Les vies cachées du Monstre de Frankenstein : quand la créature devient à son tour « marchandise »

Abstract

Assembled in a laboratory from the remains of corpses, Frankenstein's creature is a manufactured product, a commodity that does not meet the expectations of its creator. The cultural industries (cinema, television, video games, comics, etc.), have therefore wished to contribute to the construction of a popular icon, whose life story was also transformed to meet the requirements of an increasingly fragmented public. While cultural productions have often staged the origins of the monster, others, more or less faithful to the original story, propose to include it in heterogeneous audio-visual productions, ranging from parody to crossover with other monsters (the Werewolf, the Mummy, Dracula), through television (Beetleborg), video games (Darkstalkers) and animation (Hotel Transylvania). To explore the hidden lives of Frankenstein’s monster, his various adventures and his many encounters, is to understand how the audio-visual industry uses and misuses this monstrous figure and exports it like a commodity in atypical fictions (blaxploitation, erotic films ...) and sometimes in grotesque fictions.