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Vampires and Subcultures Survey
Hello!
I am new to this forum and registered here to gain some information on gothic subculture. Just so you know, I am a part of it and am trying to research all the implications of belonging to a subculture and the society around it. I am a student in the UK and am writing a dissertation of how vampire films (mainly True Blood and Twilight) affect gothic subculture and what gothic people think about these films/series. Please help me with this and fill in my Survey here! It shouldn't take long and please answer as sincerely as possible. Also if you have any ideas feel free to add them. All your help and effort are appreciated! Thank you! :wink: Miss Fleshmechanik P.S. If you are interested I can write here more about my findings or what I'm interested exactly in finding out. |
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Personally, I think they've ruined the vampire "mystique" with the new movies. They turned monsters into cuddly things. Not cool. Only show that did it in a nice way (i.e tongue in cheek) is Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which ofcourse is a couple of years old now. All in all, vampires are dead to me now (pun intended). |
EDIT: What I mean is I'd like to know how gothic subculture MIGHT be affected. Sorry, I left 'might' out of the sentence. I'm not saying it IS affected, but it could be. So what I'm researching is the opinion of gothic people and what they think about vampire movies in relation to gothic subculture.
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In general I think you're going to find "gothic people" thinking much the same as others on Twilight:
Twilight is a good book... had it been written as fan-fiction by a pre-teen... Personally I love True Blood, but I'd always filed that under "guilty pleasures." |
I found the first Twilight book so uninteresting I couldn't finish it...
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Twilight is the literary equivalent of an 8 bar enema of nails and gasoline.
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I like how you included Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was a good 'goth' show if anyone was.
It was fun and campy, yet with some thought put into it. It's the Siouxsie Sioux of TV. Then again, Sioxsie's a bitch and Sarah ******** Gellar is cool. EDIT: Check it out. I just found another arbitrarily censored word - the female version of the name Michael. |
Holy Crap, Common Sense!!!! It's not obsolete!!!!! Thank God, man!!!! My theory? DRUGS!!!!!!! DON'T EVEN TOUCH THE BOOK, IT'S EVIL!!! Every page is soaked in a skin-peircing, highly addictive chemical substance, which builds up a need in the reader to turn the page, even though they are still vaguely aware of how bad the book sucks! By the time they're finished, it's too late, and they're convinced that the book was good--even the whole series--but really, it's only a chemical dependency on Twilight merchandise! Then, when the movies come out, they just sit back and rake in the bills by the millions as the Living Steph-Heads come straight to them!!!!! I refuse to even touch them, and thank God I saved my girlfreind in time... She still displays symptoms, but with coaching, she's pulling through!
It's a conspiracy, man...... |
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BTW, I like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" a lot (having watched most episodes live when they originally aired and collecting the series on DVD now - I have 4 out of 7 seasons), but I'd also like to include two other shows as my favorite Gothic horror television shows. "Millennium" consistently creeped me out. And for pure Gothic thrills nothing has ever matched the fun I had watching "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" in the mid-seventies. http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...hakposter2.jpg The pilot movie "The Night Stalker" originally aired as a stand-alone made-for-tv movie in 1972, but it's ratings went through the roof the night it aired. Even though the film has dated music and some campy sexist banter between the TV reporter lead character and his girlfriend, it also has one of the best vampire mythos representations I have ever seen on television. Janos Skorzeny was convincingly superhuman, animal-like in his attacks on people and correctly portrayed as a creature of few weaknesses. The vampire confrontation around the swimming pool where he took out a dozen cops freaked me out. And the sounds he made when they finally cornered him with sunlight and Kolchak staked his heart ... as creepy as fingernails on a blackboard! *shiver* You can see that movie HERE Quote:
You can see the first episode of that series, "The Ripper", HERE. Modern vampire tales and Gothic horror in general pale in comparison, although I have heard from people I respect that True Blood is a decent "guilty pleasure". Maybe I'll check it out one of these days. I have no interest in reading "Twilight" or any other novels that dilute Gothic horror conventions for the sake of telling a story about teenage romance. |
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It's worth checking out, I really liked the first series, and the second was good enough. The vampires were nicely menacing without being cheesy horror-movie cliches or loved up teens, which was kinda refreshing. Also, they occasionally feature awesome bluesy music. |
Bete Noire, good to know. Thanks!
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Vampires are just pretentious zombies.
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I took your survey. I've got one issue with it: Dracula isn't a vampire. I really shouldn't have to get into this, but I'm just going to say that Vampires can't turn into wolves, if they could they would be Werewolves and not vampires. Dracula shoots fireballs, teleports, can turn into a giant bat monster, a wolf (and I think a werewolf too), a dragon, a gigantic, 50 meter tall monstrosity, a big ball of faces, and on and on and on. It was cute in the book, because that book was ridiculous, but since then there's no excuse.
That was my only peeve with the survey though. I think this is an interesting question though, because I've been thinking about the same thing. Like, subcultures have their own "norm" view of various monsters and such that's influenced somehow by that style. Like, goth kids have some affinity vampires, but what you're probably thinking of is the influence of 30's and 40's universal horror movies on the late 70's/early 80's goth rock scenes. So, it's really Dracula that everyone loves. Which is fine, because Dracula is a serious badass and deserves respect. By extension, the vampires goth kids would tend to gravitate to are ones that share something with Dracula, like Count Orlock and the like. You know, monsters. Emos on the other hand, are whiny bitches, so they tend to glamorize vampires of the pretentious whiny rich kid with super-aids kind. The ones that don't get to turn into cool bat monsters, but still have all the crippling weaknesses. Well, I don't get that at all, but whatever floats your boat I guess. But what really pisses me off is when they take the powerless version of vampires, take away the weaknesses (we all understand that vampires dissolve in sunlight right? This isn't new... shit, Dracula is weak against sunlight too, and he's on par with King Kong and shit) and give them a bunch of powers in human form I've never heard of before. So now you get whiny rich kids that run faster than the flash for some reason. So I get the curiosity about the relation between subcultures and perceptions of monsters. Here's a neat parallel: so I've never actually fallen in very well with the general perception of vampires by goth kids, or zombies for that matter (although zombies are more of an ebm thing). But now I'm a haunter too, and I've noticed that the general view on dinosaurs (being the regression to the stupidity of the 60's and early 70's and the complete disconnect between birds and more basal theropods) makes me wanna hit somebody. Shit, Ariel Pink even has a song called "Evolution's a Lie," which is great, but given that there are still a handful of people that genuinely believe that, it's hard for me to laugh at. Point is, I have a harder time ignoring facts than opinions. Subculture differences are one thing, but screwing up an already established mythology is beyond irritating, especially if the mythology doesn't need to be fixed. |
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the only they could affect our culture is word of mouth if idiots start saying "of they are like that b/c of so and so" then we are screwed. the gothic community is already having to deal with the whole emo thing and im still not sure whats happening there.
in the end i say we'er fucked if more preppies go goth b/c of these movies and tv shows. |
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Just watched the movie, and might I just say that it kicked total ass. |
Has anyone else watched the show Dark Shadows? I found it interesting.
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Fleshmechanik- You would come out better approaching Gothic subcultures with qualitative methods. For example, I refuse to do this survey, therefore yer Quantitative Methods are not representative of the sample because I am like, TRUgoth.
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