Theda Bara, the Vamp: A Mini-Essay

     In 1915, Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a Jewish tailor from Cincinnati, was rechristened Theda Bara by movie mogul William Fox, provided a backstory which transformed her into the mysterious daughter of a French artist and an Arabian mistress, and placed in the starring role of A Fool There Was, which was based loosely on Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Vampire.”[1] Over the span of a decade, Bara performed in multiple films – The Serpent (1916), The Vixen (1916), and The She-Devil (1918) among them – which cast the young woman into the role of the vamp: a deadly femme fatale (similar to that found in William Allingham’s “The Witch-Bride” and John Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”) who lures males into her pernicious snares through her sexual wiles.[2] A stark contrast to the girl-next-door innocence of Mary Pickford, Bara represented an unrestrained European sexuality for movie audiences in the United States and her vampiric characters, images of the liberated new women, often met tragic fates, with men eventually freeing themselves from her seductions and the vamp becoming an exotic outsider punished for her transgressions against “the domestic life of ‘normal’ women.”[3]

Works Referenced

Rowbotham, Sheila. A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States in the Twentieth Century. New York: Penguin, 1997.
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[1] Rowbotham, 110.
[2] Rowbotham, 110.
[3] Rowbotham, 110-111.

Floral Skull Wreath

$20 - $25 (based on 2018 prices)

Makes one wreath

The Dia de Los Muertos portion of 2017’s haunted house required dozens of wreaths and flowers for an intricate funeral scene. To prevent myself from using the same design for each prop, I did variations on the sugar skull motif. For this version, I chose to contrast bright flowers with black-and-white bats. To help unify the haunt’s overall theme, I also incorporated the color schemes from other props, namely blues, pinks, and yellows.

• One fourteen-inch metal wreath frame
• One large sugar skull cutout (roughly fourteen inches tall)
• An assortment of artificial flowers is multiple colors and sizes (e.g. dahlias, hyacinths, and hydrangeas)
• Eight sprigs of colored onion grass
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Six glittery bats
  

1. Position the cutout onto the wreath and glue it in place. Although I elected to center the item for a more balanced look, you can offset it to achieve an asymmetric pattern.

2. Separate the flowers and leaves from their stems. Although you could do this while you glue them to the wreath, I found that performing this step beforehand made the following process much easier. Plus, it gives you a clear idea of exactly how many of each item you have.

3. Use hot glue to adhere the flowers to the wreath. For visual interest, build up layers and vary the color patterns so that blooms with the same hues and shapes are not concentrated in one area. You may want to play with the arrangement first before gluing it in place.

4. Repeat the method in step three with the leaves, gluing them around the outer circumference of the wreath’s back and, to enhance the appearance of the prop, ensuring you create contrast by using different hues and sizes in various positions.

5. Weave the sprigs of onion grass into the clusters of flowers to generate more depth. You can use an evenly spaced pattern to create balance or a random placement for extra irregularity.

6. Add further embellishments to the wreath by gluing the glittery bats to the floral arrangement. Akin to the onion grass, you can strategically place them in an even pattern or scatter them haphazardly across the surface.

7. You can create a hanging loop by re-purposing the one that came with either the cutout or wreath or fabricate a sturdier version with steel wire.

"The Witch-Bride" (A Poem)

Although the poems were published thirty years apart, John Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci” and William Allingham’s “The Witch-Bride” grapple with the same concept: the seduction of man by an otherworldly force. In the former, the spectral vixen abandons her victim after their brief liaison; however, in the latter, the supernatural being attaches itself to its pray and follows him for all eternity.[1]

A fair witch crept to a young man's side,
And he kiss’d her and took her for his bride.

But a Shape came in at the dead of night,
And fill’d the room with snowy light.

And he saw how in his arms there lay
A thing more frightful than mouth may say.

And he rose in haste, and follow’d the Shape
Till morning crown’d an eastern cape.

And he girded himself, and follow’d still
When sunset sainted the western hill.

But, mocking and thwarting, clung to his side,
Weary day! – the foul Witch-Bride.[2]

Works Referenced

Adamson, Sylvia. “Literary Language.” The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 4. Ed. Suzanne Romaine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 589-692.

Allingham, William. “The Witch-Bride.” Selected Poems from the Works of William Allingham. Ed. Helen Allingham. London: MacMillan and Company, 1912. 87.
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[1] Adamson, 674-675.
[2] Allingham, 87.

Spider Baby Mask

$10 - $15 (based on 2017 prices)

Makes one mask

I normally craft my own mask and costume for each haunt to correspond with the theme. Working on a haunted house in 2017 presented me with the opportunity to costume not only myself, but a collection of scare-actors. To achieve this, I made several doll masks for each one to wear and help unify the motif.

• One plastic doll mask
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat black*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in spice brown*
• One 20” x 20” square of white fabric
• At least four tablespoons of dark roasted coffee grounds
• One pan large enough to soak the fabric square
• One 4 oz. bottle of all-purpose tacky glue*
• One yard of black yarn
• One yard of brown yarn
• Three buttons
• Four plastic spiders
  

1. Use a sharp knife to cut the jaw off the mask. For visual interest, create jagged edges. To make this process easier, trace the outline of your cut with a marker first.

2. On a newspaper-lined surface in a well-ventilated area, give the top half of the mask one or two coats of black paint. Although I only used two coats, you may want more depending on your desired coverage. Keep in mind, though, that this is the base coat and much of the paint will be covered up by the coffee-stained fabric.

3. Boil enough water to completely submerge the fabric square and pour it into the pan. Add the coffee. The longer you allow the coffee to brew, the darker the stain will become. Likewise, greater amounts of coffee will produce a richer stain. Submerge the cloth in the coffee mixture and soak it until it reaches the color you desire. I soaked mine for four days and scattered the coffee grounds over the top of the fabric to add spots. Remove the cloth from the water and allow it to dry.

4. Once the fabric square has dried, center it on the mask and, starting at the front of the face, adhere the cloth. I found that this process works best if you move in stages: apply a layer of glue to one section, hold the fabric down until it sticks, and then repeat the process.

5. Once the glue has dried, smudge brown paint around the eyes and nose and along the edges of the mask to give the illusion of grime. You may want to experiment with a scrap of leftover cloth before applying the paint to the fabric.

6. Trim the excess fabric from the eyes and edges and create holes randomly on the forehead. You can make one or two small openings to serve as subtle accents or a mass of tattered cavities for an extremely distressed look.

7. Fraying and shred the fabric below the mouth and add strands of black and brown yarn. For visual interest, stagger the lengths of both the cloth and yarn.

8. Accent the mask with a cluster of spiders crawling across its surface and a few strategically placed buttons. NOTE: The particular spiders I used were made with a slick plastic which did not adhere with hot glue. As a result, I used superglue gel to affix them to the prop.

9. If the mask did not come with tie strings, you can fabricate some with extra yarn or replace the existing elastic band with a makeshift twine version for additional creepiness.

*You will not use the entire bottle’s content for this project.