Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker.
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The 2000s saw a wave of films that fall into the mumblecore and indie rom-com genres. In films like Almost Famous (2000), Garden State (2004), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the central female character typically serves as inspiration to fill a void in the male lead’s life. Released in 2002, May, written and directed by Lucky McKee, plays with elements of the indie rom-com genre specifically. However, its female lead, played by Angela Bettis, transgresses boundaries, has a fierce sense of agency, especially in the last act, and is both the monster and creator, echoing elements of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The result is a sharp film keenly aware of indie film tropes, enough to subvert them, and a creative retelling of Shelley’s novel.
May follows the story of May Canady (Bettis), a quirky veterinarian’s assistant who is obsessed with finding a friend, like Victor Frankenstein’s Monster. Since childhood, May has been an outcast, due to her lazy eye. The film opens with a shot of her wearing a black eye patch as her mother says, “Do you want to make friends? Then keep it (the eye) covered.” The film then cuts to a scene of May in front of her elementary school, surrounded by classmates, who whisper about her eye patch. One asks, “Are you a pirate?” May’s only friend is Susie, a doll her mother gifts her as a child. “She was my best friend, and now she’ll be yours,” her mother says. May keeps the doll behind a glass display case, and as the film progresses, Susie represents May’s increasingly fractured mind, especially the more that she is rejected.
Mumblecore, Indie Rom-Coms, Manic Pixie Dream Girls, and May
Before analyzing the film further, it’s important to define characteristics of both mumblecore and indie rom-coms in order to address how May both fits into and breaks the tropes of these film movements. New York Times writer Dennis Lim notes that mumblecore’s history can be traced to the South by Southwest Film Festival, when sound editor Eric Masunaga first used the term at a bar with fellow film industry friends. Masunaga worked with Andrew Bujalski, director of Funny Ha Ha (2002), one of the earliest mumblecore films. Lim writes that the genre concerns itself with “the mundane vacillations of post collegiate existence,” adding that such films hinge less on specific plot points and rather on “tipping points of interpersonal relationships.” Settings may include parties that go disastrously astray or events triggered by “ill-judged acts of intimacy.”
These characteristics are especially true of May. The film’s central conflict is centered on May’s longing for friendship and her loneliness, but all of the narrative’s tipping points occur when her quest for intimacy goes terribly wrong, triggering many of the film’s goriest and transgressive scenes. She bites the lip of her love interest Adam (Jeremy Sisto), just as one example, before smearing herself with his blood. This causes him to spurn her for good, which pushes her over the edge to the point that she kills people to make her own “friend.” Further, Lim notes that mumblecore films are typically set in white, middle-class worlds and feature 20 and 30-somethings. This is true of May. The protagonist has a decent job, earning enough to live on her own in a city, and Adam, an amateur horror film director, attended college before he dropped out to work as a mechanic while still hoping to launch his film career. The number of parties that Adam attends hints that he isn’t terribly far removed from his college years. May’s behavior, however, pushes the limits of how much “weird” these artsy middle-class characters can take, especially Adam.
Further, May subverts several tropes of the indie-rom com films that were ubiquitous at the time, while challenging the manic pixie dream girl archetype. “Manic pixie dream girl” is a term coined by film critic Nathan Rabin, after he watched Kirsten Dunst’s performance in Elizabethtown (2005), according to Lucia Gloria Vazquez Rodriquez’s writing on the character type in the context of postfeminism. It’s true that May’s release predates this term, but she exhibits elements of this archetype and also subverts them. The term describes a bubbly, shallow female character who is meant to teach soulful, artistic young men to embrace life and its adventures. Other examples include Natalie Portman’s character Sam in Garden State and Kate Winslet’s Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The women in these films only function to support a male-centric narrative. In Garden State, for instance, Portman’s Sam largely serves as a character who helps the male lead, Zach Braff’s heavily medicated Andrew, find purpose in life. She meets him in a waiting room and introduces him to indie rock band the Shins by sharing her headphones with him. She’s far more outgoing and social compared to Andrew. As he’s trying to fill out his forms, she taps him on the arm with her headphones and implores him to listen to the Shins. “You gotta hear this one song. It’ll change your life, I swear,” she tells him. The moment she puts the headphones on him marks the beginning of their relationship and the first time he steps out of his comfort zone to experience and feel something. He’s emotionally numb and stunted, due to his meds.
Immediately, Sam is presented as someone hip and cool who can break Andrew out of his funk and teach him to live. This is perhaps best illustrated later in the film when she stands on a pile of junk with him in the pouring rain, outside of a friend’s trailer. They scream into the infinite abyss, so to speak, and it’s one of the first times that Andrew generally smiles and emotes, raising his voice above its usual monotone pitch. It is the biggest outpouring of emotion he’s had thus far in the film. Sam, however, is not given much of her own storyline, other than a romantic interest who teaches the male lead to live again. She functions primarily to serve Adam’s storyline.
While May is initially more reserved and a bit less free-spirited than these characters, Adam does take a liking to her because he initially sees her as a form of inspiration. Her weirdness is attractive to him, especially as a horror filmmaker. She sews her own clothes, has an interesting job, and immediately is enamored with him. While Rodriquez states that these manic pixie dream girl characters typically lack ambition of their own and merely act as a plot device for the male lead and his ambition, this is not true throughout May. The film focuses on May’s quest for the perfect friend. Her desire drives the narrative. Further, while Adam may initially look to May as a source of fascination, he serves as her inspiration, especially his hands, which she deems perfect. To her, he is a piece of art, someone who has the potential to be her ideal companion. This is reinforced by the countless number of times that the camera zooms in on his hands, underscoring May’s perspective and gaze. When they are intimate, she tends to nuzzle his hands. Further, she is the one who pursues him, after first observing him outside, working on a car. The first time she sees him, she gushes to Susie about him. Shortly after, she watches him at a café and has the boldness to slide next to him while he falls asleep just so she can be closer to his hands. It’s a unique reversal in which men in May are reduced to body parts and the focus of a woman’s gaze. It’s not Adam’s ambition as a filmmaker that initially attracts May, but rather, a part of his body. The only part of him she longs to touch at the café and indeed does touch are his hands, jolting him from his nap. Yet he’s not startled by this awkward exchange. Her thrift store looks and initial boldness draw his attention.
Additionally, Rodriquez states that manic pixie dream girl characters are frequently staples in indie-rom coms, which center on the progress of a relationship. May highlights the protagonist’s struggles with relationships, specifically with Adam, but unlike other indie rom-coms, femininity is not subordinated to masculinity. It is true that May shows at least some interest in Adam’s capabilities as a filmmaker, but she’s more interested in his hands. Several times, her gaze focuses solely on his hands, even while he’s speaking about his own ambitions and artistic projects. Further, those who spurn May ultimately become part of her final creation.
Despite the way that May subverts a lot of the tropes of indie-rom coms and mumblecore movies, critics did try to trap the film within these genres, especially its female lead. For instance, critic David Rooney, writing for Variety, noted that Bettis as the lead came across as “somewhat irritating and fidgety, making May appear simple-minded. But the pixyish looks and quizzical gaze ultimately prove a snug fit for a bizarre character, bringing a degree of pathos to her desperate killing spree” (41).
The focus on May as an offbeat character is important. James MacDowell, in his exploration of the “quirky female” trope in indie films from the 2000s, notes that these films often link such a female character with a thematic focus on innocence and childhood (86). This is true of McKee’s film in that May’s trauma and otherness stem from her childhood when she was labeled a freak by her classmates because of her lazy eye. Susie, a doll gifted to her as a kid, stays with her into her adult years, always watching. Initially, the doll is presented as a harmless gift, meant to serve as May’s friend. However, Susie becomes a projection of May’s insecurities, frequently a victim of her verbal lashings when she’s rejected. In addition, May’s first friendship is with a doll, thus unreal, adding to her difficulty relating to people in a normal way. She struggles to separate fiction from reality. Furthermore, all of May’s memories of childhood are marred by the pain she felt when she was tormented and bullied by her classmates. These memories are recounted in the film’s opening minutes. Instead of a wild-eyed, innocent fascination with childhood, May’s memories of such years are negative. They left her emotionally stunted, unable to form meaningful connections with anyone that aren’t based in fantasy.
Before addressing some of the similarities between Frankenstein and May, it is worth noting the music used in May signals that the film may have wanted to attract the type of indie crowd that movies like Garden State and Almost Famous drew, even surpassing that niche market to garner mainstream success. May’s soundtrack includes some of the most well-known indie rock darlings of the time, featuring songs by the Breeders and Kelley Deal, sister of Breeders/Pixies front woman Kim Deal. Yet, despite this, May never had the box office success of those other films, even though it also had the backing of a bigger studio, Lions Gate. Initially, May only had a limited theatrical release and only grossed about $150,000, before hauling in $634,000 after its worldwide release. It didn’t recuperate its $1.7 million budget (“The Numbers”). Only later did May gain more recognition as a cult film. Part of its failure to draw big box office bucks may be because it initially appears like an indie film, in part because of Bettis’s performance and its soundtrack, but the film breaks the tropes of indie-rom coms and veers into straight horror by the last half. The bloodshed may be too much for anyone hoping that Adam and May are going to have a happy ending, one in which May inspires Adam to make the film of his dreams that makes him the next Dario Argento.
A Retelling of Frankenstein and May as Monster and Creator
Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker. As already stated, May feels that intense type of loneliness similar to Frankenstein’s Monster. Due to a physical deformity, she’s viewed as an outsider by her classmates. Yet she also has a fascination with blood and guts that initially reels in Adam. During one of their first dates, they have lunch together in the park. When May tells Adam she works at the animal hospital, she says that some people think it’s gross. He says, “I love gross. Disgust me, please.” Here, we have the first indication that May’s otherness is not something that Adam, a horror filmmaker, can handle, even if he thinks he can. She recounts a story about a dog she stitched together, using cat sutures instead of dog sutures. When the dog returned home, the stitches ripped and the dog’s guts spilled everywhere in the yard, even painting the fence red. May takes a delightful glee in recounting the story, again signaling that she can’t separate reality from fiction. Adam stops eating, and the camera zooms in on him, showing his disgusted look. The scene ends when Adam informs May that he has to catch Dario Argento’s film Trauma at a local art house theater. While Adam may relish high-art horror films, he can’t handle what he encounters in real life. The giallo splatter of an Argento film is one thing, but hearing about a dog spilling its guts is another. Further, despite May’s fascination with all things bloody, she doesn’t even know who Argento is, thus illustrating the important distinction between the two: Adam is drawn to blood and gore on the screen, splatter that’s fictitious, while May takes delight in it in real time.
However, Adam isn’t quite ready to end things with May just yet. On a second date, he invites her to his apartment, adorned with bizarre art that matches his film interests. He asks May if the art creeps her out, to which she replies, “Nothing freaks me out.” Adam even jokes that he’s a psycho and then stabs May with a fake knife. This act brings the same type of girlish delight that May exhibited when she recalled the story of the botched dog operation. It gets her off, to the point that she takes the knife, tracing it along Adam’s chest and stomach, before she bites his lip hard, causing him to break off the kiss and intimacy. This is one of the first major tipping points in their relationship that gives Adam serious pause. Again, he can handle bloodshed and oddball antics in film, but when he’s presented with an inkling of that in real life, he flees.
The final transgression occurs when May invites Adam over to watch one of his movies. She cooks him macaroni and cheese, with Gatorade as the beverage of choice. Alone together, they watch Adam’s film, which features a young couple devouring parts of each other and gaining sexual satisfaction from it. The short film is soaked in blood, lust, and sex, and it turns May on. She snuggles closer to Adam, even draping his arm around her. When the credits roll, and when Adam asks her what she thought of it, she responds, “It was sweet,” before adding that the only aspect that seemed far-fetched is when the female lead swallows and devours the man’s finger in one small bite. Like her interactions with Susie, May again blurs the line between reality and fiction.
Soon after, Adam and May wander to her bedroom. She bites him and then smears his blood on herself, mimicking scenes from his movie. This is the final transgression. Adam leaves and refuses to take her constant phone calls shortly after. In analyzing the relationship between May and Adam and the film’s parallels to elements of Frankenstein Maria Isabel Martin Ayuso writes:
At first she meets Adam (Jeremy Sisto), whose main hobby is to watch and produce gore movies, and this is precisely the point that seems to link May and Adam, the taste for blood and entrails. Adam and May have a brief romantic encounter, but the relationship fails because May, who is unable to establish the limits between fiction and reality, tries to prove her love for Adam by biting him –as she had previously seen in a gore movie. Therefore Adam, who seemed to be quite open-minded, discovers that “his girl” is too weird, even for him. Adam tries to end the relationship, but May desperately needs to be loved and she is going to chase him in an obsessive way until she finds out that he has already found a replacement for her. (220)
Unlike other indie rom-coms, it’s clear that May is not going to function as a character who serves a male protagonist’s needs, in this case inspiration for Adam’s gore movies. She is too transgressive. In a subsequent scene, May shows up at Adam’s residence, but before she knocks on the door, she overhears him talking to a friend. He tells his friend, “she’s pretty, but she’s not playing with a full deck.” His friend responds, “That’s not what you want her to be playing with,” denoting the fact that Adam is attracted to oddballs. Adam then demands that they stop talking about May and adds that he’s glad that he “successfully escaped that lunatic.” This is the first time that Adam refers to May in a negative, disparaging way and sees her transgression as a threat, something Other, even after he pretended to kill her with a fake knife.
This is a real turning point in the film, a moment when May decides to become the creator and build her perfect friend. Further, in an analysis of the film and the parallels to Shelley’s novel, Martin Ayuso sees similarities between Adam’s rejection of May and the DeLacey family’s rejection of the Monster in Frankenstein. She writes, “It fills the Monster with hatred, while May realizes how hard it is to find a friend in contemporary society. May lashes out and screams at Susie, her doll” (220-221). When the Monster is rejected by the blind man’s family, he blames his creator and decides to torment Victor by killing those closest to him. This shift is marked by the Monster’s dialogue and a change in the setting to winter. “For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them,” the Creature says (Shelley 113). The Monster’s inner turmoil and thirst for revenge are reinforced by the change in seasons. The Creature feels a fierce wind that arose from the woods, powerful enough that it felt like a “mighty avalanche,” producing a type of “insanity” in the Creature’s spirit (Shelley 113). May is not necessarily vengeful like the Monster, but she decides she must kill to build the right companion. The DeLaceys’ rejection of the Monster and Adam’s dismissal of May are major turning points in the development of both characters, which ultimately causes them to kill.
In a less subtle parallel between the film and Shelley’s novel, May volunteers at a day care center for blind children and is rejected when she brings Susie to a show-and-tell day. In one of the most visceral scenes, the children bust the display case, crawl over broken glass, and rip Susie apart. This scene occurs shortly after Adam rejects May and she’s pushed to the edge, to the point that she decides to make her own friend. Further, prior to May’s final decision to act and take what she wants, her violence erupts like Frankenstein’s Monster. She kills a cat, for example, and lashes out as Susie several times.
Of course, Adam and his perfect hands are a target for May’s perfect creation, but her other target is Polly (Anna Faris), a co-worker and other love interest of sorts for May. From the get-go, Polly is presented as hypersexual. When May tells her that she has a perfect neck, Polly tells her she should call her one night so they can “eat some melons or something.” In another scene, when they’re alone at work, Polly crawls across a table, urging May to dance with her. She’s attracted to May for the same reason that Adam is, because she’s weird. When May pricks Polly at work, causing her to bleed, she calls her a “crazy bitch,” before smiling and adding, “I kind of liked it.” She pleads with May to do it again, and when blood is drawn a second time, the camera zooms in on Polly’s face, her mouth parted into an O-shape, her breath long and heavy, her reaction orgasmic. When May is rejected by Adam, she turns to Polly, and in a steamy scene, Polly unbuttons May’s shirt and confesses that she “loves weird.” Yet, like Adam, she can’t fully handle May’s transgressions.
Other than a punk rocker named Blank (James Duval), Polly is the first person that May kills in her quest to build her creature. Before the killing starts, there is a striking change in May on Halloween night. The audience witnesses May cake her face with makeup and paint her lips red. She wears a Little Red Riding Hood costume that she made, a clever subversion of the fairytale in which the woman becomes the hunter instead of prey. When she dials Polly’s number and leaves a message, her voice is more assertive and confident. May has a striking sense of agency and uses sex as a weapon. She lures Polly to her death by making her think that she wants a sexual encounter. In this scene, the two are alone, in Polly’s apartment. May is seated above her on the couch, in a position of power, holding scalpels to her neck, while Polly is seated at May’s feet. Prior, Polly always initiated intimate encounters and wielded her sexual power, but here, the roles are reversed. Polly’s neck is collected for May’s creation.
May’s agency kicks up another notch when Polly’s lover, Ambrosia (Nichole Hiltz), who earlier in the film dismissed May as a freak, returns to Polly’s apartment and scoffs at finding May in the kitchen. Here, May is again in full control, ordering Ambrosia to “Give me a little spin, doll,” while she stares at her legs and then orders her again to “Turn around for me,” before stabbing Ambrosia and using her legs for her creation.
The final victim is, of course, Adam. Their last encounter occurs at Adam’s house, and it’s a reversal of the scene at May’s house, when they ate macaroni and cheese before watching Adam’s art house gore film. Here, May is in charge, even snapping at Adam’s date that his hands belong to her. Ultimately, May gets what she wants by killing Adam and his date and chopping off his hands.
May’s ultimate creation is Amy, a monster whose name contains the letters of May’s name. She adds one last touch, gifting Amy her bad eye because she thinks the creature can’t see her and thus can’t love her. In the final scene, with blood dripping from her eye socket, May rests her head on Amy’s chest, while the creature’s hand, composed of Adam’s body parts, caresses her. As disturbing as the final scene is, it’s a notable shift from the conclusion of Frankenstein, which ends with both the Monster and Victor’s demise and a final confrontation between the two. May, at least, finally has a companion, despite how twisted it is. Since May could not find a perfect friend, she makes one, composed of body parts of other people that she thought perfect, whether Adam’s hands or Polly’s neck. This leads to a companion who ultimately won’t reject her and who May believes will always love her, flaws and all.
There is another important distinction to draw between Victor and May as creators. Martin Ayuso notes that Victor created the Monster to achieve immortality, to enshrine his name through the ages, to conquer the limits of life and death. Early in the novel, Victor confesses, “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn, and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical or, in its higher sense, the physical secrets of the world” (Shelly 30). May, however, did it for acceptance and love. Because of this, Ayuso dubs May a “caring creator” (221). In that regard, she is a far more sympathetic character than Victor. In fact, she’s drawn that way from the start, through flashbacks that show how she was rejected from the outset, bullied by children because of her eye patch. At long last, May can have companionship through her creation.
Furthermore, both creators have different ideas of perfection. Ayusso points this out, writing:
In spite of sharing common features – such as the search for perfection and the need of acceptance – it is important to state that the reasons that lead May and Victor Frankenstein to become monstermakers are very different. In fact they do not perceive the terms “perfection” and “acceptance” in the same way. While Victor Frankenstein considers “perfection” as the capacity of a human being to defy natural laws and become immortal; May perceives perfection as something fragmented, unable to exist as a whole unless somebody assembles the pieces. Victor Frankenstein wants to be recognized for his contribution to the scientific field; whereas May just wants to be accepted like she is by those who live around her. (222)
A Comparison to James Whale’s Monster and Conclusions
Additionally, the portrayal of May as a sympathetic character links her to Boris Karloff’s iconic take on the Monster in James Whale’s films for Universal Studios. Both characters have a type of innocence that make their monstrous actions more understandable. The turning point in Frankenstein (1931) occurs when the Monster meets a child, Maria (Marilyn Harris), near a pond, after he escapes from his creator’s castle. In one of the most iconic scenes in horror history, Maria accepts the Monster, despite his grotesque features. They toss flowers into the water, and during a misunderstanding, the creature throws Maria into the lake, thinking that she too will float like a flower petal. Instead, she drowns, triggering a mob of villagers and the final confrontation between the scientist (Colin Clive) and Monster. The flower scene warrants comparison to the intimate moment between May and Adam when she smears his blood over herself after biting him. In Whale’s film, the Monster imitates what Maria does with the flower petals. When he picks her up, he laughs and smiles, thinking that the child will enjoy his actions. He tosses her into the water, not realizing the repercussions of his actions, nor the fact he is endangering her life. May mimics what she views in Adam’s film, thinking he’ll enjoy the blood and gore in real life, unaware of the physical pain she’s inflicting on him. This is the key moment that Adam turns on May and finally spurns her, similar to the moment in Whale’s film when the town comes together to hunt the Monster, wielding torches and unleashing growling dogs. At this moment, the Creature realizes he’s going to have to kill his creator if he wants to survive, whereas May realizes once Adam rejects her that she’s going to have to become a creator if she wants a perfect friend.
In Whale’s sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the Monster returns and forces his creator to make a bride for him, just like the Creature’s request in the novel. Unlike in the text, however, Dr. Frankenstein (Clive) complies. When the Bride (Elsa Lanchester) is created, she cackles at the Monster and then screams, thus rejecting him, even when he reaches out to her and says, “friend,” displaying the same type of innocence and longing for connection that he showed toward Maria. Ultimately, Dr. Frankenstein flees the castle and the Monster blows it up with the Bride in it, too. He declares, “We belong dead.” It’s hard not to feel bad for Karloff’s Monster, just as it’s difficult not to feel sympathy for May, who seemingly can’t understand the difference between reality and fiction, especially in her interactions with Adam. May and the Monster simply want a friend. The important distinction between McKee’s film and Whale’s adaptations of Shelley’s work, however, lies in the fact that May has a companion in the end, even if Amy isn’t real. May is not destroyed by a mob before the credits roll, and she finally smiles because she feels the love and acceptance that she’s always wanted. The film’s final moments are a clever change to the Frankenstein story, one in which the monster, this time female, is not destroyed and instead acquires what she desires, a friend stitched together by her own hands.
Works Cited
Bride of Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale, Universal Studios, 1935.
Frankenstein. Directed by James Whale, Universal Studios, 1931.
Garden State. Directed by Zach Braff, Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2004.
Lim, Dennis. “A Generation Finds Its Mumble.” New York Times, Aug 19, 2007. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/newspapers/generation-findsmumble/docview/433656467/se-2?accountid=69639
MacDowell, James. “Quirky: Buzzword or Sensibility?” in American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood and Beyond, eds. Geoff King, Claire Molloy & Yannis Tzioumakis (New York: Routledge, 2013), 53–64.
Martin Ayuso, Maria Isabel. “If You Can’t Have a Friend, Make One: Lucky McKee’s May as a Revision on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” AEDEAN 2008, 31: 217-223.
May. Directed by Lucky McKee, Lions Gate, 2002.
“May 2003: Financial information.” The Numbers. 2 January 2020. Web. https://m.the-numbers.com/movie/May
Rodriguez, Lucía G. V. “(500) Days of Postfeminism: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Stereotype in Its Contexts.” Prisma Social, 2017, pp. 167-201. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/500-days-postfeminism-multidisciplinary-analysis/docview/1968339746/se-2?accountid=69639.
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Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text. Oxford University Press, 1998.
