Thursday, April 17, 2014

Chloé Kent - OUTSIDE READINGS #2 – Les Vampires part two


I'm currently in a class surveying Vampires: Power, Self, and the Other. We analyze both films and texts on vampires and compare the two in a multicultural context. The first film we watched was called Les Vampires, a silent film series from 1915. The vampires in the series Les Vampires, contradicts many of the normal expectations of what a vampire is. The vampires in this film series lacks the supernatural ability or the thirst for blood that is typically found in a vampire. One reason they may have portrayed the vampires in Les Vampires in this way is that for the average depiction of a vampire, there is sympathy behind his character. Vampires must feed on humans in order to survive, so despite how evil they might be they are still pitied in a way. In contrast, the vampires in Les Vampires do not have to perform the evils that they do, it is only for money and power. This could be a representation of the cultural situation in Paris at the time, the vampires representing the role of the Germans coming into the country and taking from the citizens of France. In this way, the filmmakers would not want for there to be any sort of redeemable qualities about the vampires in the film, but to portray them as thieves that cannot be trusted.

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