Week Two: Vampire-- Love and Pain

This week I watched the movie "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013), directed by Jim Jarmusch. (I was a little unclear on whether we had a choice between the book or the movie, and I've read a bit of the beginning of the book since, but I spent most of my attention on the movie so I'd like to focus on that a bit more).

When an author is writing a vampire novel, they have a few interesting themes to play with. For example, vampire characters are very much like human characters in a sense, at least when you compare them to say, animal characters-- however vampire characters create a certain type of 'trope' for themselves that can be a special kind of playground for the writer. Authors like to follow a certain set of rules for vampiric characters, whether those be rules following popular vampiric lore (asking permission to be let into a residence, sleeping during the day, etc). or lore that the author themselves add to spice up the tired old recipe. This allows the writer to explore the world created within this specific set of boundaries for these characters; in certain ways this can be more interesting and produce different kinds of results than if the author is building a character that has no pre-determined set of rules dictating how they may behave or what their motives may be. The latter way of building characters is often more challenging because of the wider variety of options; I think that stereotypes and literary character tropes exist for this very reason.

Springboarding off of that-- the vampiric characters in "Interview with the Vampire" as well as "Only Lovers Left Alive" operated within a specific set of motives that came from things like their long lifespans/immortality, their need to feed, their lack of companionship and loneliness belonging in a world scarcely populated with their own kind; many vampire characters often deal with similar problems thanks to their similarly dire circumstances. The two main vampire characters in Rice's novel, Louis and Lestat, face this conflict when Lestat turns Louis out of his need for companionship in the lonely world (of course later this turns into trouble for Lestat, as you cannot force someone into immortality without some kind of retaliation). In "Only Lovers Left Alive" there is a similar situation with the two main vampire characters, Adam and Eve, who are traversing through time with only each other and a few others. When the two lose only a small number of vampire friends, because they are so scarce, this forces them into some hard situations, for example when Eve's vampire friend dies-- and his connection to a good blood supply goes with it.

Many vampire tropes are present in almost all vampire novels and movies, and I think the fun that the writer has coming from working within these sets of rules and tropes to give a fun spin on a classic story.

Week One: Gothic in Contemporary Culture

The gothic aesthetic is one that is has been present in popular culture for many years, specifically in the form of 'counterculture'. I'm sure it has been viewed as weird and scary even back when it first came to be as much as it is now.

A specific example that I can think of is how prominent the idea of 'gothic' is in recent fashion throughout the last 15 years or so. There's the obvious idea of the gothic fashion style that one thinks of when they think back to the 2000's. Lots of black hair dye, lipstick, and nail polish, tripp pants, band shirts, Hot Topic... not such a great way to look. People who considered themselves as 'gothic' seemed to be really into the culture of horror movies, classic monsters like vampires, werewolves, bats and spiders, acting or looking 'creepy' or mysterious, many of the traits that we decided were earmarks of the gothic genre in class. In any case it was a super popular way to dress and I can't think of a single person I know who wouldn't know what gothic fashion is on some level.

Today gothic fashion has taken some new turns. There's still the classic 2000's gothic look (we call it 'mall goth' now) but there's definitely a surge of trendy looks one can label themselves as that are a direct descendant of the mall goth look. Personally, I think this came from the fact that those who considered themselves a mall goth in 2005 are a bit older now and a bit more conscious of how they look. It's easy to think you look great in middle school but we become a bit more self-aware as we grow older.

I can think of some popular trends that a lot of people in their 20-something's like to identify as, fashion wise-- 'pastel goth' is a big one, and I think a lot of people who are into this look definitely think of themselves as being part of some counterculture movement (though I will say that it's a bit wildly popular for that idea, but that's another discussion). Pastel goths still enjoy dark makeup and nail polish but might swap out all the black for more pastel colors, dying their hair pink, blue, or lavender, wearing lots of sheer blouses and inverted-cross patterns, and wearing some more antique-inspired necklaces and earrings. There's a bit less of a connection to the gothic genre in terms of spider webs, spooky castles, and general halloween aesthetic, though the term is known as pastel goth and this is why I'm sure it comes directly from many people who identified as mall goths in their teen years. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.

There are some other great looks that have come out of gothic fasion, though. My favorite right now is surf goth, seen below--

You can definitely draw some similarities to early gothic fashion, and even though it may not be apparent at first you can do this with almost any fashion trend with 'goth' in the name. It's pretty interesting!