The Psychological Fulfillment in Watching Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein

Abstract:

Young Frankenstein, by Mel Brooks, served to offset the anxiety and fear created by previous horror and monster movies. Written and produced in 1974, only one year after one of the most frightening movies of all time, The Exorcist, Mel Brooks created a horror/ monster movie that would relieve psychological tensions rather than create them as the Exorcist had the pervious year, this movie looked at monster movies through parodical glasses. To do this, Brooks used elements described by Freud’s methods of humor and Harries’ elements of parody. In creating a parodical film, Brooks allowed his audience to fulfil both their psychological drives for sex and aggression.

For centuries, authors have placed human features on their fears allowing their public to confront a concrete creature rather than an abstract idea. The fear of death resulted in stories regarding vampires and mummies, fears of the unknown resulted in stories about creatures invading the Earth, fears of reincarnation resulted in stories of mad scientists creating life from death. With the invention of the motion picture in the late nineteenth century, these fears were able to be seen using human actors and actual “monsters” making both the fears and the fulfillment greater. As more of these films were created, audiences grew more tolerant of the once frightening monsters forcing directors to go even farther. To continue this trend, filmmakers soon were creating more fear than they were relieving creating another psychological void that needed to be filled. Sensing that the realm of horror films and many other genres of film were saturating the film industry, Mel Brooks wrote and directed two films in 1974: Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Th...

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...that allowed the anxiety and fears of a nation to be relieved as well as a significant degree of sexual tension. He opened the door to other authors, directors and film makers to attempt to relieve tension in their films rather than create it and in doing so he helped popularize a genre of film: Parody.

Works Cited

Berger, Asa. Blind Men and Elephants: Perspectives on Humor. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 1995

Harries, Dan. Film Parody. London: British Film Institute 2000

Rose, Margaret A. Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-Modern. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1993

- Parody// Meta-Fiction. London: Croom Helm Ltd. 1979

Sinyard, Neil. The Films Of Mel Brooks. New York: Bison Books 1987

Young Frankenstein. Dir. Mel Brooks. Perf. Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman. Twentieth Century Fox, 1974. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox 1999.