Everything you Never Knew about Vampires

[faustus]

"Dracula is a film that has been created by Stoker to allow him to put forward not only his ideas that he has researched but his frustrations that he has found in the society that he lives in and rebels against.
"Bram Stoker lived in the Victorian era, his work seems way ahead of his time when considering femininity, however he was amongst those such as Jane Austen and Emily Bronte, who could be described as those who began the movement of feminism. Bram Stoker can be counted as a feminist due to his extremely influential work, Dracula, because women have been shown as much more dominant than the male characters."

"The blood which the vampires drink can also be seen as seamen."

"Buffy goes around seducing all her victims and luring them into her trap so they die and became vampires just like her."

Comments

[ticking-fool.livejournal.com]

All using exactly the same quote from Van Helsing leading you suspect that they haven't read the book, just the lecture handout and the subtitled bits in Coppola's film?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

From my small sample they've all talked about the three vampirettes, as in “young man goes out – sees girls one tries – to kiss him not on the lips but throat. Old Count interferes – rage and fury diabolical. This man belongs to me I want him”

Guess which clip I then show them...

They clearly all then fixate on “Women seem empowered in the novel. Dracula himself is outnumbered by the sisterhood of seductive female vampires who are part of his incestuous harem and who arouse feelings both of thrilling sensuality and of horrified disgust in the men they offer to kiss. Dracula’s daughters are sexually aggressive while men are chaste and passive.”
(Showalter) and not “Rather than championing women’s rights or a revaluation of traditional female roles, Dracula enacts the male-dominated (patriarchal) suppression of any violation of those roles.”(Anne Cranny-Francis)

And because they haven't read the novel (or think Stoker made the film) they don't comment on the scene (with Lucy and Mina) dissing the New Woman. From memory the scene can be read either way but it needs to be read.

[ticking-fool.livejournal.com]

I second marked a bunch of literary essays last year (Interview With a Vampire vs Dracula - from a free choice of questions and texts over half chose this combination for some reason), and they all went exactly the same way - stuff about new women, homo-erotic imagery and the bit where Van Helsing says Mina has a man's brain. They sound very similar to your lot... depressing really.

What's even more depressing is that you've just made me all nostalgic for marking as well as teaching. It looks like I might actually be hooked...