Soccer is Boring / Vampires are Metaphors.

Despite Vlad's best efforts from beyond the grave, Roumania lost today, so the Dutch and the Italians will go on to the quarter-finals of the 2008 UEFA Cup, along with the Germans, the Portugese, and, um, some others who have yet to be determined.

I lived in England for four years -- during the last Euro Cup (2004) and World Cup (2006) -- and football does seem, as ever, quite foreign and tribalistic.

Go Cubs.

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My project's basic premise is that the Vampire archetype can be read as a metaphor for a myriad of different "sicknesses" on the societal and individual levels.

The first things that I have thought of, roughly, have been, metaphors for:

1.) Straight-up diseases, particularly consumption/tuberculosis in the late 19th century and HIV in the late 20th century -- Sheridan le Fanu's short story "Carmilla" (first pub. 1872).

2.) Addiction/other mental disorders -- Ferrerra's The Addiction (1995)

3.) Over-consumption/capitalism/"corporate" greed also in the current era -- Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002); Scott's The Hunger (1983)

Vampires, of course, also very firmly linked with sexuality, often"deviant" in eras where sexuality is shunned-- homosexuality, highly sexed women, especially in the Victorian era, -- and highly hypermasculine/idealized in the late 20th century, such as Lestat.

My students always associate vampires with sexuality, especially given their (the vampires', not my students') accoutrements and associations: night-time, glamour, blood, puncturing, dancing, fancy outfits, death, castles, foreign accents, pain and pleasure together...

Also, the Dracula story itself, as maifested in (at least):

-Stoker's novel

-Murnau's Nosferatu (1922)

-Browning's film (1931)

expresses a certain xenophobia that the English/Western Europe felt for Eastern Europe (and one certainly still felt today, with the debate about Turkey "really" being a part of Europe being a glaring example).

Much of the fear of this story comes from the idea that this foreigner has arrived on London shores and is using mysterious powers that the "civilized" British do not understand.  The "peasantry" and ignorance of Dracula's brethren in Transylvania are established immediately in the story when the townsfolk try to give Harker charms and amulets to protect him on his way up to the castle. 

Western Europeans were, in the late 19th century, both envious of Easter Europe's growing wealth and power, yet scornful of its "backwards" ways -- a model which Count Dracula fit perfectly. 

A threat to London, and "all that is holy," indeed.

Next post: some actual notes. 

Love,

 R.x