#vampire essay

[weirdletter]

Vampire Films Around the World: Essays on the Cinematic Undead of Sixteen Cultures, edited by James Aubrey, McFarland, 2020. Info: mcfarlandbooks.com.

Vampires are arguably the most popular and most paradoxical of gothic monsters: life draining yet passionate, feared yet fascinating, dead yet immortal. Vampire content produces exquisitely suspenseful stories that, combined with motion picture filmmaking, reveal much about the cultures that enable vampire film production and the audiences they attract. This collection of essays is generously illustrated and ranges across sixteen cultures on five continents, including the films Let the Right One In, What We Do in the Shadows, Cronos, and We Are the Night, among many others. Distinctly different kinds of European vampires have originated in Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Serbia. North American vampires are represented by films from Mexico, Canada, and the USA. Middle Eastern locations include Tangier, Morocco, and a fictional city in Iran. South Asia has produced Bollywood vampire films, and east Asian vampires are represented by films from Korea, China, and Japan. Some of the most recent vampire movies have come from Australia and New Zealand. These essays also look at vampire films through lenses of gender, post-colonialism, camp, and otherness as well as the evolution of the vampiric character in cinema worldwide, together constituting a mosaic of the cinematic undead.

Contents: Introduction – James Aubrey   Australia Children of the Night in a Sunburnt Country: Aristocrats and Outback Vampires – Graeme A. Wend-Walker   Canada A Monstrous Showing: Movement and Deformed Discourse in Guy Maddin’s Vampire Ballet Film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary – Lorna Hutchison   China The Hong Kong Vampire Returns: Nostalgia, Pastiche and Politics in Rigor Mortis – Fontaine Lien   Germany Nosferatu’s Daughters: Radical Feminism, ­Lesbo-Vampirism and Fluid Identities in Dennis Gansel’s Wir sind die Nacht (We Are the Night) – Kai-Uwe Werbeck   India Chutney Vampires: Contextualizing Bollywood’s Undead Cinema – Anurag Chauhan   Iran Reclaiming the Marginalized Female Body in Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – U. Melissa Anyiwo   Ireland and UK Creating an Irish Neomyth: Byzantium’s Feminist Vampires – James Aubrey   Italy Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D: History, Genre and the Politics of Camp – Vincent Piturro   Japan The Intertextuality of Moon Child: How Japanese Popular Culture Molds and Interprets Gender and the Vampire – Jade Lum   Korea Blood, Dust and the Black Universe: From Asia Extreme to the Vampire ­World-Image in Thirst, The Wailing and the New Korean Vampire Horror Cinema – David John Boyd   Mexico The Craft of Delicacy in Cronos: Rethinking Vampire Films in Latin America – Roberto Forns-Broggi   Morocco and USA Only Lovers Left Alive: Expat Vampires and ­Post-Imperial Cosmopolitanism – Wendolyn Weber   New Zealand “Don’t … don’t believe the hype!” Vampiric Evolution and What We Do in the Shadows – Charles Hoge   Serbia Vampire Privilege: Class, Gender and Sex in Serbian Metaphysical Horror – Tatjana Aleksić   Sweden Unqueering Child Vampire Love in Let the Right One In – James Aubrey   USA Museological Horror in Ganja and Hess and Da Sweet Blood of Jesus – Cheryl D. Edelson   USA “It’s more like a disease”: Compensatory Masculinities and Intersectional “Otherness” in The Transfiguration – Cain Miller Filmography Bibliography About the Contributors Index of Terms

[weirdletter]

Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, by Theresa Bane, McFarland, softcover edition, 2020 (2010). Cover illustration by Joseph Maclise, info: mcfarlandbooks.com.

From the earliest days of oral history to the present, the vampire myth persists among mankind’s deeply-rooted fears. This encyclopedia, with entries ranging from “Abchanchu” to “Zmeus,” includes nearly 600 different species of historical and mythological vampires, fully described and detailed.

Contents: Preface Introduction The Encyclopedia Bibliography Index

[weirdletter]

Vampires in Italian Cinema, 1956-1975, by Michael Guarneri, Edinburgh University Press, 2020. Info: edinburghuniversitypress.com.

Demonstrates how and why the transnational figure of the vampire was appropriated by Italian genre filmmakers between 1956 and 1975. Actively engages in the ongoing academic debate about the cultural legitimacy of Italian genre cinema. Covers unpublished film production data (from the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome), original screenplays (from the Biblioteca Luigi Chiarini in Rome), cinematic paratexts and vampire-themed paraliterature (from libraries all over Italy). Outlines the 1945-1985 historical and industrial context of Italian cinema. Positioning itself at the intersection of Italian film history, horror studies and cultural studies, this fascinating book asks why, and how, was the protean, transnational and transmedial figure of the vampire appropriated by Italian cinema practitioners between 1956 and 1975? The book outlines both the 1945–85 industrial context of Italian cinema and the political, economic and sociocultural context of the Italian Republic, from post-war reconstruction to the austerity of the mid-1970s. Using case studies of films by directors such as Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda, it also delves into lesser-known gems of Italian psychotronic cinema from the 1960s and 1970s, like L’amante del vampiro (The Vampire and the Ballerina) and Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel Trecento... (The Reincarnation of Isabel). With original research into hitherto unpublished film production data, censorship data, original screenplays, trade papers, film magazines and vampire-themed paraliterature, the book strongly argues for the cultural legitimacy of Italian film genres like horror, adventure, comedy and erotica, whose study has so far been neglected in favour of the Italian auteur cinema of the 1940s neorealists and their later followers.

Contents: Introduction PART I: THE INDUSTRIAL CONTEXT 1. The Italian film industry (1945-1985) 2. Italian vampire cinema (1956-1975) PART II: VAMPIRE SEX AND VAMPIRE GENDER 3. Female vampires 4. Male vampires PART III: SANGUINE ECONOMY, BLOODY POLITIC 5. Vampires of the late 1950s and early 1960s 6. Post-1968 vampires Appendix A: Three Italian vampire films that were never made Appendix B: Files from the Italian Show Business Bureau fonds at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome Bibliography Index

[weirdletter]

Eco-Vampires: The Undead and the Environment, by Simon Bacon, Routledge, 2020. Info: routledge.com.

This work studies the ways vampiric narratives explore the eco-friendly credentials of the undead. Many of these texts and films show the vampire to be an essential part of a global ecosystem and an organism that can no longer tolerate the all-consuming forces of globalization and consumerism. Re-examining Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a range of other vampire narratives, primarily films, in a fresh light, this book reveals the nosferatu as both a plague on humankind and the eco-warriors that planet Earth desperately needs.

Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Dracula the Environmentalist: The Land Beyond the Forest 2. Vampiric Sustainability: The Undead Planet 3. Undead ­Eco-Warrior: The End of the World as We Know It 4. The End of the End: Consumerism Will Eat Itself 5. Vampire Ecosystems: It Came from Outer Space Filmography Bibliography Index of Terms

[weirdletter]

The Global Vampire: Essays on the Undead in Popular Culture Around the World (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy), edited by Cait Coker, afterword by Amanda Jo Hobson and U. Melissa Anyiwo, McFarland, 2020. Cover image by Ruta Production/Shutterstock, info: mcfarlandbooks.com.

The media vampire has roots throughout the world, far beyond the shores of the usual Dracula-inspired Anglo-American archetypes. Depending on text and context, the vampire is a figure of anxiety and comfort, humor and fear, desire and revulsion. These dichotomies gesture the enduring prevalence of the vampire in mass culture; it can no longer articulate a single feeling or response, bound by time and geography, but is many things to many people. With a global perspective, this collection of essays offers something new and different: a much needed counter-narrative of the vampire’s evolution in popular culture. Divided by geography, this text emphasizes the vampiric as a globetrotting citizen du monde rather than an isolated monster.

Contents: Acknowledgments Preface (and In Memoriam) Introduction—Texts and Contexts: The Global Vampire in Popular Culture – Cait Coker     The Americas and Canada Biting, Sex and Blood: The New American Vampire Narrative – Candace R. Benefiel “I’ll give you blood to drink”: The New Vampire in Novels About the Salem Witch Trials – Marta María Gutiérrez-Rodríguez Wes Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn: A Passing Narrative – Kendra R. Parker The Transmediated Lesbian Vampire: LGBTQ Representation in a Contemporary Adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s – Carmilla Natalie Krikowa Éternelle Colonization: The Figure of the Vampire as Colonizing Factor in 21st-Century Québec – Maureen-C. LaPerrière and Julien Drainville     Europe and the Mediterranean “The creatures of the night, what bad jokes they make!”: Racism, “True” Humor and the Nationalistic Vampire on Film – Simon Bacon Amid and Beyond Gender(s): The Vampire as a Locus of Gender Neutrality in John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In – Marie Levesque The Economic Miracle and the Italian Undead in Tempi duri per i vampiri – Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns “Time is an abyss”: The Role of History in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979) – Thomas Prasch There’s Water Here: Cities, Safety and the Global Environment in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive – Karen E. Viars     Asia and Australia From Sunnydale to Seoul: The Vampire “Fan” in Korean Dramas – Cait Coker “Don’t adjust your life to mine”: Moon Child, Homoeroticism and the Vampire as Multifaceted Other – Miranda Ruth Larsen Aboriginal Australian Vampires and the Politics of Transmediality – Naomi Simone Borwein “In need of vitamin sea”: The Emergence of Australian Identity Through the Eyes and Thirst of Kirsty Eager’s Vampires – Phil Fitzsimmons     Globalism: Real and Virtual Worlds? The Ecohorror of The Strain: Plant Vampires and Climate Change as a Holocaust – Tatiana Prorokova-Konrad “Set to drain”: Vampirism as Mechanic and Metaphor in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Trevor Dodge Afterword – Amanda Jo Hobson and U. Melissa Anyiwo About the Contributors Works Cited Index

[weirdletter]

The Vampire: Origins of a European Myth (Der Vampir. Ein europäischer Mythos), by Thomas M. Bohn, translated from the German by Francis Ipgrave, Berghahn Books, 2019. Cover painting by Johann Heinrich Füssli, info: berghahnbooks.com.

Even before Bram Stoker immortalized Transylvania as the homeland of his fictional Count Dracula, the figure of the vampire was inextricably tied to Eastern Europe in the popular imagination. Drawing on a wealth of heretofore neglected sources, this book offers a fascinating account of how vampires—whose various incarnations originally emerged from the folk traditions of societies throughout the world—became identified with such a specific region. It demonstrates that the modern conception of the vampire was born in the crucible of the Enlightenment, embodying a mysterious, Eastern “otherness” that stood opposed to Western rationality.

Contents: List of Illustrations Prologue: From Original Sin to Eternal Life Introduction: The Vampire as an Imperial Category Chapter 1. Vampirism in the West Chapter 2. Vampirism in the East Chapter 3. Vampirism in the Headlines Chapter 4. Vampirism in Popular Belief Chapter 5. Vampirism in the Modern Period Conclusion: The Vampire as Local Scapegoat Bibliography Index

[weirdletter]

Vampires: The Myths, Legends, and Lore (Oxford People,) by Charlotte Montague, Chartwell Books, 2019 (reprint, 2010). Info: quartoknows.com.

Vampires explores the diverse myths and legends and their impact upon popular culture and the possible explanations behind such phenomena. Part of the Oxford People series, the book also investigates the lives of real-life individuals who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of blood, drawing on the vampiric tradition for their inspiration. Vampire legends go back centuries, taking root in the Gothic forests of Transylvania. Over time, the vampire has transformed from a vile re-animated corpse, bloated with blood, into a charming immortal that is cursed to live outside of society. From Count Dracula to Edward Cullen, for centuries we have been enthralled by the mysterious legends in horror fiction that surround these dangerous creatures. Vampires rarely have been more popular than they are today, although the Victorians could certainly give us a run for our money. Pale-skinned, dark-cloaked, garlic-hating—the folklore is crawling with memorable images that share one thing in common: their lust for blood. This book examines the vampire myth from all angles: from its genesis in folklore, to offshoots of blood-thirsty creatures, and eventually to its status today as one of the most iconic figures in popular culture. We will try to find out how this strange creature, who came into being centuries ago, transformed through gothic imagination from a hideous monster into a suave villain. This book creates a beautiful addition to anyone interested in the paranormal, and a great gift for gothic readers.

Contents: Introduction Chapter 1. The Rise of the Vampire Mith Chapter 2. From Peasant to Nobleman Chapter 3. Myths and Legends Chapter 4. Vampire Devotee Chapter 5. Vampires of thr Imagination Glossary Index

[weirdletter]

Dracula as Absolute Other: The Troubling and Distracting Specter of Stoker’s Vampire on Screen, by Simon Bacon, McFarland, 2019. Info: mcfarlandbooks.com.

Dark, dangerous and transgressive, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is often read as Victorian society’s absolute Other—an outsider who troubles and distracts those around him, one who represents the fears and anxieties of the age. This book is a study of Dracula’s role of absolute Other as it appears on screen, and an investigation of popular culture’s continued fascination with vampires. Drawing on vampire films spanning from the early 20th century to 2017, the author examines how different generations construct Otherness and how this is reflected in vampire media.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction One. Undead Memories and Troubling Histories Two. The Land Beyond the Forest Three. The Trouble with Money Four. Violent Distractions Five. Distracting Technologies Filmography Chapter Notes Bibliography Index