Dr. Adem Şentürk writes: The Freak Series 1

“Freak”: In the TDK dictionary, it is used to mean “very strange, shockingly ugly.”

This means that calling someone a freak is an assessment based on appearance and society’s perception of “normal.” Appearance is a simple, superficial, and quickly decided matter. It does not require deep thought; it is instantaneous. Adjectives like “ugly, beautiful, ordinary” are labels applied to a person’s life countless times and have become a kind of reflex. Decisions are made automatically and in an instant.

The term reflex itself is a response to situations frequently encountered in human biology. It is something initially thought about, but through frequent exposure, the brain applies the response directly without consulting itself. In other words, the brain disables itself in this situation.

The Concept of the Freak in Literature

The concept of the freak was initially treated only as a physical trait in the world of thought. The two best-known examples of this are Quasimodo in Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, published in 1831, and the monster in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, published in 1818.

If we look at the popularity of these two works up until 1931, Victor Hugo’s “freak” is clearly more well-known. Yet, both are based on the same foundation: “Even if their appearance is freakish and far from the concept of the ‘normal human,’ these freaks are the most human in their essence.”

Hugo was against the use of the concept of religion by power centers; however, he had no argument with religion itself. That is, he opposed the transformation of God’s religion into a tool for human power centers. Shelley, on the other hand, thought that the essence of religion was also problematic and that blaming only the power centers using religion was an escape.

In this respect, Hugo was a reformist, while Shelley was a revolutionary.

Hugo was a man and a respected figure; Shelley, due to being a woman and the social structure of the period, was a marginal figure.

Hugo was from France, where industrialization began later. Shelley was from England, where the industrial revolution first began. At this point, the sentence in the opening scene of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Zarathustra speaks to the hermit, comes to mind: “Could it be possible? This old saint has not yet heard that God is dead.”

Shelley saw the industrial revolution as a period created by humans where human reason became a kind of “deified” entity. For this reason, the character in her novel is a scientist; he is a “human-god” model who dares to create humans in a laboratory.

The Permanence of Shelley’s Work

The reason why this work, written by a 20-year-old young woman, continues to gain value by increasing its influence every day is as follows:

The most important condition for a writer or artist not to be defeated by time is not to remain trapped in their own time and to notice and foresee issues that will become problems in the future while they are still in seed form.

In Shelley’s time, existing as a female writer was considered “freakish” in itself. This situation, by positioning her outside the system, allowed her not to be engaged with conventional wisdom. Thus, she was able to create a freakish character with natural and sincere empathy.

Predictions and Today

Shelley’s predictions have, in a sense, turned from “dream to reality” today.

Both Nietzsche and Shelley predicted that the old world paradigm would collapse and that the model in which humans are at the center and God holds absolute authority over life would come to an end. Despite Hugo’s reformist approach, Shelley felt that a radical transformation was inevitable.

The point we have reached today is even further than their predictions:

In their time, the “death of God” was being discussed; today, the “death of man” is being spoken of. We are moving toward a world where humans and all other living beings are turned into tools and are completely controlled.

Unlike the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein that later went out of control, today’s “monster” is now completely under control: a reality moving toward an absolute surveillance society where every moment of the individual is monitored and voluntarily permitted.