Friday, November 12, 2010

Classic genre tropes

Brief thoughts this afternoon about some classic plot devices and what they meant at one time or another:

Individual v. vampires: fear of the unknown, death, or foreigners
v. werewolves and mutants: fear of one's self, typically brought on by adolescence
v. mummies: fear of past burdens
v. Frankenstein's monster: fear of science
v. computers, robots: fear of the future and our own inhumanity to each other
v. zombies: fear of each other, plague