Young and Undead: On Child and Teen Vampire Movies

Images from Låt den rätte komma in/Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008 - above) and Let Me In (Matt Reeves, 2010)

Film Studies For Free loves a good vampire movie, like the two relatively unconventional examples of the genre pictured above. 

In fact, FSFF doesn't turn its nose up at bad vampire movies, either. Let's face it: this blog is just not that fussy when it comes to vampire movies.

Both kinds of films are represented below, in a fairly short, but terrifyingly good, list of scholarly and other online studies of the recent flourishing of teen and pre-teen varieties of undead cinema (along with their literary sources). 

Please note that the list does not dabble in studies of the televisual versions of the genre. For those, you could no better than to visit the complete archive of Slayage articles on, inter alia, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly.

• Stacey Abbott, 'Urban Vampires in American Films of the Eighties and Nineties, in Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Conference Proceedings Budapest, Hungary May 22-24 2003, ed. by Carla T. Kungl (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.Net, 2003) scroll to p. 133 
• Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, ' Contemplating the Franchise, the Fandom and the Celebrity Juggernaut of the Twilight Saga', In Media Res, July 2, 2010 
• Simon J. Bacon, 'Fangs for the memory': can the American cinematic vampire be equated with Pierre Nora's idea of the 'lieux de memoire' ? Masters thesis, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, 2009
• Courtney Brannon Donoghue, ' "Twilight is a license to print money": Selling the Female Film Franchise', June 30, 2010 
• Glennis Byron, '©Branding and Gothic in Contemporary Popular Culture: the case of Twilight', The Gothic Imagination, December 31, 2010
• Melissa Click, '“Rabid”, “obsessed”, and “frenzied”: Understanding Twilight Fangirls and the Gendered Politics of Fando', FlowTV, December 18, 2009
• Martin Fradley, 'Review of Contemporary Gothic, by Catherine Spooner', Journal of Transformative Works, Vol. 4, 2010
• Rebecca Housel, ' Eclipsing the "Real": Twilight & Simulacra', In Media Res, July 1, 2010
  
• Erich Kuersten, 'Someone to Fight Over Me: Feminism, SandM, and the Daemonic in Twilight', Bright Light Film Journal, 68, May 2010
• Stephanie Leach, 'Vampires Go to University: Academic Fads and the (Non)Future of the Humanities in the Neoliberal Academy', Graduate Student Essay, McMaster University, 2010 (Word Document) (published by Dr David L. Clarke)
• Benny LeMaster, 'Queer Imag(in)ing: Liminality as Resistance in Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In', Summer 2009
• Anders Marklund, 'Old fangs into new viewers: the American poster to Let the Right One In', Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 1.1, 2010
• Pramod Nayar, 'How to Domesticate a Vampire: Gender, Blood Relations and Sexuality in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight', Nebula, 7.3, September 2010
• Maggie Park, 'Twilight: The Multi-Media Marketing Machine', In Media Res, June 28, 2010
• Julia Pearlman, 'Happily (For)ever After: Constructing Conservative Youth Ideology in the Twilight Series', Senior Thesis, Wesleyan University, 2010
• Leonie Margaret Rutherford, 'Industries, Artsists, Friends and Fans: Marketing Young Adult Fictions Online', First Monday, Volume 14, Number 4 - 6 April 2009
• Matt Zoller Seitz, 'Scene of the Year: Let Me In', Salon.com, December 31, 2010
• Kirsten Stevens,'Meet the Cullens: Family, Romance, and Female Agency in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight', Slayage, 29, 8.1, Spring 2010
• Catherine Strong, '“...it sucked because it was written for teenage girls” — Twilight, anti-fans and symbolic violence', Papers of The Australian Sociological Association 2009 Annual Conference
• Natalie Wilson, ' Twilight Fandom: Taking a Bite Out of Gendered Backlash', In Media Res, June 29, 2010 
• Michael Wood, 'At the Movies: Let the Right One In', London Review of Books, 31.9, 2009 
• Rochelle Wright, 'Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs: Let the Right One In and genre hybridity', Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 1.1, 2010

Immaturity Abides! On Teen, "Gross Out" and Dumbass Comedy

Jonah Hill and Michael Cera in Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)

Film Studies For Free is two years old today. You go, blog!

In honour of its tentative entry into digital post-toddlerdom (and hopefully not the terrible twos), it wanted to celebrate online and openly accessible studies of what FSFF likes to think of (in its über-scholarly way) as those liminal film genres and cycles of comic immaturity, awkwardness, stupidity, and tastelessness -- that is to say, all varieties of the teen (or arrested development) comedy (including the "teen sex comedy", the "gross-out" comedy, comic "dude flicks" and "bromances"), as well as studies of related issues.

Today's scattershot links list is partly an offshoot of FSFF's recent entry on the romantic comedy, and partly its first experiment in "crowdsourcing" via its blossoming Facebook page. Thanks so much to those who suggested items there.

If anyone else has any bright ideas for further additions, do please 'fess up. FSFF earnestly promises that you won't be ritually humiliated, or mercilessly laughed at, at all  :o)

• Joseph Aisenberg, 'Here Come the Bromides: Living in the Era of the Bromantic Comedy', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009

• Peter Alilunas, 'Male Masculinity as the Celebration of Failure: the Frat Pack, Women, and the Trauma of "Victimization" in the "Dude Flick"', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Steven W. Bender, 'Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story on the Geography of Color and Colors', Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 12, 2009

• Nick Burns, 'Heathers: Scent of dominance', from Jump Cut, no. 36, May 1991, pp. 32-36

• Zachary Campbell, ‘"Sorry About All the Gravity!" Anna Faris, Serious Respect for the Unserious', Rouge, 13, 2009

• Isabel Sterling Clark, 'The Challenge of Being Yourself: Adaptation, Adolescence, and Disguise in Teenage Romantic Comedy Films of the Late 1990s and Early 2000s', Senior Thesis, Haverford College, 2009

• Evan Elkins, 'Great Job?: Tim and Eric’s Comedy of Failure', FlowTV, August 8, 2008

• Caroline Haggod, 'Bruno and Bromances: Modern Masculinity Goes to the Movies', The Huffington Post, March 10, 2010

• Peter Hutchings , 'Welcome to Royston Vasey: Grotesque bodies and the horror of comedy in The League of Gentlemen', Intensities 4, December 2007

• Carmen Induráin Eraso, 'Riding on divergent but similar roads: Airbag or the Spanish experience of the American Road Movie', Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2005, vol. 13, 107-121

• Ewan Kirkland, 'Romantic Comedy and the Construction of Heterosexuality', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Barbara Klinger, 'Say It Again, Sam: Movie Quotation, Performance and Masculinity', Particip@tions Volume 5, Issue 2 (November 2008)

• Zachary Lamm, 'The Cinematic Shrews of Teen Comedy: Gendering Shakespeare in Twentieth-Century Film', Genders On-Line, Issue 49, 2009

• Christina Lee, Beyond the Pink: (Post) Youth Iconography in Cinema, PhD Thesis, Murdoch University, 2005

• Christian Lorentzen, 'Dicking Around', N1FR Issue 1, August 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Notes on Quirky', MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism, 1.1, 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Knocked Up', Alternate Takes, November 14, 2007

• Gabrielle Moss, ' From the Valley to the Hellmouth: “Buffy”’s Transition from Film to Television', Slayage: A journal of Buffy Studies, 1.2 [2], 2001 

• Joshua Louis Moss, 'Historiography of the World Part 1: The Jewish Body, Historical Crisis and The Comedic Farce', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Scott Murray, '“Cameron Fry, this one’s for you.” Or: Why the Sausage King of Chicago Doesn’t Turn Up for Lunch at Chez Quis', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Diane Negra, "Where The Boys Are: Postfeminism and the New Single Man", FlowTV April 14, 2006

• Jakob Isak Nielsen, 'There's something about comedy theory', P.O.V. No.26, 2008

• Sharyn Pearce, 'Sex and the cinema: What American pie teaches the young', Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 6 (4) 2006: pp. 367-376

• Sina Rahmani, 'Hollywood and Diversity: Subversion, Apologetic, or Both? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Dir. Danny Leiner. New Line Cinema, 2004', Colloquy, 9, 2005

• Michael Joshua Rowin, 'I Love You, Man and the Apatow Comedy Factory', Reverse Shot, Issue 24, 2009

• Philip Scepanski, 'Out of the Mouths of Babes: Animated Sitcoms and Political Incorrectness', Mediascape, Fall 2008

• Ethan de Seife, 'Gremlins in the Mix', 16:9, 6.25, 2008

• Carter Soles, Falling Out of the Closet: Kevin Smith, Queerness, and Contemporary Independent Film. PhD Thesis, University of Oregon, September 2008

• Carter Soles, 'A Stalker's Odyssey: Arrested Development, Gay Desire, and Queer Comedy in Chuck and Buck', Jump Cut 49, Spring 2007

• Lesley Speed, 'A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling', Senses of Cinema, Vol. 22, 2002

• Scott F. Stoddart, 'Love and Death on Long Island (Dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1998)', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Donato Totaro, 'Screwballs: Teen Comedy Canadian Style', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 8, 2009

• Lisa Trahair, 'Comedy and Beyond: Geoff King's Film Comedy', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 15, 2004
  

• Eric King Watts and Mark P. Orbe , 'The Spectacular Consumption of “True” African American Culture: “Whassup” with the Budweiser Guys?', Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 1–20

• Cynthia Weber, '"Oi, Dancing Boy!" Masculinity, Sexuality, and Youth in Billy Elliot', Gender 37, 2003

• Jessica Winter, 'Knocked Up', Cinemascope, 31, 2008

Video Essay on The Big Lebowski, Kevin. B. Lee with Karina Longworth, March 2010

Concordia cinema studies resources freely accessible online

The woman at the window: image from Jane Campion's Bright Star (2009); a trope explored in Julianne Pidduck's PhD thesis on the costume film now accessible online

Film Studies For Free was excited to hear last week that Concordia University has launched its online Institutional Research Repository Spectrum, with 6,000 full-text theses and dissertations. It was excited because it knows that based at Concordia is the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of the Faculty of Fine Arts, the largest, university centre for the study of film animation, film production and film studies in Canada.

FSFF also specifically knew that highly significant Canadian scholars, such as Julianne Pidduck (now a professor at the Université de Montréal) and André Habib (also at the Université de Montréal) had produced graduate theses there.

So, it is delighted to bring you the below links to the fabulous (mostly) Film Studies thesis resources accessible via the repository, including ones by Pidduck on the costume film (and also on contemporary film noir), Habib's brilliant francophone thesis on Jean-Luc Godard, and great work by other (now) well-known scholars such as Liz Czach.

• Babineau, Dan (2003) Stairs in cinema : a formal and thematic investigation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Ballantyne Tree, Tanya (1989) Formative evaluation of a documentary film on the effects of poverty on a Montreal family. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Bambic-Workman, Helen (1986) Development and evaluation of an instructional manual concerning the Nagra 4.2 film sound tape recorder. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Baric, Stephanie (2001) Yugoslav war cinema : shooting a nation which no longer exists. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Bird, Charles (1979) The making of 8mm film loops. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Black, Joel Elan (2003) 'Arrested for selling poetry!' or 'You wouldn't want your children reading this' : the historical significance of the "Howl" obscenity trial. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Boudreault-Fournier, Alexandrine (2003) Manufacturing culture in Cuba, an ethnography. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Brook, Glenn Leonard (2002) Canada, a people's history : an analysis of the visual narrative for a colonial nation. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Bruce, Jean Marietta (2003) A melodramatic imagined nation : the unruly subject of Canadian cinemas. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Castiel, Élie (2003) Pour une esthétique du plan-séquence dans Le Voyage des comédiens de Theo Angelopoulos. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Chang, Sandra (2003) Children's pretend play with television and film-scripted character toys. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Cheryl., Dabreo-Ramharack (1998) Uplifting The Black Race - only males need apply : Black male militancy in Malcom X, Panther, Boyz n' the hood, and Get on the bus. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Clarke, Jocelyne (1989) Moving peripheries and marginal cultures : cinema and the "Dark Continent". Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Curcin, Nikola R (1983) Investing in Canadian feature films : production and evaluation of a video-tape for potential investors. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Czach, Elizabeth (2000) Home movies then and now. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• D'Amboise, Paul (2002) "Tinseltown as teacher" : a case study of historical feature films as interpretive sources of history within an educational context. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Dancsok, Michael (1998) Transcending the documentary : the films of Arthur Lipsett. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• De B'béri, Boulou Ebanda (2003) Africanicity in Black cinema : a horizontal labyrinth of trans-geographical practices of identity. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Deschamps, Lisa Anne (2002) The effects of popular culture on youth sub-culture and how it plays a role in the school environment. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Dorland, Michael (1991) The discursive economy of the emergence of the Canadian feature film : discourses of dependency and the governmentalization of a displaced national cinema, 1957-1968. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Dufour, Marianne (2000) Through the looking glass : the therapeutic potential of videotaping as an adjunct tool in non directive art therapy in an object relations perspective. Other thesis, Concordia University.
• Egan, Catherine M (1973) Films for art programmes at the secondary level. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Frigon, Martin (2003) La fonction historique de la figure du patriote dans le cycle abitibien de Pierre Perrault. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Gasher, Mike (1999) The Grey Fox meets Jumanji : the emergence of the feature-film industry in British Columbia. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Gilbert, Sylvie (2000) Sortir de table : les performances alimentaires de Carmen Miranda, Louise Mercille et des religieuses du Moyen Âge. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Gupta, Dipti (1998) Confronting the challenge of distribution : women documentary filmmakers in India. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Habib, André (2001) Origine et fin : Méthode(s). À partir et autour des Histoire(s) du cinéma de Jean-Luc Godard. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Jaafar, Nisrine (2001) The blue flame and the red flame: love and eroticism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Jordan, Randolph (2003) Starting from scratch : turntables, auditory representation, and the structure of the known universe in the films of David Lynch. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Katadotis, Katina (1995) Quebec's Cinema act : policy and practical perspectives. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Keightley, Keir (1996) Frank Sinatra, hi-fi, and formations of adult culture : gender, technology, and celebrity, 1948-62. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Kolomeir, Harriet T (1987) The neighbourhood movie house in Montreal, 1925-1929 : the harmonious whole. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Kristmanson, Mark (1999) Plateaus of freedom : nationality, culture and state security in Canada, 1927-1957. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Laakso, Hanna Maria (2002) DOGMAtic iconoclasm : performative aspects of realism and excess in Lars von Trier's Breaking the waves and The idiots. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Marsh, Susan (2003) As easy as 1,2,4-- : the space of ambiguity in art and teaching. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• McKee, Tracey L (2000) Good girls do it too! : a look at the representation of women who kill in made-for-TV movies. Masters thesis, Concordia University
• McLeish, Anna (2003) To recycle is to author is to create is to recycle : transitory film authorship, from popular European cinema to post-new Hollywood cinema. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Moen, Kristian (2001) "About as shapeless as the Man in the Moon" : the representation of desire and transition in six films of Charles Laughton. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Nagy, Judy (1996) Home grown remedies : in-house innovation in the film-making industry. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Nichols, Robert Darcey (2003) From monuments to cinema : the question of the counter-monument in two works by Mark Lewis. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Pidduck, Julianne (1997) Intimate places and flights of fancy : gender, space, and movement in contemporary costume drama. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Pidduck, Julianne (1993) The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir : reframing gender, violence, and power. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Pinsonneault, Michael (1999) Social dimensions of Hollywood movie music. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Preville, Philip (1997) The effort to forget : collective memory and documentary film in Québec. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Primeau, François (2001) Enquête sur la représentation de la masculinité et la Méthode dans le cinéma états-unien des années mille neuf cent soixante-dix : vers une nouvelle conception de l'acteur cinématographique. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Pycock, Elizabeth (1992) Memory and anger : teen films and the female body. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Read, Robert J (2003) The film noir collection and the legacy of nineteenth century modernity. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Ryan, Cyril (1996) Black movie : five picture deal to make gun movies. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Schyngera, Wes (1993) Experiencing media : the resonance of post(modern) culture. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Shalinsky, Bernard (1977) Multi-sensory exploration of the natural environment : production and evaluation of a super 8 film-based videotape. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Simon, Cheryl Inez (1998) Gender, genre and globalization : discourses of "Femininity" in the popular culture of the 1990's. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Sinkinson, Susan (1999) The self as "other" : accessing issues of difference in Trinh T. Minh-Ha's Reassemblage. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Smith, Donna Lee (1989) Mombasa days : a feature-length film script. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Smith, Matthew (1996) Introducing a new medium : newspaper reviews of the first film screenings in Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto and New York in 1896. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Spivak, Robert (1991) Christopher Durang : satire and beyond. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Stober, JoAnne (2001) That's not what I heard : synchronized sound cinema in Montreal 1926-1931. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Stoianova, Christina (1999) The Eastern European crisis of self-knowledge (1948-1989) : the relationship between state and society as reflected in Eastern European film : a genre approach. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Suchet, Simone (1994) Le cinéma rural et la société italienne des années soixante-dix : représentations idéologiques et impuissance politique : étude sur Novecento de Bernardo Bertolucci, Padre, padrone de Paolo et Vittorio Taviani, [et] l'Albero degli zoccoli de Ermanno Olmi. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
• Verma, Tina (1999) Re-imagining multiculturalism : how newness enters the world. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Weir, Jodi (1999) Performing gender : transgenderism as critique. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Zhou, Hao (2003) Application of 3D facial animation techniques for Chinese opera. Masters thesis, Concordia University.
• Zielinski, Ger (1996) Towards the "Utopie film" : aspects of Adorno's thought in Alexander Kluge's antagonistic concept of realism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.