Bella Swan: the new face of feminism

Yesterday I talked a bit about why the “paranormal romance” vampire stories aren’t like their romantic-lit predecessors, the Harlequins. There are a few issues that need clearing up on this front:

#1. A special word for Twilight, about why it really really isn’t just regurgitated romance conventions. It’s the closest to those old romance stories, but it’s different in more ways than just having a unique female protagonist. Which leads to…

#2. Why it’s important that these stories are compared to Harlequins at all.

To the first point.

Some readers might protest that Bella isn’t so much an independent free-thinking female badass, that in fact, she really does just sit around and wait for Edward. To that I would reply that she spends the entire series balancing monsters, and finally gets exactly what she wants in the end. Unlike Sookie Stackhouse or Anita Blake or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bella only has four books to tell her story. That means we get to see the entire character arc, from start to finish. In the first two books in the series, there is admittedly a whole lot of moping. Bella kinda drove me nuts, with her constant wailing and moaning. If it were me, I would have spent a couple days weeping into my Ben and Jerry’s, and then hit the singles bar (or juice bar, in Bella’s underage case). But then, the story isn’t about me. It’s about Bella’s constant adoration for Edward, even in the face of certain abandonment. That loyalty and love finally turns out to be her biggest strength. In Twilight and New Moon, Bella might be considered less than ideal as a self-assured, strong young role model. To illustrate my point, here’s a picture of my righteously awesome New Moon shirt (based on the design from the New Moon movie poster), acquired from Hot Topic, and modeled so stylishly by my human boyfriend Max:

I told Max to look disaffected, but I think he looks downright uphappy. Can't imagine why...

Closeup... "Please don't make me choose"

Notice that Bella is trapped between the two burly males, making her appear rather tiny and demure. The quote would suggest that she wants the men to make the choice for her (she does, she wants them to get along so there’s no reason for her to make a choice). So far, she seems to fit the Harlequin mold–that is, weakling woman who lets the boys make her decisions for her. But as I mentioned, there are four books in the series, and Eclipse is our heroine’s turning point. Bella may start off wimpy, but she doesn’t stay that way. For evidence, here’s the poster for the upcoming Eclipse:

You can see why these two images just tickled me pink for comparison’s sake. These are the kind of images that give scholars who really like media criticism wet dreams. But I digress. Instead of being overshadowed by the boys, in this poster, Bella takes the front line. She is not gazing unsteadily at the boys anymore, now she confronts the viewer head-on. The boys are demoted to the background, and despite their good looks, it is Bella’s glowing figure that really pops out of the frame. She looks every bit the strong lead female.

The best part about these two images, though, is the text. The first one, “Please don’t make me choose,” makes Bella seem weak, indecisive, pleading, a little bit pathetic even. The second one, “It all begins with a choice,” makes Bella seem incredibly strong. It is her choice (to marry Edward, ostensibly, although it could be any number of choices) that gets the story going. Bella is the one calling the shots now. She’s not waiting for her two beaus to fight over her, she’s taking charge and making her own decisions.

Now here’s where things get a bit tricky. Yesterday I suggested that the leading ladies of the vampire romances are the polar opposite of the Harlequins damsels, but that’s not entirely true. Bella, Sookie, and Anita are all strong women, no doubt, and this is emphasized by their strong voices that dominate their stories. But they are not just girls pretending to be boys. This is to say that they do not completely refute all feminine stereotypes and simply adopt masculine roles, along the lines of a Buffy character.

All three women keep aspects of their femininity, and these are as central to their identity as their independence and their “gifts.” Sookie and Anita frequently express wardrobe woes. Sookie in particular seems to enjoy dressing up and feeling feminine. She might fight off the bad guys, she might even take or give a beating from time to time, but she also will take the time for the gentler things in life, like a good romance novel, a tanning session, or a thorough house cleaning. Even tough Anita has her soft spots. Anita complains about dealing with emotional stuff, but when it comes down to it, she is most adept at handling emotional issues. She is able to confront her feelings and talk them out with her many boyfriends, while some of those boyfriends remain emotionally handicapped throughout the series.

But when it comes to traditional aspects of femininity, Bella wins out. It is Bella that truly masters the characteristics coded feminine, and turns them into weapons as sharp as any fangs or claws. This is most evident in her non-violence. Although there are some bloody battles throughout the books, Bella is never immediately involved. Once she becomes a vampire, she and her vampire family are able to settle their disputes diplomatically, instead of turning to bloodshed. Part of this is because of Bella’s vampiric talent. As a human, she is immune to most vampire powers. As a vampire, she is able to extend this defense to those she loves. Bella’s power is totally defensive, passive even–but she still manages to use this to save the day.

Bella uncompromisingly brings together her various monster friends, though they don’t always get along. She accepts them without a second thought, likely because she understands them in a kind of sympathetic way (as I discussed in previous posts). Through the classically “feminine” traits of passivity, acceptance, loyalty, devotion, and love, Bella creates for herself and for her friends an idyllic life. She even takes a maternal turn and gives birth to a new species, half-vampire, half-human (more on this later… Renesmee is the future of this trend). Instead of adopting masculine problem-solving traits, like violence, she forges her own path.

While Bella might not fit the traditional definition of “feminist” heroines, in some ways she is more feminist than any prior texts I have read. In Twilight, and in Anita Blake and the True Blood/Southern Vampire series, things that are considered feminine are not villified and rejected, like the domestic sphere, non-violence, etc. They are not manipulated into supporting patriarchal values, like in the Harlequins. Instead these women embrace their girly side and use it to their benefit, which generally allows them to come out on top, and allows them to save their vampire/werewolf/monster boyfriends. And because our protagonists are dealing with monsters, way out of their league, they are able to maintain that elements of damsel in distress while simultaneously preserving their independence. They are (mostly) human women dealing with monsters, and as such, the stakes are that much higher (no pun intended), and they are not made to look guilty or weak needing help. They can fall into the classical victim role from time to time, which is somewhat comforting in its familiarity. Instead of staying in the victim role, though, they emerge stronger than ever, and they always finish their biggest battles themselves, made all the more impressive by the fact that they are just human women facing off against the monsters.

This is a fine balance, but I think it’s probably the most important thing I have to say about these vampire texts. That’s quite a claim, I know–and you’ll notice I didn’t bring in any academic sources to support my argument. That’s because they don’t really exist. In some senses, academic sources are behind the times, and I simply couldn’t find anything that supported this thesis. We still largely depend on the criteria set out by decades of largely patriarchal thought. Laura Mulvey, the queen of feminist film criticism, thinks that we need to reject the mode in which stories are told and create something new and distinctly feminine. I disagree. I think what these vampire romances are doing is much more important, that is, taking what is already coded as feminine and showing that it’s not bad. It should be celebrated.

On a final note, I should mention that this is only one possible reading for these texts. I intended to look at the way these texts could be read in a pro-feminist light, to justify the interest of millions of women in these texts. I think I’ve managed to do that, but the fact is it’s only my own formal analysis. To really defend these texts as feminist, it’s necessary to look at the fan culture around them. Which I plan to do! Starting… now!

Well, OK, starting in the next post. But in honor of reaching the end of this particular segment of my thesis, I will once again reward readers with a song! Suggested by my lovely thesis adviser, “Because the Night.” Such a good suggestion I’m disgusted I didn’t think of it myself! I’m going to have to re-burn my CD copy now.

Originally written by Patti Smith, I believe, I decided to link to the 10,000 Maniacs cover from the 90′s, since it’s my personal favorite. It doesn’t really have anything to do with this particular post, but it’s definitely one of those pop songs that is eerily appropriate when recontextualized. Enjoy!

Dracula’s Wedding

I’ve been talking a lot lately about the way different genres mix with the vampire genre for interesting new twists. Today, I’m busy working on my other finals, so instead of a long-winded post, I’ll offer one more little example of generic mixing with the vampire tradition. This example also happens to be one of the songs off my vampire mix.

(Beware: there was not an official video to be found for this particular song, but I did uncover this video of the song set to a compilation of “vampiric” images… it’s kind of nuts. Forgive me, there are limited options when you’re trying to do a blog without shelling out the $ for fancy uploads.)

Obviously, this is a hip-hop version of Dracula. While there are many types of music that incorporate vampires in one way or another, hip hop is unique in that it still has a strong and somewhat limited cultural identity. It’s amongst the most modern musical genres, only really appearing on the scene in the 1980′s, and it emerged in the U.S. The vampire genre, on the other hand, is old as the hills, and (arguably) comes first from a British literary tradition.

The nice thing about this song is how it imagines some of the conventions of hip hop into the classic Dracula story. Dracula’s a big bad vampire, so what’s he afraid of? Well, like any other guy, he’s afraid of commitment!! Of course, this fear of commitment is a fairly recent stereotype, as far as I can tell, which is why it works so well for hip hop. It’s a nice modernization of the vampire along the same lines as the Americanization of vampires I’ve discussed in relation to the Western or the hard-boiled detective story.

The other thing I like about is how it’s changed the Van Helsing character. In just about every adaptation of Dracula, the characters get re-arranged in totally bizarre ways. This is the only version I know of, though, where Van Helsing is a sexy songstress, and apparently has romantic interest in Dracula. It’s an original take on an old theme, and I think it’s pretty catchy, too. The song seems fairly self-conscious about this. I would have liked to see what Outkast would have done with a video version of the song, if they would have riffed on older movie conventions or done something satirical along the lines of Dracula: Dead and Loving It, or something with even more hip hop cache like Blackula or Vampire in Brooklyn.

Which reminds me of another vampire who got satirical treatment.

This is purely for your entertainment. In the following clip, Dave Chappelle discusses how Sesame Street is a pretty good reflection of life on “the street.”

Make new trends, but keep the old

Yesterday I talked about the heroines of the vampire romances, so today I thought I’d spare a moment for the vampires themselves. The vampires in the vampire romances may not be quite as unique as their female counterparts, but they are somewhat distinct from older vampires.

First things first: what are older vampires like? Of course I’m resorting to terrible stereotyping here, and there are some glaring exceptions to the rule (most notably Christopher Lee’s rock star take on Dracula in the Hammer films), but vampires are usually world-weary, elite creatures that spend half their time scheming and drinking blood and the other half of their time reflecting on the meaninglessness of existence. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is the ultimate example of this. He’s urbane, sophisticated, and fairly slow moving. He’s charming and polite, and of course, every bit the upper-crust gentleman. Another favorite example is Catherine Deneuve’s character in The Hunger. She’s beautiful in the same way a statue is beautiful: striking, but otherwise pretty much cold, hard, and dead. While she does have some pretty steamy scenes with Susan Surandon, she’s mostly characterized by fashionable outfits, classical music, big empty colorless sets, and ponderous camera work.

très chic, non?

There are also the more emotional vampires, like Louis of Interview with a Vampire. While he’s somewhat less removed, he’s not much more exciting. Like the others I’ve mentioned, he comes from the upper class, he’s overly polite and pensive, and he spends most of his time whining about his condition.

proving that vampires can, in fact, be anemic

Don’t believe me? Well, then let Sting tell you all about it on another cut from my vampire mix. For the record, this isn’t the official video (there doesn’t appear to be one). It’s just the song set to a series of black and white photos that I think are supposed to be evocative. Also, major overuse of the Ken Burns effect. Such are the disadvantages of youtube.

Our vampires are in stark contrast to these tame monsters. Again, genre seems to have a lot to do with this. Near Dark is, as usual, my first and best example. The Western elements of the movie make the vampires stand out in a big way. These are some seriously energetic vampires, with more in common with bandits from the Wild West than with Bela Lugosi’s mannered bloodsucker. They are fast, violent, and loud. They are crass, and they appear to be low class. They trade in capes for dusters, spurs, leather jackets, and corsets. They adopt characteristics of American countercultural figures like the motorcycle gang. They are armed with switchblades and guns, and they are usually covered in blood. They hoot and holler and set things on fire. They see no need to seduce their prey–instead, they lock them in a bar and have a gory field day, even making fun of their quarry before they unceremoniously rip their throats out. They don’t seem to spend much time worrying about their immortal souls. Instead, they joke around, watch TV, and play poker as they make their way across the Western landscape to a synth soundtrack. They are not classical music, they are rock, pop, country. In short, they’re American.

While the more recent vampires might have more in common with their restrained ancestors, they are hardly lacking in the American department. Jean-Claude of the Anita Blake series (my personal favorite) at first appears to be a highly traditional vampire in the same vein (OK, pun intended that time) as Bela or Anne Rice’s moody creations, with his reserved and delicate French phrasing. He actually turns out to be every bit as modern as the Near Dark vampires, only smarter. Likely owing much to the hard-boiled detective story aspect of the series, he’s a wealthy businessman and the public face of vampires. His old-school charm translates to media-savviness, and his Gothic flair for the dramatic makes him an expert entertainer. He’s hyper-sexualized, and also not afraid to get his hands dirty. While the original Dracula invested in real-estate, Jean-Claude makes his fortune from a vampire strip-club, a vampire dance club, and a vampire circus, amongst other businesses. In later books, his background story reveals a rags to riches tale in the great American tradition of the self-made man. He pulled himself up by his thigh-high suede bootstraps.

The vampires in the Southern Vampire mysteries series are similarly economically-minded. Eric the Viking runs a successful vampire bar, and Bill Compton makes a living working with computers. They may be part of a complicated old-world monarchy, but they also seamlessly assimilate into mainstream American culture. The Southern setting of the novels and Sookie’s colloquial dialect add to this Americanization of the vampires.

I’m not the only one to make these kinds of observations. In her book Celluloid Vampires, Stacy Abbott sees a similar kind of process taking place with two other vampires, Blade baddie Frost and Buffy boytoy Spike. She goes even father, though, claiming that their modernity and Americanness is indicative of a larger, longer trend with vampires in film and on TV:

“The modern vampire, from Dracula to present-day vampires such as Frost and Spike, has consistently challenged its relationship to convention and tradition, gradually escaping the confines of time and space to become free of the association with the past and liberated into the expanse of the modern landscape. It is my intention to examine the relationship between the celluloid vampire and the modern world, and to argue that rather than acting in opposition to modernity, the vampire has come to embody the experience of it” (p. 5).

While I obviously agree with parts of Abbot’s argument, I also realize it’s not without its flaws. Abbot’s project is similar to Nina Auerbach’s (whom I’ve discussed before on this blog), and it gets trapped in some of the same downfalls, that is, it follows a zeitgeist model. In her estimation, vampires represent the current version of modernity, and so they always change with the times. For example, she predicts (the book was published in 2007) that vampires will move toward the digital and the global, because that is our current idea of modernity. She points to Buffy, the Underworld series, and the Blade series as evidence of this. While all three have enjoyed moderate popularity and success, they have not had the explosive dominance of the romantic vampires–a trend that Abbott unfortunately misses.

And so, while I cautiously point out the aspects of the new vampires that are innovative and original, I also have to acknowledge that this alone does not make them attractive. It must, then, be something else that draws multitudes of readers and viewers.

My best guess is that the attraction is the particular balance they strike between old-world charm and new-world ingenuity. Take the Cullen family for example. They like their modern gadgets, their fast cars. They are as lively as any other modern vampires. Instead of melting in the sunlight, they sparkle, and they are immune to classic vampire attacks like holy water, garlic, and crosses. But they also maintain aspects of classic vampires. They are wealthy and well-behaved, and in constant battle with their vampire instincts. Perhaps the best example of their balance between new and old is their diet. They are “vegetarians,” meaning they only eat animals. Because they suffer a crisis of morality, along the lines of Louis in Interview with a Vampire, they abstain from drinking human blood, but in referring to it as “vegetarianism,” they invoke a trendy hipness to their behavior.

Another important addition in the vampire romances is the idea of vampire family. In Near Dark and in Twilight, the vampires uphold the tradition of the nuclear family with mom, dad, and kids. They add elements of the family melodrama to the horror and romance genres. To say that they are totally traditional families, though, is not entirely correct. They are modern families, “blended” families, made up of individuals unrelated by blood. Well, kind of–they share blood to become vampires, so in some sense they are blood relatives. This only serves to prove how complicated the vampire family is. In choosing to uphold the model of the traditional nuclear family, however, they uphold the nostalgia of that institution. The same goes for the monarchichal arrangement of vampires in the Anita Blake series and the True Blood/Southern Vampire series.

In some ways, the balance seems to benefit the heroines more than the vampires. The vampires are chivalrous and respectful–old world qualities–but they also stay away from the kind of cloying restrictions and stereotypical dominant behavior that so often accompanies chivalry. Perhaps here is the appeal for the multitudes of female fans–our heroines are treated like ladies, but they are still able to enjoy the aspects of the modern world that benefit them most, that is, independence. They are able to join their vampire families (as women are wont to do–family is usually coded as feminine, after all) without being confined to the home.

Again, this has a lot to do with the blending of generic conventions. The urban detective genre serves as a nice counterpoint to the more restrictive horror and romance genres for Anita and Sookie, and the American setting encourages a “modern” perspective. But to a certain extent, the vampires also manage because they are aware of the vampire tradition. Edward makes fun of Bella’s expectations that his house would be a creepy dungeon. Jean-Claude frequently jokes about older vampire texts, even affecting a Bela Lugosi role from time to time. Both Anita and Sookie interact with older vampire texts, like the classic Universal and Hammer horror films. It is this postmodern self-reflexivity on the part of both the vampires and the readers that allows the vampire romances to continue squarely in the vampire tradition while simultaneously pushing the limits and escaping the clichés to forge their own completely new path.

Double the fun in this post–another song! Since I’m talking about how the new vampires have caught on, and how original they are, it seems appropriate to honor the older vamps. How perfectly this sentiment is captured in “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus–Bela’s Lugosi’s dead, but he’s also undead. Works on many levels, but I’ll leave that up to my readers. The song was used in The Hunger, and it’s easily one of my favorite scenes in vampire cinema. The rest of the movie doesn’t really live up to that opening scene (though it’s highly recommended). I would have included that scene, but it doesn’t include the entire song, and all the clips on youtube were total crap quality. So instead here’s a fan video with doctored footage of the 1931 Dracula starring the man himself. I think the effect gets old, but it’s a nice atmospheric backdrop for the song. Enjoy!

Harlequins are quaint but our girls know better

Yesterday I mentioned that the conventions borrowed from romance allow the new vampire texts to break out of the classic horror plot conventions, because the vampires become sympathetic in relation to the heroine (who tells the story). Today, I’m going to explain how that dynamic works in reverse, that is, how the vampire stuff keeps the romance stuff from getting out of control. Probably the biggest criticism of the new vampire cycle is that they are too romantic, too sappy or not scary. The Twilight saga has fallen victim to this especially, and a lot has been said about how they are basically just toned down Harlequin romances.

This is one of the criticisms that peeves me the most. I have read plenty of Harlequins, and I still have a hard time seeing the connection. But again, my word alone is not defense enough. Instead, I’ll explain some of what has been said about Harlequins, and show exactly why Twilight and company do not quite gel with their more formulaic cousins.

Probably the best-known scholarly work on the Harlequins is a book called Loving With a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women, by Tania Modleski. In her book, Modleski argues against the idea that Harlequins are just trash lit, an opinion that is still held by many people (given the predominant Twilight criticism). She says instead that the Harlequins do a lot of very complex work that goes unnoticed. Instead of simply confirming patriarchal values, the Harlequins “neutralize” the feminine role within the patriarchy, while simultaneously drawing attention to the very problems inherent in their attempts to neutralize:

“The reader of romances, contrary to the arguments of many popular literature critics, is engaged in an intensely psychological process. The energy women now use to belittle and defeat themselves can be rechanneled into efforts to grow and to explore ways of affirming and asserting the self. Moreover, the very fact that the novels must go to such extremes to neutralize women’s anger and to make masculine hostility bearable testifies to the depths of women’s discontent. Each novel… is as much a protest against as an endorsement of the feminine condition” (p. 58).

While Modleski does not simply write off the novels as “the successful conspiracy of a group of patriarchal capitalists plotting to keep women so happy at home they remain unwilling to make demands which would greatly restructure the workplace and the family” (p. 113), she also does not completely write off the patriarchal overtones in the novels, or emphasize the uniquely feminine aspects of them. Her highest praise is that the Harlequins could potentially lead to change for some women, and they only are able to show that there is a problem in the present state of affairs by presenting a situation that eliminates the problem. Modleski’s argument reveals the contradictory message set forth in the Harlequins—but now her argument is over twenty-five years old, and the introduction of vampires into our popular romances has complicated the situation greatly.

What’s so different? For starters, the formula has changed completely. The Harlequins are told in first person, and detail stories of young, virginal, naive women who fall desperately in love with condescending men. These men are usually openly contemptuous of the heroines, misunderstanding them as schemers, then finally saving them from themselves. The women are helpless, unable to do much more than weakly defend their virtue and wait for the hero to make the next move. Of course, this is an oversimplification, but already there should be some major incongruities apparent.

Fabio, the face and rippling pectorals of the traditional romance novel

The vampire stories are told in first person, and detail the stories of young, modern, slightly jaded women who take care of themselves. Sometimes, this means falling in love with men, but these men generally aren’t condescending, and if they are, well, they’ve got another thing coming. Our heroines are far from helpless. They are all self-sufficient, more than capable of taking care of themselves. Anita and Sookie both have full-time jobs and bills to pay. Bella is fortunate enough to be a dependent, but even she does most of the domestic work in her household. While Bella might have time to moon over Edward in her spare time (who can blame her? she’s in high school after all, and I know I didn’t have much to do in high school other than sit around and imagine my future success as a famous director), Anita and Sookie both have more pressing concerns, like fighting vampires and solving crime. In the end, our heroine is always responsible for saving the day. These girls are not delicate flowers that wait around for men to come save them.

She packs her own gun...

In fact, all three women say as much. Anita never leaves the house unarmed, and both she and Sookie balk at the notion of men acting chivalrous around them, or assuming they can’t take care of themselves. Try to open a door for one of these two and you’re likely to get your head bitten off. Anita is most in conflict with the traditional notion of femininity. She is horrified at the thought of wearing a pink bridesmaid dress, and cringes when things get too emotional, noting that she’s better when she can just point and shoot. Sookie is a little softer around the edges, but no less willing to take matters into her own hands. She knows how to handle herself in a bar fight, and she knows her way around a shotgun. Bella is the most traditional of the three, but even she is perfectly aware of the changed notions of femininity. She is horrified that Edward wants to marry her right out of high school, afraid that people will label her “one of those girls.” She conflates early marriage with a certain type of girl, one who does not have a will or mind of her own. All three women are actively aware of feminine stereotypes, and all three actively work against them. They assert themselves as thoroughly modern, independent women who have real-world problems, and can damn well take care of themselves.

But it’s not just that our girls are spunkier than the average Harlequin heroine. The fact is they are dealing with vampires. They have to confront scenes of gore that their Harlequin counterparts couldn’t even dredge up in their very worst nightmares. The vampire storylines take the plots beyond romance, plain and simple, and to something more involved, something more complex. Romance is not the sum total of the plot, thanks to the vampires.

I think academics like Modleski would have a hard time finding the same kind of underhanded endorsement of the patriarchy that resides in the Harlequins. The heroines of the vampire stories are not demure, and they do not get swept into a romantic relationship that solves all their problems. More importantly, any “problems” that might exist in terms of inequality or with women being unhappy with their lot in life are not neutralized, but are confronted head on by heroines who are aware of these things. They are self-consciously making their own way in the world, though they might be petite and good looking and constantly underestimated. Their dealings with monsters have made them tough. The romance genre here is tempered by the more violent horror genre, keeping the girls from falling into the traps of living to love a man.

I hope this post has convinced readers that the vampire romances are not just Harlequins with some bloodsuckers thrown in, but are in fact their own genre. I hope I have shown how aspects of both romance and horror are used to temper each other, to counter each others’ more patriarchal urges and instead forge a new path that allows for a distinctly feminist voice to emerge unhindered by the limitations of generic expectation. Part of this comes from the self-consciousness of the stereotypes that surround both genres, and part of this comes from our heroines’ refusal to lie down and take it.

Of course, in these stories, it’s not just a matter of horror and romance. There are other genres in the mix as well. But that’s another post…

Never Met a Girl Like You Before

In one of the early scenes in my favorite vampire-Western Near Dark, Caleb (the cowboy) is trying to hit on Mae (the vampire) when she insists he stop his truck, at which point she jumps out and starts talking about how deafening the night is. Now, you or I might think “Hmmmm, she’s hearing voices? Must be crazy. Get the net!” or perhaps “She’s blinded by the night? Must be another pesky vampire. Good thing I ate that eggplant parmesan earlier…” Caleb’s inspired, libido driven response (as he continues to try to kiss her):

“Sure haven’t met many girls like you.”

To which Mae affirms, “No you haven’t met any girls like me.”

They go on to repeat this exchange about 5 times in the course of 2 minutes. By the end of the scene, you’re pretty damn sure he hasn’t met any girls like her. While I might complain this sentiment is somewhat belabored in this exchange, perhaps it is rightfully so, because I can think of no better way to express the allure of the heroines of the new romantic vampires texts.

The heroines are all similar precisely because they are unique. They have many qualities which differentiate them from other literary and cinematic women, but for this particular post, I will concentrate on the most apparent, their less-than-human qualities, their glaring oddities, the thing that makes them most “other.”

Before I quite get down to it, though, it makes sense to introduce a little bit of theory for context. One of my all-time favorite academics, Linda Williams, wrote a very interesting article entitled “When the Woman Looks,” about the relationship between women and monsters in the horror film. For a little background, Williams is building on an article I’ve already discussed on the blog before, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey talks about how women’s role in film is basically to be looked at by men, for masculine pleasure. Whether or not you agree with this argument, the fact is it’s pretty much the most influential feminist article about cinema EVER. Don’t take my word for it, though–here’s Williams’ introduction:

“Whenever the movie screen holds a particularly effective image of terror, little boys and grown men make it a point of honor to look, while little girls and grown women cover their eyes or hide behind the shoulders of their dates. there are excellent reasons for this refusal of the woman to look, not the least of which is that she is often asked to bear witness to her own powerlessness in the face of rape, mutilation, and murder. Another reason for the refusal to look is the fact that women are given so little to identify with on the screen. Laura Mulvey’s extremely influential article on visual pleasure in narrative cinema has best defined this problem in terms of a dominant male look at the woman that leaves no place for the woman’s own pleasure in seeing: she exists only to be looked at.”

The politics of the gaze are pretty complicated, and Williams goes over them exhaustively. The conclusion that she finally reaches about monsters, though, is most applicable for our purposes:

“The male look expresses conventional fear at that which differs from itself. The female look–a look given preeminent position in the horror film–shares the male fear of the monster’s freakishness, but also recognizes the sense in which this freakishness is similar to her own difference. For she too has been constituted as an exhibitionist-object by the desiring look of the male. There is not so much difference between an object of desire and an object of horror as far as the male look is concerned… The strange sympathy and affinity that often develops between the monster and the girl may thus be less an expression of sexual desire (as in King Kong, Beauty and the Beast) and more a flash of sympathetic identification.”

Williams argument goes pretty Freudian after that, but I think the key point is established here. The woman and the monster are both different or other from the male protagonist/male viewer, and so in that sense, the woman and the monster are the same. They can identify with each other, because they both are basically victims of patriarchy. When monsters wreak havoc on the protagonists, women might feel a little vindicated, because the monster’s fighting the good fight against the crushing forces of masculine power. When the monster is destroyed in the end, that’s a bummer for us girls, because the patriarchy is re-established.

Another scholar, Rhona Berenstein, makes a similar argument in an article with a similar title, “Looks Could Kill: The Powers of the Gaze in Hypnosis Films.” By hypnosis films, she means those movies where the female protagonist comes under the power of the hypnotizing monster, like the 1931 Dracula (you know, the one with Bela Lugosi).

She argues that in the hypnosis movie, the woman basically gets to run around acting completely nuts and doing whatever she wants because she has the excuse of being under the monster’s power. While the guys are all stressing out about how to kill the monster, the woman gets to have fun. In the end, of course, the monster is killed and the woman gets a happily-ever-after with some boring human dude who basically did nothing but whine the whole movie, and she has to look happy and demure. Again, the patriarchy comes back in full force, but its not only the monster who suffers–it’s the woman too.

So what does all this academic stuff have to do with our romantic vampires?

The first part of the argument–the idea that the woman and the monster are linked, and can identify with each other, is pushed to its very limit in our stories. Each protagonist, the woman who tells the story, has something that marks her as not-quite-human. For Mae, this is most obvious, because she is actually a vampire. No real mystery about the link between monster and woman there. The woman is the monster. It’s important to note, though, that in Near Dark, Mae is the least monstrous of the monsters. She is the most moral, the most conscious of her role as a vampire. In the end, she’s the hero, so there really is a mix-up of the traditional hero-defeats-monster dynamic. Granted, some have argued that the patriarchy is still reestablished, because she is “cured” of vampirism and is put back in place in a more traditional family. This is the kind of argument that Berenstein might support. Mae got to have her fun as a vampire, but in the end she has to go back to her subservient place in the patriarchy. I guess I would see this instead as the result of the pairing of the romance genre and the vampire genre. Mae is first seen as monster, as other, but then the monster becomes the hero, a totally sympathetic character. Instead of killing her off in the end (she’s still a monster, after all), Mae is accepted by Caleb (who arguably represents patriarchal culture). The hybridity of the romance and horror genres creates a new path through which that which is monstrous becomes normalized.

If that’s still too much about justifying difference, though, remember Near Dark is only the beginning. The most recent texts have come much, much farther in terms of this relationship. Anita Blake is a necromancer, able to raise the dead. She’s not a vampire, but she is certainly more that human. Similarly, Sookie Stackhouse is a telepath. Bella, probably the most human, even has her oddity. She is immune to most vampire powers, what in later books is called a “shield.” All three talents make these women stand out. It’s also important to note that in all three series, the heroines are not the only people to posses their talents. They all meet other minor characters with similar abilities, but their talents are always amongst the most rare in their respective mythologies. These women are not entirely singular, they are just very unusual. Like the monster, they are made to feel abnormal, as if they do not fit. For Anita and Sookie, their gifts are seen as handicaps. Both women lament their treatment as children, as if they were freakish or odd or downright scary. It is only within the monster community that they find acceptance. Sookie appreciates the mental silence of the vampires (she cannot read their minds) and Anita thrills at the idea that her supernatural friends are hard to kill and quick to heal, so when she attracts trouble their better equipped to handle it than normal humans.

Bella’s talent is imperceptible to humans. Instead, she laments her social oddness in a much more mundane way. She complains about her clumsiness, her weirdness, her lack of interests in typical high school interests, like clothes and the prom. She desperately wants to be a vampire, to have the grace and the strength of her immortal friends. When she finally does become a vampire, she is still unusual, because unlike the others, she accepts her role as monster. She turns out to be really good at being a vampire, as if she were “born to be a vampire.”

In all three cases, the monsters are understanding of these women’s role as social outcast, and so the link between woman and monster is made very sympathetic on both sides. Their “otherness” is emphasized by their unusual traits, and its easy to see how the women in these stories would prefer the monsters to the judgmental humans, who ostracize them. Now here’s where I think things get really interesting. ALL THREE STORIES ARE TOLD IN FIRST PERSON! We get to hear exactly what these women think; we are put in their position. Because these women have unique positions riding the line between human and monster, they are in the best possible position to judge both sides from a more objective perspective. Instead of the traditional dualism of humans=good, monsters=evil, there is a spectrum of good and bad on which both monsters and humans can fall anywhere. There are good and bad humans, and good and bad monsters. Instead of seeing things just in terms of normality and difference, we are forced, through the eyes and ears of our female protagonists, to judge everyone, human and monster alike, based on a new criteria, a new morality that is not simply black and white. Monsters become sympathetic, romantic characters. Humans become villains. The stark binaries are dissolved.

Because the romance genre is so thoroughly mixed in with the horror genre, the convention of the return to patriarchy at the end of the horror film is dissolved. Instead, the happily ever after can result in the woman celebrating her difference, alongside the monsters. This is the first way in which I see the generic hybridity of these texts resulting in a more feminist perspective.

Whew! That one got long! If you stuck with me, here’s your reward: another song off the vampire mix!

In honor of our leading ladies:

A Girl Like You, by Edwyn Collins (no relation, that I’m aware of…)

A totally wacky video (no idea if it’s the official music video), but it kinda fits. Notice the monstrousness of the silhouettes!

Mixing it up…

On a biographical note, my interest in media studies is an inherited genetic trait. My father is a professor of film and television (though he covers all kinds of media, really), and here I am, writing my senior honors media thesis, so I guess the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. It remains to be seen whether I will follow his footsteps into academia proper, but certainly I have benefited from my proximity to such a braniac in the field. We not only share physical characteristics, it turns out we share many of the same opinions on media studies, which is why today I am turning to one of his articles, “Genericity in the Nineties: Eclectic Irony and New Sincerity.”

I definitely recommend this article to anyone who has doubts about postmodernism, because it is a fabulous explanation of the postmodern condition. It’s got a lot going on, but the idea I want to focus on is generic hybridity. So here’s the argument in a (very small) nutshell (and I’m assuming he’s reading this so I hope I do it justice–hi Dad!):

Playback devices (VHS, DVD, etc.) burst onto the scene in the 1980′s, and flourished in the 90′s. As a result, viewers were able to see not only the latest movies in theaters and the current shows on television, but a whole history of media, all at the same time. This created what our inspired author refers to as a “simultaneity” of past and present texts. When submerged in the cacophony of a hypermediated environment, films themselves have to change, either reflecting the abundance of texts by pulling in all kinds of generic references (like Back to the Future III), or by creating a simplified “sincere” storytelling mode that hints at a purity separate from the fray (e.g. Dances With Wolves). For our purposes, we can more or less ignore the latter category. Instead, I want to draw more attention to the former model, the movies and TV shows that bring in diverse generic references. Here’s a good description of the logic of these texts, in the big man’s own words: “we enter a narrative universe defined by impertinent connections, no longer containable by one set of generic conventions. We encounter, instead, different sets of generic conventions that intermingle, constituting a profoundly intertextual diegesis” (Collins 249). The films are hybrids of various genres, and they are aware of the references they make. Near Dark is one such film. It very consciously employs aspects of the classic Western alongside scenes that could come straight out of a horror film, or a romance, or a family melodrama. The result is a something greater than the sum of its parts, an amalgamation of traits that produces a damn good film.

That’s all well and good for films from the 90′s, but what about now? Well, the latest vampiric texts have seen the rise not only of these playback devices, but an intensification and magnification of this simultaneity through the flowering of the digital era. We have entered an age where we have access to every vampire text ever created, at all times, in all places. Understandably, the newest vampire texts reflect this in their generic hybridity. They are highly self-reflexive, drawing connections across multiple genres, always with an awareness of vampire history, and their position in that history.

Three of the most popular series, the Anita Blake series, the Sookie Stackhouse series, and the Twilight saga, are perfect test cases for this hybridity. The Anita Blake books, by Laurell K. Hamilton, draw together elements from the horror and romance genres, in the style of the hard-boiled detective novel. The Sookie Stackhouse series offers a similar mix, differentiated by a regional specificity, as the novels are set in the American deep South. The Twilight series has introduced vampires to teen romance, or as Entertainment Weekly so fondly called the series, “the Harlequin-romance-for-teens cycle” (58). Romance is notably a presence in all three examples, and this, more than any other factor, is a distinguishing characteristic of the late vampire trend, as I have mentioned in former blog posts. All three (and many more like them) are considered mass-market romances, often given the title “paranormal romance” on bookstore shelves. The books themselves are fully aware that they fulfill this role—Twilight especially constantly draws comparisons between its own narrative and that of classic romantic masterworks such as Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights. This has led to a dismissal of the texts are mere “chick-lit,” inane, fluffy escapist trash for the bored housewife or the vapid tween.

I would argue instead that the really interesting work takes place not in the individual examples of romance in the texts, but in the mixing of genres that takes place. Because romance is mixed with other things, these texts can shed light on some of the problems inherent in romance. The generic hybridity of the texts is a place where commentary can come into the texts, and it is what allows something like Twilight to be read as either a concession to old school patriarchal values or as a revolutionary feminist text.

It’s also important to keep in mind that the mixing of different generic traits can add up to and create something entirely new, not merely simple pastiche.

Of course, all this is essentially groundwork for my argument about the vamp texts. The real question is where do they reflect these characteristics? In what way? STAY TUNED!

p.s. Word to the Wise: there’s a fine line between brilliantly incorporating generic traits to create a work of vampiric genius and really boring regurgitation without any original input. For example, the guy outside my window who thinks he is Bob Marley is not a true artist, but a mere charlatan. My point? Don’t start a drum circle in your front yard and expect your neighbors to appreciate your poetic talent.

How can vampires reflect society when they have no reflection?

Part of the vampire’s unique appeal may be explained by the frequent use of the vampire figure as allegory. The vampire has served as allegory for just about every fear that has plagued society, including (but certainly not limited to) sex, drugs, disease, race, immigration, war, youth unrest, and an endless variety of political ideologies. In a lot of cases, this is perfectly reasonable. Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend is one such example. It can be read as a pretty creative twist on cold war analogies. There are some vampire texts that even play up the allegorical readings through casting choices, writing, or selective imagery, like Let the Right One In, or Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary, which both posit the vampire as allegory for immigration, or Habit, which parallels vampirism and disease (more specifically the AIDS epidemic). While these kinds of readings offer insight into individual texts, they don’t always appreciate the complexity of vampires or the stories in which they star.

One particular example is Nina Auerbach’s reading of the 1987 vampire classic (and my personal favorite vampire film of all time), Near Dark. If you intend to do any serious study of vampires, Auerbach’s book, Our Vampires, Ourselves, it absolutely essential. I can’t recommend it highly enough, especially for media scholars. She has a very straightforward, engaging style, and she comprehensively traces vampires from their pre-Dracula literary roots to the early nineties. It’s a great history, and a great introduction to studying vampires. Her project falls more or less in line with the “allegorical” mode, though that is really selling her short, since her project is anything but simple. In her introduction, she explains in her own words how she sees herself as writing a sort of history of American culture through tracing the tradition of the vampire:

“An alien nocturnal species, sleeping in coffins, living in shadows, drinking our lives in secrecy, vampires are easy to stereotype, but it is their variety that makes them survivors. They may look marginal, feeding on human history from some limbo of their own, but for me, they have always been central: what vampires are in any given generation is a part of what I am and what my times have become. This book is a history of Anglo-American culture through its mutating vampires” (Auerbach 1).

Auerbach argues, in other words, that each generation gets the vampire (or vampires) it deserves. While I generally agree for the most part, I do take issue with this approach for one big reason. This is what we could call a zeitgeist model, or even a “media effects” model. For those unfamiliar with the media effects model, it essentially sees the relationship between media and viewers as an A to B transmission. For example, A. we see this vampire text, B. this is what it means. These kinds of arguments don’t really take into account all of the different people who might interact with a text, and all the different interpretations they might bring to it. It’s just too cut and dry. There’s never a sense that there could be lots of zeitgeists for a particular time, or that vampires can represents lots of various allegories simultaneously.

That’s where Near Dark comes in (SPOILER ALERT for Near Dark after this point! I warned you!). For me, Near Dark more or less signals the beginning of the recent cycle of vampires, because it has all the right qualities, namely, a strong central female character positioned between worlds, as well as a complex set of genres that come into play. For Auerbach, Near Dark is just another representation of American culture. Auerbach sees the ending of the movie as a confirmation of the “loss of will that accompanied the dominance of Reaganism and AIDS” (p. 192). Her reading is perfectly logical: Mae, the central heroine of the film, is turned back from vampire into human, so that she can join Caleb, the protagonist cowboy, in the hetero-normative family structure and agrarian Western dream. Auerbach reads the ending as purely negative: “Bigelow’s paternalistic happy ending is the end of enlightenment” (p. 192). Auerbach sees Near Dark as the end of a cycle of “revisionist” vampires beginning in the 1970’s.

But what Auerbach sees as a reaffirmation of the patriarchy, I see as potentially very liberating, especially when genre conventions are considered. Caleb, the quintessential good-looking, strapping young cowboy, is made out to be both ineffectual and impotent as a hero figure. He fails to lasso Mae and seduce her in the beginning of the film; instead, she lassoes him and turns him into a vampire. He fails as a vampire when he cannot kill to survive, and he even fails to defeat the vampires when he is turned back into the human cowboy and rides to the showdown on his horse. The family unit of the vampires is too strong, and when he faces off against Jesse, the lead vampire, in the traditional showdown scene, the rest of the family sneaks up behind him and nearly kills him. They kidnap his sister, Sarah, and are about to drive away with him left waiting helpless in the dust, when Mae decides to save Sarah and reunite with her lover Caleb. The vampire as family unit (ahem, sound familiar anyone? Do the Cullens ring a bell here?), representative of the feminine family melodrama genre, subverts the masculine Western genre by rendering the cowboy useless as a hero figure. The ending, with Mae restored to humanity, is furthermore a confirmation of her heroic role in the story, and the dominance of the also feminine romance genre over the horror and Western genres.

My argument hinges on the idea that genres come with certain expectations. When a movie or book or whatever mixes genres, those expectations get tied up in the mix, and that can make for some very interesting, and very diverse readings. Auerbach’s reading is a good reading, but it falls flat in light of these kinds of expectations. So what does that mean for the more modern romantic vampire texts? Can we read Twilight as just a metaphor for teen abstinence? Can we look at True Blood as an analogy for civil rights in the American South? Are these vampire stories or homosexual coming out stories? Certainly, these questions can figure into our readings, but I think we’ll be better served if we all step back and look at the other particulars of the texts. Which is exactly what I plan to do! Stay tuned for generic hybridity!

Type O Gross!

Doing research for this blog yielded a number off odd and entertaining little finds. Perhaps the strangest example from the vault:

Here’s the description from the site where you can buy it:

“Blood Energy Potion

Blood Energy Potion. New from the makers of Mana and Health Energy Potion comes Blood Energy Potion: the world’s first synthetic blood beverage. The fruit punch flavor packs 4 hours of energy along with iron, protein, and electrolytes. Not only does Blood Energy Potion have a similar nutritional makeup to real blood, but it has the same color, look, and consistency of blood. Get real blood nutrients without that real blood taste! The re-sealable transfusion bag style pouch provides the convenient delivery of fluids for vampires and humans alike! Contains no real blood, just synthetic!”

It’s the packaging that’s really the stroke of genius. I have a deep rooted fear of needles, so even looking at this product gives me chills. They couldn’t have just stuck it in a juicebox. They really need you to feel the authenticity of sucking blood out of a bag. I guess it’s preferable to sucking it out of a human, anyways.

So for those of you who feel like you need to truly immerse yourself in the vampire experience, go nuts.

Remember when vampires were sparkly?

I got this in my email from Borders a little while ago:

A new novel by Stephanie Meyer, which will finally satisfy all those inquiring minds asking “What now?” For those unfamiliar with Bree Tanner, she is a very, very minor character from Eclipse, the third installment of the Twilight series. Blink and you miss her. And now she has her very own novel. She has also provided a neat solution of the problem of where the Twilight saga could go. Because the series only has four books, there has been suggestion that this whole “romantic vampire” thing is only a passing trend, and it will go away as quickly as any other saga. Now that Bree has her own book, any of the minor characters could end up with a novel, or even a saga of their own. Maybe Ms. Meyer will reconsider her novel from Edward’s perspective (a shelved project after it leaked online). Personally, I’m hoping for a novel from the perspective of Leah, the sole female werewolf in the story, or maybe a tale of the Amazon vampires.

As for the idea that this is all just a trend, I should also point out that unlike Twilight, many of the series do not have a termination date, and have been going strong continuously since well before Twilight debuted on the scene. I’m thinking of the series for older readers and viewers, like Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, or Anita Blake. So even if the initial excitement of Twilight passes after the movies finish their run in theaters, there will still likely be a large fanbase for all things romantic and vampiric.

Even if my prediction fails to come true, and everybody stops reading and watching these vampire texts, the fact remains that these texts have changed the cultural conception of vampires irrevocably. Arguably, before this point, vampires have been classified as a subgenre of the larger horror tradition. Practically every time I tell someone about my vampire thesis, they (often smugly) ask me “Remember when vampires were scary?” I generally don’t bother to dignify these queries with a response, because I have gotten so sick of that particular sentiment, which seems to be shared by multitudes of people in the online community as well as critics and writers. Whether or not vampires were ever scary is a topic for another post, but the fact remains that within this sentiment is the confirmation that vampires have changed. One of this year’s superbowl ads underscores my point rather… well, mysogynistically:

You might notice that listed amongst the “chores” men are so cruelly put upon to accomplish (oh the drudgery of carrying lip balm!) is watching vampire TV shows. Not chick flicks, not soap operas, not even Hallmark made-for-TV movies, Nicholas Sparks’ adaptations, Jane Austen adaptations, or CW serials. Vampire TV shows, which have evidently, in the opinion of the most phallo-centric advertising in the know universe, now become the gold standard for feminine entertainment. Vampires are now girly.

Granted, there are still vampires out there with more masculine airs. There’s Blade, of course, and 30 Days of Night, The Strain, Vampire Hunter D, Daybreakers, etc. These texts, however, do not have the cultural presence or power that the romantic vampires have enjoyed, and they also bring up an important question about defining the vampire genre. In the case of Blade, the vampires are just generic monsters that serve as a vehicle for Wesley Snipes to kick ass and show off his rippling muscles. 30 Days of Night and The Strain have very little specificity to their vampirism rules, and might as well just be any old monsters. Vampire Hunter D has incorporated some of the aspects of the romantic vampire, but along with Daybreakers, falls under the sci-fi mantle moreso than classic horror. These are all sweeping judgments, and I mean them to be. The vampires in these texts serve as background, as means to an ends. The vampires as vampires don’t really have a central role in the story. The romantic vampire texts, on the other hand, have given vampires definition as they have never had before. The texts themselves have a unique pattern, and the vampires within drive the narrative with their individual characteristics. Though it might be too grand a claim, it seems that the romantic vampire cycle has given vampires a distinct genre of their own. In the following posts, I’ll set out some of the qualities of the romantic vampire cycle, so that you can decide for yourself if this is the case, or if these vampires, like others before them, will be gone with the sunrise.

p.s. If you were less than amused by the superbowl ad above, try this one on for size:

What music they make!

Back in October, when vampires were especially in vogue thanks to the season and the impending release of that treasure trove of vampiric studliness, New Moon, I began putting together a vampire mix. I think they actually have one of those “iTunes essential” mixes for anyone interested, but I took a different approach. I wanted to incorporate not only songs about vampires, but pop songs that reflect some kind of vampiric theme when recontextualized. I feel that vampires would appreciate that, because many of them are professed pop music fans (see Lestat, Edward Cullen, the Lost Boys).

So, from time to time, I’ll post one of those songs if the mood strikes. To get things rolling, here’s my first track, “The Night Starts Here,” by Stars. Not one of the songs that’s explicitly about vampires, I think it’s poeticism sets a good tone for my particular project. This is the video, which is only a little bit vampiric:

The Night Stars Here by Stars

Enjoy!