2008 saw an influx of vampire fiction in American popular culture. The Twilight book series was a sensation across the young adult market. In September of 2008, Alan Ball of American Beauty and Six Feet Under fame, adapted Charlene Harris’ best-selling book series The Sookie Stackhouse Novels into an hour long vampire drama for HBO. This series was the complete antithesis of the young adult vampire fiction that was sweeping the nation around the same time. Considering Ball’s previous works, it was no surprise that Trueblood was going to be risqué. Looking at the first season of the series, Trueblood is rife with sex and violence. Neither men nor women are exempt from the debaucherous behavior present in every episode of the show. Although men in the show are also presented as objects on many occasions, the representation of women in the text remains skewed. Trueblood cleverly fools the audience into thinking it has finally been given empowered female characters in charge of their own sexuality. In reality, the underlying ideology is still present. The females in the text are not in charge of their own sexuality, instead their sexuality and self worth are defined by those around them which is seen as normal within the series. I will argue that these false representations of empowered female characters are creating skewed ideas of female gender roles in the minds of viewers. Peforming a textual analysis on various episodes from season one of Trueblood, I will be applying the cultural feminist perspective to examine how female characters are objectified to attract a male audience, viewers are given a false representation of female empowerment to draw in the “educated” female audience, and how female sexuality is defined by masculine ...
... middle of paper ...
...red. "Masculinity as Fact: A Review of Empirical Mass Communication Research on Masculinity." Men, Masculinity, and the Media. Ed. Steve Craig. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1992. 9-23. SAGE knowledge. Web. Research on Men and Masculinities. 1 May 2014.
Hardy, Jonathan. "Mapping commercial intertextuality: HBO’s True Blood." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 17.1 (2011): 7-17.
Mukherjea, Ananya. "My Vampire Boyfriend: Postfeminism, "Perfect" Masculinity, and the Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal Romance." Studies in Popular Culture 33.2 (2011): 1-20. JSTOR. Web. 01 May 2014. .
“Mine”. Ball, Alan. Trueblood. HBO. 7 Sept. 2008. Television.
“Strange Love”. Ball, Alan. Trueblood. HBO. 7 Sept. 2008. Television.
In Kimmel’s essay “’Bros Before Hos’: The Guy Code” he argues that the influence of society on masculinity is equal to or greater than biological influences on masculinity. In the essay, Kimmel uses various surveys and interviews to validate his argument. He points to peers, coaches, and family members as the people most likely to influence the development of a man’s masculinity. When a man has his manliness questioned, he immediately makes the decision never to say or do whatever caused him to be called a wimp, or unmanly. Kimmel’s argument is somewhat effective because the readers get firsthand accounts from the interviewees but the author does not provide any statistics to support his argument.
The concept of masculinity is considered as the qualities and characteristics of a man, typical what is appropriate to a man. In this article, A Community Psychology of Men and Masculinity: Historical and Conceptual Review, The author Eric S. Mankowski and Kenneth I. Maton, analyze four main themes: "Men as gendered beings, the privilege and damage of being a masculine man, men as a privileged group, and men’s power and subjective powerlessness. The second and fourth themes are described as
J. Gordon Melton, in the excerpt “Sexuality and the Vampire” published in his The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead (1998), explains that vampires have a sexual appearance that started from their origin in Dracula. Melton supports his statement by analyzing the monsters' transition to sexual beings through the stories of Dracula’s desires, multiple countries’ erotic tales revolving around vampire-like beings, the manifestation of sensual themes in literary, stage, and screen works, and their current evolution of the once terrified immortals to loved heroes. The purpose of this essay was to outline the seductiveness of the written immortal creatures in order to explain the fanged-mammals’ appeal beyond their terrifying monster abilities.
Blechner believes that if we change the metaphors, change the stereotypes, the reality can be changed. So, when Angel becomes an angry and vengeful vampire, it won’t be a comparison to men and their masculinity, but instead an expression of what happens to him when he gets too excited. And Buffy will understand that she does not need to dress a certain way to please her man. She should only be pleasing herself. Brown’s theory also reflects the same idea as Blechner’s theory. Brown believes that if the stereotypes of sexual orientation are dismissed, and looked into with a much less biased view, that a new reality will form in the study of human behavior. Buffy, The Vampire Slayer is a metaphor for the beliefs and views (on gender roles and identity) of our society and culture in today’s world. But it also presents a metaphor for what the future should bring into how we (as a society) see males and females, and their behaviors with each other and within themselves, without the wall of stereotypical beliefs that are preventing both sexes as a whole from “slaying the demons and the vampires”.
Michael Abernathy’s article “Male Bashing on TV” uses many television sources and percentages to explain how men are treated like idiots inside of the media. Abernathy is a television reviewer, cultural critic, and queer culture commentator (350). While Heather Havrilesky's article “TV’s New Wave of Women:Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane” is the opposite and uses television sources to explain how women are treated as smart yet crazy inside of the media. These two articles describe how men and women are portrayed differently in television shows and the media. The articles have smaller subtopics in common which are the portrayal of men and women in the media, the comparison of men and women in each article, and how Abernathy and Havrilesky want
Bram Stoker’s Dracula illustrated fears about sexual women in contrast to the woman who respected and abided by society’s sexual norms. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla” represented not only the fear of feminine sexuality, but also the fear of sexuality between women. John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre” showed society’s fear of sexuality in terms of the seductive man who could “ruin” a young girl.These texts are representative of vampire stories in the Victorian Era, and will be the focus here.
The movie, Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity produced by Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp, deconstructs the concepts that create the social constructs of masculinity. Masculinity, a set of behaviors, roles, and attributes correlating to men, is earned, not given (Conley 190). Starting from television shows to children’s toys, the idea of masculinity has infiltrated their minds starting at a young age. Moreover, the concept of masculinity has physical attributes, such as muscles, a deep voice, and be able to protect themselves. Masculinity, for boys of any races, socioeconomic classes, or ethnicity, has grown up with the same stereotypical image of what a man should entail. Since many media outlets show that a form of masculinity
Conclusively, while Bram Stokers novel Dracula is seen as a gothic and horror story, I argue that it is a novel that seeks to address female sexuality directly. Seen through numerous passages, Stoker confronts and battles the views between sexuality during the Victorian era though his genius of characterization of characters present within the novel. As it seems highly intentional to me, I respect the way in which he criticizes and critiques upon female sexuality by bringing into light new ideas regarding female desires. When contrasting his text upon today’s culture, the differences to how one perceived the vampire has changed significantly.
... E Glenn, and Nancy B Sherrod. The psychology of men and masculinity:Research status and future directions. New York: John Wiley and sons, 2001.
The legend of the vampire has emerged countless times within human imagination over the past few centuries. The first available representation of the mythical creature in prose fiction can be found in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1810). It was not until eight decades later that Bram Stoker popularized the existence of this figure with the publication of “Dracula” in 1897. The folklore of the vampire has come a long way since and can be found in today’s popular media more frequently than ever before. However, with due course of time, the representation of the creature has taken alternate routes and today’s vampires are noticeable different – socially and physically – from their predecessors. One effective path to trace this transformation is to compare arguably modern day’s most famous representation of the vampire, Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” with “Dracula”, the foundation from which a large number of modern works draw inspiration. Examining this comparison closely, one finds that a new socially acceptable, sexually abstinent and desirable creature is fast replacing the fearsome and sexually voracious monster, as depicted in early tales of the vampire.
The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. Dir. Thomas Keith. Media Education Foundation, 2011.
From Transylvania to Hollywood, vampires have transformed from unfamiliar, mysterious personalities to one of the most dominant monsters in the horror genre today. Vampires are one of the oldest and most noted creatures in mythology, with many variations of them around the world. Although the most famous version is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, many variants have come before and after telling of the same legend with their own added ideas and modifications to relate to their cultures. Today, there is a multitude of literary and film works that convey and resurface peoples’ fear of vampires. As gothic works like Dracula, by Bram Stoker and Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire directed by Scott Jeralds share certain traits reflective of the genre; These factors include setting, actions of each vampire, the initial reactions to news of them, and how their presence affects the people who live within the region the vampires inhabit.
Historically, the representation of gay, African-American men on television has fallen short of the mark . We have seen “sissies, faggots and finger-snapping queens” sashaying across the screen, feminizing and marginalizing African-American men by these racially insensitive and homophobic caricatures. In this paper I examine the characters: Keith Charles of HBO’s Six Feet Under, Omar Little of HBO’s The Wire, Lafayette Reynolds of HBO’s True Blood, and Julien Lowe of FX’s The Shield and how their characters manifest their masculinity. The three characters that appear on HBO shows are portrayed as strong, masculine, openly gay men. Only Lowe, the sole African-American gay man who has appeared on a basic cable hour-long television drama is a closeted gay character. Since the “out” characters appear on HBO and the closeted character appears on basic cable, is it possible that an audience who can afford to pay for HBO is tolerant of the representation of masculine gay men while an audience watching on basic cable is not tolerant of that representation? Or is HBO’s marketing campaign, “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” an experimentation with “genre, coupled with their strategy of distancing themselves from broadcast television culminating in a distinguishable brand name and a noticeable schism between pay cable and broadcast television” (Jaramillo 60). Or rather, is the HBO audience one that is able to pay for a subscription to HBO, just gazing at these characters? Are these characters just a twist on the “big black buck” stereotype for a post-modern audience – one comfortable with explorations of masculine, racialized, gay desire? HBO’s marketing certainly attempts to position itself as a step above broadcast TV, airing programming that is de...
This fetish has been manifested in the movies I view, the television shows I watch, and the books I read. When my obsession with reading is crossed with my obsession with monsters, the result is a bookshelf containing more vampire novels than most people would consider healthy. I have discovered that every vampire novel varies vastly; no two books are ever alike. For example, the Twilight Series, the Anita Blake Series and the Vampire Chronicles Series have different legends and lore, different relationships between vampires and society, and different genres, theme, and purpose; this array of novels displays most clearly the range of audience the vampire genre can cater. The Twilight series is a bestselling series written by Stephanie Meyer that has captivated millions of teenage girls.
The author’s op-ed piece was published in 2009, the very peak of the vampire contagion, where one could find these creatures wherever they looked. This pandemonium that arose from vampires is what drove del Toro and Hogan to pen “Why Vampires Never Die.” Furthermore, the purpose behind this essay is to give an abridged description of the past of vampires for the people who had become fanatics of the creatures. Also, this essay showed how vampires have persisted in pop culture. They suggest that vampires have been remade by diverse cultures at different times, and this change echoes that society's angst and concerns. The novelist’s imply that Stroker’s Dracula may mirror an exaggerated human on a prim...