charliesmum (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
charliesmum) wrote2005-07-26 07:32 pm
charliesmum) wrote2005-07-26 07:32 pm
Entry tags:
Consider vampires...
We got our lovely fast computer back, and it only cost $80 for a new hard drive. So yay and stuff.
Charlie had a great 2nd day with the new minder - she took him to the pool, where he got to play with his best friend. I'm so pleased Charlie is finally having a real summer holiday.
The boyfriend played with Charlie in the pool, and is a lovely young man. Gonna be a teacher.
Anyway, I had a vampire dream last night, probably because I just read a Lauren K. Hamilton book about vampires, but it also occured to me that I dream of vampires when I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed. I think vampires symbolise to me the act of letting go, of having someone else be in control, in charge, and then I don't have to make any decisions. I was wondering if that was part of why they have such a lasting appeal to writers and movie makers and people who like to wear black alot.
It's really odd. Zombies aren't sexy at all. Werewolves, well, Lupin maybe, but over all they are either savage monsters or tragic figures. Ghosts are either scary or vengeful, or both, but never particularly sexy, but Vampires get all the girls. (or boys if you're Anne Rice)I think it does all come back to control, or losing control, which frankly is what sex is about in some ways.
What do you think?
Charlie had a great 2nd day with the new minder - she took him to the pool, where he got to play with his best friend. I'm so pleased Charlie is finally having a real summer holiday.
The boyfriend played with Charlie in the pool, and is a lovely young man. Gonna be a teacher.
Anyway, I had a vampire dream last night, probably because I just read a Lauren K. Hamilton book about vampires, but it also occured to me that I dream of vampires when I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed. I think vampires symbolise to me the act of letting go, of having someone else be in control, in charge, and then I don't have to make any decisions. I was wondering if that was part of why they have such a lasting appeal to writers and movie makers and people who like to wear black alot.
It's really odd. Zombies aren't sexy at all. Werewolves, well, Lupin maybe, but over all they are either savage monsters or tragic figures. Ghosts are either scary or vengeful, or both, but never particularly sexy, but Vampires get all the girls. (or boys if you're Anne Rice)I think it does all come back to control, or losing control, which frankly is what sex is about in some ways.
What do you think?
no subject
That said, I've totally studied the business about why vampires are perceived as being sexy, and I can't remember a lot of the details. Just that vampire fiction, if I'm not mistaken, began with LeFanu and other writers around that era, and in books at that time - at least in American books written by men, which was obviously most of them - women were generally perceived either as perfect household goddesses or as whoreish temptresses. Female sexuality was demonized very literally in the form of vampires.
But I can't remember what's cause and what's effect here. Were women written as vampires because vampires were sexy and dangerous, or did vampires become sexy and dangerous after LeFanu got the ball rolling? You'd have to ask
no subject
I don't know who LeFanu is. I need to go look him up. My own vampire fantasies started after seeing Frank Langella in "Dracula '79" based on the play that he also starred in. He was really dead sexy in that. You totally wanted him to win in the end.
no subject
I am sure as I think about it that women were written as vampires because vampires were already perceived as sexy but evil and dangerous, rather than the other way around. LeFanu wrote, well, vampire stories - almost exclusively, I believe, and I think he also *slightly* predated Stoker, but - am I remembering any of this correctly at all? - there was a boom in vampire fiction in the Victorian period and slightly before, which is when both of them were writing. Which makes sense, because I think it also coincided with a boom in Gothic fiction? I don't know, I could be making that last part up.
It makes sense on some level that vampires would be perceived as sexy... the threat that they present is, as
Goddammit, now I really do have to ask