09 March 2018 - The Sun Mocks “Snowflake Students” for Correctly Understanding the Plot of Frankenstein
FLAKENSTEINS Snowflake students claim Frankenstein’s monster was ‘misunderstood’ — and is in fact a VICTIM
Gary O'Shea and Thea Jacobs (The Sun, 05/03/2018)
SNOWFLAKE students claim Frankenstein’s monster was a misunderstood victim with feelings.
A professor has even suggested the lab-created murderer could be protected by human rights laws.
English author Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein has terrified millions since it was first published in 1818.
The Sun mocked 'snowflake' students over Frankenstein, and Twitter piled in
(BBC III, 07/03/2018)
Earlier today, The Sun created a monster by posting a story about how university students today feel increasingly sympathetic towards the creature in Mary Shelley's classic novel, Frankenstein.
The Sun story picked up an earlier article in The Times about how the treatment of Frankenstein's murderous creation ties in with contemporary students' concerns about animal rights.
It highlighted comments by Nick Groom, a professor of English literature at the University of Exeter, who has written a new introduction to mark the novel's 200th anniversary since publication.
Just how monstrous is the Sun's 'Flakensteins' story?
David Barnett (The Guardian, 07/03/2018)
As Sun headlines go, “Flakensteins” isn’t really up there with the classics such as “Gotcha”, “Up Yours Delors” and the immortal “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster”, but it’s causing something of a stir nonetheless.
“Snowflake students claim Frankenstein’s monster was ‘misunderstood’ – and is in fact a VICTIM” trumpeted the Sun’s story on Tuesday, echoing an earlier Times article that drew from a new edition of Mary Shelley’s 200-year-old novel. In its foreword, Exeter University’s Nick Groom writes that many students are sympathetic to the creature given life by Victor Frankenstein, despite the fact that the tortured monster then, as the Sun succinctly puts it, “murders his creator’s brother, pal and bride”.
Howls of social media derision ensued, as the villagers of Twitter jovially took up their pitchforks and torches to point out that, yes, this was the whole point of Shelley’s book.
Feeling sorry for Frankenstein’s monster is hardly new
Fiona Sampson (The Spectator, 08/03/2018)
In the last couple of days my Twitter feed, always a cheerful place, has been more full of jokes than usual. The source of the mirth is Exeter University academic Nick Groom, and his ex cathedra pronouncements on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. According to Groom, it is possible – gasp – to read Frankenstein’s creature as a sympathetic character. Whatever next? Will the Times and the Sun hold the front page while Groom invites us to see Mr Darcy as sexy or, going out on a limb, Oliver Twist as an intensely sympathetic portrayal of an abused and abandoned child?
Journalists have long rubbed their hands in glee at “don states the obvious” stories. Mostly these take down scientific research that, however painstaking, has ended up agreeing with common sense. This time, it’s the opposite. This time, it’s journalists who have swallowed the obvious that’s being stated by an academic, and have given him oodles of free publicity in the process. And that, of course, is the point.