NosferatuTheVampyre Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Twilight: Goth or Not? (Not.)
Filed under: Horror », Fan Rant »
I don't remember when it started, but somewhere around the age of 16 I discovered Bauhaus, heavy eyeliner, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman. (Guess who my favorite character was?). I acquired a leather jacket, big boots, and a collection of Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite books. Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Crow were the height of romance. That's right. I'm a former goth. (My friends are snickering right now. Former! Former, damn you all.)
What I find very interesting is that what Twilight, from an admittedly cursory glance at its fanbase, is, well, not goth. They're screamy teens with Hot Topic tees or grown women and the occasional dude. But werewolves and vampires and smoldering glances and longing are all super goth! And there are some goths who do enjoy a bit of glitter (or a LOT of glitter), but not on our vampires. I mean, their vampires. I asked one friend, and she replied, "Because VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE. Make sure you put that in there. One goth I spoke to says, NO SPARKLING KTHXBAI."
But more importantly, the velvet-and-lace crew of goths are a bit older and not the target audience. And the teen goths can't relate – Bella might toss her hair and bite her lip, but her angst isn't relatable to someone who is truly an outsider, someone who is rejected or even beat up by their peers, not the center of attention, no matter how uncomfortable she might feel with her new hangers-on or her dad.
RvB's After Images: Nosferatu, The Vampyre (1979)
Filed under: Horror », After Image », Columns »
The image of Lugosi's Dracula is heavily copyrighted; Nosferatu is, by contrast, an open source vampire; you could tell that from his cameo a few years back on Sponge Bob Square Pants. The silent classic was originally a bootleg version of Bram Stoker's novel. When Werner Herzog went to work on a remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 vampire film, he could call his creature Count Dracula, thanks to public domain laws. Herzog preserved much of the original's style out of admiration for Murnau and "the most important film ever made in Germany" (maybe so...any other suggestions?).
But Herzog's skeptical, neo-documentary approach--seen this summer in Rescue Dawn--wouldn't permit him to use Murnau's mistier plotting. He took pains to see how Nosferatu works. Why has no one burned the evil castle down in daylight? Simple: it doesn't really exist except in ruins, "except in the minds of men" who are tricked by the darkness of night. How does the vampire beat Harker home? There's a line about how the sea voyage is faster than heading back from Transylvania overland. (Unlike the book, this is set about the time Murnau set his version, 1838; there are no railroads yet in Central Europe.)
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