Vampires/week 3

In today's culture when we think of vampires our first thoughts are the Twilight series, True Blood, and The Vampire Dairies. We have made vampires become these objects of desire and our lustful side. Now Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't vampires suppose to be these bloodsucking humanoids that stalk in the shadows and would do anything to get their prey. One example is Nosferatu, it's the original vampire it does not fall in love with any girl or sparkles in the sunlight, no he's a stalker of the night drinks the blood of his victims without hesitation. We also discussed the gleam of vampires with The Lost Boys In how the way vampires were the motorcycle gang and wear black leather; also consider the total badasses of school. Ann Rice decided to take the mythology of the vampire, but to look into the point of view of this monster in Interview with a Vampire. In the novel we get to see on why the vampire hunts and the pain and suffering with immortality. I think it is interesting how we see these emotions and ideas that a vampire would go through.

Zombies/ Week 2

Zombies have been part of our pop culture since the 1960's. In the early days of horror zombies were just people who were under the control of some supernatural horror to do its bidding. In 1968 George Romero recreated the zombie from a possessed human being to a mindless, flesh eating undead creature. Since then this genre has been found in movies, tv-shows, video games, novels and comic books; in the novel Monster Island by David Wellington he takes the reader into the mind of a zombie, but one that has control of its human conscious. I think we are so infatuated with zombies is that they are the perfect monster to dislike, they are a quick paycheck for those who are in the media. We also think of zombies as a means of human survival against a post- apocalyptic threat and knowing what you loved is suddenly ripped away from you. Try to imagine everything that you have ever known and loved was suddenly gone, your all alone and you are suddenly attacked by the creatures of the undead. People think that can survive this are as good as dead. 

Frankenstein/ Week 1

Frankenstein is one of those long time classic pieces of literature that ages well in time. I rarely pick up a horror novel, not because I hate reading that type of genre, its just that I need to find one that sparks an interest to me. When I started reading Frankenstein, The first thing that I found interesting was how the way Mary Shelly wrote the book in the same style that Bram Stoker did when he wrote Dracula, which the stories were told through journal entries, and letters from the point of view of the main characters. What really liked about Mary Shelly's imagination for this book was that she was thinking way ahead of her time when coming up with the concept of recreating life and using technology that was far advanced from her time period. The way that the monster was depicted was nothing like the hollywood version, and the fact that it was intelligent and not a mindless monster was very surprising to me.

Conventions of Horror

1.) Monster, killer, or some supernatural force
2.) Creepy environment
3.) Female companion (Damsel in distress)
4.) Lab assistant
5.) Creepy host
6.) Plot twists
7.) Curses
8.) Death (or) Cheating death
9.) Protagonist falling into insanity
10.) Cause of dread
11.) Shocking Finale
12.) Secret Passageways
13.) Fog
14.) Nighttime
15.) Animal's reaction
16.) Old Castles
17.) Robes
18.) Cemetery
19.) Prophecy
20.) Revenge

Hello

Hi!

I will be using this blog to record about the discussions we had in class. I am looking foreword to this class and to sharing what we went over in class. I believe that we will be talking about Frankenstein for the first week of class.