The Muslim terrorist is cast as a neo-dead psychic vampire draining vitality
Evidence
The most obvious similarity between the vampire and zombie is that both creatures extinguish vitality and introduce a state of zombification, at times through biting their victim, and at other times by attacking the body in another way. We might think of vampires and mummies/zombies as “psychic vampires,” creatures who “flourish not by sucking blood but by draining vitality, will, and even experience from their victims.” The standard zombie narrative introduces a monster, or monsters, who steal life from the innocent, much like the Muslim terrorist who is the neo-dead, asleep to the vitality of the living, who takes life in an intimate, “deadly embrace.” — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 715
Categorization
Category: Connection Points
- XREF: Ties the vampire/mummy/zombie monster cluster the reader is tracking directly to the contemporary figure of the Muslim terrorist, closing the medieval-to-modern loop.
Related
- The Muslim terrorist is rendered as a psychic vampire stealing life intimately (similarity 0.93)
- The figure of the Muslim monster predates and shapes the modern Muslim stereotype (similarity 0.79)
- The Muslim monster in Western fiction fuses murder with sexual pleasure (similarity 0.79)
- Real-world Muslims today are described with monster and undead vocabulary (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Muslim males in Gothic horror are framed as essentially evil, deviant, and child-murdering
#corroborates(0.80) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 511 - The Muslim in Gothic horror is damned for sexual sin in an Oriental setting
#expands(0.70) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 422 - Film transformed a gentlemanly captivity into a Muslim-monster fantasy
#corroborates(0.60) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 593