Interview with a Vampire

This book is not simply about good vs. evil. It is a bout two very different types of men going through their lives as vampires. Louis the intellect and Lestat the predator.   They are both charming in a way that completely crosses over to creepy at times.  Louis clings on to his humanity as best he can while there is really nothing left of him that remains human. The death of his brother sparks Luis to seek death and then he spends the rest of his existence resenting the fact that he must cause it.  It was easier for him to believe in the power of vampires and not for him to believe in the idea of her brother seeing visions. This theme of religious doubt is repeated in the novel. By telling the story through the eyes of the interviewee we learn details of the lives of vampires and the rules of their existence. The interviewee seems to ignore the story Louis tells him at times as he is too wrapped up in the idea of becoming one himself. Louis just longs for the past.  The relationship between Louis and Lestat drives the story and is almost homoerotic at times. From the moment Louis describes Lestat the reader can sense the tension.  This book, as we discussed in class, opened up the genre of supernatural romance. And supernatural romances know no bounds so they are all encompassing to any kind of sexuality or preference.  The sexuality really comes out whenever Lestat is manipulating any other character. Manipulation becomes sensuous and reinforces the perceived sexual nature of the vampire.  Understanding where any genre started is truly interesting and the dialogue in the novel captures your interest immediately.  I found it very well written and a fascinating read. 

Bram Stoker's Dracula The Movie or my love for Gary Oldman

When watching Nosferatu this morning I couldn’t help but notice the comparisons between Gary Oldman’s performance as Dracula and that of Max Schreck. Obviously this could have been due to the fact that Gary Oldman was playing Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Nosferatu was essentially the same story. But the play with shadows in both films is really interesting. Seclusion also plays a big part in this film, as each character seems confined in some way, Harker by the castle, Mina by her thoughts, Renfield by the asylum etc.  You have two representations of women in the horror movie, the virtuous thoughtful obedient wife, and the flirtatious frivolous woman.  Obviously it is the latter that dies.  In this movie Dracula is perceived as both the suave romantic with undying love and the horrible grotesque creature that he has become. He begins to have an internal struggle with what is important to him when Mina Harker enters the picture.  Ultimately love prevails in this film but love for whom. Mina seems to do a full 360 and take charge of her own destiny instead of being so compliant with life and she ends up actually choosing the vampire. There is a definite struggle here between the damned and the saved. Lucy is saved but only too late and the question remains if Dracula truly is? You see his appearance change when Mina finally kills him (he was dying anyways) back to that of his “ true nature” so he may have been.  There is also a hint to the fetish quality of vampires when Dracula and Mina finally end up in bed together and only becomes more prevalent as that scene plays out.  The relationship between Dracula and the animals is pretty important here as he cannot only control the “ children of the night” but can also become something of one himself. Again this is the animal sexuality that appears in horror. This is incredibly blatant in the scene between him and Lucy when he essentially rapes her as this man, animal, wolf, bat hybrid.  While this movie doesn’t always mesh entirely with the book it still depicts Vampire Horror in a rather traditional sense then that of the works of today. 

Twilight

            This book has reached the masses through widespread promotion, 5 movies, a sparkling man and shirtless boys.  So what is the big deal? I read it and at first it was troubling attempting to ignore the writing style and fan fiction type of sentence structure. However, one I got past this I looked at the story.  The story itself is as old as time. It’s a love triangle that just happens to be between a Vampire and a Werewolf. Yet these “creatures” are not at all threatening, at least not the central ones. It is the outside forces that they face that cause any alarm in himself or herself or the reader.  All the characters are for all intensive purposes high school students and this book is definitely for young high school girls. Having said that I have a young impressionable sister and really don’t want her reading these. Not for the context at all (I read racier things with out knowing it when I was much younger then her) but more for the writing influencing her own writing skills, but I digress. The vampire is domesticated (and the werewolf as well in later books of the series) and it becomes about which bad boy she wants.  This vampire tale goes back to Victorian themes in that it tries to repress sexuality in the female protagonist.  Edward also compares blood to a drug, which is often the metaphor for the addiction and obsession vampires have for blood. They are the drug addicts of the monster world.  The Cullens themselves maintain superiority over the town with their wealth and beauty as opposed to striking fear into the masses. Yet they are also still outcasts and left alone at their own lunch table. And it is the repulsion and compelling nature of their coldness so to speak that draws Bella in. All in all I am glad I read it so that I don’t rely on other’s opinions of the book however my own is not that favorable.  

Vampire Notes

Nosferatu

-       Went from yellow tones to grey when the mood changed

-       Not an attractive vampire

-       Stolen story

-       Almost destroyed because the story was so close to Bram Stoker’s Dracula

What made the “look” of Vampires change?

-       Social transgression

-       Fist world war- shows the problems with the Victorian Age (puts the end to Victorian Ideals)

-       Bella Lugosi Dracula “ brings the Tuxedo” to Dracula

-       Interview with a vampire – is charming

-       Both detached and completely immersed in humanity

-       Creepy only in his perfection

-       Becomes a vey popular take on this genre

-       Claudia – frozen as a child (her own daughters death?)

-       A lot of Catholicism in the book

-       Religious doubt is a big subject line of the book

-       Religion goes hand in hand with Vampires

-       Sense of religion being the demonic power that fuels vampires

-       She went in depth on explanations on what vampires thing, ingestion of blood- live blood

-       Through the e yes of an interviewee a “wannabe” vampire

-       Fetishistic qualities to it

-       Plays off of wanting to be in the position of that fear and helplessness

-       We build the rules for these beings so that it’s a situation we know how to get out of

-       Ann Rice opens up the genre “ Supernatural romance”

-       Twilight domesticates the Vampire  (the high you get from being chaste)

Rules

-Fictional worlds “have” to have rules

            -Defining fiction in game terms

            -What are the rules so that we can see them bent broken or otherwise

            - Change the rules just enough to fit our own vampires

            -Have we exhausted the vampire?

- Interview with a Vampire and sex, do they have it>?

- Something more compelling then sex and that’s feeding

- Drugs are the metaphor because you keep coming back for more.

-  You are what you are accept it (Beatniks) 

Oppositions you see in the work

-       Past v the present

-       Privileges the past as a genre

-       Interviewer represents the present

-       The way the vampire works in the frame of media (no longer a gothic tale) 

-       Religion (belief vs. Disbelief) damned and saved

-       Are you damned because of your nature of because of your actions///what exactly is redeeming

-       Destiny and predestination

-       Mortality vs. immortality

-       Humanity vs. inhumanity

City of Lost Souls

-       The appeal of animal sexuality

-       Separation of the mind and the body

-       Sexual subtext

Other Notes

-       Ann Rice novel is not entirely heterosexual

-       One of the first novels to lay out in strong terms that it doesn’t matter if your gay, straight, it matters if you are top or bottom, the dominant or the submissive

-       Accepting what you are and pair up with the right combination otherwise you aren’t going to be happy (all inclusive)

Lost Boys

-       Homoerotic undertones

-       Unites the vampire motifs with the teenage rebel

-       Manipulative

-       Origin of Twilight

-       *80’s glitter 

-       The vampires influence the town but no one knows that they are the reason for everyone missing

= subtle manipulation

Monster Island

Monster Island

This book was very enthralling from the get go. It kept my attention because it was more about Dekalb himself and what he must over come for his daughter then it was about the zombie virus itself, as it takes place after the virus has spread.  And there is also Gary who tries to rationally survive the zombies through becoming a smarter version of one. This is a viewpoint on zombies that I have not heard of before and therefore found it very interesting.  Through the eyes of a “zombie” we get a better look at zombies and the story is no longer as incredibly one sided. Which is usually one of my main problems with zombie stories. This book however, is incredibly engrossing and keeps the reader guessing as to what will happen next. It is definitely not as predictable as one would expect a zombie book to be. This plot has many twists and turns that keep the story going and make it a great zombie book. I find myself really enjoying the characters and getting to understand their motivations. This is a very original take on a well-known genre giving it new life, so to speak. The zombies aren’t as meaningless in this book as they seem to be in other works and one can identify with them better, especially with Gary.  Although I don’t understand why in nearly every zombie book or movie someone’s intestines just have to be ripped out. The images of the zombies being shot in the head, or the green hand grabbing one of the warrior girls really resonate with the reader.  This book actually got me into the zombie genre more than I thought it would.  Maybe the human struggle for survival translates deeper through literature than film at times.                              

King Kong and Zombies

Class Notes 

Gothic Horror

King Kong Film

Formula for the gothic romance – fate driving you forward toward a particular goal but you don’t trust it because love is doomed etc.

Heroine is more complex

Dramatizes the first step of her voyage

Love triangle between the heroine, the hero and the monster

Ideal past has eroded away

Civilized vs. the savage

Never was a book- novelization done after the movie

Construction of the savage as a stereotype- was mostly used to justify imperialism

(Central social issue of New Zealand)

King Kong and special effects

Deep dark woods

Isolated Island

Larger than life monster

Nature as the enemy

Paranoia

Helplessness of the heroine

Monster vs. hero

“Marries” Kong

Zombies

-First shows up in films around the 1950s

- Night of the living dead- post apocalypse type survival story

-Why is it popular?- cheap to make, survival skills, hanging on or letting go, motif of being able to let go of your loved one-see them change- zombification, plays with our ideas of morals, about identity, Alzheimer’s = actual zombification, responsibility of the survivors

- The situation of over population- something that we all can see and feels out of our control

- Our population currently is unsustainable

- The paranoia becomes personal

-Paradigm shift

-Zombies are given this incredible amount of freedom with this huge consequence

- Zombies = Immigrants= subtext

- The hope of survival or despair of the population and their reaction

-Isolation = a challenge

- Cleansing aspect tied to apocalyptic ideas

-Depressing/ not really narratives of hope

- The zombie narrative is, you lose- they overwhelm, there is always more

- The hungry ghost aspect- unsatisfied in this life

- The slowness, easy to defeat but its inevitable

-Always more zombies then there are non-zombies

-Some people are already zombies (Shaun of the Dead)

- we fantasize about the end of the world

- the group vs. the individual 

-real enemy isn't entirely the zombies but human nature itself 

-what is savage and what is civilized????

Shaun of the Dead

Shaun of the Dead

I watched Shaun of the Dead because unlike most of the general population I do not like zombie movies, zombie TV shows, or discussing what I would do if there were to suddenly be a zombie apocalypse. I have to be careful who I say this to though as people take my lack of interest very seriously. However, I can get into anything that Simon Pegg does and so I gave it a chance. I loved this movie. I was able to experience all the zombie cliché goodness while still genuinely enjoying the film.  In this movie is of course have the traditional virus spreading through out England affecting suburban neighborhoods and towns alike and a group of friends trying to survive it.  With the perfect amount of humor and mockery this film delivers just as much gore as you would expect to see in your typical zombie film.  Because zombies are thoughtless creatures who just want to consume your flesh there is no sympathy for this monster and all that remains is the overwhelming desire to destroy its brain and run away. That is probably why zombie films don’t usually do anything for me, as the monster is not a real monster, it’s just a reanimated corpse with no real thoughts. For me I need a monster that has more of a story to them and is in general a more rounded character. Zombie films play mostly off of fear for fears sake. Who wouldn’t be afraid of being consumed by a heard of undead civilians only to become one yourself? And maybe I am not giving zombies enough credit. I am repulsed by them and isn’t that the general idea? The “angry village people” or mob in this type of film are the zombies themselves and are just as good at generating widespread panic. The suspense in this type of film lies with wondering which members of the group will survive the attack. It is typically the main protagonist and their male or female counterpart that come out of it all unscathed as Shaun of the Dead demonstrates. All in all wonderfully done film with very good scenes with gore, comedy, action and anything you could ask for in an undead film. As for me, zombie lover or not I truly enjoyed watching this movie. And who knows, maybe one day I will get bitten by the zombie craze.