The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Program details ethics, responsibility
Ohio Chautauqua 2017 examines Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’
As a creator, do you focus on the benefits of your invention without considering possible detriments or do the pros ultimately outweigh the cons?
This “deep and philosophical” question was one of many posed to the audience during the Ohio Chautauqua 2017 program, “Grappling with the Monster,” an informal analysis of English author Mary Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus,” and the shared responsibility one has regarding the elements one puts out into the world. The program also, on a larger scale, “evaluated” humankind’s creations that serve to aid health, security, the environment and society, while facing existing repercussions of those creations.
Scholar and actor Susan Marie Frontczak, commanding the room like a professor, presented the workshop on June 9 at Burton Public Library in the last of the community-based programming held daily throughout the week. Frontczak, who lives in Colorado, pulled double duty during Ohio Chautauqua 2017 playing both physicist/chemist Marie Curie and Mary Shelley.
As part of the Ohio Chautauqua 2017 event held in Burton Village presented by Ohio Humanities, a series of free community-based programming workshops were conducted, engaging citizens in conversations about common historical issues, figures and events.
For the second time, the Ohio Humanities Council has selected the village to host Ohio Chautauqua. Burton Village and three other communities each host a five-day stretch of the annual community and cultural event that combines living history performances, music, education and audience participation.
The tour, which also will stop in Clifton, Warren and Milan, started in Burton Village on June 6 and runs through June 10. All events are free of charge.
The Ohio Humanities Council each year selects four communities in which to hold its historic figures theater performances, music performances and lectures. Burton Village last hosted the event in 2012.
For Ohio Chautauqua 2017, in addition to Frontczak, the “The Natural World” theme is featuring scholars portraying President Theodore Roosevelt; primatologist/activist and “Gorillas in the Mist” author Dian Fosse; and Shawnee Chief Cornstalk (Hokoleskwa), who lived in Ohio and Kentucky in the time of the Revolutionary War.
The Chautauqua events are sponsored by the Burton Historic District Association located on the Century Village Museum grounds. The association requested and applied for the event, along with nine other organizations, and was awarded first choice.
Frontczak developed her first living history presentation in an attempt to reconcile her technical and scientific backgrounds. She’s worked as an engineer and also as a software engineer. Her passion for storytelling is incorporated into her motto — “Give me a place to stand, and I will take you somewhere else.”
“If something was becoming monstrous in society, it’s becoming a ‘Frankenstein,’ Frontczak said, noting the many cultural references the name has spawned.
“Even back then, it was a misuse of the name in a way. And that’s another thing, he wasn’t given a name. That’s part of the confusion. Also, it’s only in the movies that scientist Victor Frankenstein is referred to as Dr. Frankenstein. Never in the book is he a doctor. He is never recognized by his peers as having achieved a level of expertise to have a degree conferred upon him. He comes up with something he wants to research and he becomes so obsessed with it, that that’s what he does. And I consider that as significant as the creature not having a name.
“In the book, the creature turns on the humanity that has treated him so horribly. Seeking revenge, he kills Victor Frankenstein’s younger brother, William, and Frankenstein realizes it, but the murder is blamed on the maid, Justine. At the trial, Victor Frankenstein says nothing, he doesn’t step up. At that point in the story, I began to wonder who is the monster, and is it Victor Frankenstein? There’s this ambiguity.”
Frontczak asked the audience to brainstorm things done today with science and technology based on things Shelley wrote as fiction in 1818.
The list included organ transplants; cloning; limb reattachment; DNA engineering/genetic modification; artificial apparatuses, for example pacemakers; prosthetics; 3D printed organs; plastic surgery, in vitro fertilization; quasi wombs (incubators); vaccines; and antibiotics.
Frontczak said the goal of the discussion was to wrestle with the specific questions these and other creations have, and how they parallel those in the novel.
“I want to raise more questions than provide
answers. I am not a geneticist or an attorney in bioethics. What responsibility does a scientist, any scientist, have to his or her creation?”
Citing the use of the chemical DDT, Frontczak detailed its benefit of killing mosquitoes and preventing malaria, but lamented the destructive toll it took on the bald eagle population, which eventually led to its ban in America.
“The question ‘Who’s to blame, who’s responsible?’ is a red herring,” she said. “It is used today to get us all worked up pointing fingers and not solving the problem. DDT is in some ways a good example and a scary example, in that it was only society that could reel it in. It was only us that could decide we shouldn’t do that any more. It became a ‘monster’ because it wasn’t being husbanded. It had its good intentions to balance (out) people succumbing to malaria, but it became much messier than that.
“We have to raise awareness about the ramifications of these things,” she said. “‘Frankenstein’ is a story about meddling with the natural world and not understanding the consequences, to try something and see what you’ll find. Everything we do has consequences. The minds and hearts of the people in the book are blinded by his physical appearance. On a personal level, I see this as a metaphor for anything that blinds me to seeing or hearing a greater truth, the bigger picture. I consider it part of my responsibility as a human being to try taking that veil away from my eyes — I can’t pretend it’s not there.”
Ohio Chautauqua 2017 concludes June 10 at Century Village Museum.
For more information, visit ohiohumanities.org.