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The Vampire Lectures The Vampire Lectures LAURENCE A. RICKELS UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS MINNEAPOLIS • LONDON Frontispiece: "Untitled," 1995. Photograph by Nancy Barton. Copyright 1999 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re- trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rickels, Laurence A. The vampire lectures / Laurence A. Rickels. p. cm. Includes filmography. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8166-3391-6 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8166-3392-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Vampire films — History and criticism. 2. Horror tales — History and criticism. 3. Vampires in literature. I. Title. PN1995.9.V3R53 1999 791.43'675 —dc21 99-30570 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota Press is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 Contents IN MY PREFACE • ix LECTURE ONE • 1 Histories of Vampirism, Stoker, Rice, Middle Ages, Eighteenth Cen- tury—Alcoholics, Dead Bachelors, Heretics, and Suicides, among Other Candidates for Vampiric Comeback—Sexology or Cryptol- ogy—Succubus, Incubus — Blood, Andy Warhol Presents Dracula and The Fearless Vampire Killers—Antiquity, Inquisition, Vlad the Impaler, Countess Bathory LECTURE TWO • 15 Eighteenth-Century Vampirism Epidemic in Eastern Europe, Jour- nalistic and Scholarly Responses—The Plague, Discovery of Cir- culation, Psychoanalysis — Medical Explanations—Death's Make- over in the Eighteenth Century, Live Burial — Projection — Blacula LECTURE THREE • 26 Stoker's Dracula—Circulation—Trips—The Castle inside Him— The Lady's Lost Letters—Technologization and Group Psycholo- gization — Horror of Dracula—"Dracula's Guest" LECTURE FOUR • 40 Stoker's Dracula— Totem and Taboo—Incest Is the Law—The Two Women, the Golden Lady, Hair Color Change, the New Woman— Vamp LECTURE FIVE • 51 Fourth of July—Mina's Gadget Love — The Telegraph — Cargo Cult—The Cemetery in Whitby—Burial Service—Dracula's Daugh- ter and Nadja—The Recorded Voice versus the Mass of Typewriting LECTURE SIX • 64 Double, Insurance, Substitution — Photography and the Mummy — Cinema, Cannibalism, and Melancholia — Back Home — Mirror Stage — Spider Woman or Phallic Mother — Ewers's "The Spider" — The Tenant— "The Antimacassar" — From Dusk till Dawn LECTURE SEVEN • 77 Station Identification — "The Horla" — The Force of Invisibility and Posthypnotic Suggestion — "Human Remains" and Face Value — Vampire's Kiss—"Doom of the House of Duryea" LECTURE EIGHT • 90 The Double Genealogy—The Black Cat and Universal Soldier— Murnau's Nosferatu—Nina's Vampire Bond — Release from Empty Circulation — Herzog's Nosferatu—Not Seeing LECTURE NINE • 99 Bad Smell— The Lair of the White Worm — Opportunistic Diagno- sis and "The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady" LECTURE TEN -111 Postal Pathology—Espionage and Psychological Warfare — Where the Technology Goes When We Go to the Movies — Interview with the Vampire and Bram Stoker's Dracula LECTURE ELEVEN • 118 Browning's Dracula and the Bicoastal Count — Deane and Balder- ston's Dracula or the Red-Eye Special — Lugosi's and Stoker's Lives and Plan Nine from Outer Space LECTURE TWELVE • 131 "Dragula" or "TV" — Famous Impostors — Browning, Chaney, Lugosi — Ed Wood Jr.'s Glen or Glenda, Killer in Drag, Death of a Transvestite—The Great-Nephew LECTURE THIRTEEN • 147 "For the Blood Is the Life" and the Miscarriage of the Antibody— "Four Wooden Stakes" and the Mother Is a Tramp — "Clarimonde" plus One Is Nun—"Restless Souls" and Killing the Dead—"The Sad Story of a Vampire" and Mama's Boy—"The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" and Feedback LECTURE FOURTEEN • 160 Le Fanu and "Carmilla" —The Schloss —The Name That Must Not Vary—Supplying the Loss of Mother—The Hunger—Daughters of Darkness— Vampyres LECTURE FIFTEEN • 173 Dreyer's Vampyr—"Taboo upon the Dead" — Painting versus Film — "Revelations in Black" and Blue — The Vampire Tapestry LECTURE SIXTEEN • 189 Stephen King's Mass—'Salem's Lot and Danse Macabre—Ghost- busting and Nazi Hunting in Salem's lot and A Return to Salem's Lot LECTURE SEVENTEEN • 201 "They Bite" Big Time — "The Vampire" and Death Is a Painter of Portraits — "The Room in the Tower" and "Mrs. Amworth" — The Lost Boys—Peter Pan—The Case of California—The Gulf War- Role Playing— Werther LECTURE EIGHTEEN • 219 Near Dark—"The Tomb of Sarah" and Father Knows Best—Were- woman — The Wolfman and the Living Dad — / Was a Teenage Were- wolf or Totem Becomes Mascot— The Thing with Vampire Vegeta- bles— "Who Goes There?" LECTURE NINETEEN • 234 Burial Practice, Embalming — Freund's The Mummy—Strobl's "The Tomb of Pere Lachaise" — Schizomummies—The Unwrap- ping of Mummy Came First—Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars— The Great Experiment, the Unconscious Father, Her Hand in Mar- riage — Periodicity LECTURE TWENTY • 249 Polidori's The Vampyre—Archaeology and Autoanalysis — Miss- ing Persons — "Return of the Undead" — Blood ofDracula and Buffy the Vampire Slayer LECTURE TWENTY-ONE • 264 Varney the Vampyre—Group Psychology and the Quotation Marx of Vampirism — Gambling— Rumor — Neighborly Love—Suicide— Vampire Plays by Boucicault and Reece LECTURE TWENTY-TWO • 277 Gothic—Mary Shelley and Frankenstein — William — Golem — Whale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein LECTURE TWENTY-THREE • 287 The Show of Grief—Public and Secret Identification — The Ghost- writer's Preface — Dilation — Death Wish Fulfillment — William's Murder, Victor's Vampire — The Mother's Portrait — Elizabeth Is the Killer-Substitute — Flashback—The Alma Mater — Elizabeth Must Die — The Missing Grave — The Monster Mourns — Why Victor Can't Make the Mate — In Love with Electricity—Teenage Frankenstein LECTURE TWENTY-FOUR • 304 Drag Race of Mourning and the Finish Line of AIDS—Son of Frankenstein — Andy Warhol Presents Frankenstein—Body Parts on the Reassembly Line — Vampire Detectives — Pale Blood and Three Subspecies—Good Citizens or Suicides? — Interview with the Vam- pire— Lost Love — Nietzsche — Life Sucks — What's God Got to Do with It? —Egotism —Life Is Killing —The Death Cult of Child- hood— Locket—Casper and Doyle's Spiritism LECTURE TWENTY-FIVE • 326 Revenge — "It Was" — Nihilism — Eternal Return — Third-Person Pronouns — The Law of Pleasure LECTURE TWENTY-SIX • 335 Innocent Blood—The Vampire Lestat—Relocation of Graves — The Theatre des Vampires — Overman — Sacrificial Drive — Ma- ternal Subcultures — Origin of Vampirism — Incest Is the Law— Rock Music— The Queen of the Damned REFERENCES • 351 FILMOGRAPHY • 357 IN MY PREFACE I started pumping up this corpus called The Vampire Lectures in 1986 on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, somewhere be- tween the airport and the beach, or in other words or worlds, somewhere between the middlebrowbeat Back East and the Teen Age on the Coast. It was my new curricular offering, a course load of auto-stimulation, which I made a point of injecting into the student body's circulation system, their curriculum vitae, in order to catch them where they breed. And I had time. All the time of the transference was on my side. Because it was not, not right away, an instant hit; the student body was slow on the intake. "Vampirism in German Literature and Beyond" doubled as intro to psychoanalytic theory: the vampire located on the margin of the psychoanalytic treatment of mourning sickness, where it is as much a symptom as an example, was advanced to the front of the class. On Halloween eve 1987 the student newspaper ran an interview with me that began with the question of how I came to a topic of study that some might consider "morbid." My answer back then: I guess it begins with an interest in Freudian psychoanalysis, and the impression I have, which is the basis for all my research, that the issue of mourning is the most vulnerable point of articulation in psycho- analytic theory. So this is what I've pursued throughout, and vam- pirism, haunting, all these morbid manifestations are frequent analo- gies for mourning and aberrant mourning in psychoanalysis. On the sidelines of that proper pursuit, I necessarily acquired all this marginal knowledge, and I figured, Why not switch perspectives a little bit, in the usual move of seeing the marginal as somehow more central than it had seemed to be, and address vampirism within psychoanalysis more directly. In the course we're set to do right now I allow vampirism and the technical media and psychoanalysis to occupy interchange- ix x LAURENCE A. RICKELS able places; one isn't necessarily marginal with respect to the other; they converge in one thought experiment. So the class that right away drew attention but not yet the crowds tried to convey psychoanalytically conceived themes or topics of mourn- ing and melancholia or technology and haunting via the host of cultural phenomena or symptoms served at our media mass. What I find encour- aging about the outrageous success of the class, especially since 1995, and now I am talking body count, is that I at no point anticipated or compromised with student-consumer expectations. I believe I never gave in to the desire for paraphrase-o-rama explanations (a desire that most likely gets projected onto students, for their edification or identifica- tion, by mediocre professors) not even or especially not in the form of reading assignments, required or recommended. We always encountered our words and thoughts directly. No explanations, please. The class was always way more about the theoretical issues I placed on the conveyor belting out of my pedagogy than it ever was just another imitation-cool sampling of sensationalisms.