The Monstrous Fantastic Conference Paper Abstracts - International ...

93. (FTV/H) Monsters and Morality CypressChair: Brian RappIndependent ScholarDracula the Anti-Christ: New Resurrection of an Immortal MonsterMelissa OlsonUniversity of Wisconsin, MilwaukeeIn his introduction to Monster Theory, Jeffrey Cohen argues that we are what we presently fear. The monster “is born only at this metaphoriccrossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment – of a time, a feeling, and a place.” But if the monster personifies a certain momentin which it is born, what does it mean when a monster survives in popular culture for hundreds of years? Bram Stoker’s Dracula has neverbeen out of print, yet it manages to remain relevant to Cohen’s self-described “method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender”by continually redefining itself through new interpretations, both literary and cinematic. Because these interpretations are legion, it is all tooeasy to overlook an entry into the Dracula catalog that actually contributes something original, a fate that has befallen the ill-received 2000horror film, Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000. This film did embody a specific cultural moment, a breath that the world held between two millennia.In their attempt to modernize Dracula for the new millennium’s contemporary, cynical audience, the filmmakers incorporated a imaginativelybrazen statement about the infamous vampire: that he is actually Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Christ. With this bold leap, Dracula 2000 resurrectsthat which contributed to the original inspiration for Dracula: anti-Semitism. It has long been argued that Jewish stereotypes contributed toStoker’s imagery of his title character. Now Dracula is cast as the most hated of all Jews, and a dark mirror-image of Jesus himself. Just as hedrank the symbolic blood of Jesus at the Last Supper, Judas/Dracula now “drinks the blood of all God’s children,” giving them a new, damnedeternal life. The cinematic Dracula even goes so far as to promise God that he will remake the world in his own image, bringing full-circle themyth of the Jewish threat to Christendom."We're Them and They're Us": Zombies, Evil and Moral AgencyJune M. PulliamLouisiana State UniversityUnlike other monsters such as the vampire, werewolf or mass murdering maniac—the zombie is not evil. Evil necessitates that one have moralagency to make a conscious choice to do right or wrong, to do good or to cause harm. Yet the defining characteristic of the zombie is a lack ofmoral agency. Zombies are slaves, either literally, as is the case in earlier works such as the 1931 film White Zombie, where they constitute anundead labor force, or figuratively, as in Romero’s films, where they are in thrall to an insatiable desire for human flesh. As slaves, zombies lackthe will to have moral agency, and so cannot be evil, even when they commit acts that harm humans. Humans, however, are evil, which isrevealed when they are in proximity to zombies. Zombie masters are evil because they deprive the living (or the dead) of their will. Yet humanswho terminate zombies with extreme prejudice are also evil. While humans might have to defend themselves against zombies bent oncannibalism, their desire to exterminate zombies prevents them from seeing the creature’s humanity and affiliation with the living. In thispresentation, I consider the zombie, from its beginning in Lafcadio Hearn’s “The Country of the Comers-Back” and William Seabrook’s TheMagic Island, to more recent incarnations in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead films, and in twenty-first century texts such as MaxBrooks’ World War Z Seth Grahme-Smith’s literary mashup Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In all of these works, the zombie tells us abouthuman moral failings.From Monster to Hero: The Evolution of the Vampire in Fiction and FilmAntoinette WinsteadOur Lady of the Lake University“From Monster to Hero. . . .” examines how the image of the vampire has evolved from that of a monster to that of a romantic hero and theimplications behind this evolution. Beginning with the image of the vampire presented in Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931), the paper willprovide a historical perspective on the initial concept of the vampire as a demonic figure. Moreover, it will show how this image graduallychanged to that of a misunderstood anti-hero with the introduction of Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows (ABC 1966 – 1971) and Lestat in AnneRice’s Interview with a Vampire and how these changes reflected the cultural changes taking place in the late 1960s and the mid-1980s. Inaddition, the paper will address the latest incarnation of the vampire as seen in the Sookie Stackhouse and Twilight series, as well as in theBritish TV series Being Human, wherein all cases the vampire has evolved beyond merely sucking blood to actual intercourse, procreation, and,in the case of Being Human, eating food. As this paper will demonstrate, the vampire no longer represents an object of revulsion, but ratherrepresents an object of desire – a deadly desire.