At the Catholic literary journal Dappled Things, Eleanor Bourg Donlon wonders why they don’t make vampires like they used to:
The real problem with so many of these [new vampyre] films is actually they are both too serious and yet not serious enough. In the midst of taking themselves so damned seriously (the profanity is apt when speaking of the nosferatu), they become seriously unrealistic. (Says Abbot: “I know there’s no such person as Dracula. You know there’s no such person as Dracula.” “But,” quips Costello in response: “does Dracula know it?”) They are so desperate to invest the metaphysically denuded world with some sort of meaning that they end up dressing in modified Lugosi garb and speaking in husky, tremulous tones. This is symptomatic of a pervasive problem: as we have completely lost the sense of the sacramental nature of reality, we attempt to convey the preternatural through fantasy and costume. The more conspicuous the spectacle and more gaudy the display, the clearer it is that we are dull to its true presence. On the one hand we superficially embrace the supernatural under the guise of the fantastical; on the other, we completely reject the metaphysical backdrop proper to any such foray into vampyrism. And—pace drooling Edward Cullen fans—it is the latter which truly makes such nonsensical nightmares resonate with viewers.
August 9th, 2010 | 12:18 pm
The strange attractiveness of vampires is an important element in all the stories I know of – but in the really powerful stories, like Stoker’s Dracula, it’s an attraction that is shot through with horror. Properly handled, the defeat and destruction of the vampire represents the triumph of genuine life over the powers of death: of generative life and growth over static un-life and eternal death.
One of the things that disturbs me about the recent spate of vampire books/films, and Twilight specifically, is that these new pro-vampire stories don’t just ignore the tension between life and death – they embrace the side of death. In the Twilight series, Bella’s desire for Edward is shown in an entirely positive light, and her desire to become a vampire like him is ultimately shown as positive.
What message is that sending? That death and stasis are more attractive than life, growth, and change. Bella hates the fact that her teenaged body will change and become (in her eyes) less beautiful – so she wants to be frozen forever. This is a desire that many women struggle with – but how horrible, to have a popular, emotionally button-pushing series of books that endorses the idea of staying eternally “perfect” and rejects the beauty of maturation. The Twilight stories offer the reader the choice of life and death, and basically say, “Choose death.”
August 9th, 2010 | 1:36 pm
This is also why H.P. Lovecraft could maintain that an ordinary but isolated farmhouse could be the most terrifying of settings; he had a huge metaphysical backdrop behind it (the terror of the infinite space empty of God).
August 9th, 2010 | 2:20 pm
“There is no such person as Dracula,” states the author. Dracula is translated as Dragon. The Order of the Dragon, an Order similar to the Order of the Golden Fleese or Order of Bath, was bestowed upon a one time Transvalian ruler known in history as Vald the Impailer. Yes, I know I am a pedant.
August 9th, 2010 | 3:19 pm
Many thanks, Joe, for the nod.
Holly: Indeed! The Twilight series makes utter hash of the attraction/repulsion effect of evil. Moreover, the superficially chaste Edward is counterbalanced by the ever-lustful Bella (hat tip to Regina Doman in her recent presentation at the American Chesterton Conference for this point). Not only is the lengthy depiction of ungoverned female desire unwholesome for young readers, the notion that young girls crazed for young men will be kept from sexual misconduct because of the staunch restraint of their lovers is at best absurd and at worst dangerously naive.
Bill: Thank you for the clarification but I will add a further detail: while it is true that Stoker took the name “Dracula” from the actual historical personage Vlad the Impaler, the research of renowned Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller (among others) has definitively proved that there is at best a tenuous connection between Stoker’s Count and the historical Vlad. Stoker took the name from William Wilkinson’s 1820 book, “An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia”, wherein the name Dracula is used twice to refer to Vlad Dracul, Vlad the Impaler’s father, and once in reference to the Impaler himself. Dracula’s notes for the novel seem to indicate that he was interested in the fact that “DRACULA in Wallachian language means DEVIL” (at least, so said his source). Beyond this he knew little of the Count’s historical namesake. So I do agree that the historical figure of Vlad existed, but sadly admit that Count Dracula does not exist except in a fictional universe (apologies to Stoker who claimed in the introduction to the Icelandic edition of the novel that “this mysterious tragedy which is here described is completely true in all its external respects….”).
August 9th, 2010 | 4:16 pm
Ms. Donlon, I’d be curious to hear your opinion of Elizabeth Kostova’s novel The Historian, which attempts to much more thoroughly tie Stoker’s Dracula to the historical Vlad Tepes. I thought it was rather well done, though the ending was a bit weak. And I’m afraid it also didn’t especially confront the theological content of vampirism.
I certainly hope you are right that “[p]erhaps someday the true dramatic potential of vampyrism will be fully realized.” As a student with an intense interest in the theological and moral potential of the horror genre, I think it’s long past due.
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