A strain of sophisticated wit and self-parody alternates with pure and moving lyricism to help locate The Bride of Frankenstein in a real-world milieu. As in Frankenstein, the gothic idiom becomes frighteningly modern. Dr. Frankenstein's dismay as he fashions a mate for his monster-"This isn't science, this is black magic!"-echoes a theme of the between-the-war years that was expressed in Surrealist art. In the catalog Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art, curator Sidra Stich writes, "In...archetypal Surrealist figures, human form embraces all sorts of nonhuman elements and subsists in an utterly disoriented state. Combining the man-made with the manufactured, Max Ernst subverts the idea that the human body is distinct from objects or the environment..."