随着怪兽在文学著作中的不断呈现，英语论文，吸血鬼最近已经成为最时尚的怪物文化文化现象之一。吸血鬼以书籍、电影、电视连续剧等多种形式的展示。本文将从四个方面讨论吸血鬼文化。
I.Introduction
With the increase of monster’s literature works, vampire has become one of the most fashionable monster cultures in recent days. Vampire culture is demonstrated in many forms such as books, movies, TV series and so on. The will discuss vampire culture from four aspects. First of all, a general introduction of monster culture with Cohen’s theory. Second, the origin and history of vampire culture’s development. Third, the types of vampire with the distinctive characteristics and last the social effect of vampire culture.
II.Monster Culture
In Cohen’s idea, he believes that the monster’s body is culture itself, “The monstrous body is pure culture” (Cohen 2). Monsters cannot be categorized into any single species. There are generally several elements inside a monster’s body, such as fear, desire, anxiety and fantasy. All the elements give monsters life or literally create them. Unlike any other kinds of animals or creatures, they are not mortal, so they do not follow the natural order, which we have known previously. The emergence of monsters normally means danger to the human beings or creatures in normal life. Since monsters don’t act according to the natural order, the fighting against them becomes a tough issue, so monsters often bring with fear.
Monster culture is also the culture of fear. Heidenreich states that “Vampire scholars as diverse as Nina Auerbach and Teresa Goddu havargued that vampiric discourse is about fear. Popular culture uses vampiric discourse to voice fear of change, fear of the other, fear that the other is bringing change into our communities ”(Heidenreich 32). In another way, monsters are actually living inside of us, and it is the fear which created monster culture, which is a way of expressing human beings’ fear.
Furthermore, different monster cultures represent various cultural symbols. In different countries, monsters have different patterns of manisfestation. For instance, , terrorists from Muslim world are often regarded as monsters for many American people while most of Chinese people regarded westerners as Gweilo, which is actually word similar to monster in Chinese expression, when the society was isolated from western countries.
Finally, Cohen presents in his word that in monster culture, the curiosity of exploring monsters often leads up to death. Many people would show much interest in solving the mystery of the monsters when they bring damage to the world. As it’s shown in many videos or books, people who have strong curiosity about unknown stuff are mostly punished instead of being rewarded the truth. In the film of Jurassic Park, the curious visitors are eaten by the dinosaurs.
III.The Origin and Historical Development of Vampire culture
The origin of vampire culture can be traced in legendary tales in Old Roman or Paleo Hebrew’s civilization, which is about a thousand year’s history. But vampires in modern sense are said to originate from Balkan and Slavdom in the East Europe. It’s believed that vampires are actually created from people’s own imagination of mythical nature and the demonstration of people’s emotional feelings in different period. George said in his book Introduction: Undead Reflections that ”It offers a vigorous commentary on the development of the genre, the construction of racial and gendered otherness, the treatment of gay sexuality, the significance of pseudo-science in sympathetic vampire narratives, the vampire’s relationship to the zombie, and the emergence of young adult vampire fiction”(George 15).
Vampire culture has never stopped developing in the past centuries. It became popular in the middle age when the plague was rampant in Europe. The medical technology was very backward then, many patients were assumed to be dead and buried when they were only in a shock. So the phenomenon that dead people crawled out of their tomb with blooding nose and mouth were often seen by people. These “dead patients” were considered vampires by human beings and their types also became the original stereotypes of vampires, with blood flowing in the noses and mouth. It was also believed that vampires would wake in the night and sucking blood from people alive. There were even stories of “living vampires”. French count Karl Drais in the 15th century kill more than 300 children for founding gold. In the 17th century, Hungarian Countess Elizabeth murdered young girls and drunk their blood for eternal youth.
In the late 18th century, gothic novels became popular. A huge number of vampire works were produced, among which Bram Stoker’s Dracula was the most famous one. The protagonist Dracula was depicted as a smart gentleman who was very attractive to the females and capable of controlling the victims’ thinking, which made Dracula the name a synonymous word for vampires. Herbert pionted out “Dracula exemplifies not only ego’s abnegation of the transformative spirit, but also the masculine from the feminie” (Herbert 104). The abundant vampire works accordingly intrigued many scholars to study vampire culture, which meant the development of vampire culture entered a brand new era with systematic research. Since then, the theme of vampire has often been adopted in nearly all the literature forms such as poems, novels or televisions, which also symbolizes vampire culture’s being an important part of modern culture.
IV.The Three Types of Vampires
With the development of vampire culture, the types of vampires greatly changed as well as their characteristics. They became more and more good-looking and shrewd at the same time. In the Western works, vampire’s type is normally categorized into three kinds: the wicked and devil, the perfect lover and the combination of human beings and ghost. With the difference in different sorts of vampires, they usually have some common features. For instance, they are afraid of sunlight and can only walk in the night sucking people’s blood or human beings attacked by vampires would turn to be them.
In the beginning, the wicked devil was the earliest type of vampires. This type was to be found ugly and horrible but powerful. They could turn into small creatures like cat or bat while drinking man’s blood in very cruel way. The type was often contained in horror books or films. They often emerged as beautiful dissolute women to allure men for their blood at night, and horrible-looking devil with long teeth. In the horror works of vampires, there were many scenes of sex, violence and blood. Vampire works easily aroused people’s fear with the horrible atmosphere. In this phase, vampire represents the fear inside human’s bodies. The emergence of vampires stemmed from people’s misunderstanding of death, so the basic tone of vampire stories was horrifying. Vampires with the horrible-looking features only presented human beings with dangerous look and unconquerable at the same time. So the type always aroused people’s fear and desperation. The wicked type of vampires demonstrates people’s inner fear and fragility in the living world.
Another type of vampires is the role of perfect lovers. These vampires have miraculous power and fall in love with a human being beyond the thirst for blood. They are often coined as good-looking, extremely wealthy and also belong to the high social status. Meanwhile, they have highly self-control ability in front of their lovers. Hemphill said in his work Vampires: Scary Or Sexy that “When vampire literature was born, this second level of fear was the stage of human-vampire evolution that influenced the first horror authors. John Polidori, The Vampyr. This was the beginning of the modem type of the vampire: a handsome, aristocratic man who is beastly and sadistic like folkloric vampires but also intelligent, personable, and all-too-human at the same time” (Hemphill 14). The type of perfect-lover story is also stereotyped. Male vampires often fall for human girls first and treat them with all their heart and then the girls finally fall in love with them by transcending the impossible barrier between vampire and human beings.
The last type of vampire is the combination of human being and ghost. Different from the last two types, such vampires are proud of their own power but hate to hurt human beings. Vampires of this type are always struggling between the good and the evil. For one part, they have great power and like to be a hero with their power, but on the other hand, they are ghosts and live on human being’s blood. So they always live confusion and pain, but the heroic side always conquers the evil side in most stories. Compared with the former two types, this type is the most favored and has endured the longest history. Maybe it is because that the first type is too scary which presents no beauty to the public while the perfect-lover type is too idealistic, so the compromise between the two caters for people’s taste most.
During the history of vampire culture, vampires have developed their image from the initial wretched devil to the confused combination of humans and ghost. It makes a significant contribution to the art works in the world and greatly enriches vampire literature. Vampires were infused into literature works only as rigid types of monsters at first. Gradually, the type of vampires became more vivid after being added more pro-human disposition. Nowadays, the vampire is no longer a mere image but carries its own culture.
V.The Social Effect of Vampire Culture
With the enrichment of vampire culture, forms of telling vampire stories are more and more diversified. There are thousands of books and novels on vampires available in the market, and media forms on vampires such as movies or TV series are gaining more and more fame. “Vampire: Brighter in Darkness and Twilight” instantly became a hit when it was first released in 2017. Numerous fans of vampires are attracted to vampire culture. Bailie says that “According to statistics brought out by Romance Writers of America, in 2017, the paranormal subgenre made up 17.16% of the popular romance genre, which in itself comprised 54% of all books sold by the publishing industry” (Bailie 34). Generally, it separates in to two parts: the dracula movie and the affectional movie, for example. The vampire culture entertains people greatly.
In modern times, addiction is not a word exaggerating people’s fondness of vampire stories. Jeffrey Andrew mentions that “fans’ crazy love for vampire is becoming a mainstream trend, which, stimulates the more people involve in the trend at the same time and illustrates the continuities of vampire series in movies and novels and explains why the vampire characters appeal so many worshipers” (Jeffrey Andrew 30).
Take “The Night Eternal” for example, the final novel in The Strain Trilogy, written by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan have attracted thousands of readers. The novel tells how the two leading roles of Nora Martinez and Vasiliy Fet who finally become an affectionate couple like in fairy tales. The writer remarked that “The development of their love in the ruined society is really moving and the most shining part of the entire context of the novels” (Toro 24). Even though the series ended with a loose and sad story, which is intentionally planned by the writers, fans are still deeply immense in the fictitious plots.
VI.Conclusion
By explaining its inseparable part in monster culture, introducing the origin and historical development, analyzing the different vampire types as well as the social effect, the intends to have a general research of vampire culture. Nowadays, vampire culture leads an irreplaceable position in entertaining the public in that its way of expressing human being’s deep emotional feelings and also the change of social development.
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