Adapting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In our English 242 course, we were tasked with adapting a novel for a wider, contemporary audience. A team of my classmates and I decided to adapt Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) to a radio interview, that takes place in the year of 2016. In our adaptation, a scientist develops a robot, and equips it with an advanced learning algorithm, one that can scour the Internet to learn, as well as use camera inputs. This robot, which represents the monster created by Victor Frankenstein, continues to learn at a pace that frightens the scientist, prompting him to shut it down. However, the robot is not fully shut down. While scouring the internet, the robot is able to tap into the NSA surveillance camera network, and proceeds to observe an elementary …show more content…
Like Frankenstein, our scientist also abandoned his creation. It updates the original by the means of creation. In the original, the monster was created by human body parts fused together, and run by a human brain, the only technology that was available at the time for a project at that time. As time has progressed, new technologies have been discovered, and advance. We make use of that with a brain that relies on neural networks, and artificial intelligence, while our body was created by 3D printed body parts. However, our adaptation differs from the original when it comes to the social issues mentioned. In the source text, issues that are presented include the death penalty, and the monster’s right to company. We focus on mass surveillance, and the monster’s right to human rights. Our adaption relied heavily on the Gothic convention of the fear of the unknown, with our unknown being what happens when science is uncontrolled, and what happens with the information gathered by watching us. Another convention used was the use of present day technology to create an unlikely scenario, in which we discuss issues that can arise from these technologies. The intended audience that we had for this adaptation was people who enjoy listening to radio talk shows, and those who listen to podcasts. Although this may not be a large audience, it is definitely diverse. I, and many of my friends, listen to podcasts, while I know older people who listen to radio shows. We may not have been able to reach our entire audience because of how broad it was. For example, older people may not have any idea what artificial intelligence is, or the implications of state-sponsored surveillance. However, I feel that our method was still effective, as we were still able to reach most of our target audience through the uncertainty that was