A Story That Asks Us To Question Some Of The Assumptions We Make About Other People - Tumblr Posts

Thinking about The Angry Black Girl and her Monster, again, and how one of the pure storytelling elements I appreciated the most was their willingness to lean on the framework already provided by Frankenstein to avoid rehashing a story about the 'monster' that most of their audience would already know.

Because they didn't rehash the part of the story that wasn't really changed from the original (the part where the 'monster' is really just scared, lost, and reacting to other peoples' fear and violence, rather than being inherently a violent monster), it gave the movie more space to focus instead on the part of the movie they changed (turning Victor Frankenstein the generic old white guy mad scientist into Vicaria Frankenstein, the brilliant young black girl science prodigy who is also deeply traumatized by the systemic marginalization and violence that she and her community face because of the color of their skin and by the personal losses she has faced as a result of systemic violence).

The fact that we could lean on the original Frankenstein narrative for characterization of her brother means that the story could craft a much deeper and tighter narrative around Vicaria, and I just -

This is what remakes and adaptations should be! Not an ever so slightly altered copy/paste of the original with updated CGI or some modern references, but a way to use the original story as a framework/jumping off point to tell a new story with some of the groundwork already laid.