#idk if this makes any sense I just have brainworms abt this movie and I need them Out on the internet

[skippudippu]

this is really inspired by a post someone else made but I can’t find it rn 😭😭 but hear me out okay

yes lisa frankenstein is a campy silly funny slasher romcom, and I ADORE it for that. but I’ve been thinking abt how it comments on the way society treats people with trauma, especially women, especially in past decades. the three major women each demonstrate different effects of that.

Lisa is the most obvious — we know what happened to her mom, and we see how everyone feels about her. hell, she tells us. nobody cares about her healing, they just want her to move on. (this also ties into themes of the original Frankenstein story; he wasn’t a monster, but everyone treated him like he was, so he became one.) instead of helping her, everyone others Lisa because she does not hide her pain, nor the effects that pain has had on her. so she becomes the dangerous freak everyone made her out to be.

then we have Janet — Janet, whose father died in the Vietnam war, who appears to have ignored her trauma exactly the way society wanted her to. she buried her pain in order to fit into traditional feminine roles: she’s a mother, she keeps up her home, she’s thin and made-up and absolutely drenched in feminine colors and silhouettes. but the unchecked trauma ate her up inside, and it made her into an antagonist. she became the very sort of person that contributed to her own suffering. she’s perpetuating a vile cycle.

and finally, there’s Taffy, who naturally checks every box on the ‘traditional femininity’ checklist. social and bright and pretty. a cheerleader, a party girl, toeing the line between fitting in and being memorable. she’s never experienced the kinds of struggle that Janet or Lisa did — until the end of the movie. that shot of the man in the car looking at her, beaten and bloody and scared out of her mind. and he drives away without a word. the minute she has a big, ugly problem? she’s dismissed. she’s othered, the same way that Lisa was.

but in Taffy’s final scene, she’s visiting Lisa’s grave. she wears the rosary, a symbol of her otherness. her dress is a feminine cut, and it’s black w pink flowers. she has just been a victim of events scarily similar to Lisa: her mother was killed by a frankenstein, she witnessed death, she was subsequently dismissed for her trauma. but I have to hope that this symbolizes the difference between Taffy and Lisa/Janet; that she’ll break the cycle; that she’ll be able to address her suffering while reclaiming her femininity.

#lisa frankenstein #lisa swallows #taffy swallows #kathryn newton #diablo cody #idk if this makes any sense I just have brainworms abt this movie and I need them Out on the internet