Final Project: The Brides of Dracula

Ryne Tremmel
December 20, 2010
English 263: The Vampire Novel - Final Project Paper

The Brides of Dracula

For my final project, I chose to draw the brides of Dracula.  I chose this for a number of reasons.  Dracula is a classic vampire story, and one that seemed to fall right in the middle of the semester for us.  I enjoyed this because, to me, Dracula was kind of the "quintessential" vampire book.  Not only was it innovative for its time, but it was so innovative that many of the things that it introduced to vampire fiction evolved into what are today considered to be conventions of the genre.  One of these elements that Dracula seemed to introduce was the idea of using sexuality as a way to create a sense of fear about the vampires and what they can do to a person.

While sexuality in vampire fiction was more or less introduced to us in Dracula, it came up many times throughout the semester.  However, as the books got more and more modern, I found that the sexual aspect of the stories became less and less subtle.  I figure that it's just the way the genre is evolving.  That is why I chose to draw the brides at somewhat of a halfway point between Dracula-age vampires and the vampires of today.  While Stoker didn't come out and say that the brides of Dracula acted sexually, it was definitely implied.  In my picture, however, I decided to take it in a more modern direction, where the woman are obviously drawn in a somewhat sexual way.  To me, this is more where vampire fiction is today, which can be seen in things like True Blood and Twilight (although modern vampires do seem to have a certain level of romanticism to them.)

Another thing that I noticed about the sexuality in vampire fiction was that before we discussed it in class, I was totally oblivious to it.  However, once we discussed it and I understood the concept a little better, it started to really effect the way I read into many aspects of the stories that we read.  The way that I drew the brides of dracula are sort of how I imagined them once we discussed what they really represented, and it's relationship to Victorian society.  It was an edgey concept to me, especially considering the time period in which Dracula was written, and I think the edge just grew and grew in my mind until all of the subtlety of the concept was gone.

One thing that I enjoyed about this project was the 1st person perpective of the picture, from John Harker's point of view.  While I'm not an art student or anything, I thought that touches like that would really make the drawing more interesting.  Along the same lines, I really enjoyed the reflection of John in the mirror.  It provided a good oppurtunity to both make the picture a little more interesting, and an oppurtunity to touch a little bit on vampire folklore that was introduced in Dracula.  More specifically, it was an oppurtunity to show that Dracula's brides had no reflection, which was another element from Dracula that has stood the test of time.

One part that I don't like about my project is the shading.  I intended the picture to be in a dark room, with the only light coming in from the open door, but I was just unable to do that and I don't think it really came across very well.  Another thing about the drawing that I would have changed if I could have was the way in which I drew the brides.  One the one hand, I had never really tried to draw women before and I actually think it went alright--but on the other hand, what I was trying to show was a bit of a more subtle view of the sexuality of Dracula.  Granted, I didn't want it as subtle as it was in the actual book--the point of the drawing was to illustrate them in a more modern sense of the word "sexual".  However, I found it difficult to make them kind of seductive without making it super obvious.  I guess I just don't have that kind of artistic touch, or maybe I just didn't give myself enough time to work out all of the kinks in this project.

The process of creating this project was pretty long.  First, I outlined the things laying around the room because I knew that I wanted the picture to be from John's perspective, and I knew that might be tricky.  After I did that, I outlined all of the women without hair or too many facial features.  After that came the adding of details to the people and room, and the addition of some light shading.  Overall, I think it started strong, but after working on it for a long time I started to just run out of ideas on how to improve it.  When you're drawing on an 8x10 piece of drawing paper, it's not too hard to run out of space, either.   

Overall, I think I'm happy with the way the project turned out.  I think that it got across the sexuality that we found in the stories that we read throughout the semester, and I think that it is a decent representation of that scene from Dracula.  But, while I feel like I covered as many bases as I could content-wise, I was a little disappointed by the final product.  I'm a little bit of a perfectionist, and despite the fact that I enjoy the nice simple cartoony look that I gave it, I would have liked to have been able to create more atmosphere in the drawing (because I thought that that part of the book was very atmospheric and scary) through the use of shading and things like that.

Final Post

I actually had a lot of fun in this class this year, although I'd have to say that it isn't at all what I expected it to be.  Overall, the format of the class worked out much better than I had expected it to.  I enjoyed creating my blog, as well as adding to it every week.  While at first it seemed a little less organized than D2L, I think that it was easy to get used to, and was actually a more personal format than D2L usually is.

The content is probably what surprised me the most, though.  What I had known about vampires before this class was a lot less than I had originally thought.  Pretty much all I knew of vampires was what I had learned from TV shows and movies, mostly.  I had no idea that vampiric fiction had such a rich literary background, as well.  I mean, I knew about Dracula, of course, but vampiric literature goes so far beyond Dracula, and it so many different directions.

I think that, looking back on it, my favorite book to read was Bram Stoker's Dracula.  It seemed like the quintessential vampire book, and unlike the books we had read up to that point in the class, it actually had a pretty decent pace for most of the story. 

I expected to like Dracula, though.  A book that we read that I was actually surprised that I enjoyed was I Am Legend.  Maybe it was the fact that it was made into a movie so many times, but I was a little skeptical about it.  On the other hand, a book that I was really expecting to enjoy and kind of didn't was Let the Right One In.  While it was a unique twist on the genre, which I was looking forward to, it was a bit too weird for me to really connect to.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class and I'd be pretty surprised if everyone here didn't agree.  It was laid back, but also really informative.  I was never confused about what to do, and always felt like help was readily available if I needed it.  I really enjoyed reading all of the classes posts throughout the year, and I hoped you've enjoyed reading mine as well!  Bye!

Let The Right One In and the "Uncanny"

For this week's blog post, I decided to look up the suggested term, "uncanny", and try to relate them to Let the Right One In.

The first thing that I noticed about the term "uncanny" was that it doesn't seem to be very well-defined.  Rather than finding a set definition for the word, Google led me to sites with articles explaining the somewhat indefinable nature of the word.   Wikipedia seemed to break it apart in a way that way pretty easy to understand, though, so I mostly stuck to that.

The Wikipedia article defines the term as a "Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange."  In all honestly, that's pretty much all I got from the article.  The rest of it spent a lot of time going into the theories of different psychologists and their definitions of the concept.

The first thing that the definition made me think of was Eli.  The definition seemed to almost pinpoint that weird uneasiness that associated with her character.  It seemed to stem from the idea that she was not what she seemed; an innocent young girl on the outside, but something so much more dark and complicated on the inside.

While I at first found it hard to relate the term "uncanny" to Calhoun's article, I suppose that some of the things that he said about the relationship between children and adults could be related to the concept of the "uncanny".  The passage stated that “Parents and other adults are supposed to protect children, and their potential failure to do so can be a potent source of horror: for both children and adults” (27).   I felt as though that uneasy feeling of horror in Let the Right One In could have come from the fact that the role of the protector and protected change; it isn't Eli who needs protection from adults, but they who need protection from her, in a way.

(While I'm not sure if this comparison is legitimate, it was about all I could manage with the limited amount that I could understand regarding the concept of the "uncanny".)

Final Project

(Sorry about the late post.  I've had some computer issues recently and I must have lost track of this)

Anyway, I'm leaning towards doing one of the more creative projects for my final.  I thought that the script idea sounded really interesting.  I'd like to do that, however, I wasn't sure if it meant to do a full script, or maybe just script out a chapter.  If anyone has any information on how long this script should be, or what it should cover, any help would be much appreciated :)  Anyway, if I were to do a script, I would probably choose to script out a chapter selected from either Dracula or I Am Legend.

I was also considering doing an illustration or comic.  If I did an illustration, I think that I would again either choose Dracula or I Am Legend.  I think that both of those novels had thematic elements that could be easily represented in a picture or a comic.  For the illustration, I would probably just try to draw something that references the book's thematic elements and important symbols, and if I did a comic, I think that I would most likey try to do short comics for specific scenes from each book.  I enjoyed the ending of both Dracula and I Am Legend, and I thought that they were very important to the overall purpose of the books, so if I did a comic, I would probably do the end of one of those books.

Anyway, I'm not really deadset on anything yet, and I'd actually like to experiement with a couple different things before I decide on what to pick.  However, if anyone has any feedback or suggestions that might help me decide what to do, or if anyone has any suggestions for interesting scenes to script/comic/draw out, please let me know.  Thanks!

Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In has seems to be a pretty big departure from what we've read so far in this class.  While some of the themes seem to be similar to other stories that we've read, they are dealt with in a much different way.   One example of this was the idea of sexual taboo that was found in some of the other stories that we've read.  While we have seen stories that have dealt with the sexual desire between man and woman, woman and woman, and man and man, Let the Right One In introduces us to the idea of the desire between an aging man and a young child. 

In other stories that we read, such as Dracula, I felt as though the sexual element of the novel was sort of subtle and was usually hinted at rather than directly discussed.  While this was enough to make people uneasy at the time of Dracula's release, it was difficult to understand why (considering how different modern society is from Victorian society).  However, Let the Right One In seemed to maybe "modernize" this concept of taboo, giving it a form that makes even modern audiences extremely uneasy.

This kind of dark uneasiness carries on throughout the novel.  The characters were really interesting in their own way, as well.  While there were many interesting characters and relationships throughout the novel, I found the relationship between Oskar and Eli to be the most interesting.  It seems as though they are drawn to eachother because they are both outcasts, and neither of them are what they initially seem to be.  Not only is Eli not just your average friendly neighborhood girl, she isn't a girl at all, and she's also a vampire.  Oskar, on the other hand, is a small boy who gets bullied a lot, but beneath the surface is a dark and violent side that he usually keeps to himself.  It was interesting to see the way that they depended on each other.

Overall, I enjoyed the story.  It was a lot weirder than some of the stories that we've read, which was very hard to get used to at first, but it ended up making the story something really unique and unlike anything I've read before.

Interview with the Vampire, Pt. 2: "Postmodernism"

For my blog this week I chose to work on option #5.  When I typed the word "postmodernism" into google, the first site listed was the "postmodernism" article on Wikipedia (which wasn't much of a surprise).   After reading the Wikipedia article for a short time, I started to see why the term might characterize the work of Anne Rice.  The article started off with a basic definition of the word itself.  "Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations;". 

While I didn't completely understand the definition itself (I'm pretty sure I have no idea what the terms "global cultural narrative" or "meta-narrative" mean), it was what followed that passage that caught my attention.  The article goes on to say that "in particular [postmodernism] attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial."  That part of the article immediately made me think about Louis, and what he represents in the context of the vampire genre. 

In earlier works of vampire literature, the relationship between humans and vampires--and, maybe more importantly, the relationship between the reader and vampires--was presented as a representation of good vs. evil.  It was a very "black and white" relationship, with few, if any, shades of grey.  Humans good, vampires bad.  However, Louis showed us a vampire who was conflicted; his compassion for humankind made his identity as a vampire and his thirst for blood something that actually haunted him for many lifetimes. He forced us to throw the black and white "humans good, vampires bad" mentality out the window, which seems to be the main idea behind postmodernism.

I also found the "straight vs. gay" aspect of the Wikipedia definition to be very relatable to Interview with the Vampire.  In the same way that Louis blurred the line between good and evil, the relationship with Louis and Lestat blurred the lines between straight and gay in some ways.  As we have read, culural anxieties involving sexuality have been represented many times in vampire literature through the relationship between the vampire and its prey.  However, before Interview with the Vampire, this relationship was usually between a male and a female (or sometimes female and female).  Interview with a Vampire was the first book we read where the predator/prey relationship was represented by two male characters.  While the book never directly mentions homosexuality, the relationship between Lestat and Louis blurs the line between predator and prey, as well as straight and gay.

This is the first time I've read much on postmodernism, but I think that it's clear to see why it could be connected to Anne Rice's works.  It seems like the main idea behind it is the throwing out of preconceived notions of absolute relationships such as black and white, and good and evil, and that seems to be exactly what Interview with the Vampire did in the context of the vampire genre.  That "blurring of lines" seems also to have carried over into modern day vampire fiction, and seems to have been used a lot in recent television shows, books, and movies.

Interview with the Vampire, Pt. 1

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is very different from what we have read so far in this class.  The main thing that sets it apart is the fact that it gives us an entirely new perspective on the life of vampires, and what it is like to be one.  Up until this point in the semester, the books we have read portrayed vampires as "monsters".  This is probably due to the fact that we have only read about vampires from the perspective of those around them, rather than that of the vampires themselves.   Interview with the Vampire, on the other hand, gives us the tale of a 200-year-old vampire's story told first-hand.

While the main character, Louis, does some  pretty bad things, it is easier to forgive him because we can see the way his mind works.  For example, it is very easy to sympathize with Louis early on in the story because of the loss that he went through with his dead brother.  This is what led him to long for death, and it makes his decision to (more or less) "accept" becoming a vampire more understandable.

It is also clear to see that Louis is conflicted about his destiny as a vampire.  While he accepted it at first, it becomes apparent that Louis feels too much compassion towards people to let himself fully become a vampire in the "monstrous" sense.  He says multiple times that he is unhappy with his life, and often mentions that he feels as though he has been/will be/should be condemned to hell.  He is unable to take human life, and often has to resort to killing animals in order to quench his thirst for blood.

Another aspect of the story that makes Louis seems more human is his "friend" Lestat.  Lestat, unlike Louis, has fully accepted his roll as a vampire who preys upon humans.  Louis, on the other hand, is often disgusted by Lestat's lack of any kind of compassion for human life.  Lestat's constant persistence towards getting Louis to accept his role as a killer also shows the difference between the two characters.

Overall, I am finding the "human" aspect of Interview with the Vampire to be very interesting.  It's an interesting change of pace to read a story where both the hero and villain are vampires, and I'm excited to see where it will lead, and to see how Louis deals with his inner conflicts.