We are assuming that the MOVIE VERSION of Frankenstein actually happened.
And a Human-like being could be assembled from parts of the dead, and re-animated by electrical & chemical means.
This would have happened in the late 19th Century, as per the films.
So–what effect does this have on Society?
On Business?
On the Military?
The movie version, at least the one I’ve seen, was slow, inarticulate, and clumsy. Other than brute strength jobs, he would have no productive use.
I think you just came up with a new subgenre of scifi, GolemPunk.
That’s like watching a movie about the Wright Brothers and declaring that airplanes will only ever be hobby toys used to glide a few hundred feet over a grassy field.
So, you’re saying that he would evolve? I never saw that in the movie version.
If they all looked like Michael Sarrazin, you could have a successful gigolo escort service. Until they pulled off all the ladies’ heads.
No more than Kitty Hawk “evolved” into an F16.
I’m saying that Dr. Frankenstein’s successors in the field of crafting flesh golems would hone the craft and make better products than his proof of concept.
I agree, but the OP stipulated the “movie version”.
No, it’s that the technology would get better, and so the resulting beings would be more capable.
My objection is that the number of such beings would be inherently much more limited than just normal humans. If you’re building a body out of bits of corpses, you’d need several corpses for each Frankie. If you’re looking to build a huge workforce, it’d be easier to just hire people off the street.
Unless the Frankies can do something regular humans can’t do, I don’t think it would make much difference. Rich people might have them around for show, like they do with fancy sports cars these days, but in the end, the vast majority of people would still drive mid-level Fords and the like.
First, society would have to decide on the personhood of such creatures. Whatever decision the state and church made would not be universally accepted and would just be one more reason for people to despise each other.
I don’t think I’ve seen the movie, but the brain was also taken from a dead person, right? Did the monster remember his former life? That would surely make a big difference to how the technique would be used.
And what would relatives think of their loved ones’ remains being used this way? There might well be a sudden craze for cremation, resulting in a shortage of… raw material.
The demand for green/gray Band-aids would skyrocket. Investment incentive?
You have just reinvented and justified slavery.
Or GolemPorn. Because he would certainly have an enormous schwanzstucker.
Depends on the movie. The original creature as depicted in the 1931 film didn’t seem to, although there is the suggestion that the “criminal brain” that he received had some malign influence.
In 1942’s The Ghost of Frankenstein, he got Bela Lugosi’s brain transplanted into him. He not only retained all of Bela Lugosi’s memories, he even started talking in Bela Lugosi’s dubbed-in voice.
By the next film, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, he still retained all of Bela’s memories and Bela’s voice (and, conveniently, was now played by Bela himself). But you’d never know it, because all the scenes that established that fact were cut out before release.
Edited to add: If we’re going by this particular film series, Frankenstein’s name wasn’t Victor. It was Henry.
This is already a thing. Years ago a group of friends including some lesbians took a trip to Giiovanni’s Room, a historic gay bookstore. I learned many things there.
#1 The double headed axe is a symbol of lesbianism.
#2 There is a line of erotica/romance novels aimed at and featuring gay men- and the Universal Studios Monsters, Frankenstein-The Dark Desires would be the volume you want.
Yup. A guy named Abby.
Various religions would also have various things to say about cutting up corpses and reassembling them into new people, or even into new non-people. Some of them would be extremely upset.
And this too:
In Edinburgh in the 19th century, so a little after the period the book/movie is set in, there was considerable demand from medical institutions for corpses, as the science of anatomy made great strides. A cottage industry sprang up, by which enterprising citizens would remove corpses from graveyards and sell them to aspiring anatomists. Two entrepreneurs, Burke and Hare, streamlined this process further by not just finding but creating the corpses. Sadly, these pioneers of free market dynamism had their nascent business crushed by the heavy hand of state regulation.
If we are positing a scenario where there is considerably demand for fresh(ish) corpses, then there are a couple of very obvious ways in which this demand will be met. On the more tolerable side, people could volunteer to become golem after their natural demise. Some sort of financial instrument akin to life insurance could be imagined, by which annual payments would be made during one’s lifetime, in return for rights over the corpse post mortem. At the other end of the scale, one can imagine not only higher murder rates, but e.g. greater use of the death penalty by governments keen to ensure a steady supply, or an increase in industrial accidents among the employees of industries reliant on physical labour. But of course this is exactly the time period in which Western governments in need of resources turned to their colonies; the horrors of colonialism and the slave trade which we abhor in this timeline for example, would probably pale in comparison to the one in which golemification was an option.
Oops! I forgot
Reanimated corpses as cheap manual labor can be seen (in a non porn fashion) in OTTOMH George R R Martin’s short story Override, and are a hot button political issue in the universe of Ron Goulart. In Goulart’s work (non spoiler) the central government sends one of its best espionage agents to influence a vote on ‘zombie labor’
ETA
I first read of Burke and Hare in a book coincidentally titled Raising The Dead. I believe it was Larry Niven who has organ donation become much more viable, then it is made mandatory. Then, countries start giving out the death penalty for all kinds of minor crimes to keep up wi demand. Authorities often go after “organ leggers”. Police use tranquilizer guns rather than bullets to avoid damaging a criminal’s harvestable organs.
Doesn’t China already do this in order to get organs for transplant?
Really?