FINAL ESSAY OPTION 2

Final Essay Option 2: The Cultural Fears and Desires the Vampire Embodies

For this essay option, you will write about the cultural fears the vampire represents in either Dracula's Victorian English era or Louis, Lestat, and Claudia's postmodern American era (remember, the book IWTV was written in the 1970s US even though it is "set" earlier).

Your primary source will be either the novel Dracula or the novel IWTV. 

You will also include research from at least two outside sources from the library's databases as support. I recommend researching the history of these times and places and the specific areas you are focusing on. Remember the three critical interpretations of blood in Dracula: you may want to return to that introduction to get some ideas of what to look up. It could be anything from British colonization in the Victorian era, women's rights during that era, psycho-analytic theory/Freud, etc. 

Additionally, you must incorporate your monster thesis notes into the essay at least twice.

Make a claim for how the vampire's specific representation in either the Victorian era with Dracula 

or in the postmodern era with Louis, Lestat, and Claudia reflects specific cultural fears and desires. 

To be very, very clear, you will be choosing to write about either Dracula or Louis, Lestat and Claudia. Not both books/sets of vampires. 

Make sure to use the chart we made in class and focus on one to three specific characteristics (their existential crises, their relationship to religion, their appearance, etc). Then, discuss how those categories represents certain specific cultural fears and desires.

For example, Dracula represents fears such as a fear of women's sexual expression during the Victorian era. He also represents a desire for more free sexual expression. 

Interview's vampires represent a desire for eternal youth and beauty, as well as a desire to know one's meaning and purpose in life in a time when that had been ripped away from people due to the Atomic age crisis and the loss of religious unity.

The essay should be 3-5 pages in length, use proper MLA formatting, and include a Works Cited page that does not count toward the 3-5 page requirement. 

You may also find the chart below to be helpful.

Modernism vs Postmodernism  --The features in the table below are only tendencies, not absolutes. In fact, the tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with modernism. The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency is associated with postmodernism.

DRACULA                                                             INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

Modernism/Modernity	Postmodern/Postmodernity
Master Narratives and Metanarratives of history, culture and national identity; myths of cultural and ethnic orgin.	Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives; local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master narratives: counter-myths of origin.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explantions in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, hierarchies of social-class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear bases for unity.	Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases for social/national/ethnic unity.
Master narrative of progress through science and technology.	Skepticism of progress, anti-technology reactions, neo-Luddism; new age religions.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Idea of "the family" as central unit of social order: model of the middle-class, nuclear family.	Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class marriage model, multiple identities for couplings and childraising.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith and personal investment in big politics (Nation-State, party).	Trust and investment in micropolitics, identity politics, local politics, institutional power struggles.
Root/Depth tropes. Faith in "Depth" (meaning, value, content, the signified) over "Surface" (appearances, the superficial, the signifier).	Rhizome/surface tropes. Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers without concern for "Depth".
Faith in the "real" beyond media and representations; authenticity of "originals"	Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem more powerful than the "real"; images and texts with no prior "original". "As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more powerful than unmediated experience.
Dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. popular culture); imposed consensus that high or official culture is normative and authoritative	Disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture; mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation of pop culture, hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
Mass culture, mass consumption, mass marketing.	Demassified culture; niche products and marketing, smaller group identities.
Art as unique object and finished work authenticated by artist and validated by agreed upon standards.	Art as process, performance, production, intertextuality. Art as recycling of culture authenticated by audience and validated in subcultures sharing identity with the artist.
Knowledge mastery, attempts to embrace a totality. The encyclopedia.	Navigation, information management, just-in-time knowledge. The Web.
Broadcast media, centralized one- to-many communications.	Interactive, client-server, distributed, many- to-many media (the Net and Web).
Centering/centeredness, centralized knowledge.	Dispersal, dissemination, networked, distributed knowledge
Determinancy	Indeterminancy, contingency.
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness.	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness (art, music, and literature).	Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture, intertextuality, pastiche.
Design and architecture of New York and Boston.	Design and architecture of LA and Las Vegas
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, human and machine	cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human and machine and electronic
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified sexualities, exclusion/bracketing of pornography	androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous sexuality, mass marketing of pornography
the book as sufficient bearer of the word; the library as system for printed knowledge	hypermedia as transcendence of physical limits of print media; the Web or Net as information system

Chart Created by Martin Irvine

News research

This is a friendly reminder that you need to do some outside news related research for your project, and this should be cited in your analytical paper. The research need not be through the library's databases (though it can, if you like).

Workshop

Please answer with specifics and examples, using complete sentences.

Name:________________                                                         Reviewing for:______________

Workshop for Monster project

1) What are some ways the monster's represented cultural fears and desires can be more specific? Can they be connected more directly to any events, conditions, people, places, or things in the real world? 

2) How can the language of the fears and desires be more precise? For example, instead of "fear of lies", you could shift the language to be "fear of lies by politicians and political propaganda."

3) How can the monster's physical attributes more perfectly match the cultural fears and desires they represent? What aspects of their physical manifestation are currently undeveloped?

4) How can the other details about the monster (living conditions, prey, attitude, etc) better represent the fears and desires?

5) How can the creative aide better match their concepts for the monster? For example, if it is a social media monster, is their creative aide a social media account?

6) What research, if any, did the writer robin creating their monster? Is there any further research they could do to strengthen their analytical aspect?

Workshop for Fairy Tale project 

1) How can the updates to the story or stories better reflect specific events, conditions, people, places or things in our culture today?

2) Are you able to recognize the tale type? Are there enough aspects of the original tale intact so that you can tell it is, in fact, still that story?

3) What are some additional updates to the story the author might make in order to make it even more culturally relevant and timely? Think of specific details related to characters, setting, plot, specific objects, and more.

4) How does the writer plan to present their fairy tale to the class? Is there a way to do this more effectively or creatively?

5) What research, if any, did the writer do when updating their story? Is there any further research they might do to strengthen their analytical aspect?

Example of how to format and approach your "Create a Monster" essay

Below is an essay that, while not perfect, does a good job of focusing on the prompt. 

Final Essay: The Wi-Fi People

            Over the last few centuries, humans have created monsters that reflect the culture around them. Common monsters like vampires and zombies are are always changing with the times to reveal new fears, such as a fear of contamination due to viruses. In the 21^st century, our culture has changed drastically when compared to past centuries. Technology has advanced to the point of taking over people's lives, especially since many people have access to the internet and all its resources at their very fingertips. The Wi-Fi People are monsters that are found inside a Wi-Fi network and attack people who are constantly on the internet wasting time. The Wi-Fi People know these people have a desire to do absolutely nothing but be online and they want to help people fulfill their desires.

            The Wi-Fi People represent the desire to do absolutely nothing. People are constantly worrying about life and all the responsibilities they have, yet most of these people choose to ignore these responsibilities and simply waste their time online. This is especially common with teenagers in high school and college who procrastinate by being on social media instead of studying. The cultural fears that the Wi-Fi People represent is the fear of being isolated and both desiring and lacking a sense of community on the internet. Technology has developed new ways for people to communicate with each other, no longer requiring people to actually meet in person to socialize.

            The internet has become such a huge part of our lives that it has become somewhat of a crisis; the crisis being that we spend more time on social media than actually interacting with people face to face. And as Jeffery Jerome Cohen states in his Monster Thesis 3, “the monster notoriously appears in times of crisis as a kind of third term that problematizes the clash of extremes”; the Wi-Fi People first appeared when people began getting addicted to the internet. Once a person connects to the free Wi-Fi they offer, that is when the person’s faith is sealed. The person will begin to notice a man and woman dressed in black formal suits popping up in ads. At first the person will dismiss them, but the person will begin to notice these people more and more while spending time online. Once the person begins to notice the Wi-Fi People, the monsters quickly vanish and the person can no longer find them, which makes the person believe that he or she was simply imagining the Wi-Fi People. The Wi-Fi People always seem to escape before a person can fully process that they are even on their screen, because “the monster itself always turns immaterial and vanishes, to reappear somewhere else, often slightly in a new form” (Cohen). The thing that changes about the Wi-Fi People are their eyes. Each time a person sees them, their eyes look like the spinning pinwheel on computers that shows up when a computer is frozen. 

            These monsters are similar to Dracula in that they want to create more of their kind. “The monster attracts” people with free Wi-Fi and that is when the victim becomes obsessed with the internet (Cohen). The Wi-fi People and vampires have a similar appearance in that they both have the physical appearance humans. Once a person gets connected to the free Wi-Fi, he or she begins to lose interest in the real world without even noticing it; all they notice is the weird people in the ad with the black suits. The Wi-Fi People’s goal is to turn people into emotionless people that live in the Wi-Fi and lure even more people to become like them. They are not like the other monsters we have studied in that the Wi-Fi People are emotionless and do not speak. The other monsters studied: vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, and zombies, all seemed to be overly emotional and want to figure out their purpose in life. The Wi-Fi People simply want to make more of their kind and take over the world. They do not speak to each other; once turned, all one wants to do is make more of their kind. The Wi-Fi People stay quiet because in our current culture, people posts and tweet about their day and it is public so everyone is able to see what a certain person is doing or where they are. The Wi-Fi People are the opposite of this and only smile; their silence is part of what makes them scarier to people. They have the physical appearance of a human being, only with red bloodshot eyes which represent the hours spent online.

            The inspiration for the Wi-Fi People first came from a Doctor Who episode, “The Bells of Saint John”. This episode provided the idea that the Wi-Fi was being controlled and people’s soul got trapped online. The idea seemed fascinating, but there was a physical monster missing. The Wi-Fi People’s appearance is based of The Gentlemen, a monster from an episode in the television serious “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. The female version of the Wi-Fi People was inspired by an old Japanese urban legend, “The Slit-mouthed Woman”. These monsters inspired the creation of the Wi-Fi People because of their creepy smiles that can bring shivers up anyone’s spine.

            The fact that the Wi-Fi People live inside the Wi-Fi brings terror to people. It is unknown territory to us, as we cannot live inside the machine ourselves. As Cohen state, “the monster always exists at the margins of the world- it cannot be incorporated into our epistemological systems.”  Even if one knew about this monster, it would mean staying away from any form of Wi-Fi or internet in order to stay away from the monster, which no one can easily do in our current society. Cohen states in Monster Thesis 5 that in order to avoid being the monster, one would have to avoid the monster’s “official geography”. This seems almost impossible since the internet has become such a huge part of everyday life. In order to avoid coming across the Wi-Fi People and becoming one of them, a person who would normally be online on a daily basis would have to stop being online all together.

            Our internet dependent culture has created this monster, or as Cohen stated in his Monster Thesis 6, our culture has created this child. Cohen mentions in Monster Thesis 5 that “cultures or groups create monsters in order to scare other people into behaving in ways that serve the groups’ goals”, meaning that the Wi-Fi People were created to scare people away from being on the internet too much. Mothers will tell people the story of the Wi-Fi People to scare their children from wasting time on the internet. Monsters are first created from a specific crisis that is occurring and gains more physical traits and qualities from the culture at the time of the crisis. As the culture changes over time, so will the monster.

Reminder Note

Bring computer and workshop paper (absolutely must be printed--papers on the computer will be sent away) on Thursday.

Important: presentation date shifts

Dear students,

Please note that I have just bumped up all of the presentation dates by one class day. On the plus side, this is because you will have a day off--I was just invited to give a presentation at UCLA on the 8th.

I am, however, sorry if this causes any slight stress. Luckily you still have a significant amount of time to work on your presentations, and you have an extra day now to work on other things, so hopefully no one is too bummed out. Any questions or concerns, let me know.

Papers in My Office

I have the following students papers completed and ready to be picked up during office hours tomorrow (many of you did not pick them up on Tuesday because you were voting and I forgot to return them to you today):

Priscilla Hernandez
Tatiana Itow
Malachi Allen
Naudika Diaz
Taylor Watanabe

Addie Crane
Ceci Carmichael