Mary Shelley famously referred to her book Frankenstein, as well as the monster she created, as her “hideous progeny” (25). The reference continues. Technology has replaced the author’s role in creating literature and has taken over; altering the way society approaches and reads literature creating its own hideous and illegitimate progeny. As our society experiences technological advances, we increasingly focus on the easy and efficient and we throw away our past and permanent ways of life. We are consumed by the internet and the electronic world, and consequently have forgotten about books and literature that you can actually touch and hold. Literature is defined as the body of writing, the profession of a writer, writing with universal and permanent interest. To me, literature is all of the above; it is something you can delve into and learn from, something you can experience. Frankenstein is a legitimate form of literature and it is based on such ideals that I consider the Disney film Pinocchio an effective remediation of Shelley’s tale and not the hypertext Storyland. Storyland and electronic writings like it are just additional distractions to our increasingly shallow society and do not live up to the depth that Shelley achieved. It is not my intention to oppose all technology, on the contrary technology, when used appropriately, can produce a legitimate and worthy product, as we see in Pinocchio and Frankenstein.
In Frankenstein, Shelley gives depth to her tale by creating connections between her characters as well as connections between herself and the story. By creating such connections, the story becomes more complex and engages the reader. Shelley maintains authorship of her tale and gives her tale a sense of intention and effort. This mentality transcends to her characters: Victor Frankenstein and the creature. We also see this sense of authorship, intention, and connection in the 1940 Disney film Pinocchio, in the film itself as well as in the characters. The film director and editor maintain a sense of individual authorship and chose to portray the characters in a specific way. Looking at the characters, we see Geppetto putting a lot of effort and care into the creation of Pinocchio, forming a close character bond. We do not, however, see such effort and connection in the hypertext Storyland. Rather, Storyland is primarily fragmented, with no authorship and therefore no connections among the characters and the author.
When I first came across Storyland, the word “story” immediately caught my eye and I thought I finally found a real piece of literature, something comparable to Frankenstein─ a successful combination of technology and literature. I was wrong. I was immediately met with circus music and the flashing letters that make up “Storyland” and I could no longer take this site seriously. Storyland is a program that randomly creates disconnected stories according to a computer formula. The formula determines what sentence to add onto the growing story until it reaches ten sentences. Storyland, according to Katherine Hayles ─author of Writing Machines─, is “a new breed of second-generation electronic literature…experimenting with ways to incorporate narratives with sounds, motion, animation, and other software functionalities” (27). When the story ends, you can hit a button to start the process over again. This new breed of electronic literature has become so focused on the sounds and animation that people have lost sight of literature’s power to speak alone, without all the high technology accessories. Shelley’s character Victor Frankenstein focuses, too, on sounds motion, and animation, but instead of using those aspects to cover up and mask the story, Shelley uses them to create the monster, which enhances and develops her story.
Literature is engaging because of the imaginative world that you can create from reading it, not the superficial sounds and flashes that distract from the actual story. In other words, the stories may be arbitrarily composed, but they still lack the free and creative quality that Hayles glorifies when she promotes “the free form of play” (16). Storyland is a confined and limited program that can only proceed forward, which is ironic because as a hypertext it should link nonlinearly to other texts. We, however, do see this nonlinear linking in Shelley’s Frankenstein when she referred to other texts, such as “Genesis”, “Paradise Lost”, and “Mutability.” Shelley uses the “Genesis” reference, for example, to further her idea of creation of a “hideous progeny” and consequences of such a creation. Adam parallels Frankenstein’s monster and upon this discovery, the monster directly compares himself to Adam considering the fact that “I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence” (Shelley 116). Shelley incorporates “Paradise Lost” when she hints at the corruption of society and fall of man and she includes “Mutability” to further her argument about the change of man in both their actions and thoughts. These complex parallels give her story depth and perspective and a broader audience spectrum. Storyland may be randomly produced, which would seemingly make it interesting and surprising, but it is not playful in the way that a novel, such as Frankenstein, could be.
Novels are more creative and playful because they have an author ─ a person who knows how to appeal to other people. In Storyland, the author is not involved in the final product; rather the confined and limited computer is generating the disconnected story. There is no author giving thought and effort to producing literature. In Frankenstein, we see Shelley’s ownership and pride in her “progeny,” yet in Storyland we experience no strong connection between the author and the story and therefore no connection between the story and the reader. Without an author, the writing loses definition and according to Sven Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies, “the idea of individual authorship” (159) is being lost more and more in the electronic and hypertext format. Loss of definition of an individual is a key concern of Birkerts. He writes that “the decline of the prestige of authorship…has much to do with the climate of our current intellectual culture” (158-159). Birkerts argues that we, as writers and as people, are losing our individuality and soul when we give up our past ways for new technology.
To a certain extent, Birkerts argument makes sense. When looking at Storyland, it is obvious that we have lost individual connections that are so important in writing. In juxtaposition, however, look at the film Pinocchio. Pinocchio, the character specifically, was created by Geppetto, and therefore because he was artificially created, it involved technology. Technology was not Pinocchio’s downfall; rather his creation strengthened the bond between him and his creator, Geppetto. Still looking at Pinocchio but this time as film media, there is the idea that the director and editor are creating the film, which is directing the viewer. So even in the most modern form of technology, the creator and product relationship still works and plays a significant role in the final product.
Individual authorship also plays an extremely significant role in Frankenstein. Shelley develops a very intimate relationship with her novel calling it her “progeny,” just as Frankenstein develops a strong relationship with his creature. Shelley wants her novel to “bid forth and prosper” and she even said “I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days” (25). Both Shelley and Frankenstein put a lot of effort ─ choosing each “feature as beautiful” ( 60)─and intention into their projects and consequently created very complex products. Compare this to Storyland, a hypertext without an author, without any intention, without any human effort to create a deep and complex story.
I also define stories with the idea of permanence. The stories created are not permanent; as soon as the button for a new story is chosen, the story disappears and a new one is made. The same story is never repeated. While some may think of this unpredictability and mutability as a good thing, Birkerts emphasizes that permanence is an issue with technology because “words which appear and disappear…have a different status and affect us differently from words held immobile on the accessible space of a page” (154). Words written in Frankenstein will remain there whether you open or close the book and images in Pinocchio will stay there whether you rewind or fast forward. Phrases written by Shelley are infamous and live on, as do the stories of “Genesis” and “Paradise Lost”. It is very improbable, however, that a phrase or story produced in Storyland will live on and become a legend. Words that are permanent on a printed page have a sense of resonance and history to it because you know that an author carefully selected a word for that reason. Words that appear and disappear in an electronic program, such as Storyland, are fleeting and not as meaningful.
Consequently, there is no depth to the stories. The reader cannot truly delve into them and experience them in a meaningful way. As I have argued, you should be able to truly experience literature. You should be able to sit down for a couple hours and enter a whole new world where you can learn something new or just let your imagination run wild. In Frankenstein, the reader is submerged into Frankenstein’s and the creature’s world. Because the reader is so immersed in the characters’ life, the reader develops emotional connections and sympathy for the creature. In Storyland, the character relationships are not developed and there is no plot or climax to the story, so how are you supposed to get deeply involved in the story? The typical Storyland introductory sentence starts with a random character doing a random action. For example, when I opened Storyland, the first sentence to come up was, “Before things were written, a paranoid schizophrenic pretended to be free. The schizophrenic persevered.” The schizophrenic is given no introduction, previous history, or defined relationship to the orphan, the fatherly uncle, and the fortune teller who are later briefly introduced. Because these characters are not properly introduced, the reader does not form as intimate a relationship with the characters or the story, as they would with a more detailed novel. In Frankenstein, the reader develops an intimate relationship with the creature, just as Shelley does, because the reader essentially grows up with the creature. You are there before, during, and after the creature’s life and you are able to delve into the creature’s thoughts.
Similarly, in Pinocchio, the viewer follows Pinocchio from his creation to his becoming a real boy. The reader sees Geppetto’s fatherly love for Pinocchio and we see the social obstacles that Pinocchio must overcome. The film, as does Frankenstein, utilizes pathos the appeal to the audience and to help draw a connection between the story and the viewers. Pinocchio mirrors Frankenstein in that the main characters must confront societal corruption and manipulation in order to prove themselves to society and to develop as characters.
I might disagree with Birkerts in that he considers all technology to be the devil, but I think we do need to slow down from focusing on the future and look at what we are leaving behind. As Birkerts said, in order to embrace technology, we have to give up a “certain way of looking at the world… with a set of assumptions about history and distance, and difficulty and solitude and the slow work of self-making – all of which go against the premises of instantaneousness, interactivity, sensory stimulation and ease that make the world of Wired attractive to so many” (213). These technological advancements are severely altering the “modification of the relation between the writer and the language” (Birkerts 157). In other words, no more are the days where a person sits down with a pen and paper to write a story, like Mary Shelley did. We have forgotten that writing is a form of technology too. We are losing that personal connection between the author and the story and we are therefore losing the personal connection forged between the story and the reader. Not all technology is bad, but when looking at Storyland specifically you see what technology has become ─ a distraction in an increasingly shallow and fragmented society. Mary Shelley saw her book as a hideous progeny, something she was proud to send out into the world and call literature. Disney saw their film as an accomplishment, a children’s movie about morals and society. The hypertext Storyland has made a similar attempt at achieving such a masterpiece and has fallen short.
