‘Lisa Frankenstein’ Is This Generation’s ‘Edward Scissorhands’
Xandra Harbet
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Life is a suburban nightmare hellscape and we’re just living in it. The least we can do is seek out kindred spirits—undead or otherwise. We’ve all seen the slew of coming-of-age movies that pair the nerdy girl with the jock or vice versa. Yet at the end of the day, everyone was hot and “normal” all along. But what about the outcasts? The black-clad kids at the back of the classroom scribbling tortured poetry in their journals? They need love, too.
1990’s Edward Scissorhands brought us the heartwrenching tale of an isolated boy who creates snow with his bare (scissor) hands. He’s shy, kindhearted, and far too naive to navigate the hypocritical gossip of suburbia who fawn over the shiny new thing until it loses its luster. Frankly, the Boggs family’s insufferable neighbors are far more potent than a rom-com cheer captain on her best (worst) day.
In fact, the town’s actual cheerleader Kim Boggs is less catty, viscious, and judgemental than every vulture in town. It doesn’t take long for the popular teen to ditch her cruel friends instead of meekly protesting against their routine bullying. Naturally, Edward is largely responsible for Kim’s epiphany that her friends and her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend royally suck.
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While Edward Scissorhands is the bittersweet tragedy of star-crossed lovers torn apart by a societal mob mentality, what if Edward and Kim fought back against the town hens instead of accepting the fate that their cookie-cutter town dealt them?
Lisa Frankenstein has entered the chat. Here, we have the mildly timid newly resurrected nameless zombie-adjacent teenager known only as The Creature (Cole Sprouse). Sure, his awkward stilted walk and utter cluelessness in navigating human life mirrors Edward—with one key difference. The Creature will fuck you up. And unlike Edward, he’ll do it without much convincing. And we can’t forget Lisa’s step-sister Taffy—the only person in the brooding teen’s family who seems to give a shit about her existence. Their supportive yet polar opposites dynamic is a fresh change from the typical rivalry angle we usually see in teen movies.
It’s unclear precisely in what decade Edward Scissorhands is supposed to take place, but there’s certainly an argument for the ‘50s. Similarly, Lisa Frankenstein winds fans back to 1989, just one year before the release of the 1990 classic. Despite their seemingly different time periods, each film is choc full of perfectly pristine bland pastel houses that contrast the “otherness” of characters like Edward, The Creature, and his love interest Lisa (Kathryn Newton). Of course, any time Lisa takes center stage, there’s quite literal electricity that follows her with neon lights and an even brighter tanning bed.
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When Lisa’s step-mom Janet (Carla Gugino) isn’t giving Nurse Ratched, she might remind you of another unbearable character: Edward Scissorhands’ Joyce. You remember Joyce. She’s the stuck-up woman who looks down on everyone while sexually harassing anything that moves. No matter how much rejection she faces, Joyce never quite learns the concept of ‘he’s just not that into you.’ She’ll make them pay for it, too. Similarly, Janet will do anything to get rid of Lisa, including but not limited to getting her committed. Dammit, Janet.
Janet’s singular redeeming moment in Lisa Frankenstein comes when she sasses a multi-level-marketing door-to-door rep when he tries to push his way into her house for a carpet cleaning. The unhappy housewife assures him that you can eat off her carpet before slamming the door and saying, “Between you and the knife guy, Jesus H.”
Though the scene is pretty blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, the interaction takes us back to Peg’s status as an Avon rep in Edward Scissorhands. Even though Peg is Ultimate Mom Goals, her Boss Babe arc highlights the futility of multi-level-marketing schemes that often cause people to lose more money than they make, given that the compensation plans prioritize recruiting over selling.
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According to the FTC, less than 1% of MLM reps make money (and most end up continually losing funds with the sunken cost fallacy). Joyce snaps at Peg the same way Lisa’s stepmonster does at the MLM reps who are likely stand-ins for the Kirby vacuum company (allegedly known for forcing their way into people’s homes) and Cutco.
Then we have Lisa’s dad, who’s a mildly more aloof version of Peg’s husband. He chimes in to parent every so often but largely stays out of it. Both families have forced family dinners, but at least they’re not utter torture in Peg Boggs’ household. The same cannot be said for the Swallows family.
The love interests in Edward Scissorhands and Lisa Frankenstein may be starkly different, but there are adjacent similarities nonetheless. Kim and Lisa’s step-sister Taffy have a lot more in common than Kim and Lisa themselves. Both girls are kindhearted staples of the popular crowd who try to do the right thing but ultimately buckle under peer pressure and selfish impulses.
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Kim chooses not to come forward when she and her boyfriend Jim set up Edward to rob Jim’s house, which could have prevented Edward’s future banishment. Meanwhile, Taffy sleeping with Lisa’s crush could have circumvented the escalation that results in Lisa fleeing the cops via death. Of course, both characters are with asshole guys—and they don’t realize it until after they cause irreversible damage.
When it comes to Edward and The Creature, the parallels are off the charts. Both guys have comically absurd makeover scenes while they lament over their missing body parts and eventually chill around the house with ridiculous fluffy robes. Edward and The Creature want to be good at hugging, but it’s just not their strong suit. They also have similar meet-cutes with their respective paramours, opting for flying limbs and a lot of screaming. Whatever happened to reaching for the same pencil in math class? The half-alive teens desperately need a lesson or two on boundaries when Edward peeps at Kim undressing and The Creature forces Lisa to dress up.
As both movies carry on, the Very Pale Men with sunken eyes and wild hair begin holding themselves more humanly and lose some (not all) of their constipated facial expressions and skittish behavior. Like any good coming-of-age movie, Edward watching Kim dance in his self-made snow and The Creature twirling Lisa in her driveway are standout moments.
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Despite Edward and The Creature’s stark contrast from the girls’ monotonously pastel worlds, Kim and Lisa learn to accept them as they are. Lisa tells The Creature that he doesn’t need to be fixed, which is akin to the townspeople saying Edward isn’t handicapped (only to go back on that sentiment when they turn on him). However, Kim genuinely embraces Edward’s differences, navigating around his scissor hands when he insists he can’t hug her.
In Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa objects to ‘fixing’ The Creature at first, saying, “I can’t just get you new parts. I mean, you’re a dead man, not a Chrysler LeBaron.” Yet as he begins defending her (and offing anyone who hurts her), she gets him a new ear, hand, and, uh, other appendages.
Unlike The Creature, Edward doesn’t kill for pleasure, but he’s more than willing to take out Jim when he pushes Kim down. The Creature opts for his own brand of revenge against Lisa’s sexual assualter by helping her chop off the guy’s hand. And (Lisa) frankly, he’ll cut down anyone who so much as inconveniences her.
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The ending of Edward Scissorhands is the very morose sentiment that Lisa laments and later circumvents: “Time is the wound. It takes you further and further from that place when you were happy.” Edward and Kim have a few brief moments of happiness before they let their town tear them apart.
Edward perpetually lives in those minutes of bliss throughout his isolated immortal existence, while Kim spends the rest of her life dancing in Edward’s snow and dreaming about the man she loves. Ultimately, she could take matters into her own hands, go to him, and move out of their hellacious town. She doesn’t. If you can listen to Edward Scissorhands‘ “Ice Dance” composition without sobbing uncontrollably, then The Inventor might have forgotten to give you a cookie heart.
Both endings are a product of societal pressures catching up to outsiders, but Kim and Lisa handle the police sirens a bit differently. While Kim sacrifices her love for Edward to dramatically save him from the town that quickly turned on him, Lisa instead turns her back on the town that spurned her. At first, the ending is a little jarring, given that Lisa chooses to die by way of a tanning bed—a callback to her quote, “The electric chair is like a tanning bed for criminals.”
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Though it seems like Lisa chooses to end her life rather than live it, there’s not much difference between her decision to zombify herself and a teenager becoming a vampire to live with her lover forever. In this case, it’s either die in jail or experience temporary death via tanning bed to get the cops off their trails and carve a life for themselves. The difference between Lisa and Kim’s respective endings is telling of the decade each movie was released in.
The ‘90s were certainly a period of rapid change and embracing otherness, but Gen Z has taken that vibe and run with it. The latest generation that’s making their way from adolescence to adulthood fights for what they deserve—whether it’s fair job conditions, mental health care, or the ability to express themselves. Like Lisa, many Gen Zers will go scorched Earth on bullies, people who abuse power positions, and hypocritical stuck-up jerkfaces.
That’s the kind of energy Kim could have used to get her happy ending, but her upbringing overpowers her desire for a messy and ostracized life with Edward. Lisa, on the other hand, gives zero Fs, and it’s iconic to watch.
Where Edward Scissorhands is soft, tragic, and sweet, Lisa Frankenstein is an in-your-face chaotic raunch fest and it’s delightful. It’s about time the outcasts got a (un)happy happy ending in all of its unhinged, sexed-up glory. Lisa Frankenstein encourages all of us manic-depressive girlies to embrace our weirdness and dark humor while spitting in the face of anyone who tries to tell us who we are. And if there are a few errant vibrators and flying appendages, well, our lips are sealed. In The Creature’s case, quite literally.
Categorized:Editorials
