scholar Scott MacQueen, noting Whale's lack of any religious convictions, disputes the notion that the Monster is a Christ-figure. Rather, the Monster is a "mockery of the divine" since, having been created by Man rather than God, it "lacks the divine spark". In crucifying the Monster, he says, Whale "pushes the audience's buttons" by inverting the central Christian belief of the death of Christ followed by the resurrection. The Monster is raised from the dead first, then crucified. Queer reading In the decades since its release, modern film scholars have noted the possible queer reading of the film. Director James Whale was openly gay, and some of the actors in the cast, including Ernest Thesiger and, according to rumor, Colin Clive, were respectively gay or bisexual. Although James Curtis, Whale's biographer, rejects the notion that Whale would have identified with the Monster from a homosexual perspective, scholars have perceived a gay subtext suffused through the film, especially a camp sensibility, particularly embodied in the character of Pretorius and his relationship with Henry. Gay film historian Vito Russo, in considering Pretorius, stops short of identifying the character as gay, instead referring to him as "sissified", "sissy" itself being Hollywood code for "homosexual". Pretorius serves as a "gay Mephistopheles", a figure of seduction and temptation, going so far as to pull Frankenstein away from his bride on their wedding night to engage in the unnatural act of creating non-procreative life. A novelization of the film published in the United Kingdom made the implication clear, having Pretorius say to Frankenstein: "Be fruitful and multiply. Let us obey the Biblical injunction: you of course, have the choice of natural means; but as for me, I am afraid that there is no course open to me but the scientific way". The Monster, whose affections for the male hermit and the female Bride he discusses with identical language ("friend") has been read as sexually "unsettled" and bisexual. Gender studies author Elizabeth Young writes: "He has no innate understanding that the male-female bond he is to forge with the bride is assumed to be the primary one or that it carries a different sexual valence from his relationships with [Pretorius and the hermit]: all affective relationships are as easily 'friendships' as 'marriages'". Indeed, his relationship with the hermit has been interpreted as a same-sex marriage that heterosexual society will not tolerate: "No mistake – this is a