A Deeper Understanding of Aspirations and Defeat Emerges from Considering the Parallels Between Frankenstein and Bladerunner.

21st Century audiences gain a deeper understanding of aspirations and defeat from considering the parallels between Frankenstein and Bladerunner. Between two different contexts and composers; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein a 19th Century Romanticist, modern Gothic text and Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner a 20th Century post-modern, environmentalist, anti-cloning, anti-economic-rationalism discourse, both texts can still be shown to share similar ideas on aspirations and defeat. Over-ambitious and obsessive aspirations lead to the defeat of individuals and relationships in society, both with the natural world and with each other. In both texts, as well as aspirations that are shown to be artificial – like that of Tyrell for commercial and monetary gain, and Victor Frankenstein for selfish satisfaction – aspirations are shown to be humane and universal. The defeat of humane and universal aspirations blurs the lines between humanity and artificiality, resulting in moral defeat of society.

Over-ambitious and obsessive aspirations ultimately lead to the defeat of individuals and their relationships in society, both with the natural world and with each other. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this is conveyed largely through the characterisation of Frankenstein. Shelley characterises Victor as a complex and shifting character, initially young, imaginative and ambitious, intrigued by philosophy and science. However, as he experiences the corruption and repression of the industrial-city-life of Ingolstadt, his ambition becomes an obsession in which his psyche becomes disturbed and he isolates himself, showing how his obsession led to his own emotional and moral defeat and destruction of his relationships with society. “Company was irksome to me…I abhorred society.” The defeat of Victor and his connection to the world as a result of his obsession can be observed in “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope…your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you,...