Welcome to the 2018 University Press Week blog tour! This year’s #UPWeek theme is #TurnItUP and we’ll be celebrating the ways in which university presses amplify voices, stories, and subjects that might otherwise be overlooked in traditional publishing. Today’s blog tour theme is Art and Culture and we thought we would literally turn it up with a scholarly music mix that accompanies one of our books.
Two hundred years ago, Mary Shelley published the book that would end up on high school and university reading lists centuries later. Her famous novel, Frankenstein, is iconic and adaptations of it abound in film, theatre, and books. But Dr. Frankenstein’s monster also lurks in songs, news stories, and theories.
Mark McCutcheon, author of The Medium Is the Monster: Canadian Adaptations of Frankenstein and the Discourse of Technology was interested to see just how far he could go down the rabbit hole of Frankenstein adaptations. Within music, these adaptations are clearly seen in song titles, including “Dr Frankenstein” by Ice Cube, “Frankenstein ska” by Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, and “Dr Funkenstein” by DeadMau5, but the trope of Frankenstein persists through organ instrumentation in pop music. Frankenstein is further referenced by musical mad scientists, robotic dance moves, and human-machine ambiguities in EDM (see DeadMau5’s cartoon mouse-head helmet that contains video goggles inside). Dig deeper into McCutcheon’s discussion of “Frankenphemes” in music in Chapters 2 and 7 in The Medium Is the Monster.
To enhance the reader’s experience, McCutcheon, professor by day, DJ Dr. Teeth, a.k.a. @sonicfiction by night, created a “sonic supplement” to The Medium Is the Monster featuring songs that adapt Frankenstein by artists including Janelle Monáe, Michael Jackson, Corb Lund, DeadMau5, Ice Cube, and so many more. Get your groove on here.
McCutcheon’s monstrous mix not only enhances his argument and makes scholarship fun and interactive, it also highlights the interests of our diverse authors, whose creative endeavours cross disciplinary boundaries and invite people to engage with them in new ways.
Follow the tour around the continent!
