ENG 305U: Vampirism in Film
CRN 80583 NH 462
Course Time: 3:30 -5:50 p.m.
Dr. Grace L. Dillon; Office CH 117Q; 725-8144; dillong@pdx.edu
Office hours: TR 1:30-2:30 p.m. and by appointment

Second Hag: Come hither.
Youth (to the Girl): O my darling, don't stand by, and see this creature drag me!
Second Hag: 'Tis the law drags you.
Youth: 'Tis a hellish vampire, Clothed all about with blood, and boils, and blisters.
--translation of Aristophanes' "Ecclesiazusea"

When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!
When move in a sweet body fit for life, And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife
Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!
--Keats, "Lamia"

…perhaps we live in a continuing crisis…that sometimes takes the shape of vampires.
--Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves 117  

What do empusas, lamia, strigae, the goddess of Kali, and vampires have in common?  This course will explore the simultaneous horrifying and attractive vampiric promise of the transgressive and how the study of vampires in film relates to this iconic image appearing in opposition to humanity while paradoxically underwriting our own attempts to define and affirm our humanity.  These shapeshifters embody the conditions of liminality, the phenomenology of unbridled consumption, the refutation of scientific materialism, forbidden sexuality, and gender outlaws, and yet fuse moments of mastery and vulnerability.   From classics such as Nosferatu to metatexts including The Shadow of the Vampire,  from Hollywood blockbusters such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula to black and white independent cinema such as The Addiction,  this course will critically engage in cinematic tales both of vampires and vampire slayers. In the process, we will pose and attempt to answer such questions as:  Are vampires evil?  Do they suggest a romantic dark side? Proffer a manifestation of alternate spirituality? If vampirism is the exchange both of bodily fluid and blood, does vampirism express an ambivalent, even sympathetic Other?  a confrontation with pure evil? or an image of erotic degeneration?  

Course Requirements:  You will write dialogue journal responses and complete a take-home final exam.  The dialogue journal response work will be assigned at the session before the work is discussed.  They should be typed double-spaced 12 point font 2-3 pages long (minimum) and can vary from analyzing critically the stories, novel excerpts, films, or essays assigned to experimenting in a short story or film script format with the styles, tropes, and techniques noted in the assigned reading or viewing of film. These are helpful start-ups in group conversations and discussions or as a reflection on films or film clips we have viewed earlier and will be collected at the end of each session unless otherwise noted.  These are also helpful pre-writes for essay responses written for the final exam. The panel presentations (approximately 30-40 minute sessions)  will be your opportunity in a self-selected group ( a comfortable 3-4?) to present films or a direction we have not taken in class at that point which you feel would benefit our class.  Note that these panels may provide rich material for final exam essay questions as well. These panels could range from exploring the Peter Pan syndrome and perpetual adolescence of mall-hungry vampires in Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys (1987) to taking a more globalized perspective of vampirism in films like the Japanese Ringu but here feel free to be as innovative as you would like!  

Your final grade in the course will be computed as follows:  class participation including dialogue journal responses (40 %) , panel presentation (20%), and final exam (40%). 

Required Course Text: Skal, David, ed.  Vampires: Encounters with the Undead.  New York:  Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2001. (noted as Skal in the course schedule)

Course Schedule:  Readings should be completed by the date assigned.

WEEK ONE:

M 6/21  Introduction. The Matrix (1999), The Animatrix(2003), The Matrix Reloaded(2003), and The Matrix Revolutions( 2003). Myths of old renewed. See The Uncanny Experiments in Cyborg Culture.

T 6/22   Readings: 1) John Polidori's "The Vampyre: A Tale." (Skal 37) and 2) Freud's "The Uncanny." F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu(1922), WernerHerzog's Nosferatu (1979), and E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire (2000). Metatext, Walter Benjamin's "optic unconscious," and allegory. The Myth of the Tormented Homosexual Artist. (See The Fruit Machine.)

 W 6/23   Readings: 1) Bram Stoker's From Dracula. (Skal 211) and 2) Richard Dyer's "It's Being So Camp As Keeps Us Going." (Pck.) Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) with reference to cinematic history (Thomas Elssasser) and Ed Wood and dragula and the gothic on screen.

R  6/24   Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (Skal 103) and 2) Rob Latham's " Voracious Androgynes." (Pck.) Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983) with reference to Carl Dreyer's Vampyr (1931) and Harry Kumel's Daughters of Darkness (1971) Lesbian vampire motifs, glitter rock, and gene mutations with food consumption and aging.

 

WEEK TWO:

M 6/28 Reading: 1)Richard Dyer's "It's in His Kiss." (Pck.) George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and William Crain's Blacula (1972) with reference to Romero's Martin (1976), 28 Days Later, (2002) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) The vampire liberation front, the curse of slavery, and "the primal horde." (See Freud's Totem and Taboo).

T 6/29   Readings: 1) David Skal's "The Fatal Image: Artist, Actress, and the Vampire." (Skal 223), 2) Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "Luella Miller" (Skal 261), 3) Fritz Lieber's "The Girl with Hungry Eyes" (Skal 417), and 4) Kenneth Mackinnon's "After Mulvey." (Pck.) Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm (1988) with reference to Toni Morrison's Beloved. The vamp, gaze theory, and Laura Mulvey's "Voyeuristic scopophilia" from Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. See also "The Vamp and the Machine." referencing Fritz Lang's Metropolis. (1927) 

W 6/30 Readings: 1) George Bataille's "Heterology" (Pck.) and 2) Gina Wisker's "Love Bites." (Pck.) Neil Jordan's Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Queen of the Damned. Ann Rice, Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, and George Bataille on eroticism, decay, and death.

R 7/1 Readings: 1) Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (Skal 429), 2) E. F. Benson's "The Room in the Tower" (Skal 305), and 3) Peter Stallybrass and Allon White's "From Transgression to the Carnivalesque." (Pck.) Boris Sagal's Omega Man ( 1971), Richard Rodriguez's From Dusk Til Dawn (1996), and Ravenous. The American spirit, nuclear mutation, wendigo, and cannibalism.

WEEK THREE:

M 7/5   HOLIDAY 

T 7/6      Readings: 1) Suzy McKee Charnas's "Unicorn Tapestry" (Skal 445), and 2) Joan Copjec's "Apparatus Theory." (Pck.) Robert Bierman's Vampire's Kiss (1989) and American Psycho. Vampire personality disorder, psychotherapy, Lacan's "Mirror Stage," and the Blank Generation's ennui.    

W 7/7     Reading: 1) Carl Jacobi's "Revelations in Black" (Skal 369). Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995). Narcotic jouissance, urban emptiness, and spiritual combat. Michael Almereyda's Nadja (1994) and Po Chih Leong's The Wisdom of Crocodiles (2000). Andre Breton's Surrealism, isolated immortality, and "the real story."  

R 7/8   Joel Schumacher's Lost Boys(1987), Fran Rubel Kuzui's Buffy the Vampire Slayer(1992), John Carpenter's Vampires (1998), J. S. Cardone's The Forsaken (2001), Stephen Norrington's Blade(1998), Guillermo Toro's Blade II (2002), and Underworld (2003). The dhampir, the return of the slayers, "buffy-verse", and the original Marvel comic books series, The Tomb of Dracula (1973).

WEEK FOUR:

M 7/12    Readings: 1) Norine Dresser's From American Vampires and 2) David Skal's An Interview with a "Vampire" (Skal 495 and 515). The postmodern vampire, fandom, and crossover stardom. Henry Jenkins and Pierre Bourdieu referenced. Gamebook Vampire: the Masquerade and role-playing. Yoshiaki Kawajri's Vampire Hunter D: Blood Lust (2001) and Hiroyuki Kitakubo's Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) . Techno-gothic Japan and post-cyberpunk vampire anime.

T 7/13  Panel Presentations. 

W 7/14  Panel Presentations. 

R 7/15   Panel presentations continued if needed. Revisiting transformations in vampire myths.  Final exam due.