Anna Sibilia

David Steiling

August 30, 2015

East VS West

The Monsters in the Mirror

Personally, I do not have the stomach for most of the modern horror genre. It wars against too many of my moral centers and exploits my unease in ways far more severe than what would be necessary to send a message. I cannot sit still through these absurd and appalling stories; I often get sick and nauseated when I bear witness to these grotesque tales, as the sight or sound of torture imbeds itself firmly into my nightmares. As such, I’d like to note: if I have any night visions plagued by unnameable peril and demonic distortions, I blame this class. As it’s painfully apparent, I’m quite a horror virgin, though I do know the vast differentiation between the thematic goals of Western and Eastern horror. 

The East has this tendency to isolate and intertwine, to weave narratives out of stray threads and then bring them together in a knot at the end. These varying characters have  their own sins and hellion thoughts, and it is the power of an individual’s thoughts that make the Eastern depiction of horror thrive. 

The emphasis is placed upon the psyche, a fragile, malleable thing that can be trained to imagine nightmares into glory, or comfort into chaos. If a person has been subjected to evil repeatedly, they intern begin to see it in everything; soon you have sadists and serial killers from haunting pasts that now inflict their agony and sorrow unto others. There is the prevalent notion of taking a single person and tainting them with trauma, disconnecting them from all the good in the world. Soon, the individual festers and destroys that which thrives around them, spreading evil like a disease. 

Here in the West, most horror comes back from a more traditional point of view: the Highest Good vs the Darkest Evils. We focus more on the individuals in a conflict scenario more so than a war of minds. Manipulation is used, yes, but it is mostly a duel of wills to survive and conquer one another. In most cases, it is a Man VS Man story where the audience watches as one side (more soften than not some average people thrown into a situation far worse than they imagined) is pitted against their oppressor whom uses mind-bending games or brutal scare tactics to corner their quarry. This is not so much a test of whose mind is stronger as much as it is a metaphor for the battle between good and evil latent within man with a side being a champion for the virtues and the other a representation of terrors. 

Anna Sibilia

David Steiling

August 23, 2015

Fangs and Fascination

Why These Parasites Are Perfect

Throughout history, vampires have a consistent record of dominating the fictional world, for better or for worse. These leeches have latched onto minds innumerable and thus have been passed on as a tradition from generation to generation. They are one of the most popularized form of demons to exist in mainstream horror, fiction, and other genres of media. Often aloof and sultry, vampires are commonly portrayed as masters of seduction and temptation; they lure in both the audience and their victim with mysterious charms, working into the cracks of the human facade with a practiced grace and smooth precision. Vampires are the royalty of the underworld as they have the uncanny ability to control and manipulate seemingly anyone and anything, and the characters in Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice are no different.

Louis de Pointe du Lac was a man born into a plantation owning family in New Orleans who’d become a broken man after the death of his brother, Paul, whom had passed after fight between them. Having been left with self-loathing and guilt, Louis had made it his personal mission to find death as quickly as he could to be freed from this miserable existence. Enter Lestat de Lioncourt, a suave vampire hailing from the Auvergne region of France. Noticing Louis’s misery, he decided to trick the many into becoming his immortal company. From then on, Louis has to struggle with keeping his humanity untainted from the corruptive influence of Lestat, while his new natural urges compel him to act in a similar, bloodthirsty manner. 

As a story-telling tool, these men demonstrate the concept of temptation and virtue extremely well, which is a common theme of vampiric works. The undead immortals are constantly used to display how fragile man is, be it in a moral, physical, or mental sense. Lestat uses a mind games and his knowledge of predatory instincts in order to guide Louis down a darker, more destructive path that fits his new, supernatural role more appropriately. Louis is meant to champion the strength of men and his devotion to all that is right and pure, a telling theme from Gothic Literature as it implements the grace of the divine as a way of helping the characters fend off the other who has ‘fallen from grace’. 

Vampires have always been representative of the devil, and there reaches a point in Interview with the Vampire in which this is painful apparent: the taking of Claudia. During this scene the audience is witness to the quarreling thoughts and savage desires within Louis’s mind; we see him rent over his wants of nothing want to kill and save the sickly child whom he’d almost killed before. His ‘tainted’ side wants to devour her, to drink her dry so that he might live longer:

“…I couldn't bear it, looking at her, wanting her not to die and wanting her; and the more I 

looked at her, the more I could taste her skin, feel my arm sliding under her back and pulling her up to me, feeling her soft neck. Soft, soft, that's what she was, so soft…”

And all the while his moral conscience is revolting and demanding that he spare her, to not commit such an evil act, yet he give in to his urges, only to let another, worse fate overcome the girl. With her wrenched away from him, Lestat ensures that the girl is turned into a vampire instead of killed, now cursed and used as a tool of extortion for Louis. 

With this type of personification and attitude, it is no wonder that the myth of these man-eaters has survived for so long; they are a perfect parallel for the devil in terms coercion and lies. While this particular story does evoke sympathy for the crumbling of Louis’s humanity, it also exemplifies man’s resilience when brought to the gates of hell; though he make break and falter through the fiery maze, he will succeed and triumph when his mettle is tested. Vampires are a cruel, oppressing monster, though they are one of the best ways to highlight the inner strength of the very thing they aim to destroy and consume.

Anna Sibilia

David Steiling

August 16, 2015

What Lurks in Nightmares

The Beginning of Gothic Literature

When Mary Shelley first wrote Frankenstein, she’d little idea that her frightening and epic work had unleashed something far more powerful from the unspoken Pandora’s Box of literature: men could now play God in their stories, craft monsters and demons with pen, paper, ink, and words. There was this trepidation and hesitance that authors possessed before, only giving characters the idea to look for divine inspiration or hellish temptation. Yet now, after this woman had fearlessly taken the plunge into the forbidden unknown and made a human on par with the highest heavens, men could now wonder and write what it was like to be both mortal and omnipotent caught in a purgatory of sin, suffering, damnation, and redemption.

However, bearing the ability to make flesh into something new did not make Frankenstein above his human nature; when the consequences of his mad actions gripped his shoulders with a righteous hand of punishment, he fled like a coward. Make no mistake, the Gothic genre is filled with specters of guilt, grace, and feverish madness that lead to many creative and baleful tales, but this story had started them all by exposing the flawed nature of man.

Though as interesting as this Frankenstein’s tale might be, it is not on the same level of today’s modernized Gothic genre. One of the most prominent examples of this comes in the form of a beloved hero known as Batman. Arguably the most easily recognizable Gothic hero, Batman is a story rife with tragic events and dark undertones. The hero himself is a brooding figure meant to embody mystery and the eerie quality of the dramatic tone of the story. Everything from the comic’s art to the plot champions the necessary elements of the Gothic genre: the modernized yet haunting city of Gotham (which is, admittedly, aptly named) filled with towering buildings that loom and suffocate the light; the bizarre and monstrous villains that are superhuman and sometimes even supernatural in their origin, all of whom would like nothing more than to spread chaos or their sphere of power and consume the city -much like how evil incarnate is often portrayed as an all-devouring force in it’s purest form; countless heroines and damsels populate this world, each one acting as either an alluring temptress or a devoted love interest whom wishes to break past the hero’s hardened heart; and the story itself is centered on the emotions and kaleidoscope conscience of the main hero.

The prevailing composition of the world is founded on the dreary and sublime, and the turning point of Batman’s whole development (the murder of his parents) is set upon him like a curse. It plagues him and haunts his dreams, eventually giving him the drive to become the caped crusader that is needed by the city. Each night he searches out and pursues the many faces of corruption and crime, but ends up being sent after horrors that masquerade as men. 

This is one of the most integral parts of both Frankenstein and the Batman series. There may be evil lurking in the shadows of our nightmares, but it is nothing compared to what we can create with our own hands. The protagonist of this novel had chosen to play with the natural order, and thus, could not fathom the outcome. At the moment of his greatest triumph, he had also given birth to his ultimate undoing. Likewise Batman had chosen to find and eliminate evil, only to bring even more destructive forces to light, most of which started out as lost souls searching for a way to correct or justify their situations.