DECADES TOO LATE

                                              MISSALS TO MISSILES:

                                            SUCH STRANGE THINGS

December 11, 2025

Hello. My name is Steve. I used to write blog entries and post them on this website.

Back then, I was simply an old man who had an occasional idea that did not die of

loneliness. Something noteworthy happened between my last post and now. A

milestone was reached. Myrna and I celebrated (and thoroughly enjoyed) 50 years

together This feat was noted by many, including our four daughters who pooled

their creative resources, and treated us to a most enjoyable celebration.

I mention this attempting to justify the dearth of blog entries that some of you,

perchance, have noticed. Though not the sole reason for the hiatus, the partying did

contribute. I can only apologize, painfully aware that reasons often sound like

excuses. Alas! When one is a blockhead, it is easy to get writer’s block. I could not

find a way to begin the blog. So, this is the beginning. The large gap of time was

not a sabbatical; it will not translate into this blog entry being especially brilliant—

the product of long, thoughtful dives into profundity. It will simply be the next

entry posted. Here goes.

About a month ago, Time magazine ran an article concerning the final season of

Stranger Things. I came late to the party but played catchup and watched the first four

seasons in short order. The series can feel derivative. The Duffer Brothers borrowed

heavily from material we are familiar with—Poltergeist, Alien, Invasion of the Body

Snatchers, works by Stephen King and Steven Spielberg; there is even a dash or two of

Stand by Me and Scooby Do—still, it all seemed more an homage than a rip off. As a

former junior high school teacher, I found that the bantering/bickering of the kids

rang true. The characters were well-drawn. Of course, they ought to be. With 40+

episodes, they had a lot of time to draw!

One of the strangest things about the show is the absence of parents. The ones

portrayed either forget they have children or are comfortable going days (and nights)

without seeing them.

           Ominous-looking government agent: Ma’am, where is your son?

           Mom: Mike?

           Agent: Yes, Mike.

           Mom: (Responds puzzled to herself) That’s strange. (To agent) Just one sec.

           (Yells down the basement stairs) MIKE! Boys! Stop playing that silly old

           Dungeons and Dragons. There’s a nice, mono-syllabic, grunting, blackout

           bespectacled G-man waiting to interrogate you. (Silence) Mike? (Turning to

           agent) Hmm. They were down there.

           Agent: Ma’am. (Agent talks into sleeve and exits)

At this point, the boys (and mystery girl) have been absent for three days. They are

tired but have successfully dispatched two SUVs and a helicopter from their bicycles,

armed only with their formidable nerdy wits and a numerically named nymph (11).

For plausibility’s sake, the Duffer brothers endowed 11, implausibly, with telekinesis.

Stranger things happen in the show besides the parental indifference. That telekinetic

naif’s origin story involves a scientist whose motivations are morally questionable, and

moral ambiguity is the theme of this blog. During the past few months, I have

observed people/characters behaving in the most befuddling ways. Their actions are

condemned by some yet lauded by others. These recurring events have prompted me

to ask, “Who is the monster?” This question has been swirling around inside my

noggin till I fairly swoon. It has flooded in through various mixed media. Examples

where this monstrous behavior is exhibited include:

Stranger Things—Streaming on Netflix

Politics—Ubiquitous

Frankenstein—Mary Shelley’s novel

Frankenstein—Innumerable versions, multiple media

Humans killing humans—Various contexts

I know that we could add subcategories to that last one. Our species is predatory.

Some examples of said predation include humans killing animals, or self-esteem, or

idealism. . . even Planet Earth. But let’s save such unsavory things for another time.

Instead, let us explore the concept of a monster, which is addressed figuratively and

literally in Stranger Things and Frankenstein. Both works have creatures that one can

point to and identify as a misshapen monster. Each has a creator/manipulator whose

behavior appears monstrous, or at least, myopic. The common thread relates to

Frankenstein’s subtitle—The Modern Prometheus. It is the classic theme of playing with

fire and its dualistic nature. Controlled, it can warm us, provide light, and cook our

food. Uncontrolled, it can grow into an all-consuming conflagration.

Originally, I had intended to express, at length, my great displeasure in Guillermo del

Toro’s Netflix rendering of Shelley’s familiar tale but have pared down my critique for

brevity’s sake. Still, I loathed it so much that some bile might bubble up. To task then.

Humans are capable of exhibiting monstrous behavior. Some take to it more readily

than others; many of them flourish in the reality show that is today’s political

environment. Keep that milieu in the back of your mind.

Victor Frankenstein created a being generally dubbed a monster. As many know, it

was never given a name, referred to variously throughout Shelley’s book as: the

creature, abomination, unholy thing, devil, murderer, and, yes, monster. Its “birth” at

midnight during a tempest lasted one sentence because the how of its creation was

unimportant; it is what came afterward that mattered.

While the thing was being assembled, before it was animated, Victor viewed his

creation as beautiful. Granted, it had translucent, yellow skin, was a stitched together

slaughterhouse quilt and stretched out eight feet from toe to top—still, Daddy adored

Junior. It was akin to an art project. It was also an immortality experiment. The

scientist’s beloved mother died prematurely, and he felt cheated that Death took cuts

on Mom’s dance card. Frankenstein wasn’t mad or vainglorious. His goal was to cheat

Death, to stay his deadly hand. The sepulchral sculpture, culled from the Grim

Reaper’s harvest, was a marvel. . . as an object. However, the moment it was endowed

with life, it was a grotesquery. The creator recoiled. He ran, screaming. His “David”

was Death animated. He was repulsed by the striated muscles that strained through its

diaphanous skin, blood vessels pulsing, bringing life to what was, moments before, a

cadaver.

Frankenstein fled to his bedchamber, abandoning the newly born creature. This

proved to be a fatal mistake, one he repeated shortly thereafter. Exhausted from his

labors, he collapsed on his bed and had a fantastical dream (Chapter V). He awakened

with a start to find the creature kneeling at his bedside, hunched over, his face inches

from his creator. . .

You guessed it. Victor screamed and ran away, leaving the befuddled 8-foot-tall baby

to fend for himself. Throughout the book, there appears to be a psychic connection

between these two. Because of this, the newly-born being felt the abandonment. He

knew that his creator ignored his responsibility to him emotionally. We know that

Frankenstein shirked his duty to the scientific community and to the world—the same

world that would soon “raise” the naif, teaching it what happens to those who are

different and cannot speak for themselves. The continual atrocities borne by the

unnatural being fill it with a thirst for revenge. He murders Victor’s younger brother

and frames his nanny for the crime. He later dispatches Frankenstein’s best friend,

then, for a wedding present, gives Victor his recently murdered bride, Elizabeth.

Later, justifying all this mayhem to the man who made him, the perpetrator laments,

“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.”

True to form, the short-sighted scientist disavows his part in the monster’s evolution.

(I think we can now refer to the creation as a monster). Frankenstein is completely

ignorant of his “son’s” nature. They have lived separate lives from the birth in

Chapter V to their contentious reunion in the Alps in Chapter X. Victor’s concern

was solely corporeal; he gave the creature a brain but gave nary a thought to its mind.

He had forged something manlike but didn’t view it as a human being needing

nurturing, emotional support and parental guidance. Depriving his creation those

building blocks doomed it to be unhuman. Who, then, is the monster? Who,

ultimately, is responsible for all that death and suffering? Frankenstein did not strangle

the victims, but the hands of his creature were incapable of movement until he

animated them. That cadaverous body would not have felt the villagers’ stones and

stabs, his ears would not have heard the shrieks and insults, his mind would not have

lamented its tortured existence had his creator understood the responsibilities

assumed when one brings life into this world. It is fair to ask, Would the results have

been different for a Victoria Frankenstein, a fertile frau with children? Would the

experiment have even taken place?

[Quick critique inserted here to give us a breather before bringing this blog home…]

Mary Shelley’s tale overflows with profound questions too numerous to list and too

morally ambiguous to answer. Del Toro’s film is linear and simplistic. His creature

kills nothing save the audience’s curiosity. At one point, Victor Frankenstein turns to

the camera and says, “I am the monster,” just in case an eight-year-old was getting

popcorn while the scientist was tormenting the fettered, diaper-wearing creature. I

apologize and will henceforth refrain from further bashing Guillermo’s film.

Apparently, I am overprotective of the book, having taught it to numerous junior high

classes; and so, let us return to the monster motif.

The son shall not bear the sins of the father, nor the father for the son. This is

paraphrased Ezekiel 18:20. It sounds biblically reasonable, but was Victor the

creature’s daddy or mommy? Was it even a living human being? It was ambulatory

and able to learn, but did it have a soul? Back in the Alpine encounter in Chapter X,

an enraged Frankenstein vehemently expresses his desire to kill his monster who

points out the irony of murdering the murderer to prove that killing is wrong. Of

course, in the present day, we, as a society sanction certain instances of homicide.

We’ll skip those done “civilly” under the Justice Department, and most of those

perpetrated in the fog of war; however, recent events bring us back to the question

asked earlier, Who is the monster? Since September, members of the United States

military have been directed to atomize selected boats and everything/one on or

around them. These video game-like images have been broadcast and analyzed to

death (so to speak). We proceed then, assuming the reader’s familiarity with these

events.

On December 5th, the New York Times printed an essay by Phil Klay, a novelist who

served in the Iraq war as a Marine. He offered insight as to the purpose of these

“snuff films” and their ubiquity. Klay began his analysis with a story told by St.

Augustine. It seems a young man in Ancient Rome was cajoled into attending the

gladiatorial games. Knowing the evil deeds being done around him, he kept his eyes

tightly closed for a long time. But, when a man was felled, the crowd roared with

delight. Curiosity forced open his eyes, and “he was struck in the soul by a wound

graver than the gladiator in his body.” The blood and the savagery overwhelmed him.

“He imbibed madness, becoming a fit companion for those who had brought him,”

Augustine concluded.

It is impossible for me to summarize the former Marine’s article; I will merely pluck

out a point or two. Klay observed that today, we need not expend any energy to

imbibe cruel madness. The media is bringing the Colosseum to us. The gladiator’s

gash is replaced with a missile’s flash. The result is the same—unknown people die to

entertain a select section of the citizenry for the cynical purposes of the rulers.

Hmmm. Seems ironic to have rulers who are unable to make a measured response.

Where, then, be the monsters? Who be they and why? Who is throttling the necks,

and who directs the missiles? Shelley’s monster could secretly murder innocents

because Victor told no one of his machinations; hence, no one could act. Today,

those in power rain down death as a God-given right of their reign as did kings.

Someone must be responsible for the 85+ humans who were obliterated from above

by technology’s approximation of Zeus’ lightning bolts. Someone locked in on the

target and launched the lightning. Somebody ordered someone else to engage. A

whole bunch of somebodies elected the embodiment of their desires to carry out such

strikes. The stricken (or parts thereof) lie at the bottom of the Caribbean like limbs

unstitched from Frankenstein’s monster.

I often feel like the ancient Roman, clenching his eyes tightly, incredulously hearing

the cruel approval screeched by the lovers of spectacle for its own sake. I believe that

my eyes are open, but I stanched the bloodlust. I am not titillated by others in agony. I

know I must exit the Colosseum. Kindness has no seat there. It is enough for me to

hear the brutes bleating within that charnel house. The monstrous deeds echo

through the chambers, reverberating, deafening all to rational sounds from without.

“Are there no mirrors inside that arena?” I wonder. There obviously is no reflection

going on. The scientists of Stranger Things and Frankenstein could see monsters only

without, not within. The ruling class of Ancient Rome and Present-Day U.S.A. have

the same monstrous myopia. They create The Other, subhumans outside themselves

for the ruled to ridicule and destroy. Those of us who have taken the exit can see that

the Colosseum lies in ruins, though the roar of the crowd echoes afresh around us.

Thankfully, the din has not deafened us. The key now, I think, is for us to keep the

fog of “war” from misting up our mirror.