Contemporary Culture:
"Can you tell me why men believe in all ages and places that there are men and women who cannot die?" (Abraham Van Helsing)
On this page, you will find a "mass" of ideas, documents, and references that relate to the manifestations of vampires/vampiric contagion in our own contemporary culture. You might, for instance, discover conversations about the way that Twilight constructs particular gender norms, or the political ramifications of the rhetoric of blood transmission in scientific discourse on AIDs, or the "viral" spread of new media, even a personal reflection on reading a 1897 novel from a historical distance.
Just because...well, because it is awesome. If you have not yet seen this it is necessary.
Simone 3.27
The quality of this video is not the best but it address the issue Janine raised about hospitality. This clip of Buffy shows that you cannot always trust the people you allow into your house and the consequences of inviting in the evil you don't know over the one that you do.
The quality of this video is not the best but it address the issue Janine raised about hospitality. This clip of Buffy shows that you cannot always trust the people you allow into your house and the consequences of inviting in the evil you don't know over the one that you do.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/trayvon-martin-case-george-zimmerman_n_1392591.html
Jekyll and Hyde metaphors are everywhere...
Jekyll and Hyde metaphors are everywhere...
Catey Oakley 3.27
This is less related to the actual text of Dracula, and more with the Dracula myth in film, and the horror film industry as a whole. Comedian Eddie Izzard comments on pop culture a lot, and in this clip he discusses the conventions of B-list horror movies, but relating to our class a little more, he discusses the way that films tweak the myth of Dracula as we know it so that the subject remains new and interesting. This clip is from his 1994 Unrepeatable tour, and even if the points that he brings up aren't really relatable to the text we're reading, at the very least it is quite funny and worth a watch.
ProfGonzalez: Catey, can you provide the link to the video? We can post it in its entirety if it is a youtube link.
Catey: Sorry, I could have sworn I had posted it. Maybe I didn't press publish. Here's the link: http://youtu.be/j4yrL6rc6bU
ProfGonzalez: Catey, can you provide the link to the video? We can post it in its entirety if it is a youtube link.
Catey: Sorry, I could have sworn I had posted it. Maybe I didn't press publish. Here's the link: http://youtu.be/j4yrL6rc6bU
Janine Perry 3.26
Reading the first chapter, I have to wonder why Harker made the decision to travel to and stay with a man whom he had never met before. Perhaps this seems more dangerous to a person living in an age where TV shows like "To Catch a Predator" have to exist because of the unfortunate state of society; it could also be that contemporary media coverage is more comprehensive. I wonder what Harker's contemporaries would have thought of this meet-up, and if this sort of thing was commonplace then.
Profgonzalez: You bring up an interesting question about the notion of "hospitality" in the 19th-century. The question of who you should welcome into your home--and under what conditions--became an increasingly ambiguous question as the world itself seemed to become "smaller" through colonial enterprise, globalizing trade, and technology. Maybe the question from another angle is this: under what conditions do we let people through our own threshold today, and what is the unspoken contract of behavior for both parties when we do?
Profgonzalez: You bring up an interesting question about the notion of "hospitality" in the 19th-century. The question of who you should welcome into your home--and under what conditions--became an increasingly ambiguous question as the world itself seemed to become "smaller" through colonial enterprise, globalizing trade, and technology. Maybe the question from another angle is this: under what conditions do we let people through our own threshold today, and what is the unspoken contract of behavior for both parties when we do?