Becoming Vampire: Difference and the Vampire in Popular Culture

by Simon Bacon

Overview

Becoming Vampire is an interdisciplinary study of how the figure of the vampire in the twenty-first century has been used to create and define difference, not as either a positive or negative attribute, but as a catalyst for change and the exploration of new identity positions. Whilst focusing on the films Let Me In and Let the Right One In to highlight the referential and intertextual nature of the genre itself, it utilises a broad spectrum of methodological approaches to show how the many facets of the vampire can destabilise traditional categories of who we are and what we might become. This volume then provides a timely examination of the multifaceted and multivalent character of the vampire and the possibilities inherent within our interactions with them, making this study a consideration of what we might term ‘vampiric becomings’ and an exploration of why the undead ‘creatures of the night’ remain so fascinating to Western culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783034319904
Publisher:	Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Publication date:	12/20/2016
Edition description:	New
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.86(h) x (d)

About the Author

Simon Bacon is an independent scholar based in Poznan, Poland. He has contributed articles to many publications on vampires, monstrosity, science fiction and media studies and has recently co-edited several books: Undead Memory: Vampires and Human Memory in Popular Culture (2014), Seductive Concepts: Perspectives on Sins, Vices and Virtues (2014), Little Horrors: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Anomalous Children and the Construction of Monstrosity (2016) and Growing Up with the Undead: Vampires in 20th and 21st Century Literature, Films and Television for Young Children (forthcoming).

Table of Contents

CONTENTS: The All-American, Un-American Vampire: Nationhood and the Vampire – It Made Me Do It!: Disorientation and Vampiric Objects – What a Girl Wants: Agency and the Becoming Female Vampire – The Vampire Survival Guide: ‘Reel-Life’ Vampires – The Vampire in Neverland: Nostalgia and Becoming-Child – Vampiric Invitations: Becoming with the Vampire