Forums

Posted: 16-11-2008 14:29 Post subject:

i would love to know where the first vampire came from, they are truely fascinating to me.

Posted: 12-03-2009 22:45 Post subject:

Posted: 05-09-2009 22:20 Post subject:

I've just spent a very enjoyable and nerdy day reading the whole of this thread and e-meandering around all (well, most of) the sites and stories referenced. I have alternatively been shouting at the computer and going "oooh, that's cool."

My academic background includes a period of study of the politics of visual representation, and when I was learning all the language and tricks of critically deconstructing images, I realised it all happily fitted in with my earliest interest in the paranormal and associated folklore.

I read Stoker's Dracula just as I got to Uni, in the late '90s, and the vampire myth of disease, sexuality, blood and death felt to me to be appropriate to ideas about AIDS, although in the earliest development of the stories of course it'd've been TB and rabies. The oral tradition of fairy tales and campfire stories impart valuable information and warnings of how to avoid the sickness and examples of early non-scientific ideas of what to do if the worst happens.

One of my 3 tutors' pet topics was Buffy and all the various representations contained therein.... although we've discussed all sorts of other subjects, I've not yet put it to her that the 1990s resurgence in interest in vampirism, and it's new sexy wardrobe, was a reaction to the threat of Aids, made slightly safer by advances in medicine that have all but stopped it being as deadly as it first was in the west.

I really must see what she thinks.

Posted: 06-09-2009 10:06 Post subject:

Your theory makes a lot of sense - I've studied cultural theory and I could dissect Buffy til the cows come home.

It's particularly interesting that although much is made of the sexual symbolism behind the idea of the vampire, the character of Angel is effectively neutered in the early series of Buffy - he does not feed and is not permitted the release of sexual ecstasy. The vampire is made safe and sanitised in the 90s landscape - to link with your theory perhaps this is because now society is aware of how to protect itself from STDs and they no longer hold any fear? Buffy is ALWAYS able to eliminate the vampire threat.

Of course, later in the final couple of series we see Buffy actively seeking out a dangerous, thrilling and ill-advised relationship with the vampire Spike. This is a very different experience because it is definitely sexual and both parties get satisfaction from it. Haven't quite worked out what that symbolises yet...

Posted: 06-09-2009 11:39 Post subject:

Since films like The Lost Boys (1987) and Interview with the Vampire (1994), the mainstream cultural idea about vampires has become a creature of the night; a being for whom ageing has stopped, usually allowing them eternal youth; the threat is of sexual intoxication that results in the loss of your life, and eternal undeath is a state of life limited only by the need to feed and avoid daylight (read as getting HIV, taking medication and using a condom?). The loss of grace, or your mortal soul, which used to be attached, is no longer the fear (society's not that religious anymore). Vampirism can be managed, and the afflicted can live an almost normal life, as long as they abstain for the behaviour although they are pathologically driven to do it. Given that, Vampirism would appear to be sex itself in the age of AIDS.

Ooh great Myrtlee! Maybe I could bounce some ideas off you some time?

Somehow I managed to miss out on Buffy when it was being broadcast, and have probably seen the most important episodes (to get the gist of what was going on), but not in chronological order, so I'm all over the place. I've just started occasionally immersing myself in box sets to try to figure it out. My OH loves Buffy, but gets a bit sick of me going off on different tangents, armed with the back of an envelope, a pen, and a wild look in my eyes, about how Buffy either sets up, questions, subverts, then replaces or occasionally reaffirms various ideas about women, the paranormal, sexuality, religion, family, race, life, the universe and everything.

There was another lass on my course who'd just got her BA in painting with a dissertation about vampirism in surrealist art, and was moving on to representations of the werewolf for her MA. We had some verrrrry cool conversations. Werewolves are my favourite creatures, and I'm still trying to figure them out. (Mine was about the inability of photography to represent any minority as anything but a stereotype...
The tutor who was into Buffy's other pet subjects were the Alien films and Elvis. The other 2 tutors on the course were experts on (among other things) Frida Kahlo, religious and sexual symbolism in the gardens of English stately homes of the 16th-18th centuries, the map of the London Underground and miniaturised reconstructions of sea battles of the 2nd world war. I bloody loved that course!)

Posted: 06-09-2009 13:33 Post subject:

It's nice to see people having fun with symbolism, but don't get too dis-anchored from reality.

"Society" doesn't know a darn thing about STDs. "Society" is an enormous bunch of individuals, most of whom know myths or nothing at all. One in four teen-agers in America has an STD (thank you, abstinence-only education), and HIV still spreads in the adult population worldwide for reasons ranging from disempowerment to self-deception. And HIV+ people still have to deal with fear and villification - it's a long time since anybody called for a quarantine, but it isn't that long ago that a man was charged with "assault with a deadly weapon" for spitting on a cop. Yet people still go around having anonymous sex in tea rooms, perfectly intelligent characters with plenty of access to prophylactics on TV shows get unplanned pregnancies all the time (but nobody gets STDs except on "very special episodes"), and education is limited by law in many places to "just don't have sex till you're married and you'll be fine."

Buffy's dangerplay with Spike in the fifth season is probably the closest American media has come to talking frankly about the subject in the last 20 years. Sad

Posted: 06-09-2009 15:03 Post subject:

PeniG - I should have put a few limiting factors in that last post - I should've distinguished between the representations and reality of society, which isn't unified or monolithic or average at all. What representations in tv and movies tell us about society is limited and affected by the points of view and interests of the writers, directors, producers, studios, stations, governments, what is deemed to be acceptable for broadcast, and everything else. The audience needs to be interested in the story, and the story needs to feel right, familiar, almost like real life, just somehow more exciting and colourful. Any message, by the time it's out there to be received, is almost invisible unless you look for it. No-one wants to be lectured to (unless you were on my course - another Aliens lecture? Fantastic!).

When there's an old idea that suddenly gets dusted down and finds a new resonance, it's usually chiming with a fear or concern in it's audience, but that particular thing might not be the only meaning or purpose it serves.

The vampire myth from it's development in the dark ages until it's explosion in popularity with Dracula did nothing to stop the spread of TB, rabies, the black death, or bubonic plague. The church and background of Christianity wouldn't've been much help - with the cultural upheaval of the catholics fighting heretical sects and the emergence of protestantism in Europe, either denying vampires existed or confirming them as evil beings and sending the priests in. Pretty much the same trouble as we have now!

Posted: 06-09-2009 16:45 Post subject:

Posted: 27-10-2009 17:13 Post subject:

Posted: 28-10-2009 21:10 Post subject:

Just heard this discussion on the popularity and meaning of contemporary representations of vampires on Radio 4,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nds0m#synopsis

Just what we were saying above!

Posted: 07-01-2010 02:38 Post subject:

We all know that garlic flowers keep vampires away, right?

http://video.hollywoodreporter.com/services/player/bcpid6555681001?bctid=60612147001

I'm guessing Lawndale, California, can only be a few miles down the road from Sunnydale.

Laughing

Merged two Vampire Threads. P_M

Posted: 06-05-2010 08:17 Post subject:

New Zealand man 'attacked by vampires'
A New Zealand man has been bitten by three people who drank his blood during an alleged vampire-style attack in the dark.
By Paul Chapman in Wellington
Published: 7:00AM BST 06 May 2010

Details of the bizarre late night incident on Mount Victoria, an unlit beauty spot that overlooks the capital, Wellington, emerged after two people appeared in court jointly charged with wounding with intent to render a man unconscious.

James Phillip Brooks, 22, and Xenia Gregoriana Borichevsky, 19, were both remanded on bail without entering a plea.

A warrant was issued for the arrest of a third accused, James Eric Orr, 19, who failed to appear at Wellington District Court.

The charge carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in jail.

It is believed the victim, whose name has been suppressed by the court, passed out after being bitten on the night of February 20.

Outside the court, Mr Brooks said he understood there was blood drinking during the incident but added: "That wasn't me.

"Do I look like a vampire? I'm out during the daytime," he told the city's Dominion-Post newspaper.

Mr Brooks, who has a number of facial piercings and a mohawk haircut, said: "I may look like a punk but I'm not a punk. I'm just different.

"Yeah, I bit a guy. He hit on my missus. My girlfriend and my mate were biting him.

"If I'd hit him, I'd have really hurt him, so I thought I'll bite him seeing as they're already biting him."

He said drinking blood "wasn't my agenda".

Police refused to discuss the case because it is before the courts.

Ms Borichevsky's bail conditions were relaxed by the court after her lawyer asked the judge to lift a night-time curfew on her.

Dr Marc Wilson, a senior lecturer in psychology at Wellington's Victoria University, who specialises in studying paranormal beliefs, said drinking human blood was "incredibly unusual".

He said human teeth were not designed for breaking skin and sucking blood.

"You could do it but you would have to really want to."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7684055/New-Zealand-man-attacked-by-vampires.html

Posted: 30-06-2010 07:01 Post subject:

Posted: 30-06-2010 13:35 Post subject:

I wonder if Vampires ever hold up Blood Bank Vans? Hmmm, could be a good idea for a film.

Posted: 30-06-2010 20:32 Post subject:

PeniG - pardon my ignorance but you mentioned people meeting in tea rooms for casual sex, what is a tea room? Is it a euphemism or is it like Betty's in York?! Shocked

I'm English so apologise for needing an explanation. Thank you in advance.
Very Happy