|
The Forbidden: Past and Recent Vampires as Symbols of Changing Sexual Mores
Part 1 of 2
"The girl went on her knees, bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive... I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips in the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes and waited- waited with beating heart."
---Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula, page 52
Over the centuries, the vampire has undergone radical changes. From the Count in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel to the alcoholic New Yorker Sam in the 1997 film Habit, the figure of the vampire has evolved with society. The personalities of vampires in recent movies reflect modern attitudes toward sensuality and pleasure. Emerging from the mists of our own collective unconscious, the Children of the Night represent forbidden rapture. After all, blood drinking is the oldest taboo of Judeo-Christian tradition because the blood was thought to encompass the God-given life force of a living thing. Even the consumption of animal blood was outlawed. Thus the connection between vampires and sin was forged.
Soon they came to stand for all of our transgressions- chemical addictions, sex addictions, egotism, greed, and vanity. We have praised them and cursed them in the same breath, grateful for the vicarious experience they afford us yet horrified at how deftly they mimic the monsters within our own hearts. The evolution of the filmic vampire mirrors cultural beliefs about eroticism and guilt. Through a careful study of this vampire, one can make out the veiled influence of the Puritanical guilt complex we inherited as Americans and its resulting psychological sadomasochism.
In order to begin this undertaking, it is necessary first to discuss our point of origin. Eroticized vampires existed at the very beginnings of modern Western civilization. For example, in ancient Roman literature, there were the Lamias. "They were a breed of extraordinarily bloodthirsty vampires, who seduced young men, had intercourse with them and attacked them at the peak of orgasm, drinking their blood with feverish delight" (Masters 196).
A study progressing forward from ancient Greco-Roman vampire myths would undoubtedly prove most fascinating; however, for the duel sakes of brevity and an emphasis on a far more recent age, the two main points of historical reference will be Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and its 1922 film adaptation, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror.
Thus, no attempt will be made to analyze the vampire as representative of non-Western cultural sex guilt. Contrasting modern characterizations of the vampire will include T he Hunger, The Addiction, and Habit, three vampire films of the 1980's and 1990's. While the world of film abounds with other viable examples (among them Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, one of my favorite films), I have selected these three for their specific emphasis on the vampire as addict.
Beginning, then, with Stoker's Count Dracula, the vampire embodies untempered lust. His appetite has made him a monster, cursed to live outside of society, beyond the will of God. In the words of Jonathan Harker, "Have you ever seen that awful den of hellish infamy- with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes and every speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo? Have you ever felt the Vampire?s lips upon your throat?" (Stoker 422).
The Count charms beautiful young women from their beds to receive his kiss, seducing them into a state of wanton submission. He is the ruling alpha male, powerful, aggressive, and dominant. It is his desire that matters, not that of his devotees. This point of view reflects the sexual politics of its era. Women are passive receivers of sex, never equal partners or initiators. And while they may partake of some degree of pleasure, there is always some pain and suffering involved, at least in the beginning.
Moreover, the idea that one night with the hungry vampire can vanquish a young woman's spiritual virtue reflects the Christian ideology that virgin females are purer and more sacred than their sexually active counterparts for their likeness with the Virgin Mother of Jesus. In addition, the tale of the Old World vampire serves as a warning for adolescent girls. Forsake from the handsome stranger and love a boy whose family your family knows for the wanderer in fine clothes with an exotic accent will take advantage of you.
From the masculine point of view, this same idea signals a pervasive fear that you, too, could lose your woman to the powerful enchantments of another man evil enough to ignore your claim to her. Arthur Holmwood lost Lucy to the grave, and Jonathan Harker almost lost his Mina. Another implication here is the fear that a man who cannot fully arouse and pleasure his wife will lose her to one who can. Both Arthur and Jonathan were very noble men, but neither one could erotically possess a woman as could Dracula. The common threads running through all these interpretations of the novel are pleasure, suffering, and guilt. Interestingly, they are not separate entities but rather a trinity of facets belonging to the same experience, namely of an erotic encounter.
The aristocratic Old World Dracula fathered the far beastlier vampire of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror, henceforth to be abbreviated as Nosferatu. "Because Prana films, the company that produced Nosferatu, did not purchase the screen rights to Stoker's Dracula, Murnau and screenwriter Henrik Galeen- at least in part to circumvent potential legal problems- changed the names of the principal characters, developed a new set of physical characteristics for the vampire, and shifted the story from England in the late nineteenth century to Bremen in 1838" (Waller 177).
The resultant vampire, the Nosferatu, was much closer to an animal than a man in appearance and behavior. He was bald and long-faced with pointed chin and ears. His fingers were elongated also and taloned with sharp claws. The deep black circles around his eyes made his gaze far more chilling than that of the stately Count, but yet his violence seemed more random, less controlled and intentional.
|
