I've been seeking a bunch of Frankenstein films since re-reading Mary Shelley's novel, and I've seen some wretched TV movies and B-pictures in that process, so why not an episode of a TV series, too. Plus, "The X-Files" is one of the more respected shows in TV history. "The Post-Modern Prometheus" is a stand-alone entry in the series--what they call a "monster-of-the-week" episode, which is irrelevant to the overarching plot of a season, and it's one of the highest ranked such episodes in the show's span. The title is a spin on the subtitle of Shelley's story and an appropriate one given that the episode is largely a pastiche of the classic Universal Frankenstein films of the 1930s and 1940s, including black-and-white photography, some low-angle shots, lightning, a mad scientist, a monster and an angry mob.
Even the monster's deformity of a double face seems to allude to the episode reflecting, or doubling, the familiar Frankenstein myth. His seeking a bride is also taken from the novel. The mad scientist, Dr. Pollidori, seems to be named after John Polidori, who was with Mary, Percy Shelley and others at Lord Byron's villa when they had a ghost-story writing competition, for which Polidori's "The Vampyre" is the other, albeit lesser, significant work to emerge. In 1997, Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal, was big news, so this episode updates the science-y stuff to involve genetics and borrows from "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells in its human-farm-animal hybrids.
Seeking a mate, the creature breaks into women's homes, anesthetizes them and rapes them for the purpose of impregnation, which has incestuous and potentially further rapacious implications, as well, if one supposes he used any of his own genetic material, besides that of farm animals, and planned to create a sexual mate. As disturbing as this subject matter is and as off-putting as the light treatment of it by "The X-Files" is, it's almost aptly analogous to the misogyny of parthenogenesis in Shelley's "Frankenstein," of life created by man's will alone. The difference being here that woman continues to be used, without consent, for her womb.
I guess the references to "Mask" (1985), including Cher, are meant to humanize the creature, named "Mutato," whose actions are otherwise, indeed, monstrous. Generally parodic in tone, the episode's treatment of the town as Jerry Springer viewing bumpkins comes off as rather insulting. And, the investigative work of Mulder and Scully and whomever else leaves much to be desired: they repeatedly touch evidence without using gloves, nobody seems to have noticed or been questioned regarding fumigation tents being put over houses where and when crimes were reported, the two FBI agents run inside one of these tents only to pass out, and so on. Yet, I do like the inclusion of the comic-book writer, who's akin to Captain Walton in the epistolary structure of Shelley's story--it being comprised of his letters, he's the narrator and surrogate author within the narrative. In "The Post-Modern Prometheus," it's even insinuated by Mulder, the believer of the detective duo, that the comic-book writer is the author of this very episode. Mulder, self-aware and practically breaking the fourth wall, doesn't like the ending, so he calls for the writer to change it.
Even the monster's deformity of a double face seems to allude to the episode reflecting, or doubling, the familiar Frankenstein myth. His seeking a bride is also taken from the novel. The mad scientist, Dr. Pollidori, seems to be named after John Polidori, who was with Mary, Percy Shelley and others at Lord Byron's villa when they had a ghost-story writing competition, for which Polidori's "The Vampyre" is the other, albeit lesser, significant work to emerge. In 1997, Dolly the Sheep, the first cloned mammal, was big news, so this episode updates the science-y stuff to involve genetics and borrows from "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells in its human-farm-animal hybrids.
Seeking a mate, the creature breaks into women's homes, anesthetizes them and rapes them for the purpose of impregnation, which has incestuous and potentially further rapacious implications, as well, if one supposes he used any of his own genetic material, besides that of farm animals, and planned to create a sexual mate. As disturbing as this subject matter is and as off-putting as the light treatment of it by "The X-Files" is, it's almost aptly analogous to the misogyny of parthenogenesis in Shelley's "Frankenstein," of life created by man's will alone. The difference being here that woman continues to be used, without consent, for her womb.
I guess the references to "Mask" (1985), including Cher, are meant to humanize the creature, named "Mutato," whose actions are otherwise, indeed, monstrous. Generally parodic in tone, the episode's treatment of the town as Jerry Springer viewing bumpkins comes off as rather insulting. And, the investigative work of Mulder and Scully and whomever else leaves much to be desired: they repeatedly touch evidence without using gloves, nobody seems to have noticed or been questioned regarding fumigation tents being put over houses where and when crimes were reported, the two FBI agents run inside one of these tents only to pass out, and so on. Yet, I do like the inclusion of the comic-book writer, who's akin to Captain Walton in the epistolary structure of Shelley's story--it being comprised of his letters, he's the narrator and surrogate author within the narrative. In "The Post-Modern Prometheus," it's even insinuated by Mulder, the believer of the detective duo, that the comic-book writer is the author of this very episode. Mulder, self-aware and practically breaking the fourth wall, doesn't like the ending, so he calls for the writer to change it.