From the beginning, vampires were more than just devils of darkness. They were symbols, used to express what wasn’t acceptable. Before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, vampires were anything but attractive or sexually appealing. They were dead men feeding on the living. But Dracula gave them more meaning, and vampires were used as a metaphor for Victorian views on sex. In Victorian times, sex was seen as dangerous and not to be spoken of. Women were supposed to be chaste and nurturing, and female vampires were the complete opposite of the Victorian ideal. They were seductive predators. They were beautiful as well. As times changed, male vampires became attractive and more alluring, too, fitting the image of a dangerous man who is able to seduce innocent girls.
Traditionally, vampires represented aspects of our sexuality that were not socially acceptable or were feared. Infection through close contact, corruption of innocents, complete indulgence in any desire…all of these are reflected in a vampire. However, this image has not remained static, as can be seen in a long series of novels and films. Just as Dracula represented Victorian fears about sex, film representations of vampires can stand for many things, from fear of outsiders to addicts and dangerous men.
Most recently, vampires can be seen as mirroring the gay community, most strongly in the HBO series True Blood (based on a series of novels called The Southern Vampire Mysteries). In previous works, vampires were not necessarily heterosexual; they engaged on occasion in homoerotic acts. Yet what is notable about this series is that the vampires are out in the open, members of a community, coexisting with humans and fighting for equal rights, such as the right to marry. Sound familiar?
With all this in mind we might then ask: what do the currently popular vegetarian vampires (who refuse to feed on human blood) represent? Two recent examples are Twilight and The Vampire Diaries. Twilight is clearly an allegory of teenage sexual abstinence. Clumsy and graceless teenage girl Bella falls in love with hunky vampire Edward, who despite being a vampire chooses to nourish himself with animal blood, instead of harming humans. Along with many other plots Bella and Edward battle with their passion for each other. They kiss, they embrace…all PG-13. Yet this is not what Bella, the mortal one, wants. As a teenager, it is normal for her to get carried away with her feelings and it takes all the restraint that Edward has to keep her at bay. And it’s hard on him, too; the thirst for her blood nearly drives him mad. This sequence repeats through all four books, until at last, in the fourth one, they get married shortly after high school graduation and consummate their marriage on their honeymoon. To stress the abstinence theme even more, soon after Bella and Edward finally satisfy their longings, Bella gets pregnant. Having a half-vampire growing in her belly, with such strength that it can break her ribs when it kicks, along with a gruesome and bloody childbirth, is enough to promote lifelong abstinence in really sensitive people. With such scenes it would be hard to convince anyone of “the joys of bearing children.”
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with abstinence; it’s a personal choice. And portraying vampires, stereotypically the most lustful, impulsive, and pleasure-driven creatures, as having enough control over themselves to restrain their desires, sends a strong message. It’s not exactly what you would call a typical vampire story.
As for The Vampire Diaries, it takes a somewhat different perspective on a very similar storyline. A mortal teenage girl, Elena, beautiful and confident, falls in love with another hunky vampire, Stefan, who also drinks animal blood in order to live a normal life among humans. It must be said that the novels and the television series differ very much. While sexual abstinence is stressed in the books, this is not true of the TV version. In the books, however, they engage in another form of pleasure-seeking: blood exchange. Elena and Stefan suck each other’s blood, which is described in a very suggestive way as another form of intimate encounter. Stefan may be a vegan vampire, but these blood exchanges could very well symbolize safe sex. Elena is in no real danger and she is, in fact, enjoying it just as much as Stefan, the actual vampire. Even though this vampire hero is vegetarian, the story is still charged with sexual meaning.
It may be that it is all the sexual energy that draws some people in, but a vampire is more than a bloodthirsty corpse in heat. Its nature is clearly alluring due to something else. They are free of social and moral constraints; they only answer to themselves and go after their desires in a way we envy. And these new vegan vampires are more like us because they try to heed the same social and moral norms that we do. Writers have minimized vampires’ dark traits, humanizing them into a symbol even closer to our hearts. They are the boy next door—with fangs.
No comments:
Post a Comment