LSU graduate students contribute to Dracula sourcebook

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By Colleen McKinney

Vampires are hot right now. From the "Twlight" saga, "True Blood" and "The Vampire Diaries," vampires are taking over the television airways and the bookstore shelves. One LSU graduate student is taking the trend to a new level by composing a book that attempts to catalogue the sources of the OG vampire, Dracula.

John Edgar Browning, LSU Ph.D. student in the English department, is working alongside author Caroline Joan Picart to create "Dracula: The Sourcebook, A Guide to Film and Television, Comic Books and Video Gaming." The book is to be published in 2010 by McFarland, according to an article released by the LSU Website.

"This work is the largest of its kind because it has catalogued over 1000 films, television programs, documentaries, adult features, animations, comic books, video games and theatrical titles in which Dracula, or his likeness, is featured," Browning stated.

Browning and his associates waded through over "700 [film and media] citations," along with 1000 comic book titles alone that all share, in some aspect, "the 'Dracula' cinema myth."

"Dracula: The Sourcebook" is divided into four sections: Dracula in Film, Television, Documentary and Animation Filmography, Dracula Adult Filmography, Dracula Comic Bibliography and Dracula Video Gamography, according to LSU's Web site.

Mitch Frye, the writer of the introduction to the Comic Bibliography sections, wrote, ". . . Stoker's Dracula would continue to impact the fictional lives of Marvel superheroes for years to come. Characters from Spider-Man to Captain Britain have since battled the likes of Count Dracula and Morbius in the comics, and Marvel has preserved these stories within its continuity canon."

Browning also noted, "Several prominent figures in Dracula studies have contributed to its completion." Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker - the former's great grandnephew, David J. Skal, Ian Holt, Robert Eighteen-Bisang and J. Gordon Melton, all forces in the world of Dracula studies, contributed their works to the book. Browning's goal with the sourcebook "is to expose this vastly familiar, yet largely underestimated body of work" of the most "emulated... character in horror."

Browning explained why societies have been and still are fascinated by vampires, especially Dracula.

"Dracula is inextricably like the genre he parented, for he too, like horror, cannot be encapsulated...nor is he restricted to national or geographical borders," Browning stated. "We have encoded [Dracula] with our politics. Dracula is an amalgam of social fears and desires."

"The recent vampire surge... we've been seeing reflects our society's transformation from predominantly conservative ideologies towards more progressively liberal ones," Browning said, referring to the media takeover of vampires.

He makes an example of "True Blood," the HBO vampire juggernaut inspired by Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series, which is set in Louisiana. Browning points out that in the show, monogamous heterosexual relationships are looked down upon, "even laughed at," partially due to overtly sexual vampires and "fangbangers," humans who seek sexual relations with vampires.

"What we define as 'monstrous' or 'deviant' is never static," Browning added.

So, for all you Twi-hards and self-proclaimed fangbangers out there, this might be a great addition for your bookshelf. If you have room between your Edward Cullen fan fiction, of course.

Originally Published: Issue 823 - November 11, 2009

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