A Reflection of Me. (Self Reflection)

           I revised my last essay, “Digital Wreading: Patchwork Girl’s Blurry Distinction.”  It was the essay that I connected to the most, mainly because of my hands-on experience with Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl.  In the final, revised draft of the essay, I pushed myself to further prove my point about the hypertext failing as a novel, rather than merely edit it; it’s much easier for me to pick out what needs to go and what can stay in my essays than it is to move to the next step: revision. 

           I expanded on Katherine Hayles’ topic of ‘cyborg subjectivity’ and included more concrete information about Patchwork Girl itself (instead of what it represents, its ideas, its lack of focus).  I realized that my argument was lacking and not as strong as it could be because I hadn’t given the reader a clear picture of Patchwork Girl’s layout – its ins and outs.  With its layout now explained in the essay, my argument/point is balanced and substantial.

           Unsurprisingly, this essay is also the strongest I’ve written throughout the semester.  At the start of the semester my revision skills were close to non-existent.  Now that I revise my work, I have room for improvement.  I’ve also overcome my habit of not providing enough evidence for my arguments – in mostly every essay I’ve written I’ve successfully used quotations to their fullest potential to back-up my point(s).  However, I plan to continue working with my conclusions in hopes of making them stronger and more thought-out.  Less abrupt.

Digital Wreading: Patchwork Girl’s Blurry Distinction (FINAL PROJECT)

              Hypertext, by definition, is “a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially.” Patchwork Girl is an early form of hypertext, its release being in 1995. Essentially, it is hypertext at its rawest form. Simple windows serve as the frames of the program and ‘story’. Much like the simplicity of its physical make-up, the ‘story’ of the hypertext remains only text – there is no bigger picture, no point, no true structure. The hypertext as a medium, not a text, becomes the focus.

              The two different mediums (text and media) are literally combined as a program yet are able to stand alone or co-exist within that program. Katherine Hayles puts it best in her essay, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” when she says

“The effect of Patchwork Girl’s creative juxtapositions is to shake us awake from the dream that electronic fiction is simply “text” that we read on screen instead of on paper. If Patchwork Girl insists through its appropriations that the past can never be left behind, it also shows through its transformations that new media create a new kind of literature and a new sense of cyborg subjectivity.”

However, the ‘cyborg subjectivity’ is elusive and too general of a sense. And Shelley Jackson, the author of Patchwork Girl and Stitch Bitch, agrees: “Hypertext blurs the distinction between subject and object, matter and the absence of matter. We no longer know where it does its thinking, or what it is driving at. (It’s no one and no-place, but it’s not nothing.)” (Stitch Bitch). The ‘nothing’ she refers to is, essentially, the hypertext itself. An example of this is that what you see in a specific text box is true in that moment, but as soon as you click to another box, the reader (and the story) starts anew. The hypertext lives from moment to moment, not as a whole.

              Separation of the whole eliminates the purpose of a text, or in this case, hypertext. ‘Text’ is not ‘text’ without meaning; it is reduced to a state of limbo in which words collect but serve no identifiable purpose. Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies, addresses the problem of the hypertext’s lack of clarity: “The words on the page, though they issue from the invisible force field of another’s mind, rive from some collective elsewhere that seems more profound, deeper than a mere writer’s subjectivity” (156). The limbo, or ‘collective elsewhere’, has no beginning, middle, end; it does not control a specific arrangement. The text becomes irrelevant and the medium turns into the focal point.

              Hayles expands by saying that “electronic hypertexts necessarily enact [cyborg subjectivity] through the specificity of the medium.” When moving through Patchwork Girl, an intricate hyperlink web/quilt steals your attention; you do not know where you are going or why, but you know that you want to explore its medium. You start at its Graveyard and make your way through the Journal, Quilt, Story and Broken Accents. You find that some links take you to pages with no more than one sentence, others with only pictures. You back-track. You re-start. You get both nowhere and everywhere, gaining no insight. A new link, a wrong turn, and the ‘story’ changes entirely. When you stop, you are not at the end. You are in the middle. Permanently fixed to the same spot every time. Going forward and backward gives you the sense that you progress with the ‘story’, when it reality you are re-visiting links that present themselves differently than before. You are travelling with the medium, not the ‘text’.

              If no meaning can be found within the ‘text’, the reader is no longer a reader. “Because electronic hypertexts are written and read in distributed cognitive environments, the reader necessarily is constructed as a cyborg, spliced into an integrated circuit with one or more intelligent machines,” claims Hayles. Instead they are merely an observer. Patchwork Girl presents itself as a fragmented story, when in reality its ‘story’ does not exist. Its windows frame the collected words like photographs: we can view them but cannot read them. The words hang in their boxes, white space that halts our interaction. What we get from the hypertext is what we make of it, not what it makes of itself.

              “I have to wonder, as one reading memory folds into another, as the imprint of thousands of impressions harvested from thousands of pages blurs, what has been the purpose? Where have my reading experiences gone and what have they left me with?” Birkerts reflectively questions (105). In this case, Patchwork Girl has left nothing; if it serves no real purpose, it cannot leave the reader with a purpose. As a hypertext, Patchwork Girl’s moment-to-moment existence denies the reader the chance to build up a ‘reading memory’. Instead of a ‘reading memory’, readers are left with memories of the medium – the boxes, the white space, the pictures. It becomes a hypertext memory or a picture memory. The medium as a focal point eliminates the possibility for the text to serve a purpose.

              Jackson’s blurred distinction carried out by Patchwork Girl disregards atypical novel formatting, redefining the meaning of text and story. However, the redefined matter is neither here nor there; an incomplete ‘story’ that has no goal or point does not constitute as a story.

Digital Wreading: Patchwork Girl’s Blurry Distinction

            Hypertext, by definition, is “a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially.”  Patchwork Girl is an early form of hypertext, its release being in 1995.  Essentially, it is hypertext at its rawest form.  Simple windows serve as the frames of the program and ‘story’.  Much like the simplicity of its physical make-up, the ‘story’ of the hypertext remains only text – there is no bigger picture, no point, no true structure.

            The two different mediums (text and media) are literally combined as a program yet are able to stand alone or co-exist within that program.  Katherine Hayles puts it best in her essay, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” when she says “The effect of Patchwork Girl’s creative juxtapositions is to shake us awake from the dream that electronic fiction is simply “text” that we read on screen instead of on paper. If Patchwork Girl insists through its appropriations that the past can never be left behind, it also shows through its transformations that new media create a new kind of literature and a new sense of cyborg subjectivity.”  However, the ‘cyborg subjectivity’ is elusive and too general of a sense.  And Shelley Jackson, the author of Patchwork Girl and Stitch Bitch, agrees: “Hypertext blurs the distinction between subject and object, matter and the absence of matter. We no longer know where it does its thinking, or what it is driving at. (It’s no one and no-place, but it’s not nothing.)” (Stitch Bitch).  The ‘nothing’ she refers to is, essentially, the hypertext itself.  An example of this is that what you see in a specific text box is true in that moment, but as soon as you click to another box, the reader (and the story) starts anew.  The hypertext lives from moment to moment, not as a whole. 

            Separation of the whole eliminates the purpose of a text, or in this case, hypertext.  ‘Text’ is not ‘text’ without meaning; it is reduced to a state of limbo in which words collect but serve no identifiable purpose.  Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies, addresses the problem of the hypertext’s lack of clarity: “The words on the page, though they issue from the invisible force field of another’s mind, rive from some collective elsewhere that seems more profound, deeper than a mere writer’s subjectivity” (156).  The limbo, or ‘collective elsewhere’, has no beginning, middle, end; it does not control a specific arrangement.  The text becomes irrelevant and the medium turns into the focal point.  When moving through Patchwork Girl, an intricate hyperlink web/quilt steals your attention; you do not know where you are going or why, but you know that you want to explore its medium.

 

            If no meaning can be found within the ‘text’, the reader is no longer a reader.  Instead they are merely an observer.  Patchwork Girl presents itself as a fragmented story, when in reality its ‘story’ does not exist.   Its windows frame the collected words like photographs: we can view them but cannot read them.  The words hang in their boxes, white space that halts our interaction.  What we get from the hypertext is what we make of it, not what it makes of itself. 

            Jackson’s blurred distinction carried out by Patchwork Girl disregards atypical novel formatting, redefining the meaning of text and story.  However, the redefined matter is neither here nor there; an incomplete ‘story’ that has no goal or point does not constitute as a story. 

Works Cited

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc., 1994. Print.

Hayles, Katherine. Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis. 2000. Web. <http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.100/10.2hayles.txt>.

Jackson, Shelley. Stitch Bitch:the patchwork girl. Media In Transition. 4 Nov. 1997. Web. <http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/articles/index_jackson.html>.

Digital Wreading: Patchwork Girl’s Blurry Distinction (Draft)

       Hypertext, by definition, is “a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially.”  Patchwork Girl is an early form of hypertext, its release being in 1995.  Essentially, it is hypertext at its rawest form.  Simple windows serve as the frames of the program and story. 

       The two different mediums (text and media) are literally combined as a program yet are able to stand alone or co-exist within that program.  Katherine Hayles puts it best in her essay, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” when she says “The effect of Patchwork Girl’s creative juxtapositions is to shake us awake from the dream that electronic fiction is simply “text” that we read on screen instead of on paper. If Patchwork Girl insists through its appropriations that the past can never be left behind, it also shows through its transformations that new media create a new kind of literature and a new sense of cyborg subjectivity.”  However, the ‘cyborg subjectivity’ is elusive and too general of a sense.  And Shelley Jackson, the author of Patchwork Girl and Stitch Bitch, agrees: “Hypertext blurs the distinction between subject and object, matter and the absence of matter. We no longer know where it does its thinking, or what it is driving at. (It’s no one and no-place, but it’s not nothing.)” (Stitch Bitch).  The ‘nothing’ she refers to is, essentially, the hypertext itself.  An example of this is that what you see in a specific text box is true in that moment, but as soon as you click to another box, the reader (and the story) starts anew.  The hypertext lives from moment to moment, not as a whole. 

       Separation of the whole eliminates the purpose of a text, or in this case, hypertext.  ‘Text’ is not ‘text’ without meaning; it is reduced to a state of limbo in which words collect but serve no identifiable purpose.  Birkerts, author of The Gutenberg Elegies, addresses the problem of the hypertext’s lack of clarity: “The words on the page, though they issue from the invisible force field of another’s mind, rive from some collective elsewhere that seems more profound, deeper than a mere writer’s subjectivity” (156).  The limbo, or ‘collective elsewhere’, has no beginning, middle, end; it does not control a specific arrangement.

       If no meaning can be found within the ‘text’, the reader is no longer a reader.  Instead they are merely an observer.  Patchwork Girl presents itself as a fragmented story, when in reality its ‘story’ does not exist.   Its windows frame the collected words like photographs: we can view them but cannot read into them.  The words hang in their boxes, white space that halts our interaction.  What we get from the hypertext is what we make of it, not what it makes of itself.

Stitch Bitch, Patchwork Girl and They Say/I Say

             Colloquial and Academic language are thought to serve two different types of writing, fiction and nonfiction, respectively, but can actually work together.  In “They Say/I Say,” Graff and Birkenstein offer “that translating the one type of language into the other, the specialized into everyday, can help drive home a point” (118).  But when such a translation is applied to a hypertext, like “Patchwork Girl,” does that still apply?  Does “Patchwork Girl’s” use of formal and informal language ‘drive home a point’?  To Shelley Jackson, the author of “Patchwork Girl” and “Stitch Bitch,” it does not: “Hypertext blurs the distinction between subject and object, matter and the absence of matter. We no longer know where it does its thinking, or what it is driving at. (It’s no one and no-place, but it’s not nothing.)” (Stitch Bitch).  The ‘nothing’ she refers to is, essentially, the hypertext itself.  What I don’t understand is that if the hypertext isn’t ‘nothing’, but I don’t know what its purpose is, then does it even possess a purpose?  I feel like determining if it has a purpose is the purpose; a game of Can You See Into the Deeper Meaning of My Existence? 

            Apparently, I cannot see into the deeper meaning.  After searching through more than nearly forty links within “Patchwork Girl,” I thought I’d figured it out; that Mary Shelley and the female monster become one, morphing their thoughts and feelings.  After all, in the section titled “Us,” Mary and the monster say, “I bring you my story, which is ours.”  To my surprise, “Stitch Bitch” tells me the opposite, the monster saying that she is separate from her creator.  The purpose I thought I’d established is not the purpose at all.  This brings me to square one.  But I do agree now with Jackson’s point about us not knowing what the hypertext is getting at, because I sure don’t.  I’m thinking the key to it is to not over think it, but to take it at face value; what you see in a specific text box is true in that moment, but as soon as you click to another box, you (and the story) start anew.  The hypertext lives from moment to moment, not as a whole.  In “Stitch Bitch,” Jackson says “hypertext just makes explicit what everyone does already.”  Which is true in a literal sense.  We live on a day to day basis.  Still, I can’t help thinking that I’m supposed to come away from “Patchwork Girl” with an actual analysis of its contents.  It’s frustrating to spend time with a hypertext (or any text, for that matter) only to be told, in the end, that your experience with it is incorrect.

More Rambling from Birkerts

          In Chapter 11 of “The Gutenberg Elegies,” Birkerts wastes no time in getting to his point.  In fact, he shortens his (expected) beginning anecdote down to a measly two paragraphs.   And at the end of them, the kicker: “I felt none of the tug I had felt with Cortázar’s novel, none of the subtle suction exerted by masterly prose” (151). This quote is in response to his first experience dealing with a hypertext – a hypertext in which “the extent of the text was concealed (and in that sense lifelike)” (151).  Are novels, then, not lifelike?  Are they merely words printed on pages?  Does Birkerts prefer not to have his novels seem lifelike?  To not want to be affected by a book strips the book of its purpose; books provide us with images and stories that we can engage in, hypertext or not.  And while he says that he “wait[ed] patiently for the empowering rush that ought to come when worlds upon other worlds and old limits collide,” his previous words almost contradict such a statement (151).  How can the “empowering rush” felt from reading a novel not be considered lifelike?

          Birkerts moves on to say that hypertext does not “occupy a position in space” and only has “potential” (155).  However, text is still text, off screen or on screen.  He believes that text on a computer “affect[s] the way the words are registered when present” (155).  So is that to say that if a novel in its entirety was put online to be read, we would experience the novel differently than if we read from its actual, physical binding?  I don’t think so.  If the words aren’t changed, how would the experience of what you’re reading change?  To him, the origin of the words ties into the experience: “The words on the page, though they issue from the invisible force field of another’s mind, rive from some collective elsewhere that seems more profound, deeper than a mere writer’s subjectivity” (156).  Still, someone somewhere is writing and publishing the text online; it’s not coming from a “collective elsewhere.” 

          Birkerts cannot emotionally connect with online text.  The experience of reading from a computer makes him feel detached from the journey a novel produces and the actual meaning a novel possesses.  But text online does not give new meanings to words; it’s not like you’re forced to enter a technological world in which words are foreign.  I think, if anything, the fact that he knows the hypertext is essentially text intermingling with technology disengages him.

Delving into the world of Hypertext/Patchwork Girl

            Hypertext, by definition, is “a method of storing data through a computer program that allows a user to create and link fields of information at will and to retrieve the data nonsequentially.”  Patchwork Girl is an early form of hypertext, its release being in 1995.  Essentially, it is hypertext at its rawest form.  Simple windows serve as the frames of the program and story; there is nothing exceedingly fancy about it.  The most intricate thing of Patchwork Girl is the embedded, hidden links that are necessary to the user’s progression of the overall story.  These links are the only challenges presented, because without them all, every user experiences a slightly different story, forced to piece the puzzle together on their own.

            In my own short time spent with Patchwork Girl, I feel as if I’ve only gotten a small sample of two sections: ‘Graveyard’ and ‘Journal’, two separate paths you’re able to take at the opening Title Page.  I’ve gotten fully through five links in the ‘Graveyard’ section and thirty-three in the ‘Journal’ section.  Are these links embedded in other main sections?  I wouldn’t be surprised if they are.  I also wouldn’t be surprised to know if I missed any links.  Despite intently reading each new window, the real focus of working with Patchwork Girl lies more in attempting to establish some sort of order with the links, some way to make sense of the story being told (and shown).  When I was working my way through the program, I started randomly clicking on every possible space in each window in hope of finding a new link.  That was when I discovered that even sub-sections had a level of their own sub-sections.  The sub-sub-sections revealed more specific details of the story.

            Another interesting aspect of Patchwork Girl is the way the story appears to progress backwards.  In my experience, I started with the death of the monster and worked my way to its resurrection (which happened to just be a figurative way of showing the start of the story).  By working backwards, the story reveals itself in a way that entices me to continue my search for the missing pieces.  After reading about the death of the monster, I learn about its relationship with its creator, Mary Shelley; once Shelley enters the picture, I learn about her relationship with her creation.  When both sides are told, I then read about their experiences as one entity: creator and creation become entwined, causing the story to narrow its broadness.  But while the text itself narrows its focus, the program does not.  Multiple windows and links still guide me.  This is when it’s most apparent that the two different mediums (text and media) are literally combined as a program yet are able to stand alone or co-exist within that program.  Katherine Hayles puts it best in her essay, “Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” when she says “The effect of Patchwork Girl’s creative juxtapositions is to shake us awake from the dream that electronic fiction is simply “text” that we read on screen instead of on paper. If Patchwork Girl insists through its appropriations that the past can never be left behind, it also shows through its transformations that new media create a new kind of literature and a new sense of cyborg subjectivity.”

“Frankenstein” Meets “Flubber”

             Movie and novel are two separate entities, two entirely different mediums used for entertainment.  Yet as different in medium as they are, Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and the movie “Flubber” share the same plot and dark versus light sub-concepts.  In “Flubber,” Professor Phillip Brainard constructs elaborate experiments with his flying robot assistant, Weebo, to create an energy saving substance (which is later dubbed Flubber).  His overall absent-mindedness and focus on the project costs him his wedding to his beloved Sara.  Brainard’s lost sense of reality and time is much like that of Victor Frankenstein’s; both men become so engrossed in their projects that they jeopardize other things in their lives, specifically the chance to be with the one(s) they love.  However, the successes of their experiments are conveyed dissimilarly even though “Flubber” is a take on “Frankenstein.”  Victor is disgusted and shameful upon seeing his creation, while Brainard is thrilled to see his.  Frankenstein’s story progresses in a much darker way than Brainard’s.  “Flubber” builds off the same concept of “Frankenstein” but poses the story in a two-way direction: dark and light.

            In both mediums (novel and movie), the creation scene is the starting point for the progression of the stories.  In “Frankenstein,” “it [is] a dreary night of November” when Victor witnesses “the dull yellow eye of the creature open” (60).  In contrast, Brainard sees Flubber come to life early in the morning, with bright sunlight streaking through his basement windows.  The only similarity between the two scenarios is that both the creature and Flubber are ‘born’ through the use of electric shocks and moments thereafter thought to have not worked.  The reaction of finding that the shocks worked differs for Frankenstein and Brainard.  Frankenstein feels that “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (61); he flees from the room and abandons his creation.  Instead of being fearful, Brainard is excited albeit angry until he notices his success; with a swift kick to the container housing Flubber, he turns to leave and doubles back.  For a second, there is nothing but smoke filling the screen as he waits for any sign of movement.  Then Flubber pokes out of the container and Brainard smiles, pleased.  Despite its gelatinous blob of a form, Brainard cares for his creation; to him, it is not about how the creation looks, but how it works.  The same cannot be said in regard to Frankenstein.  Upon seeing his creature alive, he fixates on and fusses over the physical abnormalities of the thing, such as the “watery eyes” and “shriveled complexion” (60).  Even though Frankenstein chooses these features for his creature, suddenly he perceives them to be hideous.  Therefore, the entire creature becomes hideous and neglected.  Brainard considers the potential his creation possesses while Frankenstein does not; this positivity on Brainard’s part is the light of the situation, while Frankenstein’s pessimism is the darkness.

            After the creation scenes, the light and dark roles reverse for the movie and novel.  Once Flubber is created, Brainard’s excitement gets the best of him; his positivity turns into outright cockiness.  When he learns that the college he works for is in need of help, specifically the school’s basketball team, Brainard sets to work.  He produces a spray and sticker type of Flubber and uses both to aid the basketball team during an important game against a rival school.  Not only does he help the team cheat, he also behaves obnoxiously and unprofessionally when sitting behind the other school’s Dean and Sara.  His once proud feelings turn sour quickly and do not help to gain him respect from Sara or the other school; the light of the situation falters.  On the other side, Frankenstein’s role turns lighter.  Despite abandoning his creature, Frankenstein seeks solitude in the forests of Geneva to sort out his thoughts.  This time of isolation and self-actualization allows him to understand that he made a mistake and that it needs to be remedied.  After coming to this conclusion, he seeks to find the monster and end their problems; Frankenstein’s once dark thoughts give way to the enlightened view he gains.

            Although the novel and movie build off of the same plot and concepts, they are conveyed through the two lenses of dark and light, interchangeably.  The difference in their mediums – “Frankenstein” being the written word, and “Flubber” a series of photos – helps establish the two lenses in such a way.  The medium difference permits the two mediums to also convey the same plot using each lens.

“Frankenstein” Meets “Flubber” – Draft 1

            In “Flubber,” Professor Phillip Brainard constructs elaborate experiments with his flying robot assistant, Weebo, to create an energy saving substance (which is later dubbed Flubber).  His overall absent-mindedness and focus on the project costs him his wedding to his beloved Sara.  Brainard’s lost sense of reality and time is much like that of Victor Frankenstein’s; both men become so engrossed in their projects that they jeopardize other things in their lives, specifically the chance to be with the one(s) they love.  However, the successes of their experiments are conveyed dissimilarly even though “Flubber” is a take on “Frankenstein.”  Victor is disgusted and shameful upon seeing his creation, while Brainard is thrilled to see his.  Frankenstein’s story progresses in a much darker way than Brainard’s.  “Flubber” builds off the same concept of “Frankenstein” but poses the story in a two-way direction: dark and light.

            In both mediums (novel and movie), the creation scene is the starting point for the progression of the stories.  In “Frankenstein,” “it was a dreary night of November” when Victor witnesses “the dull yellow eye of the creature open” (60).  In contrast, Brainard sees Flubber come to life early in the morning, with bright sunlight streaking through his basement windows.  The only similarity between the two scenarios is that both the creature and Flubber are ‘born’ through the use of electric shocks and moments thereafter thought to have not worked.  The reaction of finding that the shocks worked differs for Frankenstein and Brainard.  Frankenstein feels that “the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (61); he flees from the room and abandons his creation.  Instead of being fearful, Brainard is excited albeit angry until he notices his success; with a swift kick to the container housing Flubber, he turns to leave and doubles back.  For a second, there is nothing but smoke filling the screen as he waits for any sign of movement.  Then Flubber pokes out of the container and Brainard smiles, pleased.  Despite its gelatinous blob of a form, Brainard cares for his creation; to him, it is not about how the creation looks, but how it works.  The same cannot be said in regard to Frankenstein.  Upon seeing his creature alive, he fixates on and fusses over the physical abnormalities of the thing, such as the “watery eyes” and “shriveled complexion” (60).

Comppost: “Frankenstein” Meets “Flubber”

Flubber plot: Phillip Brainard, a professor at Medfield college, constructs elaborate experiments with his flying robot assistant, Weebo, to create an energy saving substance (which is later dubbed Flubber).  His overall absent-mindedness and focus on the project costs him his wedding to his beloved Sara.  This being one of his only successful experiments, Brainard is ecstatic upon seeing the creation of Flubber. 

 

Brainard’s lost sense of reality and time is much like that of Victor Frankenstein’s; both men become so engrossed in their projects that they jeopardize other things in their lives.  Both jeopardize the chance to be with the one(s) they love.  However, the success of their experiments are conveyed dissimilarly even though “Flubber” is a take on “Frankenstein.”  Victor is disgusted and shameful upon seeing his creation, while Brainard is thrilled to see his.  Still, there is the moment of hesitation in both cases.  Victor hovers over his creature’s body and Brainard carefully watches the container housing his specimen.  In those instances, both men are anxiously waiting for the success they’ve been aiming for.  In that moment they are both hopeful and wishful, believing that their one thing will solve all their problems.  Frankenstein’s story progresses in a much more darker way than Brainard’s.  Although building off of the same concept, “Flubber” poses Victor’s story in a positive light.