New Age Vampires; A Job Well Done.

A)                I just finished season one of the Vampire Diaries and I must say that I am very intrigued. The series begins as a normal cliché drama about how hard high school is and how dreamy vampires are depicted nowadays, however season one ended leaving the viewer with so much more. What began as a modern and corny take on our view of vampires, turned out to be an actually clever and interesting series far from what the other vampire literature I have read.

                   My initial thought on this series was that it was going to be similar to Twilight; young girl falls for the hot new vampire in town. I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be nothing like I expected. The characters and the plot of this series is captivating and about as realistic as a TV show about vampires and get. The protagonist, Elena, is a young girl struggling with the issues that high school brings. In this way she is similar to Bella, from Twilight. She is sad and lonely because of the loss of her parents and is trying to find her place in the world that has changed so much. However, this is where the similarities stop. Elena is a strong-willed, independent, beautiful girl who grows up immensely within the first season alone; whereas Bella’s character is pretty much the same annoying, dependent, whinny seventeen year old throughout the entire series. Elena does fall for the handsome vampire, Stefan, but she maintains her sense of self throughout her experience. Furthermore, Stefan is nothing like Edward (thank God). He is a bit strange and curious like Edward, but his character has much more depth. He is extremely caring and protective of Elena while still allowing her to live her life and experience things on her own. Stefan acknowledges Elena's weaknesses, but at the same time recognizes and respects her strengths. He is hardly ever hovering over her or locking her away in his home to protect her from the dangers that the town is facing.

                This story contains many of the same themes as the other novels we have read. It has first person narration in the form of diary entries (similar to Dracula) that Elena and Stefan keep so in almost every episode we hear the direct thoughts of the protagonist human, as well as the vampire. Also, the theme of good v. evil is extremely prevalent throughout the season. Initially, we have Damon, Stefan’s brother, who is the quintessential bad boy vampire. He comes into town, killing as he pleases, having zero remorse for his actions. Then, we have the evil vampires that return from the past, seeking vengeance on the town for what happened to them hundreds of years ago. Because of the latter, we actually get to see character growth from Damon, which is always the intriguing part of cinema, watching the characters develop and relating to their struggles. Damon’s behavior shifts from evil vampire, to an actual friend of Elena. This is much different from what we saw in Interview with the Vampire, where Lestat continued to be the evil vampire he was in the beginning, and there was no shade of grey between good and evil. Here we have a more fuzzy area, where evil isn’t always as evil as we think it to be.

                Another aspect that I thoroughly enjoyed is how well they blended the new, modern view of vampires, with the old, traditional features. We have teenagers going to school and living amongst vampires, just like in Twilight and True Blood, but it is not all romance and false depictions. Vampire Diaries actually makes it believable that vampires could exist amongst humans, which I think is something that the other series were lacking. The way in which they depict the killings, the mind control, and the manipulation make it very traditional to how vampires were initially introduced into literature and film. These are very important features of vampires that are what initially drew me to them; the fear of the other. They don’t sparkle in the sunlight, they don’t always have control over their hunger, and they can be killed fairly easily. Now, this is only season one, so who knows what the rest of the series has in store for us. But thus far, I think that for the reasons I mentioned, this is by far my favorite piece of work that we have studied.

B)                This course and tutorial have opened up a new outlook on literature for me. The theories and analysis that we have done over these past eight weeks has been something that I never did while reading novels. Although initially I found the constant digging and interpreting to be slightly annoying, now it is something that I find I actually enjoy doing and it is definitely going to carry on to every book I read from now on.

                Thinking too deeply into things that someone has written has never been something I thought to do, perhaps because I did not know how to go about doing it. Now that I have learned how to approach literature from such a view, I find that it really does help understand the text better. For instance New Historicism was an important aspect in learning about Dracula because the novel played directly off of how things were during that time. The fear of the un-known and the lack of information/certainty about such unknown things is what made that book so frightening. Interview with the Vampire’s approach on opening the door to the mind of the other was fascinating as well, especially reading it right after Dracula. Two completely different ways of looking at the same subject matter. This tutorial was extremely helpful in reading these novels; and the theories and approaches we learned opened my eyes to things I probably would have missed had I read these works on my own. I would not change a thing about the tutorial; it was a very interesting and enjoyable experience.