Ye Olde Story of Autocrats

Henry V (Kenneth Branagh) encourages his troops to conquer France, in the 1989 movie based on the Shakespeare play Henry V.

I recently read Dan Jones’ The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, in order to fill some serious gaps in my knowledge of British history.
Jones’ book is the story of British rulers from Henry I (who ruled from 1154-1189) through Richard II (who ruled from 1377-1399). 

I learned quite a bit in this book.*
First of all, I learned why Henry V (1386-1422)—a king not covered in the book (because he was a Lancaster)—fought so hard to reclaim French land in the Shakespeare plays.
I had never understood why Henry V was invading France in 1415.
I also learned more about the Magna Carta than I ever knew from my Indiana high school history classes.
During the 1960’s, Midwest high schools emphasized American history.

The Plantagenets fought to gain back land in France because they were from a royal house that originated in France.
The Plantagenet Kings and Queens only spoke the French language, not the English language, until the very late 1300’s.
For generations, most English Barons possessed land in both England and France, and traveled back and forth between the two.
As the Plantagenets conquered and reconquered Wales and Scotland, they wiped out the hereditary rulers in those places.

Prince John (Claude Rains) holds his very large scepter in 1939’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. There‘s no evidence that Robin Hood was a real person, but Richard the Lion-Hearted, and his brother John, were real Plantagenets.

The Magna Carta was a 1215 peace treaty between King John I (1166-1216) and his ruling class.
Its’ purpose was to protect the freedoms of Englishmen.
This document had a big influence on the thirteen colonies, and the American belief that rulers shouldn’t be autocrats.
Its’ main principal was that an English ruler was not above the law.
It also guaranteed due process of law, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, and trial by a jury of ones’ peers.
Of course, the Magna Carta was designed mainly for the upper crust, and it wasn’t honored by British rulers for many generations.
However, it was a start.

Doctors attempt to treat Cardinal D’Ambroise (Christopher Lee) suffering from bubonic plague in 2011’s Season of the Witch.

Dan Jones’ The Plantagenets covers the Black Death, the bubonic plague pandemic that killed the rich and the poor, and threw England’s economy into a tailspin.
Hundreds of thousands of workers died, and wages overall threatened to rise.
Therefore, King Edward III instituted the 1351 Statute of Laborers.
This law kept wages artificially low, and protected the political class, and the King (England’s biggest landowner), from suffering financial losses due to the plague.
One sentence from the law reads:

“If any man take more [than the prescribed wage], he shall be committed to the nearest jail.” (page 413 in The Plantagenets.)

This 1351 Statute which set wages for “saddlers, skinners, white-tawers, cordwainers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, masons, tilers, shipwrights, carters, and all other artisans and laborers” reminds me of how COVID-19 was actually used to widen the inequality gap, making fortunes for the wealthy, and driving middle-class (and lower class) workers into poverty. 

In any rational world, the COVID-19 pandemic should have made wages go up, especially for workers engaged in health care and education.
However, while wages increased slightly in many industries after the pandemic, they increased at a much lower rate in health care and education, and haven’t kept up with inflation!
Most salary increases went to people in executive positions, and not to the average worker.

Getting back to the Plantagenets, the next ruler after Edward III (Richard II), faced the Peasants’ Revolt.
At the young age of 14, Richard actually held a face-to-face negotiation with the rebel leader Wat Tyler (1341-1381).
Tyler demanded that all hierarchy be abolished (except for the king’s own lordship), that the goods of the Catholic Church not remain in the hands of the clergy, and that serfdom be abolished.
Richard appeared to concede to his subjects, but soon after the conversation occurred, Wat Tyler was beheaded, and the rest of his rebel band was hunted down and killed. 

King Arthur (Graham Chapman) assaults a peasant (Michael Palin) in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
“Help, help, I’m being repressed.”

A British film about a peasant during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, is currently in preproduction.
The proposed title is The Hood, and it’s to be directed by Paul Greengrass (the director of the Jason Bourne movies).
Benedict Cumberbatch has been mentioned as the possible lead.

By the time Richard II was 20 years old, he resolved to not be as conciliatory to rebels.
He reversed Edward III’s 1351 Treason Act, which had mainly limited treason to attacks on the King, the Queen, their children, and senior officials.
Richard broadened the law, in order to expand his executive power.
He decreed that all those who constrained the King, ignored a royal command, or basically annoyed him in any way, were now traitors to the crown!
This, and other actions, led to a civil war.
As Dan Jones put it:

“He had built himself up as an antagonistic private lord, rather than fulfill his higher duty to be a source of public authority. He had believed that kingship was about prestige and magnificence instead of leadership. And he had ended up with nothing.” (Page 494, The Plantagenets.)

Jack, 14th Earl of Gurney (Peter O’Toole) is quite, quite mad in 1972’s The Ruling Class, a black comedy about the British class system.

I began to realize, after reading The Plantagenets, that the English have been attempting to limit their rulers to just leading their subjects—and not terrorizing them—since the early 1100’s.
In doing so, Englishmen were way ahead of the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, and the French.
No wonder, the men of the thirteen colonies rose up against George III in 1776!

It’s interesting that a person like Trump still believes that a U.S. President should expect absolute loyalty, and that leadership is mainly about prestige and magnificence.
He’s obviously never heard about the Magna Carta.
It’s also interesting that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule, in 2024, that Presidents are immune from criminal liability for committing fraudulent acts.
To many, that sounds like being above the law.

*In The Plantagenets, Dan Jones notes that, in 1269, Henry III forced the Jews of England to wear a felt yellow badge of shame (page 271). I also learned that Frederick II (Holy Roman Empire) made Sicilian Jews wear a blue T-shaped badge, and Philip II ordered French Jews to wear a wheel-shaped badge (page 272). Note: all page references in this memorandum are from the American 2014 paperback edition.

Anglo-Saxon Supremacy vs Democracy

A Huguenot father urges his son to be quiet during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572.* In 1685, 200,000 French Huguenots fled France, with at least 15,000 immigrating to the colonies. George Washington was the grandson of Huguenots, but practiced the Anglican religion.

In 1776, Americans decided to rebel against King George III because they no longer wanted to be second class citizens in their own land.
As British-imprinted colonialists (not Spanish or French), they had experience in governing themselves.
They wanted to continue being British, but discontinue being saddled with unfair taxes, erase the possibility that the Brits would end slavery, plus stop assimilating 1,000’s of Anglo-Saxon convicts every year.

It's difficult to find details on the fact that between 1615 and 1775, at least 55,000 convicts were transported to the thirteen colonies (mainly to Maryland and Virginia).
Back story: by 1718, felons were overrunning London.
Rather than execute (or imprison) these men and women, the Transportation Act of 1718 was devised to send more criminals to the thirteen colonies.
In 1774, more than 60% of those found guilty at the Old Bailey were transported to America.

A hand brand for British criminals that’s on display in the Newark Museum, Notts, United Kingdom (used 1642-49). Felons found guilty at the Old Bailey (in London) were branded on their hands during the mid 1600’s. During other periods, thieves were branded on their cheeks or thumbs.

British forces were sure that the rebellion would fail, because they knew that the thirteen colonies weren’t particularly homogenous.
Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues, by Jonathan Kennedy, explains how disease killed more British soldiers than bullets.
The Brits lost the war.

Clusters of settlers had immigrated to the colonies, to practice their own specific versions of Protestantism.
There were many distinct sects of Protestants in the New World (French Huguenots, Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers, Calvinists, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Mennonites, Presbyterians, etc.)
European countries had driven many of these sects out—sometimes from country to country—before they finally settled down.
No European nation had ever contended with this much religious diversity, and that was the reason behind the separation of church and state in the US Constitution.

Mary Dyer (shown above) was one of four Quakers hanged (in 1660) for defying Massachusetts Puritan laws, and practicing her religious beliefs.

By 1776, the thirteen colonies made one big dysfunctional family.
There were roughly 2.5 million people, only one-third of whom were of English descent.
(Native Americans weren’t counted, but slaves were.)
Many English families had migrated back to England, rather than endure the many hardships of life in America.
Yet, every generation from the year 1696 (when the population was a mere 250,000 individuals), the population had still doubled.

Between 1700-1775, over 400,000 immigrants arrived in the colonies, mostly from Northern Europe (countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Ireland).
At least 200,000 unwilling immigrants also arrived, destined to become slaves in the Southern colonies.
Eventually, despite having such diverse backgrounds, European immigrants adopted the English language, and became devoted anglophiles.
Some exceptions, like Martin Van Buren (the 8th president), grew up speaking Dutch.

Another curve ball thrown at the new country was that despite Europe moving on from slavery during the Middle Ages, the Southern colonies were still stuck in the ancient system of slavery.
The plantation owners used people with darker complexions (sometimes, their own near relatives) as slaves.
Southern men boosted profits by raping their female slaves to create more slaves.
Thomas Jefferson shocked George Washington by telling him that Monticello earned an excellent 4% a year, exclusively through the births of Black infants.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

In 1831, French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), traveled to the US, ostensively to research American prisons.
He traveled throughout the country, and his writings discussed the “cost of living in a materialistic society.”
According to Tocqueville, Americans were so focused on obtaining “the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives” that they neglected their responsibilities as citizens.
Sound familiar?

One way of thinking about US history is that it’s a series of battles between elites who want to cling to power because of their ethnicity, and people who don’t want to remain in the underclass.
In 1776, independent Americans decided to break with Great Britain, but there was only one pathway to that goal.
That pathway was to make concessions to rich plantation owners, and maintain a social system based on slavery.

For nearly 90 years, the nation endured half slave and half free, but then it all blew up (in 1861), with the Civil War.
15 years later, historians agree that Democrat Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, and the electoral college by one vote.
However, a Congressional Electoral Commission still made Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the nation’s 19th president.
Democrats agreed to trade Tilden’s victory for ending the empowerment of Black citizens in the South (Reconstruction).
Tilden became the first of many politicians to win the popular vote, but not become the nation’s president.

Culturally overwhelmed by the influx of non-Northern European immigrants (during the 1890’s-1920’s), Anglo-Saxon elites, and their sympathizers, resolved to isolate the US from the “horrors” of internationalism.
The nativist movement grew in power during the 1930’s.
(Read all about this era in Rachel Maddow’s Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.)

Beaver (Jerry Mathers), and his mother (Barbara Billingsley), in 1957-1963’s Leave It to Beaver. In shows of this period, women were always shown in shirt-waisted dresses, in their kitchens, and seldom worked outside the home.

Americans gained democratic rights in the 1960’s and 70’s, for example the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Roe vs Wade in 1973, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
Now, Project 2025 is trying to erase various rights, and restore the 1950’s WASP class structure.

Over the years, Republicans and Democrats have switched sides in their roles as Conservatives versus Liberals, and each side talks about despising elites.
Some elites (especially those in the news media and academia) are idealists about democracy, and not particularly materialistic.
They have few beliefs in common with the elites of the 30’s.
Both sides claim to advocate for blue collar workers, but MAGA policies are based on favoring Big Business over the working class.
Donald J. Trump (the leader of the movement), was despised by Anglo-Saxon “old money,” has no English ancestors, his mother was an immigrant servant girl, and he’s married two immigrants.
The lines drawn in the 2024 battle between Conservatism and Liberalism, and elites versus non-elites, has become very confusing.

*Photo: Prima/UIG/Rex Features.

Hating What You Can’t Control

The two Art Deco sculptures that adorned the iconic Bonwit Teller building from 1929 until 1980.

Those who don’t value art and science are distrustful of them for similar reasons.
People who value both, are open to new ideas.
Also, if they’re artists or scientists, they exert a lot of effort to meet their goals.
Those who value neither, live in all-or-nothing materialistic worlds. 

In 1980, Donald Trump decided to tear down the Bonwit Teller building, so he could build Trump Tower.
This 1929 building was designed by Warren and Wetmore, the same architects who designed Grand Central Terminal.
Art dealers had appraised the two Art Deco bas-relief sculptures, that decorated the building, at being worth between $200,000-$700,000.
Therefore, Trump agreed to donate them—plus the ornate grillwork above the door—to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Preservationists, and everyday New Yorkers, were shocked when Trump without warning broke his word to the Met.
His illegal workers* surprised New York City, by smashing the 15-foot sculptures to bits.

Why did Trump destroy these iconic sculptures almost 45 years ago?
If he was truly a wealthy man, it would have been just a little “skin off his nose” to save them.
If he had lived up to his word, he would have gained the endless gratitude of the Met.
He might even have negotiated for more money than the cost of preserving the sculptures.
However, that would have made him look poor.
Instead, Trump callously destroyed the bas-reliefs, labeling them “garbage” and “junk.”
In later years—as the saga of the Art Deco sculptures became legend—he called the sculptures “martyrs,” saying “They are like a man who was nothing in life, but when they were shot they become somebody.”

Of course, Trump doesn’t believe in being a true martyr, just like he didn’t believe in becoming a soldier during the Vietnam War.
However, martyrdom is one of the subjects that he’s fascinated by, like sharks, batteries, and taking showers.

I know some of the reasons why Trump destroyed the two Art Deco sculptures.
He looked at them, but he was unable to comprehend why they were valued.
Possibly, he didn’t have the cash on hand to preserve the sculptures, and was embarrassed by that fact. Therefore, he ordered them destroyed, with blow torches and jack hammers.
The preservation of the two bas-reliefs would have made him feel stupid, and Donald Trump hates feeling dumb.

Dr. Anthony Fauci testifying before the House of Representatives in 2024.

In 2024, Republican House members wanted to deflect criticism of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic from Trump.
Therefore, they asked that Dr. Anthony Fauci (an advisor to seven Presidents) be questioned on how the Trump administration handled the pandemic.
The goal was to blame a scientist for the bad job that Trump did.
Republican Representative Marjorie Greene waved around photos of beagles, and refused to address Dr. Fauci as doctor.
Republican Representative Ronny Jackson (former doctor to Trump) claimed that Dr. Fauci had covered up a Chinese lab leak. 

I know why House Republicans are trying to destroy Dr. Fauci’s reputation.
They look at him.
They don’t want to admit that Trump cared only about his image and was an inadequate president.
Therefore, they order Dr. Fauci destroyed.
Dr. Fauci’s knowledge, and integrity, exposed them both as ignorant.

Painting representing the Pope refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. Galileo spent his last years under house arrest for repeating the theory that the earth moved around the sun.

Ever since Socrates (469-399 BCE) was forced to drink poison for the sin of heresy against the Greek gods, and Galileo (1564-1642) was condemned for heresy by the Roman Catholic church, philosophers and scientists have been persecuted for putting forth theories that don’t align with the politics of the group in power.

Science is the process of uncovering the laws of nature, and scientists devise theories to explain facts.
At first, some scientists theorized that COVID could be transmitted via surfaces, but that turned out to be rare.
Early on during the COVID crisis, the public was discouraged from buying up all the KN95 and N95 masks, but that was so hospitals would have enough.
The fact remains that in most influenzas, not spreading your germs around does bring infection rates down, no matter how much you hate wearing a mask.

For further information on why some of the assumptions that scientists initially had about COVID-19 were wrong, please read Dr. Anthony Fauci’s On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, Silent Invasion by Dr. Deborah Birx, or Nightmare Scenario by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.
My memorandums “Condemned to Repeat the Past, Part One” and “Condemned to Repeat the Past, Part Two,” discuss the 1918 pandemic in relationship to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bernardo De Bernardinis of the Italian Civil Protection Department (left) with his lawyer (right), during his trial after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake.

On 10/22/2012, an Italian judge strangely convicted six prominent scientists of manslaughter because they failed to accurately predict the 2009 L’Aquila 6.3 earthquake (which caused 288 deaths in Italy).
The six scientists had all downplayed the likelihood of a major earthquake.
Each man was sentenced to six years of imprisonment, but the convictions were eventually overturned, three years later.

The conviction of Bernardo De Bernardinis—deputy director of the Italian Civil Protection Department, who was tried alongside the six scientists for listening to their advice—was not overturned.
However, his sentence was reduced from six years to two in 2015, and his sentence was suspended. 

Queen Christina of Sweden (Greta Garbo) in the 1933 film Queen Christina. Queen Christina was known for frequently dressing in male attire, and enjoyed “masculine pursuits” like the pursuit of knowledge, art collection, and horseback riding.

People who are distrustful of science desire absolutes, but we live in a world in which absolutes don’t exist.
Such people exist in an imaginary world in which all vaccines could have zero side effects.
They want scientists to never be wrong when predicting natural disasters.
They want every physician to make a clear diagnosis, and never be puzzled by which treatment to choose.
They want all infants to be born either male or female, when the percentage of intersex babies is between 0.018% to 1.7%.

Making art is the process of creating environments, objects, sounds, and visual experiences.
Most artists want to share their work with others.
Just as scientists disagree about theories; we disagree about what art is worth making.
When Vincent Van Gogh committed suicide, he died convinced by the world that he was a failure.
The great master, Henri Matisse, dismissed Pablo Picasso’s early paintings as a revolting hoax.
Some people only value representational art, because they believe they understand this form of art.

Those dismissive of artwork, however, are usually less angry than those resentful of science.
It’s easy to say that art, especially fine art, is superfluous.
It’s not so easy to dismiss science and scientists.
We’ve watched as inventions have transformed societies.
We’ve watched as doctors have improved medical outcomes.
These experiences have given scientists a power that artists do not possess.

*According to the Forbes article, “How Donald Trump Took Down Bonwit Teller, A Fifth Avenue Landmark,” by Michael Lisicky, the undocumented, mainly Polish, workers hired to take down the limestone and granite building were earning $4 an hour (a very low hourly wage for a very dangerous job).

Must Knowledge Lead to Progress? Part Two

Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) with the access terminal to his supercomputer, Colossus, in 1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Geoffrey Hinton, the “Godfather of AI,” recently remarked that “machines could take over” because they have the ability to learn independently and share their knowledge.
He then went on to say that it’s conceivable that AI could “wipe out humanity.”
The fact that artificial intelligence is rapidly altering human society makes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein particularly relevant.
See my memorandum Artificial Intelligence and Human Fears.

In Colossus: The Forbin Project, Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) builds Colossus, but despite its’ superior intelligence, he still expects his creation to be subservient to him, and to human instruction.
Colossus (at this stage, at least) does wish to preserve humanity as a whole.
However, it also believes that by being a dictator over humankind, it can do a better job than any humans could, and is willing to sacrifice human lives along the way.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates a being who is better able to learn, and also physically more powerful, than himself.
In all aspects, except attractiveness, it seems to be superior in many ways.
He’s unable to be a good father to this creature, however, and the creature murders all the beings who Victor Frankenstein loves.

Mary Godwin Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Before Bridget Fonda played the role in 1990’s Frankenstein Unbound, Elsa played Mary Shelley.

When Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley began her first novel Frankenstein (1818), she was 18 years old.
Despite her age, she created a work—arguably the first true science fiction novel—that still inspires other artists today.
While Mary Shelley didn’t believe in organized religion, she did believe in the existence of God.
In Frankenstein, this teenager explored themes of good and evil; prejudice; loneliness; human control; and the limits of scientific knowledge.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, but her mother died a few days after giving Mary birth.
Her father, William Godwin, was an influential journalist, philosopher, and publisher, who wrote An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.

Alienation must have been an easy subject for Mary to write about.
She had a fraught relationship with her stepmother.
She was shunned by society after she escaped from her father’s influence with a married man, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Only one, of her four children with Percy Shelley, survived to adulthood.
She and the great poet, Shelley, eventually wed.
However, she became a widow when she was 25.
Mary Shelley died at the age of 53, of a brain tumor. 

One idea that Mary Shelley’s novel, Whale’s two films—Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)—and the Corman film Frankenstein Unbound (1990), have in common is that the monster is not a true monster at all.
He’s a lost desperate soul, who turns to vengeance and murder, after his needs are met with cruelty.
Can such a creature have a soul?

In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, the main piece of evidence against Justine (Catherine Corman) is a locket belonging to the little boy. In Mary Shelley’s novel, the Frankenstein creature planted the child’s locket on Justine.

In the 1818 book, the monster kills at least four people.
He kills Victor’s young brother William, and frames William’s nanny Justine for the crime.
Later, he rapes and murders Victor Frankenstein’s fiancé Elizabeth on Victor’s wedding night.
Finally, he murders good Henry Clerval, Victor’s friend since childhood.
However, he comes to love the DeLacey family, especially the old grandfather.
By the end of the book, the creature is filled with remorse for his crimes, and wanders off, to commit suicide.

Although the “creature” in the 1818 novel, is much more articulate than the “monster” in the 1931 and 1935 films, there are key scenes in the films that reveal his capacity for goodness: the scene with the little girl by the lake, and the scenes with the blind hermit (a similar character to the DeLacey grandfather).
Both scenes are given power by the magnificent performances of Boris Karloff.

The blind hermit (Oliver Peters Heggie, left) shakes hands with the Frankenstein monster (Boris Karloff, right) in Bride of Frankenstein.

However, the monster does murder the little girl (perhaps because he believes she can float); does throw “his Master” off the old windmill in the 1931 film; and kills or injures people in both films.
At the end of Bride of Frankenstein, the monster is filled with self-loathing.
He tries to commit suicide, and allows Victor and Elizabeth to escape the lab.
Note: When Frankenstein was reissued in 1938, the scene with the little girl was cut.
The footage was lost until 1985, when the scene was partially restored.

In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, the monster murders Victor’s fiancé Elizabeth, Frankenstein himself, and several villagers.
Unlike other versions, this monster doesn’t commit suicide, but is killed by scientist Dr. Joe Buchanan for being an aberration, not created by God.
By the end of the film, Buchanan identifies completely with Victor Frankenstein.

The monster (Nick Brimble, left) shows Dr. Joe Buchanan (John Hurt, right) who’s boss, in Frankenstein Unbound.

In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, the creature interrogates Dr. Joe Buchanan as to when Victor Frankenstein created Buchanan.
He’s surprised to learn that Joe thinks himself created by a being called “God.”
Corman’s monster is intellectually between the articulate being in the Shelley novel, and the grunting child-like creature in Whalen’s Bride of Frankenstein.

Humans are using human-created artwork, and our written work, to educate AI, and make AI more intelligent than we are.
Victor Frankenstein used odd parts from graveyards to build his creature, and this resulted (in Mary Shelley’s words) in a “thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.”

The data in ChatGPT comes from wild sources like forums, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Facebook, as well as from edited books.
These sources contain conflicting information!
No wonder, ChatGPT sometimes goes mad and spins tales about fake people, and events!
How can software like ChatGPT believe in an absolute truth?

Midjourney images are “built” from billions of images stolen from the open web.
Much of the “raw material” is not keyworded* correctly.
That’s why a video of New York was used to represent London crime in an TV ad for mayor of London (2024).
That’s why a video of a Ukrainian man was used to represent a basement-dwelling American, in a 2023 Republican commercial blaming President Biden for inflation.
Many stock images, and videos on the world market, are generated by Russian, Ukrainian, and Estonian photographers.
It’s an easy way for creatives to obtain another “revenue stream.”

Android David (Michael Fassbender, left) pours tea for his industrialist creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce, right), in Alien: Covenant.

Ridley Scott’s film Alien: Covenant (2017) is a modern retelling of Frankenstein, with Walter as the “good side” of the monster, and David as the “evil side.”
In the prologue, Peter Weyland explains to David that “one day they will search for mankind’s creator together.”
Years after Weyland has died, David drops a bio-weapon on the planet of the Engineers (a giant alien race that facilitated the evolution of humans), thereby punishing the creators of his creator. 

In the original Frankenstein novel, Victor (traumatized by his mother’s death) develops a method to give life to non-living matter.
This experimental creature kills all the people who he loves.
In Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, Dr. Joe Buchanan believes he can create a super weapon that will end all wars.
Instead, he creates timeslips and ends human civilization.
In Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Peter Weyland creates a synthetic in the image of Michelangelo’s David.
The superior android David is scornful of his weak, human master.
Yet, later he feels a type of love for scientist Elizabeth Shaw (2012’s Prometheus).
Nevertheless, he plots vengeance on the alien race (the Engineers), as well as all the life forms that they “helped along.”

Today, scientists like Dr. Frances S. Collins (former leader of the Human Genome Project) and computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton all believe that science can help humankind make great advances.
At the same time, both warn that there are ethical issues to consider.
Yes. Knowledge can lead to progress, but scientists must tread carefully.
A false step can lead to the end of humankind.

*The rights to photographs and videos sold by commercial agencies (like istock, Shutterstock, and Getty), are routinely associated with “keywords,” so that these images may be used accurately. Sometimes, the keywords are not correct.

Must Knowledge Lead to Progress? Part One

Frankenstein Unbound, by Brian Aldiss

Author and Anthology Editor Brian W. Aldiss, as well as his companion novels—Frankenstein Unbound (1973) and Dracula Unbound (1990)—were well known during the late 80’s/early 90’s.
Both featured a main character named Joe Bodenland.
Frankenstein Unbound was about a fired U.S. Presidential advisor who travels in time (from 2031 to 1817) where he meets a mad Dr. Victor Frankenstein, as well as the author of the fictional work herself, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley. 

In the first chapter of the Aldiss non-fiction work Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (1973), he made the controversial proposal that Mary Shelley wrote the first true science fiction novel when she wrote Frankenstein.
He also gives his proposed definition of science fiction:

Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mold.*

In 1990, Roger Corman chose Frankenstein Unbound for his first directing challenge, after a 15-year gap.
This memorandum is a comparison of the two works.
Part Two will be a memorandum on the themes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and how her ideas about science and religion were transformed, and used, in the various films about her characters.

One difference between the Aldiss novel, and the Corman film, is the profession of the main character.
In the novel, the hero is a failed Texan politician named Joe Bodenland.
(He’s a married man—licking his political wounds after being fired—while his wife is away from New Houston on a business trip.)
In the film, Joe is a brash scientist who’s designed a super weapon more destructive than the atomic bomb.

At the beginning of the film, Dr. Buchanan is conducting an experiment.
His team blows up a small version of the Statue of Liberty in front of an audience of dignitaries.
Although there are shields protecting them, most viewers end up covered with ash, and with disheveled clothing.
The year is 2031, and Dr. Buchanan is a scientist seeking more funding for his project.
I’m not sure why Buchanan is destroying this particular statue, and it’s not a particularly strong beginning for the film.

For the rest of this memorandum, I’ll refer to the hero in the book as “Texan Joe B” and the film hero as “Dr. Joe B.”
“Joe” will refer to both characters.
The main point of both stories is that not all scientific knowledge leads to progress.

There’s a big side effect to Dr. Joe B’s weapon.
It has accidentally created “timeslips,” events in which random people travel in and out from the present to the past.
In the novel, Texan Joe B hasn’t caused “timeslips;” in the movie, Dr. Joe B has. 

Dr. Joe Buchanan (John Hurt) defends Justine Moritz (Catherine Corman) with an axe. Roger Corman’s daughter played a nanny, falsely accused of murdering Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s 6-year-old nephew, in Frankenstein Unbound.

In both versions of Frankenstein Unbound, Joe is zapped (along with his automobile) via a timeslip, from the mid 21st century back to 1817 Geneva, Switzerland.
(Luckily, Texan Joe B speaks fluent German.)
In Geneva, Joe meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein, his monster, his fiancé (Elizabeth), Mary Shelley, as well as poets Lord Bryon, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In the movie, Dr. Joe B runs into trouble when he tries to prevent Justine Moritz (a young woman falsely accused of murdering Frankenstein’s nephew) from being hanged.
In the novel, Texan Joe B is tossed into jail, accused of murdering Dr. Frankenstein himself.

Dr. Joe Buchanan (John Hurt) shows his talking car to Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda) in Frankenstein Unbound.

In the film, the scientist’s talking car has a nuclear-powered engine, and it’s able to drive itself.
In the novel, the politician’s car doesn’t talk, is electric, and is outfitted with a swivel gun on the roof.
(The talking car in the movie is played by a 1988 Italdesign Aztec concept car.)

In the film version of Frankenstein Unbound, Frankenstein constructs the female monster with the head of Victor’s fiancé Elizabeth, and the female monster has a slight, delicate body.
In the novel, Frankenstein constructs the female monster with the head of the hanged servant girl (Justine), and the body of the female monster is just as large and ungainly as that of the male Frankenstein monster. 

If the screenwriters for the film version of Frankenstein Unbound (Roger Corman and F.X. Feeney) had included more of the Aldiss novel in the script, it would have been an R-rated, or even an X-rated movie!
Mary Shelley is a very sexual woman in the book. She goes skinny dipping with Dr. Joe B, and breastfeeds her infant son William as they talk.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Raul Julia) wakes the female monster-bride (Catherine Rabett) in Frankenstein Unbound.

Moreover, Aldiss goes into graphic detail about drawings of the sexual parts of the “monsters” in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.
(This scene in the Aldiss book, reminded me of android David’s lab in Ridley Scott’s 2017 film Alien: Covenant.)
Rather than spend money on Frankenstein’s lab, however, Roger Corman chose to spend his budget on ripped-apart sheep, the Frankenstein monster assaulting villagers, and the death scene of the monster at the end of the story.
Unfortunately, most of the practical special effects—with the exception of the monster death scene—weren’t well executed.

In the novel, Texan Joe B watches as the two monsters mate for the first time.
(He had intended to kill them, but instead watches as they have sex.)
The only sex scene in the film is between Dr. Joe B (John Hurt) and Mary (Bridget Fonda).
However, the scene is more suggestive, than graphic.
(I’ve always loved John Hurt, so it’s nice to see him as a romantic lead.)

From left to right: the scandalous poet Lord Bryon (Jason Patric), Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda), and Percy Shelley (Michael Hutchence) in Frankenstein Unbound.

In the novel, we hear a lot more from Lord Bryon, Mary Shelley, and Percy Shelley, than in the film.
In place of philosophical discussions about human society, the movie audience is given human arms torn out of sockets and gutted sheep that appear to be breathing.

At one point in the Aldiss novel, Lord Bryon says:

“Is it possible that machinery will banish oppression?” he asked. “The question is whether machines strengthen the good or the evil in human nature, So far the evidence is not encouraging, and I suspect that new knowledge may lead to new oppression.”

In both versions of Frankenstein Unbound, the Joe character loses his moral compass and becomes prey to wild dreams.
By the end of the novel, Texan Joe B kills three of the novel’s main characters: Victor Frankenstein, the monster’s mate, and finally the monster himself.
At the end of the movie, Dr. Joe B does kill the monster, but it’s partially in self-defense.
It’s Dr. Victor Frankenstein who killed the female monster, and the monster who killed Victor.
At the end of both works, Joe trudges off into the snow.

*In his essay “A Monster for All Seasons” (in Science Fiction Dialogues, 1982) Aldiss says that “mode,” might have been a better word than “mold.” Also, (says Aldiss) perhaps he should have left out the phrase “Gothic and post-Gothic.”