Vampire films are gaining popularity in many countries. The majority of these vampire films portray one-dimensional love or horror stories. Unlike other vampire films, Let the Right One In is a complex film and novel that can be interpreted to reflect social problems in Sweden. The film and novel illustrates a divide between young people and adults in Swedish society. These different age groups are represented by different characters. The Swedish vampire, Eli, is not simply a monster, but she is a complex character with which the audience can sympathize as she appears to be a twelve year old girl. Although Eli is not a human child, Eli represents youth fighting against the dangers of Swedish society.
Eli must murder to stay alive, and the victims can represent danger to the Swedish welfare state. According to Wright, “in contrast to the vampire figures of innumerable earlier films, Eli derives no pleasure from luring, attacking and killing human victims, preferring to let Hakan do the slaughtering for her” (60). For example, Eli murders Locke when Hakan is unable to provide her with blood. The audience feels sympathy for Eli because “afterward, as she leans forward over the limp body of Jocke, her posture conveys pain, regret, and remorse” (Wright 60). The audience does not view Eli as a monster because Eli would die if she did not feed off humans. Furthermore, Eli’s victims are not people that have families and they spend their time drinking at a local Chinese restaurant. Eli’s victims could represent a drain on Swedish welfare. Eli may be choosing people such as Jocke and Virginia because they do not have jobs and live off of welfare. Perhaps Eli killed Virginia and Jocke because these characters pose a danger to...
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...skar and herself. According to Wright, “though the central characters are children, the psychological and interpersonal issues the film addresses are potentially relevant to audiences of all ages” (57-8). Therefore, the film may be able to heighten both adult’s and children’s awareness of issues. Since vampire films are popular Let the Right One In is able to attract a large audience and expose a large number of people to problems in Swedish society. Not only should children fight against dangers, but adults should also protect children from issues raised in the film and novel.
Works Cited
Lindqvist, John. Let the Right On In. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books St. Martin's Griffin, 2007. Print.
Wright, Rockelle. "Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs; Let the Right One In and genre hybridity." Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. 1.1 (2010): 55-70. Print.
best example of this is when the woman and vampire are on the floor of
Corrigan, Maureen. "Karen Russell's 'Vampires' Deserve The Raves." NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 23 May 2014. .
[3] Dorn, Alex. "Novelists Stephen King and Ajvide Lindqvist Embrace 'Let Me In'" HitFix. N.p., 08 Oct. 2010. Web. 16 Dec. 2013.
Carmilla is an example of a woman who loves her food far too much. Carmilla is consumed entirely by her food, even sleeping in a coffin of blood: “The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed” (Le Fanu 102). There exists a unique relationship between the vampire and their victims. Food becomes defined in terms of victimhood, distinctly separated from humanity’s general consumption of meat. The need for human victims makes hunting synonymous with courtship, as intense emotional connections are established between the vampiress and her food. As seen in the intense relationship developed between Laura and Carmilla, the vampire is “prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons” (105). For Carmilla, cruelty and love are inseparable (33). The taking of the victims’ blood for sustenance is a highly sexualized exchange of fluids from one body to another. The act of consumption is transformed into an illicit carnal exchange between the hunter and the hunted.
After analyzing The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth is the ideal vampiric figure, supporting Thomas Foster’s perspective about vampirism from his book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In fact, Roger Chillingworth, presents many instances of how vampires might act and appear in literature. Even though he is not a literal vampire, it does not
Conclusively, while Bram Stokers novel Dracula is seen as a gothic and horror story, I argue that it is a novel that seeks to address female sexuality directly. Seen through numerous passages, Stoker confronts and battles the views between sexuality during the Victorian era though his genius of characterization of characters present within the novel. As it seems highly intentional to me, I respect the way in which he criticizes and critiques upon female sexuality by bringing into light new ideas regarding female desires. When contrasting his text upon today’s culture, the differences to how one perceived the vampire has changed significantly.
TELOTTE, J. P. (1989). Voices in the dark: the narrative patterns of film noir. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
Malcolm, Joyce Lee. To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1994. Print.
From Transylvania to Hollywood, vampires have transformed from unfamiliar, mysterious personalities to one of the most dominant monsters in the horror genre today. Vampires are one of the oldest and most noted creatures in mythology, with many variations of them around the world. Although the most famous version is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, many variants have come before and after telling of the same legend with their own added ideas and modifications to relate to their cultures. Today, there is a multitude of literary and film works that convey and resurface peoples’ fear of vampires. As gothic works like Dracula, by Bram Stoker and Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire directed by Scott Jeralds share certain traits reflective of the genre; These factors include setting, actions of each vampire, the initial reactions to news of them, and how their presence affects the people who live within the region the vampires inhabit.
At first glance, Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the hour-long TV series which premiered in 1997 and is now in its third season, bears little resemblance to the book which started the vampire craze -- Bram Stoker's Dracula, published a century earlier. And yet, looks can be deceiving. Although the trendy -- and often skimpy -- clothing and bandied about pop-culture references of "Buffy" clearly mark the series as a product of a far different culture than that of the Victorian England of Dracula, the underlying tensions of the two texts are far similar than one might think. Beneath the surface differences in the treatment of their heroines, the two texts converge in similarly problematic anxieties about gender and sexuality.
of the book. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print. The. Ferguson, Niall. "
Dracula, the most famous vampire of all time, which readers were first introduced to by Irish author Bram Stoker in 1897 with his novel Dracula, which tells the story of the mysterious person named Count Dracula (Stoker). The book is an outstanding masterpiece of work, which is why it has been a prototype for various movie releases over the decades. Whenever a film director decides to make a movie on behalf of a novel the hope is that the characters concur from the novel to the movie, which leads to the exploration of the resemblances and modifications between the characters in Dracula the novel by Bram Stoker and Bram Stoker’s Dracula 1992 movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Has anyone ever stopped and thought about why movie remakes exist? There is always a simple explanation to this conception, and it’s either that Hollywood directors are “lazy” or that Hollywood wants to destroy our childhood scares. For the most part, Hollywood isn’t literally attempting to become futile or destroy the integrity of films, but it’s much for the profit of recreating former popular movies. In addition to that, the revamp graphic quality allows for older movie plots to compete against their modern counterparts, but there still remains an issue. In order to reestablish an older horror film, a newer one has to take its place for the sake of pleasing the current technologically adept generation; however, alterations may completely
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Maple emphasizes how deep and rare the love between the two adolescents is, and I would argue that human’s innate desire for this kind of love is one of the reasons why Twilight became so widespread. However, I argue that another basis for the obsession of the books is simply because the Cullen’s, the family in which Edward belongs to, represent vampires in a contrasting light than most vampire architypes represent. Although most analysts hone in on the fact that Meyer characterizes the vampires more romantically than any other vampire depiction at that point in history, I argue, based on evidence from the book series, that The Cullen’s are not given the full picture they