Review Of Jemaine Clement 's ' The Shadows '

Since the beginning of time vampires have been categorized into different "types” and are portrayed in different ways throughout several books. This paper will focus on three vampires from the following books: Dracula by Bram Stoker, and I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Dracula is considered to be the traditional vampire, where it all started, and the vampires in Matheson’s book, follow somewhat Stoker’s concept, but is more of a modern “type” of vampires. Certain vampire elements have been presented, but others have been completely removed or altered. In addition, elements along with appearances are used to infer if the vampire is a form of “the other”. There are two types of vampires; the traditional or modern vampire which can be distinguished based on the elements present in their storyline.

The truly shocking and terrible, blood-sucking-monster we once  knew have now changed into beautiful, perfect,and healthy human beings. This paper will discuss the change and the reason why  the change of idea many still accept and like the modern picture of vampires.In order to answer this, I will examine the differences between Bram Stoker's Dracula , the typical figure of horror before, and the soft light just before sunrise or after sunset's Edward Cullen, the obvious example of the 21st century vampire. From this, I will be able to decide out what changed in the features of the vampires we know today.Many would think about Edward Cullen as a "shockingly disrespectful behavior of the vampire old example" (Mole).

To portray these characters and make them real to the audience, as a group we had to use various theatrical techniques, including the Stanislavskian realistic acting methods and we explored and used a variety of different Brechtian techniques. Our chosen form of "Tragedy" was “War Stories", and

They shun the light and crave the taste of blood. The mere thought of them could make a grown man tremble. But what if a vampire wasn’t just a horrific creature of the night? What if they were completely human, enabling them to hide in plain sight? Wouldn’t that make them more dangerous? Due to popular Gothic literature, vampires are commonly romanticized to be pale bloodsuckers that hide in the dark, waiting for their next meal. This version of a vampire makes them easy to spot in literature, but is also very limiting in that it only lends itself to that specific genre. However, a different version, laid out by Thomas Foster, shows how anyone, whether they be fictional or nonfictional, can be considered a vampire through analysis of

Stoker’s novel Dracula, presents the fear of female promiscuity, for which vampirism is a metaphor. Such fear can be related to the time in which Dracula was written, where strict Victorian gender norms and sexual mores stipulated

After decades of cheesy horror movies, the image of vampires has been misconstrued as sparkly, angsty teenage boys or handsome men that lure in girls for the fresh blood of a virgin. Many of these stereotypical vampires are influenced by the story of Dracula, held in the Victorian era. Yet, many of the stories published about vampires diverge from the message that Bram Stoker is trying to make. During the Victorian period, sexuality is repressed by society, as sexual behaviors from women are viewed as unacceptable. In the Gothic horror novel Dracula, Bram Stoker uses the traumatic experience of Jonathan Harker at Count Dracula’s castle and the invasion of vampires in Great Britain to create a social commentary on the sexual repression occurring in this era and its detrimental effect on the men.

Dracula by Bram Stoker is the original vampire book, the one that started it all. From it derived the now so beloved and famous teen-romance vampire genre, with novels like Twilight. However, Dracula is not remotely like the sparkle-in-the-sunlight, falling-in-love-with-mortals vampire any more than Harry Potter is like the Wicked Witch of the West. Dracula is a gothic horror novel set in Transylvania and England during the Victorian Era. Letters, diary entries, and newspaper clippings from the viewpoint of several characters tell the story, allowing for a wide variety of viewpoints that highlight happenings in Dracula as well as present the social issues pertained within. While it contains action, suspense, horror, and romance, it also displays the corruption within the everyday society. The way the women are presented, interacted with, and how Count Dracula affects them brings forth the issues within the Victorian society, especially the men’s treatment of women and the different social and gender roles, which Stoker uses to highlight the situational irony found within the novel.

    Perhaps no work of literature has ever been composed without being a product of its era, mainly because the human being responsible for writing it develops their worldview within a particular era.  Thus, with Bram Stoker's Dracula, though we have a vampire myth novel filled with terror, horror, and evil, the story is a thinly veiled disguise of the repressed sexual mores of the Victorian era.  If we look to critical interpretation and commentary to win support for such a thesis, we find it aplenty "For erotic Dracula certainly is.  'Quasi-pornography' one critic labels it.  Another describes it as a 'kind of incestuous, necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in-wrestling matching'.  A

The mischaracterization of Dracula and the propagation of the archetype and stereotype of vampires can mainly be blamed on the media. While this is not the grossest mischaracterization that we will see in this paper, it is certainly an early starting point for the making of monsters out of the misunderstood and unknown.

Vampires are very present in today’s society. Many novels and shows, like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, show that vampires are still integral to our culture. However, the birth of such a cultural phenomenon would not have happened without Dracula. Without Bram Stoker’s novel, there would be no stereotypical vampires that capture the culture’s conscious. Aside from telling a story on vampires, Dracula also explores ideals about the women of the time in which it was written, which is the Victorian Era.

Different depictions of vampires are commonly exhibited in vampire folklore in past and present literature and film. The diversity of different variations of vampire legends are prominently seen in most literature, but the main ideas and attributes are generally the same. This is not that case when focusing on specific novels discussed in class. The novels I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and Fledgling by Octavia Butler are two contrasting works of vampire folklore. The novels are about different societies of vampires. They both emerged in different ways, the survive and feed in contrasting ways, and they both represent completely different forms of vampires. This essay will examine the characterizations of the contrasting the vampire species in both I Am Legend and Fledgling, as well as, investigating how these different species of vampires relate to human species.

Vampires have aroused a perennial fascination within humanity since their fictional materialization into history. However, it is over the course of the last century that these creatures have become an iconic symbol of mystifying horror and inexplicable desire. Recently, the vampire has undergone a significant reconstruction of physical appearance, behaviour, and surroundings, along with, extensive modifications to its super-natural disadvantages. These distinct character adaptations are imperative when considering two of the most notable vampires ever fashioned: Count Dracula and Edward Cullen. The dissimilarity between Bram Stoker’s 19th century, Count Dracula, and Stephenie Meyer’s 21st century, Edward Cullen, is a complex reflection of the contrasting societies from which these vampires emerged.

As one of the most attractive and enduring figures in the Gothic literature, the vampires have moved from being a peripheral element with the genre to a place near the center and are capable of generating its own massive tradition now. In the recent literary history, they have already been adapted to play a role of a rebel against the moral, social, religious, and even sexual taboos. Put simply, the vampires are now a metaphor of human beings in the modern society and life.

Orlomoski, Caitlyn, "From Monsters to Victims: Vampires and Their Cultural Evolution from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century" (2011). Honors Scholar Theses. Paper 208.

The legend of the vampire has emerged countless times within human imagination over the past few centuries. The first available representation of the mythical creature in prose fiction can be found in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1810). It was not until eight decades later that Bram Stoker popularized the existence of this figure with the publication of “Dracula” in 1897. The folklore of the vampire has come a long way since and can be found in today’s popular media more frequently than ever before. However, with due course of time, the representation of the creature has taken alternate routes and today’s vampires are noticeable different – socially and physically – from their predecessors. One effective path to trace this