At the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, Jacob Elordi was reportedly moved to tears by a standing ovation that lasted either 13 or 15 minutes, depending who you ask, after the world premiere of his latest film, Frankenstein. Elordi plays the creature at the center of director Guillermo del Toro’s take on the classic, and critics are all “forgiveness” this, and “artistry” that about the latest visual interpretation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 horror novel. However, the world has been overlooking the real-life reboot that’s been right under our noses, not to mention at the top of the Billboard 200 chart: Sabrina Carpenter and her latest album, Man’s Best Friend, released August 29.
While Elordi is a natural pick to play the mix-and-match creature, with his six-foot-five frame and classically handsome face just begging for some monstrous prosthetics, the diminutive, perky, and often lingerie-clad Carpenter and her career are an apt stand-in for the misunderstood figure at the center of the story, painstakingly crafted only to be reviled by the maker. Shelley’s tale examines themes of bodily autonomy and patriarchal control, which easily transpose onto Carpenter’s image, in which she somehow manages to rotate through a wardrobe of vintage Victoria’s Secret teddies and lacy robes with sky-high heels. She’s not dressing for the male gaze. As she said in a 2024 interview with Time, she’s dressing for herself and empowering her fans to do the same. “Femininity is something that I’ve always embraced,” she told the magazine. “And if right now that means corsets and garter belts and fuzzy robes or whatever the fuck, then that’s what that means.” While a bustier and heels may be part of the Playboy Bunny uniform, when Carpenter dons the same look, it’s with a wink and the knowledge that her stiletto heels are a means of lifting her to the top of the world.
Her career, like that of any other pop sensation, owes plenty to those who came before her: a dash of Dolly Parton’s big hair and commanding lyrics, a sprinkle of Britney Spears’s girl-next-door sexpot vibe, a heaping scoop of Taylor Swift’s collaborator-heavy, country-influenced discography, and more. Stir to combine and bake for 20 minutes. And voilà, you have yourself a Carpenter, a chart-topping amalgamation of the divas of yore, familiar yet novel. But just as Carpenter is celebrated for her absolute bangers, the same society that demanded a pop star exactly like her shrieks that she’s too provocative, a bad influence, sending our delicate young girls a bad message. Clutch your pearls, folks; a former Disney child star is singing about sex! It’s almost as if she…grew up? A concept. In “Tears,” a song off her new album, Carpenter sarcastically marvels at how hot it is when the male object of the narrator’s affection acts with basic human decency. “I get wet at the thought of you / Being a responsible guy / Treating me like you’re supposed to / Tears run down my thighs,” she sings. Similarly, the creature doesn’t understand why Frankenstein, who created him and tended to him, recoils in horror at what he’s done and runs from him. Carpenter in “My Man on Willpower”: “He used to be literally obsessed with me / I’m suddenly the least sought-after girl in the land.”
In the book, the thoroughly alienated and rejected creature vows revenge and goes on a killing spree, eliminating those Frankenstein loves one by one. In “Goodbye” Carpenter sings, “Broke my heart on Saturday / Guess overnight your feelings changed / And I have cried so much I almost fainted / To show you just how much it hurts / I wish I had a gun or words.” Thankfully, she chooses words.
Carpenter’s revenge on those who wrong her is bloodless but brutal; just listen to “Never Getting Laid” and imagine being on the receiving end of that, for one example: “Baby, I’m not angry / I love you just the same,” she sings, before continuing, “I just hope you get agoraphobia someday / And all your days are sunny from your windowpane / Wish you a lifetime full of happiness / And a forever of never getting laid.” Trapped inside by fear, watching everyone else have a nice time, and no sex? Withering.
While it’s implied that the creature kills himself at the end of Shelley’s Frankenstein, it’s an off-screen conclusion, an assumption that the creature, shunned and ashamed, once again takes matters into his own hands and decides the only way through is out. Consider, however, an alternate ending: What if he used his attention-grabbing form, his conspicuous power, to build a community and demand visibility, and with it accountability from the oppressors who so revile him and his companions? At the MTV VMAs this weekend, Carpenter performed “Tears,” appearing onstage after slowly rising from beneath a lightly bedazzled manhole cover bearing her name. She was surrounded by drag performers and dancers dressed as police officers, some holding signs that read things like “Dolls Dolls Dolls,” which may have been a nod to the pro-transgender-rights Protect the Dolls campaign. It’s a sparkly mob with a message that’s bound to scare the hell out of some of those mad societal scientists.
Later in the show, when she accepted the best-album award for Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter acknowledged her LGBTQ+ dancers in her speech, specifically thanking “my incredible cast and dancers and my queens onstage with me tonight,” and saying, “This world, as we all know, can be so full of criticism and discrimination and negativity. So to get to be part of something so often, more than not, that is something that can bring you light, make you smile, make you dance, and make you feel like the world is your fucking oyster, I’m so grateful. So grateful to do that.”
It’s a well-worn cliché that English majors cherish correcting those who don’t seem to know that Frankenstein is the scientist’s name: “Well, actually, he’s Frankenstein’s monster.” Some scholars use this as a jumping-off point to debate which of them is actually the monster. Del Toro’s take on the tale gets around this by labeling Elordi’s character the creature. In Carpenter’s case, “monster” certainly isn’t appropriate, nor does “creature” feel right. She is something entirely new, though in the flash of her sequined costumes, wink of her winged eyeliner, and bounce of her blonde curls we may catch glimpses of the familiar.
No, in this story, 200 years and change after Shelley first wrote it down, she’s the creation and creator both.
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