Vampyren i populärromanen - En kulturanalytisk studie av två vampyrromaner utifrån teorier kring död och sexualitet i vår samtid

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how contemporary attitudes towards death and sexuality is made visible and connected in the vampire novels Interview with the Vampire and Dead Until Dark. The aim is to investigate why the vampire novel has reached today’s amount of popularity and if it can be explained by theories of death and sexuality in modern society and in popular culture. The most important theories in this examination are Zygmunt Bauman’s theories about modern society, Jean Baudrillard’s thoughts about death in the postmodernity and Michel Foucault’s studies regarding sexuality in the Western societies. The conclusion presented is that sexuality and death are well connected in the examined novels and in popular culture as a whole and death’s popularity in popular culture could be a result of repressed emotions regarding death and sorrow, which can be helped by us working on handle death more visibly and with higher regard.