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The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood"

Author: Felicitas Schott

Publisher: diplom.de

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 67

ISBN-13: 3842821859

Drakul. Nosferatu. Upyr. Vampyre. There have been many names for what we know today as the vampire. For over a century, literature, television, cinema and many other areas in our daily lives cannot be imagined without the appearance of this fictional character. Almost everyone is familiar with the image of the walking undead that creeps out of its coffin at night and sucks the blood out of humans. The undead has always been appealing to its audience. It is the ‘otherness’ of such monsters, their frightful darkness and exoticism that makes them so interesting. This book deals with the figure of the vampire regarded as the ‘unknown other’ and how it is fictionally represented in the American TV series True Blood (2008 - ). Considering both psychoanalytical concepts as well identity theory, the author depicts the literary and cinematographic development of the fictional figure of the vampire since the late nineteenth century, and analyzes different representations of the vampire and its “otherness” as well as their appeal to the audience in the True Blood.

The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood"

Author: Felicitas Schott

Publisher: diplom.de

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 69

ISBN-13: 3961162441

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Initial point and working hypothesis Drakul. Nosferatu. Upyr. Vampyre. There have been many names for what we know today as the vampire. It is believed that the existence of the vampires goes back in time for almost one thousand years. At least since Bram Stoker’s successful novel Dracula from 1897, almost everyone is familiar with the image of the walking undead that creeps out of its coffin at night and sucks the blood out of humans. Today’s American popular culture makes it even inevitable to not be faced with vampires on television, in advertisement, on cereal boxes, or even in educational programs for children. The undead has always been appealing to viewers especially of the horror and fantasy genre. Zombies, ghosts, demons, mummies, and vampires have been present in movies and on television ever since the invention of the motion picture at the turn of the twentieth century. It is the “otherness” of such monsters, their frightful darkness and exoticism that makes them so interesting. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, a striking popularity of the undead figure of the vampire in American popular culture is particularly notable. Since F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece Nosferatu in 1922, it is not possible anymore to imagine cinema and television without these nocturnal creatures. The vampire has always been serving as a metaphor for something strange, for anxieties and hidden desires in society. What it has in common with other undead figures in American popular culture is its representation as a monster. The vampires’ “otherness”, their mystical darkness, hypnotizing men, seducing women, longing for life and its taste in human blood – that is what makes the figure of the vampire so extraordinary fascinating and engaging to today’s movie and television audience. This thesis deals with the figure of the vampire regarded as the “unknown other” and how it is fictionally represented in the American TV series True Blood (2008 - ). The thesis argues that the figure of the vampire in postmodern American popular culture lost some of its “otherness” to a certain extent and cannot be regarded as a “monster” per se anymore.

Collision of Realities

Author: Lars Schmeink

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-05-29

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 3110276712

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Even though the fantastic (in its most inclusive definition) has been a part of our culture for as long as it exists, it has not been a prominent feature of European academic interest. With its inherent transgressive moment the fantastic allows for an ideal space of the cultural negotiation of political, social and physical boundaries, which should place it at the center of popular cultural research, not as is the case, at its periphery. But the commencing boom of fantastic themes in contemporary media production has facilitated a paradigmatic change in research, prompting a wide interest in the fantastic in all its forms, from fantasy to horror, from fairy tale to science fiction. This volume addresses this growing interest by reviewing the status of research on the fantastic in Europe so far and by providing a necessary outlook for the future. In the essays current trends, such as the liminality debate, as well as established discourses, as for example on genre theory, are brought together to show interested researchers a network of interdisciplinary (from literary, media and social studies) approaches towards the fantastic.

Legends of Blood

Author: Wayne Bartlett

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2006-10-30

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13:

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Delves into the myths, legends, literature, and history surrounding that ever-frightening and yet strangely seductive creature, the vampire.

The Historian

Author: Elizabeth Kostova

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2005-06-01

Total Pages: 660

ISBN-13: 075951383X

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The record-breaking phenomenon from Elizabeth Kostova is a celebrated masterpiece that "refashioned the vampire myth into a compelling contemporary novel, a late-night page-turner" (San Francisco Chronicle). Breathtakingly suspenseful and beautifully written, The Historian is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family’s past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe—in a feat of storytelling so rich, so hypnotic, so exciting that it has enthralled readers around the world. “Part thriller, part history, part romance...Kostova has a keen sense of storytelling and she has a marvelous tale to tell.” —Baltimore Sun

The Element Encyclopedia of Vampires

Author: Theresa Francis-Cheung

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 685

ISBN-13: 9781435123403

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The Unsired

Author: Lee Duke

Publisher: Dorrance Publishing

Published: 2013-11-27

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1480901695

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Throw away your crucifix, for it will not protect you, not in this chillingly original take on the vampire legend. Its a tale of bloody revenge that will expose the modern-day workings of the Vampire Clans and their constant war with those who would hunt them to extinction. Its a story that explains away the myths handed down through centuries of ignorance that keeps us from believing the horrifying truth about the real vampires living among us today. It is the winter of 1362 in what was then a small Lithuanian farming village on the edge of the Carpathian Mountains. A man and a child lay dead, their throats savagely ripped open and their bodies drained of blood. The mans pregnant wife, on hearing the news, goes into premature labor, giving birth to an underdeveloped baby boy. The infant is not expected to live, and the mother remains weak and sickly. The attending midwives leave the two of them alone to share what precious moments they have left together. The creature responsible for the attacks is an injured vampire being chased through the nearby forest by a band of determined Hunters. In his need for blood to repair both the injuries and replenish his strength, the vampire doubles back, losing the Hunters in the process. Reentering the village, hidden from sight by the raging storm and the dark of night, the vampire breaks into one of the small homes to feed upon the defenseless mother as she clutches her newborn baby protectively to her breast. In the course of his savage feeding, the vampire unknowingly allows some of his own blood and that of the mother to spill into the infants mouth. The blood feeds and nurtures the dying infant, turning him into something very, very different. This horrific act will set in motion a series of events that will leave a trail of death and destruction across seven centuries and three continents, before it finally reaches the new lands of America. One man, not quite human or of the undead, will stand between the two warring factions of Hunters and Vampires, a saviour to some and a deadly enemy to others, and this is his story. Like “Blade” meets “Bond,” directed by Tarantino.

The Secret History of Vampires

Author: Claude Lecouteux

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-02-01

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1594776849

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A look at the forgotten ancestors of the modern-day vampire, many of which have very different characteristics • Looks at the many ancestoral forms of the modern vampire, including shroud eaters, appesarts, and stafi • Presents evidence for the reality of this phenomenon from pre-19th-century newspaper articles and judicial records Of all forms taken by the undead, the vampire wields the most powerful pull on the modern imagination. But the countless movies and books inspired by this child of the night who has a predilection for human blood are based on incidents recorded as fact in newspapers and judicial archives in the centuries preceding the works of Bram Stoker and other writers. Digging through these forgotten records, Claude Lecouteux unearths a very different figure of the vampire in the many accounts of individuals who reportedly would return from their graves to attack the living. These ancestors of the modern vampire were not all blood suckers; they included shroud eaters, appesarts, nightmares, and the curious figure of the stafia, whose origin is a result of masons secretly interring the shadow of a living human being in the wall of a building under construction. As Lecouteux shows, the belief in vampires predates ancient Roman times, which abounded with lamia, stirges, and ghouls. Discarding the tacked together explanations of modern science for these inexplicable phenomena, the author looks back to another folk belief that has come down through the centuries like that of the undead: the existence of multiple souls in every individual, not all of which are able to move on to the next world after death.

Screening the Undead

Author: Leon Hunt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0857735438

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The vampire and the zombie, the two most popular incarnations of the undead, are brought together for a forensic critical investigation in Screening the Undead. Both have a long history in popular fiction, film, television, comics and games; the vampire also remains central to popular culture today, from literary 'paranormal romance' to cult TV and movie franchises - by turns romantic, tortured, grotesque, countercultural, a goth icon or lonely outsider. The zombie can shamble or, nowadays, sprint with alarming velocity, and even dance. It frequently lends itself to metaphor and can stand in for fascism or ecological disaster, but is perhaps most frequently a harbinger and instrument of the apocalypse. Leading writers on Horror and cult media consider the sexy vampire and the grotesque zombie, as well as hybrid figures who do not fit neatly into either category. These are examined across a range of contexts, from the Swedish vampire to the Afro-American Blacula, from the lesbian vampire to the gay zombie, from the Spanish Knights Templar riding skeletal horses to dancing Japanese zombies. Screening the Undead sheds new light on these two icons of terror - and desire - whose popular longevity has taken them 'Beyond Life'.