To keep this blog entry centered on the vampire romance novel theme, an interesting vlog that I “randomly” discovered on YouTube (well, as random as it gets when you’re searching out vampire related material to put into your own post!) is titled “The Truth About Vampires,” staring self-confessed teenage vampire (more on that later), Heather Campbell.
Upon first glance, Heather appears to be framing this particular vlog entry as a sort of response to, or perhaps impersonation of, a specific piece of current, popular youth culture; the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. However, after viewing some of her additional vlog entires, it became clear to me that Heather has a much more complex, and arguably critical, purpose driving her unique vlogging habits… In her first vlog entry, Heather explicitly states that she has created a vlog to “answer some questions about being a vampire.” She then posts her email address, and explicitly invites curious viewers to submit questions answering just that; what it’s like to be a vampire. Instead of Heather self-selecting vampire-related topics to vlog about, she then uses these viewer-submitted questions to frame each individual vlog entry. Sans the initial weirdness, Heather's vlog is an extremely unique example of Web2.0 tools affording the exact type of collaborative creation we have been discussing in class. And Heather must be doing something right, because this particular vlog has recorded 353,077 views!
With the overall teenage vampire persona that she has created, as well as the types of questions that she requests her viewers to submit for her expert teenage vampire consideration, Heather is clearly appealing to her young, teenage peers who are similarly invested in the current vampire craze. To support her character and prove to her viewers that she is an “authority” on the subject, Heather carefully modifies her physical appearance (e.g., black clothing, black eyeliner, pale complexion) to look as much like a vampire (at least how the Twilight portrays teenage vampires) as possible. The viewer can also tell that Heather is appealing to her teenagers peers as she swears constantly; a behavior that many adolescents pass through as they explore and “try on” different identities. Er… different vampire identities. Although Heather utilizes very simple camera shots and editing techniques in her vlog, the extreme close up and low lighting conditions do a wonderful job of emphasizing the aforementioned physical features that reveal her as a vampire; her clothing looks darker, and her skin looks paler.
Lastly, what is perhaps MOST interesting about this vlog entry is the way that Heather approaches her subject with her persona. Instead of talking about how wonderful Twilight is as a series of books and movies(in other words, what the viewer my consider "normal" teenage gossip), she adopts a relatively critical stance to deconstruct the texts. For example, she expresses profanity-rich frustration that none of her teenage vampire neighbors look like the “hot” vampires who appear in Twilight (pictured right). Although the initial effect is laughter, Heather is providing a very critical read of the Twilight text; that the text itself, and perhaps Hollywood in general, does not accurately represent current teenagers. Another example of this critical orientation toward the text is what happens to the Twilight vampires when they are exposed to sunlight vs. what happens to Heather when she is exposed to sunlight. More specifically, when the sun hits the Twilight vampires’ skin, their beauty is accentuated as they brilliantly sparkle. In contrast, when the sun hits Heather’s skin, she breaks out in dozens of ugly pimples! Again, although funny at first, Heather is providing yet another critical read of the text as she argues that the texts do not accurately represent their primary audience.
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CONCEPT MAP
Bellow is a concept map that I made using the Inspiration tool as a means to explore what exactly it means to be "literate." NOTE: Click on this thumbnail to get a much larger, higher resolution image.
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