EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING THROUGH THE FICTIONAL STORIES: THE RELATION BETWEEN NEWEST GENERATION OF VAMPIRES AND THEIR AUDIENCE

The experiential learning may be based on the real work or on the life experience, as well as on the structured experience simulating the real life or work. This research work results from the hypothesis that the identification process of the viewers of audiovisual fiction with fictional characters is a dynamic system of relations leading both directions. Experience gained through this form of the experiential learning becomes a new part of a continually formed individual personality. We are especially interested in the relation between viewer’s identified and favourite characters, because we suppose that there are differences between those characters.

This study is based on an ethnographic approach that draws its source materials from virtual worlds’ participated observation and interviews as it analyses fans’ discussions of TV show True Blood during several months of 2009; respectively after the broadcast of the first season was over. The paper analyses the theme in context of vampires’ popularity in western popular culture and focus on how True Blood/Sookie Stackhouse Series succeeds to Buffy the Vampire Slayer success. Anyhow Buffy series deployed gothic fantasy and supernatural as a metaphor for problems associated with contemporary adolescence (Kaveney, 2002; Owen, 1999; Williamson, 2005 etc.), we can read metaphors of moral level in True Blood, since discourse of the show offers functional framework for metaphors in the field of minorities. For True Blood’s fans it is characteristic to find a fun in moral conflicts of characters and in their rules-breaking. True Blood fans want to see their favorite characters as “bad” vampires, but those vampires still have to correspond with modern construct of “vampire-with-morals”; it means the vampires represent immortals who realize a scope of certain moral norms and thus, these reflected norms can be broken.

The paper also examines concepts of identification and empathy with fictional characters in accordance to the concept of favoured characters. Cartwright (2008, p. 22 - 23) has discussed concept of filmic identification through term of empathy and she describes it as a reflexive experience of awareness of the thoughts, emotions or concerns of others. In searching for the answer why fans of contemporary vampires do like so much discussing their favoured vampire teams and think of them as real humans, we suppose and verify the chain of an empathy with monsters that works in consequences “Viewer – Medium – Monster” where is necessary the character of identified human medium.