Growing Up Vampire

My little munchkinhead grew up convinced she was a vampire.  I still remember the first time she bit me.  Waddled in on her little legs, chomped down on my hip, and waddled back out.  Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t believe me until I showed them the bleeding teeth marks.  She was two.  Today, she’s twenty-two.

Munchkinhead.  My pretty little munchkinhead.  She’s a senior in college now.  She’s been around the world, lived on three different continents, spent weeks on a fourth – she’s still trying to get to Antarctica – and she is still in love with vampires.  Though I think she’s stopped biting people.  Maybe…

They say the best way to be happy is to make your passion your job.  Well, Munchkinhead ought to be very happy, because she’s done just that.  Her senior capstone paper, the big, long paper she has to write in order to graduate is about, you guessed it, vampires.  Not just any old vampires.  Her paper is specifically about the roles of females in ‘60s era American and British vampire films. 

For the past couple days, I’ve been helping Munchkinhead with proofreading her draft.  In addition to having lots of vampire-filled nightmares, I’m also really impressed.  Despite the fact that it is a pretty feminist paper, it’s really good.

I don’t think I’ve read a paper of Munchkinhead’s since her If You Give a Mouse a Cookie-styled essay from freshman year of high school.  That was cute.  This is better than cute.  This is a well-written, thought-out paper that uses examples to illustrate a point.  And, best of all, it’s interesting.  A sneak peek:

[Marianne's] reaction to [Van Helsing’s] suggestion is not one of fright but of gladness to be rid of her horrible fate, once again allowing and needing a male to intervene on her behalf putting males in the dominating role. This was especially important for Hammer[A1] during the early 1960’s and late 1950’s because the Cinema audiences were changing from families to young male teenagers, and so Hammer began to orientate their movies toward a certain age group of one gender leaving the other gender under [A2] developed.[1] This male dominated role continued though the 1960’s in other Hammer films and in a few American films. Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Blood of Dracula’s Castle are two such films.[2]

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[1] Barta, Tony. Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History. Westport: Preager, 1998. P.122 and 111

[2] Blood of Dracula’s Castle. Directed by Al Adamson and Jett Hewitt. Produced by Paragon International Pictures. 1969

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Now, don’t get me wrong.  It’s not perfect.  This girl still needs to learn the difference between “then” and “than”.  And for someone who hates run-on sentences, she sure hasn’t befriended enough commas.  But, it’s on its way to being a really amazing paper.  About vampires!  Maybe if you ask nicely, she’ll let you read the whole thing.

Perhaps someday Munchkinhead will find the perfect job as curator at a vampire museum in Scotland.  In the meantime, keep enjoying those vampire films and,…

Happy Birthday Munchkinhead

 

 

 

Even as a pirate she has vampire fangs, gold vampire fangs.

 

If you click on Munchkinhead’s link in the toy box, you’ll see lots of vampire pictures and get more vampire stories, like The Not-So-Little Vampire.