RSSS 315 Tier 2: Thirteenth Week

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RSSS 315 (Tier 2) Thirteenth Week

• Vampires and Werewolves Slavic Folklore in Our
  Culture

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Armand Chapters 9-10
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Adoration of the Magi
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Savonarola 1452-1498

• Strong sermons attacking
• Art
• Luxury
• Church corruption
• Heresy public strangulation and immolation

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Kievan Rus
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Monastery of the Caves
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History

• Height of power 10th-12th
• Invasion, destruction in 13th
• Bare survival next centuries
• Under rule of Grand Duchy of Lithuania

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Iconography

• Holy activity purity
• Iconographers role
• Holy image follow the model
• Not made by human hands
• Two-dimensions, unusual perspective
• Prominent in Orthodoxy

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Christ With the Fiery Eyes
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Now Back to Werewolves
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Tanith Lee

• Wolfland (1980)
• Reprinted in Red as Blood or Tales from the
  Sisters Grimmers (1983)

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Interpretations?

• This modern version emerges as a tale about
  matriarchy written in defence against masculine
  violence and the order of society build upon it.
  Whatever the gothic setting, the
  werewolf-grandmother, who is definitely not
  "masculine and overpowering"6 nor sexually
  devouring stands for matriarchy as a humane and
  pragmatic order of society. The potential of
  intertext which operates in this tale is highly
  communicative and it is by no means tragic, as
  the genre would have required. Thus, as
  Jacobmeyer concludes, the postmodern scepticism
  against 'meta-conventions' gives rise to new
  forms of creation

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Features

• Matriarchy
• Husband dead, murdered
• Defense abused spouse issues

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More features

• Gothic setting
• Character reversal grandmother as wolf
• Not ordinary wolf werewolf bound by lycanthropic
  rules
• Intertext all the LRRH stories
• Humane and pragmatic order of society?

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Problems

• Is grandmother humane?
• What was her relationship with her husband really
  like?
• Abused woman syndrome
• S/M dimension
• Who/what is Beauty?
• Acceptable notion of male small, feminized,
  pet
• Accepts rough treatment without complaint

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Other Problems

• What kind of people/women are these two?
• Mean-spirited?
• Horror story? Or Story with a message?
• What is it? Revenge?

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Neil Jordan, 1950-
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Filmography

• Company of Wolves, 1984
• Interview with a Vampire, 1994
• Crying Game, 1992
• Good Thief, 2002

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Red Riding Hood Issues

• Nature of evil
• Sexuality violence, curiosity, link with
  reproduction
• Otherness
• Avarice
• Intergenerational cooperation, rivalry,
  seduction, hostility
• Maturity stages
• Trust

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Gustave Doré Print for Perrault Story
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An American Werewolf in London 1981

• John Landis, dir. (Animal House, Blues Brothers)
• Comic and creepy
• Key element the transformation
• Scare it could happen to anyone

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Relationship

• Alex
• Settling in..

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Davids transformation

• Multiple murders
• Waking in the zoo
• Realizing what he needs to do

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Other meanings?

• Maturity quest
• True love by a special kind of woman will change
  you from a beast

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Another dimension

• Something is wrong with David
• What are his sexual interests?
• Jack articulates his
• Alex takes the initiative
• Technical skills ok (but only she shows pleasure)
• He only sleeps well (no nightmares) after hes
  been with animals
• He says goodbye to family, he loves them but
  what about Alex?
• She is a mother figure nurturing, relates well
  to children
• Ending failure to reach the proper maturity stage