Vampire, Sexy Scapegoat
Professor Bendavides’ talk on vampires and sexuality verbalized and intellectualized all those things that swim under the surface of seemingly mindless entertainment. The vampire is used to talk about otherwise unbreachable topics in the pop culture medium. The idea of linking fear and desire is very interesting, and can be applied as a psychological concept to any kind of “other” in the social dynamic. The exoticism of strange and foreign ideas is at the root of both desire and fear that is targeted toward that subject.
Also, after the lecture, I canceled my evening plans and went home to watch a pirated internet copy of Blade for the first time. It was fabulous because if I had seen it before, I would be re-watching it through an academic lens. This way, however, I saw the movie initially with the ideas from the talk in mind. So entertainment and education blended seamlessly in my viewing experience. I think it would be great to have an academic examination of many bits of pop culture before experiencing them, so as to replace the passively receptive consumption habit (which is possibly a social construct in itself) with the actively intellectual experience. Overall, this was a great lecture!
Tags: pop culture, social construction, vampires
