Freeland's Take on Vampires

I thought Freeland's discussion of vampires was pretty interesting. She sets out with some basic premises: (1) Vampire films involve erotic transgression, (2) they make us rethink our conceptions of good and evil, and (3) they provide aesthetic or cinematic pleasure in virtue of their invoking classic vampire tropes and myths and either building upon, deconstructing or adapting them (a nice case in point is John Carpenter's Vampires - the ghouls in this film hate sunlight and wooden stakes will send em' off, but there's no way garlic or crosses will deter them). There's a certain familiarity to the genre in which the audience feels comfortable with all the stakes, crosses, absence of reflections, coffins and so on, but modifications are sometimes allowed and even welcomed provided they stay within acceptable parameters.

She traces these themes through the three film versions of Dracula quite nicely. In particular, I like her account of Browning's Dracula as making Lugosi an ambivalent figure who is neither male nor female but possesses qualities of both. His ambivalence is contrasted with the rise of western patriarchy and the attempt of the men to thwart the count's plans. In the end, Freeland seems to think this type of vampire is evil but in a less interesting way: his evil is merely one dimensional - he's the threat to the established moral order of decency that must be wiped out.

I've never seen Badham's version of Dracula but I think Freeland's account seems accurate. The evil of Dracula, as she argues, is downplayed due to his striking visuals and the fact that Lucy chooses to be with him. He seeks her for the human qualities she possesses, entailing a value of human existence. This is more of the romantic Dracula rather than a flat out evil that must be extinguished.

Freeland seems to have much more respect for the Coppola version than myself. I've seen the film a few times but it never really struck me as very engaging. Of course, I agree with her that it does remain the most faithful to the erotic transgressions of Stoker's novel, and it does seem to call into attention the nature of artifice and spectacle (on p. 141, Freeland goes into detail about the scene in the movie theater, stating that the audience is engaged in a method of recognition as much as Mina is.....we recognize the Dracula character, albeit portrayed a bit differently). Dracula in this film also asks us to join him and calls into question our notions of good and evil. Instead of Western patriarchy coming out on top, the idea of love trumps everything according to Freeland's account.

I also like how Freeland links the on screen presence of vampires to their real life actors; this is part of the fascination with vampires for her because they are portrayed by well known and famous actors. The immortality of the vampire is partly linked to their imprint within film (it would be a "file" today, in accordance with the digital era). Her key conclusion is that the vampire asks us to join a spectacle of seduction, whereby the audience desires vampires for their otherworldly and spectacular qualities that live on in images. The vampire desires us not for our blood but for what is inherently human: our flesh and blood. "Vampires are, after all, cold and dead. They are weak and pale creatures without us; they need our admiration and passion more than we in the end really need them. They are images, we are flesh and blood" (p. 157).

Freeland also develops an argument that vampires are powerful symbols of evil, mostly because they call into question the nature of good and evil in many of these works. Having thought about it, I think the vampire cannot be a poor symbol of evil as Alford would have it (I am not familiar with his work but in so far as Freeland's account of him is correct). Vampires just seem inherently evil to me, perhaps because of their formal qualities, but more so because they are, to borrow Carroll's terminology, always threatening and impure. They threaten us immediately because they consume our blood for life, and they're impure because they violate the categories of the living and the dead. The vampire is both alive and dead - undead. They also consume human flesh, which most of us normally hold to be a violation of the category of acceptable things to eat for a human diet.

I suppose what I want to know is why have vampires developed into such aesthetically pleasing models and archetypes? In other words, why are the fashionable, spectacular and romantically appealing vampires so prevalent today? You don't see many feral vampires; their violence is always contrasted with their allure and their gracefulness (the vampires in Interview, Badham's Dracula). John Carpenter's version of the vampire happens to be my favorite, but it's a largely forgotten sub-species of the vampire, and I suppose that's because Stoker's novel set the paradigm for suave vampires, and this model was subsequently lifted into many film and novel versions (just look at Twilight, the absolute zenith of vampire accessibility). Freeland admits that Dracula has been made more attractive and sympathetic in most of the film adaptations (modern novels also take it a step further as well). I'm just interested in why the vampire must be romanticized in this fashion, or why this has developed in contrast to more primitive vampires. I think the answer is partially because we have other monsters to draw upon for all our feral viciousness we wish to get out on screen (think werewolves, zombies). The vampire is something special in modern media - a strange amalgam of qualities both appealing and disgusting.

A final point worth mentioning. Freeland acknowledges that, within the vampire film, the narrative focuses on intellectual fact gathering. The male investigators have to deal with the burden of proof of the monster, thus echoing some of Carroll's distinctions about narrative and aesthetic pleasure. Though, I think Freeland wants to develop more of a feminist critique here. "Narrative closure is achieved by some device of incorporation within the patriarchal order. Thus, narrative puts an end to the spectacle (our vision of the monster and of the woman/victim)" (p.158).

More on Dracula as I finish the novel..........