@article{Lehner_2019, title={Vampiric Remediation: The Vampire as a Self-Reflexive Technique in ‘Dracula’ (1897), ‘Nosferatu’ (1922) and ‘Shadow of the Vampire’ (2000)}, url={https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/5008}, DOI={10.7557/13.5008}, abstractNote={<p>This paper aims at describing the self-reflexive functions of the vampire through the lens of remediation. First, I will describe remediation as the central form of representation used in the novel <em>Dracula</em> (1897). Its epistolary form remediates various contemporary high-tech media that are compiled as typewritten pages: It uses a hypermedia strategy. Dracula, the creature, mirrors this technique, since he and his abilities are an amalgamation of the characteristics of contemporary media. <em>Dracula</em> tries to remediate itself (that is to rehabilitate) in the shifting media-landscape of the outgoing 19th century and self-reflexively addresses this through the vampire’s connection to media. Second, <em>Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens</em> (dir. <strong>Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau</strong>, 1922) deviates from this hypermedia strategy and argues for film’s immediacy. However, it also self-consciously addresses its state as an adaptation of <em>Dracula</em> and clearly acknowledges its medium when vampirism is involved within the film itself. <em>Nosferatu</em> connects vampirism with cinema and its techniques and, consequently, presents its vampire, ‘Count Orlok’, as a personification of film instead of an amalgamation of different media. <em>Shadow of the Vampire</em> (dir. <strong>Edmund Elias Merhige</strong>, 2000), then, is a refashioning within the medium: it is <em>Nosferatu</em>’s fictional making-of. Here, the borders between cinema and vampirism and between medium and reality collapse, as <em>Shadow of the Vampire</em> not only borrows the style and story of <em>Nosferatu</em>, but also incorporates the history and the myths surrounding the production of this seminal vampire movie. Consequently, it argues for film’s failure as a medium of immediacy facing the new hypermedia-landscape of the beginning 21st century. These three iterations of the vampire and remediation demonstrate how the vampire has been functionalized as a self-reflexive technique to speak about the medium it is depicted in, be it on the brink of a changing media-landscape, at the beginning of movies as the medium of immediacy, or its existence as an established art form at the emerging digital age.</p>}, number={42}, journal={Nordlit}, author={Lehner, Alexander}, year={2019}, month={Nov.}, pages={123–140} }