more recent film, I Frankenstein (2014), the story continues where the book ends. The monster looks over his creator’s gave when he is attacked by demons. Gargoyles save the monster and give him the name Adam because they are not sure what he is since he doesn’t have a human soul. Years later the monster now named Adam meets a scientist who is trying to discover what Frankenstein did all those years ago. The scientist learns that Adam has been struggling with what he is and if he can ever be human.
This movie is a nice refresh form the clumsy ofe of a giant. It brings to life some of the struggles that the book originally brought up and allows the audience to be drawn to the monster’s plight since the monster looks human. This film could a sign that filmmakers have realized that they have chained an intellectual monster could draw audiences in just by being so dumbfounding .
I like how you describe that in the book, your vision of the monster changed with your mood toward him. I think his ambiguity in the book makes it so that we can put our own images to our definition of the monster, thus making it more "real" to us. I also think this is a probable explanation for it not having a name as well. Without a name, the monster is a fluid character that is readily adaptable to our own interpretations and emotions. Seeing the monster evolve into more of a "relatable" character rids of our ability to place our own interpretation on him, covering up some deeper meanings or "seriousness" like you mentioned.
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