Kiss of the Vampire initial analysis 2023

•  The MES of the low key lighting is highly conventional of the gothic horror genre, which targets the specific audience for this film
• Other highly conventional features of this genre include the highly hegemonic gender roles, where vulnerable women must be saved by powerful men. This reinforces the ideology that men are stronger and more dominant than women.  
• The MES of the colour red, symbolically encoded through the drip of blood falling from the letter V functions as a proairetic code, suggesting to the audience that violent and aggressive acts will take place in this film
• The male vampire is wearing darkly coloured clothes . This connotation is highly stereotypical, and reinforces certain ideologies about colours 
• The MES pf the huge bats flying in the background are yet another convention of the gothic horror, and once more will appeal to the target  audience. Ultimately this is a highly conventional film 
• The words ‘kiss’ and ‘vampire’ are particularly large, which emphasises their important. This oxymoronic clash forms a binary opposition between the violent aggression of vampires and the romantic connotations of the word ‘kiss’
• The main male vampire is pulling an interesting facial expression that may be of anger, enjoyment, or potentially scared and vulnerable. This polysemic set of connotations formed his face functions as a hermeneutic code, and may intrigue the target audience into seeing this film
• Additionally, we see two people kneeling on the floor, a man and a woman. This suggests a complex and exciting narrative where main characters will die. 
• By featuring the MES of a male character on his knees in the foreground, the poster contradicts the stereotypical assumption that only women are victims. Furthermore, the unconscious man is being victimised by a female vampire, which is highly atypical. By breaking stereotypes, the film may potentially appeal to a much wider audience 
• The MES of the moon in the background reinforces the stereotypical setting of this film, and connotes night, darkness and secret. Furthermore the setting is stereotypically foreign, which constructs an ideology that other countries are spooky, dangerous and different. This example of othering is highly typical of films of this era
• The women in this poster are wearing tight and revealing night dresses which emphasise and draw attention to the breasts of the women. Liesbet Van Zoonen argues that women are presented as sexual spectacles for heterosexual men
• It can be argued that there is some light sexualisation of men, with the MES of a partially bare male chest, which may typically appeal to heterosexual women (and gay men)