Images of the Modern Vampire


Book Description

In the predecessor to this book, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend, Brodman and Doan presented discussions of the development of the vampire in the West from the early Norse draugr figure to the medieval European revenant and ultimately to Dracula, who first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The essays in that collection also looked at the non-Western vampire in Native American and Mesoamerican traditions, Asian and Russian vampires in popular culture, and the vampire in contemporary novels, film and television. The essays in this collection continue that multi-cultural and multigeneric discussion by tracing the development of the post-modern vampire, in films ranging from Shadow of a Doubt to Blade, The Wisdom of Crocodiles and Interview with the Vampire; the male and female vampires in the Twilight films, Sookie Stackhouse novels and TrueBlood television series; the vampire in African American women’s fiction, Anne Rice’s novels and in the post-apocalyptic I Am Legend; vampires in Japanese anime; and finally, to bring the volumes full circle, the presentation of a new Irish Dracula play, adapted from the novel and set in 1888.




The Modern Vampire and Human Identity


Book Description

Vampires are back - and this time they want to be us, not drain us. This collection considers the recent phenomena of Twilight and True Blood, as well as authors such as Kim Newman and Matt Haig, films such as The Breed and Interview with the Vampire, and television programmes such as Being Human and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.




Vampires Today


Book Description

This book explores the modern world of vampirism. Based on interviews, it looks at the many expressions of vampirism, from lifestyle vampires, who adopt the culture and admire the gothic image, to 'real' vampires who believe they are a separate race and need to consume blood and psychic energy in order to survive.




Vampires Are Us


Book Description

“Vampires. Why do we care? In these pages you will find what is very simply, the most literate, imaginative, and just plain fascinating answer to that question ever written.” ?Whitley Strieber In a culture that does not do death particularly well, we are obsessed with mortality. Margot Adler writes, “Vampires let us play with death and the issue of mortality. They let us ponder what it would mean to be truly long lived. Would the long view allow us to see the world differently, imagine social structures differently? Would it increase or decrease our reverence for the planet? Vampires allow us to ask questions we usually bury.” As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband’s bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years—by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic—she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. Dracula, an Eastern European monster, was the perfect vehicle for 19th-century England’s fear of outsiders and of disease seeping in through its large ports. In 1960s America, Dark Shadows gave us the morally conflicted vampire struggling against his own predatory nature, who still enthralls us today. Think Spike and Angel, Stefan and Damon, Bill and Eric, the Cullens. Vampires Are Us explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us.




Vampire Evolution


Book Description

Vampires are beings of myth: folkloric creatures who live off the blood of the living and have been recorded in nearly every culture around the world since the beginning of man. This work traces the evolution of the vampire, from its roots in ancient mythology to obscure folk tales and legends, leading up to when these foul beings transformed into the suave Byronic heroes that continue to influence the world's view of the vampire today. It also examines key individuals in history involved in reshaping our concept of the creature. Popular culture is explored, along with the development of the vampire into the protagonist in plays and poems and novels. Sixty-one frightening images bring the topic right to your front door. Will you invite the visitor in?




The Modern Vampire and Human Identity


Book Description

Vampires are back - and this time they want to be us, not drain us. This collection considers the recent phenomena of Twilight and True Blood, as well as authors such as Kim Newman and Matt Haig, films such as The Breed and Interview with the Vampire, and television programmes such as Being Human and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.




Fanpires


Book Description

This collection of essays addresses the renewed interest in the cultural resurgence of the vampire, evident across a broad range of literature, film, television, graphic novels, and games. The appeal of vampire mythology and its associated folklore for modern audiences is examined in an age characterized by the transformative possibilities of the internet with both its low barriers to artistic expression and the erosion of the boundaries between author and audience in terms of the construction of narrative, character and fictional universes. This collection examines how audiences respond to and "use" the vampire in their own practices. From evil villains to tragic heroes, modern appropriations of the vampire, evident in popular manifestations such as the Twilight saga and the televisual adaptation of The Southern Vampire Mysteries (True Blood) are noted for their focus on the everyday. These vampires are found nested within communities, seeking to temper their urges and coexist with humans. "Drifting silently into harbour, the vampires arrived in Western Europe scarcely two centuries ago. Since then, they have become a new folklore. The rich fan cultures addressed by vibrant emerging scholars from around the English-speaking world gathered in Schott and Moffatt's collection are the true heirs of this uncanny invasion. The mix of glamour and disgust, aestheticism and dread vampires evoke offers metaphors for every form of anxiety and unholy yearning: a bloodstained laboratory for social experiment. This collection opens new corridors into the chambers of the undead, and casts an eerie light on the subterranean worlds of fans and vampires alike." -Sean Cubitt, Professor of Global Media and Communication, Winchester School of Art, UK. "Fanpires offers the preeminent collection of scholarly approaches to this immortal shape shifter. This compilation of insightful essays not only reflects the omnipresence of the vampire in popular culture, but it identifies the pivotal role of fans in revitalizing the life of the vampire." -Wendy Haslem, Professor of Screen Studies & Cultural Management, The University of Melbourne.




Celluloid Vampires


Book Description

In 1896, French magician and filmmaker George Méliès brought forth the first celluloid vampire in his film Le manoir du diable. The vampire continues to be one of film's most popular gothic monsters and in fact, today more people become acquainted with the vampire through film than through literature, such as Bram Stoker's classic Dracula. How has this long legacy of celluloid vampires affected our understanding of vampire mythology? And how has the vampire morphed from its folkloric and literary origins? In this entertaining and absorbing work, Stacey Abbott challenges the conventional interpretation of vampire mythology and argues that the medium of film has completely reinvented the vampire archetype. Rather than representing the primitive and folkloric, the vampire has come to embody the very experience of modernity. No longer in a cape and coffin, today's vampire resides in major cities, listens to punk music, embraces technology, and adapts to any situation. Sometimes she's even female. With case studies of vampire classics such as Nosferatu, Martin, Blade, and Habit, the author traces the evolution of the American vampire film, arguing that vampires are more than just blood-drinking monsters; they reflect the cultural and social climate of the societies that produce them, especially during times of intense change and modernization. Abbott also explores how independent filmmaking techniques, special effects makeup, and the stunning and ultramodern computer-generated effects of recent films have affected the representation of the vampire in film.




The Modern Vampire


Book Description

This is a guide for the Modern Vampire; therefore, if you are of the living - a warm-blooded human - you will gain nothing useful from its study. However, if you are one of the many who are new to our existence - the undead as it were - and you do not fully understand what has happened to you or how to proceed, assistance is at hand. For the recently transformed, this guide can help you understand how your body has been changed by the transformation and what to expect surviving as one of our kind. For the traditional vampire, you may learn new ways to survive. This guide provides solutions to the problem with sunlight while explaining that blood is not all we must consume for our survival. It may also help you - and possibly others of our kind - to learn and adapt to modern times while providing sufficient explanation as to who we are and, perhaps more importantly, what we are not. With this guide in hand, you will be well prepared to enter the realm of the Modern Vampire.




The Vampire Goes to College


Book Description

This collection of original essays presents pedagogical tools, methods, and approaches for incorporating the figure of the vampire into the learning environment of the college classroom, in the hopes of ushering the Undead out of the coffin and into the classroom. The essays foster interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue, and serve as a collective resource for those currently teaching the vampire as well as newcomers to vampire studies. Opening with a foreword by Sam George, the collection is organized around such topics as historicizing the vampire, teaching the diverse vampire, and engaging the student learner. Interwoven throughout the volume are strategies for incorporating writing instruction and generating conversations about texts ("texts" defined broadly so as to include film and other media). The vampire allows instructors to explore timeless themes such as life and death, love and passion, immortality, and monstrosity and Otherness.