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!
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