Men with Teeth: Portraits of Vampires and Masculinity in Mexican and Russian FilmOctober 27, 2023 at 3–5 p.m.
Depictions of the male vampire in film have varied wildly from the first terrifying vision of otherness in聽Nosferatu聽(1922) to a romanticized, homoerotic portrait in聽Interview with the Vampire聽(1994) and, more recently, to the feminized, 鈥渟parkly鈥 reluctant revenants in the聽Twilight聽saga (2008-2012). In each case, the vampire offered viewers a snapshot of evil and men in their respective time, offering viewers insight to how men envisioned their relationship to death. This presentation focuses on two disparate cultural representations of the vampire in film, Russian and Mexican, to offer a cultural comparison of how the universal frame of the vampire is used to portray images of masculinity in their respective worlds in late 20th聽and early 21st聽centuries. Specifically, it suggests that the image of the vampire comments directly on the inherent relationship men have to their own masculinity within the social constraints of their cultures.
