Cambridge Checkpoints HSC Advanced English 102 Sample ...

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Cambridge Checkpoints HSC Advanced English

The question

‘A deeper understanding of disruption and identity emerges from considering the parallels between Frankenstein and Blade Runner’ Compare how these texts explore disruption and identity.

What it requires

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Both texts are connected by an exploration of “disruption” and “identity”. Compare and contrast the ways “disruption” and “identity” are explored in the texts, taking into account context, audience, language and textual form.

Sample response: Prose fiction and film Prescribed texts: Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1819 and Blade Runner (Director’s Cut), Ridley Scott, 1992 Context of both texts linked to the words in the question, followed by a brief overview of the argument

Written with more than 200 years between them and in two very different forms, the texts Frankenstein and Blade Runner have become classics. Central to both texts is the idea of disruption and the way this disruption affects the identity of humanity. While Blade Runner can be seen as offering a parallel plot to Frankenstein, Ridley Scott takes the story of a creator and his being to new heights and answers questions that Shelley left unsaid. In both texts the natural world has been disrupted by the creation of artificial beings: the creature in Frankenstein and the replicants in Blade Runner. The chain of being, with God at the top as the creator, has been disrupted in different ways according to each context. The disruption goes even further. The very sense of what it means to be a human is disrupted, with the line between creation and human creator becoming narrower, as the creations all demand an identity. This occurs because of the context of each text, where the possibilities for science are extended and man’s voracious appetite for knowledge and power goes so far that it may ultimately destroy the world.

Identifying one parallel about the origins of both texts, establishing that they emerge from a much older tradition Focus on Frankenstein

Stories of creation are significant in most cultures and form the source of many other stories. Rather than just copying the Promethean creation myth, both Shelley and Scott have disrupted the unity of the original story to create their own stories, in which the identity of Prometheus changes. The classical myth of Prometheus acted as a warning to those who defied the gods. In the Bible, the story of Lucifer, the Fallen Angel, is a message of what happens when God’s role is usurped. Shelley acknowledged the influence of the Promethean myth in her subtitle, ‘The New Prometheus’, knowing that her audience would have been fully aware of the implications of the subtitle. The Romantic period (in which Shelley was a significant figure, both with her own writing and as part of the inner circle of her husband and other Romantic poets) was one in which ancient writings were admired and imitated, so Shelley was following in this tradition. However, she does not accept the story as it stands. The nobility of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, is questioned in the character of Frankenstein, who does not accept responsibility for his creation, feeling “breathless horror and disgust” as he faces the creature, and in so doing unleashes the vengeful retaliation of the “malevolent force” on his family. Frankenstein may be a pagan Prometheus, but the creature is described in Christian terms as a “daemon”, “a fallen angel” and a “fiend”.

Modules

Intertextual discussion continued, moving from Frankenstein to a focus on Blade Runner, linked by the word continues

Explores the parallel development of the creatures in each text

The parallel influence of science in both texts, citing contextual evidence

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Shelley merges the Ancient Roman myths with Christian myths, reflecting the sensibilities of her time, and Scott continues in this tradition of imitation, drawing from Romanticism with references to Blake’s America: A Prophecy, 1793, and also to Milton’s Paradise Lost. His ‘creatures’, the NEXUS 6 replicants, are “superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them”. With developments in technology, these creatures become “the beauty of the dream” that Frankenstein envisaged, but their creator exhibits the same lack of connection that Frankenstein had with his creation. Tyrell sees his creation, Roy Batty, as a “prodigal son”, and Roy Batty acknowledges that Tyrell is associated with the “God of Biomechanics”, but finally it is the replicant, Roy, and not the maker, who has the connection with Christian mythology, in the Christ-like image of the nail through his palm in his death scene. This image of sacrifice is far removed from notions of god and creation. Shelley had suggested the humanity of the creature in the eloquent descriptions of his learning, his wanderings when he talks to his master in the Alps and in the sensitivity of his final speech of loss: “I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks”. Scott develops this further with Batty’s sadness echoing the creature’s (“All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.”), accompanied by soft music, his face blurred by the rain and a light shining on him from above as his face looks up at the camera, creating strong empathy for the replicant and his plight. Like all science fiction, these texts take us into the realm of possibility and while that possibility is contained by the context of the time of production, it is also very much a disruption of the status quo. Shelley’s context was a time of burgeoning scientific study, where experimentation was often more about spectacle than knowledge. Mary Shelley would have been conscious of, if not also attending, experiments on reanimation, or galvanism, as attempts to recreate life were called. Luigi Galvini found that using electric prods could produce movement in dead bodies. By the time of Blade Runner, the scientific research was less crude but the end result of such experiments as cloning brought up the possibility of creating life in the laboratory and reopened the arguments. The most significant change, however, was in the relationship of science to commerce. Unlike Frankenstein, who desires to learn “the secrets of heaven and earth”, the creation of life is more about business for Tyrell, who asserts that “commerce is our goal here at Tyrell”, reflecting the economic rationalism of the 1980s. He creates replicants to work on the new planets and to serve mankind, but when they disrupt human plans and refuse to do this, demanding to be treated as humans themselves, they are outlawed and persecuted. Frankenstein’s creation also becomes an outlaw, but unlike the replicants, his physical appearance is monstrous. When the creature faces his maker in the Alps, the difference between his forbidding looks and the beauty of the landscape stands out. He is not natural and he cannot fit into a space of such beauty. In contrast, Tyrell’s creations have beauty – they are, in fact, more beautiful than the humans we see in the film. Their maker is a physically weak myopic individual. The environment that they want to inhabit is post-apocalyptic, with steamy streets and acid rain falling, in misty scenes reminiscent of film noir. Tyrell has managed to do what Frankenstein could not, in making perfect human beings, but in so doing he draws attention to the limitations of mankind and the degradation of their lives in the midst of what is called “progress”. All of this is hinted at in Frankenstein, wherein Victor Frankenstein desires glory but he does not have

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Cambridge Checkpoints HSC Advanced English the strength of character to accept what he has created. He is as myopic as Tyrell in not seeing where his responsibility lies.

Summing up the argument and returning clearly to the thesis, which reflects the wording of the question

By reading Scott’s text against Shelley’s, we can see that there are some discourses that are universal and transcend time, such as our understandings about what it means to be human and fears about the tenuous nature of existence. In the context of the early nineteenth century, Frankenstein’s creation may act as a disruption to the human world of his time, but by the time of Scott’s film, growing cynicism about human enterprise leads to a more flexible attitude to the identity of the creature and challenges traditional views about mankind. Exploring the two texts together proves that our assumption about what is human is affected by the context in which the text was produced.

Working with the sample response Read the Notes from the Marking Centre and complete the questions below. Notes from the Marking Centre: General comments on Module A Better responses developed a thesis which addressed the question and demonstrated a strong conceptual understanding of the module and the elective. These responses embedded an evaluation of the relationship between text and context in the analysis of the texts and thus revealed a wide-ranging understanding of context and how that was reflected in texts. These responses also incorporated an analysis of the ways in which a comparative study invited deeper understanding of the concepts suggested by the question. Weaker responses tended to make connections between texts often through lengthy description and recount. They were explanatory and narrative rather than analytical. These responses did not demonstrate evaluative judgements and treatment of context was often superficial or absent. Textual references were often not well selected or integrated into the discussion of the two texts studied.

Notes from the Marking Centre: Texts in Time Better responses demonstrated a conceptual understanding of the module through detailed analysis of the interrelationship between the two texts studied. They demonstrated a clear understanding of how context influenced the values and ideas in both texts. These responses considered the key terms of disruption, aspirations or independence and identity as a basis for the thesis developed in their response. Weaker responses tended to identify some similarities between these texts, often with a limited understanding of their significance. These responses often considered the key terms of the question in a superficial or generalised way and/or ignored them. Treatment of context was not integrated into the discussion and was frequently a reference to the time of composition rather than an understanding of how context is reflected in the construction and reception of texts. Textual support was often not appropriate.