Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, North America English Language and Literature 9-30-2002 Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most William Patrick Day Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Day, William Patrick, "Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most" (2002). Literature in English, North America. 3. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/3 Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture This page intentionally left blank VAMP IRE LEGENDS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CULTURE What Becomes a Legend Most William Patrick Day THIE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2002 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508–4008 www.kentuckypress.com The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Day, William Patrick. Vampire legends in contemporary American culture : what becomes a legend most / William Patrick Day. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-2242-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Vampires in literature. 3. Popular culture—United States—History—20th century. 4. Horror tales, American—History and criticism. 5. Vampire films—History and criticism. I. Title. PS374.V35 D39 2002 813’.509375—dc21 2002011001 ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-9250-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses CONTENTS Preface v11 Introduction 1 1 Vampire History 11 2 The Vampire Liberation Front 33 3 The Dracula Variations: Part I 61 4 Post-Human Vampires: "We Are Animals" 81 5 The Dracula Variations: Part II 105 6 Return of the Slayer 129 Conclusion: The Persistence of Legend 167 Notes 173 Bibliography 183 Index 189 This page intentionally left blank PREFACE s with any story that exists primarily in the realm of commercial A entertainment, taking vampire stories seriously is almost as risky as confronting the nosferatu in the crypt. The modern vampire, as opposed to his folklore ancestor, is a performer, and the cape, the evening clothes, even the fangs are at times vaguely silly, a fact acknowledged in such comic vampire movies as Mel Brooks's Dracula: Dead and Loving It! Among the mass of vampire stories to be used for thrills and forgotten are works created by writers, filmmakers, and television producers who, though confined by commercial entertainment, don't simply want to sell an evening with the vampire but to communicate in a serious way with a popular medium. The accumulated presence of the vampire story, versatile as well as pervasive, gives individual tales a thickness and weight. As writers re spond to their own moment through a vampire story they enhance the vampire story's depth and breadth, making it increasingly flexible and so phisticated. The possibilities for meaning in the vampire story result not simply from the dense variety of its versions but also because no matter how deeply absorbed we might become, we always know that the vampire is one of our great marketable nightmares-at once serious and childish that serves as part of our common language. To engage with the vampire as a writer, director, producer, actor, or audience is to consciously choose to enter this realm of fiction where we know meaning can be made rather than, as is the case with realism, appear to be found. To reject these stories because they are "mere entertainment" is in a sense to reject imagination itself, to turn away from the possibility that fictional narratives can offer us meaning. Vll Preface In taking such vampire stories seriously we could say they are Mythic in the sense Carl Jung, Northrop Frye, and Joseph Campbell have used the term, that they are alive with a primal human reality that encodes the shape and meaning of our existence. Because of their folklore origin, vampire stories seem particularly good candidates for such Mythic status. But as commercial products, vampire stories circulate as a pastiche of myth, re minding us of the primal and eternal but simultaneously signifying their dissolution into entertainment. As commercial entertainment, vampire sto ries also seem barred from the status of Art. To say that vampire stories are not Art is not to say that vampire stories aren't artful, made by skilled and talented writers, directors, and actors. It does indicate that their status is quite different from the works we call Art; because of their commercial qualities, we recognize them as creations of the moment, claiming our at tention in different ways than works we think of as timeless masterpieces. Another way of approaching vampire stories is to say that as with any commodity-gasoline, pork bellies, microwaves, stocks and bonds-these stories are highly reactive to the market, providing a sensitive barometer of the social reality in which they exist. From this perspective, stories that circulate as commercial entertainment are typically regarded as unreflec tive and unmindful things that convey an inarticulate ideology without understanding it. To examine stories in this way is to explicate for the cul ture what it cannot discern in much the same way a psychoanalyst might explain the dreams ofa resistant patient, a comparison echoing Horkheimer's comment that "popular culture is psychoanalysis in reverse." This approach, though, tends to assume that stories are a kind of synecdoche for culture rather than a part of it, that they are, like pork bellies or gasoline, fungible commodities that are not experienced individually, and even more prob lematically, it assumes that the critic is to some degree outside the culture they examine. I take these vampires stories seriously as part of an ongoing conversa tion about who we are and what we're about, one which I have chosen to join. I accord to vampire stories the status of a serious, mindful response to our culture, a dialogue carried out through images and narratives, simply because if I don't assume this about them, I don't see how I can assume it about myself. Vampire stories are located on the uneasy ground between Art and commodity, at the meeting point of entertainment and rhetoric, Vlll Preface neither myth nor masterpiece, but also not merely raw inarticulate cultural data or ideology's packhorse. Criticism, stories, and the parts of our lives we call culture are all elements of a larger whole, and it is unfortunate when we mistake the results produced by our analytical tools for a perspective outside that whole. I'm making the same kind of claim that anyone who writes serious vampire stories does: look at the vampire story in this way and see things about our world, ourselves, and our imaginations that would not have been otherwise apparent. In taking this approach, I recall one of my students saying, when he became infuriated at the idea that Salem's Lot might "mean" something, "you can't prove anything with vampires!" This is true, but I doubt one can prove anything with any imaginative creation. I don't intend to prove things about our imaginative and cultural life, I simply intend to take part in it. My understanding of these stories is inevitably retrospective; seen through such a lens, the vampire story may appear to be "going" some where, but that is a bearing my own perspective creates. There is no teleol ogy here-the seeds of Buffy were not lying dormant within Dark Shadows, nor was there an inevitable route from Dracula, Prince ofDarkness to Bram Stoker's Dracula. There is not even a real dialectic; though I think these works are often created in response to each other, they move toward prolif eration rather than synthesis. Only a literary critic would be equally inter ested in all vampire stories, and all the modes of the vampire story can coexist at the same moment for different, if occasionally overlapping, audi ences. Though our conversation about who and what we are may follow both a track of internal logic and external influence, it is more incoherent and complex than that. Given the overwhelming number of vampire stories in circulation today, the decisions I have made about which novels, movies, and televi sion programs to discuss means my argument begins invisibly in this selec tion process. In the course of writing this book I have tried to include vampire stories I thought were important voices in our culture. But works such as The Night Stalker, Blood for Dracula, 'Salem's Lot, Near Dark, Mar tin, Children of the Night, Forever Knight, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I found compelling and entertaining, which even now I return to with special pleasure, were what led me to begin exploring these stories.