Dracula

I attended the March 25, 2010 Festiba even that was located in the Coas building room 254. They topic was Vampires. When I entered the room I didn’t really expect to enjoy it, but UTPA upholds its shock & aw reputation just like when they brought over Jason Bishop my first semester of college.

The teacher that is in charge of the I guess gothic literature introduced the speakers. There were a total of three “essays” that were going to be read. At first I didn’t see how three essays would last 1hr and 30 minutes. The first speakers read an essay that they wrote together, and it was on none other than Bram Stokers Dracula. Dracula next to the Bible is apparently the most read piece of literature. It was written in 1897 so I guess that makes sense. One of the speakers made a crazy link between Food, Dracula, and Stoker. The Irish author was bedridden for the first seven years of his life, and his mother told him horror stories every night. The author often saw food as comfort. Stoker also said that you spend more time cooking and preparing food than sex. He was also the third of seven children. This essay was basically about fooood, Dracula, and Stoker all linked together.

The second story was about modern day Vampires. These speakers were talking about the very famous HBO series True Blood. This series is about supernatural’s that roam the earth amongst people, but the people know they’re supernatural’s. True blood attracted 1.44 million viewers when the show debuted, and by the end of season one it had 3.7 million viewers

They of course had to mention the ever popular Twilight series. I found it very interesting that if any of my fellow students have seen New Moon the move which grossed 22.2m dollars on opening weekend, and has grossed over 243 million dollars in total sales. Well have we stopped to ask ourselves whats really going on in this movie? Half of the movie deals with Bella doing what…… She’s crying and crying and crying and crying and then tries to kill herself then tortures herself some more, then cries some more, then more torture. What message is the movie sending to little teeny boppers? Perhaps that Woman need men. That she needs a man. When the man disappears she goes ballistic, depressed, and suicidal. Na, that cant be the message, or can it? Hmmm?

It seemed like each speech was getting better and better. My very favorite was the last speech. This person talked about all the different type of Dracula’s. it seems like they’re a very fashionable statement. The Mayans, Aztecs, Britain, Ireland, and many other places have their own version of Dracula. In Weathering Heights there are suspects but no Dracula’s to be proven. Our author said that there are many different stories and authors all linked with vampires. After hearing the best stories about vampires I had ever heard in my life I managed to pick out my favorite by Ruben Diario. It’s called “el almuadon de plumas.” Brief summary here it goes. Healthy character. She all of a sudden becomes ill. Becomes severely ill. During this time of sickness our main character claims she sees things. Every night she starts having hallucinations, and they get worse and worse. Main character dies. After her funeral they’re going to clean up her sheets well her pillow is strangely heavy. Yup yup yup. They cut the pillow open and theres a creature inside the pillow so full of blood that it’s lost its shape. It is just a big fat blob full of blood. It killed our main character!!!!! How? It was a parasite found in birds that came inside the pillow. The pillow made of feathers :o shock! Here is the link to the vampire. Vampires can be considered parasites because they need a host to live of off.

I really really enjoyed going to this event. I could literally write at least five pages on the presentation I attended. My final thoughts are that it’s not good to be a female character in any vampire or vampire like novel BECAUSE they always get brutally murdered.