Whoosh.
The Sun’s now deleted tweet was incredulous at the very thought. They could hardly believe that ‘snowflake students’ and libtard academics would possibly see any good in the grotesque beast at the heart of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Frankenstein’s monster is after all, well, a monster. It’s there in the name! How could these intellectual elite leftie bastards possibly paint him as anything other? What are they suggesting exactly? We should have empathy for murderers?!
The Sun think Animal Farm is a warning about pigs taking over the world, and that ‘allegory’ manages Juventus. pic.twitter.com/tnNusjI7GJ
— Nooruddean (@BeardedGenius) March 7, 2018
First published in 1818, Shelley’s novel has endured precisely because it is an ambiguous contemplation of good and evil that tears your heart in two. The prose are utterly beguiling, but the real genius is in the way it plays with the emotions.
We are both horrified by some of the monster’s most abhorrent acts, and yet enamoured by instances of his innate kindness and goodness. He may be born of a horrible science experiment, but is naturally loving and hopeful – until society shuns him.
Shelley encourages us to feel conflicted; she elicits sympathy for her deformed protagonist so that we may appreciate that nothing is as simple as good and bad. Frankenstein’s creation just wanted to love and be loved back. Instead he was vilified.
🙄 That’s the whole point of the book. It was the point when Mary Shelly wrote it in 1797 pic.twitter.com/EcDe2Sjqzj
— The Blindboy Podcast (@bbboatclub) March 7, 2018
Greeted with repulsion and contempt, hatred begets hatred. Doctor Frankenstein may have played God with his hubristic experimenting, but it is society that created the monster. They attacked him because he was different…which brings us to the Sun.
The underlying intentions of their outstandingly dumb piece are clear:
a) to perpetuate the disparaging ‘snowflake’ blanket term for anyone who’s not massively right-wing; b) to mock teachers, students and anyone within academia as out-of-touch elites; c) to use this as yet another example of how the left defend any kind of monster – be they immigrants or refugees or Muslims or feminists or gays or ethnic minorities or Lily Allen.
They’ve deleted the tweet but not the article (yet). Hilarious as it may be in isolation, it’s also part of a real and burgeoning campaign of anti-intellectualism on the right, aimed at students, academics and “metropolitan elites”. https://t.co/9aaYwFdOCg
— Alex von Tunzelmann (@alexvtunzelmann) March 7, 2018
Alas what the excuse for a news outlet actually achieve is an unwittingly exemplar for their entire brand of ‘journalism’.
The piece is fundamentally ill-informed. Whether through idiocy or intent, they completely misunderstand the whole point of Shelley’s masterpiece, and mock those who do. The obscene contempt for fact or learning is pure Brexit.
In classic Sun style, the piece panders to the very lowest common denominator, and treats its reader with utter contempt.
They probably know they’re pedalling a trash interpretation, but bank on the public being stupid enough to swallow it whole. In an impressive act of meta-mob baiting, they encourage their readers to align with the ignorant fictional masses.
It’s a while since I read it but doesn’t the whole book kind of pivot on this point?
I’d ask that doughty scourge of snowflakes, Sun editor @tonygallagher, but even his tweets are ‘protected’. https://t.co/3EhCv4OGVN— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) March 7, 2018
And as they do with any minority or section of society outside of the mainstream, they force their readers to think in binary terms of them and us – good vs evil. Any empathy or sympathy for otherness is seen as a weakness, and thusly treated with contempt.
It may just be a case of hilarious stupidity on one level – to so spectacularly misunderstand the fundamentals of a literary classic – but on another, it sums up the Sun to a tee. Simpleton reporting, encouraging base reaction, pushing derision for expertise, and leaving no room whatsoever for ambiguity or critical thinking.
Fair play though. For a rag that fails to acknowledge allegory and symbolism, they manage to parody themselves quite well.
