Underworld films from the last decade, and from the suave sophistication of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in 1931 to Christopher Lee’s animal magnetism in numerous incarnations mostly in the 1960s and ’70s to the softer model of contemporary masculine perfection of Robert Pattinson in the movie adaptations of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels (Twilight, 2008; New Moon, 2009; Eclipse, 2010), the power and danger of sex have undergirded and energized the cinema. That erotic charge, at least in critic David Pirie’s estimation in his Vampire Cinema (1977), constitutes the films’ primary appeal. , in short, are undeniably the sexiest of . Vampires provide representations of tabooed sexuality to establish and reinforce proper sexual roles. Vampires are, quite simply, very, very naughty. They are seldom decorously heterosexual, monogamous, and respectful partners. Rather, they are polymorphously perverse seducers who, in film scholar Richard Kate Beckinsale turns heads and gives vampires some sex appeal in Underworld (2003). Dyer’s estimation, evoke the thrill of “forbidden sexuality.” Vampires are undisciplined forces of desire outside cultural networks of socialization. Driven Vampires, Vampires, by sexualized thirst, they devour the life force of their partners. Vampires are pure id, libidinal energy incarnate, and this By Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock makes them both dangerous and Everywhere! dangerously attractive.

rom the Twilight films to the HBO Thirst, creates vampires as a result of Principle II: The vampire is more series True Blood, from the medical testing gone awry while the interesting than those who pursue it F alternative rock band Vampire Russian epics Night Watch (2004) Weekend to the TV series The Vampire and Day Watch (2006) include vampires Ironically, the undead are, to borrow Diaries — indeed, from Count Chocula on among a host of supernatural creatures. from contemporary philosopher Slavoj cereal boxes to Sesame Street’s Count von In any number of modern imaginings, Žižek, more alive than we are. In contrast to Count — you would have to live in a coffin vampires have gone global: In True Blood us, the vampire lives for pleasure alone and not to have your path regularly crossed as well as the Blade, Underworld and is a figure of excessive — thus, threatening by vampires. Twilight franchises — to adapt Percy — enjoyment, an uncanny surplus that In New Orleans, thanks to novelist Bysshe Shelley’s famous phrase — the transgresses social expectations and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles sagas on “unacknowledged legislators of the highlights the precariousness of gender the page and on the screen, it seems one world” no longer are poets but vampires. can’t throw a stone without hitting the Vampires, vampires, everywhere. Why? For another look at vampires and undead. New York is vampire ground zero What explains their persistence — and related monsters, see page 22. in the 2007 Will Smith-driven movie, I Am appeal? Here are a few possibilities about Legend, the third adaptation of Richard the strange attraction of the monstrous Matheson’s apocalyptic 1954 novel about a undead, principles that my forthcoming codes. Vampires are imperial, selfish, world taken over by vampires. California is book, Vampires: Undead Cinema (due out domineering, and intensely physical. Nosferatu Central, teenage-style, in The from Wallflower Press in late 2011), Lurking beneath the human façade is pure Lost Boys (1987) while vampires take on develops in much greater depth. animalistic energy. The vampire’s power the Heartland in director Kathryn and potency (the vampire is driven not just Bigalow’s vampire western, Near Dark Principle I: Vampire narratives to feed but also to reproduce) are both (1987). Even Alaska is vulnerable — are always about sex frightening and alluring. exceptionally so, given its prolonged Those who seek to destroy the vampire, winter darkness — in the bloody 2007 Vampire narratives are always, the agents of cultural repression, cannot cinematic adaptation of writer Steve Niles inevitably, about sex — although what help but seem priggish and impotent. The and illustrator Ben Templesmith’s vampire each has to say obviously will vary Van Helsings, Jonathan Harkers, Arthur comic book miniseries, 30 Days of Night. depending upon time and place. From the Holmwoods and Quincy Morrises of the Lest one think vampires are merely “vamps” of the Theda Bara school who world seem boring juxtaposed against the a domestic concern, Sweden has a populated the silent screen of the early 20th smoldering sexuality of, say, Gary vampire problem in Let the Right One In century and “monsterized” aggressive Oldman’s titular Dracula (1992) or any of (2008), which puts an unusual spin on female sexuality to the lesbian vampires of actress Ingrid Pitt’s luscious vampire the familiar boy-meets-girl story: The Great Britain’s Hammer Studios incarnations for Hammer Studios. Dreaded young teenage girl is actually an aged productions of the 1970s to the leather-clad and desired in equal measure, the vampire vampire. The 2009 South Korean release, sexiness of vampire Kate Beckinsale in the is sexier, more interesting, and more

4 Fall 2010 commanding than the forces of cultural virulent xenophobia. Rather, the vampire is stability that seek to expel it, which in part an “overdetermined” body that condenses a is why we won’t let it die. constellation of culturally specific anxieties and desires into one super-saturated form. Principle III: The vampire always returns Dracula is certainly about sex, but is also in professor/critic Stephen Arata’s The vampire may be staked to death or estimation about race — about “reverse reduced to ashes by the sun at the end of El colonization” in which culturally inferior Vampiro (1957), The Horror of Dracula others from the backwaters of central (1958), Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), Europe infiltrate the heart of the empire. Blacula (1972), Fright Night (1985), or And True Blood parallels vampires coming Dracula 2000 (2000), but all that’s needed out of the coffin with homosexuals coming to revive him is a little blood, a voodoo out of the closet — plus raises questions ritual, or the removal of a cross from the about race and class because of its rural corpse. Even if the vampire is destroyed, Louisiana setting. What makes the vampire some trace or essence invariably survives so potent is its concatenation of sexual, — Dracula’s ashes in The Horror of racial, and technological anxieties and Dracula or his DNA in The Mark of longings — a sort of Rorschach inkblot of Dracula (1997). culturally-specific dread and desire. The vampire always returns because it is our creation, and we won’t let it rest. It is Principle VI: We are all vampire our prodigal son, returning home, bearing textual nomads with it and giving shape to deep-seated anxieties and tabooed desires that may vary None of us can simply watch a single with the times but never vanish. To “taste vampire movie. Instead, we are watching the blood of Dracula,” as the title of the many vampire movies simultaneously, 1970 Hammer Studios film demands, is in comparing the new representation with a sense redundant because Dracula’s blood the old and looking for winks that is already coursing through our veins. acknowledge a rendition is participating However, each time Dracula is in and revising an established tradition. unleashed upon the world he embodies a We are all “vampire nomads,” to adapt an new structure of feeling, a different idea from cultural theorist ; awareness, an altered set of fears and we range among a profusion of vampire desires. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula in Tod texts, considering one in light of others. Browning’s 1931 version is a suave Old Vampires don’t seem to mind the bitter Alaskan Vampires have so colonized Western World aristocrat. In The Satanic Rites of winters in 30 Days of Night (2007). Far from it. cultural imagination that one need not have Dracula (1974), Christopher Lee’s Dracula read Stoker’s Dracula or seen even a single is a corporate CEO concocting a virulent vampire movie to know the basics: strain of Bubonic plague. In director F.W. the determination of what the vampire is Vampires drink blood, come out only at Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), the monstrous and how to deal with it leads to a night, can transform, are destroyed with a vampire Count Orlok is conquered by the consideration and sometimes revision of stake, etc. There are, at this point, no pure, virginal blood of a woman who epistemological paradigms and to an vampire virgins. We are bitten from the surrenders her body to the vampire, engagement with technology. Tools range moment we see Count von Count on martyring herself in the process. In Buffy from the traditional crucifix and Sesame Street or Count Chocula on a cereal the Vampire Slayer (1992) and the TV communion wafer to the sort of light box or experience our first Halloween. series it spawned, the vampire is also grenade Hugh Jackman wields in The vampire, therefore, is a ready-made vanquished by a woman, but a stake- Van Helsing (2004). metaphoric vehicle whose potency derives wielding, hip teenager who is far from The vampire thus is, perhaps in an from its intrinsic connections to fear, sex, passive. America always gets the vampire unexpected way, a sort of cyborg, defined science, and social constructions of it deserves, opines Pirie. More to the point, in relation to and, in many cases, produced difference. ■ each generation of filmmakers creates the by particular technologies of detection, vampires it desires. determination, and destruction. Vampire narratives thereby function as referendums Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock is Principle IV: The cinematic vampire on the inadequacies, perils, and promises professor of English and director is always about technology of modern science and technology. of the English graduate program at Central Michigan University. In vampire narratives, when people start Principle V: The cinematic vampire He is the author of The Rocky sickening and dying, the vampire is first condenses what a culture considers Horror Picture Show and Scare suspected and then confronted, and the “other” Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women inevitable question gets posed: “What is it?” and has edited academic collections of essays on The answer — usually provided by an expert Vampires resist all-encompassing, topics including South Park, , M. on occult matters, a Van Helsing figure (the one-to-one metaphoric interpretation. It is Night Shyamalan, and American ghost stories. hunter first introduced in Bram too reductive to say the vampire is the He also has edited four volumes of the fiction of Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula), but metaphorical embodiment of sexual desire, American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft for Barnes & sometimes provided by a book of arcane lore capitalist exploitation, viral contagion, or Noble. Email him at [email protected]. — is a necessary preliminary to developing a response to the vampire’s predations. Whether vampirism is caused by viral For works cited, go online to contagion or demonic agency, and whether www.phikappaphi.org/forum/fall2010.

MovieWeb.com (all) MovieWeb.com the antidote is an inoculation or holy water,

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