On
Saturday evening I got caught up on my journal and after that returned to
working on my essay. So far I’ve mostly just organized my notes into thematic
categories, with the first group centred on the idea of Victor Frankenstein’s
belief that ugliness equals evil and beauty equals goodness:
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
presents a dilemma of aesthetic perception. Victor Frankenstein believes that
the physical appearance of a person reflects the content of their mind. He
equates beauty with benevolence and deformity with wickedness. Victor is the
creator of a new form of sentient life that is superior to humans in every way
but one. As soon as Victor sees in motion the monster that he created he
rejects its very existence because he assesses its grotesque face as expressing
“the utmost extent of malice”. Even when later he recognizes the creature as
being clever he only sees its mind as reflecting the ugliness of its
countenance. When tempted to sympathize with the monster his compassion is
destroyed by one look at the walking and talking mass of filth that he has
brought into the world. Since Frankenstein believes that the outer aspect is a
mirror of the character, he is afraid that if he were to accept the
responsibility of caring for the creature he would be condemned by society’s
reaction to his having produced such an ugly creature. It would be perceived
that he was the source of the ugliness. He would be seen as hideous by
association and therefore would have to accept his own inner repulsiveness.
For both lunch and dinner I had
tomatoes and avocadoes, with a banana and blueberries for dessert. I weighed
myself before dinner and I was surprised to see I weigh 92 kilos when a few
days ago before starting my fast I was 90.8 kilos.
I watched an episode of the
Rifleman. This story begins with Lucas and Mark riding a stagecoach home from
Fort Sumner after selling stock. A passenger named Johnny Cotton is
particularly interested in Lucas’s rifle. Mark tells him that his father made
the crank action alterations on the Winchester himself. When the stage hits a
bump we see that Johnny is handcuffed to the marshal sitting next to him. When
the driver stops to water the horses Johnny’s gang of two sneaks up, wounds the
marshal and set Johnny free. Johnny steals Lucas’s money and his rifle. The
gang takes off into the mountains. Lucas sends Mark home on the stage and takes
off unarmed and on foot after the outlaws. In this kind of terrain Johnny and
his men will have to walk their horses quite a bit and so Lucas is able to
catch up. But Johnny sees Lucas climbing up towards them and shoots. Lucas
seems to be hit and slides down to the foot of the rock. Johnny is satisfied
that Lucas is dad but Blade isn’t and descends to make sure. While he’s doing
that Johnny takes off and Abe follows. Meanwhile Lucas jumps Blade and after a
short fight knocks him out. Lucas climbs the rock and takes Blade’s horse.
Later Lucas gets above Johnny and Abe and sends an avalanche down that kills
Abe and so Lucas gets Abe’s pistol. Down the trail Johnny lets his horse go and
waits in ambush for Lucas. He’s at a distance higher up from which he can hit
McCain and McCain’s pistol shouldn’t have the range. But Lucas grabs an old
“poison water” sign and uses one of the boards as a stock to extend the range
of the pistol. He kills Johnny.
Johnny Cotton was played by Vic
Morrow, who was in Blackboard Jungle and several other films and who co-starred
in the TV show Combat. He died in 1982 in a stunt helicopter crash along with
two child actors while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment