What you will be doing---
In light of reading one of the two handouts, and because this week begins October, your subject will be "Halloween," "All Hallows Eve," "Hallowe'en," or however you would like to refer to the holiday that October represents. What you need to do is create something (image, images, whatever) that represents this holiday BUT you must also incorporate something from the reading (this means I will be looking for evidence you have actually read it). This subject is broad, and you should respond to it as such---meaning you don't need to think of it in traditional terms. I want you to be creative so do not be cliche, in other words, think outside the box for this assignment.
You can't use images you find on the web, so you can't simply copy and paste something into a powerpoint slide and call it done. You need to create, design, and work with your own stuff. You can use words, but images should also be a part of this journal. Make sure you can open the image b/c if I can't you won't get credit.
Additionally, I want a 5 sentence (or more) explanation for your creation: how/why does this represent both the reading and Halloween (be specific---use the reading to support this!), how/why is it uncliche, and where does knowledge fit in with this type of assignment (was knowledge created, explored, re-envisioned)?
**Please respond to ALL questions.
This is due by Thursday, September 30 by 9:30 am or it will be considered late.
Have fun with the journal, and I look forward to seeing what you create!
The reading explains how the appearance of vampires was used to explain mysterious deaths (that were most likely caused by a disease) as well as commenting on the fact that while many people associate bats with vampires, they are “unimportant in the folklore” and serve no real purpose in the stories (which is why they are crossed out in the Glog). People used vampires to explain the unexplainable, such as why a body would groan when already dead, or why a body failed to decompose. People ultimately invented reasons to be afraid of “nothing less than death itself.”
ReplyDeleteIn order to convey the idea of Halloween I used a dark background with hints of red (since red is “related to the undead”). I tried to stick with the theme of virus/bacteria as a vampire because in a sense, it was. The idea of the vampire sprang forth from the idea of an invisible killer. At that time, “death…was thought to be passed around, not viruses and bacteria.”
I felt the revelation of bacteria as the “real vampire” was one of the key points of the reading and tried to re-create that in my Glog. I tried to focus the reader’s eye on the “vampire amoeba” to take away from the cliché vampire themes of blood, sex, and power. Overall, I believe the knowledge that disease was the true cause for fear and that folklore surfaced from the inability to explain death was properly conveyed by the Glog.
http://skb08d.glogster.com/vampire-glog/
http://alissamargaret.glogster.com/Real Vampires/
ReplyDeleteThe chose to read the article about the vampires, because I think they're much more interesting than zombie's are. I think my Glog represents the reading because what I took from it, the folklore definition of a vampire pretty much would mean that all college students today would end up being considered "vampires". I determined this because to folklore tales, vampires tended to be people considered "unworthy" and one kind of unworthy person was someone who drank. Using this idea, I made a kind of collage of different parties and things I've been to--from my 21st birthday to some parties over the summer--to show that pretty much everyone our age would probably fit the standard of a vampire. I don't think it's a cliche because they're all real and they're all actual people at parties. In order to give it the flair of Halloween I added a Gothic background to the Glog. I guess that the knowledge was kind of reinvisioned for this assignment because I tried to take the folklore legend and put it in today's society standards.
After reading both the Barber article on The Real Vampire and the Del Guerico article about The Secrets of Haiti's Living Dead, I decided to make my journal about the latter. I found this article far more interesting than the legend of the vampires in that the process of zombification is much more recent than the origins of the legend of vampirism and the potential for zombies to exist today is still present. As with the vampire article, science has evolved and people are aware of post-mordem activity in the body. Yet, in the present day, when one sees one buried and they believe the person to be dead, seeing that person alive again is entirely shocking and bizarre.
ReplyDeletehttp://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l128/altreagle/zombiefish.jpg
This picture, which I edited on picnik, was of my trip to a beach back home this past summer. I edited it to make the waters more eerie and a slight mist lingers over the sand and water. While the eerie theme may seem cliche, I believe that since the picture is of a beach and the additional graphics and words advise against zombie fish, the image is not cliche. Along the same lines, since it is still eerie, it represents Halloween, but the allusion to the fish from the article, the fugu fish that assisted in the cause of zombification, is a humorous take on the idea that a fish causes one to be a zombie.
I chose to read the Del Guerico article, since I didn't care to hear any more about vampires thanks to a certain Stefanie Meyers. =) Anyway, in the article, zombies are looked on with a strictly scientific light, though no biases are kept in regard to the Haitian religion of Vodoun. I found it very interesting that a paste or powder, made entirely from plant and animal parts, could put someone in to a death-like trance. Actually, now that I think of it, it isn't SO unbelievable, but still interesting.
ReplyDeletehttp://s763.photobucket.com/albums/xx271/mbd09d/?action=view¤t=ENC3416Blog7Halloween.jpg&newest=1
For my image, I decided to present the "formula" for zombification. Like DJ's, mine might lean towards the cliche with the dark graveyard as a background, but I think it's effective in conveying the idea of Halloween. For the "ingredients" of zombification I used the Vodoun symbol for the snake deity, a puffer (or fugu) fish (from which the tetrodotoxin is derived), several animal ingredients ("toads, sea worms, lizards, tarantulas, and human bones"), and a mortar and pestle. These are all combined to make the powder (which Davis pretended to rub on his skin to trick the voodoo sorcerer who had sold it to him), hence the Vana White-esque women rubbing her arm. These then put the victim in to a death-like trance, reminiscent of our poor, beloved Aurora (a.k.a. Sleep Beauty), which is NOT EQUAL TO our popular and exceedingly fictitious depiction of zombies as decayed corpses rising from the dead, hungry for human flesh. I mean, seriously, they weren't cannibals before. Why the sudden change?
http://aliciadeer.glogster.com/Zombies/
ReplyDeleteAfter reading about this Narcisse's transformation of people from normal to the living dead, I had a hard time believing it wasn't science-fiction. I thought it was interesting that by combining five key ingredients you could strip a man of his freedom and free-will. Although, with the advances in science and medicine, I see that there's little limit to what sort of damage man-kind is capable of doing to itself.
This glog is supposed to have a "ghoulish" feel to it, in the spirit of Halloween. It's a bit cryptic and I wouldn't advertise as kid-friendly (because of the undertones of death) but is supposed to satirically approach the work of Narcisse with the small poem. I think that it's originality lies in the lack of Halloween decor, while still conveying a the demented, real-life appeal of zombies.
I read the article The Real Vampire by Paul Barber. In my glog i chose to recognize some things that are usually associated with vampires are death. I specifically used bats at the top of my glog as they are definitely associated with vampires therefore i used them as a purpose to show what is associated, but not always real and the truth. The article really opens your eyes as to what is associated with the holiday Halloween and how death, coming back to life and drinking blood are all associated with the well known vampire from Europe. I wanted my glog to have a feeling of unease about it, therefore the quote "footsteps walking over your grave." I want people to feel like these vampires lurk around areas of death and that they are especially around once you are dead
ReplyDeletehttp://char9136.glogster.com/Glog-505/
ReplyDeleteFor my image I choose to work from Del Guercio’s article “The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead”. Throughout the article Del Guercio discusses how zombies are perceived in Haitian culture. I believe the acceptance of zombies in Haiti is very un-cliché itself, seeing most would assume tales involving zombies to be fiction. My image itself is of a zombie trick or treating which is different than most images we hold of zombies. Normally we associate the living dead wondering aimlessly and attacking people. Seeing that zombies are so accepted throughout Haitian culture, I decided to draw one going to door to door on Halloween as though it was the norm and edit it similar to that of a newspaper comic. To incorporate the role of voodoo in the history of zombies, the zombie notes that all is fine because his father is a voodoo doctor.
ReplyDeletehttp://i744.photobucket.com/albums/xx87/zackhadeed268/Zombies2.jpg
http://jocelynrapp.glogster.com/voodoo/
ReplyDeleteBefore starting my glog, I really enjoyed the intro to Wade Davis' The Serpent and the Rainbow, and his discovery of 'zombies.' I wanted to do present some of those ideas so I included some things like the chemical formula for tetrodotoxin bordering a sleeping voodoo doll, a symbol relatable of that culture. I tried very hard not to be cliche or too Halloweeny with this assignment. The words are short and sweet but to the point, 'no one will hear you scream,' a warning to the next unfortunate soul to be placed under the spell of the deadly toxin. "beware of the voodoo zombies," like I said, straight to the point.
http://krissyzam.glogster.com/vampglog/
ReplyDeleteI did the Paul Barber reading, which I found amusing at some of the folklore and how it has been twisted into the cliches we know today. One he mentioned how alcoholics were vampires. Also how vampires weren't pale but "tan and rosie" and that it was said in "Romania there is a belief that a bat can transform a corpse into a vampire by flying over it" (426). So I made a glog with funny things that wern't cliche and touched on these things. Apparently..I'm a vampire. Enjoy the glog everyone! :)
http://gmg09.glogster.com/vampires/
ReplyDeleteThe reading, I thought was very interesting. It kind of went back to the history of how vampires came to be, and what people used to believe was real. It may have sounded far fetched to us now, being that we have all this technology, but really back then it seemed like pretty legitamite claims. I chose to go with kind of a vampires throughout history thing, because I do feel like the impact of Hollywood, as well as the society we currently live in now have a lot to say in regards to how we want these creatures to look like. The reading talks about the traditional vampire being kind of red skinned (from "sucking blood") and being a "plump Slavic fellow...a stubbly beard, his mouth and left eye open...he would look for all the world like a disheveled peasant." This is far from what we generally picture today. However, the Dracula in the middle, is the transition that first occured when it was created into Hollywood, and he has darker hair, is clean shaven, and very well kept. This, in comparison to the modern day vampire, who has a more casual, sexy look, is kind of the evolution of it all. The vampires purpose and impact on the audience has also changed. With the first one, the audience was much more frightened of these vampires who would cause havoc, from killing people, to being charged for their dry cows. While, with the modern vampire (in this case, my attempt at drawing Eric) is more in tune with sexual desires and his ability to satisfy his cravings by drinking blood, as opposed to just killing his victim. The first vampire also has blood on his shirt which was thought by the villagers to be the blood from his victims, but in reality was just the blood being expelled from the decomposing body. It's also an interesting point, to note the differences between the first and last vampires. While the first one is kind of a unappealing form to look at, and the last is very appealing, the middle one looks sort of fictional. At least the other two can be seen as ordinary men, in a way, but Dracula looks too made up (just thought I'd throw that in there). While some of the images may be cliche, I decided that showing the evolution of it wouldnt, since we typically see the Dracula version of it. I thought I'd add the blood splatters against the black background because the reading talks about red being the color of the "undead" and it kind of goes with Halloween. The spiders I thought gave it more of that holiday feel, and I did have a picture I drew of a carved turnip (the original jack o lantern from the Celtic holiday...yes I did my research) but it looked awkward with the other images, so I left it out.
My blog represents both the reading and Halloween. Well it represents Halloween in being a dark spooky picture. People mostly want to see something unusual, out of the norm and spooky for Halloween and I think my glog accurately portrays this. I also included some of the more common Halloween animal motifs and colors. For this blog I read “The Real Vampire” and I think that my glog accurately represents the reading because they talk about the original vampire in folktales. How the vampires were not the pretty seductive vampires we know of today, so I made my picture reflect some of the things Barber talked about. The bat which is associated with vampires is present but off in the corner and smaller because as mentioned in the article it didn’t show up in the stories until a later date. I also liberally used the colors red and black and a few tombstones to show that their ‘vampires’ did not live in mansions waiting for young women to prey on. The corpse guy at the bottom is my vampire and I gave him a little bit of a reddish tone because the article talks about the shin turning a reddish color as the body starts to decay, and that is exactly what is happening. My vampire is a decaying body that someone has exhumed to make sure that he isn’t a vampire.
ReplyDeleteMy picture is not cliché because I didn’t stick to a coffin, or the colors orange and black, I don’t have a lot of bats and my vampire does not have fangs or blood dripping down his face.
Knowledge in this type of assignment is re-envisioned. I think that we all have an idea in our heads of what Halloween and vampires are to us and they mostly center around the more cliché motifs. For this assignment I had to think outside the box, on how to show Halloween and vampires and have people understand what I am referring to and stay outside of the realm of cliché.
http://kitty161.glogster.com/The Real Vampire ADR/
http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/02e5453561
ReplyDeleteI read the article about zombies and found it really entertaining and interesting. The zombification process and the “zombie drug” are strange, but it was intriguing to read a zombie story that skipped the gore and told the truth. According to Wade Davis, the drug makes its victim in a “trance-like” state. My slideshow shows the zombification process in real life. The first few pictures show people sleeping at random times. The next two pictures are of my friend and of her dog, both half-sleeping half-awake, looking rather zombie like (the pup is sleeping with her eyes open). The last picture is of a real-life TV zombie. The first set of pictures represents the dead part of being a zombie, and the latter serve to personify full zombie-ness.
http://kem07d.glogster.com/katiemancinihalloweeeeen/
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the vampires reading I did not expect such a factual reading with a historical background. I have never read Twilight, although I did enjoy the movies, so I was expecting more of a story than a historical account. The story of them putting a stake in a man 40 days exhumed, while he groaned is something that made me think about how there are vampire "tall tales" just like Paul Bunyon. This reading was very different than what I am used to but I really enjoyed learning about this vampire culture, and this assignment was very fun too!
I chose to use these images for a few different reasons. The vampire fangs, of course, are because I read the vampires reading. The text in my image was inspired by the reading, I really liked the word, "paranoia" as many of us sort of have this feeling of eerie-ness on halloween night, "this will be the year something happens". Also had a paraphrase from the reading (less than 4 consecutive words) coming from the fangs to give them a purpose so they didnt seem cliche. I used a headstone on the lips to resemble "the kiss of death".
http://js2008.glogster.com/Vamp/
ReplyDeleteIn my Glog I tried to incorporate a few elements from the article "The Real Vampire" into an incredibly simple story or dialogue between two village peasants. I used pictures from a trip I took to Eastern Europe and just stuck to red and black as the main color scheme because it relates to vampires and therefore Halloween.
I would say that my Glog is uncliche because it doesn't take on a modern interpretation of the vampire, just like the article. It was mentioned that a typical vampire of 18th century Europe would look like a regular peasant, maybe a little plump and with life-like coloring. Unlike the portrayals we see today. So, I tried to allude to "the real vampire's" ordinary appearance with the old woman's question.
For me personally after reading the article I think new knowledge was created through a re-vision of what I previously believed. Before reading the article I knew villagers held different beliefs about supernatural things than we do today. However, I didn't know that villagers thought that bad people had the potential to return as a vampire, or that just from an animal passing over a grave a person could return as a vampire. I agree with the article that people who had no scientific knowledge of why people were dying in droves or dead bodies could make sounds would try to rationalize strange phenomena by any possible means.
There has been an over abundance of vampires in popular culture lately so I chose to mix things up and read the article about zombies. The article describes how Harvard biologists went to Haiti looking for the toxins used in what Haitians referred to as zombification. Their search paid off when a voodoo priest who shared the authentic formula with them. My poster creates knowledge because it shows a list of the ingredients required for the zombification toxin. These ingredients are pulled directly from the article and situated on a poster advertising alternative afterlife options. The design of the poster is reminiscent of Halloween with it’ reference to zombification and the dark red background, yet it is uncliche because I used funny images on the items tags and a cat voodoo priest to lighten the mood. Overall I thought this article was interesting because I never knew there was a factual base behind the zombie myths.
ReplyDeletehttp://meggnetic.glogster.com/ZombificationShopping List/
http://forevrevanescnt.glogster.com/the-real-vampire-halloween/
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Barber's article on The Real Vampire, it was very reminiscent of my Slavic Vampire class where we discussed the various origins, legends, and versions of vampires and lycanthorpes. For past generations the appeal of vampires was in being able to explain the unexplained. Illness, famine, and sudden deaths were easily brushed off as the doings of the evil, living dead. At the time there was no official knowledge of how a body behaved after death, and often normal deomposition processes were mistaken for blood-sucking symptoms.
For my representation I chose a natural look with the trees,the color scheme may have been slightly cliche but it was made more interesting by the stylized format. I went with simplicity because to much going on would have detracted from the over all effect. The grave is made into a joke by the addition of a speech bubble representing the "sigh" thought to have escaped the lips of Paole's corpse. I decided to use the common RIP found on headstones as the basis for the little lyric blurb that explains the true nature of vampirism.
http://jed07e.glogster.com/zombie glog/
ReplyDeleteone way this creation represents halloween is that this photo was actually taken on halloween last year while carving a pumpkin - the main staple of halloween, accentuated in the photo. the overall look of the picture is pretty spooky (red eyes and green zombie skin!). i included a voodoo doll to represent the haitian voodoo practices that created the zombie myth (if it is a myth at all...). the spiders and worm are included as ingredients to the mysterious poison davis was after (a blowfish wasn't real easy to work with), and the ball and chain is attached to the poison that made its consumers into slaves.
this glog is not a halloween cliche at all, especially as it is an original, unstaged photo. the only standard halloween symbols are the pumpkin and the spiders, both of which are being used alternatively to the norm. the spiders are part of the poison, and the pumpkin, well, its not exactly in standard jock-o-lantern form. this creation is knowledge re-envisioned. i took the knowledge i aquired from the reading as well as my pre-existing judgements of "halloween" and tried to combine them in a new and oringinal way.
I choose to design a creation based on The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead because vampires do not interest me at all. The glogster that I created shows the elements of what it takes to create the zombie potion/formula. Normally when you first think of a zombie the image that most of us imagine is that of a mutated creature running around. However, the Haitian zombie seems more to be like a person put under a deep sleep, mistaken for death. The background image of the red splatter I used is some what cliché but I wanted to us it to tie in the whole scary Halloween aspect. The clock next to the sleeping woman is supposed to represent that it is only a matter of time before she wakes up. The voodoo doll in the corner ties in the stereotypical idea that is associated with afterlife culture in Haiti. With this assignment I feel knowledge was envision because in order to create this image because I took knowledge I obtained from the reading with knowledge I already had of Halloween.
ReplyDeletehttp://katharinareekmans.glogster.com/haitianzombie/
The image I created represents both the reading and Halloween because both the dark moonlit background and "zombified" person give off that creepy feeling most Halloween images do. As the reading by Guercio explains, zombies are simply creations of the Hatian culture. So, I used this image from Halloween '09 (not cliche because it is an image I took myself) of my friend made-up as a zombie, by the make-up artist, me. The reading also explains that being "poisoned" into being a zombie is something that was a consequence of bad actions. While my friend wasn't made-up into a zombie as a punishment, he made a choice and expressed it to me, so as a result I made him into a zombie. Similar concepts. This reading really opened my eyes to not only the realness of zombies, but the culture of a country so foreign to me. The dark background of my image represents the obscurity and lack of knowledge of the Hatian culture, and zombies as a whole.
ReplyDeletehttp://janobanano.glogster.com/Glog-2805/
http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f309/Feliciani/?action=view¤t=VampireCheerleaders.jpg
ReplyDeleteI chose to take a non-scary, everyday person/thing (cheerleaders) and twist it to make it a Halloween figure, in this case a vampire. I edited the photo on Picnik. It goes along with the reading because Barber talked a lot about how the vampires we see in horror stories/films are much different than the original "real" vampires. He called these real vampires "vampir" and that it also what I put in my picture. For a lot of girls, cheerleaders represent the "it" crowd. The "popular" girls that always cut eachother down... So here they are in their true form...
I chose to read The Real Vampire article. This article focused on the coming about of vampires, and how they have changed through time. Part of what struck me with this topic was how abstract and scary vampires used to be versus how they are today. With all the hype of Twilight and True Blood, vampires have become an icon rather than a fear. What’s funny though, is when you relate vampires to another seemingly Halloween type of figure: witches, the results are vastly different. Witches have been abstract to many people for quite a while, and they have not really changed in that respect. With the Salem Witch Trial and all of the accusations of people being witches, witches have been portrayed as a bad thing. In my opinion, its hard to determine a distinct difference between how evil one character is compared to another. They both have evil capacity, and they both have at one point been frowned upon in society. I wanted to portray what it would be like if vampires were still “shunned” today from society through my picture.
ReplyDeletehttp://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad334/kimiholowiak/wepo-1.jpg