Sunday 14 October 2018

Frankenstein: the beer and the errors

As we are getting closer and closer to Halloween, pubs here offer as guest ales spooky themed beers. Two years ago, I had that one from Greene King in a local pub (our favorite local pub, that looks eerie any time of year, but especially when Halloween is near). The beer was a disappointing blonde. I find it more fitting to drink a darker ale when Halloween comes. It generally tastes better too. So this seasonal ale was named Frankenstein, just like the famous novel, which I must revisit one day. I am sure you can find at least one mistake with the label. I can find two. The first is that the image is one of the creature, which in Mary Shelley's novel is nameless. Frankenstein is the name of the creator. The beer should be named The Monster of Frankenstein or the Creature of Frankenstein. Or something of the sort. The other mistake is more subtle: the creature on the label has the look of the popularized cinematic monster, which is allegedly made of chopped up parts of corpses. In the novel, it is never explicitly stated how the creature is made and what substance exactly from human body Victor Frankenstein uses. He remains willingly vague about it. It is a bit of an academic distinction, but I used to be an academic in a part life, so I do enjoy to point out such mistakes.

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