RSSS 315 Tier 2: Ninth Week Tuesday

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RSSS 315 (Tier 2) Ninth Week (Tuesday)

• Vampires and Werewolves Slavic Folklore in Our
  Culture

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News

• Topics for today
• Film comments
• Interpreting Stoker
• Religious
• Sociological
• Psychological
• Formalist

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Religious

• Good vs Evil
• Infectiousness of evil
• Links with darkness, decay, death
• Opposition to Christianity
• Allegorical
• Example Only defense is purity of heart,
  sacrificial love

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Formalist

• Sources folklore and literary
• Themes and motifs
• Narrative technique, e.g., unreliable narrators
• Gothic elements

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Gothic features

• Mystery, gloom, fog, night, storm
• Desolation, isolation
• Animals wolves, bats
• Distant past (unforgotten) sense of nostalgia
• Old castles, mansions, graveyards, churches
  (cobwebs, spiders)
• Mysterious sounds (howling, flapping, scratching)
• Mysterious figures, secrets, threat of violence
• Dark colors (black), blood, pale features

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Sociological

• Economic
• Capital, expanding markets
• Monopoly on resources
• Feminist
• Gender roles
• patriarchy
• Dealing the other, aliens

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Psychological

• Non-Freudian
• Freudian
• Displaced sexuality
• Oedipal themes
• Patricide
• Matricide
• Incest
• Dealing with repressed fears

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Key passages

• Jonathan and the daughters
• Killing of Lucy
• Seduction of Mina

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Woman Empowered Lucy and Nosferatu

• Men are secondary
• Van Helsings role diminished
• Jonathan in a trance
• Face to face with Dracula she is not afraid
• Terms of the sacrifice purity of heart plus dawn
• Does He hope that she will win?

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Literature into Film Challenges

• Background information
• Imagery
• Suggestiveness
• Inner dialogue, monologue

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Aleksei Konstantinovich Tolstoi 1817-75

• The Family of the Vurdalak

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Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 1814-73

• Carmilla famous lesbian vampire story
• First published in Dark Blue, December, 1871
  through March of 1872.
• Some have said "probably the best vampire story
  of all"
• Diminished Gothic's emphasis on external sources
  of terror
• Focus on the psychological effects
• Lesbianism

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Afanasevs Bucket of Blood
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Forensic bases

• Burial practices
• Decomposition features
• Decomposition duration
• Possible to explain vampires

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Key facts

• Shallow or no graves
• Bloating during decomposition
• Fluids expelled during decay
• Dead bodies make noises
• Decomposition generates heat
• Skin shrinks back
• Corpses attract wolves
• Puncturing is the best treatment for bloat

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Carl Dreyers Vampyr (1932)

• Famous expressionist film director (Danish
  1889-1968)
• Evil presence, atmosphere
• Two daughters, one infected
• Reassuring male presence

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Bela Lugosi 1882-1956

• Theater background
• 1931 hit
• Career swings
• Sad ending

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Film Versions of Carmilla/Bathory The Hunger
(1983)
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Daughters of Darkness (1971)

• Another cult classic
• Harry Kumel
• Combines Carmilla and Bathory