Pop-Cultured Catholic #14: “Jurassic Park”; or, the Modern “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus”

As influential as Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” has been to Gothic horror, one author has created another monster just as iconic as the vampire count himself. That person is Mary Shelley, author of the 1818 novel “Frankenstein”, also known by its full title as “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus”. While “Dracula” has been a defining work in supernatural horror, “Frankenstein” pioneered science-fiction horror and could be declared one of the first science-fiction stories in general. For today, I will now dissect its themes and impact from a Catholic perspective.

Before I analyze the themes introduced by “Frankenstein” and echoed by a more recent science-fiction horror classic, I will first recap the Greek myth alluded to by Mary Shelley. Prometheus is one of the Titans, a group of deities preceding the Olympians. When Zeus rises to power and supplants his Titan father Cronus, Prometheus submits to Zeus. He remains on the Olympians’ good side, until he looks down and sees the state of mankind. Watching humans struggle in their ignorance, Prometheus takes it upon himself to teach them culture, technology, and natural sciences against the will of Zeus. When this culminates in Prometheus stealing fire to share with humanity, Zeus leaves him chained to a rock to be fed on by an eagle each day. Prometheus’ punishment goes on indefinitely, until he is finally freed by Heracles (a.k.a. Hercules).

While Prometheus has long represented the archetype of someone seeking to pioneer higher knowledge and control of the natural order, then paying the price for it, certain elements of this trope would need adjusting to work for later audiences, including a Christian audience. To people like the Ancient Greeks, the gods’ status and human progress were in direct competition with one another, often yielding a zero-sum game. At best, Man could benefit from the gods in a transactional manner, if the latter were appeased enough. Nowadays, Prometheus easily comes across as a heroic martyr rather than a person facing karmic punishment for hijacking the natural order. The original story’s implications are also at odds with the mindset of Christianity, in which God has nothing to need from mankind and only has things to give. Man was made to be stewards of the Earth, God made the natural world intelligible, we are invited to understand it, and we even act as co-creators with God every time we bring new life into the world. This extends to the sciences, with famous Christian researchers such as Gregor Mendel and Georges Lemaître. What is demanded of us, though, is that we use the tools and knowledge we acquire in accordance with what is good versus evil, plus that we keep our own fallibility in mind whenever we enter new frontiers.

If the Promethean archetype is to work as a karmic downfall today, then the character’s fall ought to result from him specifically using his knowledge unethically and/or recklessly, rather than from him merely acquiring and sharing said knowledge.

Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is one such story, in which an ambitious medical student discovers a way to artificially create life, then wields it “like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun”. Contrary to what many might expect from Frankenstein’s adaptations, the titular Victor Frankenstein never intends to create a Halloween monster. Instead, he seeks to fashion from scratch a human person of exceptional beauty, intellect, strength, vitality, and athleticism. However, Victor’s limited skills result in his creation’s appearance being riddled with minute imperfections. Once he awakens the “Creature”, the subtle imperfections in its otherwise handsome appearance come together and give it an uncanny look. Due to this, combined with its imposing stature, Frankenstein is terrified by what he sees and abandons his creation to fend for itself.

While Victor Frankenstein’s folly partially lies in him crossing new scientific boundaries without the proper caution, understanding, and ethics, the greater tragedy lies in his unwillingness to take responsibility and care for the person he created… whom I will henceforth refer to as “Adam”. Once the story’s perspective switches to Adam’s, we see him start out as this innocent and pure-hearted person, who is unjustly rejected by society because of his frightening appearance. Adam quickly learns about human culture by observing people from a distance, training himself to speak fluently, and even deciphering how to read books. Once, he manages to rescue a small girl from drowning, only to be shot by her scared guardian. Adam’s only experience with friendship comes fleetingly in the form of a blind man, until that too is sabotaged by unfortunate happenstance. Soon, Adam lashes out violently for the first time, then tracks down Victor Frankenstein as a last act of desperation. He hopes to persuade his “father” to take pity on him and either welcome him back or at least create an “Eve” for him. However, what follows is a vicious cycle of mutual hatred, betrayal, and revenge. Both Frankenstein and Adam lose everything and then spend the final moments of their lives regretting how they treated each other.

By extension, I perceive another important theme which overlaps with the one about the increasing responsibilities of scientific power: the fact that all persons brought into this world deserve to be treated with love and dignity, no matter what acts have caused their existence. To partially quote a certain animated movie with a panda voiced by Jack Black, “Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn't make you who you are. It is the rest of your story…”. If Victor Frankenstein had not cruelly acted like a deadbeat father or if society had not mistreated Adam, then a happy ending could have been salvageable for Adam. The Church affirms that every person has the right to be conceived and welcomed, as the product of a loving mutual gift of self within marriage. Despite this, children are sometimes born from sinful acts. And with the invention of certain biotechnologies, the amount of unethical acts/circumstances from which a child may come into existence has increased. But one other Catholic talking point is how, even if a person’s existence is started by an act of outright evil, that does not make the person’s existence itself a sin nor the person any less a child of God to be cared for. Needless to say, such children should not be directly compared to Frankenstein’s Creature. But I believe that broader motif behind the character is applicable in these situations, yielding an example of these two themes overlapping in real life.

Out of the future literary works to echo Mary Shelley’s themes and put a new spin on them, one of the most famous is Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”. The Jurassic Park franchise needs no introduction, especially thanks to Stephen Spielberg’s movie adaptation, which took on a life of its own and snowballed into a whole film series. While Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” put more emphasis on the adventure and wonder, Crichton’s original novel was a much more dark, viscerally brutal, and horror-focused story fit for Halloween. The premise centers around a biotech company named InGen, which manufactures lab-grown replicas of long extinct dinosaurs to market as theme park attractions. InGen’s methods involve collecting partially complete genomes of dinosaurs from fossilized amber, filling in the genomes’ gaps with DNA from modern animals (mostly birds, non-avian reptiles, and amphibians), then growing clones from the hybridized genomes.

In Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”, the role of Victor Frankenstein is shared between InGen’s CEO John Hammond and his top scientist named Dr. Henry Wu. While the book’s version of John Hammond is more antagonistic than his iconic movie portrayal by Richard Attenborough, he does share that same ambition to deliver on real dinosaurs for the public. This creates some friction between him and Dr. Wu, who would prefer to embellish the dinosaurs and make their replicas more like the stereotypical Hollywood reptiles, which typical guests would expect dinosaurs to be (this idea was expanded and updated in the “Jurassic World” movie to yield the Indominus Rex subplot). Hammond has the integrity to not approve of this hollow mindset. He demands that InGen’s replicas be as pure and unaltered as possible, only blending other animals’ genes that are believed to be shared. This mirrors how Frankenstein in the book wanted to create an actual perfected man and not a monster. However, Dr. Wu ponders whether InGen’s dinosaur clones may still subtly deviate from their millions-of-years-old counterparts in unknown ways, despite Hammond’s best efforts. That is, akin to how Frankenstein’s efforts still yielded minute imperfections in Adam’s appearance.

Following the themes shared with “Frankenstein”, John Hammond and Dr. Wu’s endeavor blows up in their faces, and their original fates in the “Jurassic Park” novel do not go well. Hammond’s ambition to provide authentic dinosaurs results in animals that are far more sophisticated, dangerous, and unpredictable than he was prepared to handle. The park’s woefully under-managed and later sabotaged security system enables the dinosaurs to escape and start killing people. Also, Dr. Wu’s prediction that the genetic blending may have caused undetected side-effects comes true. One famous example is how the frog DNA used to fill in certain dinosaurs’ genomes has enabled their all-female populations to change sex and breed uncontrollably. Dr. Wu proudly realizes that the dinosaurs breeding means he has succeeded in creating fully functional life, ironically right before a Velociraptor kills him. This is reminiscent of Frankenstein almost seeing his work through by making a suitable “Eve” for Adam, only to become paranoid that they could birth a superhuman race. Finally, Hammond meets his end being immobilized and eaten alive by his smaller venomous dinosaurs, the Procompsognathus (coincidentally, Prometheus has his liver repeatedly eaten by an eagle, and all birds are technically dinosaurs).

“Frankenstein” and “Jurassic Park” complement each other by tackling similar broad themes from different perspectives.

One of the biggest differences between Shelley and Crichton’s approach is how much the science itself is shown or lack thereof. With the year being 1818, Mary Shelley lived way too far in the past to see biotechnologies like these come into fruition: genome sequencing, cloning, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, hormonal manipulation, gene splicing, gene therapies, other genetic editing tools like CRISPR, and the use of GMOs. Yet she was imaginative and learned enough to envision science advancing to the degree, where people can artificially create/alter/emulate life. Her novel leaves it vague exactly how Frankenstein makes his Creature (although various adaptations would popularize the image of “Doctor” Frankenstein building a body out of cadavers and reanimating it with lightning-powered machinery). But this vagueness allows her story to broadly represent any potential scientific advancement, while focusing on the broader philosophical implications of such an endeavor. Meanwhile, Michael Crichton saw many of these advancements become a reality and had the science itself take more of a center stage in the narrative of “Jurassic Park”. His narrative also delves deeply into big research corporations’ potential for corrupt practices. And while no DNA from non-avian dinosaurs could survive that long in real life, the method of de-extinction he put forth has been deemed theoretically possible for recently extinct animals, such as the Tasmanian tiger or even the woolly mammoth.

A second major difference is that “Frankenstein” bring ups the ethical can of worms which is also opened, if such an endeavor specifically involves the creation of new persons. As fascinating and awe-inspiring as non-avian dinosaurs are, they are still mere animals, whereas humans have a far higher dignity in God’s creation and will be surrounded by an additional layer of moral boundaries. Nowadays, for example, there are worries that it is becoming increasingly common for people to treat babies as commodities to be manufactured and bought, defective or surplus products which can be discarded, etc. Crichton’s two Jurassic Park novels focus more on how nature around us can be altered and do not really delve into the human side of bioethics. The only time I have seen Jurassic Park media touching upon that is once in the film series, when “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” introduces the cloned child named Maisie Lockwood. Down the road, I might make a future post commenting specifically on her character.

Overall, with the increasing versatilities of our biotechnology, it is becoming another prime example of the Promethean “fire” now in our hands. That “fire” has proven itself capable of being both helpful and harmful, so using it ethically and responsibly has only become all the more important. And to quote Jeff Goldblum’s portrayal of Crichton’s Ian Malcolm character, our scientists ought to make sure they have not become “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should”.

As supplementary materials, I am first sharing a YouTube video essay I found on Mary Shelley's life experiences around "Frankenstein", one of the YouTube videos discussing the debates over potentially replicating the woolly mammoth, and one of Christopher West's Theology of the Body Institute videos showcasing an egregious case of reproductive technology's misuse. Besides that, I am also sharing two narrated and storyboarded chapters from Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" novel, plus the quotable debate scene from the "Jurassic Park" movie...

1.) “Inside the Tragic Origins of Frankenstein: Love, Death & Creation”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=GYPPhf8KQDM

2.) PBS Eons' "We Can 'Bring Back' The Woolly Mammoth. Should We?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1GAQLKXZj8

3.) Christopher West’s “This Disturbing Netflix Documentary Exposes the Horrors of Reproductive Technologies” (sperm donor deceitfully fathered between 600 to 3000 kids)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qbQ8BUAU0s

4.) "Jurassic Park" Novel's T. Rex Breakout Scene Narrated and Storyboarded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AztA3Qj0r4A

5.) "Jurassic Park" Novel's Death of Dennis Nedry Scene Narrated and Storyboarded (GRAPHIC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyyHEVmn8bE

6.) The "Jurassic Park" Film's Quotable Debate-Over-Lunch Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GfN8Yk_70