영화 <프랑켄슈타인>의 흥행 다시 보기: 1930년대 초반의 사회경제적인 위기와 미국의 불안

Abstract

This paper attempts to re-read the phenomenal hit of James Whale's film Frankenstein (1931) as it reflected the American anxiety after the experience of the Great Depression. Focusing on the early 1930s' socioeconomic conditions caused by the economic crisis enables the spectators' consumption of Frankenstein to be interpreted as a desire to escape from the miserable reality threatening their ordinary security. The film of Frankenstein represents the collapsed social security through the character of Monster, implying a radical vagrant class caused by the increases in the unemployed population. Although both Boris Karloff, who played the role of Monster, and spectators, whose majority was composed of the poor, felt sympathy for the “deserted and innocent” Monster, the film made them retreat from compassion and labeled the Monster as a criminal, resulting in a social crisis. The most effective strategy of the film for leading spectators to make a monster the common enemy is the setting of Monster's “abnormal” brain, which is like that of a criminal's. Another strategy is related to the three murders the Monster commits; these acts lead spectators to feel sympathy, little by little, not for the Monster's position, but for the protagonist, Henry Frankenstein's. The Hollywood industry, searching for business profit and adapting a dominant ideology, enforces the film's “happy ending,” which protects the social order and is upheld by the dominant class as Henry survives. This mirrors efforts to control the masses who are anxious about falling into the vagrant class and urges them to forget the dangerous Monster, the symbol of social disorder, and to move for social cohesion.