How Vampires Became Finally Toothless
Some twenty years ago, I wrote my diploma thesis on the ever-changing approach to Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. As it turned out, it would become a long and continuing story, because once I started digging into the subject I found that it has so many different aspects, levels and layers to it that I’d literally need a vampire’s lifetime to sort it all out. You can go from technological aspects (the portable typewriter Mina Murray uses for her journal was cutting edge when Dracula was first released in 1897) to Victorian zeitgeist all the way to the world-spanning myths of blood as the essence of life and demons that will go to great lengths to steal it – and that’s just scratching the surface.
For this blog, though, I’ll have to cut a long story short, leaving aside such things as the inherent sexism, hypocrisy, blatant racism or the underlying fears of recolonialisation that can be found throughout the story. Instead, I’ll just focus on one aspect that is widely discarded in today’s review of Dracula (or vampires as a whole, for that matter). And that is that Stoker’s original Dracula is a monster – and nothing but a monster. In 1897, the Transylvanian count had hardly anything romantic about him. He was not a tragic figure whatsoever, let alone an either laughable or cuddly character that one would utilise in advertising or to teach children how to count on TV. Dracula was a monster and therefore had to be killed, simple as that.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a beast, an abominable creature. In many ways he is a perversion, which is most patently illustrated by the fact that he sleeps by day and roams around by night. Dracula defies nature in that he can shape-shift and in that he is immortal. He mocks Christian virtues in that he corrupts church rites and rituals. In short, he is the Victorian version of an all-out bad guy with a criminal record as long as your arm, and he has to be stopped.
Dracula’s worst crime, however, is that he destroys morals. Simply put, he turns women into sex slaves with no will of their own. His bite is an act of penetration, blunt as the metaphor may be, just as the exchange of blood with his victims barely conceals what bodily fluids Stoker really had in mind. Epitomising the sexual connotations throughout Dracula is the sheer overuse of the term ‚voluptuous‘ by Stoker: Dracula’s intrinsic threat is not in his superhuman strength or any of his other powers that might cost you your life. It’s in that he will seduce, thus freeing whatever emotions women of the Victorian Age otherwise had to hold carefully confined. In other words, what makes Stoker’s Dracula so dangerous is that he will take England’s women away from the control of their husbands, fiancés, fathers and suitors.
Yet, as there is something fascinating, universal and timeless in vampires, they have undergone a profound change since Stoker’s days. Pop culture has turned them from villains into heroes in almost no time. Shorty after the novel’s release, the story was first adopted for the big screen – and not, as one would think, by pioneering Hollywood or the spearheading Babelsberg studio in Germany, but by filmmakers from Sweden.
Since then, roughly every decade has had its own breed and brand of vampires, from Bela Lugosi, Max Schreck and Christopher Lee to Gary Oldman, Selma Hayek and Johnny Depp. By the 1980s, vampires had turned from dead cold to undead cool. In 1987, The Lost Boys took them to MTV-style teenage cinema, with Kiefer Sutherland the pointy-fanged version of Marlon Brando’s bike-riding ‚Wild One‘.
What small (and somewhat logical) step there was left to be taken for vampires to complete a full circle was finally made when Stephenie Meyer’s appalling Twilight series came out. Meyer’s protagonist, vampire Edward Cullen, is a pale imitation of the awe-inspiring, hideous and reckless creatures once conjured up by the likes of John Polidori, Sheridan Le Fanu or Stoker. He is the ultimate good guy, all white and shiny, with no shades of grey at all.
To me, Twilight is such a tooth-pulling read because it makes vampires mainstream at last. Not only is Meyer’s version of a vampire entirely harmless, but in fact she ironically turns what was once a plain epitome of the devil into the wimpy delight of the religious right. Her Edward Cullen is so utterly law-abiding, well-behaved, pure and chaste that he even saves sex for marriage. Let’s face it: If there ever was a vampire you could imagine in Sunday school, it is Glittery Ed.
Once, vampires were evil. They were dangerous and self-indulgent. They were rebels to say the least, with all the raunchy animal and physical magnetism that would go with it. For centuries, vampires were tempting and attractive because they would challenge the existing order.
Now, it’s the opposite. Vampires have gone from challengers to custodians. They are restrained and self-controlled. They are neat, clean family entertainment, unsexed and puritan. And I must say, never before have I been more terrified by vampires than I am today.
To find out what all this has to do with Shades of Grey (besides both being appalling, that is), check out part 2 coming soon.