Visit of the Body Snatchers: Alien Invasion and Vampire Narratives

Proteus: A Journal of Ideas. 26.2, Fall 2009: 19-24

This paper examines themes of Eros in traditional vampire narratives. Discussed are the seminal 19th century texts by Polidori, Le Fanu, and Stoker; four major cinematic Stoker adaptations (Murnau, Herzog, Browning, Coppola); and the Sookie Stackhouse novels. The paper posits that "contemporary vampires inadvertently express a deeply disturbing poverty of Eros and a perhaps still subliminal horror of the externalization of identity and the materialism that are American consumerist society's primary values."

2019

The vampire is one of the most powerful and enduring archetypes handed down to us by nineteenth-century literature, and remains, arguably, the most popular manifestation of the undead in popular culture. Perhaps more than any other monster, the vampire is a reflection of humanity. As Nina Auerbach says in her seminal work, Our Vampire, Ourselves, every generation creates its own vampire. Vampires embody our deepest fears and wildest desires, they represent the past that refuses to remain buried, our anxieties in the face of unavoidable social change and our fear of social and ethnic Others. They are signifiers that expose what we wish to conceal. Some vampires seem to uphold the status quo and a rigid patriarchal system, others defy the social and moral orders by freeing repressed desires and latent sexualities and by embodying in their very being all that is hated and suppressed by socio-normativity. This paper will examine the evolution of the vampire in popular narrative, discuss...

Gothic Keats Press, 2022

The purpose of this paper is a new approach from an interdisciplinary standpoint to the long lasting phenomena of the vampires. Consequently, I have drawn on from multiple sources in history, folklore, literary studies and anthropology. As monsters, they have been analysed in the light of their symbolic meaning. Previous studies place them in realms of mythical thinking and belonging to a liminal state of the natureculture classification. As undead, their specificity is to trespass sides, a matter of fear for the living. Although we want to consider our civilization as rational and free from superstition, undead keep coming back through different narrative media. I will try to address that question by emphasising the liminality of death and the allure of immortality. The chosen case of research is Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and the film adaptation directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1992). By comparing the changes in the characters and the plot I have tried to frame them as different versions along the history of a myth. Any social order need to set boundaries but, being humans, we are tempted to trespass at least through fiction.

H-Russia, H-Net Reviews, 2017

2014

The purpose of this work is to show how, through centuries, literature, film and television influenced popular imagination and added layers of meaning to the word vampire. Even if the figure of the undead bloodsucking demon can be found in different mythologies, most experts would agree that the word vampire is of Slavic origin and that the imagery one is accustomed to relate to it is a part of the Slavic lore. The word vampire first entered the English language in the late eighteenth century as a brief mention in a travelogue, but the word and the creature it denotes become a part of the popular imagination only in the nineteenth century when the vampire made his grand entrance into the high literature. It appeared first as the title of a novelette by John William Polidori, a close friend and a part of Lord Byron's circle, and later as a character in Bram Stocker's seminal work Dracula. It is exactly the sinister Count that engendered the countless vampires of the following centuries, and the Count's progeny evolved with the evolution of the new media, namely film, television and last, but not least, the internet. In this paper, I will try to track as closely as the scope of the paper allows the evolution of the vampire from the 18th and the 19th-century incarnation of evil to the seductive and self-sacrificing tall dark stranger of the 21st-century film and TV sagas.

SIC-časopis za književnost, kulturu i …, 2011

The article discusses Doina Ruşti’s Zogru (2006), a recent novel which uses the image of the vampire in response both to its absence in Romanian literature and to its prevalence in America, in an attempt to stand vampire mythology on its head.

In Vampires in Transition, I develop semiotic analyses of two key films of the Spanish transition: Elisa, vida mia (Carlos Saura, 1977) and Arrebato (Ivan Zulueta, 1980). Building off Gilles Deleuze's semiotics (1986, 1989) and Teresa de Lauretis' film theory (1984, 1987) – both drawing on Charles Sanders Peirce (1930-35/1958), I have designed three inter-connected concepts in relation to the vampire figuration: 'vampire-images', 'camera-vampires', and the 'phoenix'. One one hand, these concepts aim to approach the films under study through decolonial and trans-feminist perspectives. On the other hand, they intend to draw meaningful insights on Hispanic film studies in relation to what Donna Haraway calls “informatics of domination” (1991c). Departing from one of the peripheral meanings of the vampire – a male sexual predator, the vampire has been designed as a perverse figuration of structural violence in cybernetic capitalism which could help us understand the relationship between massive addictive habits of digital machines and western patriarchal agendas, as Wendy Huy Kyong Chun studies (2016). Drawing on Teresa de Luretis (1984) and my own trans-faggot experience, vampire-images are designed to give an account of the processes of simulation that work to erase traces of exploitation. They depart from Gilles Deleuze's time-images of modern cinema (1989), which imply irrational cuts caused by particular relinkages of sound and visual data. In addition, as my analysis of Elisa, vida mia attempts to prove, vampire-images involve icons of women as objectified or subordinated to men. The 'camera-vampire', particularly outstanding in Arrebato, stands as a tool to capture and observe the effects of vampires, but its cybernetic design involves a feedback-loop system, which often implies vampiric procedures and habits. Last, as a way to mediate between images and cameras through my own situated knowledge, I have designed an inter-connected phoenix figuration, particularly drawing on Joanne K. Rowling's Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix (2003). Building on the ethics of Zhuangzi (2003) and Karen Barad (2007), phoenix tokens transform the predatory and immortal features of vampires as a way to remind us the never-ending change of material-discursive practices. Last, by public screenings and debates and practices of situated knowledge (Haraway, 1991) and anthropophagic procedures (Suely Rolnik, 1998), I have aimed at decolonizing my id-entity (Anibal Quijano, 2000) as Spanish and European citizen designed at birth as 'male', apart from sharing and spreading revolutionary faith. Resumen: E n Vampiros en transicion, he llevado a cabo analisis semioticos de dos peliculas clave de la transicion espanola: Elisa, vida mia (Carlos Saura, 1977) y Arrebato (Ivan Zulueta, 1980). A traves de la semiotica de Gilles Deleuze (1986, 1989) y la teoria filmica de Teresa de Lauretis (1984, 1987), ambxs basandose en Charles Sanders Peirce (1931-35/1958), he disenado tres conceptos interrelacionados a traves de la figura del vampiro con la intencion, por una parte, de aproximarme a estos filmes y a sus lecturas a traves de perspectivas decoloniales y trans-feministas, y por otra, de entender las vicisitudes de lo que autoras como Donna Haraway han llamado la “informatica de la dominacion” (1991c) en relacion con los estudios de cine hispano. Inspirandome en sus usos perifericos (el vampiro como seductor y depredador sexual), el vampiro surge como una figuracion perversa del capitalismo cibernetico para abarcar diferentes realidades mediatizadas tecnologicamente y fuertemente relacionadas con el sistema patriarcal occidental, como los habitos adictivos de consumo tecnologico (Wendy Huy Kyong Chun, 2016). Apoyandome en Teresa de Lauretis (1984) y a traves de mi experiencia trans-marica, la imagen-vampiro explica como se llevan a cabo procesos de simulacion de condiciones de explotacion. La imagen-vampiro parte de lo que Deleuze llamo la imagen-tiempo del cine moderno, que involucran cortes irracionales a traves de re-asociaciones de material audiovisual (1989). Ademas, como el analisis de Elisa, vida mia trata de explorar, las imagenes-vampiro implican iconos de mujeres objetificadas o subordinadas a los hombres. La 'camara-vampiro', specialmente notable en Arrebato, surge como una herramienta para intentar capturar efectos vampiricos, pero su propio diseno cibernetico implica un sistema de retroalimentacion, que en numerosas ocasiones lleva asociado procedimientos y habitos vampiricos. Por ultimo, y mediando entre los dos conceptos mencionados, he disenado una figuracion fenix que se inspira en Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix (Joanne K. Rowling, 2003). Basandome en la etica de Zhuangzi (2003) y Karen Barad (2007), los signos fenix transmutan el caracter depredador e inmortal del capitalismo vampirico para recordarnos el poder cambiante de las practicas materiales y discursivas, Por ultimo, a traves de visionados publicos y debates y de la aplicacion de metodologias situadas (Haraway, 1991) y antropofagas (Suely Rolnik, 1998), he intentado decolonizar mi id-entidad (Anibal Quijano, 2000) como ciudadanx espanolx y europex designadx al nacer como 'varon' y compartir y propagar una fe revolucionaria. Palabras clave: Elisa, vida mia; Arrebato; semiotica; imagen-tiempo; informatica de la dominacion; imaging; vampiro; fenix; transicion espanola.