Frankenstein and The Happy Sunshine Family

Daughter Number Three recently posted a YouTube video made by her daughter Ruby and her daughter's friend Arielle, called "The Happy Sunshine Family." I've included it here: it's a family romance complete with "wicked" twin locked in a cage, like poor Harry Potter under the stairs at the Dursleys, or the many dogs – wicked or not – who periodically go back to the cage in their owner's homes.

This fascinating, morbid trope goes all the way back to fairy tales, and then to one of the world's most notorious anti-heroes, Frankenstein, patron saint of the misunderstood and encaged/enraged Other.

I read Frankenstein, the novel, for the first time a couple of years ago, and as a result became obsessed with everything having to do with Mary Shelley. This kind of took me by surprise, as I don't consider myself a fan of the horror genre. What intrigued me was the notion of Frankenstein as outsider who wants to become a member of the "happy sunshine family" but who is unequivacably unwelcome to them. Watch the video, and we'll pick up on the comparisons tomorrow. Here is the frontispiece to the original edition of the book.

We were bored, so...... we created a somewhat disturbing movie using playmobiles. Yep.