The Vampire

I find it so interesting how the vampire has changed over time, are vampires good or evil?? This is the question that is constantly put out there with television shows and books because the vampire is portrayed as a good hero or an evil villain. The first vampire book series I ever read was the twilight series, twilight is a love story with vampires. Twilight really goes into this idea that a Vampire can be a good guy by drinking animal blood, attending high school, having a family, and casually falling in love with a human. The typical vampire that drinks human blood, kills people ruthlessly, doesn’t associate with humans, and embraces being evil is the typical evil vampire villain in today’s vampire television and literature.

Another big component of the vampire that has changed over time is how a vampire created? With twilight, it’s a simple vampire bite and the venom fills the human body and they become a vampire. In the show the vampire diaries, a vampire gives you some of their blood, if you die with it in your system, you are resurrected and have to feed on a human to complete the transformation and live. If you don’t feed on a human you die. Also in Interview with a vampire by Anne Rice, a vampire bleeds you dry and then in your last moments of life he feeds you his blood and you become a vampire. Overall I feel the biggest vampire factor that has changed over time is how you become a vampire.

This past week I watched the movie “Only Lovers Left Alive”  directed by Jim Jarmusch. I thought only lovers left alive was a very interesting take on the vampire. In the film not once did they say the word Vampire, they also referred to humans as zombies.  The two main characters Adam and Eve have been around for a very long time but have never fallen out of love. As I stated earlier humans are referred to as zombies in the movie because we are the living dead. The movie never says if the vampires are considered living or dead, but if you notice the names of the two main characters, Adam and Eve are the first humans ever to exist on earth, they have lived the longest. Because of this I feel the movie is really trying to emphasize what it means to live and what it means to be dead. Because Adam and Eve have been around so long they understand how precious life is and all the amazing things it has to offer. The zombies have and only will be around for a short time, so will they truly ever embrace life’s wonders? I feel like this is why they are the living dead in this movie. Overall the interpretation of the vampire in this film and how they are deemed the superior being was very interesting to me.

The Gothic Today

Examples of the gothic in contemporary culture can be found in many different television shows today; The Vampire Diaries, Sleepy Hollow, Bates Motel, The Walking Dead, and American Horror Story. The difference between using gothic styles now vs. back then is it’s a whole new ball game. Nowadays people don’t want to see the typical vampire or the old Frankenstein story. Do we enjoy them? Yes but now we want more. We want a new plot line, a new dramatic twist, a new background story, a new way to kill the monster etc. A new theme in T.V. shows is, understanding how the monster came to be a monster. The audience loves a good juicy background story that helps us sympathize with the monster. Bates Motel would be a good example of this, in this show we explore the origin story of psycho killer Norman Bates. I think it’s interesting how we see the transformation from a normal boy into a psycho killer, who kills for the fun of it. A big change with gothic style is this idea of how a human can become a monster too. A monster isn’t simply created in a lab or created by a werewolf bite.

Sometimes a person chooses to become a monster, in American Horror Story we see this theme a lot. Ryan Murphy explores this idea of how people’s everyday choices can be evil & monster like as well. Ryan Murphy also likes to use creepy settings for the seasons, circus, bayou of new Orleans, haunted house, asylums and hotels. The most recent season was freak show, the evil monster in this show was a clown and a human. The clown became a monster because everyone made fun of him, the human was also treated in a way that was not respectable. This is how Ryan Murphy explore the gothic by showing us what creates a monster.

Overall gothic themes are presented in many different television shows today in contemporary culture. The traditional monster story has changed quite a bit over the years.