All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts 9781622737949

Table of contents :
Introduction: All Around Monstrous or a Critical Insight into Human-Monster Relations
Frank Jacob and Verena Bernardi
Chapter 1 Two Sides of the Same Coin: Witches, Class, Gender, and Modernity in Jeannette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate
Jessica Doble
Chapter 2 From Deadly to Dead Friendly: The Acculturation of the Vampire in Young Children’s Literature of the 1970s and 80s
Simon Bacon
Chapter 3 Conflict and Complexity: Humanist and Spiritualist Discourses in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand
Svetlana Seibel
Chapter 4 From Revulsion to Revival: Representation and Reception of Monstrosity in Tod Browning’s Freaks
Stephanie Flint
Chapter 5 On weres waestmum – In the Form of a Man: Grendel’s Changing Form in Film Adaptations
Almudena Nido
Chapter 6 Moonlight and Silver Bullets: Twentieth Century Racial Purity in Werewolf Films
Octavia Cade
Chapter 7 Romance as a Panacea and a New Generation of Intellectual Zombies in Warm Bodies and iZombie
Tatiana Prorokova
Chapter 8 Noble Savages, Magical Negroes, and Exotic Others, Oh My!: Black Female Vampires in Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2
Kendra R. Parker
Chapter 9 “One Big Happy Frankenstein Family” – The Originals: From Monstrous Patriarchy to Unruly Modern Family
Verena Bernardi
Chapter 10 From Tokyo’s Destroyer to International Icon: Godzilla and Japanese Monstrosity in the Postwar Age
Frank Jacob
Chapter 11 Music to Save an Audience: Two Melodramatic Vampires of 1820 and the Music that Betrays Them
Ryan D. Whittington
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

All Around Monstrous Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts

Edited by

Verena Bernardi Saarland University, Germany

Frank Jacob Nord University, Norway

Series in Critical Media Studies

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Series in Critical Media Studies Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940482 ISBN: 978-1-62273-794-9 Also available: 978-1-62273-458-0 [Hardback] Cover design by Vernon Press. Cover image designed by Kjpargeter / Freepik. Product and company names mentioned in this work are the trademarks of their respective owners. While every care has been taken in preparing this work, neither the authors nor Vernon Art and Science Inc. may be held responsible for any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in it. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

Table of contents Introduction: All Around Monstrous or a Critical Insight into Human-Monster Relations

v

Frank Jacob and Verena Bernardi

Chapter 1

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Witches, Class, Gender, and Modernity in Jeannette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate

1

Jessica Doble

Chapter 2

From Deadly to Dead Friendly: The Acculturation of the Vampire in Young Children’s Literature of the 1970s and 80s

23

Simon Bacon

Chapter 3

Conflict and Complexity: Humanist and Spiritualist Discourses in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand

45

Svetlana Seibel

Chapter 4

From Revulsion to Revival: Representation and Reception of Monstrosity in Tod Browning’s Freaks

71

Stephanie Flint

Chapter 5

On weres waestmum – In the Form of a Man: Grendel’s Changing Form in Film Adaptations

97

Almudena Nido

Chapter 6

Moonlight and Silver Bullets: Twentieth Century Racial Purity in Werewolf Films

127

Octavia Cade

Chapter 7

Romance as a Panacea and a New Generation of Intellectual Zombies in Warm Bodies and iZombie Tatiana Prorokova

147

Chapter 8

Noble Savages, Magical Negroes, and Exotic Others, Oh My!: Black Female Vampires in Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2

161

Kendra R. Parker

Chapter 9

“One Big Happy Frankenstein Family” – The Originals: From Monstrous Patriarchy to Unruly Modern Family

187

Verena Bernardi

Chapter 10

From Tokyo’s Destroyer to International Icon: Godzilla and Japanese Monstrosity in the Postwar Age

211

Frank Jacob

Chapter 11

Music to Save an Audience: Two Melodramatic Vampires of 1820 and the Music that Betrays Them

245

Ryan D. Whittington

Contributors

273

Index

277

Introduction: All Around Monstrous or a Critical Insight into Human-Monster Relations Frank Jacob and Verena Bernardi

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) defined the monster as the “great model of all small aberrations” and the “principle of recognizability of all forms of anomaly.”1 Therefore, monsters or the monstrous can be found in any anomaly, in every form that does not fit social norms in a specific time-space continuum. And in fact, as Australian historian, Evelleen Richards correctly remarks, “monsters are everywhere.”2 The different monstrous “massmarketed manifestations, werewolves, vampires, devils, alien horrors, technorecreated escapee dinosaurs … have provided us with so many variations on the ancient myth of the Beast, the terrible ‘something’ lurking out there, as to make it one of the defining metaphors of our age,”3 although every age can claim its own monsters and monstrosities. While monsters seem to be everywhere, the simple narrative that they “are evil, and the hero is good”4 is rarely enough to explain the whole picture related to modern day monstrosities or their predecessors. They are as complex as those who create the monsters, i.e., the humans in their specific time and place. Frankenstein’s monster was not the only one that was “man-made” or “manufactured from man”5 and was therefore an “indictment of the technology that created him and of the humans who, repelled by his monstrous appearance, made him an outcast.”6 What animates the monster

Michel Foucault, Die Anormalen: Vorlesungen am Collège de France (1974–1975) (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2007), 77-78. 2 Evelleen Richards, “(Un)Boxing the Monster,” Social Studies of Science 26, no. 2, Special Issue on “The Politics of SSK: Neutrality, Commitment and Beyond” (1996): 323. 3 Ibid. 4 Melissa Bloom Bissonette, “Teaching the Monster: Frankenstein and Critical Thinking,” College Literature 37, no. 3 (2010): 108. 5 Richards, “(Un)Boxing the Monster,” 324. 6 Ibid. 1

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might be “something somewhere between science and magic,”7 but the portrayal as presented by Mary Shelley (1797-1851) is more than just the description of a mad scientist and his creation of a monster; it is also, as American historian Howard L. Malchow highlights, a reflection of “contemporary attitudes towards non-whites, in particular on fears and hopes of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.”8 It becomes clear rather fast that monsters are multifaceted creations that resemble the problems of the times they were created in. As Frankenstein’s monster provides different angles for close readings, vampires have, as American English Professor Frank Grady remarks, “also been assimilated into the current American fascination with identity politics and ethnic self-definition,” with Anne Rice’s novels and their main characters acting as “the immortal custodians of Western culture.”9 Next to Frankenstein’s monster and vampires, there are plenty of different forms of monsters, all providing their own perspective on or specific narrative related to the existent society. Canadian sociologist John O’Neill, to name just one more example, argues that “the narrative events of Jurassic Park reenact the conflict between apparent omnipotence (the combination of scientific knowledge and evil) and a limited creation whose fuzzy logic guarantees the long-run survival of humanity despite its reckless attraction to omnipotence.”10 Obviously, every monster, no matter if it is hairy, slimy, or simply dangerous for human survival, comes with more than one specific message for interpretation, as the contributions in the present volume will show. These messages depend on the specific time-space continuum in which the monster is created or if something “abnormal” is considered to be a monstrosity. Very often, monster films document such changes very well, as they “oversee and proclaim cultural change, encoding revised charters of the self and new ideal standards of thought and action,”11 and King Kong (1933) might have been one of the most important monster films so far, as it created some kind of

Mark Bould, “What Kind of Monster Are You?, Situating the Boom,” Science Fiction Studies 30, no. 3, The British SF Boom (2003): 398. 8 Howard L. Malchow, “Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in NineteenthCentury Britain,” Past & Present 139 (1993): 90-92. 9 Frank Grady, “Vampire Culture,” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 226. 10 John O’Neill, “Dinosaurs-R-Us: The (Un)Natural History of Jurassic Park,” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 293. 11 David H. Stymeist, “Myth and the Monster Cinema,” Anthropologica 51, no. 2 (2009): 395. 7

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“modern myth”12 and some essential patterns of the genre by which many other monster films have been inspired. Regardless of its impact, even in the 1930s, the monster as such was not as shocking as some of its acts. Censors, for example, were rather concerned about one scene in which the ape took away the clothes of actress Fay Wray (1907-2004) and another one in which the monster kills indigenous people in one of their villages by trampling them down.13 The monstrosity was consequently not the creature itself, but its acts. In the 1970s and 1980s the horror film, instead of classical monsters, focused on a new “surrealist reality effect”14 and monstrosities were created in so-called splatter films by providing shots of deformed or opened bodies, just like the experiences that early modern freak or horror shows had provided. Newer horror films by Hideo Nakata, Manoj “Night” Shyamalan or Alejandro Amenábar use non-body elements like space to create a fear of an invisible monstrosity.15 There are obviously continuities in how the monstrous is displayed on the cinema screen, but there is also, as German scholar Arno Meteling highlights, an “asynchronicity of medial, aesthetic, and narrative parallels and diversities”16 with regard to figures and plots that display the monstrous in horror films. Especially in the medium of film, monsters have appeared on the screen since the first images were shown, and many of these monsters, like King Kong or Godzilla, became international icons.17 Regardless of the long monster tradition with regard to film, the monsters that were shown, because of their steady appearance, have become rather unspectacular and less monstrous over recent decades.18 In Hollywood, almost all of these monster classics have been followed by remakes and sequels, especially since money can be made from them.19 This means that even “today’s postmodern teens,” who – according to English professors Susan Lee Groenke and Michelle Youngquist – “are disconnected from family

Ibid., 396. Lukas Germann, “Die Monstrosität des Realen — Filmische Bilder der Gewalt und ihre Ästhetik,” in Von Monstern und Menschen: Begegnungen der anderen Art in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, eds. Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 153. 14 Arno Meteling, Monster: Zur Körperlichkeit und Medialität im modernen Horrorfilm (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2006), 10. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 13. 17 Germann, Lukas. “Die Monstrosität des Realen,” 153. 18 Ibid. 19 Christian Knöppler, The Monster Always Returns: American Horror Films and Their Remakes (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017), 9. 12 13

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and social institutions, live amid constant change and ambiguity, and hang out in such nonplaces as cyberspace,”20 can experience the same monsters on cinema screens as the generations before them. Yet monsters, as the present volume will show, are not only present on the cinema screen, but approach us everywhere and in every possible media. There, they “hold some distant but threatening relationship of difference to the norms we construct to order our world”21 and in a way confront us with a steady discourse about our own role within this world. Architectural historian Terry Kirk highlights that “[m]onsters proliferate in times of crisis” and that it needs “a prevailing apocalyptic mood, usually triggered by political upheaval and threatening loss of control”22 to bring them alive. They represent, he continues, the “collective anxieties”23 of a society in a specific time and when the creature is shown or told to be captured or killed, the members of such a society cheer, because at the same time their own anxieties are kept in check. Regardless of their appearance and the media in which they are presented, monsters are cultural products that help us to recognize our own norms, namely through the abstraction with the monstrous Other. That the interpretatory perspective of monstrosity can change is already visible in early modern texts, when medieval representations were mixed with present trends, to create a modernity owned by its people.24 In the literary texts of early modern Europe, therefore, “monsters not only become an "alien" space for negotiating between historical displacement and continuity, but they also typify the notion of medieval as-other—the embodiment of a past age replete with wonder.”25 Novels, to name just one example, can eventually “support[ ] or undercut[ ] larger socio-political messages”26 by using monsters or the grotesque as the means to raise timely questions, or, as Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) put it,

Susan Lee Groenke and Michelle Youngquist, “Are We Postmodern Yet? Reading "Monster" With 21st-century Ninth Graders,” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54, no. 7 (2011): 505. 21 Terry Kirk, “Monumental Monstrosity, Monstrous Monumentally,” Perspecta 40, Monster (2008): 7. 22 Ibid., 8. 23 Ibid. 24 Serina Patterson, “Reading the Medieval in Early Modern Monster Culture,” Studies in Philology 111, no. 2 (2014): 284. 25 Ibid., 286. 26 Daniel Punday, “Narrative Performance in the Contemporary Monster Story,” The Modern Language Review 97, no. 4 (2002): 804. 20

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the grotesque body is cosmic and universal. It stresses elements common to the entire cosmos: earth, water, fire, air; … It contains the signs of the zodiac. It reflects the cosmic hierarchy. This body can merge with various natural phenomena … It can fill the entire universe.27 Of Humans and Monsters The existence of the monster is dependent on the human being, which needs the former as an antithesis to its own existence. The relationship between human and monster is therefore also always an asymmetric one, as the latter represents everything that is not or should not be human. That the monster steadily appears in all kinds of popular media in a way reflects the human need for the monstrous as well.28 Although the monster is not capable of existing without human imagination, this existence also challenges the human mind by triggering two usual reaction patterns, namely: 1) abhorrence and fear, and 2) fascination and curiosity.29 Due to its existence, or better its creation, the monster eventually becomes what American scholars Sharla Hutchison and Rebecca A. Brown refer to as “a harbinger of change, a signifier of futurity.”30 Nevertheless, monsters run through a steady metamorphosis that is triggered by their uninterrupted re-imagination of readers and audiences in any form of popular media.31 For humans the monster is nevertheless not only a significant other, it is also a commodity that is once more particularly interesting since monsters recently began to boom again32 Consequently, monsters and monstrosities

27 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. by Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 318 cited in ibid., 804. 28 Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter, “Einleitung,” in Von Monstern und Menschen: Begegnungen der anderen Art in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, eds. Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 9. 29 Ibid., 10-11. 30 Sharla Hutchison and Rebecca A. Brown, “Introduction,” in Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siècle to the Millennium: New Essays, eds. Sharla Hutchison and Rebecca A. Brown (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015), 1. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.; Iris Mendel and Nora Ruck, “Das Monster als verkörperte Differenz in der Moderne: De-Montrationen feminisitscher Wissenschaftskritik,” in Von Monstern und Menschen: Begegnungen der anderen Art in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, eds. Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009), 117.

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have gained attention with regard to the academic discourse,33 in which the figure of the monster is very often used as a category of scientific analysis.34 While the depiction or presentation of the monster in popular media can help us to better understand subconscious determining forces as sexism, racism, stereotypes, etc.,35 the monster itself provides numerous approaches to study cultures or societies, especially since the categories determined by it are so broad. As Hutchison and Brown emphasize, “monsters may (simultaneously) represent the Freudian and Jungian repressed, socio-cultural transformations and anxieties as well as commodity culture.”36 It is probably due to this multi-layered monstrosity that humans “remain obsessed by [the monsters’] sometimes destructive, sometimes domesticated, always unpredictable presence, consistently seduced by the possibility of learning from them or about them so as to understand our selves, our societies, our nations, and even our increasing globalization.”37 It is consequently not surprising that each society creates its own monsters and displays them in all forms of popular media, and therefore provides academics with endless case studies of the monstrous. In all these cases, monsters not only entertain, but also, as Kirk correctly remarks, “mark the boundaries of cultural values,” because it is the method of their creation that “is symptomatic of how a culture conceives of collective inquiry to the tolerated limits of its self-awareness.”38 The Other then can simply not be explained, yet is needed to define the self, always waiting in the shadows to be summoned for an identity discourse: that is the monster we created, the monster within us. It is through this reflection that the monster keeps its dual semiotics, above mentioned and highlighted by Kirk, of fear and attraction:

Some works related to that discourse are: Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (London/New York: Routledge, 1990); Judith (Jack) Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Kelly Hurley, The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism and Generation at the fin de siè cle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle, eds. Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 34 Mendel, “Monster,” 117. 35 Ibid., 118. 36 Hutchison and Brown, “Introduction,” 2. 37 Ibid. 38 Kirk, Terry. “Monumental Monstrosity,” 7. 33

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Monsters are deviant, transgressive, threatening, and therefore horrible, terrifying, and tremendous yet also astonishing, marvelous, and prodigious. The modern scientist orders monsters in terms of relationships to nature’s norms. Paré classified them as either prodigious apparitions beyond the course of nature or deviant creations entirely against its course.39 Dealing with monstrosities very often also involves a discussion of the body, and initially, monster research was rather uncommon40 and mainly focused on aspects of the aesthetics of the dysplastic body.41 A history of the monster, and a special focus on the historical context of monster media, as it is provided by the present volume, will show how monstrosities were perceived through the centuries.42 What is considered monstrous is also related to the specific time-space continuum of its existence, and very different actions, like rape,43 or body trends, like female tattoos,44 were being considered to be monstrous. Whatever the monstrosity, however, it is always in need of a definitory opposition. How it can be defined, perceived, and evaluated was demonstrated by American scholar Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who has provided a “sketch of a new modus legendi: a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender” by offering “seven theses toward understanding cultures through the monsters they bear.”45 Cohen’s Seven Theses Cohen’s seven theses, formulated in the mid-1990s, are an essential framework for monster studies and shall therefore be shortly summarized. The theses are:

Ibid. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England,” Past & Present 91, no. 1 (1981): 20-54 marked an important turning point. 41 Birgit Stammberger, Monster und Freaks: Eine Wissensgeschichte außergewöhnlicher Körper im 19. Jahrhundert (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 11. 42 Ibid., 13-15. 43 Garthine Walker, “Everyman or a Monster? The Rapist in Early Modern England, c.1600-1750,” History Workshop Journal 76 (2013): 5. 44 Christine Braunberger, “Revolting Bodies: The Monster Beauty of Tattooed Women,” NWSA Journal 12, no. 2 (2000): 6. 45 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 3-4. 39 40

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Thesis I: The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body When the monster’s body is a resemblance of the society that produced it, it is highly impacted by “a time, a feeling, and a place” and therefore must be understood as a historical product, i.e., something that is ‘made' in a specific time-space continuum. Due to this, the “monster’s body … incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy,” which means that it is “pure culture.”46 Thesis II: The Monster Always Escapes Whatever monster is killed in a specific time, it might return in another to be read or displayed in a different way, addressing the current anxieties of its human creators. Thesis III: The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis Monsters cannot be understood along human categories or hierarchies, because they display a total otherness, and therefore resist such classifications.47 Cohen correctly argues, related to this thesis, that “the geography of the monster is an imperiling expanse, and therefore always a contested cultural space.”48 Thesis IV: The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference Without the monster, there is no Other, as it “is difference made flesh” and therefore must “function as dialectical Other”49 which is usually constructed according to “cultural, political, racial, economic [or] sexual”50 categories. It must therefore be emphasized that every time has its own monsters, and they “are never created ex nihilo, but through a process of fragmentation and recombination in which elements are extracted … and then assembled as the monster.”51 Thesis V: The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible The monster, although created by human minds, is also acting as a guardian of the unknown, which is probably why it is so fascinating at the same time.

Ibid., 4. Ibid., 7. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., 11. 46 47

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An engagement with the monster, due to the curiosity of the human, is, however, very often rather negative for the latter: “To step outside this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself.”52 Thesis VI: Fear of the Monster is really a Kind of Desire It is obvious that the monster is ambivalent, i.e., as mentioned before, frightening but attractive at the same time. It is the “linking of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from constraint” and it is therefore not surprising that “simultaneous repulsion and attraction [are] at the core of the monster’s composition.”53 Thesis VII: The Monster Stands at the Threshold … of Becoming The pure existence of the monster eventually creates discourse, and no matter how far it is pushed away, it will always find a way back to create a new discussion about this existence. Monsters will consequently never fully disappear, because they are an essential factor within human discourse about everything that can be considered culture in a specific geographical setting at a specific time. It is therefore clear that monsters will be different in every time, but they are a necessary Other without which the self must remain undefined. The present volume tries to give some answers to the question of how the monstrous is displayed, discussed, and perceived in its different historical contexts and in different popular media. Contributions The first section of the present volume discusses monster case studies in popular literature. Jessica Doble analyzes the depiction of witches in Jeannette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate to highlight the ambivalence—the historical good or bad witch—of it. Simon Bacon then goes on to address the role of vampires in Young Literature of the 1970s and 80s, before Svetlana Seibel provides a discussion of humanist and spiritualist discourses in one of the United States’ most famous and popular vampire novels, Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand.

52 53

Ibid., 12. Ibid., 17.

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The second section deals with popular media, films and TV series. Stephanie Flint opens the section with a discussion of the depiction and reception of monstrosity in Tod Browning’s film Freaks (1932). That monsters might change their appearance in films over the years is discussed by Almudena Nido, whose chapter describes the changing form of Grendel on the cinema screen. Another monster, the werewolf, and its different appearances over the decades of 20th-century film history, as well as the subconscious discourses about racial purity, are analyzed by Octavia Cade. That zombies could be interested in relationships with human beings that go beyond the eating of the latter’s brain is shown by Tatiana Prorokova in her chapter that provides a deeper insight into the world of iZombie (2015-2019). The series is of specific interest, as it depicts “intellectual zombies” who are quite different from their fellows in other film or series formats. Kendra Parker shows how racial stereotypes are impacting the monster genre as she provides a close cultural reading of black female vampires in Bill Condon’s Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2. That vampires are not only popular, but also highly related to modern identity discourses in the United States is shown by Verena Bernardi, whose chapter deals with The Originals (20132018), another TV series that creates a specific vampire milieu in the US South. The film and television section is concluded by Frank Jacob’s chapter on Godzilla and the representations of this Japanese monster in different films in one of the most successful monster series in cinema history. The final chapter of the present volume is some kind of excursion, where Ryan D. Whittington discusses two different melodramatic productions on the opera stage of the early 19th century, to show how monsters, i.e., vampires in the specific case study, could be presented through music. Overall, the chapters of the volume show the diversity of the monstrous in different popular media and thereby again highlight that monsters have to be understood in their specific historical and geographical contexts. Each generation has its own fears, anxieties, stereotypes, and tastes, and therefore naturally will also have its own monsters. Works Cited Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World, trans. by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Bloom Bissonette, Melissa. “Teaching the Monster: Frankenstein and Critical Thinking.” College Literature 37, no. 3 (2010): 106-120. Bould, Mark. “What Kind of Monster Are You?, Situating the Boom.” Science Fiction Studies 30, no. 3, The British SF Boom (2003): 394-416.

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Braunberger, Christine. “Revolting Bodies: The Monster Beauty of Tattooed Women.” NWSA Journal 12, no. 2 (2000): 1-23. Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror. London/New York: Routledge, 1990. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In: Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 3-25. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Daston, Lorraine and Katharine Park, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England.” Past & Present 91, no. 1 (1981): 20-54. Foucault, Michel. Die Anormalen: Vorlesungen am Collège de France (1974– 1975). Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2007. Gebhard, Gunther, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter. “Einleitung.” In: Von Monstern und Menschen: Begegnungen der anderen Art in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, eds. Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter, 9-30. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. Germann, Lukas. “Die Monstrosität des Realen — Filmische Bilder der Gewalt und ihre Ästhetik.” In: Von Monstern und Menschen: Begegnungen der anderen Art in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, eds. Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter, 153-172. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. Grady, Frank. “Vampire Culture.” In: Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 225-241. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Groenke, Susan Lee and Michelle Youngquist. “Are We Postmodern Yet? Reading "Monster" With 21st-century Ninth Graders.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 54, no. 7 (2011): 505-513. Halberstam, Judith (Jack). Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism and Generation at the fin de siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Hutchison, Sharla and Rebecca A. Brown. “Introduction.” In: Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siècle to the Millennium: New Essays, eds. Sharla Hutchison and Rebecca A. Brown, 1-10. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. Kirk, Terry. “Monumental Monstrosity, Monstrous Monumentally.” Perspecta 40, Monster (2008): 6-15. Knöppler, Christian. The Monster Always Returns: American Horror Films and Their Remakes. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2017. Malchow, Howard L. “Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” Past & Present 139 (1993): 90-130. Mendel, Iris and Nora Ruck. “Das Monster als verkörperte Differenz in der Moderne: De-Montrationen feminisitscher Wissenschaftskritik.” In: Von Monstern und Menschen: Begegnungen der anderen Art in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, eds. Gunther Gebhard, Oliver Geisler, and Steffen Schröter, 117-136. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. Meteling, Arno. Monster: Zur Körperlichkeit und Medialität im modernen Horrorfilm. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2006. Mittman, Asa Simon and Peter Dendle, eds. Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

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O’Neill, John. “Dinosaurs-R-Us: The (Un)Natural History of Jurassic Park.” In: Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 292-308. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Patterson, Serina. “Reading the Medieval in Early Modern Monster Culture.” Studies in Philology 111, no. 2 (2014): 282-311. Punday, Daniel. “Narrative Performance in the Contemporary Monster Story.” The Modern Language Review 97, no. 4 (2002): 803-820. Richards, Evelleen. “(Un)Boxing the Monster.” Social Studies of Science 26, no. 2, Special Issue on “The Politics of SSK: Neutrality, Commitment and Beyond” (1996): 323-356. Stammberger, Birgit. Monster und Freaks: Eine Wissensgeschichte außergewöhnlicher Körper im 19. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011. Stymeist, David H. “Myth and the Monster Cinema.” Anthropologica 51, no. 2 (2009): 395-406. Walker, Garthine. 395-406. or a Monster? The Rapist in Early Modern England, c.1600-1750.örHistory Workshop Journal 76 (2013): 5-31.

Chapter 1

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Witches, Class, Gender, and Modernity in Jeannette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate Jessica Doble

Halfway through Jeanette Winterson’s novel, The Daylight Gate, the narrator states, “Only humans can know what it means to strip a human being of being human.”1 The scene in which the narrator makes this observation details the prison cell in which a group of accused witches are being held as they await trial. The events leading up to their imprisonment include an attempted rape of one of the prisoners, the hunt for witches and a Jesuit priest, and an attempt at black magic. In the end, each witch in the prison cell was executed along with Alice Nutter, a rich woman of Lancashire, England who was used by both the witches and the hunters. The conditions in which the accused witches were kept were inhumane, cruel, and grotesque. The women were classified as witches and since witches were so feared as no longer human, the jailers ensured they would lose their humanity by creating the conditions in which they suffered to the point of madness, rotting bodies, and death. The stripping of humanity must be recognized by a human since it is only another that can withdraw the categorization of human from another person. In the tumult of religious convictions and transgressions, poverty and prostitution, Winterson’s novel focusing on the Pendle Hill Witch Trials of 1612 in Lancashire England revisits the historical context of these famous trials and by writing in the horror genre, puts the events in relief against the institutionalized classism and sexism of the Church and monarchy that resulted in so many executions of witches. Witches were often marginalized in society, a social status that often resulted in the increased susceptibility to a charge of witchcraft.

1

Jeanette Winterson, The Daylight Gate (New York: Grove Press, 2012), 94-5.

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From the benefit of contemporary perspective, Winterson’s novel provides a commentary on the historical narrative of the Pendle Hill trials in large part due to the narration style. Winterson’s narrator comments directly upon the events of the novel. When the narrator describes the Well Dungeon that holds the accused witches, a shift occurs to Jane Southworth’s perspective, a shift that comments on insanity of being kept under the ground with no light save that of moonlight. Jane stands under the grate waiting for the water, the narration shifts to Jane’s: “It comes from the outside and she tries to imagine that some of the outside enters this hellish inside and makes it bearable.”2 With the inclusion of Jane’s imagination, it adds a dimension to the horror present in the scene and the book more broadly. When the rain is the thing that staves off insanity, the narrator’s observation of the shifting status of humanity within a person becomes more apparent. In spite of the shift to different characters’ perspectives, the narrator also reinforces the position of observer. In the same scene, the narrator describes the scene as it first appears, but changes it: “The flare throws grotesque shadows on the black stone walls of the cell. No, it is not the shadows that are grotesque; the women are grotesque.”3 This emphasis on the grotesqueness of both place and people emphasizes the chronology of deterioration. The light reveals the context and the women have become what the context dictated they would be: grotesque, less than human. In this chapter, I argue that Jeanette Winterson’s novel creates characters that represent the institutional constructedness of the witch and the feeling of the uncanny the witch engenders in the male characters as the cause for the creation of witches. I will first discuss the religious context of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in the persecution of Catholics and pagans with the rise of King James I of England and Protestantism. After reviewing James’s Daemonologie, I will turn to belief more generally as well as the growing tradition of reason, science, and disbelief that coincides with the turn to modernity. Disbelief is more often demonstrated in the novel as being held by the educated upper classes than by the provincial, peasant classes (the folk). Not only did class make people vulnerable to being accused of witchcraft, but also possessing bodies that deviate from the abled, masculine norm such as women and elderly. These “other” bodies engender the feeling of the uncanny—danger, fear, unknown as well as the abject, the fascination one feels toward the uncanny and fear. These contexts manifest in the figure of the witch, a person who appears different and is feared because the people 2 3

Ibid., 90. Ibid., 94.

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in power do not know what the witch is capable of or that she might threaten the balance of power that holds them at the top of the hierarchy. Witches become monstrous in nature; the projection of fears onto them creates the women (and a few men) as witches. These social constructions—religious beliefs, class, gender, and modernity—create shifting criterion for the ways in which people retain or are stripped of their humanity through applied designations of otherness and sometimes as far as becoming monstrous. Part of understanding the political and religious contexts in the 1600s hinges on the publication of Daemonologie by James I (1566-1625). The only book written by a reigning monarch on witchcraft highlights the reality of witches in the world through a dialogue between a rational inquiry as inspired by philosophy and the superstitions and religious convictions of Protestantism. As the new King of England, James “really thought that he was only carrying out his plain duty towards God”4 to protect his subjects from the attacks of Satan’s servants. James did not doubt the presence of witches but created a guide for local justices of the peace in their searches for witches and their attempts to convict them: the witches’ Familiars bring them dishes, create wine from a wall, “cure or cast on diseases” and make men “unable for women.”5 These particular pieces of evidence demonstrate the poverty of witches as they attempt to alleviate their hunger. The dual ability to cure and cast diseases again underscores the doubling of the figure of a woman. Many women identified as healers were often accused of witchcraft alongside women accused of causing the diseases afflicting their neighbors. The last evidence of a witch implies sexual impotence created in men. The close connection between witches and sex becomes apparent in this fear of witches making men unable to satisfy their sexual needs with a woman. The last two, casting diseases and sexual impotence, demonstrates a fear of unknown causes and sickness of body. In The Daylight Gate, the witches are accused of causing an illness in a neighbor and having a Familiar as well as the close ties witches have to sexual activities. Modernity With the turn toward reason and scientific inquiry came the ushering in of modernity by the educated gentlemen of the time. As Charles L. Briggs and Richard Bauman argue, modernity needed to be constructed and in contrast to what had come before, “rural (or aboriginal), lower class, ignorant, old-

4 5

James I, Daemonologie, ed. G.B. Harrison. (London: Curwen Press, 1924), vi. Ibid., xiii.

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fashioned, indigenous—in a word, provincial—versus urban, elite, learned, cosmopolitan, that is to say modern.”6 Bauman and Briggs locate the divide that relegates the realms of the people within them; the modern subjects exist in the progressive movement of modernity away from the squalor and beliefs of the peasant folk. However, science does not automatically dismiss beliefs held by groups of people. Intellectuals must “construct a scientific realm and project it as authoritative and disinterested.”7 If science is disinterested, it cannot be biased or create inequality. It is pure. However, modernity produces and structures inequality and its heralding of science as pure merely seeks to mask that constructedness and hierarchical nature of society, which is a political move intended to keep power in the control of the educated, religious men. James Sharpe, the writer of the preface to Robert Poole’s overview of the Lancashire trials in 1612 and 1634, argues that “some writers tended to marginalize accusations of malefic witchcraft as yet another sign of peasant backwardness.”8 In the time of the witchcraft trials, there was again this divide between the folk and the educated classes. Sharpe’s use of “as yet another sign” demonstrates the collection of ways in which peasants were deemed backward and as belonging into the supernatural ordering of the world. The modernity/provincial difference is apparent on the subject of witch beliefs. The marginalization results from the turn away from belief and toward science and education as ways of understanding the world around them. Of course, science and education were excluded from the poor and women, so they maintained beliefs which men of science deemed backwards. Therefore, the regulation of said beliefs becomes a maintenance of power. The default skepticism instead of belief described by Stephens is what David Hufford has termed the “tradition of disbelief.” In his article of the same title, Hufford argues that those who are typically writing about beliefs, such as those writing treatises on witchcraft, participate in this tradition of skepticism, assuming that those they interrogate believe whereas they, the modern, educated men, know. This distinction highlights the turning of English society to the tradition of disbelief as argued by Stephens and Bauman and Briggs. It also demonstrates the ways in which this position is the standard, or at least becoming the standard by the seventeenth century.

Richard Bauman and Charles L. Briggs, Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 2. 7 Ibid. 8 James Sharpe, “Preface,” in The Lancanshire Witches: Histories and Stories, ed. Robert Poole (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 7. 6

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The interrogators need to prove the reality of demons through experiential narratives since “disbeliefs about supernatural agents begin with the argument that traditions about such agents generally develop with very few actual experiential referents.”9 In other words, there are few examples of demons in the real world to provide reinforcements for beliefs in the supernatural world as described in Christian mythology. Instead, any experiences of the supernatural are seen to “arise from and are supported by various kinds of obvious error.”10 The error stems from a misinterpretation of events when someone attributes them to the supernatural. This insistence on the unreality of the demons forces the interrogators to seek proof from people accused of witchcraft through a bodily, experiential event, one that cannot be easily refuted as a figment of the person’s imagination, mental illness, or misinterpretation of reality. The knowledge created by the use of science in modernity equated to the characters Roger Nowell and Alice Nutter represent the tradition of disbelief. They both claim to not believe in the reality of witchcraft and are both educated and wealthy, members of the upper class. The rest of the characters believe that witchcraft not only exists, but is also actively practiced on Pendle Hill. Gender and the Body The “otherness” of women’s bodies and the inferiority constructed by society has been well theorized by scholars such as Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray.11 The feminist writers of the 70s deconstructed the gender hierarchy present in literature. However, patriarchal society persists and continues to be made manifest in literature. Witches were more often women and when one’s body does not adhere to the standard for women—beauty, pure, flawless—the accusation of witchcraft became easier to level against them. Walter Stephens sheds some light on this connection by arguing that by looking at the treatises of men tasked with finding proof of the existence of witches and the spiritual world one learns that the hunt was just as much a rational inquiry into the spiritual. Stephens uses a witch case in Germany as an example of the types of witch trials that were focused on sexual encounters with demons. Walpurga Hausmannin was burned at the stake in 1587 as an example case during the witch trials which lasted from the 1400s to the 1600s. The interrogation and then the trial focused on sexual intercourse and David Hufford, “The Traditions of Disbelief,” New York Folklore 8, (1982): 48-9. Ibid., 47. 11 See Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). 9

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specifically sex with the Devil.12 It is not only significant that Walpurga has sex with the devil, but that “sex is repeatedly identified as the primary motive for Walpurga’s initiation into witchcraft and her perseverance in crime.”13 Therefore, sexual activity symbolized both submission and the pledging of body and soul.14 The reason this becomes so important is that the interrogators of the witches thought that the body provided a scientific avenue through which they could, through scripted interrogations and scientific inquiry, glean irrefutable truth of the spiritual world.15 This scientific inquiry becomes a part of a whole theoretical and spiritual apparatus that includes the defining of women’s natures as evil and connected to the flesh in order to maintain the power of men in society: therefore, women 1) could not enjoy the sex and passively accepted it and 2) were evil since they turned away from sexual congress with men.16 The necessity for the proof to maintain this discourse stems from the turn toward skepticism, especially on the part of the upper classes of society. Alice Nutter, the rich woman accused of witchcraft in The Daylight Gate, is depicted as having sex with the Dark Gentleman, a figure that the audience is led to assume is the Devil. Although it is not revealed in the trial as with Walpurga, the way in which Alice reveals this intercourse, in conversation with Christopher Southworth, the Jesuit Gunpowder Plotter, mimics that of a confession that might be given during an interrogation or trial. Therefore, the novel also closely ties witches and sexual activity, connecting women and the body in a way that makes this connection transgressive and a tie to witchcraft and the Devil. Disability parallels the narrative of “womanness” and “otherness” and crosses when the body is both female and disabled. Rosalind GarlandThomson argues, “disability, like femaleness, is not a natural state of corporeal inferiority, inadequacy, excess or a stroke of misfortune. Rather, disability is a culturally fabricated narrative of the body.”17 As Bauman and Briggs argue as well, these socially constructed categories place narratives on the body that only see a manifestation of the system in which both disability and femaleness are inferior. When they are connected in a body, women and disabled, the “cultural stereotypes imagine disabled women as asexual, unfit 12 Walter Stephens, Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 1-2. 13 Ibid., 3. 14 Ibid., 13. 15 Ibid., 15-17. 16 Ibid., 42. 17 Rosalind Garland-Thomson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” NWSA Journal (2002): 6.

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to reproduce, overly dependent, unattractive–-as generally removed from the sphere of true womanhood and feminine beauty.”18 Their differently abled bodies exclude them from femininity, but femininity excludes the female body from the spheres of science, government, and literature. If women are relegated to objects of beauty and mother, then women of disabled body are not left with either of them. In addition, “aging is a form of disablement that disqualifies older women from the limited power allotted to females who are young and meet the criteria for attracting men.”19 Aging and the reason it is viewed negatively is revealed; women are to attract men when their bodies do not measure up to the standard, they cannot participate through the bodies where they have been determined to have value by a patriarchal society. Especially in terms of disability or disfigurement, “otherness” takes on a more monstrous connotation, being labeled as “primal freaks in Western history, envisioned as what we might now call congenitally deformed.”20 These labels are socially constructed and by creating categories as deviating from the norm a hierarchy is established. Therefore, as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues, the disability label manifests from a “pervasive cultural system that stigmatizes certain kinds of bodily variations.”21 I here apply the word disability to the past as no mention of disabled bodies would have been made in the 1600s to consider the ways in which being differently abled and pushed to the margins creates the stigma. From a contemporary perspective, stigma corresponds to the marginalization of people who today we would classify as disabled or with a body anomaly. Elizabeth Device, one of the accused witches and a major character in the story possesses an eye anomaly, which produces fear in the villagers and helps to keep her in poverty. The use of “freaks” and “stigma” underscores the fear that people in the novel view bodily otherness. To connect the body and witchcraft, we again turn to Daemonologie. King James does not go so far as to say that disability or anomaly creates a witch, but he does insist that a witch will have the devil’s mark on his or her body, left there as a symbol of the witch’s servitude to him.22 The physical marking helps to create the monstrous body that accepts the demon. The mark can be anything from a birthmark, mole, or age spot. What we would potentially consider nothing more than a blemish today—after all, we still hold perfect skin as a beauty standard—would have been grounds for being called a witch and

Bauman and Briggs, Voices of Modernity, 17. Garland-Thomson, “Integrating Disability,” 5. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 James I, Daemonologie, 22. 18 19

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evidence to support that claim. One’s body, similar to a disability, could betray itself and help to create the circumstances in which one could be accused of witchcraft. Tom Peeper, the serial rapist who plays a large part in rounding up and intimidating the people accused of witchcraft, claims to search her body for one such mark as he rapes her in the beginning of the novel. The Uncanny and the Abject I would argue that all of this—disability, body anomaly, womanness, class/folk, superstition, religion, and the growing tradition of disbelief— results in what Freud terms the uncanny. The uncanny describes a feeling that is “frightening, of what evokes fear and dread.”23 It is important that the feeling evokes something from the person feeling it. Freud attempts to theorize what causes the feeling and what it feels like once the person experiences it. He argues the feeling is a “frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar”24 but has become unknown and unfamiliar; thus the uncanny is a feeling of strangeness in the familiar, a hidden quality that the person does not understand and as a result of the not knowing, creates fear, an “arousing uneasy, fearful horror.”25 The uncanny encompasses both that which is familiar to the viewer and in that familiarity, something strange and unfamiliar due to some unknown reason, that which is hidden beneath the familiarity. Freud attaches this sense of the uncanny to the primitive natures within every civilized man (I think he, in fact, means man as in not woman here), that which is repressed in the psyche as we turn away from that primitive world only to return to “our original emotional reactions due to the uncertainty of our scientific knowledge.”26 Freud views the uncanny as a return to the superstitions that govern primitive people’s lives; the civilized person falls back on them when there is fear and doubt in the contemporary world. As Freud argues that “as soon as something happens in our lives that seems to confirm these old, discarded beliefs, we experience a sense of the uncanny.”27 Freud’s move from the individual uncanny to the cultural uncanny demonstrates his belief in the cultural evolution theory and its effect on the individual. The barbaric culture maintains what the civilized society

Freud, Sigmund, The Uncanny, transl. by David McLIntock (New York: Penguin, 2003 [1899]), 123. 24 Ibid., 124. 25 Ibid., 131. 26 Ibid., 148. 27 Ibid., 154. 23

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would call superstitious beliefs whereas the primitive is attached to the civilized, but still holds some of the barbaric beliefs. The civilized society, having developed from the barbaric to the primitive and now on to the civilized, leaves behind those beliefs that are outside of Christianity and science. Therefore, the uncanny becomes a product of a tension between what is repressed within the individual from society’s inability to stamp out the primitive in the civilized subject. If the peasant folk of society remain, then they manifest the uncanny within them as Other from what civilized society strives toward: male, scientific, outside of pagan beliefs, and reasoned. One of these beliefs, I have no doubt, would have been witchcraft since due to the connection the educated class attributes to the pagan/primitive group and witchcraft as irrational and superstitious. Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject takes the uncanny a step further: the abject is the collapse of that fear into the self and a sense of a desire connected with the revulsion associated with the uncanny. Kristeva argues, “There looms within abjection one of the violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable.”28 The threat does not only come from outside, but also stems from within; abjection creates the collapse of the binary through a desire for the revulsion experienced by the uncanny. There is rejection, but it cannot be directed at an object since the revulsion also comes from the fact that one is also drawn to the that which is being rejected.29 The uncanny and the abject provide important guiding concepts to exploring the narrative of The Daylight Gate. Horror and the uncanny are closely related concepts since they both engender fear in the viewer. For witches, the uncanny feeling comes from the façade of humanness that hides the power of witchcraft, and in the reasoning of the sixteenth century, the connection to the Devil and sin. This perceived practice of witchcraft and performing the bidding of the Devil demonstrates the witch’s place in primitive culture and outside the civilized society (alongside, I will argue, disability, womanness, and class).

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 1. 29 Winterson, Daylight Gate, 6. 28

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The Daylight Gate I now turn to Jeanette Winterson’s novel as a case study of the monster as constructed through bodies, class, gender, belief, and modernity which creates a sense of the uncanny, earning the label of monster. Winterson’s reimagining of the events that took place is of course a contemporary perspective with the benefit of the establishment of theoretical fields in gender, psychology, and disability studies, which places her novel securely in the contemporary world even as it is historical fiction. Winterson draws the narrative to us instead of leaping to the past. Therefore, I read the work as an examination of the past in the present. The Daylight Gate is not only historical fiction, but a self-conscious look at the horrors of extraordinary events as well as the more mundane. Class The first scene in which the reader meets the human characters shows the audience the beginning of the accusations of witchcraft. In John Law’s perspective, Alizon Device is a witch with a dog as her Familiar.30 The belief is unquestioned in the novel and he refuses her a pin and what may or may be her suggestion of sexual payment. She curses him for his refusal. Quickly after her curse, John attempts to flee from her and thinks that he is being chased by her Familiar. However, he appears to suffer what might be a stroke, an ailment which he attributes to Alizon’s curse. The belief in witchcraft is present since he knows her to be a witch, which makes him think that he is being attacked by Alizon instead of suffering a physical ailment generated from his own body. It has to be accepted by the pedlar in order for him to believe it could be happening to him. Therefore, she is already a witch and capable of using her power against him, and these beliefs condemn her and her family. Alizon is obviously of a lower class if John assumes that she offers sexual favors for his goods. Her poverty not only means she must attempt to exchange the last thing she has, her body, but results in her own undoing in an accusation of witchcraft being levelled against her. The accusation also means that John Law belongs to the class that maintains the belief in witches. Since the upper classes move into a tradition of disbelief through the construction of modernity, the unquestioned belief in magic and witchcraft highlights John Law’s ignorance and low-class status. These class circumstances bring about the novel’s first accusation of witchcraft.

30

Ibid., 4.

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Unquestioned belief in witchcraft is not the only way class is indicated for characters: dialect as an indicator of ignorance. Sarah Device stands accused of witchcraft stemming from the incident between Alizon and John. When Tom Peeper reminds Sarah of the accusation against her, she responds, “‘John Law spoke nowt but pigshit and drink.’”31 The audience knows that it was not Sarah, but Alizon who was on the street that day on Pendle Hill, but John Law accused three witches from the Demdike clan, so it does not matter to Tom; they are all guilty by association and low status in society. Their low class, gender, and lack of education result in not being believed when they deny the accusations. However, John Law’s reputation as a fat man who likes to drink does not disqualify him from respect in the town and enough recognition as a participant in the town to be believed when he accuses the women of witchcraft. He is not a beggar and he is male, both qualities that automatically make him a better citizen in Pendle Hill society.32 Alizon’s dialect separates her from John too, indicating that she occupies an even lower status. Elizabeth – Old Demdike’s daughter and mother to Jem, Alizon, and Jennet – reveals their state of poverty: the last time they had eaten was three days ago in the time of religious fasting. “The parson calls Lent a fast, for it suits the church to starve the poor. I begged from the church and the parson said that a fast did a woman good. I answered that I must be the goodliest woman in Pendle.”33 Roger Nowell comments when he breaks up the feast and the attack on Alice Nutter that the group feasts on meat on Good Friday, a religious violation. Alice responds that the poor cannot have the luxury to make those choices.34 Poverty indicates a witch because they cannot adhere to the rules of Christianity. This lack of understanding poverty on the part of Roger highlights the conditions that engender accusations of witchcraft against the poor. They do not have the luxury of following religious doctrine due to their poverty, which marginalizes them in a religious community such as that of Pendle Hill and seventeenth century England.

Ibid., 11. I should note at this moment that not all of the main characters who are accused of witchcraft are women. Jem (James) Device is a man, but the systems of poverty and educationalism keep him in the margins of society in spite of his gender. He will not be discussed as much as my argument focuses on gender as a marginalizing factor that leads to accusations of witchcraft, but it is important to recognize that intersecting systems work to disadvantage people even if they should be privileged through a system such as the patriarchy. Jem represents the man who is not privileged. 33 Ibid., 31. 34 Ibid., 38. 31 32

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In addition to being poor, Elizabeth has a face anomaly that does not provoke compassion in those that look upon her but fear and loathing, which exacerbates the poverty that marks her body. Instead of being able to rely on the compassion of others to beg, she must utilize different tactics: “Begging had never helped her. If she could not gain sympathy, she could provoke fear and dislike.”35 She is already feared due to her appearance that is different from the standard; therefore, she encourages the fear for very practical reasons. She must be feared in order to receive any charity so she can eat and provide for her family. Elizabeth is poor and her marginality contributes to her poverty and the hard life she leads that manifests its effects on her body, which in a vicious cycle increases the fear with which people perceive her and her low economic class. In contrast to the low-class characters such as Tom and the Demdike clan, Alice Nutter, the rich woman accused alongside the Demdikes, defends the clan to Roger who leads the investigation into the witch outbreak. The conversation is one between peers after Roger catches Alice with the Demdikes when she brings provisions to the family. Alice attempts to explain the social position of the family she allows to shelter in Malkin Tower on her land. “‘Such women are poor … are ignorant. They have no power in your world … I have sympathy for them.’ ‘Sympathy? Elizabeth Device prostitutes her own children?’ ‘And what of the men who buy? Ton Peeper rapes nine-year-old Jennet Device on Saturday night and stands in church on Sunday morning.’”36 Alice touches upon the lower hierarchical positions of the women; they are uneducated and poor. In the modern world of men in power and where society turns away from peasant beliefs and toward science and reason. It is the men who make these choices as those who are educated if they are of the correct class that can afford the luxury of education. Due to their lack, they can hold no power in the world constructed by men of higher class. Alice understands this lack due to her position as a woman, which results in her sympathy and charity. However, Roger Nowell does not and cannot understand the position the Demdikes are in to prostitute their children.

35 36

Ibid., 40. Ibid., 55.

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Roger is described as a man of class who can read, ride, and enjoy gentlemanly sport as well as refined culture.37 Until Roger Nowell experiences excruciating pain, he does not believe in witchcraft (similar to the way in which, until witchcraft touches King James life, he does not believe in it). Roger “had not believed that a man could be laid low by witchcraft until he felt it in his body. Now he believed.”38 In the men’s world, women only have sex to offer. Instead of demonizing (and I use this word purposefully) Elizabeth for her inability to provide for her family, Alice points out that the men are just as if not more culpable for the situation in which the women are put. The hypocrisy of paying for sex and then portraying oneself as an upstanding Christian is obvious to Alice, who is outside of both male society and the Church community. It is not too far to say that the discourse of the novel judges Tom Peeper a monster, especially after Winterson reveals the incest he performs on Jennet Device. Alice earned her fortune by inventing a magenta dye that appealed to the Queen herself. She practices falconry, which is a sign of wealth and class as one must have the money to buy and time to train a falcon. Due to her station as a wealthy woman, she is always referred to as Mistress as a sign of respect and recognition of class. Through the narrator, we learn, She looked beautiful. She was beautiful, even though she was—how old? Nobody knew how old. Old enough to be soon dead, and if not soon dead, then as lined and wrinkled as the milk-and-water wellbehaved wives of religious husbands with their hidden mistresses.39 This early description of Alice foreshadows the comparisons that will be implied between Alice and the women around her. The expectation for women is to fall into these two categories—beautiful woman or old hag—but Alice straddles these two categories, which makes her uncanny. She’s familiar in the sense that she is recognizably a woman, but her agelessness does not place her in an easy category for men to understand her as a viable sexual object or not. In spite of this uncertainty, she is still desired by many of the men in the novel, which demonstrates that their feeling of the uncanny also expands into the abject. The men desire her through that fear. Hargreaves fears Alice: “‘She rides astride like a man, and she rides with the bird even though no woman is a falconer. I tell you I don’t trust her. A woman

Ibid., 18. Ibid., 155. 39 Ibid., 9. 37 38

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astride and a falcon following—that’s unnatural.’”40 Alice does not behave as a woman should or possess the things proper women do such as her falcon. In the seventeenth century, only men practiced falconry. She does not fit the feminine traits expected of her and therefore, she is feared, feared for being a witch and for not meeting the standard or expectation. It is not only the men of lower classes and who are more likely to believe in witchcraft that question Alice. Roger Nowell seconds Hargreaves’ suspicions about the ways in which she earned her fortune through witchcraft instead of her own ingenuity or business acumen.41 In this instance, her upper-class status cannot save her since she is a woman. Alice is the young beautiful witch, opposite the side of the hag. However, this version is no less uncanny than the hag for she still engenders fear from her station outside of accepted cultural norms of the seventeenth century as depicted in The Daylight Gate. Since the men do not actually know what Alice is capable of, they fear what she can do with her witchcraft. Even though she is rich and well educated, she cannot escape the patriarchal system that requires her to be less successful and mind her place among men. As a result, she is branded a witch, a monster, in order to create the circumstances in which she can be removed from a society that fears her. Right before her execution, Alice no longer uses the Elixir of Youth. Her body changes: “Gaunt. Lined. White hair. She was still beautiful, as if there was something transparent about her, as if her skin were made of leaves that had lain in the sun. She was an old woman.”42 Witches are created when they are accused. She loses her beauty and becomes what they fear by the time she dies; the hag with the dark magic of youth. When Alice is about to die for being accused of a witch, society receives what it desires: the witch of their fears and their abjective desire. Gender In a patriarchal society, as Ann Rosalind Jones describes, Western though has been based on a systematic repression of women’s experience and maintains a self-centered view of the world.43 The characters of The Daylight Gate maintain this view of based on gender constructions and what power this Ibid., 17. Ibid., 53. 42 Ibid., 212. 43 Ann Rosalind Jones. “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of L’ecriture Writing,” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1997), 370-1. 40 41

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construction bestows upon the male gender. The male characters hold positions of power in the state and the Church and over the course of the novel wield that power to hunt for Catholics and punish a group of poor women from the margins of society. They also participate in the rape culture established by classifying women as less than (male) human. Tom Peeper, the local thug and serial rapist, accompanies Constable Hargreaves in locating witches. Tom believes in witches and the evil of women, so when Sarah fights back, he tells Hargreaves, “‘Cats fleshed as women, that’s what women are, tempting men to sin and damnation.’”44 Tom removes the women’s humanity; women take on the qualities of cats: aloof, associated with witches and magic, superstitions, and sneaking. Her animalistic nature is also in relation to men. The cats take on female flesh as a way of turning men away from their faith, toward Satan. If Sarah is not a human, then her rape is not only trivial but rather deserved in order to keep the animal and by extension Satan at bay. It is not the monster within, but the monster that reaches through women for men’s souls. I argue that part of the fear comes from this hidden fear that gets brought to the forefront when the person is accused of witchcraft, the fear of her connection to the Devil and hell, resulting in a feeling of the uncanny. Whether Tom is supposed to read as genuine in his fear or merely uses it as a tool to wield power over those who are socially beneath him is uncertain in the context of the novel. Since Tom escapes punishment for his series of rapes, the novel reveals the lack of humanity placed on women by society and stands in judgment of a society that supports men like Tom in their monstrousness. The novel provides further evidence of rape culture when a young boy comes upon the rape scene and Tom attempts to initiate him in the acts of rape undertaken by Tom and demonstrates the way a member of the state, Constable Hargreaves, will stand by. Tom tells Robert a young boy not to be afraid of her after she tells him that she will curse him if he touches her. Then Tom dismisses her threat, calling her powerless without Demdike who happens upon the trio that Sarah will “suck it if she wants to get home alive.”45 The fear of death forces submission and teaches Robert how to make women submit to men. However, the teaching does not go as planned. Sarah bites off Robert’s tongue. The novel allows Sarah to oppose both the physical assault, but also the initiation that Tom attempts to give Robert in both metaphoric and literal terms.

44 45

Ibid., 12. Ibid., 13.

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When Roger Nowell, the magistrate of Pendle Hill, confronts Tom about this scene, Alice argues for Sarah Device and the witches. She tells Tom, “‘You threatened Sarah Device with ducking [drowning test] and you raped her.’ ‘So she says,’ said Tom Peeper. ‘The young lad was kissing her in sport. It was sport, Master Nowell.’”46 Tom attempts to normalize the act of rape. The way in which the men in this scene interact with the women demonstrates the lack of humanity poor women possess. Women are not believed and forcing women to have sex is sport, not to be taken seriously, but rather seen as a form of entertainment. Sport also implies there are winners and losers. It is a form of conquering and controlling the other team as well as trivializing the act by comparing it to recreation. Tom threatens her life and invites another man to violate her body, but he has no further regard for his actions than “sport.” All humanity that a woman would have is lost for Tom; Sarah is a woman, a witch and therefore beneath his consideration for her humanity. Body The body in The Daylight Gate is a space for evidence of a witch and the manifestation of the ways in which witches come to embody that which they have been accused. A woman’s body is little understood by the male characters and their reading of a female body becomes the evidence needed to condemn several of the women. Once they’ve been condemned, their captivity forces the humanity they had to be leeched from them by the conditions of the prison. Witches were feared as monstrous, but the institutionalized captivity creates the monsters the men and the Church fear. Tom calls on Hargreaves to “‘search for the witch marks. A cat comes and sucks you, doesn’t he, Sarah?’”47 The use of “sucks” suggests that of a mother suckling her young, but in this case of the demonic or devilish sort. Since women are cats (not human), they birth nonhuman children. The women must be controlled so they cannot reproduce the fiendish children of demons. It is also sexual and proof of the connection to the Devil as described by Stephens who argues for the necessity of the mark to prove the experiential reality of the spirit world. If Sarah has the witch’s mark, then she possesses evidence that she has sex and therefore should be receptive to sex with a man like Tom Peeper. This move again reinforces the power dynamic between the genders: Before discussing Alice and Roger at more length, I will discuss another monstrous mother: Elizabeth Device. Roger Newell is disgusted by her: she is

46 47

Ibid., 42 Ibid.

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“dirty and ugly. The strangeness of her eye deformity made people fear her … her hair was already white, although she was not yet forty, and her skin had shrunk tight and sallow over her bones.”48 Elizabeth’s body is outside of the beauty standard due to her hard life and eye anomaly, which causes people to fear her. In essence, Elizabeth represents for the town the sense of the uncanny. It is a vicious cycle; since she has a hard life, it further etches itself into her body and her body bears the brunt of poverty in part due to her face anomaly. Elizabeth is the hag of the evil witch stories. The sense of something hidden and unfamiliar stems from her face anomaly. Due to her difference, her face is not standardly human but other than human, creating that feeling of the unfamiliar (face anomaly) within the familiar (woman’s face). The deviation causes fear because it is unknown and not understood through what the uncanny manifests. Elizabeth’s appearance, however, does not stop her from being raped, resulting in Jennet (although the reader learns early that Jennet is the product of rape it is not until very late in the novel that it is revealed that Tom is her father).49 Elizabeth tells the assembled group during her interrogation about witchcraft that Tom Peeper told her “I should be glad of it [the rape], looking as I do.”50 Tom not only states that she deserves to be raped due to her appearance, but she should also have enjoyed it and as is implied be grateful for it since she could not get a man to have sex with her in any other way. So much focus is put on the woman during a rape (if she liked it or asked for it), but by delaying the revelation of Tom as the father, Winterson demonstrates who the “real” monster is and who has the power to label the monsters in society and highlights how rape is not about beauty, but about a display of power. Instead of the fear that Elizabeth provokes when she tries to beg, Tom views her as an invitation to his heterosexuality since she is not a viable woman in this society. In contrast, Margaret Pearson is pretty and does not beg, but gets food from the farmhand.51 There seems to be a rationalization for the farmhand’s fornication with Margaret as the narrator states, “Fornication was a sin but not with a witch who had put a spell on you.”52 Just as Alice explains the rules are different for poor people who do not have the luxury to choose what to eat and when, the narrator points out the ways in which the rules are different for

Ibid., 39. Ibid., 39. 50 Ibid., 159. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 29. 48 49

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sex with witches since the man can claim bewitchment. The monstrous witch, who needs to prostitute herself in order to survive, becomes the object they determine her to be. The circumstances the woman endures creates the accusation of a witch when women have no other recourse for supporting themselves. The patriarchy tells them their worth is in their bodies, but it is a sin to use the most power a woman is granted. Similarly, Alizon Device and Nancy Redfern vie for attention from the jailer in charge of their prison cell in exchange for leaving the cell and food. They continue to have currency in their bodies. Old Demdike, on the contrary, is coated in feces and “weeping sores between her legs. When the gaoler comes for one of the women, Demdike lifts her dress and leers at him, offering him her sores. He hits her. She has lost two teeth this way.”53 Alizon and Nancy fall into the category of woman that is still a sexually viable object. However, they are only objects. Demdike is threatening to the gaoler since she has even less to offer him (the patriarchy) than the two younger women; she is no longer a sexual object, so she loses even what humanity is afforded to Alizon and Nancy. Demdike has more connections to the monster. The narrator describes the women as “grotesque. Shrunken, stooped, huddled, crippled, hollowfaced, racked, and rattling.”54 Their bodies betray them and create the image of the monster, which is how they are judged, creating fear in them due to their cruel treatment within the walls of their prison. It reaches the point when the women are there so long that they are no longer human, or identified as people. “Names that meant nothing. The occupants of those names had vacated them.”55 When Christopher Southworth, the Jesuit priest accused of participating in the Gunpowder Plot to kill King James the new Protestant monarch, drops into the cell for his sister, Jane Southworth, who had been imprisoned in order to lure him back to Pendle Hill, Old Demdike, the leader of the Demdike clan and according to them the most powerful witch, mistakes him for the Dark Gentleman to whom she sold her soul and waits for him to take her away. Christopher is disgusted by her, calling her hag. The narrator describes her: “Her hair was matted. Her skin was thin and lined with red vein marks round her nose and cheeks. Hairs grew from her moles. Her neck had joined her shoulders. The rest was a shapeless mass.”56 Old Demdike from Christopher’s perspective is that of a hag, the body outside of sexual viability, which reduces her status as a

Ibid., 91. Ibid., 94. 55 Ibid., 201. 56 Ibid., 167. 53 54

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person in society. Hag denotes witch and old woman, “a shapeless mass” who no longer meets any standard of beauty and induces fear and revulsion because the viewer must be confronted with humanity’s mortality. Kristeva’s conception of the abject claims that when one views a corpse, the revulsion comes from one’s inability to separate the self from death.57 Demdike dies very soon after she meets Christopher, a narrative point that underscores the abject in the novel. Christopher experiences the abject due not only to her horrific appearance, her connection to witchcraft and age, but the reminder of death that is always near life. These women, Elizabeth Device and her children, Old Demdike/Elizabeth Southern, Chattox, and Nancy Redfern all represent the grotesque, ugly, evil witch that is so familiar to popular culture. The women (and Jem) are Othered and marginalized in Pendle Hill society due to their peasant/folk status of lower class and being uneducated. Elizabeth and Old Demdike seek to gain power where they are afforded none due to their face anomaly and old age respectively. The situations in which they are placed works to create them as monsters in their own minds, into witches, a label which creates them as monsters because it is applied to them by the townspeople. It represents a convergence of ideas of the grotesque, fear, horror, and uncanny in the figures of the people accused of witchcraft due to their place outside of society’s normalizing reach. In the end, the narrator describes the witches as they are led to their executions. They have lost both their humanity and their monstrousness. Jem “can’t walk. He hasn’t walked more than twelve paces each way for four months. He has lost what fat he had. His eyes shine like fireflies in the waste ground of his body.” He has become less than human. Jem was not ever feared, but he was useful in taming the witches for the civilized society. “Chattox is demented. She spits and raves. She curses. She wants to be what they say she is: a witch. What else is left for her to be?”58 As I argued with Alice Nutter, Chattox needs to be the witch at the end. There is nothing left for her and society has relegated her to being only a witch. Nance Redfern and Alizon Device “can longer stand. Both have been infected with syphilis from the jailer.”59 For these two women, their humanities were stripped by being forced to have sex in order to survive. They became their genitals and used by the jailer for them. Mouldheels sits on the floor and pulls blisters from her

Kristeva, Powers, 3. Daylight Gate, 214. 59 Ibid. 57

58 Winterson,

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pus-soaked feet. She can feel her way through to the bone.”60 Their bodies withered in the cells in which they were kept, provoking the audience to question who the monsters are in the novel. Conclusion The Daylight Gate provides a case study for the historical narrative of witches as monsters by representing a range of monstrous women and the circumstances in which (most often) women are marginalized in a patriarchal, modern society. The intersecting systems that exert power over their lives create the space in which women become witches. Members of the lower classes are more susceptible to accusations of witchcraft since their status in the social hierarchy disadvantages them in believability and marginalizes them in religious and economic communities. Women have particular economic issues in a patriarchal society since women have fewer opportunities for supporting themselves. Women’s bodies are gendered in relation to men, which results in women attempting to use their bodies to get their basic needs met from men, like food and shelter. Class also does not protect women in the same way that it protects men. Alice Nutter is a member of the upper class, but due to her success, her beauty, and her refusal to acquiesce to the gender roles assigned her, she becomes a target for an accusation of witchcraft. Although Roger does not believe in the reality of witchcraft, her gender and her association with the poor allows him to use witchcraft against her to get what he wants (the Jesuit priest of the Gunpowder Plot in order to further his own career). The novel’s focus on decaying bodies and the ways in which circumstances dictate how bodies become grotesque highlights the transient nature of humanity and monstrosity constructed through man-made institutions. The women accused of being witches are victims of poverty and do not possess the standards for women dictated by society either due to age or being differently abled. They are often viewed with horror and then established as a fulfilment of this uncanny feeling that gets attributed to them. Uncanny feelings create fear in the viewer from the doubling of familiarity and unfamiliarity as well as the visible and the hidden. Since society is patriarchal, men are the standards of personhood and women are Other. Bodies that fit the young, sexually viable, not differently abled rubric hold more value than those that are not.

60

Ibid., 213-5.

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Winterson represents all of these in a book that creates the horror as it stands and judges it for its creation. The trials, witches, and the inhumane treatment of other people continues to be discussed through The Daylight Gate and its genre. Hannah Lockhart acknowledges the obvious horrors stemming from the supernatural (“the horror of evil, Satanic rituals and invoking the Devil, ghosts, demons, voodoo etc.”) and then turns to what is called “the actual, more horrifying evil,” that of the acts that are committed by humans against themselves.61 Further, the reviewer defines the “true horrors,” as “poverty, inherent misogyny, puritanism, injustice and corrupt policing, rape, torture, incest and murder.” These “true horrors” stem from human activities enacted against other people. Instead of the horror from the supernatural, in Hannah Lockhart’s view, the human acts create a greater sense of horror. This is important in a book about witches. The reviewer goes on to note: This book is graphic, grotesque, heady, sublime and surreal in equal measure. … terror of this novel comes not from people possessed … but from those who inflict suffering on other human beings. … the minute you don’t see someone as a human being it is a mandate for murder.62 Hannah Lockhart humanizes the horror, making it not supernatural or exterior but a product of the evil within, which makes the horror monstrous. The suffering causes the people to lose their humanity—both those who are inflicting the suffering and those who receive it. The category of the witch draws further suffering since it gives license for further marginalization. Since witches are no longer human, it is more acceptable for other members of society to visit suffering upon them. The discussion of the horror genre and the creation of monsters and humans in society highlights the institutionalization of classism, sexism, and the privileging of able bodies, as well as the way literature, attempts to make apparent the consequences of an unequal society. Society perpetuates inequality and innocent people suffer for aspects of their lives that remain outside of their control. Not only do those oppressed suffer, but the continuation of accusing people as witches greatly affected society as a whole on two continents.

61 Hannah Lockhart, “The Daylight Gate,” Goodreads April 25, 2016. Accessed February 14, 2017. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13136119-the-daylight-gate?from_ search=true 62 Ibid.

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Works Cited Briggs, Richard Bauman and Charles L. 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Freud, Sigmund. 2003. The Uncanny. Translated by David McLIntock. New York: Penguin. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2002. "Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory." NWSA Journal 1-32. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. 2007. Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader. New York: W.W. Norton. Hufford, David. “The Traditions of Disbelief,” New York Folklore 8, (1982): 4756. James I. 1924. Daemonologie. Edited by G.B. Harrison. London: Curwen Press. Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of L’ecriture Writing,” in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1997), 370-83. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Lockhart, Hannah, “The Daylight Gate,” Goodreads April 25, 2016. Accessed February 14, 2017. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13136119-thedaylight-gate?from_search=true Sharpe, James. 2002. James Sharpe, “Preface,” in The Lancanshire Witches: Histories and Stories, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003, 1-18 Stevens, Walter. 2002. Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Winterson, Jeannette. 2012. The Daylight Gate. New York: Grove Press.

Chapter 2

From Deadly to Dead Friendly: The Acculturation of the Vampire in Young Children’s Literature of the 1970s and 80s Simon Bacon

The 1970s saw the introduction of vampires as the main protagonists in children’s books. Titles such as Bunnicula,1 Vlad the Drac2 and Gruesome and Bloodsocks3 featured vampires that are not wholly scary but are very unlike the human societies with which they come into contact. These texts dramatically changed the construction of the vampire as no longer a figure wholly to be scared of, but as one that also represents the strangeness of others and cultural, racial or social difference. This shift can be largely attributed to the aftermath of the increased liberalism of the 1960s, which promoted both individualism and the acceptance of difference. However, the enforced acculturation of the vampire in said narratives meant for young audiences suggests that this was not the only cultural influences on the creation of the friendly vampire and that other forces were also at work. This chapter takes a closer look at a selection of children’s books from the 1970s and 80s to see how the historical and cultural settings that produced them might be responsible for this development and whether their integration into human society is as friendly as it first appears. Making the Vampire Suitable for Children Before looking at the first book in this study, it is worth sketching in some of the background of the development of the vampire in popular culture in the

1 James Howe and Deborah Howe, Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery (New York: Atheneum Books. 1979). 2 Ann Jungman, Vlad the Drac (London: Collins, 1982). 3 Jane Holiday, Gruesome and Bloodsocks (London: Harper Collins, 1984).

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twentieth century to see how it changed from a representation of all things evil to a staple of children’s written and visual media. Until the latter end of the twentieth-century vampires were rarely thought of as suitable fare for young children. Popular discourse saw them as rather unsavory creatures as the somewhat overenthusiastic vampiricist Montague Summers notes at the start of that century: “in all the darkest pages of the malign supernatural, there is no more terrible tradition than that of the Vampire.”4 Psychoanalyst Ernest Jones writing in the 1950s reinforces this view, describing them as the stuff of nightmares, evidenced by his in-depth discussion of vampires in his book, On the Nightmare, where they are representative of repressed desires, specifically “the sadistic side of the sexual instinct ... [and] necrophilia.”5 This unsuitability is not just limited to their connection to transgressive sexual behavior but is equally seen in the fact that in some narratives babies and young innocents were sometimes consumed by vampires and Bram Stoker’s Dracula seemingly used infants to satisfy the hunger of his three brides, “she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor ... there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half smothered child.”6 No wonder then that stories of the undead were thought inappropriate for a young audience. The situation changed somewhat during World War II in which period the prewar “classic” monsters, such as Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Wolf Man and the Mummy,7 were no longer deemed scary enough to rival the horrors of war. As W. Scott Poole observes, “in a world at war, the drama of things back from the grave, creatures wandering through the faux European fairylands, had become a joke.”8 Whilst Poole’s observation describes the manner in which the old world fears were no longer deemed as relevant during the conflict this situation continued into a post-war society that was now more concerned with the almost incomprehensible destructive power of the atomic bomb and the developing Cold War with the Soviet Union. As Paul Wells notes,

Montague Summers, The Vampire in Lore and Legend [1929] (Mineola: Dover Publications. Inc., 2001), ix. 5 Ernest Jones, On the Nightmare (London: Liveright Publishing Company, 1951), 112. 6 Bram Stoker, Dracula [1897] (London: Signet Classics, 1996), 43. 7 The classic monsters are generally referred to as those that featured in the Universal films series of the 1930s and 40s which featured Dracula (Browning: 1931), Frankenstein’s Monster (Whale: 1931), The Mummy (Freund: 1932) and The Wolf Man (Waggener: 1941). 8 W. Scott Poole, Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, 2014), 113. At the same time Stoker's Dracula was one of the Armed Services Edition Books offered to American troops to pass the time when stationed in Europe during the conflict. 4

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such concerns caused the “rise of the ‘Creature Feature’...[that engaged] with post-Atomic bomb anxiety, the Cold War fear of communist infiltration, and the internal contradictions of a new American identity.”9 However, films such as It Came From Outer Space (Arnold: 1953), Them (Douglas: 1954), Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (Siegel: 1956) did not totally stop the popularity of pre-war monsters in general and vampires in particular.10 For example, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (Barton: 1948) manifests Poole’s earlier observation regarding the comic nature of the old monsters. It featured the Universal triumvirate of monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man) alongside the then highly popular comedy duo Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. The film’s “friendlification” of the monster is highlighted by the fact that, when released, it only received the equivalent of a PG rating, making it viewable by a very young audience. As Jeffrey S. Miller notes, quoting a review from the time of its release, “teens and youngsters ... shrieked with ... terror and glee.”11 The film was an instant hit for the popular comedy duo, and was rereleased in 1956. Whilst the monsters are not spoofing themselves in any way, the routines of the two comedians around them dispel much of their horror value. It is not the only influence of this kind on the popular imagination from around that time which diffused horror with comedy. It is something of a forerunner for television shows such as The Munsters (Stone et al.: 1964-1966) and The Addams Family (Lanfield et al.: 1964-1966). Both these shows featured vampires, Lily Munster and Grandpa in the former and Morticia Addams in the latter, and portrayed them in a way that made them even more family-friendly,12 one might even say

Paul Wells, The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch (London: Wallflower Press, 2000), 56-57. 10 Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend published in 1954 is a curious example of interlinking both vampires and nuclear anxiety, and sees a mysterious “plague” possibly caused by some form of atomic radiation/mutation/fall-out. 11 Jeffrey S. Miller, The Horror Spoofs of Abbott and Costello: A Critical Assessment of the Comedy Team’s Monster Films (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2000), 63. 12 Grandpa Munster, played by Al Lewis, was very much modeled on the traditional Dracula figure as played by Bella Lugosi in Tod Browning’s 1931 film, but speaking with an American accent. Lily Munster, played by Yvonne de Carlo, at least in looks is more akin to Elsa Lancaster in The Bride of Frankenstein (Whale: 1935) with her distinctive lightening flash of white in her otherwise black hair. Morticia Addams, played by Carolyn Jones, is more clearly modeled on a mixture of Dracula’s Daughter (Hillyer: 1936), with a constant spot light highlighting her eyes, and Vampira, the host of The Vampira Show, a variety show aired in the Los Angeles area between 1954-1955, played by Finnish actor Maila Nurmi. 9

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domesticated.13 Perhaps, more importantly, it familiarized them as characters and allowed them to speak for themselves, something which vampires from Count Dracula onwards were rarely allowed to do. If Stoker’s vampire was readily vilified and “othered” by never being given a voice – he, his actions and their purported intent are only ever described by others – then the monsters in The Munster’s and The Addams Family speak with a voice very similar to that of the audiences watching them. Subsequently, the monsters are very much manifestations and reflections of the culture and times they live in as they are shown coping with the same problems as the average American family (though that is arguably as mythic a creation as the monsters themselves). Both these shows were billed as family shows, as was the slightly more sinister series Dark Shadows (Curtis: 1966-1971), which featured the vampire character, Barnabas Collins. As Andrew Boylen notes, whilst the show “was not designed for children ... children will have watched the show, airing as it did at 4PM Eastern [time].”14 Barnabas, as part of a long-running soap opera, was shown as being a complex and very “human” character in his motivations and not just a construction of “absolute otherness” as the vampire was traditionally represented. That is not to say that the more traditional and bloodthirsty constructions of the undead had vanished from the cultural imagination, as exemplified by the long-running and highly popular Hammer studio’s Dracula films, predominantly starring Christopher Lee as the Count and Peter Cushing as his nemesis, Van Helsing, that had begun in the late 50s with the Horror of Dracula (Fisher: 1958) and continued into the early 70s. The various incarnations of the vampire in these films were inherently evil but due to the vivid production colors and increasingly modern settings – Dracula A.D. 1972 (Gibson: 1972) is set in a swinging London of the early 70s – the creature from the past was shown to be alive and kicking in the modern world. In fact, this feature of the past being alive in the present becomes quite central to the representation of the vampire in this period. This clash of the Old world with(in) the New is shown in both The Munster’s and The Addams Family where the vampire parents are represented as being somewhat out of

Nina Auerbach sees the 1980s as the time in which the vampire became increasingly “domesticated” specifically in relation to films such as Fright Night (Holland: 1987) and The Lost Boys (Schumacher: 1987), though as mentioned here it can be seen to have begun much earlier. Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 168. 14 Andrew M. Boylan, “Children of the Night: Mainstreaming Vampires through Children’s Media,” Growing Up with the Undead: Vampires in the 20th and 21st Century Literature, Films and Television for Young Children, eds., Simon Bacon and Katarzyna Bronk (Toronto: Universitas Press, Forthcoming), 56. 13

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step with their children and the modern world, and Grandpa even more so, but doing their best to try and catch up. Here though the comedy elements that rendered the monsters ridiculous in Abbott and Costello make them endearing and more human, if somewhat different to those around them. This shift is emphasized by the changing view of the vampire during the 1960s and 70s which can be seen to be partially the result of the swinging 60s with its infatuation with youth culture and adolescence and a more inclusive view of society across the divides of gender and race.15 Kristyan M. Kouri notes that during that time “a more inclusive way of thinking took hold among an increasing number of Americans,”16 and whilst this is largely directed at the bridging the divides with the African American community it played out across many cultural divisions in both America and Europe. For the vampire, whose inherent otherness is often representative of racial and cultural difference, this meant that an increasing amount of texts, film and books, not only represented them as more human/humane but were told from its perspective. This resulted in a shifting of its otherness away from an existential evil to one expressing a misunderstood foreignness. In terms of children’s culture this is possibly most clearly seen in The Count from Sesame Street (Simon et al.: 1969-present) the highly popular children’s television series that was shown on both sides of the Atlantic,17 which encapsulates much of the shift in the popular view of the vampire, whilst making it child friendly and even educational. Count Von Count (or the Count) first appeared on Sesame Street on 27 November 1972. He is a very interesting amalgam of vampire history and lore, for, whilst being a puppet, he references an icon of horror films, Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula from Tod Browning’s 1931 film Dracula. By the 1970s Lugosi’s pre-World War II interpretation of the vampire had become extremely familiar within American and even European popular culture. Lugosi’s distinctive Eastern European voice, slicked back widow’s peak, cape and evening dress had

Peter Braunstein, “Forever Young: Insurgent Youth and the Sixties Culture of Adolescence,” Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 70s, eds., Peter Braunstein and Micheal William Doyle (New York: Routledge, 2002), 243. 16 Kristyan M. Kouri, “Black/White Interracial Couples and the Beliefs That Help Them Bridge the Racial Divide,” New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century, ed. Loretta I. Winters and Herman L. DeBose (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003), 366. 17 Indeed, I personally can remember watching Sesame Street and The Count when growing up in the 1970s in the South of England. 15

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become common signifiers in American households, particularly at Halloween, of all things vampiric.18 Interestingly, though, Sesame Street’s Count is never identified as a vampire although he has fangs, lives in a gothic-looking castle and has a hypnotic stare that “glamours” those around him.19 Indeed, as the decade progressed the Count was domesticated even further – the loud thunder claps that used to accompany his counting disappeared, as did the maniacal laughter, only to be replaced by more Lugosiesque guffawing, as well as increased interaction with other characters. The Count was a literal manifestation of his name and was obsessed with counting everything – a somewhat obscure folkloric trait of the vampire – which used to mark him out as different from those around him.20 His otherness is always one of Eastern Europeanness, very much in line with that of Lugosi’s vampire. While Browning’s Dracula configured a more blanket warning against being involved with the Old World at a time of increased American isolationism between the two world wars, Sesame Street’s Count is actually more focused and is constructed around ongoing Cold War antagonisms. As such, his quirkiness is seen as a product of his homeland of Transylvania, which at that time was part of communist Romania ruled by Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918-1989). Consequently, his somewhat simple and outdated view of the world is linked directly to his Eastern European identity, a stereotype that remains, in some part, until the present day. This is something that was also explored in the comedy film Love at First Bite (Dragotti: 1979), which was originally released with a twelve-years-old-and-above rating, where the

Hence the distinctive look of Grandpa in The Munster’s and Count Chocula, who featured on the box of a well-known chocolate cereal released in 1971. Count Von Count utilized this creating a character that was both familiar to parents and reinforcing tropes that children would have seen elsewhere on adult television/media. 19 Though this last characteristic was cut in the 70s as it was thought young children might find this too scary. 20 Whether the program’s creators knew it or not, this too came from vampire history, where according to certain countries' folklore the “vampire supposedly has an obsessive need to count.” Lesley Hawkes, “Staking and Restaking the Vampire: Generational Ownership of the Vampire Story,” Popular Appeal: Books and Film in Contemporary Youth Culture, ed, Lesley Hawkes (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 80. Marcia Lusted, quoted in Hawkes, identifies the source as China where “according to legend a vampire could not pass by a sack of rice without counting every grain,” though European revenants are equally obsessed by “poppy or millet or mustard seeds.” Alan Dundes, The Vampire: A Casebook (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 114. 18

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outdated and aristocratic Count Dracula is evicted from his castle by the People’s Communist collective and subsequently escapes to New York. Once there he struggles to come to terms with such a modern and liberated culture and eventually leaves for calmer climes. Bunnicula, which begins the study below, comes from the same year as Love at First Bite, utilizes a very similar idea of an outsider traveling from the “old world,” Transylvania to “new world,” America, but one that eventually finds a warmer welcome. The Bunny That Came in From the Cold The first of the three narratives looked at here, specifically chosen as earlier examples in the genre, is Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery by James and Deborah Howe was published in 1979. It is one of the earliest examples of a friendly vampire as the main character in young children’s books and it establishes a few important features that became central to the genre.21 Firstly, it uses an animal as the protagonist, and, secondly, the vampire character is vegetarian. Although the vampire is a rabbit, it still looks forward to the early twenty-first century where various kinds of vampiric “veggie” diets exist.22 Bunnicula, the eponymous hero, is described as a vampire bunny discovered by the Monroe family – Professor and Mrs. Monroe and their two sons, Toby, aged eight, and Pete, aged ten – on a trip to the cinema to see Dracula. Though it is never specified which version it was they saw, we can assume it must have been to see a screening of Browning’s original as the young children would not have been allowed in to see any of the Dracula films released during that period. It also serves to place the book in relation to the wider field of the cinematic vampire and whilst Bunnicula most obviously looks to Legosi’s Count – the markings on his fur resemble a cape – it is not the only film to possibly influence the tale. The 1970s was an important time of change in the representation of the undead on film, and not just for children. The if was a shift in the popular conception as well as seen in movies such as Dracula (Badham: 1979) – a more direct copy of the first American adaptation of the official play from 1924 – featured a far more sympathetic and romantic Count, and Martin (Romero:

The Bunnicula series consists of seven books and is now also an animated television series Bunnicula (Borutski: 2016-present). 22 The Twilight Saga, books and films, sees this as more free-range or organic blood supplies whilst True Blood (Ball: 2008-2014), adapted from the books The Southern Vampire Mysteries (Harris: 2001-2013) use a synthetic blood substitute. 21

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1978) centered around a domesticated vampire in an everyday setting that might not even be a vampire.23 Curiously, whilst Bunnicula himself exhibits these more “modern” traits of being sympathetically portrayed and placed in a very domestic, realistic setting the style of the narration still very much looks backwards and like Stoker’s Count Dracula before him the bunny is not allowed to speak for himself. The audience has to depend on the unreliable narrator, Harold, a dog owned by the Monroe family, to discover the unfolding events. And so it is via the written transcript of Harold that the readers hear of the story of how the Monroe family discovered a rabbit at the cinema and brought it home to, unbeknownst to them, cause chaos amongst the household’s pets – with the added conceit that Harold’s manuscript was left anonymously at the front door of the book’s author. Not unlike Abraham Van Helsing before him, Harold stamps his authority over the interpretation of the unfolding events, not least in his self-proclaimed superiority in the understanding of the ways of the vampire. This happens very early in the story when the Monroes first discover the baby rabbit in a blanket left by their seats in the cinema. There is a note that none of them can decipher, except the worldly Harold, who, as he explains, is able to translate it for the reader, “Because my family got around a lot, I was able to recognize the language as an onscreen dialect of the Carpathian Mountain region. Roughly translated it read, ‘Take good care of my baby.’”24 This immediately marks the rabbit out as not only foreign but potentially a dangerous outsider from the East. As the story develops Harold reinforces his role of being a self-taught Van Helsing as he tries to prove to Chester, the cat, and the Monroes that Bunnicula is up to no good. Accordingly, he interprets the ensuing events in such a way that they construct the “foreign” bunny as dangerous rather than just different. Chester is increasingly swayed by Harold’s concern and once the cat finds a book named Mark of the Vampire in Professor Monroe’s library he joins the dog in trying to catch the vampire living in their midst. Once found the little, possibly orphaned bunny from Transylvania is named Bunnicula in honor of the film during which he was found – a combination of the words bunny and Dracula as thought up by Mrs. Monroe – and due to his distinctive markings (black on white) which resemble a widows peak on its head and a bat-winged cape over its body. Harold is immediately suspicious

23 Though unlikely it had any direct influence on Bunnicula, it is worth mentioning Zoltan, Hound of Dracula, a.k.a. Dracula’s Dog; (Band: 1978) as it features a vampiric animal other than the usual bat. 24 Howe and Howe, Bunnicula, 9.

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of the newcomer, not only because of his unusual markings and pointed front teeth but also because of the dramatic entrance of the Munroe’s when they returned home from the cinema. As they walked through the front door carrying the little rabbit in a blanket, their entrance was greeted with a flash of lightening dramatically framing them in the doorway, just like in the horror movies. This distrust deepens when Chester tells Harold that the odd occurrences, such as Bunnicula’s peculiar sleeping habits – he sleeps all day and only wakes up at night – and the mysterious appearance of pale and empty fruit and vegetables around the house are obvious signs of vampirism. It later transpires that Bunnicula escapes from his cage at night and sucks the juices out of fruit and vegetables in Monroe’s kitchen. This is an early instance of vegetarian vampires that were more sensationally seen in Stephenie Meyers’ The Twilight Saga – though here of course their food is more “free range” than truly vegetarian. More contemporaneous with the Howe’s book is Anne Rice’s series of novels The Vampire Chronicles series that began with Interview with the Vampire in 1976 and featured a vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac, that exists on the blood of animals when he is first turned. For Rice’s vampires though this is a form of self-punishment rather than a natural dietary need or simple lifestyle choice. Such a dietary change, of course, has the effect of making the vampire a less dangerous or frightening character and, unsurprisingly, often features in later children’s books.25 Although Chester becomes obsessed about catching the vampire, Harold begins to feel sorry for the bunny and when the cat prevents Bunnicula from feeding for a number of days the dog tries to save him. Harold takes the rabbit out of his cage and places him on the kitchen table so that he can reach the vegetables kept there to eat, but Chester catches him. The cat tries to attack the rabbit but Harold steps in and in the resulting scuffle barks to alert the Monroe’s. After finding the mess caused by Chester and a very weak bunny, the cat is sent to a pet psychologist and Bunnicula to the vet. The rabbit is put on a diet of liquefied vegetables, which not only revives him but also stops his nightly trips. Chester “finds himself” and is happy to accept Bunnicula as part of the family. The book, and Harold’s narration, ends with the dog describing the rabbit as the “mysterious stranger ... who is definitely no longer a stranger.”26 Thus, at its core Bunnicula is a story that creates an idyllic view of family life, which can equally be seen as something of an idealized construct

This is also seen in the highly popular animated series Count Duckula (Cosgrove: 1988-1993) where the eponymous hero, due to an accident when he is brought back from the dead, needs tomato ketchup to survive. 26 Howe and Howe, Bunnicula, 98. 25

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and a point often leveled at texts from the 1980s where, as noted by Ben Furnish, “conservative politicians and polemicists sounded the call to a return to ‘family values,’”27 which was itself based on nostalgia for the imagined model family from the 1950s. In this reading, the family stands in for the idea of the wider nation and so Bunnicula represents not only foreignness and otherness but specifically a specter of Cold War Soviet Union trying to insinuate itself into the heart of America for nefarious ends. Unsurprisingly, this initially produces extreme xenophobia and rejection. However, the spirit of openness and inclusion inherited from the liberalism of the 1960s initiates a proactive response to the difference of the outsider, and indeed the ever-widening world of globalization and immigration. Yet, it is worth remembering that Bunnicula’s inclusion into the family is predicated on the fact that the overall dynamics of the family unit remains the same – his difference is recognized only so long as the overall nature of the family is unchanged i.e. the identity of the family/nation is not affected but reinforced by the integration of the outsider. Difference, therefore, is made all more open to being acceptable due to the fact that the vampire/outsider is a cuddly bunny rather than a human, which equally works to dispel the otherness – superstitious/uneducated/old-worldliness – of Transylvania. This view of Transylvania, read Soviet-controlled Communist Europe, is also the basis of the next book where the vampire is neither human nor animal but an unknown, other-worldly species. Little Green Men from Another World Vlad the Drac by Ann Jungman (1982) is the first in a series of six books. It moves the action of its tale from the suburban America seen in Bunnicula to suburban England. The notion of family here remains extremely important and in many ways is as traditional as that constructed in the former narrative. Equally, its view of outsiders/foreigners is, superficially, as benign, yet ultimately more problematic. Written for 7-9 year-olds, it shows the Stone family from England traveling to Transylvania where, outside Dracula’s castle, their children Judy and Paul discover a baby vampire hidden beneath a stone: “a tiny creature with a comical face, two sharp fangs, long ears and a hurt expression.”28 He speaks perfect English, due largely to overhearing the tourists that come to the castle and, not unlike Count Dracula before him, has a huge desire to go to England. Rather curiously he also has a green

Ben Furnish, Nostalgia in Jewish-American Theatre and Film, 1978-2004 (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 4. 28 Jungman, Vlad the Drac, 10. 27

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complexion, the reason for which is never explained, but when combined with his diminutive stature it suggests he is more elf-like than a more traditional vampire. As a result, Transylvania, as a country already synonymous with the vampire, is shown as a place full of non-human – almost supernatural – inhabitants which not only links it to the anticommunist message of Dragotti’s Love at First Bite but also looks forward to more sensational works such as Dan Simmon’s Children of the Night (1992) and even Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian (2005). The vilification of the Soviet Union at this time, and Romania’s inclusion within it as a satellite state, should not be underplayed during the 1980s. Whilst in hindsight it can be viewed as the period immediately preceding the collapse of the Communist superpower in Europe in 1991, it is a time when then President of America, Ronald Reagan, took an extremely hard line against their Cold War enemies. Reagan famously gave his “evil empire” speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, in March 1983 in which he labeled the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world.”29 The strong links between America and Britain at this time, and indeed all members of the NATO,30 meant this view of Eastern Europe had wide credence amongst them. Consequently, inhabitants of the Soviet Union were viewed as being more oppressed, uniformed and generally less sophisticated than their Western counterparts. Vlad’s greenness then further constructs him as being part of the superstitious backwardness of Communist-controlled Transylvania. This idea is emphasized when Paul and Judy discover the little vampire has no name, as apparently his Great Uncle Ghitza, who was a “real” vampire, had refused to come to his christening – it is as if Vlad, in receiving his name from the children, only became himself when he came into contact with the free West. The beneficial effects of being in the civilized West are further emphasized during his stay in England when his distinctive green hue fades as if being in close contact with democracy is normalizing him in some way.31

Ronald Reagan, “Address to the National Association of Evangelicals (‘Evil Empire Speech’),” Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project. University of Maryland, College Park, March 8, 1983. Accessed March 1, 2017. http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reaganevil-empire-speech-text/ 30 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance created specifically in opposition to the expansionist threat of the Soviet Union after World War II. 31 Interestingly, Jungman’s story never questions the ease with which the Stone family are able to travel to and from Communist Romania. 29

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After talking to the children, the vampire decides to call himself Vlad the Drac – a mixture of the names of Vlad the Impaler and Dracula – and they decide to take him home, and pretend he is a model vampire so that they can get him through customs. Once home they keep him hidden in a drawer in their bedroom, but it soon transpires that for all his brave talk he does not like blood and actually likes to eat soap, washing liquid and polish, something which again marks out his difference. However, Vlad soon tires of being kept in the children’s bedroom and, after almost a year in the house, he makes sure that his presence is revealed to Judy and Paul’s parents. Interestingly, this does not seem to faze either of the adults who accept him quite readily and decide to help Vlad to get back home to Romania. The children’s mother, who is a doctor, gets in touch with the Ministry of Tourism for Romania, who was “very impressed by Vlad and … immediately offered him the post of resident vampire at Count Dracula’s castle, with a lifetime’s supply of soap, washingup liquid, shoe polish or whatever he wanted.”32 This act of repatriation is particularly interesting, not just in terms of the Cold War tensions mentioned above, but also in light of the increasing racial tension in many of Britain’s larger cities that occurred at the start of the 1980s. The 1980s in Britain saw an economic recession and increased unemployment which especially affected working class areas of many cities, particularly those that had formerly been centers of now declining industries such as mining. Combined with this were policies introduced by the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher which allowed the police to stop and search anyone they wished on what was called “reasonable suspicion.” This led to growing distrust between ethnic minority groups, that were more likely to be targeted, and the authorities. These minority groups largely consisted of young black men, Afro-Caribbean, but also of young Asians that were second or third generation immigrants from the Commonwealth countries and, as noted by Tibor Frank, Martin Klimke and Stephen Tuck, the “race riots in the early 1980s” lead to “anti-immigration slogans taking center stage at British elections.”33 The riots in Brixton, London, Handsworth, Birmingham, Chapeltown, Leeds and Toxteth, Liverpool not only lead to a resurgence of the National Front but also

Jungman, Vlad the Drac, 118. Timor Frank, Martin Klimke and Stephen Tuck, “Using the American Past for the Present: European Historians and the Relevance of Writing American History,” Historians Across Borders: Writing American History in a Global Age, eds. Nicolas Barreyre, Micheal Heale, Stephen Tuck and Cécile Vidal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 53. 32 33

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reignited the earlier slanted debate around race in the UK that had been initiated by Enoch Powell (1912-1998) in the late 1960s. Powell’s call for an end to immigration from certain commonwealth nations as well as forced repatriation remained particularly persistent and as John Gabriel observes, BBC television discussions at the time, in 1979, were “framed entirely around Powell’s arguments” and utilized what Stuart Hall called a “racist chain of meaning” which, began with immigration and the number of black immigrants, and then moved on to the problems created by black immigration – overcrowding, unemployment, moral decline and so on – and finally arrived at solutions aimed at reducing the numbers, through immigration control and repatriation.34 Vlad’s assisted return home can be read as an example of such repatriation. This constructs his return to Transylvania as being primarily of benefit to the little vampire but the narrative appears to simultaneously imply that it is equally, or even more of a beneficial solution to the English family he was staying with. It further suggests that immigrants will only ever be truly happy if they do in fact return to their original homes. The story reinforces this last part by describing how Judy, Paul and their parents visit him back in Transylvania two years later. By that time Vlad has found himself a wife and has had five children, although, rather worryingly according to the narrator, one of them is just like Great Uncle Ghitza. The final piece of information suggests that not only would immigrants be happier returning to their former homes but they would degenerate back to the “uncivilized” peoples, bloodsucking vampires, they were before coming to Britain. In this reading, the ending of the book is given further implications due to the construction of the Stone family in Vlad the Drac. Not unlike the Monroe’s in Bunnicula Judy and Paul’s family are professionals, their mother is a doctor and their father a violinist, and their easy acceptance of Vlad would seem a positive thing. Indeed, it would appear to imply the broad acceptance of liberal values across the middle/professional classes and the inclusion and acceptance of racial and ethnic difference. However, as noted above, their eagerness to get him back home rather than staying in their house can be read as a rose-colored interpretation of repatriation and a means of trying to subliminally plant the notion that immigrants to the UK would be much happier back home with their own people. Margaret Thatcher, the prime

34

John Gabriel, Racism, Culture, Markets (London: Routledge, 1994), 35.

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minister of Britain between 1979 and 1990 was good friends with the Republican president of America Ronald Reagan, who was in office from 1981 to 1989, so it is not surprising that both promoted a very similar construction of family values as a means of propagating a political agenda. The final text to be looked at here though works against that though showing a vampire who has no wish to be taken into a human family, coming from a somewhat dysfunctional one herself, but rather wants to live and be accepted on her own terms. Subsequently, it is not family values that come to the fore but the importance of the acceptance of difference within local communities. Green Skin, White Masks Gruesome and Bloodsocks, by Jane Holiday, was published in 1984 and is part of a three-book series meant for 7 to 9 year-olds. Unlike the previous examples, the story is told from the viewpoint of the vampire herself and as such bares some connection to Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire which is also narrated by its undead protagonist. Gruesome tells the story of Augusta (Gruesome Gussie) and her cat, Bloodsocks – named so as he is all black with rust-brown paws. Gruesome is an embarrassment to her family, who are descended from a long line of Transylvanian vampires,35 as she is allergic to blood and likes to sleep at night. In contrast to all the American and/or English families described earlier she leaves her own in their churchyard home to go and live in the town of Trumpington somewhere in the north of England.36 The exact location of Trumpington is never given, but Gruesome’s journey to it is not far from suggesting her family are immigrants of some sort that have lived in their churchyard for some time. This notion of being foreign or immigrants is further emphasized due to the fact that all the vampires, just like Vlad the Drac, have green skin and that she herself enjoys odd, exotic mixtures of food such as chocolate biscuits spread with fish paste. Unlike the previous two books there is no professional family to live with so Gruesome with no home of her own is told to go to the DHSS (Department of Health and Social Services) where she is given a council flat and then to the unemployment office, who seem unperturbed at her being a vampire or green skin tone.37 This last part is particularly interesting as it intimates that the local government offices are used to dealing with clients that might come under the

Holiday, Gruesome and Bloodsocks, 11. The story suggests that this is a town in the north of England, though there is a real village near Cambridge with the same name. 37 Coincidentally the vampires in Gruesome are also shown as having the same green skin as in Vlad. 35 36

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heading of immigrant, i.e., non-white, non-English speaking. Though the fact that Gruesome speaks exactly the same way as those around her would seem to mean, as noted before, that she and her family have lived in the north of England for a while and would seem to align her with many of the immigrant groups that lived in the large industrial towns in the north. As mentioned above there were race riots in the city of Leeds in the early 1980s and much racial tension in nearby cities such as Bradford that were home to large Asian communities. Under the Thatcher government of the 1980s unemployment in such formerly industrial areas was increasing leading to large amounts of people being forced to sign on for council housing and social security payments. Consequently, Gruesome is constructed as being representative of both the working class but also the racially and ethnically different. The social security office tells her to collect her giro (unemployment benefit) from the local post office once a week. And so Gruesome and Bloodsocks move into 52A Wellington Street, where she hangs viper skins on the walls, black bin bags over the windows, and buys a coffin on credit to sleep in. Her upstairs neighbors, the Jones’s, are one of the few families that have jobs, and Gruesome becomes friends with their son Leotard. Not unlike Vlad the Drac before her, Gruesome slowly begins to change the types of foods she eats and this more “human” diet soon begins to change her green pallor to that of a more normalized pink. This along with her growing friendship with Leotard and others in the local community shows that her increasing normalization and subsequent acceptance into society is dependent upon how closely she follows its ideological and cultural blueprint. This implies a certain amount of enforced cultural assimilation but the text tends towards a level of denial in that direction as few of the inhabitants of Wellington Street are coded as being particularly average or “normal” – unlike the other books considered above where the majority of human characters are employed professionals here only Leotard’s father has a full-time job. As the story continues, Gruesome gets caught up in a pet kidnapping scam when Bloodsocks is taken from her garden. She decides to enlist the help of her vampire family to catch the villains and plans a trap by leaving the ransom in a phone box and then jumping/flying out of nowhere to catch the crooks. It transpires, however, that all the other families in the street are also leaving ransoms for their own pets at the same time and chaos ensues. However, after much furor, the crooks are caught and the vampires, who helped catch them, are lauded as heroes. Subsequently, with the safe return of all the pets, Gruesome becomes friends with many of the other occupants of Wellington Street. Due to the vampires’ exploits appearing in the news they are offered jobs as night security guards at a warehouse in Dieppe, France, and want

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Gruesome to go with them. She refuses to say that she wants to stay in her new home and with her new friends. Gruesome’s scenario is slightly better than Vlad’s and is not subject to “encouraged” repatriation, and hence is more similar to the outcome seen in Bunnicula. Arguably the female vampire here is better integrated than the rabbit, after all the bunny is constructed as less than human and his acceptance into the family is largely predicated as only being one of their many pets. Gruesome is shown as being part of the community living in Wellington Street, though this is largely based on her denying who and what she is. As mentioned earlier, the further she gets away from and suppresses her vampire past, the more human she gets. At one point late in the story one of her vampire family observes: “your face … has gone a most healthy shade, and you’ve been washing your hair.”38 This is in stark contrast to the beginning of the story where she is marked out as inescapably other – as either an immigrant, a homeless person, or a traveling gypsy – as also seen in her peculiar skin color, unusual diet and idiosyncratic home decorations. Gruesome’s acceptance into society then is not based on the recognition of her difference but upon how much she adjusts to that society. There is much here that resonates with Frantz Fanon’s observations on a colonized society and how civilization is predicated upon how much one accepts and mimics the colonizer culture. As he notes in Black Skin, White Masks, “The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards.”39 Whilst Gruesome’s vampire family might not qualify as a colonized race, her identification with British immigrant communities of the 1980s suggests that this might be an appropriate connection to make. That said, part of the reason she becomes more fully accepted, or liked, by her neighbors is her relationship to the vampires who helped save their pets. There is some partial recognition of her difference within this, but as Gruesome does her best to obscure all external markers of this connection, it is minimal at best. A Place to Call Home The first book in this study was written for an American audience and the remaining two for a British one, yet the ideological underpinnings behind them are strikingly similar. As noted, the strongly conservative nature and

Holiday, Gruesome and Bloodsocks, 74-75. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 18.

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“special relationship” between both countries’ leaders during the late 1970s and early 80s, and their respective political parties makes this situation more likely. And although each nation’s standpoint in regards to immigrants is different, the integrity and health of the family unit as a synecdoche of the larger nation-state further reinforces the possibility of meaningful comparison. Unsurprisingly then, the construction of the “professional” families in Bunnicula and Vlad is extremely similar: the fathers are both professionals with Mr. Monroe being a professor and Mr. Stove a violinist in an orchestra; there are two children in each – boys of 8 and 10 in the former and similarly aged (never specified) boy and girl in the latter (the boy is the older sibling). The respective mothers differ most, with Mrs. Monroe being a housewife, whilst Mrs. Stone is a medical doctor. It is an interesting difference as the American story suggests that the family should be solely supported by the father, whereas the British one shows that working mothers are acceptable. Indeed, one suspects that as a doctor Judy and Peter’s mother earns more than their father. Whilst both stories promote the importance of family, Bunnicula specifically constructs outsiders as a source of anxiety to that nationally sacrosanct unit. So much so that Harold, the dog, and Chester, the cat, are as fearful for their family as they are for their own selves when the vampire enters their household. It is only after it is discovered that the rabbit only requires vegetable juice to survive that they relax enough to accept him for what he is.40 Of course, the Monroe’s themselves never find out the exact nature of their new guest/pet in the book. This situation begins in a similar way in Vlad as Judy and Peter smuggle the little vampire back into the UK and their bedroom without their parents’ knowledge. It is never suggested that the little vampire is dangerous to the family in general or Mr. and Mrs. Stone in particular, but rather that the parents would be so annoyed with their children’s behavior that they would punish them and send the vampire home. However, once Judy has revealed that they have a secret guest, and more so, that he is a vampire, the parents quickly welcome and accept Vlad into their family. As mentioned above, Vlad does not tell us, the readers, the tale himself, and so his desire to return to Transylvania due to homesickness, is conveyed by a narrator, who might be interpreting the little immigrant’s repatriation with a certain bias. As it happens, the Stone family are only too happy to help Vlad get back home and even help to procure him a job at Dracula’s castle, thus

Bunnicula, as with most young children's books featuring vampires, does not bring up the notion of vampires being undead, demonic, or damned creatures and largely shows them as being scary due to their need to drink blood.

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ensuring the continued integrity of their one family unit. One could conclude that because the little vampire remained resistant to total assimilation into the Stone family (British life) that order could only be restored with his removal. This situation alters somewhat in Gruesome and Bloodsocks, created slightly later. Here, Gruesome leaves her dysfunctional family – they are green, drink blood and live in a graveyard – to join civilized society in Trumpington. Once there, she is immediately made to register herself to the authorities who then find her somewhere to live so that they know where she is. After willingly doing this Gruesome further submits to growing acts of assimilation, such as changing her diet and becoming part of the local community. Unsurprisingly, the more she is acculturated, the more she looks like those around her, both in terms of the clothes she wears and her changing skin color which eventually becomes pink (Caucasian). It is possible to see here that all “foreign” families are not seen as real families from the standpoint of the home nation and that being assimilated into civilized society – the national family – is more important. Consequently, and not surprisingly, in the texts considered in this paper vampires are used to signify “otherness.” This “otherness” is specifically tied to notions of foreignness – Cold War Eastern European/Soviet Union identity in respect to Bunnicula and Vlad, and Gruesome adds the possibility of Asian or Afro-Caribbean immigrant identity.41 The results in all these narratives, and again they are ones to be expected for books intended for children, present very agreeable resolutions to the anxiety caused by outside threats to the family unit. Foreignness of Bunnicula and Gruesome is partially dissipated as neither seem to feel any strong connection to their former homes, or cultures, and so are quickly assimilated into their new homes. Vlad, although enjoying his new surroundings and being extremely fond of the Monroes, cannot forget his connection to his original home. One could say it is his memory of home that does not allow him to make a new one in England. Oddly, this is not too dissimilar to the comments made by Enzo Columbo and Paola Rebughini in regard to the reaction against assimilation by the children of immigrants in the late 1970s and 80s who did not necessarily want to “abandon and reference to the culture of their parents” and, subsequently, the “topic of culture difference became a fundamental political issue for western

41 One could make the case for traveling communities/families or the homeless in relation to Gruesome but the concentration on matters regarding immigrants and race relations in the politics of the time suggests otherwise.

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democracies.”42 This suggests the growing need for host nations to do more to accept and embrace cultural difference rather than negate it or remove it from within its borders. And the books looked at herein definitely suggest the latter solutions rather than framing a discourse on how difference and diversity might enrich the lives of each stories’ respective families. Although seemingly promoting more liberal attitudes about the recognition of difference, in their various ways the three books looked at in this study can equally be seen to reflect dominant conservative thought in regard to the issue of outsiders.43 Therefore, the vampires in these books represent particular immigrant groups that were deemed problematic for American and British societies in the early 1980s. In all cases, they are only counted as friends if they are able to deny their vampire selves, their true nature/culture, and be the same as their new “families.” Resistance to such acculturation can only be resolved by the vampire/immigrant returning to their original homes. This creates some interesting similarities and differences in the narratives from Bram Stoker’s seminal text Dracula. Curiously the family/society/crew of light in all the books, and indeed Stoker’s, are totally against the influence and difference of the vampire. And whilst the books from the 20th century do not seek to utterly destroy the immigrant entering their midst, they will ensure that it returns home if its presence remains threatening. The vampire, however, has completely changed. Count Dracula’s most intimidating pronouncement at the end of the nineteenth century was to make British society just like himself, “And you, their best beloved one, are now to me flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin.”44 But slightly less than one hundred years later the vampire only wishes to be like those around it, with its worst menace being to require benefit money and house from the local council. Works Cited Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Enzo Columbo and Paola Rebughini, Children of Immigrants in a Globalized World: A Generational Experience (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 20. 43 Interestingly this is a similar ideological construction as seen in vampire films of the late 1980s featuring teenagers such as Once Bitten (Storm: 1985), Fright Night (Holland: 1985), Vamp (Wenk: 1986), The Lost Boys (Schumacher: 1987), Near Dark (Bigelow: 1987), My Best Friend is a Vampire (Huston: 1987) and Fright Night 2 (Wallace: 1988) that ultimately reinforce the family values of conservative Reaganite America that they seem to deny. 44 Stoker, Dracula, 311. 42

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Boylan, Andrew M. “Children of the Night: Mainstreaming Vampires through Children’s Media,” in Growing Up with the Undead: Vampires in the 20th and 21st Century Literature, Films and Television for Young Children, edited by Simon Bacon and Katarzyna Bronk, 49-58. Toronto: Universitas Press, Forthcoming. Braunstein, Peter. “Forever Young: Insurgent Youth and the Sixties Culture of Adolescence,” in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 70s, edited by Peter Braunstein and Micheal William Doyle. New York: Routledge, 2002. Columbo, Enzo and Paola Rebughini. Children of Immigrants in a Globalized World: A Generational Experience. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Dundes, Alan. The Vampire: A Casebook. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann. London: Pluto Press, 1986. Frank, Timor, Martin Klimke and Stephen Tuck. “Using the American Past for the Present: European Historians and the Relevance of Writing American History,” in Historians Across Borders: Writing American History in a Global Age, edited by Nicolas Barreyre, Micheal Heale, Stephen Tuck and Cécile Vidal. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. Furnish, Ben. Nostalgia in Jewish-American Theatre and Film, 1978-2004. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Gabriel, John. Racism, Culture, Markets. London: Routledge, 1994. Hawkes, Lesley. “Staking and Restaking the Vampire: Generational Ownership of the Vampire Story,” in Popular Appeal: Books and Film in Contemporary Youth Culture, edited by Lesley Hawkes. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Holiday, Jane. Gruesome and Bloodsocks. London: Harper Collins, 1984. Howe, James and Deborah Howe. Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery. New York: Atheneum Books, 1979. Jones, Ernest. On the Nightmare. London: Liveright Publishing Company, 1951. Jungman, Ann. Vlad the Drac. London: Collins, 1982. Kouri, Kristyan M. “Black/White Interracial Couples and the Beliefs That Help Them Bridge the Racial Divide,” in New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century, eds. Loretta I. Winters and Herman L. DeBose. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003. Miller, Jeffrey S. The Horror Spoofs of Abbott and Costello: A Critical Assessment of the Comedy Team’s Monster Films. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2000. Poole, W. Scott. Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror. Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, 2014. Reagan, Ronald. “Address to the National Association of Evangelicals (‘Evil Empire Speech’),” Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project. University of Maryland, College Park, March 8, 1983. Accessed March 1, 2017. http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/ Stoker, Bram. Dracula [1897]. London: Signet Classics, 1996.

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Summers, Montague. The Vampire in Lore and Legend [1929]. Mineola: Dover Publications Inc., 2001. Wells, Paul. The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch. London: Wallflower Press, 2000.

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Conflict and Complexity: Humanist and Spiritualist Discourses in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand Svetlana Seibel

I wanted Interview with the Vampire to be a departure, I wanted to… First of all, I always thought the vampire was the interesting one, and I wanted to know what went on behind the scenes. So I wanted it to be a departure, I wanted you to fall in love with the vampire and see things through his eyes. Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire DVD commentary (2002) Introduction: “Our Vampires, Ourselves” In her much-quoted statement, Nina Auerbach asserts that “Every age embraces the vampire it needs.”1 Vampires of contemporary literature and popular culture, though they may seem frozen outside of history, are deeply historical beings; in Auerbach’s words, “because they are always changing, their appeal is dramatically generational.”2 Anne Rice’s literary vampire Marius for one demonstrates great awareness of this fact, stylizing himself, in his own words, as “a continual awareness unto myself.”3 But Marius is by no means the only vampire character in Rice’s novels to entertain such thoughts.

Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1995), 145. 5. 3 Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985), 467. 1

2 Ibid.,

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In fact, her entire Vampire Chronicles, a long series of novels4 which arguably revolutionized the vampire figure of popular imagination more than any other of its incarnations, is a dramatization of history,5 particularly history of ideas of what came to be called the Western world. It is hardly surprising that, of all literary monsters, the vampire is the one to be concerned with history the most. As immortal beings that often choose a lifestyle of blending into a human society and finding subtle ways to bend its rules so as to ensure their own continuous existence, vampires are walkers through centuries and generations, history incarnate. Gregory A. Waller sees vampire narratives as part of “a particular body of related texts” which he understands “collectively as the story of the living and the undead.”6 In theorizing this body of texts, Waller points out their tendency to be “preoccupied with the passing on of knowledge, infused with the air of mortality, and self-conscious about the desire for closure.”7 Moreover, trapped as they are between physics and metaphysics—having to drink blood to live on and striving to find a purpose for a life of pure predation—many of our literary vampires are not only historians, but, to a greater or lesser extent, philosophers or mystics (or, in fact, both).8 This last statement is particularly true of the vampire novels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Anne Rice: “Maintaining that her vampire novels are ‘not just about vampires’ …, Anne

4 The core texts of the series were published between 1976 and 2003 and include Interview with the Vampire (1976), The Vampire Lestat (1985), The Queen of the Damned (1988), The Tale of the Body Thief (1992), Memnoch the Devil (1995), The Vampire Armand (1998), Merrick (2000), Blood and Gold (2001), Blackwood Farm (2002), and Blood Canticle (2003). After having been considered finished for some years, the series was resurrected in 2014 with the publication of a new instalment, a novel titled Prince Lestat, followed by Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, published in 2016. 5 Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s series of vampire novels typically summarized under the heading of Saint-Germain Chronicles is even more specifically historical, not only in terms of content but also genre: Yarbro’s novels consciously understand themselves as historical vampire novels. 6 Gregory A. Waller, The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies (Urbana-Champaign: Illinois University Press, 2010), viii. 7 Ibid. 8 If they are not simply animals or results of human biotechnological experimentation, two posthumanist narrative strands of vampire stories which are becoming increasingly prominent within the genre.

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Rice sees the vampire as a representative of the human condition in all its physical and spiritual implications.”9 Anne Rice’s novels were groundbreaking in making vampires the point-ofview characters. Starting with the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, the readers were invited to listen to vampires as they became simultaneously protagonists and narrators of their own stories. With that, vampires shed some of their ontological monstrosity and became a representational figure for humanity. In William Partick Day’s words, “the vampire has become an ambiguous figure in a story about the nature of humanity at a time when we are no longer sure we know what human nature is. … Even the most apparently transgressive, subversive, or revolutionary vampire is part of our attempt to define and affirm our humanity.”10 For that reason, as Anne Rice’s own numerous comments clearly indicate, the reader of modern vampire stories is invited not only to feel for vampire protagonists, but to identify with them. As far as vampires’ monstrosity is concerned, in contemporary vampire stories it became ambiguous as humanity itself is increasingly questioned, reminding the audience that “the real evil of this world had not been perpetuated by the supernatural beings.”11 Quite an impressive number of contemporary vampire novels reinforce this assertion. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s historical vampire novels construct her vampire protagonists, Count SaintGermain and Madelaine de Montalia, as warriors against injustice and suffering which permeate every epoch of human history. Suzy McKee Charnas’ animalistic vampire Prof. Weyland, having fallen into the hands of a sadistic Satanist cult, is portrayed as a victim of human superstition and power hunger rather than an angel of death. In Lynda Hilburn’s novel Dark Harvest, her protagonist, a psychologist whose clientele includes vampires alongside humans, reflects: “But I will say that I’ve seen things that shake my notions of what’s real and what isn’t. Even in my non-vampire-wannabe clients, the mind is capable of creating astounding things. Think about all the horrors humans have caused throughout the ages. It raises the question of who really are the monsters.”12 But perhaps no other literary vampire has put

9 Beth McDonald, The Vampire as Numinous Experience: Spiritual Journeys with the Undead in British and American Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 133. 10 William Patrick Day, Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2002), 2. 11 Mary Y. Hallab, Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead in Western Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009), 44. 12 Lynda Hilburn, Dark Harvest (Aurora: Medallion Press, 2008), 29.

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it more succinctly than Anne Rice’s Marius: “Many a man has drunk another’s blood, Amadeo.”13 Thus, the dread that many contemporary vampires seek to inspire in their audiences is no longer necessarily of a Gothic variety; rather, in many cases, it is a historic dread. Of all of the novels which comprise Anne Rice’s series, The Vampire Armand (1998) is arguably the volume in which all central concerns of The Vampire Chronicles combine in the most consistent way, yet the book has barely received any critical attention so far. The postmodern uncertainty which, according to Veronica Hollinger, characterizes most of the Chronicles, reaches its peak in The Vampire Armand, but it also receives a most thorough examination. Exemplified in its two central characters—Armand and Marius—the novel illustrates the way in which the tension between humanist ethic and religious discourses to this day shapes the mindset of Western societies. However, it also maps alternative discourses emerging from this tension, most notably alternative spiritual discourses, many of which have found an uneasy home in various strands of the New Age movement or became incorporated into different schools of alternative psychology. In this chapter, I will closely analyze the way Armand and Marius give voice to different philosophical positions which gave shape to postmodernity and bring them in a productive dialogue in order to critique both fundamentalist religion and “the vacuum created by the absence of any transcendent principle.”14 I will also chart the proposed solutions which emerge out of this dialogue in the course of the narrative. I argue that through its subject matter as well as through the main thrust of its narrative argument, the novel simultaneously reflects on and participates in what Christopher Partridge calls “the re-enchantment of the West,” a process which took shape in the second part of the twentieth century and underwent further revision in the years leading up to the new millennium, in a cultural milieu that Partridge refers to as “occulture.” Duking it Out: Humanism and Spirituality in Postmodern Times Centerless: Vampires Confront Postmodernity Postmodern mindset has been known to both lack a center and, in a touch of paradox, to create a center out of this very “centerlessness.” Whether interpreted in positive or negative terms, distrust is often considered one of

13 Anne

Rice, The Vampire Armand (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 132. Hollinger, “Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire,” in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, ed. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), 203. 14 Veronica

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postmodernity’s most prominent characteristics. Veronica Hollinger characterizes it in terms of a “loss of faith in totalizing stories such as capitalH History, capital-S Society, or capital-R Religion.”15 For Hollinger, “[t]his loss of faith is, in part, responsible for what has come to be called ‘legitimation crisis,’ a crisis that puts into question the ground on which so many human behaviors and beliefs have previously been secured.”16 Carmen Kuhling associates postmodernity with a “spiritual vacuum” which can be considered “a kind of a psychopathology of modernity.”17 Christopher Butler describes what he calls “postmodernist attitude” as “one of a suspicion which can border on paranoia,”18 as a result of which “Postmodernists are by and large pessimists”19 who “are good critical deconstructors, and terrible constructors.”20 Each one of these summaries in one way or another recognizes postmodernity as a framework of crisis—crisis of cultural grand narratives, but also more broadly a crisis of faith. This crisis implies a failure of previous dominant ideologies constitutive of what came to be called Western societies, most notably the ideologies of Humanism and Christianity which for centuries served as central frameworks of Western history of ideas. While both Kuhling and Butler refer to postmodernity and postmodernism in pathological terms which emphasize their lack of productive center, Hollinger points towards some of the more productive features of postmodern skepticism, arguing that “[o]ne of the more positive results of the legitimation crisis is the current widespread movement of decentering: for example, voices historically relegated to the margins of discourse, of representation, of authority have come to the foreground.”21 Taking these aspects into consideration, Hollinger concludes: “As a paradigm of ‘the human condition’, therefore, postmodernism functions neither to explain nor to exclude those ‘abnormal’ features of contemporary existence that the projects of realism are inherently incapable of mirroring; rather, it aims to incorporate the abnormal as it is within the field of analysis.”22 It appears that both these features—

15 Veronica

Hollinger, “Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire,” 199. 199. 17 Carmen Kuhling, The New Age Ethic and the Spirit of Postmodernity (Cresshill: Hampton Press, 2004), 129. 18 Christopher Butler, Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 3. 19 Ibid., 114. 20 Ibid., 116. 21 Veronica Hollinger, “Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire,” 199. 22 Ibid., 200. 16 Ibid.,

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centerlessness and decentering—are equally constitutive and characteristic of postmodern thought. Moreover, both have a profound impact on vampire literature. As Hollinger points out, postmodern tolerance towards abnormality and its questioning of what she calls “the authority of realism”23 allowed fantastic genres of literature, including vampire fiction, to find a place “at the forefront of cultural production.”24 This cultural decentering in its turn has produced centerless vampire characters who are engaged in an often painful negotiation of their own postmodern condition. Nowhere is the nature of this negotiation as evident as in Armand’s tortured cry: “Master, I don’t know who I am in this new life … Reborn? Confused?”25 While as far as their form is concerned, Rice’s novels which comprise The Vampire Chronicles cannot be called postmodern, their content operates within a recognizably postmodern mindset: they are concerned with cultural and existential uncertainty, with failure of history, with unfathomability of human psyche. However, rather than wallow in a centerless condition, Rice’s novels and her vampires are busy sifting through epochs and traditions for reasons why and how this condition came to be, as well as looking for a new center, for a “still-point in the universe,” for “somewhere to stand.”26 By making its characters traverse historical epochs, the novels interrogate ideas and structures that are ultimately responsible for breeding postmodern uncertainty, and return to the present in order to look for alternatives that could hold the potential to alleviate postmodernity’s culture of distrust. This is no small task, which is why Rice’s vampires are perpetually troubled. The Vampire Armand in particular is an unrestful novel, at times dizzying in the intensity of its search for meaning. In this search, the characters oscillate between humanist ethic and Christian religious frameworks, embodied in the characters of Marius and Armand respectively, only to find them equally wanting. Faced with “the vacuum created by the absence of any transcendent principle,”27 the novel finally makes an attempt at an eclectic synthesis which, more than anything, points towards

23 Ibid.,

200. 200. 25 Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 8. 26 John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2010), 2. 27 Veronica Hollinger, “Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire,” 203. 24 Ibid.,

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contemporary alternative spiritualist discourses and what Christopher Partridge calls “the eclecticism of the occulture.”28 “The Re-Enchantment of the West”: Humanism, Alternative Spiritualities, and Vampire Fiction In his book The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited, sociologist John Carroll writes: “We live amidst the ruins of the great, five-hundred-year epoch of humanism. Around us is that ‘colossal wreck.’ Our culture is a flat expense of rubble. … We are desperate, yet don’t care much anymore. We are timid, yet we cannot be shocked. We are inert underneath our busyness. We are destitute in our plenty.”29 Whether we accept Carroll’s critical view of the state of Western culture or not, there can be no doubt that the philosophy of secular humanism has been on the forefront of Western thought for centuries, and has profoundly influenced the direction into which Western cultures and societies unfolded. As Carroll points out throughout his book, humanist thought, from early stages on, developed in opposition to religious thought, and the two, while going through phases and motions depending on the general intellectual and spiritual makeup of the epoch in question, to this day remain locked in a continuous argument and power struggle, perhaps most importantly over what Carroll calls “the metaphysical status of the individual.”30 It can be argued that postmodernist uncertainty to a significant extent springs from the fact that both these dominant frameworks of Western thought have gradually lost grip on society, and no satisfactory alternative framework that could provide a philosophical and moral social underpinning has been put forth. It is hardly a coincidence that Carroll’s evocative description of the Western cultural “wreck” reminds of certain aspects of cultural pessimism Butler accuses postmodernism of.31 Carroll situates the root of the problem in rational humanism’s closemindedness and the narrowness of its vision, which fails to recognize that “the complexity of the human condition—of character, passion, conscience, not to mention the course of external events—rules out any simple humanist utopia.”32 The cultural processes and negotiations born of this situation are exceedingly complex and often defined by contradictions. Especially when it

Christopher Partridge, Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 71. 29 John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 1. 30 Ibid., 21. 31 Christopher Butler, Postmodernism, 114. 32 John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 25. 28

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comes to the spiritual landscape and health of Western societies, the debates tend to get heated. The proclamations of both excessive secularism and backwards religious fundamentalist tendencies of contemporary West are common. Discourses of such ilk put much stock into the ongoing conflict between secular humanism and institutionalized religion and tend to eclipse other cultural forces that continuously push and pull on hegemonic cultural narratives. Christopher Partridge, for one, interprets the spiritual dynamics within modern Western societies as infinitely more complex than any neat opposition: “What we are witnessing in the West is a confluence of secularization and sacralization. Spiritualities are emerging that are not only quite different from the dying forms of religion, but are often defined over against them, and are articulated in ways that do not carry the baggage of traditional religion.”33 The aspect of the cultural shift Partridge describes that is most pertinent for the analysis of contemporary vampire fiction is its direct link to popular culture. As Partridge notes, “the new spiritual awakening makes use of thought-forms, ideas and practices which are not at all alien to the majority of Westerners. They emerge from an essentially non-Christian religio-cultural milieu, a milieu that both resources and is resourced by popular culture—the “occult milieu”, what I refer to as “occulture”.34 If we accept Partridge’s assessment, it follows that alternative spiritualities eclectically combine mysticist spiritual frameworks, many of them archaic or medieval in origin or flourish, and situate them in the (post)modernity, underlining their practices with many humanist values. The resulting synergy serves to question most of the established cultural master narratives (including postmodernism), which is perhaps why they have a potential to trigger a sense of profound discomfort in non-practitioners. Alternative spiritual discourses, thus, worship neither Spirit in its dogmatic Christian form, nor Reason in its humanist Enlightenment incarnation. Rather, they routinely and demonstratively invest their energies in marginalized concepts and the abject. Now, how does all this relate to vampire fiction in general, and The Vampire Armand in particular? First, it is necessary to point out the role popular culture plays in the cultural discussion described above. In his study of humanism, Carroll writes: “During the humanist half-millennium, the spirit’s finest projection has been high culture. High culture has its own hierarchy,

33 Christopher Partridge, Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture, 4. 34 Ibid., 4.

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with a few supreme masterpieces at the top.”35 Tellingly, Carroll structures his study around those masterpieces of high culture in order to chart the progression of humanist thinking through the centuries, punctuating his chronology with famous works of art. Where fantastic genres of fiction are concerned—vampire fiction being one of them—the cultural hierarchy which Carroll refers to has had a strong negative impact, in that, until comparatively recently, popular fantastic fiction has not been considered a serious cultural production worthy of critical attention. As many scholars of the fantastic have pointed out, much of it can be explained with the fact that fantastic literature has come to be associated with irrationality and the abject. As Rosemary Jackson points out, “the dismissal of the fantastic to the margins of literary culture is in itself an ideologically significant gesture, one which is not dissimilar to culture’s silencing of unreason.”36 The prolonged exile of fantastic genres of literature from the literary canon, therefore, is linked directly to the humanist and Enlightenment discourses of privileging instrumental reason and rationality over any other mode of perception and expression. In Veronica Hollinger’s words, “an unquestioning allegiance to empirical reality has threatened to destroy the fantastic.”37 According to Partridge, where the occult milieu is concerned, popular culture functions, on the contrary, as “a key component of an occultural cycle, in that it feeds ideas into the occultural reservoir and also develops, mixes, and disseminates those ideas. This is important because, more generally, popular culture is also a key element in shaping the way we think about the world.”38 Partridge identifies vampire narratives in particular as one of the popular source materials which at the same time feed contemporary occulture and respond to it. Given the genre’s discursive makeup, this is hardly surprising. Religion and spirituality are themes that continue to feature prominently in many contemporary vampire stories. One reason for this is, undoubtedly, the genesis of the genre, with its foundational texts—Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)—both firmly grounded in moral dualism and Christian demonology and ethic. Both novels operate within religious concepts of eternal damnation and demonic corruption, and are structured around the idea of the battle of good against evil understood in

John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 8. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London: Routledge, 2003), 173. 37 Veronica Hollinger, “Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire,” 211. 38 Christopher Partridge, Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture, 4. 35 36

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Biblical terms. In twentieth-century vampire literature, the focus has largely shifted. The postmodern world is not interested in such clear-cut distinctions; it much prefers exploring existential and moral grey zones. In a recognizably postmodern slant, the main conflict of contemporary vampire stories is seldom the one between good humans and evil vampires. Rather, it is an internal battle within a vampiric Self. Perhaps the main symptom of this change in attitude is the fact that most contemporary vampires are no longer afraid of religious symbols. While Dracula and his disciples, children of a century nostalgic for a faith slipping away, are easily warded off by religious symbols and ritual inventories, twentieth-century literary vampires remain largely unimpressed by them. Anne Rice’s vampires in particular, if anything, tend to be intrigued by crosses and religious art and architecture. When during their famous interview Daniel expresses his surprise that Louis can as much as looks at a crucifix, much less touch it, Louis is amused: “Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I rather like looking at crucifixes in particular.”39 This immunity to the power of Christian religious symbols is one example of what Christopher Partridge calls a “shift away from Stoker’s fundamentally JudeoChristian narrative.”40 “[T]his shift,” Partridge goes on, “reflects the shift taking place in the West whereby the centre of spiritual gravity is moving away from Judeo-Christian theology to the eclecticism of the occulture.”41 All of these narrative and discursive strands come together in The Vampire Armand. In particular, the novel juxtaposes two of its main vampire characters—the eponymous protagonist Armand and his sire and one-time lover Marius—through their respective ideological and cultural alliances in order to explore the interplay of humanist and religious discourses so prominent in the West. Armand’s search for spiritual meaning and Marius’s attempt to create a, to use Carroll’s words, “humanist utopia,” are among the most central conflicts of the plot, and their almost life-long struggle to reconcile these two mindsets—one of its driving forces. In the end, Armand pieces together an eclectic framework which appears to provide him with as much peace of mind as a vampire in postmodern times can have.

Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009), 23. Christopher Partridge, Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture, 128. 41 Ibid., 128. 39 40

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Looking for a Way Out: Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand “The Human Heart Is My School”: Marius the Roman, a Renaissance Man Marius de Romanus is one of the most complexly constructed characters in the whole of Vampire Chronicles. Though he is a master vampire—and one of the oldest ones—Armand characterizes him as “a great practitioner of being human.”42 The apparent contradiction of this characterization quickly resolves itself if one keeps in mind that the category of the human, in this case, signifies not an ontological condition, but a philosophical and discursive construction. That is, Marius’ humanness is manifested not only, and not so much, in his attachment to all things human, but more so in the fact that, in his worldview, he is essentially a humanist. His predicament, thus, is most formidable: as a vampire, he is a child of the historically religious concept of darkness; as a humanist, he is a child of the Enlightenment concept of light. In the course of The Vampire Chronicles, we hear Marius address the spirit of several ages, most notably the eighteenth century, the age of European Enlightenment, during his conversation with Lestat towards the end of The Vampire Lestat. It is amply evident in these passages that Marius clearly identifies with the Enlightenment ideas as he refers with optimism to both French and American revolutions. His human origins are in Ancient Rome, in his own rendering, “in the years of Augustus Caesar, when Rome had just become an empire, when faith in the gods was, for all its lofty purposes, dead.”43 In The Vampire Armand, which is primarily Armand’s story told by Armand himself and imbedded into a frame narrative, Marius is seen through Armand’s eyes in two historical contexts: the Renaissance Venice, where we encounter Marius as heavily invested in creating his very own “humanist utopia”44 of optimism, and at the close of the twentieth century. By that time Marius has all but succumbed to postmodern pessimism and disappointment in history, but he still keeps his characteristic, defining grace in Armand’s eyes that leads him to describe Marius as a gentleman before there were gentlemen,45 “infallibly good mannered, and considerate as a point of honor, and wholly successful at common courtesy to rich and poor alike. … In Marius, I saw the sunny skies of

Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 329. Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat, 382. 44 John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 25. 45 Cf. Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 7. 42 43

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the northern wilderness, eyes of steady radiance which rejected any outside color, perfect portals of his own most constant soul.”46 Even now, in the grip of a most unsettling inner turmoil, Marius appears to Armand as the perfect example of what John Carroll calls “Renaissance man,”47 most fully embodied for Carroll in the statue of the Gattamelata in Padua: “The human individual is the master of powerful forces surging beneath him: … they are vastly stronger, yet, through his own will, his own force of character, … and a clear and concentrated mind, he is the master.”48 The baton in the statue’s hand, Carroll’s argues, is “suggestive of a scroll, symbol of knowledge, of the rational human mind conquering the volcanic chaos of nature.”49 Carroll interprets the Gattamelata, and the topos of the Renaissance man in general, as the embodiment of the humanist ideal. Marius, as described by Armand, fits this ideal perfectly. Even Armand’s enunciation—“This was Marius”—echoes Marc Anthony’s exclamation in his eulogy for Brutus—“This was the man!”—in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which Carroll regards as another defining articulation of the humanist ideal of the Renaissance man.50 The “powerful forces surging beneath him” in Marius’s case are not the pull of the mighty horse, but his own vampirism as well as the power of his passions which his vampiric nature only magnifies. For Marius, this is the challenge of Armand when he first falls in love with him in Venice—Armand is content to be a “fool” for his passions, in fact, he revels in it. Not so Marius. As long as he can remain in control, and a gentleman, he is the Master, which incidentally is the title Armand forever uses to refer to him. Through his historical associations, Marius combines in his character aspects of virtus,51 one of the central Roman virtues, the attributes of Carroll’s Renaissance man, and the

Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 7. John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 14. 48 Ibid.,14. 49 Ibid.,14. 50 See Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 16-27. 51 As A.S. Cox explains, virtus was “the most central and far-reaching” of the “characteristic ideals of Roman morality,” “which by origin meant ‘the qualities of a man at his best’” (86). The precise, fine-tuned meaning of virtus changed and developed with Roman society throughout its history. Cox elaborates that by the first century B.C. the meaning of virtus had turned inwards, emphasizing the importance of personal discipline as “men became acutely aware of the enemy within, of the need for stern self-control” (86). The first century B.C. is also the time of Marius’ birth, and part of his profuse need for self-control directly corresponds to this understanding of virtus as restraint and its central role in the development of a “noble character” (Cox 86). 46 47

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mindset of an Enlightenment thinker. As a result, his character becomes a figure of a complex historical, philosophical, and discursive convergence. Marius loves arts and sciences, especially history, and, as a true Roman, he holds the law in high regard. His relationship to religion is uneasy at best, and essentially guided by Enlightenment thinking: religion is a source of rampant irrationality and moralist excess which is directly opposed to life. Seeing how other vampires, particularly the Satanist Santino, and later Armand, in their search for meaning of their existence succumb to one dogma or another arouses in Marius a profound feeling of agony and desperation. His humanist ethic, too, is a source of continuous inner conflict born of a raging contradiction: Marius’ very vampire nature, the undeniability of his undead life, testifies against his rationalist assumptions, while his love for humanity and commitment to the good of mankind is undermined by his vampire instincts and physiology that make it difficult to practice one of Marius’ basic tenets: “I wish mercy for any man.”52 Thus, Marius is forever torn between two irreconcilable parts of his being: the humanist rational and the supernatural fantastic. His vampire ability to levitate unsettles him, because “It seems not preternatural, but supernatural.”53 As Marius makes this confession, Armand observes that it causes his Master real and visible suffering.54 Marius is wary of his supernatural characteristics because they remove him even further from the human world, but also because he cannot grasp them with instrumental reason and explain them sufficiently within the positivist science framework: “With every other talent, humans are my teacher. Human heart is my school. Not so with this. I become the magician; I become the witch or warlock.”55 It is not quite clear which aspect of the experience of levitation frightens Marius more: the separation from humanity or the irrational mysticism which he feels is the source of his ability to fly. He interprets levitation as a magical quality, though he can perceive it through his senses, which makes the vampire ability to defy gravity an empirically verifiable scientific truth. However, Marius is a humanist; as such, his truth must be human, otherwise, it will be held in deep suspicion. Marius’ suspicion, tellingly, is that its origins may lie in the murky waters of mysticism, which is too close for comfort to both religion and irrationality.

52 Anne

Rice, The Vampire Armand, 201. 198. 54 Cf. ibid., 198. 55 Ibid., 198. 53 Ibid.,

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The historical and ideological development Marius witnesses in the Western world during the age of Enlightenment and humanism simultaneously excites and depresses him. In his dialogue with Lestat, Marius describes it in a tone of deep awe: “And now we stand again on the cusp of an atheistic age – an age where the Christian faith is losing its hold, as paganism once lost its hold, and the new humanism, the belief in man and his accomplishments and his rights, is more powerful than ever before.”56 Marius explains this excitement in himself with his own Roman origins. Speaking to Lestat at the end of the eighteenth century, addressing the revolutionary spirit of that time as well as its ideological, philosophical, and scientific developments, Marius asserts: “It has taken eighteen hundred years … to come back to the skepticism, the level of practicality that was our daily frame of mind then. But history is by no means repeating itself.”57 He thus draws a connection between Enlightenment and the ancient classical world, thereby positioning himself as an embodiment of classicism characteristic for the rhetoric and discourse of Enlightenment. It follows that, just as he was a gentleman before there were gentlemen, Marius essentially sees himself as a humanist before there were humanists. And he uses his vampire ontology to bridge the temporal divide between centuries and become history incarnate: “The point is that you were born on the cusp of the old way of seeing things. And so was I. You came of age without faith, and yet you aren’t cynical. And so it was with me. We sprang up from the crack between faith and despair … .”58 A secular humanist himself, Marius hails the progressing secularization of Western culture with all his heart. He is glad and encouraged to see the general affirmation of his humanist values, his anthropocentric model of the universe. He asserts and celebrates the Enlightenment “belief in the value of human life that carries man now out of the monarchy into the republics of America and France.”59 But however ideologically exciting the idea of the universal justice and the ultimate value of human life may appear to Marius in theory, practically they

Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat, 465. Ibid., 382. 58 Ibid., 382. 59 Ibid., 465. It is telling that Marius employs masculinist expressions when talking of these historical developments and ideological stances. This rhetorical move situates him even more firmly in the historical context of Enlightenment which generally lacked feminist awareness in thought as well as language: “[F]rom a modernist perspective, especially from a feminist perspective, the traditional concept of reason is just a masculine or mancentric way of thinking that is characterized by the dominance of Descartes’ masculine way of thinking” (Jiang Yi, “Enlightenment and Post-modernism” 283). 56 57

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cannot be easily upheld by a vampire. Armand points to that inherent contradiction when he says about Marius: “But my Master, for all his lofty speeches on the virtues of humans, and his adamant insistence of our own responsibilities, nevertheless taught me to kill with finesse.”60 Killing is the nature of Rice’s vampires. Consequently, for her vampires, the humanist ideological anthropocentrism is morally disastrous, because it makes the taking of a single human life, no matter for what purposes or reasons, the greatest evil in the world. Marius tries to suppress the full implications of this truth and develops an, in his opinion, morally acceptable alternative: he only kills what he calls “the evildoers.” Because, as a vampire, he can read minds, he asserts himself to be in a position to know who is guilty of crimes which make them just a little bit short of human. In the last analyses, Marius takes it upon himself to decide who is human enough to be left alive, and whose humanity is incomplete or tainted, and therefore disposable. This way of thinking reveals the ugly side of Enlightenment’s concept of “humanity”: given a need and right circumstances, it invited utilitarian debates about who is human and who is not. The very “Republic of America” which Marius holds up as a shining example of a society that values human life above all else is infamous for having created elaborate theories of why Indigenous people and African slaves were not completely human, theories which had been used to justify slavery and genocide. Self-reflexive as he is, Marius himself cannot keep the grim reality of his elaborate philosophy from surfacing every now and then, usually after a self-conscious kill: “I meant to show you evil, not sport. I meant to show you the wicked price of my immortality. And that I did. But in so doing, I saw it myself, and my eyes are dazzled and I am hurt and tired.”61 Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Marius as a character is the fact that, as a secular humanist, he finds himself existing on the metaphysical side of things. He hopes with great enthusiasm that “the world will truly move forward, past all gods and goddesses, past all devils and angels;”62 at the same time, he is forced to admit: “And in such a world, Lestat, we will have less of a place than we have ever had.”63 Because, on the one hand, he feels that the only cultural context which could accommodate vampires in human society is religion, but on the other, due to his personal beliefs he cannot accept such an accommodation, Marius is forced to look for alternatives. He eventually

Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 192. Ibid., 133. 62 Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat, 465. 63 Ibid., 465. 60 61

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creates a spiritual system for himself that is not unlike the one that came to be associated with Romanticism: he spiritualizes the intellect and the senses. In his quest for a dogma-free spiritual framework, he turns to the deity of the Enlightenment—science, and to the deity of Romanticism—art. To fill his existence with meaning, Marius fully embraces the scientific discourse his intellect cherishes most: historiography. His theoretical concept of a universal “continual awareness” sounds metaphysical without being theological, and, tellingly, he develops this concept shortly before he is turned into a vampire, in his “last free hours as a Roman citizen”64: “The idea was simply that there was somebody who knew everything, somebody who had seen everything. I did not mean by this that a Supreme Being existed, but rather that there was on earth a continual intelligence, a continual awareness.”65 In order to avoid lapsing into a systematic theology, Marius leaves his Supreme Being deliberately nebulous and unspecified: “My idea of who or what it was, was vague. But I was comforted by the notion that nothing spiritual—and knowing was spiritual—was lost to us. That there was this continuous knowing… .”66 This reasoning is how Marius manages to reconcile the two seemingly conflictual forces that shape his psyche, his intellectual humanism and his spiritual impulse—he sacralizes the intellect. For him, knowledge is a spiritual experience, just as beauty and sensuality are divine. His interest in and awe for history are, consequently, almost a form of worship. As an immortal vampire, Marius develops an understanding of himself as that very same “continual awareness,” that endless reservoir of knowledge. He thus creates his own little universe of which he himself is the God Incarnate, the archangel, the Watcher: “I am the continual awareness onto myself, the intelligence I longed for years and years ago when I was alive, and I am in love as I’ve always been with the great progress of mankind.”67 Creating his elaborate house in Renaissance Venice, a house of art and learning where he is the Master and an object of worship, Marius attempts to materialize his conceptualization. Marius’ art and art history scholarship, too, are filled with spiritual undertones. Though he greatly dislikes Christian demonology and the iconography of eschatology, self-denial, and suffering, he is not opposed to lighter, more joyous and optimistic Christian imagery of Fra Angelico and the

Ibid., 398. Ibid., 398 66 Ibid., 398. 67 Ibid., 467. 64 65

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sensuous paintings of Botticelli. However, as an artist, in his own iconography, Marius is most of all eclectic. He is especially fond of pagan gods who, in all their faults, are so close to humans, and who make no claim to perfection, as well as angels and saints, the protagonists of many dramatic tales of Christian mythology that focus on humanity and imperfection.68 Admiring his Master’s allegorical portraits, Armand observes: “It seems here all echoes of sacred things were swept up in a new tide.”69 For Marius, not only the artistic creation itself is spiritual, but also the sensory perception thereof. Though often wary of the morbidity of his vampiric state and guilt-stricken by the need to kill inherent in it, Marius is delighted by the heightened mental and sensory awareness with which the vampire-kind is blessed. He instructs his new-born fledgling Amadeo to seek beauty through his vampire senses and let this new knowledge be his saving grace: “Though your vampiric senses … you’ll know all the world. Not from turning away from it …, but through opening your arms to endless glory will you perceive the absolute splendor of God’s creation and the miracles wrought, in His Divine Intelligence, by the hands of man.”70 In Marius’s philosophy, a work of art is an inspiration, not revelation, and even though the creative spark behind this work may come from a divine impulse, the work of art itself originates from human hands: not as a momentary manifestation of God through the human body as the monks of the Monastery of the Caves explained Amadeo’s extraordinary talent in painting icons, but as an affirmation of the divine nature of humanity itself. As Marius puts it: “All that is magical and divine in me is bounded by the human and always was.”71 In the last analysis, Marius always needs both: the intellect and the spirit, the head and the heart, the human and the vampire, and he builds his worldview around this need. However, on the landscape of human culture, he cannot find a systematic context which could accommodate the complexities of his philosophy. Through the tension between scientific and spiritual dimensions of his character, Marius points, albeit ambiguously, towards a necessity of an integral perspective capable of combining the scientific and the spiritual into a unified whole, seeking to reenchant the world, as it were. However, this holistic gesture remains incomplete, because Marius is unable to carry it through to an effective solution.

Cf. Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 45. Ibid., 45. 70 Ibid., 179-180. 71 Ibid., 452. 68 69

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Ultimately, Marius remains trapped in simplistic divisions. At the end of his journey in the series, he is lonely and disillusioned, still holding on to some of his principles, but with an underlying melancholy inertia. His optimistic humanist belief that a better world and a better society can be brought about by the age of reason is shattered, as the evidence testifies against it: “I was wrong in my optimism, I was ignorant, as ignorant as I accused others of being, and refused to see the very horrors that surrounded me, all the worse in this century, this reasonable century, than ever before in the world.”72 After centuries of life, Marius realizes that putting instrumental reason up on a pedestal constitutes a fallacy, merely a different kind of one-sided perspective, and admits to Armand that all his righteous teachings in Venice were “their own creed, the creed of the rational, the creed of the atheistic, the creed of the logical, the creed of the sophisticated Roman Senator who must turn a blind eye to the nauseating realities of the world around him,”73 an escapist stance necessary for him not to go mad. This realization, instead of opening new perspectives, crushes Marius and leaves him in utter despair and in a defeated—and arguably profoundly postmodern—state of mind that finds its expression in his bitter remark: “I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.”74 His old vision remains unrealized and he cannot conceive of a new one. His worldview is fragmented, and his character is too rigidly set, too desirous of wholeness, to bare fragmentation well. For that reason more than anything else, he exits the stage of The Vampire Chronicles as “an injured creature.”75 “To Whom I Prayed I Wasn’t Sure”: Andrei/Amadeo/Armand In the course of The Vampire Chronicles, and especially The Vampire Armand, the eponymous character virtually lives through three lives, in each of which he has a different name. He is Andrei in Kiev of the fifteenth century, torched by Tatars and Mongols, where he is a novice in the ascetic Monastery of the Cave, and a supremely talented ikon painter whose works are supposedly not art but a divine communication, “not made by human hands.”76 He is Amadeo in Renaissance Venice, first a human lover and apprentice, and later a vampire fledgling, to Marius. He becomes Armand when he takes up the leadership of Santino’s Satanist coven in Paris, after the paradise of Venice goes up in flames.

Ibid., 449. Ibid., 499. 74 Ibid., 451. 75 Anne Rice, Blood and Gold (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002), 557. 76 Ibid., 29. 72 73

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Each one of these lives is bound by a religious theme as Armand sifts through explanations and worldviews, mostly in extreme circumstances. In many respects, Armand functions as an antipode to Marius.77 If Marius is all cerebral and orderly, Armand is a chaotic being, emotional to the extreme and prone to displays of fanaticism. As a character, he is made up of contradictions and, like a pendulum, he swings from one extreme to another throughout his story: he is both cruel and gentle; ignorant and understanding; freethinking and creed-sensitive; godless and in love with God; clever, yet often playing a “Fool” to his passions. But, more than anything, he is forever an innocent, child-like, which, throughout the novel, mostly means irrational and (mis)guided above all by passion. It is no coincidence that (by our modern standards) he is a near child, having been born into darkness at the tender age of seventeen, an almost-child vampire with an angelic face of a Botticelli cherub. Innocence is Armand’s key characteristic: whatever he does, even the most evil of his deeds (and he is shown to be supremely capable of evil), he does it in good faith. Armand’s sensuality, emotionality, and clueless naive cruelty are always emphasized over his intellect or the power of reason. Even after Armand becomes a vampire, Marius perceives him as “some spirit like unto a child—naive and maniacal in … pursuit of certain themes.”78 While Marius sanctifies the intellect and the aesthetic vision, Armand looks for the sacred in love. During his last moments as a human, as he lays dying from poisoned wounds, Armand experiences a fever vision of a glass city where the saints of Russia, his native land, give him a revelation about the sanctity of simple love as opposed to “dexterous and labyrinthian creeds and philosophies of man-made and ever-seductive complexity.”79 In that moment, Armand essentially rejects the value of philosophy in favor of a religion of feeling. It is stressed on several occasions throughout the novel that, by nature and by

77 There is undoubtedly a certain Orientalism at play in this character juxtaposition: as an offspring of classical Rome and the European Enlightenment, Marius is poised as the epitome of a rational Westerner, made even stronger by Marius’ incessant proclamations of his allegiance to “the West.” Armand, on the other hand, was born in fifteenth century Russia, and raised as an apprentice of ascetic monks practicing extreme self-mortification through ritual hunger and neglect. Coming from Russia, a place of cruelty, darkness, and denial in the representation of Rice’s novel, Armand is constructed as an extremely exotic other to Marius, a blond and blue-eyed Roman, and his background, construed in such a way, serves, among other things, to make Armand the most resistant canvas imaginable for Marius to try and paint his golden vision of the world on. 78 Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 243. 79 Ibid., 158.

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nurture, Armand possesses what he calls “a religious soul.” Yet his religious framework, from the viewpoint of Christian dogma, is unorthodox and even blasphemous: he seems to be after a certain sensuous mysticism that combines carnal and exalted aspects. Instead of a worldview or a symbolic system, his worship is usually directed onto a single person; while Marius wants to create a removed pedestal for himself, Armand is a supremely relational being. As a child, he is obsessed with Christ in particular, to whom he relates in a personal manner.80 When later he meets Marius in Venice, Armand instinctively transfers his worship of Christ onto him, superimposes the image of Christ over the image of Marius and becomes obsessed with him in a similar manner, insisting that he “could have never seen such miracles in the face of anyone else.”81 To that, Marius corrects him: “Not the Christ, my child. … But someone who comes with his own salvation.”82 From this moment on, Armand becomes completely, worshipfully devoted to Marius, and the two develop a romantic attachment as well as a teacher-pupil relationship. Within this hierarchical relationship where Marius is the Master and Armand is the pupil, Marius creates a hierarchy of values which he seeks to impose on Armand disregarding the latter’s natural inclinations. While Armand, following his personal history and sensibility, is more interested in studying religious art and trying to make sense of his own religious contradictions, Marius wants him to follow through on a study plan which he himself devises, one which prioritizes the study of law and government. The classicist curriculum of Roman civic education that Marius develops for him, including the history of Roman law and Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis,83 does not impress Armand in the least; in fact, Armand finds it difficult to swallow, and his attitude towards these subjects and contents is utterly contemptuous.84 Unlike Marius, Armand does not believe that government and law could really improve, much less save, the world. In fact, his interest is not directed outwards into the grand narratives of history and society, but inwards into the mysteries of creativity and his own consciousness.85 Marius, characteristically, attributes Armand’s self-proclaimed contempt for law and government86 and his inability to appreciate the advancement which,

Cf. ibid., 223. Ibid., 35. 82 Ibid., 35. 83 Cf. ibid., 195. 84 Cf. ibid., 196. 85 Cf. ibid., 197. 86 Cf. ibid., 196. 80 81

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according to Marius, they bring to the human development to Armand’s having been “born in a dark savage land”87 past its former glory.88 Once again, Marius interprets Armand as a savage who has lost his way together with his native country. For Marius, the ratio of his Roman intellectual framework naturally supersedes all other systems of inquiry, and whoever does not unquestioningly accept the superiority of his reasoning and judgement is deemed underdeveloped and uninformed. Even Armand’s distrust of institutions is presented as a mystery to Armand himself, while Marius, with his characteristic insight, immediately professes to understand and explain it.89 While Marius appreciates the arts through an intellectualized aesthetics, Armand sees them as an epistemological framework which he uses as an entry point in his search for self-understanding and a spiritual connection to the world. As he moves back and forth between extreme asceticism and the worship of sensuality, his search is always spiritual, and through all of Marius’ lessons in aesthetics of light and sensuality, Armand keeps compulsively repeating the question: “But is Christ the Living Lord?”90 In his wonderings, he looks for a brand of spirituality which would tie transcendence to the material world. But for a very long time, he does not seem to be able to find a structured framework of spiritual understanding that would enable him to turn this ideal into practice in a satisfactory way, while knowing and understanding without a doubt that he has a “religious soul”.91 This deeply personal, internalized battle that he describes as a war on himself92 defies Armand’s journey as a character more than any other theme. He never accepts institutionalized dogmas or rationalizations of his mentors, be it Marius or the leader of a Satanist vampire cult Santino, entirely. They have the power to satisfy Armand’s “raging faith”93 only for a limited amount of time, until some occurrence strikes a private sense of awe in him and shakes him out of complicity once more. Consistent with Armand’s relational nature, the “occurrence” is frequently a person: Marius, Santino, Louis, Lestat, Sybelle and Benji have all, at one time or another, inspired a bout of renewed spiritual wandering in Armand.

Ibid., 196. Cf. ibid., 196. 89 Ibid., 196. 90 Ibid., 204. 91 Ibid., 238. 92 Cf. ibid., 238. 93 Ibid., 77. 87 88

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When Lestat brings back from his excursion to Heaven and Hell the so-called Veronica’s Veil, a relic carrying the bloody countenance of Christ not made by human hands94 imprinted on it, Armand experiences his final bout of extreme religious zeal. He decides to die for the love of God and goes into the sun.95 Though badly burned, Armand does not die as a result. Although he initially takes it as an ultimate sign that Heaven does not want him and therefore rejected his sacrifice, Armand’s attempt at martyrdom effects two major turning points in his story: not only does it lead to him meeting Sybelle and Benji, two mortals with whom he instantly connects and whom he eventually embraces as eternal companions, but also starts a process of reinterpretation which produces a symbolic understanding of Christ which finally puts his mind at ease. The latter, significantly, is triggered by Marius when he enquires about the reasons of Armand’s attempted suicide: “I do wonder. Because I know you. And I know that faith is something you simply do not have.”96 Though, considering Armand’s history and biography so far, this statement appears counterintuitive and even paradoxical, it unexpectedly makes sense for Armand: “I was startled. But instantly I knew he was right. I smiled. I felt a sort of tragic thrilling happiness.”97 At this moment, as if with a flip of a switch that long hung in the balance, Armand substitutes a religious understanding of Christ for a spiritual one. Instead of interpreting him as God Incarnate, Armand begins to see Christ as a man and a symbol: “I saw Christ. A kind of bloody light. A personality, a human, a presence that I felt I knew. And He wasn’t the Lord God Almighty and He wasn’t the Savior or the Redeemer for sins inscribed on my soul when I was born.”98 Armand, thus, finally manages to intellectualize and bring into consciousness the relational paradigm of Christ which he has been circling around since the beginning of his tale, but which eluded his full grasp up to this point. Starting from this moment, Armand’s God is a symbol of love and intimate knowledge of oneself and another, and so the two pieces of Armand’s own personal puzzle—love and faith—come together to be joined in a meaningful whole: “Lord. … It doesn’t mean what you think. It’s spoken with too much intimacy and too much warmth. … He is the Lord, yes, but only because He is the symbol of something infinitely more accessible, something infinitely more meaningful than a ruler or king or lord can ever be.”99

Cf. ibid., 351. Ibid., 352-53. 96 Ibid., 454. 97 Ibid., 454. 98 Ibid., 454. 99 Ibid., 454. 94 95

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Armand’s newly realized concept of Christ is, at its core, a mystical concept which relates more to metaphysics than it does to religion. He gives up the dogmatic paradigm of God as a formidable and ungraspable force and understands Christ as a human being and as a symbol of the divine within. Thus, every human—or vampire—marked by extreme relationality and relatability becomes Christ as Armand understands him. This change of perception causes Armand to call Christ his brother, stating: “His blood might as well have been my blood. Why, it had to be. And maybe this is the very source of his magnificence for thinkers such as me.”100 Realizing that this interpretation flies in the face of the idea of Christ as an actual God, Armand sets his Christ concept apart from the dogmatic theologies: “You said I had no faith. I don’t. Not in titles or in legends or in hierarchies made by other beings like ourselves. He didn’t create a hierarchy, not really. He was the very thing. I saw in him magnificence for simple reasons.”101 Armand’s notion of Christ comes very close to what Deepak Chopra calls “the third Jesus,”102 a concept which understands Christ as a person who achieved higher consciousness, “the God-consciousness,”103 without becoming a literal God. Armand’s understanding of Christ as love echoes his mortal dying dream of the city of glass where the monks told him that God is love, but, as Armand points out, he needed to experience it as truth in all facets for himself before he was able to internalize it. This emphasis on spirituality as an experience rather than a system of beliefs is as common for countercultural spiritual discourses as is their expansive eclecticism. As Jon P. Bloch shows, “countercultural spirituality offers the individual considerable latitude insofar as constructing a highly personalized spiritual belief system unlikely to be exactly like anyone else’s.”104 With his new-found conceptualization of Christ, Armand achieves precisely that: he succeeds in creating a spiritual framework tailored to his unique personal needs, including his vampire nature—Christ as “a kind of bloody light.”105 Armand evidently experiences his new interpretation of Christ which turns him away from dogma towards countercultural spiritual conceptualizations

Ibid., 454-55. Ibid., 455. 102 Deepak Chopra. The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008), 8. 103 Ibid., 9. 104 Jon P. Bloch. New Spirituality, Self and Belonging: How New Agers and Neo-Pagans Talk About Themselves (Westport: Praeger, 1998), 2. 105 Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 454. 100 101

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as liberation. Having adapted an alternative perspective on spiritual matters appears to present him with a workable solution to a crisis of faith which, in Armand’s case, lasted for centuries. Armand is arguably the only vampire in The Vampire Chronicles who manages to find answers to his urgent existential questions and thus transcend the condition of postmodern uncertainty and reinstate the transcendent principle on different terms. The ability to do so proves cathartic for Armand and initiates a positive change in his state of mind and outlook on (un)life: “Some sifting dark terror is gone from me,”106 he says. Ultimately, this makes it possible for Armand to leave The Vampire Chronicles with “a soul that is healed and no stranger to hope.”107 Conclusion: “A Kind of Bloody Light” In this chapter, I have attempted to untangle different strands of discourses concerned with history of ideas and ideals in the West as they feature in The Vampire Armand. I have concentrated on the character profile and the interpersonal dynamic between the characters of Armand and Marius because the philosophical thrust of the novel is arguably at its most potent when it deals with their relationship. Even though Marius is present in but about one-third of Armand’s story as dictated to David Talbot, the novel’s narrative strategy of story within a story emphasizes the significance of Armand and Marius’ relationship even centuries after the end of their life together in Venice. Rice achieves this effect by framing Armand’s tale told from memory with his encounters and conversations with Marius in the present. Marius is a stark and commanding presence in the opening part of the novel which precedes the commencement of Armand’s tale as well as at the climactic ending after Armand’s telling is done. Marius, therefore, not only features in the tale, but also dominates the frame. Throughout their interactions in the novel, Marius’s and Armand’s conflicts and contradictions expose and critically interrogate Western philosophical, ideological, and metaphysical discourses, historical as well as current. Both characters variously serve as catalysts for one another, provoking one another to enter territories beyond their respective comfort zones. Marius critiques and questions Armand’s fanatical tendencies and fatalist streak. In his turn, with his “religious soul” and his willingness to succumb to the pulling forces of circumstances and of his own psyche, Armand nudges Marius the Renaissance man off his high horse, off balance and out of control. In the process, Armand

106 107

Anne Rice, The Vampire Armand, 422. Ibid., 316.

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and Marius reenact five centuries of philosophical debates around “the metaphysical status of the individual,”108 until they both meet again in the heart of postmodern uncertainty for a final face-off at the end of the novel. By that time, they have both learnt to question the perceived certainties of their own worldviews and to listen more attentively to the other side. By virtue of the dynamic between these two central characters, The Vampire Armand is engaged in a critical interrogation which recognizes value in both humanist ethic and philosophy of reason and the power of Christian emphasis on spirit, but ultimately does not agree to let either one of them rule supreme any more than it agrees to succumb to the postmodern uncertainty. Without offering any definite final answers to the dilemma, the novel seems to tentatively point in the general direction of alternative, countercultural spiritual discourses as potential carriers of meaning in the postmodern environment by virtue of their flexibility and their openness to the possibility of a productive synthesis of the rational and the spiritual. Works Cited Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. Bloch, Jon P. New Spirituality, Self and Belonging: How New Agers and NeoPagans Talk About Themselves. Westport: Praeger, 1998. Butler, Christopher. Postmodrnism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Carroll, John. The Wreck of Western Culture: Humanism Revisited. Wilmington: ISI Books, 2010. Chopra, Deepak. The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008. Cox, A.S. “To Do as Rome Does?” Greece and Rome 12, no. 1 (1965): 85-96. Day, William Patrick. Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most. Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 2002. Hallab, Mary Y. Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead in Western Culture. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009. Hilburn, Lynda. Dark Harvest. Aurora: Medallion Press, 2008. Hollinger, Veronica. “Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire.” In Blood Read: TheVampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, eds. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, 199-212. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997. Jackson, Rosemary. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Routledge, 2003.

108

John Carroll, The Wreck of Western Culture, 21.

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Kuhling, Carmen. The New Age Ethic and the Spirit of Postmodernity. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2004. McDonald, Beth E. The Vampire as Numinous Experience: Spiritual Journeys with the Undead in British and American Culture. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Partridge, Christopher. Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture. The Re-Enchantment of the West, vol. 1. London: T&T, 2004. Rice, Anne. The Vampire Lestat. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986. Rice, Anne. The Vampire Armand. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000. Rice, Anne. Blood and Gold. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002. Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009. Waller, Gregory A. The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies. Urbana: Illinois University Press, 2010. Yi, Jiang. “Enlightenment and Post-modernism.” In The Fate of Reason: Contemporary Understanding of Enlightenment, ed. Hans Feger, 277-285. Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2013.

Chapter 4

From Revulsion to Revival: Representation and Reception of Monstrosity in Tod Browning’s Freaks Stephanie Flint

MGM’s roaring lion fades to black; an eerie tune of horns begins, and a title screen appears. Suddenly, a hand tears through the then contemporary black and white banner announcing the film’s name. Behind the torn banner, the backdrop of a carnival sideshow comes into view, along with the man to whom the disembodied hand belongs. He crumples up the banner as the music fades. The man’s voice—the booming voice of a carnival barker—takes its place. He stands, one leg up on a small stage that dons the sign “Sword Swallower,” as he addresses the screen. “We didn’t lie to you folks,” he says, gesturing around him, “we told you we have living, breathing, monstrosities.”1 He pauses momentarily. Although he could just as easily be addressing the film’s audience themselves, the screen then pans out to show the heads of the barker’s gathering crowd. The scene concludes with a woman’s shriek, as she faints at the sight of “the most astounding living monstrosity of all time.” Thus begins Tod Browning’s Freaks, arguably one of the most notorious films since the advent of film to screen. Although he likely didn’t know it at the time, as the film’s introductory barker introduces his audience to this “most astounding living monstrosity,” he may as well have been referring to the production in which he was taking part. Browning’s Freaks has been met with a lot of resistance and controversy even decades after its first release. Browning’s use of real-life sideshow performers in a cinematic production that casually flaunts the label of “monstrosity” raised a lot of eyebrows, and inevitably, a lot of questions. Namely, questions about

1

Freaks, directed by Tod Browning (1932; Los Angeles, CA: MGM Studios, 2009), DVD.

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representations of bodies deemed monstrous, whose bodies such a label is most often attributed to, and why such a fascination with the topic abounds in the first place. Looking at the evolving reception and interpretation of a film like Freaks illustrates the double-sided nature of art’s influence on society (as well as society’s influence on art), and the widespread change this influence can spark. In particular, Browning’s Freaks opened up the discussion of representations of bodies deemed monstrous into the mainstream, ranging from the casting of popular sideshow performers in the film’s main roles, and the transformation of a morally corrupt, able-bodied woman into a chicken-woman hybrid. The shifting interpretations of Freaks based on audience and critical response indicates the significant influence that events and perceptions surrounding the viewing of a film can have. The constant re-emergence of Freaks in popular culture references and academic, theoretical discussion also shows the power that such a film holds, by opening up discourse in areas previously unexplored by mainstream audiences, particularly in the direction of whose bodies are deemed monstrous, and what implications such labeling brings about. In its introductory scene, after the carnival’s barker tears through the title,2 seemingly to give the viewers of the film a good look at the carnival behind it, he leads the men and women (and the film’s viewers) around the circus tent, reminding onlookers that the real fear of these “monstrosities” lies in the knowing that “but for an accident at birth, you might be as they are.” Shortly after this warning, the announcer takes his audience to what appears to be the main spectacle, but its subject is hidden from the camera. He introduces the aghast onlookers to “the most astounding living monstrosity of all time,” one who we only glimpse at the close of the film, and who was an able-bodied and beautiful woman, until her involuntary transformation as a form of punishment for her vicious misdeeds against the carnival community. The audience expects the announcer to introduce the extraordinary bodies of prototypical side-show “freaks,” but the film’s great reveal lies in the uncanny assertion that the “true” monsters are the able-bodied. Thus, in a time when monster films were starting to gain strong momentum through Universal’s production of Whale’s Frankenstein in 1931, and Browning’s own Dracula that same year, Freaks took a more realistic approach to a popular fascination with perceptions of monstrosity. Browning’s Freaks, loosely based on Tod Robbins’ short story “Spurs”, follows the drama that unfolds within the cast of a carnival side-show when a

2 This action, Bernd Herzogenrath notes, works to bring the audience into the intense “realism” of the film. (Bernd Herzogenrath, “Join the United Mutations: Tod Browning's Freaks,” Post Script, Summer 2002: 8).

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“normal-sized” woman purports to have fallen in love with a little person (or, “midget,” as the film refers to him). The film soon reveals that Cleopatra – the “normal sized” performer – only plans to marry Hans – her smaller sized fiancé – for his money. Cleopatra and Hercules – her side-show cast-mate and secret lover – concocted this plot, and the two conspire to murder Hans after the wedding. Just after the wedding ceremony, however, Cleopatra shows her true prejudice to the rest of the “freak show” cast. As the wedding party (consisting of all sideshow cast members) holds their celebratory dinner, the group welcomes Cleopatra to their ranks, jovially chanting, “One of us! One of us!” while passing around a goblet of alcohol. Instead of taking a sip from the goblet, Cleopatra throws the alcohol in the face of its giver, declaring them all “freaks,” and that she would never be like one of them. Later, when Cleopatra and Hercules’ plot is revealed, the performers enact their revenge, killing Hercules3 and turning Cleopatra into “the most astounding living monstrosity of all time” in the form of a chicken-woman hybrid.4 Browning’s use of real sideshow performers with extraordinary bodies in a horror-themed film has met with vast amounts of criticism and challenge, and negatively impacted Browning’s career. However, instead of disappearing into the depths of rejected and dismissed Hollywood production, the film has undergone significant transformations based on the time and place of its reception. The shift in perspective regarding the importance and meaning of Freaks works to illustrate the influence of audience reception on the quality and meaning of a film. Freaks’ transformation based on audience reception, therefore, exemplifies Hans Robert Jauss’ assertions of the importance of a work’s reception in the determination of its meaning.

Hercules was originally castrated and shown at the end of the film to be singing falsetto, but censors wouldn’t allow for this. Herzogenrath suggests that these cuts were largely influenced by its “obvious opposition to wholeness.” (Bernd Herzogenrath, “The Monstrous Body/Politic of Freaks,” The Films of Tod Browning. (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2006), 191). However, it is also important to note that mutilation of Cleopatra’s body was allowed, when mutilation of a male body was not. 4 According to David J. Skal and Elias Savada, the costume that Olga Baclanova wore for this role was originally in tended by Browning to be worn by Lon Chaney in West of Zanzibar as a “human duck.” However, the character has since been most widely interpreted and referred to as a “chicken woman.” Since this essay is especially focused on the power of reception in the transformations of ideas and characters, I will refer to her as the more widely understood “chicken woman” interpretation. (David J. Skal and Elias Savada, Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning (Toronto: The Globe and Mail Division of Bell Globe Media Publishing Inc, 1995). 3

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Through the lens of a Jaussian, hermeneutical approach to Freaks, this chapter will review the time period and critical responses during significant moments of Freaks’ reception, ultimately indicating the changing meanings of the film based on time, place, and social notions. The ever-evolving reception and interpretation of Freaks indicates the importance of noting shifts in collective understanding based on the “horizon of expectation” surrounding it, and will provide significant insight into the equally shifting understandings and representations of monstrosity.5 The “horizon of expectation” highlighted in this chapter includes circulating reviews of the film produced by prominent critics in established news sources, as well as methods used (by studios or otherwise) to promote (or denounce) its viewing. Radical shifts in reception and promotion help to indicate the importance of historical context and social thought surrounding a film—especially one as groundbreaking as Freaks. This will help to indicate the influence of theory in interpretation of controversial art, as well as art’s role in contributing to the formation of critical and social theory (including Freak Studies and Disability Studies in literary and other contexts). Although there are many insightful publications on Browning’s Freaks, this chapter will focus on works that most fully incorporate rare archive materials and interviews as well as original archived newspaper and magazine documents. This chapter attempts to provide first-hand archival documents in all its materials, but those that could not be accessed will be referred to through outside essays and collections. In particular, some of the most helpful sources in this area were those by David J. Skal, Elias Sevada, and Bernd Herzogenrath; especially Skal and Sevada’s extensive interviews in Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning. When original archival documents were unavailable or exclusively located in these sources, as in the case with Skal and Sevada’s one-on-one interviews, I refer back to these authors. This is done in order to provide as comprehensive view as possible of the “horizon of expectation” surrounding the film. This chapter strives to be as inclusive as possible with regard to all relevant writings on this topic, but Skal and Sevada’s work has proved by far the most helpful and extensive, and will therefore be frequently referenced throughout this chapter. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to speak to already well-documented writings on Browning’s Freaks while contributing further archival sources and contemporary development of the film in order to reflect on the ongoing influence that Browning’s work has on audiences and theorists today.

Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception 2nd Vol, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982) 44.

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Thomas Austin notes that the fluid “collective understandings and the power relations” surrounding a film help to establish its meaning, genre, and success.6 Such notions, the fluctuating reception of Browning’s Freaks indicates, are very subject to change with the passage of time. Although the world may not have been ready for Freaks in its inception, its re-boot in the 1960’s up to modern-day’s celebration and cult-status reception indicates that what’s dead doesn’t necessarily stay that way. From “Spurs” to Freaks Although Robbins’ short story, “Spurs”—published in Munsey’s Magazine in 1923—provided the basis for the film, Freaks deviated greatly from the original storyline. Most significantly, the film highlighted the able-bodied Cleopatra and Hercules as the ultimate perpetrators, but Robbins’ short story depicted Hans as the final aggressor. At the close of Robbins’ short story, Hans’ able-bodied wife is entrapped in a cruel and abusive marriage with him, and he rides her around like a horse as penance for her harmful comments on their wedding night. In reference to this, Hans exclaims at the conclusion of the story: “It is truly remarkable how speedily one can ride the devil out of a woman—with spurs!”7 Although the film strayed from this ending, they nevertheless carried over the theme of violently punishing a woman for her moral misconduct. This continuity is especially worth noting when taking into consideration that the original ending of the film, in which Cleopatra’s co-conspirator, Hercules, is castrated, had to be taken out, while her punishment was left in.8 According to David J. Skal and Elias Savada in Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, Browning had hoped to create a sad ending for the film, but in an interview, William S. Hart, Jr. recalls that the studio won out with their preference for “a macabre ending.”9 Given the criticism that the film has received due to its final scene in which the sideshow performers enact their revenge on an able-bodied woman, it is interesting to consider how the criticism for the film could have been different had Browning gotten

6 Thomas

Austin, Hollywood, Hype and Audiences: Selling and Watching Popular Film in the 1990s (New York/Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) 116. 7 Tod Robbins, Who Wants a Green Bottle? And Other Uneasy Tales (London: P. Allan & Co., 1926). 8 In Robbins’ short story, the male conspirator is killed by the avenging husband and little person Jacques Courbé, with the aid of Courbé's dog (Robbins, Who Wants a Green Bottle? And Other Uneasy Tales). 9 Skal and Sevada, Dark Carnival, 166.

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his way. However, if the ending were not as sensational and shocking, perhaps Freaks would not have been as impactful overall. Freaks was met with resistance right away, and many challenges erupted during its screening. Likely influenced by complaints in the lunchroom (including those influenced by an apparently nauseated F. Scott Fitzgerald), a group of MGM executives tried to shut down the film’s production. According to David J. Skal’s The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, MGM President Louis B. Mayer was “furious that Thalberg had approved such a monstrosity” and “Producer Harry Rapf organized a delegation to march on Thalberg’s office.”10 MGM’s story executive Samuel Marx, although ultimately sympathetic toward Browning, was also “strongly opposed to the making of Freaks on the grounds of taste.”11 What Freaks did with its casting, Whittington-Walsh points out, was nothing short of monumental at the time. According to him, “The casting of actors who had disabilities had been done with minor characters as sight gags in the silent era, but rarely with major characters or in films where their experiences were being portrayed accurately.”12 Freaks provided the most realistic and personal look into the lives of under-represented and marginalized members of the community. However, negative notions toward those with extraordinary bodies presented themselves through all aspects of casting and filming. Most of the cast with extraordinary bodies were later given a separate mess hall to eat in, and the studio only allowed the twins and little people to eat with MGM’s general staff.13 In many ways, the prejudice that the cast members endured during the screening of the film was equivalent to their prejudiced perception and presentation upon the film’s release. Additionally, allowing certain cast members to eat in the mess hall, while others cannot, implies a hierarchy of the actors’ bodies. This indicates a problematic prejudice that Freaks helped to uncover, and therefore promoted movement toward a closer inspection of these prejudices in daily life.

David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2001), 153. 11 Skal, The Monster Show, 206. 12 Fiona Whittington-Walsh, “From Freaks to Savants: Disability and Hegemony from the Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to Sling Blade (1997),” Disability and Society 17, no. 6 (2002): 697. 13 Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 168. 10

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Contemporary Perceptions of Freaks and Historical Influences By 1932, although films like Universal’s (now) classic monster movies were popularizing the genre (for example: The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923, The Phantom of the Opera in 1925, Dracula in 1931, and Frankenstein in 1931), producers and audiences did not seem ready for Browning’s postDracula addition of real people in the role of “monsters” (in the film’s use of the term). The film illuminates many of the same conclusions of its predecessors: that society is the monster; that the able-bodied are the real beings to fear. However, Freaks highlights some key differences in methods of representation. Namely, in Browning’s use of actors with extraordinary bodies to provide a true-to-life depiction of the “freak show” cast. Bernd Herzogenrath notes that Browning’s use of realism in Freaks likely influenced its harsh reception in the 1930s. By using “real freaks,” Herzogenrath suggests that the film “denied actors and audience the safe assurance that what was depicted onscreen was ‘just a fiction’” and therefore (like the effect of Louis Lumiere’s train), “invad[ed] the ‘safe’ space of reality and the self.”14 Invading the “safe” space of reality, therefore, poses challenges to deep-seeded cultural notions that the audience was not yet ready for. Ready or not, Freaks brought these prejudices to light and on screen, which resulted in extreme discomfort and criticism. The film caused the audience to face the real-life humanity behind monstrosity and bodies deemed monstrous, thereby producing discomfort in the realization that these notions are much closer to home than the more fantastic-seeming films like Frankenstein and Dracula suggest. Without this comfort of separation, the films’ lessons, too, become realistic, causing the audience to see a reflection of society’s “monstrous” horrors, and the day-to-day complicity of all ablebodied members in the oppression of those deemed monstrous due to difference from the expected bodily and/or social “norm”. The most explicitly sexual promotional slogans focusing specifically on the sexual activities of the circus performers like “Do Siamese twins make love?” or “What sex is the halfman, half-woman?” were not used until Dwain Esper purchased the rights to Freaks and marketed it as Forbidden Love for drive-in movie audiences in the 1940s.15 (At a late forties screening in Charlotte, North Carolina, audiences were incensed when they didn’t get a chance to see a skin flick as the titles

Herzogenrath, “Join the United Mutations: Tod Browning's Freaks,” 2. There were certainly references to sexual coupling as soon as the film came out (The Baltimore Sun references the film's “vague hints of abnormal matings”), but Esper seems to have taken these suggestions to an extreme level of innuendo (D.K., “Freaks At Stanley; Olga Baclanova In One Of Main Roles,” The Sun (Baltimore: MD), Feb. 20, 1932). 14 15

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suggested. Esper “held the revolt at bay” by showing a nudist colony reel as supplement.16 At least to an extent, MGM did use the taboo nature of the film as part of their marketing campaign. The original front-of-house display for Freaks’ New York premiere, for example, featured a large banner stating, “WARNING Children Under 16 Not Admitted.”17 This warning sign, however, was clearly built into the display, more as an attempt to lure in onlookers than to keep any inappropriate audience members out. Such sensationalism in advertising only intensified when the film’s sales were lower than expected. MGM produced banners “with a jumbled, defensive tone” featuring claims such as “A LANDMARK IN SCREEN DARING!” or “WHAT ABOUT ABNORMAL PEOPLE? THEY HAVE THEIR LIVES, TOO!” (Skal & Savada, 1995, p. 177). While clearly doing all they could to bring in audiences, these promotional campaigns also work to indicate the spectacle that Freaks tried to promote with its film. At the same time, it seems that the promotional material tried to play with the audience’s misplaced sympathy. This sympathy was later intensified in the 1960s and critiqued by performers who saw no cause for such sentiments. Despite MGM’s attempts, much of the film’s critical response was significantly negative. Shortly after its February 1932 release, Los Angeles Times’ Muriel Babcock reported, “Horrified Spectators Write Scathing Letters,” noting that Browning was receiving angry letters from filmgoers who condemned the film as “Horrible” and “unthinkable” – particularly due to its use of sideshow performers.18 The Los Angeles Times also printed Philip K. Scheuer’s review the following day, who described Freaks as “not so frightening as it is revolting” because of its use of sideshow cast.19 A few months later, Mae Tinee of the Chicago Tribune condemned the film’s use of “circus monstrosities,” and that “No such film as ‘Freaks’ should be made again” because audiences won’t pay to be “sickened.”20 However, not all reactions to the film were negative. In fact, despite some claims that audience members ran out of Freaks’ San Diego screening, and even the suggestion that

Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 222. Skal, The Monster Show, 154. 18 Muriel Babcock, “'Freaks’ Rouse Ire and Wonder,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles: CA), Feb. 14, 1932. 19 Philip K. Scheuer, “'Freaks' Film Side Show,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles: CA), Feb. 15, 1932. 20 Mae Tinee, “Film of Circus Freaks Is Well Acted, But--” Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago, IL), Apr. 13, 1932. 16 17

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a woman claimed it caused her a miscarriage,21 many reports also suggested the film’s successful—or even mild—reception.22 Either way, in all accounts, the response focused significantly on the bodies of the chosen sideshow performers, much more than any other aspect of the film. Harmful cultural conceptions of disabled bodies trace far back in history,23 and prejudiced references trace to the early witch trials—many of whose arguments take strong root in (interpretation of ) biblical texts. The frequently challenged Malleus Maleficarum of the 1400s, a text which held much weight in witch trial persecution, for example, asserts that deviations from established norms of able-bodiedness can be traced back to malicious intent. According to its authors, “there is no bodily infirmity, not even leprosy or epilepsy, which cannot be caused by witches.”24 Garland-Thomson, in Extraordinary Bodies, her landmark introduction to literary disability studies, notes that harmful, deep-seeded prejudices against the differently abled are so embedded in art, action, and speech that these prejudices are difficult to identify—even by those with the best-laid intentions.25 Such prejudices were still present (albeit in different forms) at the time of Freaks’ release. Shortly before Freaks hit theaters, the 1927 ruling of Buck v. Bell by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes deemed it permissible to sterilize “inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall be found to be afflicted with a hereditary form of insanity or imbecility” under the fourteenth amendment.26 Although largely criticized, this ruling has yet to be officially overruled by the Supreme Court. Negative notions associated with differently

21 Skal and Savada write that audience members reportedly ran out of early preview screenings of Freaks in January 1932—and a woman who attended this screening even attempted to sue the studio, “claiming the film had induced a miscarriage.” (Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 174). 22 George Shaffer of the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that after a series of trial screenings in San Diego, the response indicated that the film “didn't strike the fans there as being so horrible at all” and that Browning would therefore “put some of the 'smash' stuff back into the original negative where it had been yanked out.” (George Shaffer, “Movie Gossip From Hollywood,” The Chicago Tribune (Chicago: IL), Feb. 2, 1932.) 23 For example, see Umberto Eco's On Ugliness. 24 Heinrich Kramer, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Heinrich Institoris and P G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2007, original work published 1487), 162-163. 25 Rosemary Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997). 26 “Buck v. Bell,” LII Collection: US Supreme Court Decisions. Accessed February 16, 2017. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/200.

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abled and extraordinary bodies still weigh heavily on Western culture. We are no longer in the age of witch trials, but some of the trials’ founding prejudices still hold ground today. This is not to say, however, that Browning was at all seeking to promote these harmful notions. His past experience as a circus performer27 would indicate that, on the contrary, he was more likely working to highlight the humanity of the marginalized, disabled members of society. Browning’s method of depicting such notions in Freaks, however, did not produce the effect he was likely aiming for in 1932. In a February report on the film, Nelson B. Bell of The Washington Post condemned the film’s use of “morbid curiosity” regarding “the tragedy of many of Nature’s blunders,” and labeled the cast as “the misshapen, deformed and wholly pitiable victims of a perverse destiny, comprising one of the most ghastly assemblages of human monstrosities ever gathered together.”28 After its flurry of critical reception, the months following its February premiere, Freaks faded from popular view as quickly as it came. Just some months after its first release, its mentions dwindled and quickly disappeared. MGM’s studio head Louis B. Mayer reportedly limited its release due to his own dissatisfaction with the film, and the United Kingdom banned the film for thirty years.29 Many critics who did see the film were displeased. According to Joan Hawkins, the New York Times critiqued the film’s “underlying sense of horror;” Variety criticized the “fantastic romance” as being too impossible for a “normal man or woman to sympathize with the aspiring midget” and Time “refuses to evaluate the picture at all, detailing instead all ‘the misfits of humanity’ it numbers among its cast.”30 Motion Picture Daily labeled the film as “unkind and brutal,” and included a feature entitled “Tone Down ‘Freaks,’ Women Ask Police,” which highlights the Better Films Council of Rhode Island’s protest of the film, asking the police captain for it to be “toned down” for viewers.31 Its showing in Georgia’s Fox Theater was cancelled, the court ruling it to be in violation of city law. The theater’s secretary of the board

Browning worked as “clown, contortionist, magician’s assistant, and barker” (“Tod Browning,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2017). 28 Nelson B. Bell, “The New Cinema Offerings: Palace,” The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), Feb. 20, 1932. 29 “Tod Browning,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2017). 30 Joan Hawkins, “'One of Us’: Tod Browning's Freaks,” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemary Garland-Thomson (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996) 265. 31 Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 176. 27

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deemed the film “loathsome, obscene, grotesque and bizarre” and the Atlanta Journal suggested that Browning’s work “transcends the fascinatingly horrible, leaving the spectator appalled.” John C. Moffitt of the Kansas City Star printed, “There is no excuse for this picture,” and he followed by suggesting that films of its kind are to blame for censorship rulings.32 However, not all responses to Browning’s Freaks were negative. Noted columnist Louella O. Parsons provided a promising review, celebrating its “weird nightmare qualities.”33 Theaters in Cincinnati, Buffalo, Boston, Cleveland, Houston, St. Paul, and Omaha drew in record-breaking audiences. However, this was not enough to make up for the lack of enthusiasm in larger areas like Los Angeles, or in areas like San Francisco, where the show was never released.34 Overall, MGM lost a total of $164,000.35 Despite a spattering of positive reviews and high attendance in some areas, Hawkins notes that audience response to the film was overwhelmingly negative.36 A reviewer from the New York Times noted difficulty “in telling whether it should be shown in the Rialto . . . or in, say, the Medical Center.”37 This reviewer concludes that the film’s merit is “a matter of personal opinion,” but notes that its “underlying sense of horror” attributed to “the love of the macabre that fills the circus sideshows in the first place” was certainly not a good film for children.38 Many of these reviews help to illustrate the shift of the time’s conceptions of appropriate approaches to extraordinary bodies. As Herzogenrath points out, “freak shows” and their contemporaries (i.e., “the dime museum” and “P.T. Barnum’s American Museum”) held a strong and “continuous presence in the life of 19th-century America.”39 Although such carnivals were still going on during the film’s release (and some still can be found today), their popularity had significantly decreased. The new trend was toward diagnosis, pathology, medicalization, and institutionalization. In short, the shift was toward a more scientific containment of the extraordinary body. The Buck v. Bell ruling significantly illustrates the prevalence and implications of such a shift. The

Ibid., 178. Herzogenrath, “The Monstrous Body/Politic of Freaks,” 182. 34 Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 175. 35 Ibid., 182. 36 Hawkins, “'One of Us': Tod Browning's Freaks,” 266. 37 L.N., “The Circus Side Show,” New York Times (New York, NY), Jul. 9, 1932. 38 Ibid. 39 Herzogenrath, “Join the United Mutations: Tod Browning’s Freaks,” 4. 32 33

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protocol for deviance from the “norm” was no longer witch trials or “freak shows,” but lay instead in medical treatment and classification. David J. Skal suggests that the film would have been better received if it were produced as a silent film—as it was originally intended to be shot. According to Skal, “The freaks’ [sic] glaring deficiencies in reading dialogue would have been obviated, and the heightened stylization of the silents, with the formality of intertitles and continual musical accompaniment, could have done much to cushion viewer response.”40 Years later, Browning’s talents are particularly celebrated in the realm of silent film. In a review of Freaks’ revival, Zatirka writes, “[Browning] was a master at evoking certain feelings in the hearts of the audience by the creation of a certain atmosphere ... The story in a Tod Browning film was always of secondary importance. One suspects that his silent films with Long Chaney Sr. greatly overshadowed his work during the sound era.”41 The “stylization” that silent film produces would also likely have taken away from the film’s realistic qualities, which Browning himself ended up condemning as ineffective for the horror genre just a few years after Freaks’ release. In an interview with Picturegoer Weekly, Browning notes, “If you make a horror film too realistic and detailed, it either revolts an audience or gets a laugh ... People like to be shocked, mystified, and surprised—if it’s done properly.”42 Browning’s commentary on realism in horror cinema was undoubtedly influenced by his experience with Freaks’ reception just a few years prior. By the time MGM sold the film to Dwain Esper of the exploitation film circuit in the 1940s, its meaning (and often its name) shifted significantly. In addition to adding different names to the production when he showed the film in drive-in theaters, Esper also included an introduction that shifts the film’s meaning in the direction of moralistic education. (Esper was the producer of similarly morally directive films like Reefer Madness.) Esper’s preamble states: Before proceeding with the showing of this HIGHLY UNUSUAL ATTRACTION, a few words should be said about the amazing subject matter. ... The revulsion with which we view the abnormal, the malformed and the mutilated is the result of long conditioning by our forefathers.43

Skal, The Monster Show, 158. Gregory Zatirka, “Freaks: A Study in Revulsion” Cinefantastique, no. 5, (1967): 69. 42 “THEY GIVE WOOD the HOLLY Horrors,” Picturegoer Weekly (London, UK), May 11, 1935. 43 Herzogenrath, “Join the United Mutations: Tod Browning's Freaks,” 194-195. 40 41

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At the same time, it is emphasized that the “freaks are not so different from the majority of the people. Most of the freaks themselves are endowed with normal thoughts and emotions. Their lot is truly a heartbreaking one. ... Never again will such a story be filmed, as modern science and teratology is rapidly eliminating such blunders of nature ... we present the most startling horror story of the ABNORMAL and the UNWANTED.44 In addition to shifting the meaning of the film during the years of his screenings, this preamble has continued to remain attached to many of its versions, and viewers don’t always realize that it was not included in the original production. This shift in artistic direction and perspective likely has influenced some criticism on the work, and produces a fascinating complication in the film’s reception and interpretation after Esper’s 1947 purchase. The 1962 Revival Despite its “commercial failure” in the 1930s, Robin Blyn identifies Freaks’ rise to “cult classic” status and its celebration in the 1962 Venice Film Festival as an indicator of a shift in audience desires and expectations. According to Blyn, the film appealed to audiences because its ideas “corporealize the counterculture’s discursive construction of its own revolutionary subject;” particularly, the “maligned community of others.”45 Even though the film may not have fit with the 1930’s zeitgeist, its resurrection worked to signify the United States’ “heart of sixties dissidence,” while simultaneously suggesting a “utopian community of freak subjects united in the celebration of difference and heterogeneity.”46 In fact, it is very possible that the sixties’ cultural embrace of Browning’s Freaks came about especially because the film had been initially rejected. Had the film not been “marginalized” in the past, perhaps its relevance in the 1960’s counterculture wouldn’t have held as much weight. The 1960’s extensive media coverage of birth defects associated with Thalidomide, Skal and Savada suggest, may also have contributed to Freaks’ new reception. The tabloids’ “newsprint sideshows” of exploitive “images of limbless, flippered babies” simultaneously intrigued audiences and brought

Ibid. Robin Blyn, The Freak-Garde: Extraordinary Bodies and Revolutionary Art in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 150. 46 Ibid., 151. 44 45

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the reality of extraordinary bodies closer to home.47 In The Monster Show, David J. Skal postulates that “never before had so many human beings been exposed to images of such cruelly distorted human forms,” as tabloids showcased the “New Thalidomide Monsters” whose exposé was “given a pornographic air by the blotting out of genitalia with black squares, like stripshow pasties.”48 This extensive coverage is also highly problematic in that it provides the audience with a spectacle as well as an “object” of pity. The subject’s humanity is removed, and the main focus is simply on the emotional effects on the viewer. In response to this postulation, Joan Hawkins identifies that the “latent misogyny” of Freaks’ destruction of the feminine body fits this association. Hawkins points out that the thalidomide printings reignited ancient notions of the monstrous femininity and maternity, which suggest that “the female body is itself always potentially in need of a fix, and that monsters are born because of some monstrous trauma in the womb, a trauma occasioned by either the vision or sexual (mis)behavior of the mother.”49 Watching Cleopatra’s violent bodily punishment for her deviance, therefore, activates the “unconscious guilt of women” based on gynophobic cultural notions, and “provides a cathartic, if extremely cruel, way of working through some of that guilt—by watching punishment of the maternal body on-screen.”50 The onset of the Vietnam era in the 1960s also likely influenced the audience’s perception of the film, as it, in the words of American Film’s Peter Biskind, “transform[ed] the term ‘freak’ from a derisive epithet to a verbal gauntlet flung in the face of the ‘system’ by a defiant counterculture. Freaks were hippies, dropouts, longhairs, and for a moment, it seemed that Tod Browning had won out.”51 The 1960’s “moment,” therefore allowed Freaks to provide “a rallying point for a profoundly alienated generation.”52 Once rereleased at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, Freaks got a strong second wind. Revival showings celebrated Browning’s Freaks across the country from midnight showings, to film festivals, and international competitions. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Variety reported the film’s revival bringing in thousands of dollars in revenue, and suggested that Freaks’ resurgence was

Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 223. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 290. 49 Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 149. 50 Ibid. 51 Peter Biskind, “The Editing Room,” American Film (Los Angeles, CA), Jul. 1, 1983. 52 Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 228. 47 48

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likely influenced by “street people,” many likely Vietnam Veterans, who “call themselves various kinds of ‘freaks’ . . . giving the old Tod Browning Metro film . . . a healthy run.”53 At about the same time, a revival showing at the Los Feliz Theatre set new records.54 Skal and Savada highlight the shift toward positive reviews. The influential publication Cahiers du cinéma entitled their piece “Humain, trop humain” (“Too human,” or “human condition”); Sight and Sound’s Tom Milne praised the film’s “warmth and humanity,” while expressing “the intensely human emotions contained in inhuman exteriors;” Isabel Quigley of the Spectator titled her review “Freaks with Feeling,” noting that Freaks “enlarges one’s sympathy by treating something unknown to us;” and Andrew Sarris suggested it was “one of the most compassionate films ever made.”55 Publicity for the film had shifted suddenly from revulsion to labels of “cultclassic,” “vintage,”56 “classic horror,”57 “stunning,” and “mesmerizing.”58 Despite this significant shift in response, the 1962 reception of Freaks was still not unanimously supportive. Skal suggests that viewing Freaks “became a politically correct means to indulge a morbid curiosity about thalidomidestyle deformities, while still being able to feel self-righteous and progressive,” and this caused some people with extraordinary bodies to disagree with such an approach. Films in Review posted a complaint by Montague Addison, a sideshow performer who stated that “Freaks value their individuality and dislike being placed in a niche by bleeding hearts.” He claimed that the film “actually exploits and degrades us in a manner that is hokey as well as offensive.”59 Perhaps punctuating Addison’s point, in a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Free Press, E.B. Campbell critiques the press’ use of a photo of the actors of Freaks in the announcement of a photo contest, suggesting that they deserve pity and shouldn’t be presented in such a way. The photo to which the author refers includes Browning and his cast, along with the caption, “From Our House to Yours/ The Merriest Of Christmases.”60 Although the film was certainly gaining momentum in some areas, some

53 “Pictures:

1932 ‘Freaks’ Draws Street People,” Variety (Los Angeles, CA), Jul. 19, 1972. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 291. 55 Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 224. 56 “Pictures: Ottawa's Vintage 'Monster Madness'”, Variety (Los Angeles, CA), Aug. 22, 1979. 57 “Obituary: Antony Balch,” Screen International (London, UK), Apr. 12, 1980. 58 “Movies in Video: New Releases for October,” Boxoffice (Los Angeles, CA), Nov. 1, 1986. 59 Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, 291. 60 “From Our House to Yours The Merriest of Christmases,” Los Angeles Free Press (Los Angeles, CA), Aug. 19, 1966. 54

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disagreed with the misplaced sympathy and identification that the film—as well as promotion and sociocultural mentalities of the time—produced. 1980s-1990s: Reception and Interpretation Skal and Savada suggest that the “cultural fixation on body image and cosmetic surgery” played a large role in Freaks’ appeal in the 1980s and 1990s.61 Likely contributing to this resurgence of popularity were the “revisionist assessments” of the Freaks storyline. French director Geneviéve de Kermabon reconstructed an interpretation of the film, with “fairy-tale simplicity,” featuring actors who were “actually disabled” as their cast. Reviews of the production were largely complimentary, emphasizing the cast’s “theatrical skill, beauty and grace, which would banish all patronizing thoughts from even the most insensitive voyeur,” providing “pure theater,” highlighting the actors’ bodies as “original, extraordinary, adding something to the world, rather than gawked at as something dark and fearful.”62 Even without these “revisionist” interpretations, praise-filled descriptions of Browning’s film seemed to have left their mark. Uncut‘s 1999 promotion for a “Censorship Weekend” film showing, for example, refers to Freaks as “extraordinary, and long suppressed” and even a “Gothic masterpiece” full of “both sympathy and sensationalism.”63 At about this time, Disability Studies started to take hold in academic circles. In 1978, Leslie Fiedler published his founding freak studies work, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self. Irv Zola, whom Rosemary Garland-Thomson deems the “father of academic disability studies,” published his most celebrated work, Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living With a Disability in 1982, and he helped found the Society for Disability Studies that same year.64 By 1990, Robert Bogden had published his widely-cited Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson had started on her landmark text, Extraordinary Bodies, (published in 1997), an important breakthrough for disability theory in academic literary studies. In an essay featured in Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s collection, Freakery, Brian Rosenberg refers to Browning as the “father of freak studies in this

Skal and Savada, Dark Carnival, 228. Ibid., 225-226. 63 “Hard Target,” Uncut, (London, UK), Mar. 1, 1999. 64 Rosemary Garland-Thomson, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996), xvii. 61 62

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century.”65 It is likely that many would agree. Leslie Fiedler, a major contributor to Freak Studies and disability theory, notes that “persistent memories of Tod Browning’s elegantly crafted movie, Freaks, had first triggered in me the meditations which eventuated in the book of the same name.”66 In Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and other Difficult Positions, disability theorist Lennard J. Davis notes that while the final revenge scene of Freaks “serves as a perfect example of the imagined bitterness and resentment nondisabled people project onto people with disabilities,” at the same time, the film “provides a leitmotif for the newly emerging discourse in recent American writing and scholarship on disability.”67 The ties that connect modern-day Disability Studies discourse to Browning’s Freaks are too many to count, and the film constantly functions as a point of discussion for theoretical investigation of representations of extraordinary bodies in popular culture. The initial uproarious response to the film, and then the shift to heightened (and often misplaced) sympathy for the characters, contributed to the rise in critical inquiry of extraordinary bodies’ representation. The film’s persistence in popular culture indicates that it represents a topic that needs discussing, and also provides a starting point in identifying its subject matter. The still-evolving perception of Browning’s film, therefore, indicates the fluidity of art and its meanings. Films like Freaks indicate that even though it took place and was filmed in a particular cultural moment, its meaning is not rooted in time. The combination of perspectives from all times and areas of its reception compound to constantly influence Freaks’ many meanings and implications. Garland-Thomson highlights the importance of paying attention to the construction of the “freak” in its various representations. The “freak,” she indicates, “is a historical figure ritually fabricated from the raw material of bodily variations and appropriated in the service of shifting social ideologies.”68 Therefore Freaks works as an artistic marker of this historical figure, and the “shifting social ideologies” that it stirred up. Now that much time, critique, and interpretation has passed, Freaks works to significantly

65 Brian Rosenberg, “Teaching Freaks,” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemary Garland-Thomson (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996), 307. 66 Leslie Fiedler, forward to Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemary Garland-Thomson (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996), xv. 67 Lennard J. Davis, Bending over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2002), 34. 68 Garland-Thomson, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, xviii.

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contribute to “an academic community that is beginning to both accommodate and recognize disability as a political issue, a social construction, an individual difference, and a category of inquiry.”69 Today’s moves toward academic inquiry and action, therefore, owe their existence (at least in part) to the social response that Freaks helped to put in motion. Disability Theory and Beyond: Continued Transformations, Representation and Perspectives Discussion, inquiry, and representation of the “freaked” extraordinary body is far from over. Modern-day fascination with the “freak show” remains in various facets of popular culture, including the popular television series, American Horror Story, and their 2014 season entitled “Freak Show,” which follows the action and horror-fueled drama that takes place in and around a carnival “freak show.” Unlike Freaks’ initial 1932 reception, American Horror Story’s “Freak Show” soon became known as FX’s most-watched series, it received nineteen Emmy Award nominations, the highest of any season of American Horror Story thus far,70 and it holds a 79% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.71 Halloween costumes, celebrations, and investigation of this topic has therefore been significantly re-ignited, and not always for the better. The spectacle associated with the horror genre can be problematic, and the spectacle that American Horror Story provides is often what audiences celebrate online and respond to in various other modes of representation and/or discussion. At the height of the season’s popularity, it was not uncommon to see American Horror Story “Freak Show”-themed costumes at stores, and even “Freak Show”-themed Halloween gatherings, clearly based on the images and characters of the show. American Horror Story’s “Freak Show” provides significant homage to Freaks throughout the season. The first member of the American Horror Story carnival to die, for example, is “Meep,” a Geek costumed and styled in line with Freaks characters “The Human Stork,” and “Koo Koo The Bird Girl.” The latter two—in Freaks—do not meet any sort of demise, and their most notable screen-time occurs during the film’s infamous “One of us!” scene. By contrast,

Ibid., xvii. “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” Emmys. Accessed February 16, 2017. http://www.emmys.com/shows/american-horror-story-freak-show. 71 “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed February 16, 2017. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/american_horror_story/s04. 69 70

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Meep’s violent death in American Horror Story functions as a particularly predominant image that looms, specter-like, over the entire season.72 The crescendo of Meep’s post-mortem reference occurs toward the end of the series in episode 12. The episode begins with a banquet table set up like the table in the Freaks’ famous “One of us” sequence. The episode then directly speaks to Freaks, by having ringleader Elsa and her fellow sideshow performers describe to their betrayer, Chester —in rather gruesome detail—what happens to Cleopatra at the end of Browning’s Freaks. What follows are shots that mirror the revenge sequence in Freaks, but we do not see the result of this action until the end of the episode—when Chester is revealed, in a pen just like Cleopatra’s chicken-woman pen, but instead he has been transformed into a sort of hybridization of Chester, the chicken-woman, and Meep. Meep is therefore reanimated in a sense, through the actions of both vengeance and self-preservation on the side of the sideshow performers. However, even in Meep’s death, American Horror Story plays upon the sympathy for the Meep character without expanding upon his personality. Although the season is seemingly working to promote positive notions of physical and mental difference, the method of depiction (and quick scapegoating) of Meep ultimately marginalizes the character. This unintentional marginalization and spectacle also plays out in various fan groups’ costuming and re-creations of the show’s characters. Browning’s Freaks certainly isn’t perfect, either. Although providing a significant stepping stone for academic investigation and discussion, it is still heavily critiqued, and for good reason. Critiques range from the question of representation of extraordinary bodies, to sexual and gendered representation. For example, Hawkins warns that Freaks “reinscribes physical difference as a thing to be feared.”73 M. F. Norden writes that Freaks is “one of the most disturbing films ever made.”74 Although perspectives of the film’s methods of representation are still up for debate,

American Horror Story: Freak Show, directed by Ryan Murphy, et al (2014; Los Angeles, CA: FX), DVD. 73 Hawkins, “'One of Us': Tod Browning's Freaks,” 267. 74 Martin F. Norden, The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 115. 72

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the value of Freaks in starting these conversations is significant because it provides a foundation for their discussion.75 Hioni Karamanos warns against assuming that the film is solely viewed by a “completely ‘normal’ and able-bodied audience.”76 Doing so, he states, “there is no choice but to view Browning's films, and the cinematic representation of people with disabilities, as gruesome spectacles worthy of little more than shame and disdain.” This perspective, however, “directly links disability, and the representation thereof, to notions of human misery and degradation.”77 The prejudice, in this case, lies in the perception of viewership, and can have nothing to do with the film itself. Karamanos also warns of the “critical bias” associated with “the assumption that attraction to people with physical disabilities is pathological.” This leads, as Karamanos highlights, to the dehumanization of the characters.78 Freaks' use of less frequently represented bodies also provides perspectives that are not easily reached elsewhere—particularly in the mainstream. For example, in her essay on the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, Allison Pingree argues that their presence in Freaks “spell[s] out in no uncertain terms the threatening impotence men could feel when confronted with these joined women.”79 This perspective not only opens up the important discussion of the actress’ representation, but also brings in new angles from which to approach gender and sexuality. Thus, even though it was not the perfect film, Freaks provides the opportunity for dialogue and representation that Hollywood had never before anticipated. Unintended biases in representation and discussion can also be explored. Pointon notes, for example, that “the language of discussion” surrounding Browning’s film “tends to call the disabled actors who took part ‘freaks’ and not disabled

75 The topic also seems to be highly weighted with controversy, no matter how wellreceived the work may be. Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, for example, was referred to as “‘an orgy of sadism and violence’ . . . ‘a snuff film made legitimate by a reputable publishing house’” but at the same time was nominated for the 1989 National Book Award (Rosenberg, “Teaching Freaks,” 308). 76 Hioni Karamanos, “In Love with a Nightmare: Disability Imagery and Fascination in The Unknown,” in The Films of Tod Browning (London, UK: Black Dog Publishing, 2006), 41. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 40. 79 Allison Pingree, “The 'exceptions that prove the rule’: Daisy and Violet Hilton, the 'new woman,' and the bonds of marriage” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemary Garland-Thomson (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1996), 182.

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people,” which constructs an equally problematic “reality” of the actors “as something other than human even when not in a role.”80 Some evidence used in this chapter works to support this point. Although authors, theorists, and researchers may be well-meaning, unintentional biases and points of reference to the actors in Freaks inevitably rise to the surface through the process of such discussion. Without central points of discussion like Freaks, this discourse would not be able to take place, particularly on such a large scale and across decades of its screening and reception. The destruction and hybridized re-construction of Cleopatra’s body (and its adaptations in various media like American Horror Story) also opens up further avenues for discussion. In addition to Hawkins’ previously stated point regarding the film’s “latent misogyny” which is punctuated by Cleopatra’s ultimate punishment, the screen time that the violence done to her body was given, as opposed to that of her male counterpart, highlights the acceptance of some gender-based violence on screen versus others. Thus, the message begun in Robbins’ closing line, suggesting that the “devil” can be ridden out of a woman “with spurs!” continues in Freaks’ seemingly “riding the devil out” of Cleopatra through the chopping up and re-assembly of her body parts. Cleopatra's brutal punishment functions as a focal point for the film, and she is introduced as the ultimate monstrosity just moments into the film's opening. (Her form is not revealed until the end of the film, but it is clear that the Freaks storyline will culminate in the revelation of her ultimate fate.) Although the film suggests that her moral character is what makes her monstrous, it is her monstrous re-assembly that terrifies onlookers; not her actions. In effect, a secondary storyline that Freaks promotes is a violent warning to women who break the rules, which, as Hawkins identifies, is an ancient tradition of misogynistic myth. Only slight mention of Hercules’ death (to which no screen time is afforded) compared to Cleopatra’s fate that bookends the film, makes the warning particularly gendered. Therefore, Freaks’ use of the word “monsters” and “monstrous” not only points to the harmful and problematic social notions associated with the performers with extraordinary bodies, but also points to the harmful and problematic notions associated with genderbased violence on screen. American Horror Story: Freak Show moves past this to a degree by using Chester as the new victim of re-assembly, but he is also presented as a queer character throughout the series. Chester as a queer character then produces the problematics of sexual orientation and violence on screen. Additionally, through this scene, both Freaks and American Horror Story

80 Ann Pointon, “Part One: Cinema Portrayal—Introduction,” Framed: Interrogating Disability in the Media (London, UK: British Film Institute, 1997), 7.

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suggest that the ultimate punishment—aside from Cleopatra’s/Chester's bodily harm—lies in becoming like one of the show’s performers, a monstrous, nonhuman “freak,” designated by bodily difference. The transformation of the reception of Browning’s Freaks shows the impact that time, culture, and audience can have on a film’s meaning and its success. Freaks’ sudden shift in popularity in the 1960s serves as an indicator of such an assertion. Additionally, films have become more accessible with the passing of time, which gives the viewers more agency in their choice of film viewing. Limitations of film release such as those in the 1930s, for example, are no longer the deciding factor behind such a film’s viewership. Films like Freaks, then, help to indicate the power shift in the success of a given film, and can show just how much sway an audience has over a film’s meaning and implications. Audiences’ interactions with films like Freaks illustrate what Austin identifies as its “constant rewriting.”81 Although we’ve come a long way from MGM's publicity referring to Browning's crew as “‘creatures of the abyss,’ ‘strange children of the shadows,’ and ‘nightmare shapes in the dark,’” there is still much work to be done in the realm of bodily representation on screen and in literary texts.82 Today, the phrase “One of us!” is not uncommon, and perhaps represents the beginnings of a cultural embrace and inclusion of individual difference. Despite many flaws that can be identified in some of the film’s assumptions and representations, disability theorists and many members of the differently abled community have claimed the film Freaks as their own, at least as a signifier or point of reference. References can be found in casual conversation and also in landmark, theoretical texts like those of Garland Thomson’s Freakery. In many ways, Freaks' meanings seem to be taking a turn from 1960’s corporeal utopia toward theoretical investigation and academic community. Over time, Browning’s Freaks seems to be expanding in its genre, social, and intellectual reach, further expanding the “shared space” that Austin identifies as a space of “powerful sense of identity” and, as in the case of Freaks, momentum toward positive social change. The next inquiries and discussions that Browning’s film will inspire have yet to be seen, but Freaks’ lingering influence continues to haunt Hollywood’s films and television series to a significant extent. Its representations and ideas

Austin, Hollywood, Hype and Audiences: Selling and Watching Popular Film in the 1990s, 526. 82 Davis, Bending over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism and Other Difficult Positions, 31. 81

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were likely influenced by looming film censorship laws, which ultimately contributed to the film becoming such a strong point of intersection of repressed ideas, oppressed figures, and problematic assertions. As such a stand-alone work, Freaks itself functions as a sort of monster amongst the mainstream films of its time. In an essay on the horror genre, film critic Robin Wood identifies the Monster as “the dual concept of the repressed/the Other,” and adds that “the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for the recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses.”83 In this way, Freaks functions as a magnifying glass on repressed ideas, particularly with regard to oppressed members of society at the time of the film's release. Freaks therefore lingers in adaptation and conversation as a reminder that its messages and representations still need further discussion, evaluation, and reflection. This will continue to affect the perception and interpretation of the film with the passing of time, because monsters like this one are those that cannot and should not be ignored out of existence. The shifting perceptions of Browning’s Freaks simultaneously indicate the larger shifting social response and representation of beings deemed “monstrous.” Particularly in film, a major shift toward siding with the monster (and therefore, indicating that which is monstrous within humanity itself ) began in the monster movies of the 1930s and has continued with increased momentum up to present day. This evolving representation of monsters likely influenced Freaks’ reception to a certain extent, but audience perception of Freaks over time also indicates important cultural and historical shifts regarding representation and understandings of disability, as well as marginalization of certain bodies and genders (often at the same time). Film’s advent therefore provided a platform for widespread presentation and discussion of such important issues and topics, and Freaks’ evolution is a strong indicator of this. Browning’s film has left an imprint on Hollywood and its audiences by complicating the use and understanding of the concept of monstrosity as it is represented in art, discussed in theory, and understood in our day-to-day lives. His work ultimately instigated a ripple effect within the film community that extends to today’s critiques, adaptations, and understandings of the story’s ideas and characters. The discussion is far from over, and the film will continue to evolve in audience perception as critical theories and artistic tastes continue to shift, and influence each other, over the course of time.

83 Robin Wood, “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” in Planks of Reason: Essays on the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow, 1984), 167.

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Works Cited American Horror Story: Freak Show. (n.d.). In Emmys. Retrieved from http://www.emmys.com/shows/american-horror-story-freak-show American Horror Story: Freak Show. (n.d.). In Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved from https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/american_horror_story/s04 Austin, T. (2002). Hollywood, Hype and Audiences: Selling and Watching Popular Film in the 1990s. New York; Manchester: Manchester University Press. Babcock, Muriel. (1932, Feb 14).'Freaks' Rouse Ire and Wonder. Los Angeles Times. Bell “The New Cinema Offerings” 1932. Biskind, Peter. (1983 Jul 01). The Editing Room. American Film (Archive 19751992). Blyn, Robin. The Freak-Garde: Extraordinary Bodies and Revolutionary Art in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Bogdan, Robert. Freak show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Paperback ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Browning, Tod (Producer & Director). (1932). Freaks. USA: Metro-GoldwynMayer. Buck v. Bell. (n.d.). LII Collection: US Supreme Court decisions. Cornell University Law School. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/274/200 Davis, Lennard J. Bending over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism & Other Difficult Positions. New York: New York University Press, 2002. D.K. (1932, Feb 20). Freaks At Stanley; Olga Baclanova In One Of Main Roles. The Sun. Eco, Umberto. On Ugliness. 1st ed. New York: Rizzoli, 2007. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. —. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Grainge, Paul, Mark Jancovich and Sharon Monteith. Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. “HARD TARGET.” Uncut. (Archive: 1997-2000) 22 (Mar 1, 1999): 113. Hawkins, Joan. “One of Us”: Tod Browning's Freaks. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Herzogenrath, Bernd. "Join the United Mutations: Tod Browning's Freaks." Post Script Summer 2002: 8+. Academic OneFile. Web. 22 Mar. 2016. —. "The Cinema of Tod Browning: Essays of the Macabre and Grotesque.", 2008. —. "The Monstrous Body/Politic of Freaks." The Films of Tod Browning. London: Black Dog Pub, 2006.

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Jauss, Hans Robert, Timothy Bahti, and Paul De Man. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. 2 Vol. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Karamanos, Hioni. “In Love with a Nightmare: Disability Imagery and Fascination in The Unknown.” The Films of Tod Browning. London: Black Dog Pub, 2006. Kramer, Heinrich. (2007). The Malleus Maleficarum. (Heinrich Institoris and P G. Maxwell-Stuart, Trans.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. (Original work published 1487). Larsen, Robin, and Beth A. Haller. "The Case of FREAKS."Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.4 (2002): 164-173. Lazar, David. and Madden, Patrick. After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015. L.N. (1932, Jul 9). The Circus Side Show. New York Times, 7. McKee, Patrick, Robert M. Williams Jr., and Ned Martel (Producers). (2014). American Horror Story: Freak Show. (Television Servies). Los Angeles, CA: FX. “Movies in Video: New Releases for October.” Boxoffice (Archive: 19202000) 122.11 (Nov 1, 1986): I2. Norden, Martin F. "Freaks." St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. Ed. Thomas Riggs. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: St. James Press, 2013. 383. Gale Virtual Reference Library. —. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1994. OBITUARY: Antony Balch. (1980, Apr 12). Screen International (Archive: 19762000), 12. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/963295515? accountid=10267Pictures: 1932 'freaks' draws street people, '72. (1972, Jul 19). Variety (Archive 1905-2000), 267. Pictures: Ottawa's vintage 'monster madness'. (1979, Aug 22). Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), 296, 34. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1401362927?accountid=10267. Robbins, Tom. (1923). “Spurs.” Retrieved from http://www.olgabaclanova.com/spurs.htm Rogers, Martin. "Monstrous Modernism and the Day of the Locust." Journal of Popular Culture 44.2 (2011): 367-84. Ross, Karen, and Deniz Derman. Mapping the Margins: Identity, Politics, and the Media. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2003. Scheuer, Philip K. (1932, Feb 15). 'Freaks' Film Side Show. Los Angeles Times. Shaffer “Movie Gossip from Hollywood,” 1932. Skal, D. J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books, 1994. Skal, D. J., & Savada, E. Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning. Toronto, Ont: The Globe & Mail division of Bell Globe media Publishing Inc., 1995. Smit, Christopher R., and Anthony Enns. Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability. Lanham [Md.]: University Press of America, 2001. Spadoni, Robert. Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound Film and the Origins of the Horror Genre. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

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Staiger, Janet. Media Reception Studies. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Print. THEY GIVE WOOD the HOLLY horrors. (1935, May 11). Picturegoer (Archive: 1932-1960), 4, 8-9, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/ 1771195102?accountid=10267 Tinee, Mae. (1932, Apr 13). Film of Circus Freaks Is Well Acted, but--. Chicago Daily Tribune. Tod Browning. (2017). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://academic.eb.com/levels/collegiate/article/Tod-Browning/343260 Whittington-Walsh, Fiona. "From Freaks to Savants: Disability and Hegemony from the Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to Sling Blade (1997)."Disability & Society 17.6 (2002): 695-707. Zatirka, “Tod Browning's Freaks: A Study in Revulsion” 1967.

Chapter 5

On weres waestmum – In the Form of a Man: Grendel’s Changing Form in Film Adaptations Almudena Nido

The popularity of the epic genre in cinemas after the Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the Superhero film narratives “that resonate with specific events in the globalized world”1 speak of the relevance that this type of films has found for their audiences.2 This shows an unrelenting interest in stories that portray individuals who, notwithstanding their superhuman powers and their new human shortcomings, “believe in basic human values such as honor, truth, and justice, despite their inner conflicts which may result from their corrupt, dangerous and immoral surroundings.”3 Relevantly, the portrayals of the monstrous threats – that these more human heroes fight in these adaptations of the epic narratives – propitiate an association of man and monster that further enables the questioning of the hero position and the community that enshrines the hero and condemns the monster. Boundaries are no longer safe since the “man eating ogre”4 displays worryingly human aspects that make him closer to his victims. The celebrations and ecstasies of war and conflict that the extreme forms of

Richard J. Gray and Betty Kaklamanidou, The 21st Century Superhero: Essays on Gender, Genre and Globalization in Film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 6. 2 Roger B. Rollin, “The Epic Hero and Pop Culture,” in The Superhero Reader, ed. Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 98. 3 Gray and Kaklamanidou, 21st Century Superhero, 6. 4 David Gilmore, Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 48. 1

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masculinities from medieval romances and epics showcase5 in their adaptations in film visualizes a different type of monstrosity. Notwithstanding the several consecutive Beowulf films in the first decade of this century,6 the poem has always been considered a good source for film material thanks to its cinematic quality, especially the poet’s powerful language and the visual thematic frames that are used in the poem. The appeal of the superhero cannot be discarded either just like his somewhat uneasy relationship with the monsters he battles to the death. The English epic Beowulf proves to be not only suitable for modern entertainment7 but also an ideal means to present values that are relatable to those in Western societies that still persist, are updated, and consumed in media as they still speak to the modern generations that approach it via the film versions and popular culture.8 Either in comic or film form, the heroic narrative has been transformed and presented in “ways in which different historical moments negotiate and appropriate the [Beowulf] narrative”9 showing how new aspects have been reintroduced to reflect and articulate changing views on the representations of masculinity and gender roles. Grendel’s monstrosity is, as it will be shown, another aspect where the story of Beowulf has been transformed with the laden meaning of different historical moments in order to negotiate its articulation in postmodern times. It has also been developed into the point of focus in the renegotiation of the expected gender relations and the fruitful interplay of narrative and historical context when defining masculine ideals of authority. The Physical Appearance of a Monster As a fascinating, yet perhaps more elusive element than the rest of the monstrous figures in Beowulf, Grendel has been established as the main

Martha W. Driver and Sid Ray, ed. The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), 9. 6 Edward L. Risden, “The Cinematic Commoditization of Beowulf: The Serial Fetishizing of a Hero,” in Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations, ed. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 66-67. 7 Robert Spindler, “Epics and Screenplays: The Problem of Adapting Beowulf for the Screen,” Old English Newsletter 43 (2011). Accessed June 15, 2017. http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/print.php/essays/spindler43_3/Array 8 Rollin, “The Epic Hero and Pop Culture,” 98. 9 Catherine A. M. Clarke, “Re-Placing Masculinity: The DC Comics Beowulf Series and Its Context, 1975-6,” in Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. David Clark and Nicholas Perkins, (Cambridge, UK: Brewer, 2010), 178. 5

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antagonist of the hero in the film versions. Remarkably, the monster’s physical appearance is one of the main aspects of the poem that has received more changes from film version to version.10 For a monster without a physical description in the poem, the several incarnations of Beowulf in film have shown very significant changes in the configuration of Grendel’s physical monstrosity, changes that seem relatable to the ambivalent nature of the monster in the poem and the questioning of the identity and definition of man and monster in the new postmodern historical context. The poet masterfully keeps the monster shrouded without revealing his physical appearance, making it a presence of terror that in films has been reinterpreted and visualized in different forms that may be a testament to the multiple readings and interpretations of the poem that attest to the vitality of the story and its value across the centuries.11 Seen as one of the “prodigiously evil figures” present in classical literature who “threaten men with dismemberment and death and their man-eating proclivities are the sign of moral monstrosity,”12 Grendel has been regarded as an allegorical monster, steadfastly associated with the Devil in the analyses of the poem.13 His direct descent from Cain’s progeny emphasizes the relationship of this monster with giants and with human Evil, either as an allegorized human outlaw of some kind, a citizen of the kingdom of evil or as a monster of folklore. He has been imagined by critics as an anthropomorphic monster of great size that shares some tremendous ferocity with the hero as a formidable and bloodthirsty opponent14 and is related, somehow and even if distantly through Cain, to the same species he consumes.15 The vagueness in the description of the physical appearance of this “ferocious and horrible monster with superhuman strength and nasty habits, including man-eating”16 makes him a more threatening and alluring

Spindler, “Epics and Screenplays.” Martha Driver, “Teaching the Middle Ages on Film: Visual Narrative and the Historical Record,” History Compass 5, no. 1 (2007), 167. 12 Gilmore, Monsters, 48. 13 Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, “Intemperance, Fratricide, and the Elusiveness of Grendel,” English Studies 3 (1992), 207; Niilo Peltola, “Grendel's Descent from Cain Reconsidered,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73, no. 1/3 (1972), 289. 14 Jacqueline Stuhmiller, “On The identity of the Eotenas,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100, no. 1 (1999), 10. 15 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 105-106. 16 Gilmore, Monsters, 50. 10 11

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presence17 of uncertain nature and essence. Considering how the poet strives to make him as alien as possible18 and as uncanny a presence as could be, his approach to Heorot at night is “one of the very most graphic passages in English literature”19; in itself, it is a masterful presentation of cinematic terror thanks to the artistry of the poet.20 With his entrance in Heorot Grendel materializes himself in a few details that make him even more terrible due to the imprecise nature that is ascribed to him while the suspense simultaneously builds up because of the uncertainty surrounding this monster and the need to decipher its nature.21 This makes him an appealing figure for film22 , but the poet’s suggestions have to be materialized in some concrete form to embody the monstrous threat and presence. This “most memorable antagonist”23 has morphed variedly in the film versions of the poem, verging from a recognizable human figure to a physically deformed monstrous being that may have acquired language together with some other human skills. In his latest adaptations, the monster may even have an intermediary figure that inhabits the liminal monstrous space with him but identifies somehow more certainly and physically with the human realm. This figure helps him convey his monstrous discourse and to destabilize thus the more normative divisions of monster and human by giving not only an intermediate position from which to re-address authority but also providing a more nuanced vision of the monster’s actual plight. Viewers are given insight into what Grendel’s reasons for his violence and

Friedman, Monstrous Races, 106; Gilmore, Monsters, 49. Jennifer Kelso Farrell, “The Evil Behind the Mask: Grendel’s Pop Culture Evolution,” The Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 6 (2008), 935. 19 Alain Renoir, “Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 63, no. 3 (1962), 159. 20 Arthur G. Brodeur, “Design for Terror in the Purging of Heorot,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 53, no. 4 (1954), 509; Renoir, “Point,” 166. 21 Renoir, “Point,” 162. 22 “The Beowulf poet shows us only the one detail that is most symbolic of the mysteriously destructive force which he wishes to suggest (...). The sight of his eyes gives us the distressing sensation that he can see us.” Renoir, “Point,” 166; Brodeur, “Design for Terror,” 509; Arthur G. Brodeur, Art of Beowulf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 88-106; John D. Niles, Beowulf: The Poem and its Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 154; Stanley B. Greenfield, “Grendel's Approach to Heorot: Syntax and Poetry,” in Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert P. Creed (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1967), 275-284. 23 Alan S. Ambrisco, “Trolling for Outcasts in Sturla Gunnarsson's Beowulf and Grendel,” The Journal of Popular Culture 46, no. 2 (2013), 243. 17 18

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attacks may be and, therefore, his vengeance may seem justified from a human point of view.24 In their effort to make the story more entertaining and appealing, filmmakers have tried to deconstruct the ideological residues of the traditional story that imposed a clear distinction between human and monster, good and evil in Beowulf.25 Nevertheless, these film adaptations still have retained the position of the monster as a privileged focal point for conflict and anxiety that, thanks to these efforts has moved the monster beyond the barrier of fixed category. This reflects the movement that liberated the monster from the stereotyped position in the academic criticism about the poem that disregarded the importance of the monster within Beowulf. After Tolkien’s founding article on the monsters, the poem was regarded as a work of art26 and the combat against this “strange and capricious, pitiful yet very sinister outlaw”27 was no longer seen as “an inexplicable blunder to taste”28 but as “essential, fundamentally allied to the underlying ideas of the poem”29 that does not necessarily distract from the human potential in the epic.30 Tolkien considered the monster as the very foundation of the fame and character of the hero. If Beowulf is “an heroic figure of enlarged proportions,”31 Grendel is a monster whose inhuman and supernatural qualities make the story more significant and relatable to mankind. His

Robin Norris, “Resistance to Genocide in the Postmodern Beowulf,” Literature Compass 8, no. 7 (2011), 437. 25 Ibid. 26 Tolkien defended the poem as a work of art, not just a “half-baked narrative epic” or a “wild folk-tale” with monsters whose privileged position contravened correct and sober taste, as Chambers and others had argued until the 1930s. See Raymond W. Chambers, “Beowulf and the ‘Heroic Age’ in England,” in Man's Unconquerable Mind: Studies of English Writers, ed. Raymond W. Chambers (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), 68-70. 27 Nora K. Chadwick, “The monsters and Beowulf,” in The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickens, ed. Peter Clemoes (London: Bowes and Bowes, 1959), 193. 28 John R. R. Tolkien, “Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics” reprinted in The Beowulf Poet: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Donald K. Fry (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,1968), 23. 29 Ibid. 30 It was also considered an offense to the good taste for the epic, an unsuitable distraction from the human potential that could be explored in the epic: “To us it seems simply inexcusable that the poet should have all that human interest at his command, (...) and actually put it in the background.” Robert A. Williams, The Finn Episode in Beowulf: an Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 142. 31 Tolkien, “Monsters,” 38. 24

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monstrousness helps create the glory and fame of the hero in his defeat and, thus, the monster needs to be considered as part of the importance and worth given to the hero.32 By considering the monster as a central part of articulation in the epic narrative, he took Grendel closer not only for terror but also for inspection. Inevitably, by being associated with the hero in that correlation between the hero’s fame and the monster’s essence and importance, the monster roamed Heorot no longer as an accessory of fantasy and folklore but as an insidious mirror for the hero, for the human potential that, precisely, decades before had been accused of displacing. Recent film adaptations of the poem showcase clear influences of this movement in Beowulf criticism by presenting a dignified monster that is the main antagonist and a threatening element that justifies the presence of a remarkable hero. The depth of character in the monster as displayed in Beowulf film adaptations has as a clear influence Gardner’s rewriting of the epic in Grendel (1971), which took Tolkien’s approach into his own interpretation of the monster in Beowulf by giving the background narratives for the story and monster.33 The postmodern film adaptations explore, as Gardner did, and probe into the main narrative to discover the monster’s relationship with the community he attacks and his identity as a problematic entity that reflects back on the human community. Gardner presented Grendel “as a thinking, humanized figure whose violence is neither unconscious nor unmotivated.”34 In a truly post-modernist stance, the monster became more human, entitled to possess and express very human emotions35 and, importantly, set as an alternative to the heroic ethos.36 Until that moment, Grendel had been at a safe distance when it was analyzed as an ogre whose presence had nothing to do with the human aspects of the community, but with Gardner’s retelling the monster becomes an absurd hero37 whose voice constitutes “a dark but poetic

Ibid., 39. John Gardner, Grendel (New York: Vintage, 1971); Philipp Hinz and Margitta Rouse “Adaptation as Hyperreality: The (A) Historicism of Trauma in Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf,” in The Medieval Motion Picture, eds. Andrew J. Johnston, Margitta Rouse, and Philipp Hinz (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 130-131. 34 Ambrisco, “Trolling,” 244. 35 Ibid., 243. 36 John Gardner, “Backstage with Esquire,” Esquire 76 (Oct. 1971), 56. 37 Jay Ruud, “Gardner’s Grendel and Beowulf: Humanizing the Monster,” Thoth, 14 (1974), 14. 32 33

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witness in order to comment on man’s pretensions to civilization.”38 Grendel as a postmodernist monster in Gardner’s surpasses Hrothgar’s warriors’ capacities intellectually and emotionally, proving to be an aloof creature with an endearment for philosophical questions.39 The monster also has an ability to call back on the warriors’ heroic ethos in a society that results, from the monster’s perspective, in a crude attempt at heroism, together with an emphasis on the monstrous aspects of the hero. There is, therefore, a transference in the monstrosity by presenting a hero tainted by monstrous aspects, in a fascination with the limits of humanity and monstrosity in the poem that goes beyond a binary opposition,40 thus the Beowulf narrative is deconstructed as the focal point is shifted to the monster’s perspective with a clear avoidance of the dichotomy hero-monster. His reworked Beowulf presents a monster that has been turned into a sentient, man-like creature with very human emotions, struggling to find meaning when confronted with his environment and the fellow, puzzling creatures that inhabit it. Garner’s Grendel reveals through the eyes of the monster “a human culture that is ugly and flawed”41 for the monster’s inquisitive human mind and that propels him to hatred and vengeance. Even though every new interpretation of the epic Beowulf has made use of a different type of monster varying the physicality of the monster, they have followed Tolkien’s defense of the centrality and importance of the monster, together with his relationships with the hero. They have also shown clear influences of Gardner’s introduction of a human mind and emotions in a monster that can comment on the actions and behaviors of the warriors he has a grudge against. However arbitrary or fanciful the physical embodiment of each new Grendel may seem and even taking into account the fact that it may reflect changes derived from marketing issues,42 its importance is derived from the fact that it is part of his discourse, his irruption into the world of human signification and marks any possible disposition towards the monster. Grendel’s physical

Robert Merrill, “John Gardner's Grendel and the Interpretation of Modern Fables,” American Literature 56, no. 2 (1984), 164. 39 Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation as Hyperreality,” 130. 40 Katherine O’Keefe, “Beowulf, Lines 702b-836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 23, no. 4 (1981), 484-494. 41 Michael Livingston, and John William Sutton, “Reinventing the Hero: Gardner’s ‘Grendel’ and the Shifting Face of ‘Beowulf’ in Popular Culture,” Studies in Popular Culture 29, no. 1 (2006), 3. 42 Risden, “Cinematic Commoditization,” 66-80. 38

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appearance is not an arbitrary decision for filmmakers, given that the credibility of the monster as a presence and a threat in a world that has been altered to include a fantastical figure depend on it, together with the possibility to either incorporate him or distance him from what is ethically human for the community and for the spectators. Grendel’s physical configuration in film is relevant, then, as a visual statement that in itself recalls humanity as a possible humanity as a possible locus monstruoso in the articulation of the epic story, and also, as the first and foremost characteristic of this monster that makes him especially ambivalent in the poem by exploring, thanks to his very presence, the boundaries of the human.43 A too human Grendel may predispose the audience for empathy or disgust. Viewers can side with the monster against the corruption of the hero as a progenitor of monsters in Zemeckis’ Beowulf (2007), and understand and sympathize with Grendel’s anger after the crime committed in the first place by Hrothgar in Beowulf and Grendel where moral decline faults those, who should be more human than the monster. But viewers can also join Ahmad Ibn Fadlan’s disgust when seeing what a wendol can do to his—its—fellow men creatures. The Monstrous Man Ibn Fadlan: “I was wrong, these are not men” (The 13th Warrior) One example of these ambivalent boundaries of the humans that both the poem Beowulf and its film adaptations seem to explore when configuring the physical appearance of the monster is, precisely, The 13th Warrior (1999). Being the film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, the story combines Beowulf with the retelling of 10th-century account of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, (fl. 921-922) a Muslim Arab court poet that encounters the Vikings. Recruited against his will to battle against a monstrous menace, Ibn Fadlan accompanies the Vikings to help Hrothgar’s kingdom, and find a way to destroy the cannibal monsters called wendols, who come with the mist and seem to identify themselves as bears. In order to vanquish them, the warriors have to kill the matriarch in a cave. In the final battle, the hero Buliwyf offers an example of heroicity about which Ibn Fadlan will write.

43

O’Keefe, “Beowulf,” 491.

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The monster Grendel in this film is comprised communally by the wendol,44 a mysterious, monstrous threat said to be an ancient evil. It is discovered that they are, in fact, a tribe of primitive anthropophagus people who have appropriated bear characteristics in their behavior and appearance and yet, have an unmistakable human appearance under the bear furs they wear. Therefore, in this narrative, although monstrosity dwells in the dichotomy of civilization versus nature, it presents itself within the human spectrum, given the wendol human nature. Not even the civilized rationality of Ibn Fadlan can accommodate these creatures within the realm of the remotely human. Shocking as the cultural differences between the uncouth Vikings and the Arab narrator may have been, the encounter is further problematized with the wendol who prove to be a terrifying extreme in the spectrum of humanity. They portray hybridity that when rationalized gives way to an uncanny sense of recognition and rejection. Theirs is an “otherness that seems real and unreal”45 that reveals that the monster is, therefore, human under the bestial traits and violence but this humanity is compromised in such a way that even if the wendol can be rationalized as humans pretending to be bears, they embody a third term that falls short of any categorization within the human realm. In fact, the wendol do provide an uncanny extreme that cannot be easily contemplated as human and, given their “extreme otherness”, as Klinger points out, they effectively “[render] the Vikings less foreign by comparison.”46 The wendol’s human appearance revealed by what is shown of them under the furs they wear is also visible in the human skills they employ. This uncanny proximity to their victims replicates Grendel’s descent from Cain and the ambiguity with which his status and essence are human and bestial and, nevertheless, relate him with the humans he eats, making him a human predator identified with the race of giants, Christian evil and fratricidal violence.47 As an anthropophagus creature he practices, as the wendol do,

In Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead the wendol are explicitly identified as a Neanderthal tribe, “a living anachronism”. Judith Klinger, “Otherness Redoubled and Refracted: Intercultural Dialogues in The Thirteenth Warrior,” in The Medieval Motion Picture, ed. Andrew J. Johnston et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 91. 45 Ibid., 93. 46 Ibid. 47 See Beowulf, ll. 105-114, 1260-1267; Friedman, The Monstrous Races, 104; David A. Wiliams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996), 11. 44

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exocannibalism, he eats his enemies, those who are alien to his social entity48 and who are, nevertheless, still related to him, even if it is by exclusion. He is eating the community that uses him as a boundary, reflecting the traits49 of the figures he devours when he gets closer to the threshold of the community, just as the wendol can be seen to be human only when the victims are close enough to see the human flesh under the bear furs. By his act of cannibalism, Grendel annuls any legal mechanism to control violence within the community. With no possibility to find a motivation for their attacks that could be, then, satisfied through diplomacy, as these monsters do not use any language or seem to favor any type of intercultural exchange, the wendol represent Grendel’s aggression and his embodiment of feud as a primitive and chaotic state of warrior society. Their incursion into the community introduces a dangerous inversion of reciprocity and of the comitatus of warriors that holds the warrior society and avoid its disintegration.50 In this respect, Ibn Fadlan’s desire to find a rational explanation for the wendol’s very existence in The 13th Warrior is an attempt to make the individual not only coherent as a human figure but also accountable to human law, justice and rationality. He is convinced that they are facing human enemies and, as such, their way of thinking can be discovered. This

Reay Tannahill, Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975). 49 The human rationality of the monster is emphasized when he gets nearer Heorot, Stephen C. Bandy “Cain, Grendel, and the Giants of Beowulf,” Papers on Language and Literature 9 (1973): 240, as there is a presentation of “his inner life and traces of the human in the language that describes him” Bandy, “Cain,” 241 and “that impute human motives” in his hostility, his lack of remorse in his violence and aggression. See also Brent Nelson, “Cain-Leviathan Typology in Gollum and Grendel,” Extrapolation 49, 3 (2008), 474. 50 The hero’s victory over the chaos the monster generates is the prevalence of the “homosocial society held together by metaphorically fraternal bonds under the hierarchal system of allegiance” Jeffrey J. Cohen, “Old English Literature and the Work of Giants,” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24, no. 1 (1993), 23. Feud and cannibalism are traits of Cain and of a disintegrating community, Ricardo J. Quinones, The Changes of Cain: Violence and the lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 45. It has been also argued that in the case of The 13th Warrior these traits would be part of a stereotyped representation that exemplifies Western visions of primitive humans within a discourse of colonialism. See Elizabeth S. Sklar “Call of the Wild: Culture Shock and Viking Masculinities in the 13th Warrior (1999),” in The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages, ed. Kevin J. Harty (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 121-134. 48

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seems to explicitly recall the expectations of human standards the community of Heorot held Grendel to after his crimes in the poem.51 Remarkably, the discovery of cannibalism, in the case of the wendol presented as part of an extremely stereotyped characterization of primitivism for this tribe, annuls any expectation to find a human under the furs. The legal limits of society do not contemplate cannibalism and the consumption of other individuals’ bodies, notwithstanding the violence that can be allowed to happen within the community: “one can mutilate a corpse, rob, beat, insult, and all this can be done within society ... they are still the sort of transgressions which can be accounted for.”52 This moment of consumption is marked as a boundary of absolute opposition in the definition against the cannibal that “prompts a visceral reaction among people precisely because it activates our horror of consuming others like ourselves.”53 It is also a taboo practice, excluded from the shared humanity of warrior community that Grendel and the Wendol attack, and from the remote communities of Ibn Fadlan and of the spectatorship. Cannibalism is a taboo that, as Buchan54 analyzes in Homeric society in Hector’s cannibalistic impulses in The Iliad, constitutes a transgression that cannot be tolerated: “The functioning of [Homeric] society can withstand every attack upon its validity, every challenge to the legitimacy of its everyday functioning, but not that, not cannibalism.”55 Whatever the degree of alterity that can be found in the wide spectrum of possibilities for the warriors in 13th Warrior, however distant in geographic space, culture, language and traditions they may be, cannibalism is not a possibility and the practice disowns the wendols as humans, instantly, even if rationality is applied to their shapes and behaviors. This moment of repulsion is also one of recognition, for victim and cannibal, of body as meal.56 It is abhorrent for the victims of the wendol, for any witness, to contemplate the remote possibility that these aggressors belong to the same species due to the deeds they commit. It is too horrible

Specifically legal retribution. See Nelson, “Leviathan-Typology,” 474-475. Mark Buchan, “Food for Thought: Achilles and the Cyclops,” in Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity, ed. Kristen Guest (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 14. 53 Kristen Guest, “Introduction: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Identity,” in Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity, ed. Kristen Guest (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 3. 54 Buchan, “Food for Thought,” 11-33. 55 Ibid., 14. 56 Guest, “Introduction,” 3. 51 52

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to contemplate the mere possibility of a “shared humanness”57 with these beings. Chillingly, the wendol seem to be the only Grendel analogue in the Beowulf film adaptations whose monstrosity can be said to be an accessory they can, in fact, wear at will, and yet, they present a human nature. Their violent deeds do not have, apparently, any motivation other than to perform their cannibalistic rites and satiate their hunger.58 Cannibalism is one of the traits of primitivism that the tribe of bearpeople in The 13th Warrior exhibit. Notwithstanding the fact, as it has been previously explored, that it can be argued to be one of the main features of their monstrosity that they share with Grendel, the wendols are a nuanced representation for monstrous physical embodiment. Their monstrosity is made apparent with their practices—cannibalism included—but it is also visible in their physical appearance and the configuration of their identity. It reveals an attempt to explain the very essence of the monster.59 Their human physical appearance is constructed at the same time as animal and allows them to encapsulate uncertainty in their own figures. This allows them to configure themselves as ambivalent entities that can ambiguously belong to several categories and none. Thus, they dissolve the boundaries that belong to the individual in uncanny renderings that annul any boundaries since they can adopt the form of the Dragon (the Korgon in this narrative), identify with the bear and display human behaviors.60 They mingle in nature and culture, revealing a double nature that makes them more terrifying.61 Their hybridity also results from appropriating behaviors of predators, together with accessories that allow them to embody the animal and represent an unstable boundary that they can bend to their own volition, transforming themselves from men to animals, from a community to an individual and even transgress the very humanity they try to modify by their cannibal rites and consumption. They “undermine cultural systems of differentiation”62 making themselves incomprehensible for those who

Ibid. Norris, “Resistance,” 437. 59 According to Haydock, the wendol physical appearance would simply be an attempt “to fool human beings into thinking they are under attack by a wholly different species.” Nickolas Haydock, “Film Theory, the Sister Arts Tradition and the Cinematic Beowulf,” in Haydock and Risden, Beowulf on Film, 61. 60 Klinger, “Otherness Redoubled,” 93. 61 Ibid., 91. 62 Ibid. 57 58

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need a fixed essence of their nature. Their forms cannot be ascertained to any fixed category as all the possibilities they embody are, nevertheless cancelled, but their monstrosity is understandable and configured in cultural terms63—ambiguous as any Grendel figure may be—within its own historical context. The Hybrid Man-Monster Hrothgar: “Impossible! That thing is not human!” Grendel’s mother: “He’s half. That’s why he’s so handsome” (Beowulf, [1999]) The depiction of the Wendol has been analyzed as a stereotypical representation of native Americans64 but the apparent hybridity of the wendol in 13th Warrior could also be taken as a conscious reflection of the archetypal predator and werewolf tradition in the portrayal of the Grendel kin,65 achieved through the use of fur garments and the appropriation of animal behaviors. It would not be so shocking for the Scandinavian warrior culture depicted in The 13th Warrior since the Northmen seem to accept the idea of shapeshifting as a possible origin for the wendols. Therefore, the “radical strangeness” of the wendol, as Klinger argues,66 would have a specific cultural component that would make it more ambivalent than strange, considering the cultural possibility within the warrior society for the berserkr—the hybrid warrior who could transform himself into a predator when in battle and under stress or rage—and the figure of the vargr, the outlaw hybrid

Almudena Nido, “Grendel: Boundaries of Flesh and Law,” in Monstrous manifestations: realities and the imaginings of the monster, ed. Agnieszka StasiewiczBieńkowska and Karen Graham (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013), 50. 64 Sklar, “Call of the Wild,” 133. 65 For the relationship between Grendel and the Wild Hunt see Mark J. Lidman, “Wild Men and Werewolves: An Investigation of the Iconography of Lycanthropy,” The Journal of Popular Culture 10, no. 2 (1976), 392. 66 Klinger, “Otherness Redoubled,” 93. 63

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warrior vilified by the warrior community due to crimes committed.67 The cannibal lycanthropy practised by the wendol would point to the legal nature of the monster as a representation of a “liminal state between human and animal”68 that is emphasized through the choice in the configuration for the embodiment of the monster. Unlike The 13th Warrior that visualizes in the monster a premeditated process of material hybridity by the use of animal furs that may respond and interpret the possibility within material culture to embody the monster and thus explore the limits of humanity, the film adaptations by Baker (1999) and Zemeckis (2007) opted for a hybrid creature. A genesis for the monster in the human realm was devised, following a different approach from that of The 13th Warrior’s human monster with bestial behavior. Several films have tried to answer the mysteries the poem presents in such a way that it would allow them not only to discover the true nature of the monster but also to reveal the stories behind the normative epic discourse69 and, as Avary claimed to have done with Beowuf (2007), to obtain an adaptation that would surpass the narrative that has come to us through the medieval period. This would be achieved by giving voice to, at least, some of those missing voices70 and answering the plot holes that have proved problematic for interpretation. These problematic moments in the poem that seem to have concerned scriptwriters and directors are mainly the reasons behind Grendel’s attacks and his inability to approach the throne and the force of Grendel’s mother’s terror in Heorot,71 but special attention has been given to the identity of Grendel’s sire, which proved to be a fascinating turning point for film adaptations of the poem and that has had consequences to the bestial nature of the monster as a human hybrid.

67 There

is no scholarly consensus to define berserkr. See Ármann Jakobsson, “Beast and Man: Realism and the Occult in Egils Saga,” Scandinavian Studies 83, no. 1 (2011), 2944 for a general overview. In the pagan Germanic context there is a difference between the berserkr (wolf warrior who fought in a fury either naked or clad in a wolf or bear skin, defined ambiguously as a shape shifter, glorified in pagan times and associated with temporary shape shifting) and the vargr (vilified and exiled from community, the permanently bestial outlaw, associated with crimes or murder). See Peter Arnds, Lycanthropy in German literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), 4-13. 68 Ibid., 23. 69 Imitating Gardner’s Grendel; Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation,” 130. 70 Ibid., 133. 71 Nickolas Haydock, “Meat Puzzles: Beowulf and the Horror Film,” in Haydock and Risden, Beowulf on Film, 154.

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This has been explored through a different choice in the configuration of the physical appearance of the monster. In Baker’s and Zemeckis’s Beowulf, Grendel is no longer comprised by a hominid covering himself with animal accessories, but a hybrid by-product of the mingling of human and monstrous blood through intercourse in a “colonialist” context. The monster Grendel, then, acquires in Baker’s and Zemeckis’s Beowulf film adaptations bestial physical features that distance him from a human appearance. Exiled from human company and from the throne whose right should be his, Grendel is presented as a monster with human claims to power and land and, thus, entitled to reparation or compensation for what the community of Heorot symbolizes and has been denied to him. The embodiment of the monster exposes Hrothgar’s expansionism and colonialism, together with an anxiety towards sexual repressed impulses and boundaries from which monsters emerges. Notwithstanding his human parentage—a claim defended openly by his monstrous mother or revealed as a terrible hidden truth in a degraded Heorot—the physical appearance of the monster does not clearly show such link. Baker’s sci-fi take on Beowulf (1999) provided a moody hero who was “more reminiscent of Mad Max and Sting than the epic Geat”72 and remarkably, he could be explicitly linked to the monster as a figure apart from human society, fighting his own inner demons and dubious human nature.73 Relevantly, this adaptation also provided a back story for the monster’s origin that justified the Grendel kin aggression. Thus, the monster was brought closer to the human kin, this time by giving him a human father—Hrothgar—and, therefore, instating the hybrid nature of the monster in Beowulf adaptations. The monster’s physical appearance in this film is oddly reptilian, considering his mother’s claim that he is half-human. His human affiliation is unclear physically, except for the fact that he walks erect and that his arms are muscular and bulky, he is physically alien, not only for the community of Heorot but also for the spectators, as he resembles physically an “Alien/Predator” figure from the film franchise, half reptile (visibly reptile judging by the features of his face) with peculiar disgusting features of his face where slobbering viscous slimy liquid abounds. His body has no human skin and no hair; and his back is

72 E. L. Risden “The Hero, the Mad Male Id and a Feminist Beowulf: The Sexualizing of an Epic,” in Haydock and Risden, Beowulf on Film, 128. 73 “You’re on the edge of control now. With fresh kills only inches away. And me so close—aching for you. Does it burn in you, the hunger... for blood, for flesh? Is it sweet to you the scent of my son’s kills? Tell me, hero, whose world do you really belong to, theirs or mine?”

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marked by bony plates and scales. Furthermore, spectators are led to believe the monster has no language even though his mother is able to communicate fluently with the hero and give the complete background story for her son’s claims to the land of Heorot. Grendel is the son of the king, begotten by an illicit love affair in the furore of heroic violence. It is also discovered that the land where Hrothgar has built Heorot was owned by Grendel’s mother since ancient times and, accordingly, it is Grendel’s right to have that land. Zemeckis’s film adaptation Beowulf (2007) relocates monstrosity by questioning and highlighting the unreliability of the authority figures who are exposed to power and lust and who father the monster as a condition to gain power and wealth. Beowulf and Hrothgar as kingly figures, in fact, authority in general, appear to be corrupted in this new and decadent Heorot where the epic grandeur seems to be missing except for the relentlessness of the female monster’s thirst for vengeance and lust for power on the hero’s part. The film focusses on the “dysfunctional family relationships”74 among monsters, heroes and community while exploring “the psychological potential of AngloSaxon monstrosities.”75 In the computer-generated epic world, Grendel is Hrothgar’s unwanted son, half human and half monstrous, willingly begotten in exchange for unlimited power. Hurt by his father’s name and the noisy neighbors the monster has to tolerate, he attacks in rampant violent retributions of sheer frustration and powerlessness, “as the traumatic effect of his exclusion from his father’s court.”76 His mother, the most remarkable monster and, it can be argued, also a character in this film adaptation of the poem, has been typified as a succubus femme fatale. In this post-Freudian take on the epic narrative,77 she constitutes “a trope of hyper-femininity”78 that moves the plot towards sexual desire and the anxieties it causes in the authority figures that seem to be a concern for the twenty-first-century audience. Blood is not the only thing that links the hero and the monster. They are implicitly linked, as in Baker’s Beowulf since they do share the same essence,

Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation,” 131. Ibid. 76 Ibid., 130. 77 Chris Jones, “From Heorot to Hollywood: Beowulf in Its Third Millennium,” in AngloSaxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, ed. David Clark and Nicholas Perkins (Cambridge, UK: D. S Brewer, 2010), 25. 78 Ibid., 23. 74 75

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regardless of parentage, as Grendel’s mother proclaims to the hero in the temptation scene in a reminiscent words that echo Baker’s arachnid femme fatale: “underneath your glamor, you’re as much a monster as my son.” Grendel may be Hrothgar’s son, but he is, in essence, the same type of monster as Beowulf. The only thing then that separates the hero from the monster, human from monster, is his glamor, that in Zemeckis’s is something that seems to be purposely at odds with the heroic world that is presented. Being a human in this motion capture animated world is intrinsically unstable as a category, due to the uncanny nature of the humans that look strikingly familiar to the audience yet they are not human enough in their depictions and performances. This renders “unstable the boundaries between cartoon and human appearance”79 due to the technique of motion picture used for the film. As a result, the human characters present a distinctive shallowness that makes them uncannily less human,80 while the monster is a threat and an entity that entices the spectators to believe in its reality within the context of the film as a non-human that is, nevertheless, more human.81 The monsters’ performance is consciously highlighted, thanks to the CGI technology, and in Grendel’s case helps to convey a human pathos that is remarkably missing in the human characters in the film.82 In this regard, the technique used in the film can be said to help to make more visible the disparity between the image the warriors want to present of themselves and how they are presented in the film, as Brown argues, subverting their claim to be able to control their bodies.83 In Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf, the human body is shown as the vulnerable entity against the hunger of the monster, as the locus of the base, corporal

Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation,” 132. Brown, “Beowulf: The Digital Monster Movie,” Animation 4, no. 2 (2009), 164166. 81 Zemeckis’s Grendel avoids the uncanny effect because he is a believable non-human entity in digital animation. His human-like movements are not problematic to believe, given that he is, visually, recognizable as non-human even though his emotions are human: “The audience subconsciously says ‘He’s not human; I don’t have to judge him by the same rules as if he were’. But when we try to portray a human, viewers notice what’s missing.” Geller, “Uncanny Valley,” 13. 82 Hinz and Rouse quote producer Steve Starkey in this regard: “[W]e could get the perfect performer, who portrayed all of Grendel’s pain and suffering but wasn’t limited by prosthetics or uncomfortable suits. If we had shot this film traditionally, we could never have done all that.” Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation,” 132. 83 “It is fitting because the film also works hard to highlight how humanity’s own claims to control the flesh are subverted by the flesh itself.” Brown, “Digital Monster,” 164. 79

80 William

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functions, appetites84 and desires that cannot be fully controlled or modified. Notwithstanding the glamor the hero is said to have, he is betrayed by the visible disparity in his words and actions that renders him vulnerable and soulless in performance and in essence.85 His unreliability as a narrator, together with the unreliability of the all the authority figures in the film due to their lust for unlimited power, show the baseness of the human body, saved only through grandiloquent discourse and supreme violence. Physical appearance in Zemeckis’s Beowulf is revealed then as the main locus monstruoso thanks to the glamor it is infused with in the case of the authority figures and in the female monster. Unlike Beowulf, Grendel does not possess glamor or any valid form of discourse to mediate with the warrior community. He, together with the Dragon who is Beowulf’s son in this version, have been endowed with physical appearances that betray not only their ambivalent essence but their origin in a community that cannot be contained within its boundaries. Certainly, the monster lacks skin to contain his flesh. Grendel’s physical form is an uncertain combination of unfinished, grotesquely human components. Gigantic in size until vanquished, the monster is revealed to “[resemble] nothing so much as the pitiful image of a human embryo”86 that never reached manhood87 and lives and dies in a womblike cave.88 This “monstrous baby”89 is shown to have emotional responses to the stimuli he receives from the warrior community and those emotional responses reveal a psychological depth in the creature’s mind and soul, together with psychological suffering. In fact, his physical embodiment forces him to have a different experience of the environment than men, revealing Hrothgar’s name and the merriment of his men to be mere, harsh sound that pierces the monster’s vulnerable ears.90 The unfinished state of his embodiment is also a visualization of Grendel’s ferocious hunger for the incorporation into the community that he seeks through cannibalism.91

Ibid., 158. Ibid., 166. 86 Jones, “From Heorot,” 26. 87 Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation,” 142. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., 141. 91 Almudena Nido, “Grendel y su Hambre. Canibalismo, Transgresión y Necesidad en Beowulf,” Memoria Europae II/2, no. 2 (2016), 4-24. Accessed December 28, 2016.

84 85

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In death, Grendel is more man-like than the hero Beowulf.92 The monster proves to have a language of his own in his attempt to redefine his identity and redirect monstrosity to the hero who has revealed himself and what the warrior community is about through discourse: “I am ripper, tearer, slasher, gouger. I am the teeth in the darkness, the talons in the night. Mine is strength and lust and POWER! I AM BEOWULF!” Apparently unbeknownst to the hero at that time, by defining himself as a bodiless entity that exercises violent actions that tear others’ corporeality, he has renounced his humanity and has effectively defined himself as Grendel, as he realizes decades later “We men are the monsters now.” A More Human Monster Beowulf: “Why wouldn’t he fight me?” Selma: “Why should he? You’ve done nothing to him.” (Beowulf & Grendel) The Grendel analogues are no longer a by-product of human and monstrous intermingling in Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel (2005) and Howard McCain’s Outlander (2008). Although their physical appearances are disparate as it ranges from clear Alien from space imagery to a typified troll of Scandinavian lore, they have a remarkable feature in common: their resistance to moral monstrosity. The Grendel analogues in these film adaptations belong to a species different from human and coexist with the humans as an outcast or exile due to their different nature, holding a grudge that can only be solved through a feud. Far from being a non-specific petty grudge over music played in the hall, or retaliation for having been ignored by his Father, the grievances that motivate the attacks in these adaptations are revealed to point to a resistance against the unfair actions of a warlike community that expands itself thanks to genocide (Outlander) and unjustifiable crimes on the Grendel-kin (Beowulf and Grendel). Regardless of their alien physical appearance, their plight is relatable at a human level when confronted with one cruel violent community that slaughters the other. In Outlander, both hero and monster come from outer space. Markedly different from anything the warriors may have encountered, the monstrous

92 This reversal of the roles is visualized in a change in size for both monster and hero, Hinz and Rouse, “Adaptation,” 142.

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creature has apparently nothing in common with the community it preys on. The first remarkable feature of this film is that although it is an adaptation of Beowulf it does not feature a hero named Beowulf.93 Nevertheless, the plot is recognizable, with deviations that respond to other films with which it may be associated,94 producing thus an eclectic sci-fi epic narrative95 and provides a monster, the Moorween, that explicitly resembles the monsters in the Alien franchise. It is, indeed “a meeting between Alien and Beowulf”96 since the film also explores space expansionism and colonialism. As Zemeckis’s Beowulf and several other Beowulf film adaptations, this film reveals the origins for the monster’s vague motivation for its violent attacks, in this case by presenting explicit images of the genocide its kin suffered97 and the subsequent, and understandable hatred that fuels the attacks. Even though the human warriors can be, as the film portrays with some of the characters, “peaceful explorers and traders, noble in their idealism”98 their fierce thirst for land and power is highlighted, too, in the violent and merciless means they use to obtain that. Pitted against this supreme brutality for expansion and conquest through “genocidal imperialism”99 the Moorween opts to retaliate and defend itself. This results in a problematic vision that raises questions to the ethics of their expansionism and the true nature of the hero and shines a new light on the monster’s plight that becomes understandable from a human point of view. In Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel the monster has been born, has grown and has coexisted with humans throughout all his life. Grendel’s alterity and alienation from the human community are due to his troll nature, visible in his noticeable features, gigantic size and hairy face. His physical form, when he is a small child, is recognizably human in such a way that it prompts Hrothgar to spare his life. After having killed Grendel’s father,

Marshall points out that this apparent absence of the eponymous hero may explain that this film adaptation is not usually considered by Beowulf scholars David W. Marshall, “Harrying an Infinite Horizon: The Ethics of Expansionism in Outlander (2008),” in The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages, ed. Kevin J. Harty (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 136. 94 Nickolas Haydock, “The Postmodern Beowulf,” in Haydock and Risden, Beowulf on Film, 184-185. 95Marshall, “Harrying,” 136. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., 138. 98 Ibid., 136. 99 Ibid., 146. 93

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Hrothgar is unable to kill what looks like a human child. A reaction that Beowulf will repeat when he encounters Grendel’s small son. Notwithstanding his physical deformity—in size and strength—Grendel proves to be more human than those who label him a troll, as he turns out to be a sympathetic monster with ethical reasoning. The adult troll displays human skills by way of mourning after his father’s murder. He is capable of expressing grief and surprisingly, he acts in accordance with his ethics, as he can distinguish who harms him or who treats him well.100 With no language other than incoherent utterances the warriors cannot understand (“Is that talk?”) he can convey his own narrative, as he has a human intermediary who can translate part of his discourse, act like the monstrous couple for Grendel, and understand his plight and dwell with him in the liminal place outside the community as a human outcast. Both Grendel and Selma suffer victimization by the community of Heorot that turns them into outcasts and reveal through their resistance and unwilling cohabitation that they are monsters with a moral right.101 By presenting the human intermediary for the monster’s plight and by giving the monster an ethical superiority102 the problematic points behind the concept “troll” are revealed in the film as it seems to be used to encapsulate alterity in a very ambivalent way when it also refers to the positions and process by which a member of society can become ostracized, persecuted and even eliminated.103 Other members of the community are forced to dwell and linger in the outskirts of the human community or threatened with the possibility of being forced into the position Grendel lives in. Beowulf and Grendel posits a direct questioning of the term troll as an uncomfortable exploration of humanity: “it is difficult to explain how a man might change into a beast without first knowing what a man is and whether his humanity is defined by his mind or his body.”104 Poignantly, Hrothgath’s justification for killing Grendel’s father

Beowulf: “Has this thing, this troll, killed any children? (...) Women? Old men?” Hrothgar: “What are you saying? That he fights with a clean heart? (...) He shows us he can kill the strongest. Who cares if he spares the children? (...) Don’t sour my heart with talk about why a troll does what a fucking troll does!” 101 Selma’s marginal status is ambivalently powerful, according to Haydock, “Postmodern Beowulf,” 184. 102 Tainted with ambivalence, too, as he rapes Selma. See Ambrisco, “Trolling,” 247; and Norris, “Resistance,” 436. 103 Grendel in the poem could also be identified with an ethnic alterity that justifies monstrosity on a human level. Stuhmiller, “Eotenas,” 12. 104 Jakobsson, “Beast,” 34. 100

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is, when he finally confesses it to Beowulf, ridiculous and shows the arbitrariness of violence: “Crossed our path. Took a fish.” The Monster Among Men Breca: “Give me a man to fight or even a beast, but one that is both?” (Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, episode 2) Monstrous creatures abound in the latest rendition of the poem, the 12 episodes ITV series Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (2016) where Grendel seems to have been multiplied, providing several monstrous figures that could be identified with Grendel. The configuration of the monstrous physical embodiment seems to respond to, or even blatantly imitate, other configurations of the monster in The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit blockbuster franchise. It is inescapable for the spectator to visually relate the creature that can be most identified with Grendel with Gollum as it moves and reacts in similar ways and within similar spatial contexts to those of Tolkien’s most famous monstrous figure. Grendel is a particular kind of monster in this version, distinguishable due to his stylized features. Remarkably, in the first glimpse from the monster in the shadows, he has hands that, in contrast with the other monstrous creatures, the spectator is presented with, have five fingers. He is the only monstrous creature that seems to have emotional depth as he seems to seek comfort for human touch. Moving in the outskirts of the settlement, encroaching in the shadows and jumping on the roof of Heorot, he is a scrawny creature, with animal-like movement and features, distorted form with fur on his shoulders and what seems to be a mixture of several animal features in his body. He attacks by daylight, too, and seems to inhabit a gigantic stone construction (similar to Helm’s Deep in The Lord of the Rings films) that giants are said to have built in previous times when they ruled those lands. The monsters do seem to be ubiquitous accessories and relics from the past in the landscape of warriors in The Shieldlands, since their threat is not, apparently and notwithstanding their brutal violent potential, as important as that of human ambition and treachery. The human enemies and the dark menace of treason, exile and war are feared more than the pervasive monstrous presence. In the very introduction of the TV series, we have the visible association of the human heroic aspects with the monstrous ones in an intertwined bound of interlace artwork that shows the uneasy superposition, exploitation and dependence of powers battling for the same ground. Monsters are used in this Heorot not only for decoration as trophies, but also for entertaining as their skull is used for axe throwing practice and

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championships, their flesh is food for special occasions or even medicine, and their brute force is used for the benefit of some mill machinery. There is no way to confuse them with any other element in the landscape as their presence is detected by their physical monstrosity and they can be warded off (with the use of weapons or salt to either kill or appease them). However, in The Shieldlands monstrosity is also elsewhere, and not necessarily as easily identifiable and detectable as one of the gigantic creatures with horns and voracious appetite, or even Grendel in the shadows. The real monstrosity in The Shieldlands is not in the beasts that are enslaved and their materiality used physically, domesticated in their familiar violence and presence. As the spectator discovers, there are several types of man-like creatures that range in craftiness and intelligence, and are able to use their physical appearance to fool the law. Skin-shifters live among the humans without being noticed and form part of the very community, notwithstanding the prohibition to mingle with them. Thus, the moment the skin-shifter materializes himself, monstrosity as a fixed category in this new Heorot is problematized, since it can no longer be easily and univocally identifiable with what the monster is known to have and embody, and has to include the possibility of human appearance, talk and actions. This, at the same time, allows a safer distance between Grendel and humankind, since the former’s potentiality for unsettling the boundaries of the human has been transposed to a different type of monster. Nevertheless, even though the skin-shifter produces far more terror than the beasts and is considered a greater danger, given that he is a man and a beast at the same time, he is vulnerable in his humanity when the community threatens to kill his wife and harm his child. The human monster can be easily apprehended, no matter the cunning disguise and his violent potential, as he is a prey to the human community that will use monstrous means to penalize the skin-shifter’s presence within it. But in its effort to eradicate and clean the monstrous presence that has tainted it, the warrior community of Heorot displays symptoms of its intolerance to the alterity of mixed-blood creatures that lurk among the warriors, mimic their appearance, yet hide their monstrousness within the environment of the warrior community. Relevantly for the context of the monster in Beowulf film adaptations and notwithstanding its clear fantastic context, The Shieldlands display a wide range of alterity within the warrior community, displaying several ethnicities and providing examples that flexibilize the stereotypes and assumptions about ethnicity and gender in the warrior community, for example by having a female smith or the role of Hrothgar’s queen in this adaptation as Rheda, a queen of her own. Therefore, the fact that the skin-shifter proves to be the

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most terrible monstrous menace for the community points to the anxieties of the historical context of the audience. It can be appreciated in the mob that claims justice and wants to kill the skin-shifter’s wife once he has been revealed and apprehended. Being accused of having done something repulsive for the community, the skinshifter’s wife is being forced to renounce her husband publicly if she wants to protect her own life and that of her daughter. Relevantly, the skinshifter’s wife is the only blonde, blue-eyed woman to be shown up to that point in the episodes, showing what might be the expected racial features that have been historically associated with Beowulf. This tricks the spectator into questioning current society’s assumptions about ethnicity and the problematization of alterity when a black woman within the mob, who could be interpreted as Grendel’s mother, claims for vengeance and justice for her son that has been killed because he was thought to be the skin-shifter. She is defending her alterity and that of her son against a different type of alterity that is not visible. The skin-shifter proves to be the noblest of Hrothgar’s warriors because he sacrifices himself for his wife. He is for her “the good man I saw not the creature that was hidden” and has been accepted for what he really is: “I knew what he was and I didn’t care, is that so wrong?” He was able to prove through his faultless and peaceful cohabitation until discovered that anyone can mingle with a skin-shifter within the community: “we all made him welcome, none of us knew. He was appointed by Hrothgar, if he was fooled, what chance did this unschooled woman have of knowing better? It is a mistake we were all guilty.” Normativity is asked as it stands for the warrior community, represented by any warrior and by the hero himself who, as a mirror image for those who are monsters, is asked: “what’s in your blood?” The heroes, as well as the audience, are consistently forced to reflect on the very process of monster formation and the reasons behind the monster’s attacks in the new representations of Grendel. As Gardner’s perception of the hero and his community already anticipated, the resulting relationship between hero and monster that filmmakers explore may respond to how masculinity has been eroded, together with the realization of evil within the human community. Inevitably, in this post-Holocaust, post-Vietnam, postSeptember 11th world105 the monsters are very human indeed and all the positions within the human are questioned as possible locus monstruoso. Not

105

Livingston and Sutton, “Reinventing,” 10.

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even the multi-faceted hero in the film can get away unscathed, when the binary opposition of good and evil in morality is questioned. Conclusion The representations of Grendel in the different Beowulf film adaptations that have been studied show a continuing yet futile attempt to pinpoint the exact and fixed essence of the monster in Beowulf.106 Relevant as the connection with Tolkien’s monsters may be in decisions for the physical monstrosity,107 the configuration of the Grendel figure responds to more aspects than just blockbuster marketing or new developments in the conception of the monster in academic research about Beowulf.108 The physical appearance of Grendel in film adaptations is relevant when analyzed not only in conjunction with the poem, but also as a focal point for the articulation of social anxieties about authority, warrior ethics and the very definition of what is human in that specific film adaptation. It serves as a commentary and reflection of the monster’s new historical and sociological context where alterity and monstrosity are explored.109 The monster is a reflection of those anxieties from the past that were configured in the poem, but that are also updated with new values from the society that ponders on what a monster is. The values and behaviors of the times that reflect back on the medieval narratives are shown as eroded masculinities and contested discourses, together with the questioning and problematization of the positions of hero and monster. The monster’s physical appearance serves to problematize the categories of human and monster by providing more uncertainty. Seemingly adapted to a more human nature, either in form or in mind, the monster readdresses monstrosity to the very community that excludes him and suffers his attacks. Therefore, the wendol, as a resulting being, is an ambivalent creature that cannot be ascertained to one single essence without questioning the very limits of humanity and what certain groups of human individuals are capable of. Zemeckis’s Beowulf, as a postmodernist new Beowulf narrative,110 reflects a general mistrust of authority in the figure of the hero, as embodied by an unreliable narrator of his own deeds and victim of his lust for power. The film

O’Keefe, “Beowulf,” 486. Nelson, “Leviathan-Typology”. 108 Haydock, “Theory, Tradition,” 63; Jones, “From Heorot,” 25. 109 Risden, “Freud Complex,” 22. 110 Jones, “From Heorot,” 25. 106 107

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dwells – thanks to a melancholic, hapless monster and reckless power figures – on the “popular disenchantment with political leadership after the 2003 Iraq war, and with foreign policy run as if in accordance with the heroic code.”111 The position of authority is also questioned through the exposure of its ethics of expansionism and its resulting genocide in Outlander, tainting the heroic appeal of the hero.112 In fact, it seems that the community of Heorot in any of the film adaptations seems to disguise its ruthless violence in heroic discourse, as seen in Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel where the concept of troll is proved to be the position of the outcast that risks being stigmatized and eradicated.113 It also asks the spectator, the hero himself, to consider the motives behind such ethnic cleansings as seen in other contexts in our own time114 and value the monster’s attacks as resistance and survival. No matter the physical embodiment of the monster then, there is something human in it. A possible correlation between human appearance and a lack of humanity in their actions and habits can be found in the wendol, whereas the most physically monstrous Grendels prove to have the most human of motivations when they seek justice in Gunnarsson’s and Zemeckis’s. The wide range of monstrous forms in the several film versions to portray Grendel points to the dubious boundary he inhabits and that no longer separates the human from the monster and no longer preserves the tenets of authority. The very configuration of the heroic character as reflected on the monster is questioned through the conflict with a new type of monster whose plight seems to resonate more profoundly with the audience’s own values and anxieties. At the same time, the resulting new narrative that includes the monster’s perspective on his own position reflects on the global war conflicts and a mistrust of discourse that contests the main narrative. In Beowulf hero and monster, regardless of their physical differences and even origin, they are “specular images of one another, products of human/demonic miscegenation”115 in a hostile environment for any type of alterity that may be constructed very easily as monstrosity with a discourse that wants to distance itself from the monster, yet proves through its violent power and the ambiguity it projects on the monster that there is more

Jones, “From Heorot,” 20. Marshall, “Harrying,” 136. 113 Ambrisco, “Trolling,” 248. 114 Ibid., 252. 115 Haydock, “Meat Puzzles,” 151. 111 112

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monstrosity than meets the eye and that “the monstrous progeny of Cain dwell everywhere and dine at every table”116. A more human Grendel is an undesirable reflection of humanity as monstrosity, where no matter the grandeur of the warrior community, it is inevitable to realize that physical appearance can no longer guide the distinction between monster and human in Beowulf when the heroes, the warriors and humans exhibit monstrous traits that cannot fully redeem them. Works Cited Ambrisco, Alan S. “Trolling for Outcasts in Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel.” The Journal of Popular Culture 46, no. 2 (2013): 243-256. Arnds, Peter. Lycanthropy in German Literature. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015. Bandy. Stephen C. “Cain, Grendel, and the Giants of Beowulf.” Papers on Language and Literature 9 (1973): 235-249. Brodeur, Arthur G. “Design for Terror in the Purging of Heorot.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 53, no. 4 (1954): 503-513. Brodeur, Arthur G. The Art of Beowulf. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. Brown, William. “Beowulf: The Digital Monster Movie.” Animation 4, no. 2 (2009): 153-168. Buchan, Mark. “Food for Thought: Achilles and the Cyclops.” In Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity, ed. Kristen Guest, 11-33. Albany: State University New York Press, 2001. Chadwick, Nora K. “The Monsters and Beowulf.” In The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins, edited by Peter Clemoes, 171-203. London: Bowes & Bowes, 1959. Chambers, Raymond W. “Beowulf and the ‘Heroic Age’ in England.” In Man's Unconquerable Mind: Studies of English Writers, ed. Raymond W. Chambers, 68-70. London: Jonathan Cape, 1939. Clarke, Catherine. “Re-placing Masculinity: the DC Comics Beowulf Series and its Context, 1975-6.” In Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, eds. David Clark and Nicholas Perkins, 165-182. Cambridge, UK: D. S Brewer, 2010. Cohen, Jeffrey J. “Old English Literature and the Work of Giants.” Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24, no. 1 (1993): 1-32. Driver, Martha and Sid Ray. eds. The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. Driver, Martha. “Teaching the Middle Ages on Film: Visual Narrative and the Historical Record.” History Compass 5, no. 1 (2007): 159-174.

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Bandy, “Cain,” 249.

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Fajardo-Acosta, Fidel. “Intemperance, Fratricide, and the Elusiveness of Grendel.” English Studies 3 (1992): 205-210. Farrell, Jennifer. “The Evil behind the Mask: Grendel's Pop Culture Evolution.” The Journal of Popular Culture 41, no. 6 (2008): 934-949. Friedman, John B. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1981. Gardner, John. “Backstage with Esquire.” Esquire 76, October, 1971. Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Vintage, 1971. Gilmore, David. Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Gray, Richard J., and Betty Kaklamanidou. eds. The 21st Century Superhero: Essays on Gender, Genre and Globalization in Film. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Greenfield, Stanley B. “Grendel's Approach to Heorot: Syntax and Poetry.” In Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert P. Creed, 275-284. Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1967. Guest, Kristen. Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity. Syracuse: State University New York Press, 2001. Haydock, Nickolas. “Meat Puzzles: Beowulf and the Horror Film.” In Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations, eds. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden, 143-166. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Haydock, Nickolas and Edward L. Risden. Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Haydock, Nickolas. “Film Theory, the Sister Arts Tradition and the Cinematic ‘Beowulf’.” In Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations, eds. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden, 27-65. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Haydock, Nickolas. “The Postmodern Beowulf.” In Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations, eds. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden, 177-190. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Hinz, Philipp and Margitta Rouse. “Adaptation as Hyperreality: The (A) Historicism of Trauma in Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf.” In The Medieval Motion Picture: The Politics of Adaptation, eds. Andrew J. Johnston, Margitta Rouse, and Philipp Hinz, 129-153. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Jakobsson, Ármann. “Beast and Man: Realism and the Occult in Egils saga.” Scandinavian Studies 83, no. 1 (2011): 29-44. Jones, Chris. “From Heorot to Hollywood: Beowulf in Its Third Millennium.” In Anglo-Saxon Culture and the Modern Imagination, eds. David Clark and Nicholas Perkins, 13-29. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2010. Klinger, Judith. “Otherness Redoubled and Refracted: Intercultural Dialogues in The Thirteenth Warrior.” In The Medieval Motion Picture: The Politics of Adaptation, eds. Andrew J. Johnston, Margitta Rouse, and Philipp Hinz, 79106. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Lidman, Mark J. “Wild Men and Werewolves: An Investigation of the Iconography of Lycanthropy.” The Journal of Popular Culture 10, no. 2 (1976): 388-397.

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Livingston, Michael, and John William Sutton. “Reinventing the Hero: Gardner's Grendel and the Shifting Face of Beowulf in Popular Culture.” Studies in Popular Culture 29, no. 1 (2006): 1-16. Marshall, David W. “Harrying an Infinite Horizon: The Ethics of Expansionism in Outlander (2008).” In The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages, ed. Kevin J. Harty, 135-149. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. Merrill, Robert. “John Gardner's Grendel and the Interpretation of Modern Fables.” American Literature 56, no. 2 (1984): 162-180. Nido, Almudena. “Grendel y su Hambre. Canibalismo, Transgresión y Necesidad en Beowulf.” Memoria Europae II 2, no. 2 (2016): 4-24. Nido, Almudena. “Grendel: Boundaries of Flesh and Law.” In Monstrous Manifestations: Realities and the Imaginings of the Monster, eds. Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska and Karen Graham, 41-52. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2013. Niles, John D. Beowulf: The Poem and its Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Norris, Robin. “Resistance to Genocide in the Postmodern Beowulf.” Literature Compass 8, no. 7 (2011): 435-438. O’Keefe, Katherine. “Beowulf, lines 702b-836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 23, no. 4 (1981): 484-494. Peltola, Niilo. “Grendel's Descent from Cain Reconsidered.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73, no. 1 (1972): 284-291. Quinones, Ricardo J. The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Renoir, Alain. “Point of View and Design for Terror in ‘Beowulf’.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 63, 3 (1962): 154-167. Risden, Edward L. “The Cinematic Commoditization of Beowulf: The Serial Fetishizing of a Hero.” In Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations, eds. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden, 66-80. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Risden, Edward L. “The Hero, the Mad Male Id and a Feminist Beowulf: The Sexualizing of an Epic.” In Beowulf on Film: Adaptations and Variations, eds. Nickolas Haydock and Edward L. Risden, 119-131. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Rollin, Roger B. “The Epic Hero and Pop Culture.” In The Superhero Reader, eds. Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester, 84-98. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Ruud, Jay. “Gardner’s Grendel and Beowulf: Humanizing the Monster.” Thoth 14, no. 2 (1974): 3-18. Sklar, Elizabeth S. “Call of the Wild: Culture Shock and Viking Masculinities in The 13th Warrior (1999).” In The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of The Nordic Middle Ages, ed. Kevin J. Harty, 121-134. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

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Spindler, Robert. “Epics and Screenplays: The Problem of Adapting Beowulf for the Screen.” Old English Newsletter 43 (2011). Accessed February 10, 2017. http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/print.php/essays/spindler43_3/Array Stuhmiller, Jacqueline. “On the Identity of the Eotenas.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100, 1 (1999): 7-14. Tannahill, Reay. Flesh and Blood: A History of Cannibalism. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975. Tolkien, John R. R. “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” In The Beowulf Poet: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Donald K. Fry, 8-56. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968. Williams, David. Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature. Exeter: University Exeter Press, 1996. Williams, Robert A. The Finn Episode in Beowulf: An Essay in Interpretation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Chapter 6

Moonlight and Silver Bullets: Twentieth Century Racial Purity in Werewolf Films Octavia Cade

Introduction There is a schism in the mythology. It is difficult to see, sometimes, from the settled rock of an established position, that such a position was not always so. When the particular symbols of a story become so embedded within the narrative that an automatic association develops between symbol and storysubject, it can be difficult to even remember a time when those parts were not crucial. Did the story not always go that way? Proof of such is experimental: accost a random person of your acquaintance, and ask them two questions. When are you most likely to see a werewolf, and how can you kill one? Ask another person, and another. The answers are likely to cohere, and they are frequently automatic. A werewolf transforms under the full moon, and they can be killed with a silver bullet. Even people with no liking for horror, with no interest in monsters, can repeat the basic mythology of a werewolf film. For better or worse, werewolves are part of our shared cultural knowledge, and knowledge of them has seeped into the general public, generally through the medium of film: “the contemporary human-wolf has been inspired largely by cinematic representations.”1 There are a substantial number of werewolf films to act as inspiration – the website werewolf-movies.com lists at the time of writing over 300 werewolf films, as does Bryan Senn in his book The Werewolf Filmography.2

Elizabeth A. Lawrence, “Werewolves in Psyche and Cinema: Man-beast Transformation and Paradox,” The Journal of American Culture 19, 3 (1996): 103. 2 Bryan Senn, The Werewolf Filmography: 300+ Movies (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2017). 1

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It is safe to say that the mythology has spread. Werewolves are an industry in themselves, and the paired response of “full moon” and “silver bullet” is a marvel of fictional advertising. Except there was a time when it wasn’t.3 Werewolf mythology has existed for hundreds of years, and is found in a variety of cultures. The first (English language) academic text on the subject, The Book of Werewolves4 by Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924), was published in 1865, but scholars were researching the phenomenon on the European continent centuries before this.5 Baring-Gould writes from a rationalist perspective, combining myth and historical records in an attempt to catalogue and understand lycanthropy. He gives frequent examples of werewolf folklore, and for a person who has been steeped in the modern filmknowledge of silver and moon, it is remarkable how little these symbols appear in this historical work. There is but one reference to silver, for instance, and it is fleeting. Werewolves are reported in Devonshire to range the moors in the shape of black dogs, and … two such creatures appearing in an inn and nightly drinking the cider, till the publican shot a silver button over their heads, when they were instantly transformed into two ill-favoured old ladies of his acquaintance.6 Lycanthropic connection with the moon is more common, but still appears in less than half of his given examples. Rarely is it of extreme significance. Yet sometime between Baring-Gould’s Book of Werewolves and the popular understanding of werewolf myth today, the pairing of silver and moon achieved, from obscurity, a story-telling primacy of marvellous proportions. But how has this has been achieved, and what – if anything – was the tipping point? In order to investigate, it is sensible to look first at the early history of werewolf films. 1913-1935: The First Transformations The first werewolf film produced was The Werewolf7 (1913). That there have been over 300 different werewolf films created since then is not altogether

Chantal Bourgault Du Coudray, The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror, and the Beast Within (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 77. 4 Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves (London: Senate, 1995). 5 Stefan Donecker, “The Werewolves of Livonia: Lycanthropy and Shape-Changing in Scholarly Texts, 1550–1720,” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 1.2 (2012). 6 Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves, 101. 7 The Werewolf. Directed by Henry MacRae. Bison Motion Pictures, 1913. 3

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surprising. Cinema is a visual medium, and the challenge of portraying the transformation from man to wolf and back again has clearly been a tempting one for cinematographers and special effects artists. Rick Baker (1950- ), who won Academy Awards for Best Makeup for his work on both An American Werewolf in London8 (1981) and The Wolfman9 (2010), comments that “what I like about werewolf movies is the change in the appearance of the person. I’m interested in the transformation, more than the story itself.”10 These transformations, and the circumstances surrounding them, are closely connected to theme. Werewolf films arguably have two major turning points of thematic interest: the recognition of the werewolf, either in others or in the self; and the application of a potential remedy. In no comprehensive historical source are the moon and silver the only possible options – they may be present in various proportions, but they are not exclusive. Baring-Gould, for instance, describes a number of both these points: werewolves may be recognized by their broad, short-fingered and hairy hands, by eyebrows that meet over the nose, by being one of seven successive sisters, or by exhibiting in human form the wounds of an injured wolf.11 They may be cured by being stabbed three times in the forehead, by being hit with an apron, greeted with their baptismal name, or by having their wolf skin burnt.12 It should be noted that these examples comprise only a small sample of the possible means of recognition or remedy described by Baring-Gould; the point is that such means are many and varied. Similar descriptions of various means are found in a wide range of sources, including Fahy,13 Oates,14 Simonsen,15 and Summers.16

An American Werewolf in London. Directed by John Landis. PolyGram Pictures, 1981. The Wolfman. Directed by Joe Johnston. Relativity Media, 2010. 10 John Landis, Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2011), 182. 11 Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves, 107-114. 12 Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves, 107-115. 13 T.A. Fahy, “Lycanthropy: a Review,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 82 (1989): 37-39. 14 Caroline Oates, “Metamorphosis and Lycanthropy in Franche-Comté, 1521–1643,” Zone 3: Fragments for a History of the Human Body (1989): 305-363. 15 Michèle Simonsen, “Danish Werewolves between Beliefs and Narratives,” Fabula 51, 3/4 (2010): 225-234. 16 Montague Summers, The Werewolf in Lore and Legend (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2003), 116. 8 9

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The earliest werewolf film was based on a story with equally varied remedies. The Werewolf was an eighteen-minute silent film inspired by “The Werwolves,” a short story by Honoré Beaugrand (1848-1906) first published in 1898. If the film (now lost) holds true to the story, there is no silver or moon imagery in it. While the werewolves of Beaugrand’s story were vulnerable to bullets, they were lead bullets that had crosses cut into them. Other remedies were four-leafed clovers, or holy water, or a cross-shaped wound in the foreheads of the afflicted. While silver imagery does not appear in werewolf films until 1941, the earliest extant link between lycanthropy and the moon in film appears in Werewolf of London.17 In this film, Dr. Glendon is a botanist bitten by a werewolf during the full moon. This occurs while he is searching Tibet for the rare (and fictional) “Mariphasa lumina lupina, the phosphorescent wolf flower.” This flower only blooms by moonlight, and can be used as an antidote for lycanthropy, as Glendon confirms when he researches the condition: Transvection from man to werewolf occurs between the hours of nine and ten at the full of the moon. The essence of the mariphasa blossom squeezed into the wrist through the thorn at the base of the stem is the only preventative known to man.18 He is able to coax the flower to bloom through the use of artificial moonlight, but this light is also capable of causing his own symptoms to worsen. When Glendon holds his hands under the light, he sees them become hairier and hairier until he removes them from the light, after which they resume their normal appearance. The use of moonlight in Werewolf of London thus has two characteristics: it can prompt transformation, and that transformation always occurs under the full moon. The fact that artificial moonlight causes partial transformation is an interesting one, and suggests that moonlight is required to be of a particular strength before transformation is triggered. Thus a crescent moon might not provide adequate stimulus, while an artificial light source placed just above any exposed flesh may well be sufficient.

Werewolf of London. Directed by Stuart Walker. Universal Pictures, 1935. The named flower is especially important, as further described in the film: “Unless this rare flower is used the werewolf must kill at least one human being each night of the full moon or become permanently afflicted.” 17 18

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The Wolf Man (1941) The second werewolf film from Universal Pictures, following the less successful Werewolf of London, The Wolf Man19 is in many ways the modern archetypal source of the present-day werewolf mythos. The infection and transformation of Larry Talbot, the corruption of his family and romantic ties, is inextricably linked to both the moon and the presence of silver. It is the combination of these two factors that resonates through the subsequent decades of werewolf narrative. Before asking ourselves why this is so, it is useful to briefly cover the use of these two symbols in this film. In fairness, The Wolf Man lacks the prevailing moon imagery found in Werewolf of London. There it is strongly emphasised, while The Wolf Man restricts lunar influence to a rhyme, repeated throughout the film: Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright. Although this references the autumn rather than the full moon, the lunar influence is clear: transformation into a werewolf is linked to the moon. (It should be noted that when this famous couplet is repeated in later werewolf films, the end of the second line is often changed to “and the moon is full and bright” thus adjusting the original autumn moon image.) More prominent, and featured for the first time in any werewolf film, is the use of silver as a means of defeating a werewolf. The fortune-teller Maleva is quite specific about this: “A werewolf can be killed only with a silver bullet or a silver knife. Or a stick with a silver handle.” And she should know – her son Bela is a werewolf, and he is the one who, in wolf form, infects Talbot by biting him. Talbot then kills the werewolf by smashing its skull with a silver-topped cane. This cane is the most important prop of the film. Not only does Talbot kill Bela with it, but he is in turn killed with it, when his own werewolf form attacks his father and Sir John Talbot uses the cane to unknowingly beat his son to death. Moreover, the cane’s silver head is in the shape of a wolf, and it is marked with a pentagram – “the sign of the werewolf.” One presumes that the shape and the carving are ornamental eccentricities designed to give visual emphasis to the film’s theme, because Maleva at no point indicates that anything but silver is necessary. It might be difficult, after all, to carve pentagrams onto a silver bullet, or to stab someone with a blade having the

19

The Wolf Man. Directed by George Waggner. Universal Pictures, 1941.

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rather awkward shape of a wolf. No – it is silver that is the defining and necessary characteristic of an effective weapon, and The Wolf Man so effectively defined that necessity that silver is, to this day, the commonest method of dispatch in contemporary werewolf lore. The influence of both silver and the moon in The Wolf Man has been enormous – but is this not an influence that can be satisfactorily explained by the excellence of the film itself? This is not an unusual phenomenon. A widely accessible narrative is arguably capable of leaving a greater cultural footprint than its less accessible source material. Given that Universal Pictures capitalized on the success of The Wolf Man with a series of sequels, the regular repetition of the moon and silver symbolism may have embedded this particular interpretation in the culture of the time, to the detriment of alternate narratives. Why this particular symbolism, however? If it is simply that the influence of this one specific film, The Wolf Man, defined the subsequent mythology, why was it not pentagrams and wolfbane that caught the public imagination? Or the pairing of silver and pentagrams, or that of the moon and wolfbane? Why not, for that matter, the return of the mariphasa flowers from the first Universal Pictures effort, the Werewolf of London? It should be noted that wolfbane (more frequently known as wolf’s bane, otherwise known as aconite or monkshood) did make a return in 1943 in the first sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.20 Larry Talbot’s coffin is packed with it, and when his remains are disturbed by grave robbers, they remove the monkshood and leave his body exposed to the light of a full moon, causing resurrection. And monkshood has indeed been noted in other werewolf films (most notably the 2000 film Ginger Snaps21) but it has a distinctly second-tier association in the minds of horror film-goers, if they recognize the association at all. As a symbol of lycanthropy, it is heavily overshadowed by the full moon and silver. Why is this? What was it about the pairing of the full moon and the presence of silver that so caught at audience imagination? Why, of all the potential symbolisms of lycanthropy, did these two stand so far above the rest? If it is The Wolf Man that first brought this paired symbolism to the forefront of popular thought, it is to The Wolf Man as well that we must look for further clues. These can be found primarily in the poem quoted above. Written by

20 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Directed by Roy William Neill. Universal Pictures, 1943. 21 Ginger Snaps. Directed by John Fawcett. Copperheart Entertainment, 2000.

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Curt Siodmak specifically for the film – The Wolf Man was his script – the couplet was not, despite popular belief, a historical snippet of rhyme. (Perhaps this belief gave verisimilitude to the mythology, but if so, it is a verisimilitude that would have privileged wolfbane and the moon over any silver imagery.) The poem refers to a man who is “pure in heart” indicating that even the good are subject to the infection of a werewolf bite. No matter their previous character, the corruption associated with that infection is such that a person who is bitten, and subsequently transformed, loses all sense of morality. Larry Talbot, apparently a good man in other respects, attacks not only Gwen, his love interest, but also his father. When transformed back into his human self, his memories of the time he spent as a ravening beast are distant and hazy, and he is horrified at the suspicion of what he has – or might – become. (Indeed the subject of the immediate sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, is Talbot’s unbearable misery at his condition, at the risk he poses to others, and his futile search for a cure.) “Pure in Heart” – and Pure in Body This duality between man and beast, between a rational and empathetic creature and one defined by brutishness and appetite, frequently lends lycanthropy to psychological explanation. Wolf Blood (1925)22 has a main character, Dick Bannister, who believes that he has become a werewolf after an emergency blood transfusion from a wolf. There is no physical change, however – the effects are purely psychological, a result of hallucination and superstition. Many characters perceive lycanthropy to be a result of mental illness. This isn’t a surprising perspective: the advances of medical science have often given alternate – and more accurate – results than the previous supernatural malady believed to be inflicted on the sufferer.23,24,25 Extreme sensitivity to sunlight, for instance, can be the result of the genetically-influenced

Wolf Blood. Directed by George Chesebro and Bruce Mitchell. Ryan Brothers Productions, 1925. 23 Patrick G. Coll, Geraldine O'Sullivan, and Patrick J. Browne, “Lycanthropy lives on,” The British Journal of Psychiatry 147, no. 2 (1985): 201-202. 24 Miles E. Drake, “Medical and neuropsychiatric aspects of lycanthropy,” Journal of Medical Humanities 13, no. 1 (1992): 5-15. 25 Paul E. Keck, Harrison G. Pope, James I. Hudson, Susan L. McElroy, and Aaron R. Kulick, “Lycanthropy: alive and well in the twentieth century,” Psychological Medicine 18, no. 1 (1988): 113-120. 22

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condition of porphyria rather than vampirism or lycanthropy26. A person suffering from schizophrenia might once have been considered to be the victim of a possession. Excessive hair growth may be attributed to hypertrichosis (also known as werewolf syndrome). Outside of these symptoms, an individual who exhibits the behavior of a wolf might plausibly do so as a result of mental illness rather than supernatural malady. Certainly, there is historical evidence for such judgements.27 James VI considered a selfproclaimed werewolf to be suffering from hallucinations induced by melancholy.28 Baring-Gould describes trials in centuries past where those accused of being werewolves were burned or otherwise executed, but he also describes trials where the accused was acknowledged by the court as being insane rather than an agent of the supernatural.29 One such case was Jacques Roulet, tried in Angers in 1598 for the murder of a 15-year-old boy. Roulet was found near the corpse, clearly having fed upon the child, and he claimed an apparently sincere belief that he was a werewolf, exhibiting a number of strange behaviours and disordered thinking. Upon appeal, he was sentenced to an asylum for the insane – as, no doubt, he was. If sixteenth-century judgements were capable of occasionally allowing for the possibility of madness over monstrosity, then it is unsurprising that characters firmly placed in the twentieth century may do likewise. Dr. Glendon, for instance, believes – prior to evidence of his own lycanthropy – that the condition is an “old wives’ tale” and a bit of “mediaeval unpleasantness.”30 He is determined in his scepticism: “I gave up my belief in goblins, witches, personal devils and werewolves at the age of six.”31 And Sir John Talbot, father of the unfortunate Larry in The Wolf Man, also considers werewolves to be legendary, “...but like most legends it must have some basis in fact. It’s probably an ancient explanation of the dual personality in each of us.”32 He considers lycanthropy “a technical expression for something very simple. The good and evil in every

L. Illis, “On porphyria and the aetiology of werewolves,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 57 (1964): 25-6. 27 Nadine Metzger, “Battling Demons with Medical Authority: Werewolves, Physicians, and Rationalization,” History of Psychiatry 24, no. 3 (2013): 341-355. 28 Rita Voltmer, “The Judge’s Lore? The Politico-Religious Concept of Metamorphosis in the Peripheries of Western Europe,” in Werewolf Histories, ed. Willem de Blécourt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 169. 29 Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves, 96-99. 30 Werewolf of London, 1935. 31 Ibid. 32 The Wolf Man, 1941. 26

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man’s soul. In this case, evil takes the shape of an animal.”33 Again, this is not uncommon. Every culture associates animals with particular characteristics – someone may be described as being cunning as a fox, for instance, or as gossipy as a magpie, or as mad as a March hare. Personal identification with a werewolf, by someone intensely troubled by his or her own darker instincts, is not entirely unbelievable – particularly if that person is in a suggestible state of mind caused by superstitious belief or mental illness. Yet for all the rational explanation of modern-day science, mental illness is rarely the answer in a werewolf film. For the most part, it lacks the dramatic value of an on-scene transformation: the shocking close-ups of stretching muzzles, of popping joints, the hair growth and the unmistakeable predatory signs of teeth and claws. A werewolf film without special effects? There hardly seems a point... Werewolves in films are primarily treated as a genuine phenomenon involving the physical transformation between man and beast. Rarely is it a desirable state. Some werewolves, particularly those who are tied into an existing social structure of other werewolves, such as the community portrayed in The Howling34 (1981), can embrace the lifestyle and may come to take pride in it. For the rest, the degeneration of mental ability and of emotional ties, alongside the development of bestial patterns of behaviour, prioritise a narrative of monstrosity. In these films, the infection and corruption of an individual – the implicit acknowledgement in the suspension of disbelief that an audience member could be next – frequently make the transformation a horror, a tragedy, and a misery. It is such a hideous state, in fact, that the infected are often grateful for death in that it relieves them of the burden of their condition. Dr. Glendon is shot while in werewolf form, and his human mind returns as he dies. With his last words, he is able to thank the detective who shot him, as that act has prevented the continuation of his monstrous, murderous existence. And in the 2010 remake of The Wolfman,35 Larry Talbot also thanks Gwen for shooting him with a silver bullet, allowing him to die. In the 2014 film Late Phases,36 the unstable werewolf Griffin kills his local priest, whom he genuinely loves, because of that love. “It’s an act of mercy,”37, he says, having been so unmerciful to other neighbours that he allowed them to live after he Ibid. The Howling. Directed by Joe Dante. Embassy Pictures, 1981. 35 The Wolfman. Directed by Joe Johnston. Relativity Media, 2010. 36 Late Phases. Directed by Adrián García Bogliano. Dark Sky Films, 2014. 37 Ibid. 33 34

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bit them, thus sentencing them to his own miserable life. The probability of an approaching death – even an approaching execution – is something that can be deeply felt by werewolves. In An American Werewolf in London, the infected David is forced to discuss how best he should kill himself to prevent further harm to others. Similarly, “Everything I look at goes silver bullet, in a gun, to my head, the end,” despairs Brigitte in Ginger Snaps, and Brett Sullivan, director of the sequel Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed,38 states that “if Brigitte knew she was going to eventually start attacking and killing others, she would take the bullet herself.”39 No matter how well-meaning the human side, or how innocent, the werewolf, once awoken, is uncontrollable. It is not enough to be pure in heart. It is the purity of the body that werewolf films are concerned with: the degradation and corruption of the individual; the fleshy abomination that results from transformation; the blood impurity which results from the mixture of man and wolf. Indeed Craig comments that “Werewolf cinema’s use of the origin story has not expanded beyond three primary templates in the seventy-plus years such films have been produced.”40 The templates he refers to are a transformation in the form of a bite, a curse, or a serum – all means of corrupting the flesh through the external interference of an already corrupt creature (an existing werewolf, an infected ancestor, a mad and unethical scientist). But how does this acknowledged impurity find itself reflected in the symbols of the typical, modern-day werewolf mythos? What has the full moon and silver got to do with this particular form of creature horror? Signs of Recognition, Signs of Remedy As stated above, two of the major turning points in many werewolf films are the recognition of lycanthropy as a genuine physical phenomenon, where the main character recognizes that they are turning into a werewolf, or that someone close to them is turning into a werewolf; and the attempt at remedy. The first is often associated with the moon and the onset of transformation – the connection between the moon and transformative, cyclical change being

38 Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed. Directed by Brett Sullivan. Copperheart Entertainment, 2004. 39 Xavier Mendik, "Menstrual meanings: Brett Sullivan discusses werewolves, hormonal horror & the Ginger Snaps audience research project," Film International 4.3 (2006), 81. 40 J. Robert Craig, "Howling at the Moon: The Origin Story in Werewolf Cinema," Popular Culture Review 17.1 (2006), 37-38.

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painfully obvious – while the second frequently ends with a silver bullet (or other silver weaponry). Silver is symbolically associated with purity.41 This is not the element’s only symbolic meaning, but it is the one most apt to its appearance in the werewolf mythos. It has a well-documented history in medicine of being used as a purifying agent, particularly useful against infection.42,43 A werewolf is, almost by definition, an impure creation: an amalgamation of beast and human to terrible effect. It is the result, in the filmed narratives, of some sort of infection introduced into the human body by a werewolf bite, or a serum, or a blood transfusion. The silver, notably, acts as antidote. It purifies the corrupted flesh, it counteracts the contaminated blood. It is no accident that a werewolf killed with silver weaponry so frequently turns back into its human form after it is shot or stabbed or bludgeoned. The presence of silver is a restorative – crudely put, once the corrupted creature is shot with a purity bullet, the original form reasserts itself. In killing the contaminated werewolf, the human victim is restored to its own pure and uninfected state. Silver is also symbolic of the moon. The two objects are paired – indeed, one of the ancient alchemical symbols for silver is the alchemical symbol for the moon. This dual symbolism encourages something of a commutative symbolic belief, in that if silver is associated with purity and silver is associated with the moon, then the moon can also be said to be linked, symbolically, with purity. This, perhaps, is therefore where the moment of recognition comes into play. Light is necessary for sight. Moonlight may not have the brightness of sunlight, but the associations with purity might allow a symbolic recognition of the opposite. Werewolf films frequently show the transformation of the afflicted in the light of the moon – but this is not merely a trigger for transformation. Crucially, for a film audience, the presence of moonlight allows members of that audience to see the werewolf, and it is in this light (no pun intended) that the cinematic werewolf differs from the historical mythos. Speaking of these historical and mythic sources, de Blécourt comments that

41 Steven Olderr, Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012), 184. 42 J. Wesley Alexander, “History of the Medical Use of Silver,” Surgical Infections 10, 3 (2009), 289-292 43 Brian Owens, “Silver makes antibiotics thousands of times more effective,” Nature News 19 (2013).

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“there is only a very rare story in which the moon enables somebody to observe a werewolf. The full ‘werewolf moon’ has entered twentieth-century consciousness primarily through werewolf films.”44 Note that an infected person can still be described as a werewolf whether they are in human or canine form. A werewolf still passes for human between full moons, or in the daylight. It is only the presence of moonlight that finally proves contamination to the viewer. This is the case whether or not the moonlight is artificial or natural, but the link to the full moon may be an indication of strength. The stronger the moonlight, the greater the purity of its light, and the greater the subsequent potential to see impurity will be. Pure light reveals the impure, and pure metal remedies it. This may be the link between the moonlight and silver pairing that has become so fundamental to the modern werewolf mythos. Even if audience members don’t consciously consider the symbolism of their favourite movies, it arguably sinks in regardless. So much of culture is symbolic that the recognition of such sits like bedrock in the unconscious, passively influential. This symbolic connection may explain why the classic werewolf pairing is the moon and silver, rather than the moon and the mariphasa flower, for instance, or silver and monkshood. There is a symbolic resonance between the two that is more effective than that in either of the other potential pairings. Given that werewolves are essentially studies in duality, in the tension between man and beast, a paired set of secondary symbols is more evocative than having just the moon, or the moon and the monkshood and the flower. But if it explains the pairing, it does not explain the timing of it. Recall that silver, though present in the wider werewolf mythos, is by no means universal. Recall also that lunar influence over historic lycanthropy narratives is also not universal. Its presence in the werewolf legends of classical antiquity is minimal,45 for example, as is the case in the Norse sagas.46,47 There are many werewolf tales in myth and folklore that include neither element, such

44 Willem de Blécourt, “The Differentiated Werewolf: An Introduction to Cluster Methodology,” in Werewolf Histories, ed. Willem de Blécourt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 3. 45 Leslie A. Sconduto, Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity through the Renaissance (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008), 7-14. 46 Christa Agnes Tuczay, “Into the Wild – Old Norse Stories of Animal Men,” in Werewolf Histories, ed. Willem de Blécourt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 61-82. 47 H.R. Ellis Davidson, “Shape-changing in the Old Norse Sagas,” A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture, ed. Charlotte F. Otten (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 142-160.

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as the Breton folk tale “Bisclavret”, which tells of a clothes-stealing wife, who by her theft condemns her werewolf husband to permanent wolf form48,49 in a narrative more reminiscent of the traditional selkie stories than what presentday audiences would consider typical werewolf mythos. Yet, in the hypothetical experiment described at the beginning of this chapter, the popular contemporary response to “When do you see a werewolf?” and “How do you kill it?” has assumed an almost universal coherency. Werewolves turn at the full moon. They are killed by silver. When was it that this pairing turned from potential to popular? It is difficult not to see The Wolf Man as a turning point. Its treatment of the werewolf myth was so intertwined with silver and the moon that both symbols are a fundamental part of its narrative. Yet the influence of the moon in werewolf films was instigated several years earlier, in The Werewolf of London. Recognition came before remedy – although Glendon was convinced of his own corruption by moonlight, he was ultimately killed with ordinary bullets. It is only in the next (chronological) werewolf film that Larry Talbot was killed with silver, transforming back into human form once his wolf aspect was dead. If these films were the beginning of the tipping point, they occurred in 1935 and 1941 respectively – in the run-up to, and during, the greatest, most destructive conflict of the twentieth century. That silver and the full moon, both symbols of purity, are embedded into the werewolf mythos – and even given symbolic primacy there – has a marked correlation with the influence of blood purity ideals that caused such misery and terror in World War II. Can it be said, however, that this connection was deliberate? Did Siodmak, for one, make a conscious effort to link pure heart and pure blood, to illuminate the lack with moonlight and to eliminate it through silver? Could it just have been a perfect storm of symbolism? Have the moon and silver become so embedded in contemporary werewolf narratives because the audiences of the 1930s and 1940s recognized, on some level, the applicability of the horror on the screen to the horror on the battlefield? Is this the resonance that linked silver and the moon to identity and transformation in the minds of werewolf fans forever? It should be noted here that using silver as a weapon against a werewolf was becoming popular in 1930s pulp magazines50 – prior to the appearance of The Wolf Man. It is certainly possible that the film was influenced by the literature, Kirby Flower Smith, “An historical study of the werwolf in literature,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (1894), 12-13. 49 S.K. Robisch, Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2009), 221-222. 50 Bourgault du Coudray, The Curse of the Werewolf, 77. 48

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yet given the dates, is it also possible that both literature and film were influenced by a public debate on biological purity? A subsequent issue, if the date correlation is accepted as having value, is whether the typical werewolf narrative as we understand it today can be parsed into a commentary on eugenics and blood purity. Is the perception of a mixed or “inferior” race infringing upon the ranks of the pure really such a ravening threat? And is extermination, the resumption of purity, really necessary to preserve social (biological, cultural, political) order? Few films really explore this potential parallel. Victims of the Nazi eugenic ideals included vast numbers of disabled people, as well as members of the Jewish and Romani ethnic groups, homosexuals, and other populations selected for extermination for primarily “biological” reasons of racial purity. Eugenics as the Nazis practised it was the deliberate genocide of all people deemed to be biologically inferior. It relied upon the idea that some races were genetically superior to others, and at least in some cases, genetic purity was deemed proportional. The Nuremburg Laws of 1935 classified Jewish and Romani individuals respectively, according to, among other things, the blood status of their grandparents.51 This was, of course, arrant nonsense, the bad science and worse morality of the National Socialist regime. The purpose of this chapter is not to suggest, for example, that the modern werewolf narrative is an appropriate metaphor for the Jewish experience of WWII (either collective, or from specific individuals). The aim is to illustrate the fact that eugenics was very much in the public eye during the production of several key werewolf films of the 1930s-1940s. It is reasonable to suppose that similar thematic elements may have – however unconsciously – been present in both the production and reception of these films. This focus on the supposedly impure or degenerate is explored to particularly nasty effect in two different ways in The Mad Monster52 (1942). In this film, Dr. Cameron induces lycanthropy in his test subject Petro by injecting him with a serum derived from wolf blood. Petro’s biology is therefore contaminated by the serum; he becomes a werewolf, literally impure. And this impurity is underlined by eugenic idealism, for Petro, who is Dr. Cameron’s gardener, is mentally handicapped. He can neither understand nor consent to being experimented on. To Cameron, this makes Petro the perfect subject – both human enough to test the serum on, and yet not quite

51 Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 47. 52 The Mad Monster. Directed by Sam Newfield. Sigmund Neufeld Productions, 1942.

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human enough to merit the ethical consideration that would be given to a person of normal intelligence. Petro, in fact, is treated very much as Dr. Cameron treats his lab animals. There are uncomfortable visuals in the laboratory, with wolves trapped and whining in their cages, and Petro alongside, strapped to a bed and experimented upon. Cameron even says to the wolves, upon their distressed howling, “Yes, I know you’d like to join your brothers outside and howl at the moon. But you’re serving a much better purpose. Yes, you’re serving science through me” and such is his attitude to Petro. Both test subjects are able to be experimented on because they are both perceived to be inferior biological specimens. It is difficult now, knowing the date and context of this film, to look at Cameron – the true mad monster of the title – and not see a small-time version of Dr. Mengele. Even when Petro is turned into a wolf he is still perceived, by Cameron, as being less than human: “He’s no longer human, he’s a wolf: snarling, ferocious, lusting for the kill .... My catalytic agent has brought about a complete transition from man to wolf.” Contamination has caused transformation, and the species boundary is broken. Werewolves exist in dual states – the infected are capable of being both human and canine, and they sometimes retain the humanoid biped form (albeit much hairier, with augmented teeth and nails) in their werewolf state, even if the mental ability is compromised and made more bestial. This causes the identity of the werewolf to exist in flux. They are neither fully human nor fully wolf – contamination has sent them to inhabit the biological borderlands. Their blood is literally tainted; they are impure in their very substance. This recognition of impurity is frequently recognized within werewolf narratives. In The Mad Monster, for instance, a farmer terrorized by Petro’s nocturnal predations claims that “I [have] never seen anything so awful in my life!... Something took after me down in the swamp ... I don’t know whether it was a man or beast or old Satan himself.” And Professor Blaine, one of the former colleagues of Dr. Cameron, says that “Mingling the blood of man and beast is downright sacrilege!” The Mad Monster is far from the only werewolf film to take this attitude. In The Werewolf of London, for instance, Dr. Yogami states that the werewolf “is neither man nor wolf, but a Satanic creature with the worst qualities of both!” Transformation into a werewolf is a sign of biological regression in The Howling II53 (1985), where the werewolf hunter Stefan describes the act of transformation as a time when “The process of evolution is reversed.”

53

The Howling II. Directed by Phillipe Mora. Hemdale Film Corporation, 1985.

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Werewolves are “worse than cock-a-roaches” (The Howling). They are filthy, degenerate, corrupt. “You killed your own sister?” Brigitte is asked in Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed54 (2004). “There wasn’t much of Ginger left in what I killed,” she replies. Ginger had been twisted, deformed... transformed into something bestial and contaminated. It is a contamination that many find repulsive and terrifying. And like so many repulsive and terrifying things, its distance from the norm can cause others to diminish it. A werewolf may be stronger and faster than either a human or a wolf, but it is still subhuman, still something to be destroyed as inimical to the established biological order. It is still frequently perceived as a lesser species requiring extermination. Even other supernatural beings, other contaminated beings, can look down upon werewolves as being biologically inferior. Underworld55 (2003) develops a world where werewolves are kept as a slave race by vampires. Despite the fact that the vampires and Lycans share a common ancestor, the aristocratic vampires are deeply conscious of werewolf inferiority and the need to prevent miscegenation. When a vampire woman is impregnated by a Lycan, she is burnt alive by her own father. “I loved my daughter. But the abomination growing in her womb was a betrayal of me and of the coven! I did what was necessary to protect the species.” Any biological rapprochement between the two species is “heresy” and even working with a Lycan causes the vampire Selene to be accused of being “tainted by an animal.” Silver is the weapon of choice for exterminating the Lycans, and the vampires use it ruthlessly. Lycans are, after all, “animals.” Yet perhaps the most sympathetic – certainly the most thoughtful – character of Underworld is a Lycan. Lucian is a late example of a shift in werewolf characterization. While early werewolf films depicted their monsters as monsters, or as tragic victims of their own biology, there slowly developed the possibility of pride. As mentioned above, this was often linked to established lycanthrope communities, where members could gain a sense of belonging and of understanding. They could essentially construct a community where biological impurity was valued. That impurity becomes an asset within the community, but is still perceived as a threat from without; hence, the continuation of the moon and silver imagery as a narrative reminder of werewolf recognition and destruction. It is notable, however, that

54 Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed. Directed by Brett Sullivan. Copperheart Entertainment, 2004. 55 Underworld. Directed by Len Wiseman. Lakeshore Entertainment, 2003.

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in films like Underworld the influence of the purity symbols can be lessened. Silver bullets may be extracted by other community members, allowing the basic biological impurity to reassert itself and allowing the injured werewolf to heal. Similarly, Selene comments that “the moon no longer held her sway. Older, more powerful Lycans were now able to change at will.” These Lycans were no longer dependent on – or vulnerable to – the moon, and therefore they had the ability to control when or if others saw their impurities. They are a specific refutation of the importance of eugenics. The symbols of biological purity become less strong as biological impurity, as blood impurity, comes to be seen as advantageous. Conclusion Contemporary perceptions of werewolves are almost always intertwined with silver weaponry. This is not a traditional universal remedy. Taken as a body of literature, the use of silver is heavily emphasized in only the modern versions of werewolf canon, specifically those of or influenced by film. Yet why has silver become so widely linked with modern werewolves while other aspects of the historical mythology have not? The answer may lie in a second, also primarily modern link: that which exists between werewolves and the full moon. Silver has been historically perceived as a lunar metal symbolizing purity. The relationship between silver and the moon reflects that typified by the werewolf: it is a relationship characterized by duality. This duality is frequently seen in the interaction of the two pairs: man and beast can only be seen to coexist at the full moon, while silver is only an effective antidote to contamination when the two, man and beast, are coexisting. It is the werewolf films made in the shadow of World War II (for example the 1941 film The Wolf Man) that really embedded silver and moon imagery into the modern popular culture of werewolves. The idea of racial purity was particularly significant at that time, and audience awareness of this may have underlined the assumption of the werewolf as intrinsically impure, intrinsically corrupt. This underlying idea of purity may have lost ground since the days of concentration camps, and rightly so, but the unconscious equation of symbolism may have become so entrenched in the popular consciousness that its imprints remain in the modern mythological constancy of these two symbols. While the werewolf consists of two contradictory, archetypal impulses confined within a single body – the intelligence of man and the bestial nature of the wolf – the silver moon consists of the conflicting impulses of purity and change. The moon is a metamorphic symbol, but metamorphosis can be read

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as impurity – specifically the contaminated impurity of form. Alone, a man or a wolf may inhabit an ideal form of their type, but together they represent a corrupted individual that is neither man nor beast. Only by inserting a purifying influence – such as a silver bullet – into the corrupted body of opposites can the original form be restored. Works Cited Alexander, J. Wesley. “History of the Medical Use of Silver.” Surgical Infections. 10, 3 (2009): 289-292. Baring-Gould, Sabine. The Book of Werewolves. London: Senate, 1995. Bourgault du Coudray, Chantal. The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror, and the Beast Within. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2006. Burleigh, Michael, and Wolfgang Wippermann. The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Coll, Patrick G., Geraldine O'Sullivan, and Patrick J. Browne. “Lycanthropy lives on.” The British Journal of Psychiatry 147, no. 2 (1985): 201-202. Craig, J. Robert. “Howling at the Moon: The Origin Story in Werewolf Cinema.” Popular Culture Review 17.1 (2006): 31-40. de Blécourt, Willem. “The Differentiated Werewolf: An Introduction to Cluster Methodology.” In Werewolf Histories, edited by Willem de Blécourt, 1-24. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Donecker, Stefan. “The Werewolves of Livonia: Lycanthropy and ShapeChanging in Scholarly Texts, 1550–1720.” Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural 1, 2 (2012): 289-322. Drake, Miles E. “Medical and neuropsychiatric aspects of lycanthropy.” Journal of Medical Humanities 13, no. 1 (1992): 5-15. Ellis Davidson, H.R. “Shape-changing in the Old Norse Sagas.” In A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture, edited by Charlotte F. Otten, 142-160. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Fahy, T.A. “Lycanthropy: a Review.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 82 (1989): 37-39. Illis, L. “On porphyria and the aetiology of werwolves.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine. 57 (1964): 23-6. Keck, Paul E., Harrison G. Pope, James I. Hudson, Susan L. McElroy, and Aaron R. Kulick. “Lycanthropy: alive and well in the twentieth century.” Psychological Medicine 18, no. 1 (1988): 113-120. Landis, John. Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2011. Lawrence, Elizabeth A. "Werewolves in Psyche and Cinema: Man-beast Transformation and Paradox." The Journal of American Culture 19.3 (1996): 103-112. Mendik, Xavier. "Menstrual meanings: Brett Sullivan discusses werewolves, hormonal horror & the Ginger Snaps audience research project." Film International 4.3 (2006): 78-83.

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Metzger, Nadine. “Battling Demons with Medical Authority: Werewolves, Physicians, and Rationalization,” History of Psychiatry 24, no. 3 (2013): 341355. Oates, Caroline. "Metamorphosis and Lycanthropy in Franche-Comté, 1521– 1643." Zone 3: Fragments for a History of the Human Body (1989): 305-363. Olderr, Steven. Symbolism: A Comprehensive Dictionary. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012. Owens, Brian. “Silver makes antibiotics thousands of times more effective,” Nature News 19 (2013). Robisch, S.K. Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2009. Sconduto, Leslie A. Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity through the Renaissance. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008. Senn, Bryan. The Werewolf Filmography: 300+ Movies. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2017. Simonsen, Michèle. “Danish Werewolves between Beliefs and Narratives.” Fabula 51.3/4 (2010): 225-234. Smith, Kirby Flower. “An historical study of the werwolf in literature.” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (1894): 1-42. Summers, Montague. The Werewolf in Lore and Legend. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2003. Tuczay, Christa Agnes. “Into the Wild – Old Norse Stories of Animal Men.” In Werewolf Histories, edited by Willem de Blécourt, 61-82. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Voltmer, Rita. “The Judge’s Lore? The Politico-Religious Concept of Metamorphosis in the Peripheries of Western Europe.” In Werewolf Histories, edited by Willem de Blécourt, 159-184. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Films Cited The Werewolf. Directed by Henry MacRae. Bison Motion Pictures, 1913. Wolf Blood. Directed by George Chesebro and Bruce Mitchell. Ryan Brothers Productions, 1925. Werewolf of London. Directed by Stuart Walker. Universal Pictures, 1935. The Wolf Man. Directed by George Waggner. Universal Pictures, 1941. The Mad Monster. Directed by Sam Newfield. Sigmund Neufeld Productions, 1942. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Directed by Roy William Neill. Universal Pictures, 1943. An American Werewolf in London. Directed by John Landis. PolyGram Pictures, 1981. The Howling. Directed by Joe Dante. Embassy Pictures, 1981. The Howling II. Directed by Phillipe Mora. Hemdale Film Corporation, 1985. Ginger Snaps. Directed by John Fawcett. Copperheart Entertainment, 2000.

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Underworld. Directed by Len Wiseman. Lakeshore Entertainment, 2003. Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed. Directed by Brett Sullivan. Copperheart Entertainment, 2004. The Wolfman. Directed by Joe Johnston. Relativity Media, 2010. Late Phases. Directed by Adrián García Bogliano. Dark Sky Films, 2014.

Chapter 7

Romance as a Panacea and a New Generation of Intellectual Zombies in Warm Bodies and iZombie Tatiana Prorokova

Introduction: A Brief History of the Zombie Film The zombie movie genre has a rather long and rich history. In various contexts, zombies have always been depicted as a threat to humanity, while their presence unambiguously determined an apocalyptic setting. Although a zombie has become one of the most popular monsters specifically in the twenty-first-century cinema, it is significant to trace the history of the zombie film in general in order to understand – as this chapter proposes – a significant shift in the recent portrayal of a zombie on screen. The word “zombie” comes from one of the West African tribal languages and originally sounds either like ndzumbi (“the cadaver of the deceased”) or nzambi (“spirit of a dead person”). It is important to note, that a zombie is “one of the few monsters that originate[d] from a non-Gothic, non-European tradition.” The zombie phenomenon was brought closer to the West by slaves, who were forcefully displaced from West Africa to Haiti. For a long time, it was only part of local folklore, until it moved into pop culture, “without first being established in literature.”1 William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1929), where the author described his travel to Haiti, with a particular stress on Haitian Voudou, is arguably considered the first account on a zombie figure in Western popular culture. The first staged performance about zombies was Kenneth Webb’s Zombie (1932). In the same year, Victor Halperin released White Zombie and at

Shawn McIntosh, “The Evolution of the Zombie: The Monster That Keeps Coming Back,” in Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, ed. Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008), 1-2.

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that time the history of the zombie film began.2 After that, zombies invaded cinemas, and thus the zombie genre emerged. To name just some of the most iconic zombie films and illustrate that films about these monsters were, indeed, released every decade in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it is worth mentioning Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Edward D. Wood Jr.’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead (1984), Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992), Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland (2009), and Marc Forster’s World War Z (2013). Zombie stories were even translated into a serial mode, and such TV series as The Walking Dead (2010-) and iZombie (2015-) became arguably the most popular ones among the fans of the zombie apocalypse. While, at first glance, one might not consider the zombie film a serious genre, such an opinion is undoubtedly wrong. Indeed, cinematic portrayals of a zombie do not only constantly deal with such complex problems as race, gender, sexuality, and power, but they also juxtapose the issues of life and death, questioning the (un)dead humanity that is inherent in zombies. In connection with that, the significant questions that arise are: Who are zombies – dead humans or living monsters? And what side prevails in these creatures – humanity or monstrosity? Zombie Hybridity: From Killing Monsters to Loving Humans? A zombie is a rather equivocal figure and in order to be able to interpret its various depictions in film, it is important to understand who and what a zombie really is. Scholars provide various definitions of this figure. Some claim that it is “a human being without consciousness,”3 others contend that a zombie is “a person buried and then resurrected by a conjurer.”4 Yet others provide a more detailed interpretation, stating that a zombie is “a biologically definable, animated being occupying a human host, with a desire to eat human flesh.”5 One can also single out specific features that are characteristic of a zombie, namely that it “desire[s] human flesh,” it “cannot be killed unless [its] brain is destroyed,” and “[a]ny human being bitten by a zombie will inevitably become a zombie.”6 From these descriptions, it is clear that a

Ibid., 4. Daniel W. Drezner, Theories of International Politics and Zombies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 21. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 22. 2 3

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zombie is a monstrous character, whose evil nature is mainly determined by its endless hunger and craving for the human flesh. One can speculate that a zombie even belongs to the supernatural world because it is a resurrected human, so some kind of magic might be involved. However, the fact that it used to be a human being and did not obtain any extra attributes or powers during the process of transformation (like, for example, a vampire) does not allow one to fully consider a zombie to be a part of the supernatural. A zombie visually remains a human and it is only its dehumanized nature, and particularly the desire to eat the human brain, as most of the zombie films suggest, that distinguishes a zombie from any human being. In his fictional account about zombies, Roger Ma succinctly defines the main goals of a zombie’s existence as “move, hunt, and feed.”7 This is also what cultural studies scholars notice about a zombie. Kim Paffenroth, for example, argues that zombies do not have “human minds,” they are usually “not under control of someone” (primarily with the exception of the very first zombie characters), they are “almost always slow, shuffling, uncoordinated creatures,” and they have no mental abilities, i.e., they are “usually completely imbecilic, incapable of making plans, coordinating their attacks, or learning from their mistakes.”8 From this description, it is apparent that the image of a zombie that has been created on screen overtly demonstrates that a zombie both scares (as it symbolizes the direct threat to human existence) and causes aversion (particularly because of its adherence to cannibalism). It is, therefore, obvious that unlike other supernatural beings, like, for example, vampires and werewolves, zombies cannot lead a proper life (again, due to the mental damage), i.e., the life that is similar to that of human beings. Because zombie brains are infected/dead, they cannot experience emotions and, hence, do not develop feelings for anyone: they do not have a family or friends. Unlike werewolves and vampires, zombies cannot get romantically involved or, as Sasha Cocarla notices, “such narratives for zombies are few and far between.”9 The images of zombies created by filmmakers, therefore, reveal these monsters as disinterested in and, significantly, with zero potential for having a love affair or a sex life.

Roger Ma, The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead (New York, NY: Berkley Books, 2010), 5. 8 Kim Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), 2-6. 9 Sasha Cocarla, “A Love Worth Un-Undying For: Neoliberalism and Queered Sexuality in Warm Bodies,” in Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead, ed. Shaka McGlotten and Steve Jones (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 55. 7

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There are several reasons for the de-sexualization of a zombie on screen. First, a zombie repulses and hardly ever attracts because it poses a danger. Guided by its monstrous nature, a zombie kills to feed; moreover, it does not differentiate between murdering a child or an adult. This is clearly one of the reasons why a zombie provokes “fear, disgust, revulsion, and dread.”10 Second, it is impossible to negotiate or trust a zombie due to its lack of mental abilities and, for that matter, because, as Daniel W. Drezner observes, “zombies cannot talk,”11 as well as due to its sole and overwhelming need for food, i.e., the human brain. Third, to borrow from Fred Botting, “zombies are not the most prepossessing objects of desire, passion and sexual gratification” because of their “[d]ecomposing, often broken bodies, ripped grey skin, a stench of decay and vile-smelling rags.”12 Thus, a zombie has literally nothing one can like/love it for (without involving perversion). It is also significant that a zombie cannot propagate for the reason that its body, including its reproductive system, is dead. Therefore, the relationship with a zombie does not lead to the creation of a family and threatens the extinction of humankind. In connection with that, it is symbolic that the zombie film always either explicitly or implicitly discusses the problem of the apocalypse. David Pagano shrewdly pinpoints the following: “Zombie films usually represent the catastrophic end of the human habitus, and while it is true that occasionally such an end is narrowly avoided, the contagion of a zombie always at least threatens absolute destruction.”13 Finally, a love affair (and particularly sex) with a zombie is deviant in itself and suggests necrophilia, i.e., a sexual attraction between the living and the dead. Nonetheless, in line with Botting, I claim that from all monsters, a zombie is arguably “the most human” one.14 And despite zombies’ “luminal entity between life and death”15 that overtly constructs their horrific nature,

Drezner, Theories, 100. Ibid., 23. 12 Fred Botting, “Love Your Zombie: Horror, Ethics, Excess,” in The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth, eds. Justin D. Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 19-20. 13 David Pagano, “The Space of Apocalypse in Zombie Cinema,” in Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, ed. Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008), 71, italics in original. 14 Botting, “Love Your Zombie,” 20. 15 Marc Leverette, “The Funk of Forty Thousand Years; or, How the (Un)Dead Get Their Groove On,” in Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, ed. Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008), 193. 10 11

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“[z]ombies are not some distant alien race with no connection to humanity.”16 Indeed, in every film, zombies are humans that fall victims to some virus or another catastrophe. One can speculate that “zombism” is some sort of illness that affects humans and makes them transform into monsters. Yet this transformation is never complete because zombies are, in principle, diseased humans. Paffenroth even argues that zombies’ “monstrous state is their human state, it never transforms or goes away.”17 The scholar continues: “The zombies’ bordering between human and nonhuman is even deeper and more ambiguous, however. Zombies do not just look like humans, thereby making it more uncomfortable to shoot them in the forehead: the point in the movies is that zombies are human, and humans are zombie-like.”18 And although the scholar makes this observation analyzing only Romero’s zombie films, it arguably can be applied to any zombie characters. Paffenroth proceeds: “Unlike aliens, robots, or supernatural beings, such as demons, the distasteful and horrible aspects of zombies cannot really be discounted as unhuman, but are rather just exaggerated aspects of humanity. Zombies are essentially primitive humans, humans without, or without much, reason and intellect.”19 A similar observation is made by Botting who claims: Zombie identification still draws out some kind of recognition: “they’re us.” Suppurating with sign of vile humanity, their proximity is hard to disavowal. … The very proximity of the zombie to the humanity that it simultaneously is and is not remains a most disarming feature.20 Nevertheless, the prevailing portrayal of a zombie that constructs a rather monstrous image hardly allows one to talk about humanity in these creatures. Apparently, it is not enough for a zombie to just look like a human; there are also specific behavioral patterns that it has to adopt. The actions of a zombie are, however, not considered “acceptable” in a civilized society; particularly, its craving for cannibalism and violence equates it to a psychopathic maniac who needs to be medically treated and eventually imprisoned. Since there is, in most cases, no possibility to cure a zombie and thus restore its humanity, one can speculate that its monstrosity prevails over humanity and cannot be

Terence McSweeney, The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 159-160. 17 Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead, 9, emphasis in original. 18 Ibid., 10. 19 Ibid., 11, my emphasis. 20 Botting, “Love Your Zombie,” 20. 16

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suppressed. Examining the problem of humanity in a monster, Christian Smith contends: We label them as sick, as abnormal, as repulsive deviants … feel deep revulsion for them and lock them behind bars. We know that something has gone very deeply wrong with their humanity, that even though they are genetically human, they have become in a sense somehow something less than human.21 Still, this speculation seems to be more relevant to such monsters as vampires and werewolves, who apparently can control their monstrosity and humanity and occasionally (re)turn to their “human side.” This transformation is, however, not possible in case of a zombie, because once a human turns into a zombie, this monster cannot switch back to his/her human state and be a non-aggressive, non-violent being again, even for a short period of time. Whereas most of the cinematic examples, indeed, dehumanize a zombie, categorizing it as a monster only, there are few films that challenge this viewpoint and introduce zombies who to various degrees seem to appear more like humans, particularly in terms of their behavior and ability to interact. These rare examples include Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead (1984), Burr Steers’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2015), and the TV series iZombie (2015-), directed by, among others, Michael Fields, with their rather intellectual zombie characters, George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead (2005) which introduces a sympathetic zombie, Andrew Currie’s Fido (2006) which tells the story of the zombie who is arguably more caring, attentive, and loving than the head of the family, Jonathan Levine’s Warm Bodies (2013) and Jeff Baena’s Life After Beth (2014) that show what it means to have a zombie-boy/girlfriend. All these films and series make an overt claim that a zombie can possess humanity: it can think, make decisions, have friends, and even fall in love. There are clearly some problems with control, as a zombie – even such a humanized one – still remains a zombie, and, hence, its existence is dependent on the consumption of the human brain. Yet even in this respect, these examples to various degrees manage to veil this monstrous side either employing comic elements and thus not treating the

21 Christian Smith qtd. in Monica Germanà, “Being Human? Twenty-First-Century Monsters,” in The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth, ed. Justin D. Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), 63-64, emphasis in original.

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death of another human being of the zombie attack as a catastrophe (this is especially explicit in The Return of the Living Dead and Fido), or they simply make a zombie smart and innovative, like, for example, the main heroine of iZombie, Olivia Moore (Rose McIver) who eventually manages to adapt to her situation and, working as a coroner, eats brains of already dead humans, thus getting food without any harm to humankind. Her necessity to consume human brains and ability to get all the memories of the deceased even help the local police solve crimes. While all these examples claim that the interaction between humans and zombies is possible, only two of them, namely Warm Bodies and iZombie, overtly articulate that this interaction can lead to the cure of a zombie. According to Warm Bodies and iZombie, humans can help zombies regain their humanity and thus turn back into humans. Humans, therefore, can motivate zombies for life without the human brain, thus helping them suppress their monstrous side and from aggressive and violent creatures turn into members of human society. These two examples contend that the only way to turn a zombie back into a human is to evoke its feelings – something that a monster, in contrast to a human, arguably cannot have. Therefore, it is through sympathy, compassion, and, most importantly, love that a zombie can undergo the magic transformation and become a human being again. Whereas Life After Beth raises the problem of the romantic relationship between a human and a zombie, too, it does not show a possible happy ending for the latter. Instead, the film demonstrates how Beth (Aubrey Plaza) turns from a loving girlfriend into an obsessed, jealous monster, eventually being transformed into a cruel zombie. Thus, in spite of the fact that the film, indeed, shows that a zombie can love and possess intellect, its main focus is on the degradation that a human undergoes once turned into a zombie. Unlike this example, Warm Bodies and iZombie deal with the possible improvement that a zombie can undergo once in love and his eventual return to being human. Finally, introducing two stories of relationships between humans and zombies, Fido also suggests that love can evoke humanity in monsters. While the film shows that, when loved by humans, zombies can return this emotion, too, and thus they can exist in human society (although mostly wearing special collars that suppress their craving for human flesh), it does not suggest that a zombie can turn back into a human, as Warm Bodies and iZombie do. This chapter focuses primarily on the latter examples. Love Is the Answer: A New Zombie in Warm Bodies and iZombie Both iZombie and Warm Bodies demonstrate that the transformation from a zombie to a human is possible. More than that, both examples provide an

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explicit explanation of how this metamorphosis can be achieved, revealing that the only panacea from such a disease as zombism is love. Warm Bodies is arguably a more explicit example of how love can help a zombie suppress its monstrous side and open up the human one. The film centers its plot on the zombie named R (Nicholas Hoult) who falls in love with the girl Julie (Teresa Palmer), before having eaten the brain of her boyfriend. R tells the viewer that when he eats a human brain, together with actual food, he also gets the memories and feelings of his victim. Greedily consuming the brain, R says: “I’m sorry, I just can’t help it. The brain’s the best part. The part that makes me feel human again. I don’t wanna hurt you. I just wanna feel what you felt. To feel a little better, a little less dead.”22 It thus becomes clear that R strives not only for food but also for emotions that would make him feel more human. In addition to the “privilege” that the brain gives the zombie, the audience spots some other facts that hint at R’s undead humanity, namely that he has a best friend – a zombie named M (Rob Corddry) – and that he likes listening to music. R, therefore, does not allow himself to turn into a complete monster, constantly pulling the strings that help his humanity stay awake. After a small group of people is attacked by zombies, those who survive, manage to escape, whereas Julie is taken away by R. He brings her to the plane – the most romantic (and also safe) place he can think of, knowing the girl’s passion for airplanes. R obviously develops feelings for Julie, as he tries to look nicer for her, covers her with a quilt, finds food, and plays music for her. Significantly, when he listens to a song playing, the audience witnesses a close-up of his dead heart that resurrects and starts to beat again. The young people even communicate with each other, although R can produce only short, one- or two-word sentences. They eventually experience truly human moments together as they talk, read, play, and dance. However, the question that arises in this scenario is whether the feelings that R develops for Julie are really his own or rather her dead boyfriend’s, whose brain he consumed. Indeed, R gets most of the information about the girl from to the memories he gained through the consumption of the brain. Yet, it is significant that R notices Julie before he actually eats her boyfriend’s brain, thus his interest in Julie was inflamed by his own feelings. Their love is supported by other human-looking zombies, who eventually help the couple to escape from the monstrous zombies – the ones that look like skeletons and are apparently more evil since their human side is

Warm Bodies, directed by Jonathan Levine (2013; Universal City, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2013), DVD.

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irrevocably dead. The image of R and Julie holding hands is later evoked in the minds of the zombies, when they see a poster that depicts two people holding hands. R’s best friend remembers the time when he was a human and could also hold hands with his partner. When another zombie notices the poster, M asks him: “Do you feel it?”23 The zombie nods; other zombies come closer, too, and the audience witnesses how their hearts start to beat again – the only spots of light on the dead grey bodies. When he is together with Julie, R seems to behave more like a human. He even starts to sleep and dream again. Moreover, influenced by the love-story of their friend, other zombies adopt human behaviors, too; it is especially noticeable in the way they talk as they eventually do it more often and their communication is built upon actual words and not mere sounds. Yet Julie leaves R. Arguably, this happens not because she feels that she belongs to the world of humans, but rather, because she does not want to belong to the world of monsters. Indeed, she seems to be cared for more by R than by her father or any human in the small colony that they organized after a zombie apocalypse. Being apart, both R and Julie miss each other, and while Julie understands that it would be impossible for her to have a zombie-boyfriend, R does not want to give up and eventually finds Julie. However, he does it not only because he is in love with the girl but also because he wants to warn the human survivors that the monstrous-zombies are going to attack them. Humans together with human-like zombies eventually fight against the evil zombies and win. In the fight, R is ready to sacrifice himself to save Julie. They both survive, yet R undergoes a pivotal transformation: he does not look so pale anymore, and, in accordance with the rules of a classical fairy tale metamorphosis, after Julie kisses him, the audience witnesses a close-up of R’s eye, which, reacting to the light, demonstrates that R is now alive. When R is eventually shot at by Julie’s father, to everyone’s surprise, his wound starts to bleed, which only proves that R has transformed from a zombie to a human. The human-like zombies are eventually given a chance to survive and turn back into humans, as people in the colony start to help them. Warm Bodies clearly supports my earlier argument that zombism is a disease; yet unlike many other medical illnesses, it does not have a special vaccine. The only way to cure a zombie is to love it. Nevertheless, a zombie has to want to give love in return, i.e., if a zombie does not fight for its humanity itself, no one else will be able to help it. And although Cocarla contends that 9/11 influenced the zombie movie genre in a way that there is

23

Ibid.

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an overt “effort to protect one’s self from the monstrous, sexually perverse threatening other,”24 this is not exactly what one can observe in Warm Bodies. Some humans in the film, of course, do not support the love affair between a human and a zombie; yet most of the characters (even human ones – e.g., Julie’s friend Nora [Analeigh Tipton]) do everything to help the two be together. The films’ general portrayal of R does not provoke any feelings of repulsion but instead makes the audience identify with him: he is a young, good-looking young man, who fights for his love, and unlike most of the zombies that are often depicted as “self-centered, showing no concern for their fellow zombies or mercy to their human prey,”25 R is the direct opposite of this description/characterization. He has a good personality; he does not want his humanity to vanish and ultimately succeeds in turning into a human with the help of love. A similar solution to the problem of curing zombism is given in the recently released TV series iZombie. The series narrates the story of Olivia Moore who was infected at a party and eventually turns into a zombie. Zombism in iZombie is a disease that was created by a human and, therefore, can be cured by a human. One of the main tasks for the characters is thus to create a vaccine. Olivia’s boss, coroner Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli), first tests it on zombie-rats and then on zombie-humans. One of such attempts even seems to be successful, when one of the zombie-humans turns back into a human but, as the audience finds out later, only temporarily. Olivia is not a “regular” zombie as those the viewer can usually observe in zombie films and series. She is young, beautiful, and smart. She does not stink like a decaying corpse. Only her pale skin and white hair make her look different compared to the people who surround her; yet these “drawbacks” are interpreted by the others as the girl’s interest in and belonging to some sub-culture. Even the consumption of the human brain – that she, indeed, has to eat in order not to lose her humanity – is turned from a barbaric feeding into some regular process of eating, i.e., she adds brains to pizza, makes hamburgers or sushi out of them; in other words, she cooks brains in such a way that makes them look like ordinary food. Olivia’s image is somewhat transformed from that of a pure monster to a human monster – a cannibal. Olivia works hard not to lose her humanity. Unlike R in Warm Bodies, however, she decides to reject love, saying that “love in the time of zombism –

24 25

Cocarla, “A Love Worth Un-Undying For,” 55-56. Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead, 12.

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that’s even harder.”26 She tries to break up with Major Lilywhite (Robert Buckley) – her boyfriend whom she does not want to hurt and deprive of any future. She realizes that she can be a threat to Major, once she is not able to feed herself at work anymore; she also understands that they will not be able to have a proper family together because she is immortal, and because she cannot give birth to a child. As her male zombie-friend succinctly puts it, “kissing, touching, and sex, love, yelling at someone for stealing the blankets – out of the question, forever.”27 Yet eventually Olivia has sex with this zombiefriend, and that obviously makes the zombies from iZombie different from the ones depicted as a degenerated mass of monsters in other films and series. Being able to have sex, Olivia, hence, proves that she is still a human – although, indeed, an infected one. Nevertheless, she realizes how miserable her existence is because she is no longer able to share her love with the man whom she really cares for: Every time Major calls me his friend, I ache. I miss the “girl” modifier. But the truth is we were practically besties from the moment we met. That’s why we were so great together. Underneath all the love and the desire to tear each other’s clothes off was the person I wanted to share every detail of my life with. Without that, it’s not really even a relationship, is it? Is it just sex, is that who we are?28 Although the heroine apparently realizes that it is the inability to be with the man she loves that makes her a monster, she refuses to be one, and does not want to indulge her animal instincts to eat and have sex without the possibility to have a normal life, to feel happy again. Only when her friends eventually find out who or rather what she is, Olivia starts to develop her humanity. Being identified as a monster, she does not want to scare anyone off and does everything to prove that she can be “normal,” too. Interestingly, already toward the end of the first season, Olivia visually looks more like a human because the dark shadows around her eyes have almost completely disappeared. This technique is obviously used to underscore the fact that living among humans, Olivia, indeed, suppresses her zombie-side and develops humanity.

26 iZombie, directed by Michael Fields et al. (2015-; Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Television, 2015-), TV Series. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid.

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Later in the series, the audience realizes that there are many more zombies that manage to live successfully in human society, as they continue to go to work and do their everyday chores. In many cases, their families do not even know that they live with a zombie because zombies have learned to control themselves. Feelings become essential in their human-like existence as it appears to be emotions which in the twenty-first-century cinema help zombies regain their humanity, for these “monsters” do not want to lose their families and friends, and want to be loved. In this series, other zombies are not represented as “real” monsters either (except for one example – the woman who turned into a zombie and did not have access to brains, which eventually led to her full degradation): they even manage to create a business by selling human brains and thus guaranteeing that no zombie in Seattle will ever become dangerous to humans and provoke chaos or cause an apocalypse. The head of the brain-business, Blaine DeBeers (David Anders) is a controversial character. Despite his attempts to help other zombies (which arguably happens only because Blaine wants to make money) as well as his cooperative work with Olivia from time to time, he is portrayed as a rather negative character – specifically, because the brains that he sells to zombies once belonged to orphan children, whom zombies catch and murder for profit. Nevertheless, just like Olivia, Blaine is another vivid example of how love can transform a zombie. Falling in love with Olivia’s friend – Peyton Charles (Alyson Michalka), he desires to be a better person for her, which, indeed, makes him change. That does not mean that he becomes a fully positive character, but one can notice Blaine’s explicit transformation in the course of the series. Since zombies’ personalities appear to always be influenced by the brains they eat – after all, as the saying goes, “You are what you eat” – iZombie, just like Warm Bodies questions the feelings that zombies experience. As Olivia puts it, eating brains has particular “side effects,”29 namely a zombie becomes literally controlled by the brain that it devours, since the memories, habits, and skills of the person whom the brain belonged to influence/are transferred to a zombie and it acquires characteristics, habits, and other behaviors of the brain’s former proprietor. Yet, zombies always try to fight these new, foreign feelings back, and even if they behave strangely for some time, the “braineffect” always stops after a few days and zombies return to their original state again, thus continuing to live their own lives.

29

Ibid.

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Both Warm Bodies and iZombie attempt to build a new model of a zombie, claiming that today’s zombies evolve. They are smart, good-looking, caring, and loving; they are not even “it” but rather become a real “he” or “she” as zombies now form (heterosexual) relationships, have boyfriends and girlfriends, and thus become practically indistinguishable from humans. Both analyzed examples insist that the metamorphosis is possible and zombies, indeed, can live among humans. The only thing they need in order to undergo the transformation is love. Conclusion The idea that monsters exist among us does not seem so unfeasible anymore as both literature and film have generated a great number of examples showing readers/viewers that our friends or family members could readily turn into zombies, vampires, werewolves, and other creatures. However, the idea that “human-like” monsters exist among us, feed on us, behave like us, and can eventually become humans again is a relatively new phenomenon. Most of the literary and cinematic depictions of zombies have created the image of a zombie as pure evil. Zombies exist in/as crowds and crave for human brains and/or flesh. This portrayal introduces zombies as depersonalized creatures, deprived of their gender, age, and race. In addition to that, these creatures possess no intellect and are usually solely guided by their ceaseless hunger. Yet, some of the examples listed in this analysis, indeed, demonstrate that the zombie film has already attempted to represent a zombie as a human being – maybe slower, maybe less intelligent, maybe more cruel, but still a person who can communicate, understand, and even feel. Nonetheless, only two of them, namely Warm Bodies and iZombie provide an explanation for these changes, specifically claiming that it is love that evokes feelings in zombies and returns the undead back to life. Warm Bodies and iZombie signify a shift in the representation of zombies – from the living dead to the creatures that possess humanity. Both, the film and the series are the first examples to overtly propose the possibility of a metamorphosis which zombies can undergo once they fall in love. Hence, romance is a peculiar means which the new zombie films and series apply, transforming the whole genre, which initially aimed horrifying the viewer rather than provoking sympathy and empathy for the undead evil. When considering Paffenroth’s assumption that the zombie film shows “what humans can degenerate into,”30 the transformation from a zombie into a

30

Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead, 136.

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human becomes especially significant as it now gives hope for the “lost” ones, suggesting that there is a way to become a better person, to be more “human” – all with the help of true love. Works Cited Botting, Fred. “Love Your Zombie: Horror, Ethics, Excess.” In The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth, edited by Justin D. Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, 19-36. New York, NY: Routledge, 2012. Cocarla, Sasha. “A Love Worth Un-Undying For: Neoliberalism and Queered Sexuality in Warm Bodies.” In Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead, edited by Shaka McGlotten and Steve Jones, 52-72. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2014. Drezner, Daniel W. Theories of International Politics and Zombies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Germanà, Monica. “Being Human? Twenty-First-Century Monsters.” In The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture: Pop Goth, edited by Justin D. Edwards and Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, 57-70. New York, NY: Routledge, 2012. iZombie. Directed by Michael Fields et al. 2015-. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Television, 2015-. TV Series. Leverette, Marc. “The Funk of Forty Thousand Years; or, How the (Un)Dead Get Their Groove On.” In Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, edited by Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette, 185-212. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008. Ma, Roger. The Zombie Combat Manual: A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead. New York, NY: Berkley Books, 2010. McIntosh, Shawn. “The Evolution of the Zombie: The Monster That Keeps Coming Back.” In Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, edited by Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette, 1-17. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008. McSweeney, Terence. The ‘War on Terror’ and American Film: 9/11 Frames Per Second. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Paffenroth, Kim. Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006. Pagano, David. “The Space of Apocalypse in Zombie Cinema.” In Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead, edited by Shawn McIntosh and Marc Leverette, 71-86. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2008. Warm Bodies. Directed by Jonathan Levine. 2013. Universal City, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2013. DVD.

Chapter 8

Noble Savages, Magical Negroes, and Exotic Others, Oh My!: Black Female Vampires in Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Kendra R. Parker

After Paramount Pictures released Wes Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn in 1995 and Warner Brothers released Michael Rhymer’s Queen of the Damned in 2002, black female vampires disappeared from mainstream American movies for ten years until the 2012 release of Bill Condon’s film adaptation of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. Even in the Underworld Series and the Blade Trilogy—both of which feature day walkers, hybrids, and a discussion of race, enslavement, and class—the black female vampire as a major character is conspicuously absent. In fact, in the Underworld Series,1 there are no black female vampires at all. When black female vampires re-emerge as Senna and Zafrina in Condon’s Breaking Dawn Part 2, there is a marked shift in their representation: the black female vampires here are not monstrous or grotesque looking like the black female vampires in Richard Wenk’s Vamp (1986) or James Bond III’s Def By Temptation (1990), but they are “wild” and “silenced”; nor are they major parts of the narrative like Rita Veder, the black female vampire in Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn. Instead, Senna and Zafrina are marginalized and exoticized as they act as witnesses to the purity, goodness, and wholesomeness of a golden-eyed half-vampire, half-human

1 The Underworld series includes Underworld (2003), Underworld: Evolution (2006), Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), Underworld: Awakening (2012), and Underworld: Blood Wars (2017).

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(hybrid) child.2 Thus, I investigate how Breaking Dawn Part 2 communicates and reinforces myths about race, gender, and national origin and shapes contemporary American ones. First, I explore privilege, othering, and assimilation/conversion in the first four films of The Twilight Saga—Twilight (2008), New Moon (2009), Eclipse (2010), Breaking Dawn: Part 1 (2011) which leads to a discussion of black female vampires in Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012). Next, I want to conclude that the pervasive success of the Twilight film franchise is problematic not only because it unleashes devastating images of and ideas about the difference in general, but also because it justifies the repackaging of these historically persistent attitudes specifically as they pertain to black women. Ultimately, I focus on larger cultural and ideological issues and assumptions related to class, sexuality, race, and gender—ideologies and assumptions that I maintain are passed down from generation to generation, thus affecting and influencing the narrative structure of the movie. Vampires in an American Cultural Context A focus on larger socio-cultural issues is not out of the question in regards to vampires. Vampires, in their broadest sense, function as allusions or metaphors and inundate almost every facet of American society, from popular culture to politics. Take, for example, recent film phenomena like The Underworld series (2002-2017) and The Twilight Saga (2008-2012), or recent television series like The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017), True Blood (2008-2014), and The Originals (2013-2018). Also, consider references by major political parties (and their constituents) to their opponents as “bloodsuckers” or “leeches,” the most notable being Rush Limbaugh’s reference to President Barack Obama and other Democrats as vampires on a segment of his June 21,

2 While Condon takes his cues directly from Stephenie Meyer’s novel in his “silencing” of the black female vampires, I am neither concerned with the issue of adaptation nor with Condon’s “fidelity” to Meyer’s series, though such issues are worth discussing. Instead, I consider Deborah Cartmell’s comment—“An adaptation is undeniably an appropriation of the text, and although the plot remains the same, the telling—or the interpreting of it— radically changes from one generation to the next.” Deborah Cartmell, “The Shakespeare on Screen Industry,” Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text, ed. Imelda Whelehan and Deborah Cartmell (London: Routledge, 1999), 33. Further, I must note that the black female vampires in Meyer’s novel are also marginal characters; however, I do not concern myself with the film’s “fidelity” to the novel. While comparisons to original works are fruitful, I am chiefly concerned with how the Twilight Saga movies are acts of discourse partaking in, responding to, and participating in the shaping of broader sociopolitical factors that influence and shape the film.

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2011, radio show.3 The inundation of American pop culture and politics with vampiric references stems from a widespread preoccupation with cultural “monsters,” as evidenced most by the rise of various marginalized groups beginning in the 1960s. The 1960s began a transitional period in general for women, gays, lesbians, and African Americans. It was a time when sexual identity and civil rights for the LGBTQ community was well underway; African Americans were becoming visible in the public eye thanks to the televised racial violence in the South signaling dramatic opposition to Jim Crow, and the proliferation of women in the workforce, women’s rights, abortion laws, and the continued shift in gender roles ran headlong into the diagnosis of inherent nuclear family debility at the hands of a woman. With such resistance to white heteronormativity and white heteronormative ideals came an influx of film representations of the “Other” to signal a supposed decline of American society with the arrival of monsters, aliens, or vampires in the form of racial, gendered, or sexual difference.4 What such films do is use the monster, the vampire, or the alien as a metaphor for real-world anxieties, which “enables difference to be constructed in terms of binary oppositions which

Rush Limbaugh, “Like a Vampire, Obama Sucks the Blood Out of American Capitalism,” The Rush Limbaugh Show. Transcript. June 21, 2011. Accessed September 6, 2016. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/06/21/like_a_vampire_obama_sucks_the_blo od_out_of_american_capitalism. Limbaugh comments: “I think to view them [Democrats, liberals, and socialists] as a bunch of well-intentioned, ignorant parasites is to deny that they're driven by an ideology, and we know what the ideology is. The ideology is socialism. The socialist sucks the blood out of capitalism. We’re not talking here about parasites. We’re talking vampires, if you want to get down to brass tacks—and some might say there’s not much difference in the two. I think there is. We’re talking vampires. Obama, Democrats, socialists, [and] leftists, [who] suck the blood out of capitalism.” 4 These films include British and American vampire films like Roy Ward Baker’s The Vampire Lovers (1970), Peter Sasdy’s Countess Dracula (1971), Jimmy Sangster’s Lust for a Vampire (1971), William Crane’s Blacula and Scream, Blacula Scream, Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983), and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness (1987); American horror films like Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980), Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street (1984); science fiction films like Steven Spielberg’s E.T the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters (1984), James Cameron’s Terminator (1984), Cameron’s Aliens (1986), and John McTiernan’s Predator (1987); and subculture vampire films like Richard Wenk’s Vamp (1986) and Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys (1987). Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street all have a murderer on the loose, a killer who “penetrates” his victims. These films lend themselves nicely to the concept of vampirism in that the killers in each of these films are very much “undead” in the sense that they are “killed” and later “rise” again. 3

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reinforce relations of dominance and subordination.”5 Donna Haraway suggests the cyborg is a “creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction,”6 and she “[makes] an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings.”7 I would like to suggest American speculative film similarly offers aliens, monsters, zombies, robots, and vampires as “imaginative resources” that trace a “social and bodily reality” as a way to comment on the perceived debility of a distinctly American identity at the hands of outside invaders. Joseph Maddrey, author and screenwriter of Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film, comments that the monsters in horror films “shapeshift” from one decade to another as fears of the popular (dominant) audience shift.8 Out of all the monsters in film from this time period, the vampire remains persistent well into the twenty-first century American cultural landscape in film, politics, popular culture, television, and young adult literature. Black female vampires first originated as minor characters in the early 1970s; today, they hold more prominent roles. In film, Black female vampires first emerge in Blacula (1972); Ganja and Hess (1973); Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973); and Old Dracula (1974) as minor characters, and they re-appear in Interview with a Vampire (1994) and Blade (1998) again with minor roles,9 but they do not have leading roles until Grace Jones stars as a vampire queen named Katrina in Wenk’s Vamp. Following Jones is Cynthia Bond’s portrayal of the vampire Temptation in Def by Temptation, Angela Bassett’s portrayal of Rita in Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn, and Aaliyah Houghton’s role as Akasha in Michael Rymer’s film adaptation of Queen of the Damned (2002). These films rely on many of the stereotypes that have been attached to black women (the welfare queen, the jezebel, or the sapphire), so much so that the films’

Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism, and Postmodernism (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994), 2. 6 Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149. 7 Ibid., 150. 8 Joseph Maddrey, Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004). 9 Old Dracula is also credited as Vampira. For its release in the United States, the movie name changed from Vampira to Old Dracula. The black actresses who play black female vampires in these earlier films are: Emily Yancy and Kitty Lester in Blacula, Janelle Michelle and Lynn Moody in Scream, Blacula, Scream, Teresa Graves in Old Dracula, Thandie Newton in Interview with a Vampire as Yvette, and Sanaa Lathan in Blade as Blade’s mother. 5

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use of the black female vampire is misogynistic, denigrating black women’s autonomous aspirations and objectifying black women’s bodies. Of the films that feature black female vampires, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is historically significant in terms of the development of vampire film. The portrayal of black female vampires varies from film to film. Richard Wenk’s Vamp (1986) objectifies the black female vampire and portrays her accumulation of capital as threatening to the status quo, and Wes Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) depicts black female sexuality as something to be feared and destroyed. Bill Condon’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012) domesticates and sublimates black female vampires to their “proper” place: as advocates for the purity and innocence of white patriarchy. While Vamp is important for its cult status and because it is the first film that prominently features a black female vampire in a leading role, and Vampire in Brooklyn is significant in terms of its use of black characters in major films (it is the first vampire film since Blacula that consciously riffs off of Stoker’s Dracula but does so in a way that consciously rejects the historical whitewashing of Dracula inspired vampire film), Breaking Dawn Part 2 is significant in terms of its cultural capital, because of its widespread popular appeal, and because it is the first American vampire film since the release of Queen of the Damned that features black female vampires. Not only is Breaking Dawn 2 significant for these three reasons, it is also significant because it domesticates and sublimates black female vampires to their “proper” place: as advocates for the purity and innocence of white patriarchy. Of course, any study of black female vampires in film would be incomplete without an acknowledgment of the notable critical attention to the female vampire—the white lesbian vampire, that is—that exists. Such critical attention sparked widespread critical interest among several scholars beginning in the early 1970s, but there is a dearth of significant critical attention paid to the black female vampire. Bonnie Zimmerman explains that the lesbian vampire on film became increasingly popular because of feminism and a “public awareness” of lesbianism, particularly because the lesbian vampire embodies male fears that female bonding excludes men and thereby threatens patriarchy.10 She suggests that in order to uphold androcentricity, lesbian vampire films like The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Daughters of Darkness (1971) must situate the lesbian vampire as a deviation from heteronormative constructions of family and present

10 Bonnie Zimmerman, “Daughters of Darkness: The Lesbian Vampire on Film,” in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 381.

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the lesbian vampire as the source of the debilitation of heteronormative family structures.11 Unsurprisingly, the conflation of female vampires and expressions of insatiable sexual desire as well as the stereotype of the female vampire as a castrating, threatening monster appear during the same cultural moment that women’s liberation was highly publicized and highly criticized, thus “a good many people,” David Pirie offers, “attacked it [the female vampire] as degrading and sexist.”12 Pirie excuses the denigrating representation of women by claiming that “[t]he function of the vampire movie is precisely to incarnate the most hostile aspects of sexuality in a concrete form.”13 But for Barbara Creed representations of the monstrous-feminine indeed illustrate the ways contemporary society fears and maligns femininity.14 In vampire films of the 1970s, Creed points out that the female vampire is the embodiment of the vagina dentata or “toothed vagina.”15 The female vampire, in Creed’s estimation, is dangerous precisely because she threatens to lure and to seduce “the daughters of patriarchy” from their socially prescribed gender roles.16 Zimmerman, Creed, and Pirie’s varied critical 11 Ibid., 385. Zimmerman explains: “When the lesbian is also a vampire, he [the heterosexual male] has an added explanation for the attraction one woman might have for another. It is not he who is inadequate; he is competing with supernatural powers. A man who offers his woman life through his sexual potency (symbolized by sperm) cannot compete with the vampire who sucks away her life (symbolized by blood). Instead, he must destroy the vampire—the lesbian—who threatens male power through sexual attacks on women. For, in fact, whether the woman vampire is lesbian or heterosexual, her real object of attack is always the male.” 12 David Pirie, The Vampire Cinema. (New York: Crescent Books, 1977), 100. 13 Ibid., emphasis in original. 14 Barbara Creed, The Monstrous-feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1993). The monstrous feminine includes woman as vampire, woman as witch, woman as archaic mother, woman as possessed monster, and woman as monstrous womb. 15 Ibid., 72. Creed describes the vagina dentata: “This image is presented very clearly when the vampire is female…one of the most frequent images is that of a woman’s open mouth, sharp pointed teeth and blood-covered lips.” In her discussion of psychoanalysis and cinema, Susan Lurie explains that the vagina dentata is scary as it represents male fears of castration and becomes an embodiment of their castration anxiety. See Lurie, “The Construction of the ‘Castrated Woman’ in Psychoanalysis and Cinema,” Discourse vol. 4 (1984-1982), 55. 16 Ibid., 61. “The most persistent threat to the institution of heterosexuality represented in the horror film,” Creed offers, “comes from the female vampire who preys on other women. Once bitten, the victim is never shy. She happily joins her female seducer, lost to the real world forever.”

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attention to the rise of female vampires in film throughout the 1970s is notable; however, their analyses and claims focus on the representation of white, lesbian vampires in film, and they do not consider race, nor do they acknowledge the growing number of black female vampires that emerge in film during the same period. Where some scholars focus on gender and sexuality, others like Leslie Tannenbaum, Brooks E. Hefner, Manthia Diawara and Phyllis R. Klotman, and Dale Hudson examine race as they explore black vampires in singular films;17 however, it is Frances Gateward who begins tracing a trajectory of black vampires in American film history. Gateward examines Blacula, Vampira, Def by Temptation, and Blade to explore what the intersections of race, gender, and vampirism offer “in terms of [vampire] genre revision and [American] cultural critique,” especially considering that the vampire genre is “historically one of the most racially exclusive.”18 Gateward’s analysis focuses largely on the male characters (human and vampire), and while her contribution is undoubtedly important, I now aim to expand Frances Gateward’s preliminary investigation as well as my own by considering black female vampires in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and how their representation on screen reinforces racist, sexist, and ethnocentric assumptions about race, gender, and national origin. The “Right” Type of Monster: Questioning the Vilification of Red-Eyed Vampires Precisely because of the saga’s reign as cultural capital, the Twilight saga invites critical, political, and social interrogation. Essay contributions in Theorizing Twilight: Essays on What’s at Stake in a Post-Vampire World (2011) and in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire Franchise (2010) discuss essentialized representations of race and class, white vampires See, e.g., Manthia Diawara and Phyllis Klotman, “Ganja and Hess: Vampires, Sex, and Addictions,” Jump Cut. 35 (1990), 30-36; Brooks E. Hefner, “Rethinking Blacula: Ideological Critique at the Intersection of Genres,” Journal of Popular Film and Television vol. 40, no. 2 (May 2012), 62-74; Dale Hudson, “Vampires of color and the performance of multicultural whiteness,” in The Persistence of Whiteness. Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Daniel Bernardi (New York: Routledge, 2008), 127-156; Leslie Tannenbaum, “Policing Eddie Murphy: The Unstable Black Body in Vampire in Brooklyn,” in The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night, ed. James C. Holte (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002), 69-75. 18 Gateward, “Daywalkin’ Night Stalkin’ Bloodsuckas: Black Vampires in Contemporary Film,” Genders 40 (2004). Accessed 11 June 2015. http://www.iiav.nl/ezines/web/ GendersPresenting/2005/No41/genders/g40_gateward.html. 17

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and Native American werewolves, issues of women’s sexuality and sexual expression, and religion. What these contributors do not discuss, however, is how the narrative construction of the film series asks viewers to valorize the homogeneous golden-eyed, white vampires and their allies while vilifying others that do not adhere to their homogeneity, often those with red eyes and brown skin. Beginning with the release of Twilight in 2008, the movie saga depicts Bella Swan (performed by Kristen Stewart) and her on-again, off-again relationship with and eventual marriage to Edward Cullen (performed by Robert Pattinson). The Cullens are a coven of golden-eyed vampires who teach themselves to live as “vegetarians” or simply as animal blood-drinkers so as to seamlessly blend in with humans. The saga progresses with Bella’s constant need for protection from red-eyed vampires (human-blood drinkers), protection the Cullens and their allies provide. The saga vilifies social and racial others through disparaging representations of “difference” through the use of red eyes and dark skin, and in doing so, the saga valorizes violence by the Cullens against vampires who are different from them for the sake of “humanity” or “civilization.” In this way, the Twilight Saga legitimates hierarchies of race, gender, class, and sexuality through its normalization and privileging of golden-eyed, white vampire culture at the expense of others.19 In the case of the entire saga, but especially in Breaking Dawn Part 2, the heroification of the Cullens is constructed through an associated vilification of difference, differences that encompass a different lifestyle or a darker skin color. The impetus to convert the threatening vampire characters into a Cullen-approved subject reveals the saga’s troubling discourse that revolves around the necessity of saving or killing vampires whose lifestyle choices differ from the Cullens. In order to empower the Cullens’ whiteness and vilify racial difference, the Twilight saga relies on reproducing and replicating the cultural discourses of assimilation through the domestication or destruction of red-eyed vampires. Vampires, in traditional vampire lore, are associated with a host of cultural anxieties: murder, rape, incest, cannibalism, racial difference, capitalism, and

It is important to mention that the werewolves in the saga, all of whom are from the Native American Quileute tribe, are othered as well. For explorations of the werewolves as noble savages see e.g. Natalie Wilson, “Civilized Vampires Versus Savage Werewolves: Race and Ethnicity in the Twilight series,” in Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire Franchise ed. Melissa A. Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 55-70, and Wilson, “It’s a Wolf Thing: the Quileute Werewolf/Shape-Shifter Hybrid as Noble Savage,” in Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What's at Stake in a Post-vampire World, ed. Maggie Parke and Natalie Wilson (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), 194-208. 19

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the decline of empire.20 Conversely, in the Twilight saga, vampires are reimagined: those who drink animal blood and abstain from drinking human blood are framed as good, as civilized, as closer to human, and are marked with golden eyes, but those who consume human blood are framed as bad, as barbaric, as inhumane, and are marked with red eyes. Red-eyed vampires are presented as the literal predators of humans. The saga frames red-eyed vampires as the dangerous “Others,” those who are ethically constructed as less than and as evil because of their own activities and belief systems. Yet some of my readers may challenge my view by insisting, “But the redeyed vampires do kill humans! They are predators.” Indeed. In Twilight, three wandering vampires—Victoria, James, and Laurent—kill a number of humans in and around the Forks, Washington area where the narrative takes place. In that same film, James hunts Bella, violently abuses her, and bites her with the intent to kill. In New Moon, Laurent attempts to kill Bella, but his plans are foiled by the presence of werewolves. In Eclipse, Victoria sanctions the creation of newborn vampires, and in turn, these new vampires kill other humans in an effort to multiply their numbers expeditiously. But are all red-eyed vampires predators? I want to trouble the way in which the film narrative is framed for viewers who have no choice but to believe that all red-eyed vampires—those who drink human blood—are predators. According to Edward, “When we [vampires] taste human blood, a sort of frenzy begins. It is almost impossible to stop.”21 It would seem, then, that all the redeyed vampires take the lives of the humans whose blood they consume. But Edward says it is “almost impossible,” not that it is impossible. At the end of Twilight, for example, Edward must remove James’s vampire venom from Bella’s system by siphoning her blood. Edward indeed drinks Bella’s blood, but

See e.g., Stephen D. Arata, “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization,” Victorian Studies 33.4 (1990), 621-645; Christopher Craft, “‘Kiss Me with those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” Representations 8 (1984), 107-133; Judith Halberstam, “Parasites and Perverts: An Introduction to Gothic Monstrosity,” in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995); Franco Moretti, “Dracula and Capitalism” in ed. David J. Skal and Nina Auerbach, 431-44; Talia Schaffer, in “‘A Wilde Desire Took Me’: The Homoerotic History of Dracula” in Dracula: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Reviews and Reactions, Dramatic and Film Variations, Criticism, ed. David J. Skal and Nina Auerbach (New York: Norton, 1997), 470-82; Jules Zanger, “A Sympathetic Vibration: Dracula and the Jews,” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol. 34, no .1 (1991), 33-44. 21 “Breaking All the Rules Now.” Twilight, DVD. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke. Universal City, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2008. 20

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he does not kill her; he saves her life.22 And what shall we make of the very existence of the Cullen family? The Cullens were all humans once; who turns them? Through the film series, we learn that Dr. Carlisle Cullen (performed by Peter Facinelli) bites and turns his wife, Esme, and at least two of his children, Edward and Rosalie.23 In order to “turn” a human into a vampire, that human must indeed die. It would seem, then, that restraint is indeed possible for Carlisle, but in acknowledging his ability to restrain from recklessly drinking human blood, we neglect to consider that Carlisle ends a human life in order for the vampire life to begin. Edward suggests that Carlisle “would never do this [bestow vampiric immortality] to someone who had another choice”24 —that is, he chooses to give immortality to the dying (and those who are dying young). Do we simply ignore the fact that Carlisle killed three humans—albeit humans who were already dying—to create his family? Or do we accept Edward’s framing of Carlisle’s actions as benevolent? Moreover, what are we to make of Edward’s admission to killing humans a few years after he was created? Edward: A few years after Carlisle created me, I rebelled against him. I resented him for curbing my appetite … I wanted to know how it felt to hunt. To taste human blood. [As Edward speaks, a black and white montage begins. Viewers see a young woman exit a movie theater, followed by a man, followed by Edward. Before the man can pursue the woman further, Edward appears, grabs the man, and bites his neck. The montage sequence ends with a knife falling from the dead man’s hands.] All the men I killed were monsters. So was I. Bella: They were all murderers. You probably saved more lives than you took. Edward: Bella that’s what I told myself, but they were all human beings.25

Ibid., “Fragile Little Human.” See e.g. “Breaking All the Rules Now,” Twilight for Esme and Edward’s conversion; for Rosalie’s see “I Was a Little Theatrical Back Then” in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. DVD. Directed by David Slade. Universal City, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2010. In the book series, Carlisle turns Emmett for Rosalie, but in film series, Emmett’s maker is never mentioned. 24 “Breaking All the Rules Now.” Twilight. 25 “Checking for Cold Feet.” The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1. 2-Disc DVD. Directed by Bill Condon. Universal City, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2011. 22 23

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Edward confesses his sins of drinking human blood and murdering monstrous men, in hopes of showing Bella what she is capable of once she becomes a vampire, but she justifies and excuses his actions because she imagines that the number of lives he saved far exceeded the lives he took. Do viewers, too, excuse Edward’s actions because we are seduced by the notion that he “probably saved more lives than [he] took”?26 What is it about Edward’s and Carlisle’s actions that allow viewers to readily accept that they are exceptions in their ability to resist killing humans once they have tasted their blood? Or that Edward’s murder of humans is justifiable because these humans were in some way harming others? Can I deny that some red-eyed vampires kill humans and are thus predators? No. Proponents of such an argument are right to argue that the vilification of the red-eyed vampires stems from their irreverence for human life. And yet, upon reflection, it seems to me that such proponents overlook the ways in which stories are told and framed—succumbing to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns us against in her Ted Talk “The Danger of a Single Story.” In fact, there is something precarious about our ability to assume the worst about certain groups—even if our assumptions are only applied to fictional, mythical characters. What I am suggesting is that the Twilight franchise filmmakers capitalize on our own sensibilities as viewers to assume the worst about the “different” vampires thus allowing us to perpetuate a very dangerous set of conventions that often arise when we are only informed by a single narrative. We, like Bella, extend grace and pardon to the Cullens for their behavior because we know their stories. They are “good vampires,” but what of the stories of those we do not know? Having just explored the possibility that perhaps red-eyed vampires are capable of drinking human blood and also preserving human life, I want to complicate the point by speculating further. Let’s say Carlisle and Edward are indeed exceptional in their ability to bite and not kill other humans. Are there not alternative measures to securing human blood without expending human life? In Breaking Dawn Part 1, for instance, Carlisle retrieves blood bags from the hospital that he has stored at the Cullen residence in case of an emergency for the accident-prone Bella (in case he ever needed them for her). Is Carlisle the only such vampire with the foresight to store blood bags? Although Carlisle does not consume the blood from the bags, is it not plausible that other vampires who do sustain themselves on human blood may come to a similar solution for a less deadly way of maintaining a diet of

26

Ibid.

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human blood? The film narrative does not leave room for any questions; instead, viewers are not even presented with the possibility that drinking human blood does not necessarily mean the taking of a human life. Ultimately, it stands to reason that perhaps not all red-eyed vampires drink human blood with the intent or desire to kill indiscriminately. What I am suggesting is that the film saga’s representation of the Cullen’s animal blood-drinking lifestyle as “civilized” works to seduce the viewers because viewers are provided with a very narrow set of perspectives of red-eyed, non-vegetarian vampires. The framing of the Cullens’ vegetarian lifestyle as status quo influences the viewer’s subscription to their choice as laudable, moral, and acceptable, thus shaping the way the viewing audience perceives the red-eyed vampires. Further, though the film attempts to frame the discussion of vampires in terms of what is moral (killing humans versus killing animals), the belief systems particular vampires subscribe to have a certain resonance in the twenty-first century, especially given a number of recent debates currently in progress, notably conversations that dismiss or ridicule gender identification, sexual orientation, and same-sex marriage.27 In the United States, especially during the 1980s, vampirism and blood drinking became a metaphor for oral sex, sodomy, disease, AIDS,28 and by extension, the gay community.29

I am specifically thinking of the continued backlash against same-sex marriage, notably Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and Westboro Baptist Church members’ attempted protest of Michael Sam in February 2014 (a human wall formed by students at University of Missouri prevented the protest). Janet Mock’s 2014 televised interviews with Piers Morgan—where he refused to let her identify herself for herself—comes to mind as does Facebook’s addition of multiple gender options as well as Bruce Jenner’s public transition to Caitlyn Jenner. 28 See e.g., Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 7; William Patrick Day, Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 27-29; Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon eds., Blood Read: the Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 6. 29 Media coverage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the early1980s consistently linked the epidemic with the gay community, but also indicated that other marginalized groups— Haitian immigrants, intravenous drug users, and hemophiliacs—were at risk. See Roger Hallas, Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009, 82), for the “three principal periods of media hysteria over AIDS: the initial ‘epidemic of fear’ in 1983, the disclosure of Rock Hudson’s illness in 1985, and the panic over ‘heterosexual AIDS’ in 1987.” 27

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Further, vampirism also became associated with deviant female sexuality30 and other forms of sexuality not considered heteronormative, including racial miscegenation, homosexuality, and lesbianism. Thus, if we consider Edward’s desire for Bella’s blood as a metaphor for sexual desire31 and consider the Mormon and Christian undertones in the Twilight saga,32 then it is neither difficult nor far-fetched to consider the type of blood drinking a vampire chooses to consume as an imagined discussion centering on real-world groups as well as past and present current political situations. Thus, the Cullens’ ostracism and murder of red-eyed vampires can take on new meaning. While red-eyed vampires may not be metaphors for racial difference specifically, they are metaphors for difference in general. Therefore, for a restoration of order or homogeneity to happen or to continue throughout the saga, that difference must be eliminated. What is increasingly problematic is that this narrative, an extremely popular and lucrative narrative, successfully repeats a discourse that exacts violence on those who are different and who refuse to convert. Perhaps even more troubling is that viewers continue to consume these narratives without interrogating them. What is more is that the conversion of the red-eyed vampire relies almost entirely on whether or not the red-eyed vampires have adopted the Cullens’

Sue-Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” in Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory ed. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 386-387. 31 For a discussion of Edward’s attraction to Bella’s blood and his insistence on abstinence, see Ann G. Bliss, “Abstinence, American-Style,” in The Twilight Mystique: Critical Essays on the Novels and Films, ed. Amy M. Clarke and Marijane Osborn (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010, 107-120) and Brynn Buskirk, “Chastity, Power, and Delayed Gratification: the Lure of Sex in the Twilight Saga” in The Twilight Saga: Exploring the Global Phenomenon, ed. Claudia Bucciferro (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, 2014, 153-167). 32 For varying discussions of Christianity and Mormonism in the Twilight Saga or the benefits/pitfalls of Christians and Mormons engaged in watching the saga, see e.g., Sue Bohlin, “The Darkness of Twilight: A Christian Perspective.” Probe Ministries. June 27, 2010. https://www.probe.org/the-darkness-of-twilight/; David Crumm, “Why Christians Should Love Twilight: Vampires, Werewolves and the Bible.” HuffPost Religion. November 23, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-crumm/whychristians-should-love-twilight_b_1107498.html; Felker Jones, Touched by a Vampire: Discovering the Hidden Messages in the Twilight Saga (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 2009); Jana Riess, “Yes, Robert Pattinson, There Really Are Mormon Themes in ‘Twilight.’” Beliefnet. July 2010. http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/flunkingsainthood/2010/07/yes-robertpattinson-there-are-mormon-themes-in-twilight.html 30

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value system, or on whether or not they have assimilated into their (American) culture. Jasper Cullen, for example, adapts to his new vegetarian lifestyle in Twilight, but he attacks Bella in New Moon. Jasper “hates himself” for attacking Bella, and the Cullens tolerate and forgive his behavior because he does not want to be a “monster.” The conversion or assimilation Jasper engages in transforms him from the threatening outsider to a safe vampire worthy of Cullen status. His desire and willingness to convert mark him as conciliatory and therefore worthy of being left alive and integrated into the Cullens’ social order. The Cullens’ vilification of red-eyed vampires who do not conform to their cultural reality relies on the same ideologies used to justify the subjection and slaughter of non-Western subjects, relying on the same binaries of good/evil, self/other, and non-monster/monster to legitimize the slaughter of any redeyed vampire threatening to breach their moral code. It is through either the conversions or the deaths of red-eyed vampires that the Cullens become empowered victors, but such rhetoric reproduces similar ideological assumptions that endorse oppressive practices. Throughout the film series exists the illusion or the implication of a manageable vampirism. The Cullens demonstrate American virtues of a governing body, control, and discipline. The Cullens want to maintain their anonymity as vampires, but more than that they want to be as human as possible, but even if doing so means that they must successfully pass as human and keep their vampire identity a secret. Their survival depends on their anonymity, and the Cullens will do anything to maintain that anonymity. The problem, of course, is that the Cullen model becomes the preferred method for vampires who want to co-exist with humans; any other method or way of life is different (or not deemed fathomable), and difference is dangerous. Thus, the Cullens tolerate red-eyed vampires as long as the values of these different vampires coincide with the values of their family, values that are ostensibly very human. Thus, the Cullens fight to maintain their selfproclaimed position of authority in a world of humans and non-vegetarian vampires, placing the Cullens at the top of the hierarchical social ladder. Triple Threat: To Be Black, Female, and Red-Eyed I have taken the time to explore red-eyed vampirism as “difference” to explore how the notion of cultural assimilation (or acculturation, at the very least) becomes more evident when the red-eyed vampires are also black and female. When standardized ways of life begin to be imposed upon brown bodies, a particular historical context is necessarily invoked—the moral uplifting of the

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savage Negro brute or the sexually promiscuous slave. In Breaking Dawn Part 2, black female vampires33 Senna (performed by Tracey Heggins) and Zafrina (performed by Judith Shekoni) subscribe to an ideology of assimilation as they “agreed not to hunt [humans] in the area”34 and agree to “stand with [the Cullens]”35 against the Volturi. The Cullens’ tolerance of Senna and Zafrina is much like their willingness to tolerate and in some cases, eventually to convert vampires who do not initially conform to their lifestyle. For Senna and Zafrina to successfully participate in assisting the Cullens, they must adhere to the specific ideologies put forth by the Cullens. Senna and Zafrina’s modification of their eating habits for the Cullens legitimizes a longstanding cultural norm of “others” adjusting their needs to accommodate those in positions of power. Such accommodation glorifies the Cullens and suggests that Senna and Zafrina’s indigenous nature is unseemly. However, their willingness to adjust reveals a sort of noble savagery. The narrative champions Senna and Zafrina for their obsequiousness, but punishes other red-eyed vampires. The distinction becomes clear: though all red-eyed vampires are inferior to the Cullens, Senna’s and Zafrina’s adoption of the Cullen’s ideology and their alliance with the Cullens render them as less-than evil. They are savage, wild, and uncivilized, yes, but they are also noble in their savagery. In addition to Senna and Zafrina’s (temporary) adoption of a humanfriendly lifestyle, they also exist in the narrative as magical Negroes. Zafrina has a “third sight,” if you will; that is, she projects images and makes people see what she wants them to see. Her ability to project sight reveals Bella’s capabilities as a mental shield (because Bella cannot see the images Zafrina projects),36 a shield she uses to protect herself and others.37 The magical or mystical Negro often functions to give an alienated white protagonist a sense

33 The lone golden-eyed black female vampire, Mary (performed Toni Trucks), appears like Senna and Zafrina as a marginal character in Breaking Dawn: Part 2. As if it is even possible, Mary is even more marginalized that Senna and Zafrina. She has no speaking lines, and she is known only by name through the credits of the movie. In the same “making of the movie” documentary, Condon explains, “It was fun for me to cast Toni Trucks [as Mary] because she had been in Dreamgirls. She had been involved heavily while we were rehearsing Dreamgirls. And then she had a small part that was ultimately cut…it was heartbreaking, so it was fun to make it up to her and have her appear in this.” 34 “8.” The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. 2-Disc DVD. Directed by Bill Condon. Santa Monica, CA: Summit Entertainment, 2012. 35 “9.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 1. 36 “8.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 1. 37 “15.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 1.

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of being and understanding in the world.38 Though Bella is firmly rooted in the vampire world, she remains insecure about her relative un-giftedness— her husband is a telepath; her sister-in-law sees the future; her daughter passes mental images from person to person via touch; and Benjamin, a visiting vampire, has control over the elements—and she laments: “And I get super self-control.”39 However, when Zafrina shows off her talent for projecting images, changing the scenery for everyone around her, Bella sees nothing. Zafrina unwittingly reveals Bella’s capacities as a shield—she possesses the ability to project her own mental shield outward as a form of bodily protection for herself and for others. The problem scholars tend to have with magical negroes, Matthew Hughey explains, is that the magical negro is a docile character who “saves” or “transforms” “broken whites” into “competent, successful, and content” whole persons, while the magical negro “is still ultimately subordinate to whites.”40 Zafrina indeed “transforms” Bella from a vampire with “super self-control” to the ultimate weapon of protection; once Bella realizes that she is a literal shield, she feels a new sense of purpose and enthusiastically develops her talent. Even more than serving a narrative function as the noble savage and magical negro, Senna and Zafrina are also objects of fetishism and exoticism. Upon their arrival at the Cullen home, Bella’s assessment of them suggests a sort of Cullen-centrism: “The arrival of Senna and Zafrina meant that our plea was being heard in even the most remote corners of the world.”41 Bella places her world at the center with “remote” clearly suggesting a place on the margin. One possible interpretation from a black viewer’s perspective is that Bella never considers that Senna and Zafrina have a history and culture all their own, nor does she consider that their world is their center and that she is their margin. In fact, the connotation of the phrasing “most remote corners of the world” suggests uncivilized, barbaric, and most importantly, non-white. Further, when Senna and Zafrina are leaving the Cullen home, Bella’s daughter, Renesme, touches and fondles Zafrina’s hair, even if only for a

The term “magical negro” often applies to black men, but the term is not exclusive to black men. The most popular movies with magical Negroes are Ghost (1990), The Green Mile (1999), and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) with Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Will Smith portraying the magical Negroes in the respective movies. 39 “7.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 1. 40 Matthew W. Hughey, “Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes in ‘Magical Negro’ Films,” Social Problems. 25.3 (2009), 544, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/10.1525/sp.2009.56.3.543 Accessed October 30, 2013. 41 “7.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 1. 38

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fleeting moment.42 Given the ubiquitous nature of white people being overly curious about black women’s hair—whether relaxed or in its natural state—43 may indeed evoke the feeling of being an object “on display” or at an “exhibit.” One only needs to consider Sarah Baartmann or Ota Benga to understand the ease with which difference manifests itself in exploitative and dangerous ways in the real world.44 While Renesme’s fondling of Zafrina’s hair seems harmless, and Bella’s comment that the women are from a “remote” part of the world seems inconsequential, historical documents and current research reveal that such harmless words and white curiosity led to the exhibition of black bodies in human zoos or on auction blocks in Europe and the Americas.45 The reduction of Senna and Zafrina to their appearance is a strategic move; it reaffirms pre-existing notions of how black women’s bodies should be depicted. Viewers are invited to marvel at the perceived wildness of Senna and Zafrina, and if we accept the invitation and fail to think critically about their on-screen depiction, then we perpetuate the dehumanizing pornographic gaze that reduces Senna and Zafrina to objects for our consumption and entertainment.

42 “18.”

Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 1. Numerous memes, blog posts, online articles, and books discuss the politics of Black hair. See e.g., Ingrid Banks, Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, & Black Women’s Consciousness (New York and London: New York UP, 2000); Ayana Bird and Lori Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (2nd ed. St. Martin’s: Griffin, 2014); Brittney Cooper, “De-tangling racism: White women’s fixation with black women’s hair.” Salon.com October 21, 2013. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/21/detangling_ racism_white_womens_fixation_with_black_womens_hair/; NaturallyCurly, “What if Curly Hair Was Mainstream?” NaturallyCurly. September 19, 2013. http://www.naturallycurly.com/curlreading/wavy-hair-type-2/what-if-curly-hair-wasmainstream/#nc-gallery-header; Noliwe M. Rooks, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996); Julee Wilson, “‘You Can Touch My Hair’ Explores Fascination With Black Hair, Sparks Debate,” HuffingtonPost.com. June 7, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/ 07/you-can-touch-my-hair-exhibit-black-women-hair_n_3401692.html 44 See e.g. Bernth Lindfor’s Early African Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014); Sander L. Gillman, “Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature” in Critical Inquiry 12.1 (1985), 205-243. 45 In addition to Lindfor, see also “Deep Racism: The Forgotten History of Human Zoos,” Popular Resistance: Daily Movement News and Resources. https://www.popular resistance.org/deep-racism-the-forgotten-history-of-human-zoos/ 43

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These problematic on-screen depictions of Senna and Zafrina notwithstanding, what becomes more challenging with their representation is the way director Bill Condon portrays them on screen. Condon’s portrayal of Senna and Zafrina may represent distinctly Western conceptions of “the Amazon” and “the Other.” Senna and Zafrina do not arrive in cars or wander in like the nomads; instead, they jump through trees like monkeys and make “jungle” noises to announce their arrival. Additionally, their style of dress—loin cloth, body paint, and bare feet—is an all too familiar conceptualization of the “savage” or the exotic “freaks” at public exhibits.46 Echoed by Bella’s comment about the women’s arrival from a “remote” place and Renesme’s apparent fascination with their hair, Senna and Zafrina’s exposed flesh, which is in stark contrast with the fully-clad white vampires, further reinforce a narrative that justifies the fetishization of persons of color, particularly as non-white bodies are “particularly on display” in a variety of American films.47 The absence of clothing coupled with their bodies on display for Renesmee speaks to a complex history, a history that reveals the varied methods used to dehumanize and objectify black women, rendering their bodies not their own.48 As we consider the implications of Senna and Zafrina as objects of a pornographic white gaze, it is important also to consider how this gaze affects the way in which their socioeconomic status is perceived and shaped. If we accept Richard Dyer’s assertion that “Clothes are bearers of prestige, notably of wealth, status, and class: to be without them is to lose prestige,”49 then Senna and Zafrina’s clothes serve not only to reinforce notions of racial difference, but also to mark their socioeconomic status. If we compare the fashions of all the white-skinned vampires (regardless of their eye color) to the fashions of Senna and Zafrina, we find that the white vampires are dressed in what is arguably seasonably appropriate weather: leather jackets, sweaters, long sleeved shirts, vests, boots, full length pants, and scarves—a stark contrast to the loin cloth and sandals worn by vampires hailing from the Amazon.

46 Robert Bogdan comments that fair promoters often “told [their] audience that the person on exhibit came from a mysterious part of the world—the darkest Africa, the wilds of Borneo, a Turkish harem, an ancient Aztec kingdom. The geographic location of origin was most often the non-Western world….” See Bogdan, “The Social Construction of Freaks,” in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 27. 47 Richard Dyer, White. (London: Routledge, 1997), 146. 48 See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought. 2nd Ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000) and Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage, 1999). 49 Ibid., 146.

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Here, I want to briefly address those who would question why I do not include the Egyptian vampires—Benjamin, Amun, and Tia—in my critique. My answer is simple: the Egyptian vampires occupy the same privileged space that the Cullens do. They, too, are wealthy as evidenced by their style of dress. While the Egyptians are marked by their red-eyes as different, they share a common denominator with the Cullens: money. Their modern, refined Western clothing denotes their prestige as much as Senna and Zafrina’s does not. In other words, Senna and Zafrina’s display of nakedness—during a snowy, wintry season—further places them not only as racially different from the Cullens and their allies, but also as socioeconomic inferiors. Some might argue that when it comes to the reinforcement of longstanding biases of race, objectification, and class through clothing that I am overthinking such notions. My own view is that the privileged white gaze is not just used to classify Senna and Zafrina as different, but also to another set of red-eyed, brown-skinned vampires from Brazil. In one of the closing scenes of Breaking Dawn Part 2, two Brazilian vampires arrive, trudging through the snow to the sound of faint drums and woodwind instruments.50 The camera provides a close-up shot of two pairs of sandaled feet; the camera quickly moves to a ponytail resting on a naked back, then to a partially covered waist, a bare arm, and a bare chest. Here the camera behaves like a voyeur, and viewers are invited to participate in witnessing the spectacle. We are seduced by the music and focused on the appearance of glistening brown flesh, braided hair, and non-modern clothing. Finally, the camera shifts to the faces of these vampires, and viewers see, for the first time, the faces of a man and a woman. Some may claim the camera’s focus on various body parts functions to preserve the anonymity of the characters and heighten the suspense around their mysterious arrival—an assertion I fully endorse. However, I also recognize that in “heightening suspense” both the viewers and the camera are implicated in reducing these characters to their body parts, a recognition made all the more troubling given the Brazilian vampires are dressed in a manner strikingly similar to that of Senna and Zafrina. Thus, just as the difference of Senna and Zafrina is heightened because of their style of dress, so is the difference between the Brazilian visitors and their white comrades heightened in a similar manner. Given that African Americans were considered chattel as a way to justify their enslavement in the American colonies, the portrayal of Senna and Zafrina as “wild” and “strange” and almost animalistic through their clothing proves

50 “17.”

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unsettling, at least for a modern viewer aware of historical conceptions of blackness in the Americas and abroad. Not only are viewers invited to perceive them as savage and barbaric because they bear red eyes, but viewers are also encouraged to see them as less than civilized or human because of the ways that they are fashioned on screen. Though their difference is initially marked through their eye color, their racial and class differences are clearly written upon their bodies through their physical appearance and style of dress. The way Condon fashions not just Senna and Zafrina but also two other “wild” vampires from Brazil reveals the persistence and pervasiveness of these damaging images. Breaking Dawn Part 2 exploits and feeds the American public’s previously existing investment and interest in the notion of the exotic, the savage, and the primitive woman from “remote” parts of the world. If the fashioning of Senna and Zafrina’s difference on screen is not troubling enough, their difference is made even more apparent during casting conversations when filmmakers ignore their existence altogether or justify their appearance to appease fans. During a casting conversation in the sevenpart “Forever: Filming The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ~ Part 2” documentary, Bill Condon discusses the addition of new vampires: They were all playing off of archetypes that we know … You do have the British Christopher Lee vampire. You have the Egyptians from The Awakening. The Bella Lugosi Transylvanian Vampires. And then some other more surprising ones [here the camera cuts to the scantily clad Senna and Zafrina as well as the Brazilian vampires]. That was a treat, you know.51 While it remains unclear what Condon means by “surprising,” it is evident from the camera shift to Senna and Zafrina that they are the “surprising” vampires. Perhaps Condon is unaware of the soucouyant of the Caribbean or vampire lore in parts of West Africa, but it is quite telling that even in his references to the vampires of color in Breaking Dawn Part 2 that he fails to give a specific origin as he does the British, Egyptian, and Transylvanian vampires. In a movie that already poorly represents blackness and black femaleness, the complete elision of bestowing a name (Christopher Lee, Bella Lugosi), a popular film reference (The Awakening),52 or geographical locale (Transylvania) amplifies the overall lack of awareness about other forms of the vampire in a

51 “the

gathering.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 2. Condon’s comment about “Egyptians from the Awakening” seems to be a direct reference to the British vampire film The Awakening (1980) directed by Mike Newell. 52

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global context. The lack of specifics—names, geographic locale, or other film references—suggests that black vampires do not exist or that they are marginal and therefore unimportant (at least for those responsible for the film, but perhaps even in general). If black vampires do not exist in Condon’s mind, it is no wonder that he pithily refers to their existence as “surprising.” As Condon further discusses the casting of Zafrina and Senna,53 he invites us to view them as if they were exhibits: “They are these two very strange ladies that come out of the forest and arrive. They’ve got all their belongings in a little knapsack.”54 Condon’s references to Senna and Zafrina as “strange women” with these “little knapsacks” reinforce the narrative that perpetuates the myth that all nonWestern cultures (and ostensibly their women) are “strange.” Condon’s sentiments are not held by him alone. Debra Zane, the casting director for Breaking Dawn Part 2, discusses her fashion choices for vampires in the series’ final film installment: “We knew the fans would need to recognize them [the addition of new vampires] by their appearance because there was not a lot of dialogue [in the novels].” What Zane reveals is that the filmmakers were more concerned about pleasing fans than taking a more culturally conscious or responsible role in their representation of black and brown bodies. What becomes quite clear in this behind-the-scenes look at Breaking Dawn Part 2 is that the conceptualization of Senna and Zafrina is motivated by consumer satisfaction (the fans), on the one hand, and on the other, by deeply embedded racial stereotypes. Complicit Consumers: The World’s Best Predator When I first expressed my interest in black female vampires while beginning my dissertation in 2012, I received endless sets of questions, but the most pressing of these was the confused, “Black female vampires? They have those?” The question struck a nerve for two main reasons: first, who is the “they”? The unclear pronoun reference remained (and still remains) forever unsettling. Indeed, who is “they”? Black people? Movies? Television shows? Books? The second concern is necessarily related to the first: why does it seem that few people know about black vampires? Surely 21st-century American culture has been bombarded with a very specific set of vampires—the glittery, golden-eyed family from the Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight novels—but why is there a lack of awareness of what comes before? It is this lack of knowledge that makes films like Breaking Dawn Part 2 highly problematic and, frankly, dangerous. If “people don’t passively absorb media content but do things

53 “the 54

Ibid.

gathering.” Breaking Dawn Part 2. Disc 2.

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with it that influence how they conceptually manage the real world,”55 then can we expect more than a perpetuation of denigrating assumptions from consumers of this film (and this film series)? What I have tried to do is to unpack the troubling representations of black female vampires in a popular twenty-first century American film. The representations of Senna and Zafrina as assimilated others, noble savages, and exotic freaks justify the forced assimilation or (temporary) rehabilitation of the black female vampires as a way to construct and to validate white patriarchy. Senna and Zafrina succumb to normative ideologies without ever fully operating outside or against normative conditions; they are almost the same, but not quite the same as their white counterparts. The red-eyed vampires are racialized as the uncivilized, predatory other, and the red-eyed, brown-skinned Senna and Zafrina function as magical Negroes, noble savages, and objects of pornographic gazes. What I hope becomes clear is that the Twilight saga relies on palpable stereotypes that have been attached to black women (as savage), so much so that the representations of Senna and Zafrina are misogynistic and, frankly, racist. In these regards, the Twilight saga reinforces historically persistent attitudes about race and gender and re-presents these attitudes as acceptable for contemporary American audiences. What Breaking Dawn Part 2 does is produce something palatable, pleasurable, and digestible for its audience. Hollywood is a business, and a successful one at that; they do market research, so it makes sense that they would release images that are going to be recognizable, successful, and marketable. In fact, as black female vampires emerged on the silver screen in the 1970s the way they were represented and packaged by white male directors was almost certainly to sell historically persistent images of black women that American audiences are primed to digest. In Richard Wenk’s Vamp, a film that explores a white male’s fear of economic exploitation by a black body, the film’s perspective is unambiguously that of an economically privileged white male. The capitalist and racially charged contexts of the film are very clear: the black female vampire’s rising cultural capital, consumption of a privileged white male body, and apparent social advancement make her an aberration that must be destroyed. In Wes Craven’s Vampire in Brooklyn, the black female vampire’s monstrosity is directly linked to a desire to know her ethnic origins, some of which manifest as repressed sexual urges, and it ends in a punishing of the desire or possibility to know her heritage and explore her sexuality. Breaking Dawn Part 2 propagates antiquated and problematic 55 Claudia Bucciferro, “Introduction,” in The Twilight Saga: Exploring the Global Phenomenon, 5.

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notions of race that are closely connected to American history. The series updates the fairly established cultural mythology of vampires by representing Senna and Zafrina as noble savages, magical Negroes, and exotic freaks. As Breaking Dawn Part 2 harkens back to culturally sensitive images of black women and the way their bodies were received in very public ways, the fetishizing of their bodies suggests that there is something pleasurable and attractive in the repetition of images, a repetition that threatens to continue if we, as viewers, remain complacent and complicit consumers of these images. Works Cited Arata, Stephen D. “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” Victorian Studies 33, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 621-645. Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Bogdan, Robert. “The Social Construction of Freaks.” In Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 2337. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. 4th ed. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. Brownworth, Victoria A. and Judith M. Redding. “Introduction.” In Night Bites: Vampire Stories by Women, ed. Victoria A. Brownworth, ix-xvi. Seattle: Seal Press, 1996. Cartmell, Deborah. “The Shakespeare on Screen Industry.” In Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text, eds. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, 29-37. London: Routledge, 1999. Case, Sue-Ellen. “Tracking the Vampire.” In Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory, eds. Katie Conboy, Nadia Medina, and Sarah Stanbury, 380-400. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Craft, Christopher. “‘Kiss Me with those Red Lips’: Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Representations, no. 8 (Fall 1984): 107-33. Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1993. Day, William Patrick. Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. Diawara, Manthia, and Phyllis Klotman. “Ganja and Hess: Vampires, Sex, and Addictions.” Jump Cut, no. 35 (1990): 30-36. Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Edited by David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Film.” Genders, no. 40 (2004). Accessed September 6, 2016. https://www.atria.nl/ezines/IAV_606661/IAV_606661_2010_51/g40_gatewa rd.html Gateward, Frances. “Daywalkin’ Night Stalkin’ Bloodsuckas: Black Vampires in Contemporary

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Halberstam, Judith. “Parasites and Perverts: An Introduction to Gothic Monstrosity.” In Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1-27. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Hallas, Roger. Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149-81. New York: Routledge, 1991. Hefner, Brooks E. “Rethinking Blacula: Ideological Critique at the Intersection of Genres.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40, no. 2 (May 2012): 6274. Hollinger, Veronica and Joan Gordon, eds. Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Hudson, Dale. “Vampires of Color and the Performance of Multicultural Whiteness.” In The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, edited by Daniel Bernardi, 127-56. New York: Routledge, 2008. Hughey, Matthew W. “Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes in ‘Magical Negro’ Films.” Social Problems 56, no. 3 (2009): 543577. Limbaugh, Rush. “Like a Vampire, Obama Sucks the Blood Out of American Capitalism.” The Rush Limbaugh Show. Transcript. June 21, 2011. Accessed September 6, 2016. http:// www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/06/21/like_a_vampire_obama_sucks_t he_ blood_out_of_american_capitalism Maddrey, Joseph. Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. Moretti, Franco. “Dracula and Capitalism.” In Dracula: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Reviews and Reactions, Dramatic and Film Variations, Criticism, eds. Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, 431-44. New York: Norton, 1997. Pirie, David. The Vampire Cinema. New York: Crescent Books, 1977. Schaffer, Talia. “‘A Wilde Desire Took Me’: The Homoerotic History of Dracula.” In Dracula: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Reviews and Reactions, Dramatic and Film Variations, Criticism, ed. Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, 470-82. New York: Norton, 1997. Tannenbaum, Leslie. “Policing Eddie Murphy: The Unstable Black Body in Vampire in Brooklyn.” In The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night, ed. James C. Holte, 69-75. Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002. Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Whitehead, Gwendolyn. “The Vampire in Nineteenth-Century Literature.” University of Mississippi Studies in English (1990): 243-248. Wilson, Natalie. “Civilized Vampires Versus Savage Werewolves: Race and Ethnicity in the Twilight series.” In Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire Franchise, eds. Melissa A. Click, Click, Jennifer Stevens Aubrey, and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, 55-70. New York: Peter Lang, 2010.

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Wilson, Natalie. “It’s a Wolf Thing: The Quileute Werewolf/Shape-Shifter Hybrid as Noble Savage.” In Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What's at Stake in a Post-Vampire World, eds. Maggie Parke and Natalie Wilson, 194208. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 2011. Wolmark, Jenny. “Intersections.” In Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism, and Postmodernism, 1-26. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. Zanger, Jules. “A Sympathetic Vibration: Dracula and the Jews.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 34, no. 1 (1991): 33-44. Zimmerman, Bonnie. “Daughters of Darkness: The Lesbian Vampire on Film.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant, 379-87. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

Chapter 9

“One Big Happy Frankenstein Family” – The Originals: From Monstrous Patriarchy to Unruly Modern Family1 Verena Bernardi

Elijah: Over the course of my long life I have come to believe that we are bound forever to those with whom we share blood. And while we may not choose our family that bond can be our greatest strength or our deepest regret. (2013)2 Introduction The figure of the vampire has a long history of depicting and discussing fears and desires of its time. Mirroring the respective generations’ concerns and achievements, the genre of vampire fiction, highlights, criticizes and discusses societal issues and even offers possible approaches to solve impending dilemmas. With the vampire’s renewed rise in popularity in the twenty-first century, audiences have observed a number of changes to the genre and the figure itself. Increasingly domesticated, the contemporary vampire has undergone an extensive evolution from unsightly, terrifying monster to attractive romantic interest, while simultaneously increasing its concern for and adherence to human values. Although, not an entirely new topic to this genre, the concept of family has gained more importance since

This chapter is a part of Verena Bernardi, “Us versus Them, or We? Post-2000 Vampiric Reflections of Family, Home and Hospitality in True Blood and The Originals” (PhD Thesis, Saarland University, 2018, doi:10.22028/D291-2754). 2 Julie Plec et al., “Always and Forever” (Ep. 1.1), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Chris Grismer (2013; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD. 1

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the appearance of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976, 1994)3 and the family-like union between Lestat, Louis and Claudia. While Rice’s dysfunctional and grotesque “vampire family” still contributed to the “othering” of her characters and their continuous although lessened reception as monstrous, the following chapter seeks to illuminate how, on the example of the television series The Originals, the concept of family also allows for a transformation from Byronic patriarchal monster to sympathetic vampire, or rather hybrid. Beginning with the return of the “original family” (the vampire-siblings Elijah and Rebekah and their half-brother and vampirewerewolf hybrid Klaus) to New Orleans, the series depicts their struggle to regain control over the city in order to make it a safe home for Klaus’s child, and continues with a seemingly incessant battle against all kinds of evil endangering their family. It will be argued that in portraying the evolution of the main-character Klaus Mikaelson, the series illustrates the progressive dismantling of his traditionally patriarchal behavior by strong female characters.4 Resulting in the modification of Klaus’s understanding of family, The Originals exemplifies how twenty-first-century vampires are received as less monstrous due to their longing for a family, and the progression of gender strength and equality with the introduction of strong female characters into the paradigm. Resonating Nina Auerbach’s assertion that each generation produces its respective vampire,5 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen explains in his influential essay “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” that “The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment.”6 As one would expect from immortal creatures, these bloodsuckers – in order to persist – have learned to adapt to the times and places they occupy, resulting in the simultaneous adjustment of their metaphorical significance. No longer being the ugly, vile creature who keeps to the shadows, the twenty-firstcentury vampire is now more attractive than ever. Just as this upgraded version lures its victims in with its good looks and mind compulsion, readers and viewers of contemporary vampire fiction are enthralled by these creatures’ inner thoughts and emotions. With Anne Rice’s

3 Anne Rice, Interview with a Vampire (Random House Digital, Inc., 1976). Anne Rice and Neil Jordan, Interview with a Vampire, directed by Neil Jordan (1994). 4 Due to word count restrictions, I will only analyze Hayley Marshall and Camille O’Connell’s influence on Klaus’s development in seasons one to three. 5 Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 1. 6 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 5.

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The Interview with the Vampire and Louis’s inherent telling of his tormenting autobiography, vampire stories have by now fully overcome the assumption that the loss of one’s life inevitably coincides with the loss of one’s soul. Instead of invoking disgust and fear, the recent vampire-model appeals to its audience due to its ability to exhibit multifaceted emotions and its attempt to form caring and loyal connections with its own kind as well as humans. Initiating the successful storytelling from the vampire Louis’s point of view, Rice strongly contributed to the ever-growing appeal and social suitability of vampires. The creation of a scenario, the interview of Louis by a young reporter, to whom the vampire can communicate his emotions and actions, marked the origination of what is today referred to as the sympathetic vampire. In current television and cinema, the sympathetic vampire with its ability and willingness to feel has become an established figure to attract large and loyal fandoms as well as guarantee high ratings. This is not to say that twenty-first-century vampire versions are no longer considered monstrous, but their monstrosity has adopted a more comprehensible mode, leaving sympathy and compassion in its wake. With the monsters’ progressive openmindedness and human-like qualities, audiences might be more inclined to comprehend these creatures’ differences than to judge and condemn them, ultimately speaking for this genre’s cultural influence. Following Cohen’s argument that the “cultural fascination with the monster . . . is born of the twin desire to name that which is difficult to apprehend and to domesticate (and therefore disempower) that which threatens,”7 the sympathetic vampire is the perfect medium to satisfy the human desire to tame the beast. On the one hand, the figure of the vampire is still “othered” and monstrous due to its varying superhuman and intimidating characteristics such as its vital need for blood, extraordinary strength, speed and stealth, and the ability to control minds, also referred to as compelling (e.g. The Vampire Diaries, The Originals) or glamoring (e.g. True Blood). However, sympathetic vampires are distinguished from prior depictions in that they blend in with the human society among which they dwell. Here, it is not only the vampires’ attractive – sometimes almost too perfect – human appearance, but even more so their human-like behavior which functions as a perfect disguise for these “lifechallenged individuals”8 as they are sometimes termed.

7 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), viii. 8 Alan Ball et al., “Mine” (Ep. 1.3), True Blood, Season 1, directed by John Dahl (2008; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2009.), DVD.

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Characterized by a well-built physique and “a broody, heavy forehead,”9 the sympathetic vampire lacks any sense of humor and displays almost permanent and pathological guilt for or disgust by his appetite for human blood. Seeing himself as a threat to human beings, the stereotypical sympathetic vampire is aloof or reserved when it comes to the interaction with humans. As the vampire, hence, begins to increasingly value human life, he appears to simultaneously display a wider range of human emotions. No longer limited to rage, anger and despair, the not-so-monstrous-anymore monster has learned to feel empathy and even love, which appears to be accompanied by these vampires’ appreciation of and longing for a family or some semblance of this concept. While Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries, amongst the most influential twenty-first-century works of vampire fiction, significantly adhere to the previously-mentioned characteristics in the depiction of their male main-vampire-character, the television series The Originals, as I argue, partially subverts this depiction. First aired on The CW in October 2013, the series’ fourth season is scheduled to start on 17 March 2017. Beginning with the return of Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah Mikaelson to New Orleans, the series documents the siblings’ tedious and oftentimes bloody struggle to reclaim their home and protect Klaus’s unborn child while at the same time chronicling their family’s history through flashbacks to their pasts. As New Orleans is caught up in power struggles between the human, werewolf, witch and vampire factions, the siblings, after a one-hundred-year absence from the city, face numerous obstacles to restore order, with the goal to reappoint the vampire-werewolf hybrid Klaus as the sole ruler again and to make New Orleans a safe home for his child. As quickly becomes clear, it is not at last the hybrid’s twisted and restrictive notion of family and concomitant rules and limitations which will stand in the way of achieving his goal. Towards the second half of season one, Klaus’s sister Rebekah warns Hayley, the werewolf carrying Klaus’s child, “About Nik, he is a monster. Do not ever cross him. But he does want more from life than to just be feared. He’s too broken to find it himself, but I do believe there is hope for him in the baby that you carry. And speaking of your child, our family has no shortage of enemies. She will inherit all of them. Please, be careful.”10 Through previous appearances in The Vampire Diaries, the hybrid Klaus is known for his short temper and unparalleled acts of violence. As I have

Vera Nazarian, “A Kinder, Gentler Vampire,” in A Taste of True Blood: A Fangbanger’s Guide, ed. Leah Wilson (Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc., 2010), 124. 10 The Originals, “Farewell to Storyville,” Ep. 1.16. 9

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argued elsewhere, Elijah and Rebekah continue to hope for Klaus’s redemption and not even his cruel behavior can deter them.11 The siblings seemingly unending hope, I argue, mirrors the twenty-first-century tendency of Western societies which Suzy McKee Charnas explains by the fact that, “Our century bears witness, documented and widely known from Dachau to Dahmer … to human monstrosity.”12 Contrary to his portrayal as a selfrighteous ruthless killer and tyrant, The Originals eventually shows a different side to and the evolution of Klaus’s character which, as Rebekah hints at in her warning to Hayley, will be closely linked to the slow, but progressive shift in his understanding of family and its extension as well as the dismantling of his patriarchal rule when strong female role model characters enter the story. “Family can be more than just those with whom we share blood. We can choose.”13 The connection between vampires and the concept of family has been precarious early on. As vampires have needed human blood to sustain themselves for the longest time,14 they were posing a threat to all humans and could potentially mean the death for any family member, be that mother, father, child, or other relatives. However, also vampires’ living arrangements or sexuality have been seen as a threat to the traditional Western idea of family as seen in discussions of lesbianism in Le Fanu’s 1872 novel Carmilla. Similarly, the relationship between Stoker’s Dracula and his three female vampire companions has been cause for discussions about family. Having been interpreted as his vampire wives/daughters, their “figuratively incestuous family of vampires”15 has hence been read as a polygamous relationship, deviating from the traditional model of what Murdock termed the “nuclear family,”16 the cohabitation of a father, a mother and their children.

Bernardi, “Us versus Them, or We?” 124. Suzy McKee Charnas, “Meditations in Red: On Writing The Vampire Tapestry,” in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, eds. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger (Phildadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 59. 13 Julie Plec et al., “The Bloody Crown” (Ep. 3.22), The Originals, Season 3, directed by Matt Hastings (2016; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2016.), DVD. 14 Nowadays there are also vampires who survive on animal or synthetic blood, see Twilight and True Blood. 15 Candace R. Benefiel, “Blood Relations, The Gothic Perversion of the Nuclear Family in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire,” The Journal of Popular Culture 38, no. 2 (2004): 263. 16 George Peter Murdock, Social Structure (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949), 1. 11 12

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The understanding of the term family is versatile and carries different meanings in various cultures. As Levin states, the most basic and general definition of family may designate some form of biological, legal and emotional connectedness between family members.17 However, some people may also include friends and pets into their family, thus further blurring the lines of this definition, and even completely averting the idea of kinship. Noting that “Monsters are our children,”18 Cohen creates a familial relationship between monstrous fiction and its audience. He explains that, once acknowledged, monsters can never be fully repressed and will always come back to ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place. They ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance toward its expression. They ask us why we have created them.19 Just as monsters, and vampires correspondingly, change according to time and place of their creation, so does the concept of family undergo changes resulting “from the interplay of shifting social conditions, contested ideals, and people’s attempts to build their lives amid the constraints of their time and place.”20 Due to growing industrialization, modernization and globalization, among other factors, the mid-twentieth-century ideal of the nuclear family has seen the development of a number of alternative lifestyles. As one would expect, vampire fiction also reflects these familial developments. Thinking back to the 1960s and 70s for example, vampire fiction portrayed alternatives to patriarchal families, while, for instance, the eighties movie The Lost Boys (1987) held on to the importance of family.21 With the rise of the figure of the sympathetic vampire, the idea of familial ties and kinship has once more regained prominence over the past twenty-plus years. Here, the vampire’s evolution from monster to romantic hero has mostly been accompanied by the introduction of parental figures who either helped guide this more considerate

17 Irene Levin, “What Phenomenon Is Family?,” in Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, ed. Barbara H. Settles et al. (New York: The Haworth Press, 1999), 94. 18 Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 20. 19 Ibid. 20 Kathleen Gerson and Stacy Torres, “Changing Family Patterns and Family Life,” in Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Robert A. Scott and Stephen M. Kosslyn (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2015), 3. 21 See, e.g. Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves, 167.

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version of a vampire or functioned as deterrence from falling back into the old, more monstrous habits of vampiric existence. Amongst the most famous examples of the sympathetic vampire, Edward Cullen in The Twilight Saga, for example, needs to accept his love-interest Bella Swan as an equal partner in their relationship, instead of constantly patronizing her. While he eventually realizes the counterproductive effects of his patriarchal behavior, he still relies on the father figure Carlisle to keep his urges, i.e., his bloodlust and over-protectiveness, in check. Carlisle has not only made Edward a vampire, but also taught him to sustain himself on the vampire version of a vegetarian diet – only drinking animal blood – and accepted him into his nuclear vampire family, complete with a “wife” and four more “children.” Similarly to Edward, Stefan Salvatore in The Vampire Diaries also needs the help of the almost two hundred years older vampire Lexi, a strong female character, who teaches him to retain his humanity by refraining from human blood. Stefan and his older brother Damon, turned by the same sire, live together every so often, while Damon attempts to convince his brother to accept and enjoy his murderous tendencies, thus operating as a negative example of a patriarchal figure in comparison to the maternal role-model Lexi. Just like Edward Cullen and Stefan Salvatore who do not want to be monsters, also Bill Compton in True Blood attempts to be a better vampire. Solely drinking the Japanese-invented synthetic blood-substitute Tru Blood, Bill tries to “mainstream” after the “coming out of the coffin” of vampires in the series. Bill has a more than complicated relationship to his sire Lorena, and although he is not her only progeny, Bill does not appear to be in touch with other siblings from his sire-line. Thus, not having a family, his real potential as a sympathetic vampire is only uncovered once he takes full responsibility for his own progeny, Jessica. Forced to turn the teenager as punishment for putting a human’s life before a vampire’s, Bill eventually adopts the role of a substitute father for Jessica, whom he “raises” like a daughter, in his home. Assuming a patriarchal role, Bill proves to be a reliable and understanding “father” whom Jessica, as well as other characters in the show, come to respect. When Cohen discusses the history of the vampire, he explains that “the undead returns in slightly different clothing, ... paternalistic in its embrace.”22 As was shown on several contemporary examples, twenty-first-century vampire fiction appears to have a strong, although not always immediately recognizable tendency to discuss the positive, but also problematic nature of

22

Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 5.

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family. Falling in step with this tradition, the television series The Originals takes this notion even further, portraying the life of the original vampire family, meaning the first vampires to ever be created. Starting out as a rather traditional nuclear human family, composed of a father, a mother and six children, the death of the youngest son, Henrik, due to a werewolf attack leads the mother and powerful witch, Esther Mikaelson, to transform her husband, Mikael, and remaining children, Finn, Elijah, Kol, Klaus and Rebekah, into vampires by means of her magic. The enormous change in the family members’ nature and their resulting bloodlust quickly disrupts their, until then, relatively quiet lives. However, when Klaus in his first frenzy kills a human, this triggers his hitherto unknown of werewolf gene and allows for the subsequent discovery that he is the product of his mother’s indiscretion with the alpha of the area’s werewolf pack. An offense for which Klaus will once more be the recipient of his until then believed father’s wrath. After Klaus kills his mother in a fit of rage, he claims she had died at the hands of their father, and he and his siblings flee their home to escape Mikael’s attempts to kill his children, whose vampire existence he sees as an abomination of nature. It has been argued that Anne Rice’s depiction of Louis, Lestat and Claudia as a nuclear family in Interview with the Vampire has been “the most extensively and carefully realized of fictional vampire families.”23 And Claudia’s fervent desire for a mother leads her to create one to complete her idea of a nuclear family. However, the Mikaelson family in The Originals, as I assert, far surpasses the family-like grouping of Rice’s vampires. Bonded by first human and eventually vampire blood, the original siblings remain together for over a thousand years. Elijah, Rebecca and Kol more voluntarily than their brother Finn, who spends nine hundred years daggered in a casket, they follow their hybrid brother Klaus’s lead. At the beginning of season one, the relationship between the three siblings Elijah, Klaus and Rebekah is complicated; Finn and Kol were killed before the series began. Although neither one of them finds true happiness in the company of the others, they do protect the oath they once swore to each other: “Family forever. Family above all.”24 Klaus, who is by far the most violent and disturbed family member, regularly professes his independence, but never manages to break away from his siblings, while also Elijah and Rebecca mostly remain by his side, incessantly hoping for their brother’s

Benefiel, “Blood Relations, 266. See, e.g. “Always and Forever,” Ep. 1.01; “Family forever. Family above all.” is also implied when the siblings say “Always and forever” throughout the series. 23 24

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redemption. As Gerson and Torres state, “family is so closely linked to the desire for human happiness that it invites searches for an ideal form, even though one person’s utopian dream can easily become another’s nightmare.”25 Echoing this proclamation, the siblings’ continuous faith for Klaus’s salvation26 more than once leaves them daggered in a coffin,27 after angering or disagreeing with him. Demonstrating Klaus’s almost pathological need for family, this process enables him to take his siblings with him wherever he goes, only to wake them from their involuntary slumber when he fancies their company once again. The traditional binaries of good versus evil and monstrous versus human are blurred in the depiction of the original family. This hybridity, where the characters cannot be clearly categorized, is exemplified in the main-character Klaus. Never has the term Alpha Male been more applicable. A werewolfvampire-hybrid by his very nature, he represents a monster, an animal, but still retains certain human values, such as the love for his family. Although Elijah is the oldest of the three remaining Mikaelsons, he and Rebekah mostly follow Klaus’s orders. This, of course, is not only because they value family, or because Klaus has power over his siblings being in possession of the mystical daggers, which, when stabbed in their hearts, put them to sleep, but also because Klaus’s bite as a hybrid can put his siblings into agonizing pain, which only the hybrid’s blood can cure. Early on in the series, Rebekah hence expresses her wariness of her brother’s two-faced nature saying “He lulls you into a false sense of camaraderie and kinship and then he turns on you like a snake. I fall for it every time and wind up with a dagger in my heart for my trouble.”28 Being the only one of his kind, Klaus’s unrivaled strength, speed and ruthlessness is feared by all superhuman factions. bell hooks29 states that “To those who support patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control is acceptable by whatever means.”30 Thus, it is unsurprising that Klaus does not shy away from using his unparalleled powers to secure his role on top of the Gerson and Torres, “Changing Family Patterns,” 2. See e.g. Julie Plec et al., “The River in Reverse” (Ep. 1.8), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Jesse Warn (2013; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD., where Elijah says: “I have all eternity to accomplish one little task: My brother’s salvation. If I surrender this, then, tell me, what value would I be to my family . . . .” 27 See e.g. “Always and Forever” Ep. 1.1, where Rebekah explains: “Because if I cross my brother, there’s still a coffin downstairs with my name on it.” 28 Julie Plec et al., “Dance back form the Grave” (Ep. 1.12), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Jesse Warn (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD. 29 Following her example, “bell hooks” will not be capitalized. 30 bell hooks, All about Love (London: The Women’s Press, 2000), 97. 25 26

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food chain. As his bite is lethal to regular vampires, there are only few who have attempted to stand against him – rarely any live to tell the tale – and not even his siblings are safe from his bite, if Klaus means to teach them a lesson. Just as Mikael was of the opinion that “The boy needs to be made strong”31 by regularly exerting physical abuse over him, Klaus ensures his authority through and revels in horrible acts of violence. bell hooks explains such phenomena, saying that “anyone socialized to think this way would be more interested in and stimulated by scenes of domination and violence, rather than by scenes of love and care.”32 The fact that literally everyone, no matter of which race, lives at Klaus’s goodwill and mercy, puts him in a position of unparalleled authority which he expects to exercise in every domain of life. Byronic in character, Klaus is neither well liked nor socially accepted. Very much in sync with definitions of the Byronic hero, he is distinguished from all other characters in the series due to his “ambition, aspiration, [and] aggressive individualism.”33 Creating “his own rules and his own moral code,”34 Klaus, just like his ostensible literary predecessor, appears incapable of forming any kind of relationship with people other than dominating them. While the self-absorbed egotist Klaus has turned hundreds of vampires throughout his existence, he is not on good terms with any of them. He is a patriarch par excellence who will not tolerate anyone or anything going against his wishes and orders. While Elijah early on accepts his fate to not ever find true happiness, because Klaus tends to eventually kill the women with whom Elijah finds himself in love, Rebekah takes a little longer to accept the same destiny.35 Although Klaus had also killed numerous of Rebekah’s lovers over the years, she still risks his ire once more when she falls in love with Marcel in the early nineteenth century. Still human, the young adult Marcel was Klaus’s ward, whom he had saved from physical and emotional abuse on his biological father’s plantation when he was but a little boy. Being the illegitimate son of a

The Originals, “Farewell to Storyville,” Ep. 1.16. hooks, All about Love, 97. 33 Atara Stein, The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 1. EBSCOhost. Accessed March 23, 2017. 34 Ibid. 35 See e.g. Julie Plec et al., “House of the Rising Son” (Ep. 1.2), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Brad Turner (2013; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD., where Rebecca explains: “Emil wasn't the only boyfriend of mine that Klaus killed. He did it again, and again, and every time I found someone to care about. He just kept doing it until, finally, I stopped falling in love. He said he was protecting me from my mistakes, that no one was ever good enough for his little sister. Until one day, someone was.” 31 32

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slave-woman and her master, the Governor of Louisiana, Klaus saw himself in the boy and accepted him into his family, ultimately raising him like one would a son. When Rebekah and Marcel fall in love and maintain a clandestine relationship, they know that Klaus will oppose their involvement. Nonetheless, they hope that he will eventually come to accept their love since Marcel is not like any other of Rebekah’s previous suitors, but a member of their family. Yet, Klaus again denies his sister “the freedom to love”36 by daggering her, and putting her in a 52-year-long slumber, while making Marcel choose between his love for Rebekah and the possibility to be made a vampire one day. When they discuss Klaus’s domineering behavior a hundred years later, Klaus’s continuous monstrous patriarchy becomes apparent yet again. Explaining to Rebekah “I was trying to protect you from imbeciles and leeches, not to mention your own poor judgment,”37 Klaus shows that he sees himself as the highest authority and the only one able to make sound decisions. Unlike other twenty-first-century vampire versions such as Edward Cullen and Stefan Salvatore, who claim that they do not want to be monsters, Klaus accepts his monstrous behavior since that, in his eyes, is what keeps his family safe, although this simultaneously more often than not results in the disruption of his family. In the beginning of the series, Klaus is overwhelmed by the newly gained knowledge of his impending fatherhood, which appears to cause his aggressive and impulsive behavior to further exacerbated. Not yet ready to accept the fact that becoming a father will also make him more vulnerable to his enemies, he reacts to the witches attempt to blackmail him by saying “How dare you command me? Threaten me with what you wrongfully perceive to be my weaknesses? This is a pathetic deception. I won’t hear any more lies. ... Kill her [Hayley] and the baby. What do I care.”38 However, Klaus’s desire for a family will eventually begin to somewhat outweigh his unhealthy need for control. Already an exchange between him and Elijah towards the end of episode one signals the beginning of Klaus’s development from patriarchal monster to sympathetic vampire/hybrid. Explaining “I think this child could offer you the one thing you’ve never believed you had,” namely

The Originals, “Farewell to Storyville,” Ep. 1.16. Ibid. 38 The Originals, “Always and Forever,” Ep. 1.1. 36 37

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“The unconditional love of family,”39 Elijah successfully creates an incentive for his brother to do everything he can to keep his child safe. Although, Klaus will eventually begin to recognize that the patriarchy he exercises over his siblings as well as others grants him the power and authority he wants, but will not get him the respect and loyalty he truly desires, the prospect of this realization already hints at his possible transformation into a sympathetic vampire/hybrid at a later point. Almost in sync with the gradual progression of Hayley’s pregnancy, also Klaus’s behavior slowly changes, taking on close to philanthropist traits,40 which Rebekah comments on, saying “Wow. You abandoned your quest for power to help out your family. Having an offday?”41 Where Klaus used to be egoistic and self-righteous, he begins to exercise some small extent of self-reflection, for example when admitting to Camille that he might be worried to become like his father Mikael,42 or when he assures Hayley that he is going to guarantee that his child will not experience the same “cycle of misery” he did.43 Although small, but continuous, changes to Klaus’s personality become apparent, it appears more than problematic for him to accept that his unborn child already brings change to his monstrous patriarchal rule and his concept of family. As I argue elsewhere,44 Klaus initially only considers the other originals, and sometimes Marcel, his family. However, the addition of Hayley to the fold soon challenges and ultimately diminishes his dominance and sole authority. Just like everyone else, she is expected to submit to Klaus’s rules and prescriptions. As her pregnancy, however,

Ibid. See, e.g Julie Plec et al., “Après Moi, Le Déluge” (Ep. 1.11), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Leslie Libman (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD, when Klaus helps werewolves to find shelter in St. Anne’s Church because as he explains to Hayley: “The blood that runs in their veins runs in mine. And in our child’s.” 41 Julie Plec et al., “Tangled Up in Blue” (Ep. 1.3), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Chris Grismer (2013; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD. 42 See, Julie Plec et al., “A Closer Walk with Thee” (Ep. 1.20), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Sylvain White (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD., when Klaus explains: “I've already got this one covered: my fears of fatherhood, of scarring my child as my father scarred me, are manifesting as nightmares.” 43 See, ibid. where Klaus says: “Let me put this into perspective. My father lived to torment me. It is not my intention to become him. This cycle of misery ends with my child.” 44 Verena Bernardi, “Come on in! The Interrelation of Home, Family and Hospitality in the Construction of Power in The Originals,” in Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture: Letting the Wrong One In, ed. David Baker, Stephanie Green and Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bienkowska, Palgrave Gothic Series, (2018). 39 40

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protects her from the hybrid’s exertion of dominance through physical violence, Hayley early on manages to stand against him and to emancipate herself. Doing the splits between her role as Queen of the Crescent werewolf pack and her obligations towards and feelings for the original siblings, Hayley attempts to achieve peace between vampires and werewolves in order to make New Orleans a safe home for her child. Although her sudden rank as alpha-female and her newly gained membership to the family of the originals make her a powerful figure in what seems like no time, Hayley early on displays qualities which Klaus is clearly lacking. When it comes to protecting her child and those who are dear to her, hence her family – be they members of her pack or the original siblings – Hayley proves herself to be as ferocious as Klaus is about Elijah and Rebekah. Yet, unlike the hybrid, Hayley manages to remain diplomatic and is guided by love and compassion in her endeavors. When Hayley and their unborn child are threatened on more than one occasion, Klaus eventually notices that he will have to form allegiances in order to keep them safe. This, of course, is complicated given the fact that he does not trust anyone, barely even his siblings. Time and again finding himself in situations where a loyal community proves much more helpful and beneficial than actual blood relations, the hybrid has to renegotiate what Nira Yuval-Davis refers to as the “‘dirty business of boundary maintenance’” (204). which make it inevitable to decide who stands “inside or outside the imaginary boundary line of the nation and/or the communities of belonging, whether they are ‘us’ or ‘them’” (204).45 Eventually, Klaus realizes that his monstrous patriarchal behavior will get him nowhere. Although he tries to create a resemblance of peace between his family, and the werewolves and vampires in New Orleans, Klaus turns out to be unable to shake his paranoia and need for control, again and again breaking ties he tried to cultivate. When their baby-girl, Hope, is born and Hayley eventually turns into a hybrid46 – after she dies with her daughter’s blood in her system – she becomes as close to an equal to Klaus as anyone will ever get. Where Hayley fought hard to earn Klaus’s trust and respect, her newly gained powers as a hybrid help her to free herself from Klaus’s traditional and outdated opinions regarding the allocation of gender roles, rather befitting of the early twentieth century. As Gerson and Torres state, these views include for example that “Husbands contribute to a family’s survival ... and wives specialize in the

Bernardi, “Us versus Them, or We?” 136. Julie Plec et al., “From a Cradle to a Grave” (Ep. 1.22), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Matt Hastings (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD. 45 46

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‘expressive’ functions associated with rearing children and meeting their family’s emotional needs.”47 Klaus, of course, is not nor will he be Hayley’s husband. However, for a long time, he still regularly tried to bend her to his will and did not trust her to be able to protect herself and their child. Although she proved her ability to do so more than once, it is only when she becomes a hybrid that he truly begins to believe in her abilities. Now not only bonded by parenthood, but also by blood, Klaus and Hayley are eventually equally aggrieved when, in order to protect their daughter, they have to send Hope away, pretending she had died shortly after birth. Although earlier in the season, Klaus had exiled his sister Rebekah from New Orleans after the discovery of her treachery one hundred years earlier48, Klaus’s longing for a happy family becomes once more apparent when he takes Hope to live with his sister, whom only weeks earlier he was tempted to murder. A highly dysfunctional family, the Mikaelson siblings have an almost routine-like tendency to separate for a short while, only to reconcile and repeat the same cycle of spending time in each other’s company and separating over and over again. Despite all complications and Klaus’s regular relapses into old patterns, his character’s evolution in season one of The Originals uncovers a different side to Klaus Mikaelson. In contrast to his prior appearances in The Vampire Diaries, Klaus becomes noticeably less cynical. Even though he still does not refrain from harming others – including his siblings – to achieve his goals, Klaus is less brooding and moody. Where his character used to be portrayed as a domineering, manipulative, ruthless tyrant, Klaus eventually displays the ability to be witty, charming, yes, even considerate. It can be argued that these incidents never last long because Klaus and his family time and again face almost insurmountable obstacles. However, it appears that with every impediment they overcome, Hayley, as well as the Mikaelson siblings gain more perspective49 and a greater respect for each other. Although Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah will repeatedly be estranged for short periods of time, the development in Klaus’s character and, thus, the continuously greater family

Gerson and Torres, “Changing Family Patterns,” 6. Julie Plec et al., “Farewell to Storyville” (Ep. 1.16), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Matt Hastings (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD. 49 See, e.g. Julie Plec et al., “Chasing the Devil’s Tail” (Ep. 2.07), The Originals, Season 2, directed by Jesse Warn (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2015.), DVD., where Rebekah replies to Elijah’s question why their family is always at war, saying: “I don't know. But, being away with her [Hope] made me see things differently. We're not so bad. We're not the monsters that our parents think we are.” 47 48

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bond is accentuated and accompanied by the siblings more regular moments of teasing and banter. From flashbacks to the siblings past, it is known that Klaus used to be “a sweet boy ... [w]ho loved art and music,”50 as Rebekah recalls. Recollections of his human youth also show him as a considerate and sensitive young man who suffered at the hands of his father, “the monster monsters were afraid of.”51 As the transformation into a vampire and then a hybrid had strong and long-lasting effects on Klaus’s personality, the renewed exhibition of playful jabs between Klaus and Hayley and his siblings' functions as one important stepping stone on Klaus’s way to becoming a more functional family member instead of the resistant lone wolf. Campos et al. argue that teasing is “a social interaction that benefits relational bonds at the expense of the self,”52 while Benefiel asserts in similar fashion that familiar arguments and bickering – as for example in Interview with the Vampire – contribute to the creation of “a domestic drama that closely resembles ordinary family life.”53 Campos et al. continue that in order to achieve “cooperative social living” it is necessary to put others’ well-being above one’s own interests, and that “this may require foregoing the pleasure of positive self-differentiation.”54 Hence, although teasing provocatively points out other people’s inadequacies, it needs to be understood as a social interaction “that imperils positive self-differentiation to the benefit of relational bonds.”55 Obviously, Klaus will not go from individualist to philanthropist overnight, but his sporadically occurring playfulness can be interpreted as moving in the right direction. When Hayley, for example, returns from her short stay with Elijah and Hope at the Mikaelson Safe House in Arkansas, she feels bad about the fact that she had slept with Elijah, although she would soon marry the werewolf Jackson. Klaus, who notices her uneasiness, jokingly asks her “Worried about your wolves? Or, perhaps the source of your anxiety is a little further from home? How is Elijah, by the way? I’m sure he found your visit

The Originals, “Farewell to Storyville,” Ep. 1.16. Julie Plec et al., “Le Grand Guignol” (Ep. 1.15), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Chris Grismer (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD. 52 Belinda Campos et al., “Culture and Teasing: The Relational Benefits of Reduced Desire for Positive Self-Differentiation,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33, no. 1 (2007): 3. 53 Benefiel, “Blood Relations,” 269-270. 54 Campos et al., “Culture and Teasing,” 3. 55 Ibid. 50 51

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most curative.”56 When Hayley acts embarrassed, Klaus continues to look at her with a grin on his face until she finally awkwardly replies “That obvious, huh?” at which Klaus laughs. Not letting her off the hook that easily, he continues, “Well, you both had a certain glow about you all morning. Frankly, I’m glad the two of you dropped the pretenses and, uh, shall we say ... let the spirit move you?” When he laughs even harder at his own joke, Hayley playfully shoves him in the shoulder, clearly showing that she is not offended, but finds the situation somewhat funny herself. While the old Klaus would most likely not even have given Hayley the time of day, he now even inquires about her feelings and her predicament of whether or not she should admit her time with Elijah to Jackson. Asking her if she is feeling guilty, he gives her the somewhat misguided advice that “It’s not love on which the strongest foundations are built. It’s the decency of merciful lies.” As this example shows, Klaus has by now fully accepted Hayley as a member of his family, which is a big step for the extremely wary hybrid. Although he indirectly tells Hayley what he would do were he in her place, he does not do so in his normal fashion of patriarchal and authoritative prescription, but rather in a mirthful manner among friends and relatives. While Klaus, for the longest time, has only categorized people by the triad family, ally or enemy, The Originals shows how he eventually also begins to understand that friends are equally, if not more reliable and important. While Hayley and Klaus will have many more intense and detrimental disputes57 than can be recollected here, Klaus does value her as the mother of his child, thus a family member, and also a friend. In fact, Klaus’s patriarchy and its slow dismantling appears to be caused and accompanied by the more or less concurrent appearance of several strong female characters in his life.58 Throughout the course of Hayley’s long and winding journey to earning Klaus’s respect and the many inherent and successful challenges to his authority, also the “bartender with a grad degree in psychology”59 Camille

Julie Plec et al., “Gonna Set Your Flag on Fire” (Ep. 2.10), The Originals, Season 2, directed by Rob Hardy (2015; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2015.), DVD. 57 See, e.g. Julie Plec et al., “Ashes to Ashes” (Ep. 2.22), The Originals, Season 2, directed by Matt Hastings (2015; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2015.), DVD., when Klaus sets out to raise his daughter with his siblings, not even attempting to find a spell that would reverse the one put on Hayley which prevents her from retaining her human form aside on a full moon. 58 This chapter will only focus on Hayley Marshall and Camille O’Connell while further analysis could also include the characters of Davina Claire and Freya Mikaelson. 59 The Originals, “Always and Forever,” Ep. 1.01. 56

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O’Connell regularly confronts Klaus and eventually earns his trust, love and a place in his increasingly more modern and subversive family. As Klaus originally compels Camille to spy on Marcel, whom he wants to dethrone from his position as ruler of New Orleans, their relationship starts out as a means to end. It does not take long, however, until Klaus begins to appreciate Camille’s intelligence, wit and psychoanalytical knowledge. After her spy mission is accomplished, he once more compels her, using her free time to function as stenographer of his memoirs. It is during these “sessions” that Camille’s strong personality, as well as the beginning of Klaus’s character’s change, becomes apparent. Even though Klaus could easily stop her from mouthing off to him by means of compulsion, he appears to actually enjoy her constant nagging and criticism, an offense for which many others before had paid with their lives. Resonating scenes between Louis and the reporter in Interview with the Vampire, Klaus shares his past with Camille, which gives him the opportunity to justify, or at least somewhat explain his former and current violent behavior and paranoia. Already in one of their first sessions, Camille brings up that Klaus is the architect of his own unhappiness by “repeating the same destructive cycles over and over again.”60 While he is less than pleased by her uncalled for critique, Klaus does not stop her tirade even when she points out “So of all the people in New Orleans, you choose someone with a masters in psychology to record your life story. You’re over a thousand years old. Pretty damn sure you know how to type. The truth is, you compelled me to come here because you have no one else to talk to, and you want to be understood. Then, you compel me to forget everything as soon as I leave your presence because you are too scared to trust.” As McClimans and Wisnewski explain that “A system that promotes male domination also encourages men to fear the ways in which their domination may be diminished. As a result, men attempt to control situations in which they feel most vulnerable.”61 Aside from his siblings, no one is allowed to talk to Klaus in such manner, especially not when questioning his authority and power by making him seem emotionally vulnerable. The fact that Klaus endures Camille’s snide treatment although he could stop it, hence, points at his ability to evolve into a more sympathetic and socially compatible The Originals, “The River in Reverse,” Ep. 1.08. Leah McClimans and J. Jeremy Wisnewski, “Undead Patriarchy and the Possibility of Love,” in Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality, ed. Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 165. 60 61

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version of himself and early on suggests that Camille will play a crucial role in this development. With the progression of the series, the emotional intimacy between Camille and Klaus grows. Although their relationship – just like any other of Klaus’s relationships (with Hayley, his siblings or Marcel) – will see its better and worse times, Klaus is early on strongly concerned with Camille’s safety and – though at times annoyed by it – admires her courage to stand her ground. While Camille, at the beginning of season one – speaking of Marcel – still claimed “The damaged ones, they’re not good. At least, not for me,”62 she eventually, at the end of season two, confesses her growing fondness of Klaus saying “Because, against every ounce of my better judgment, my sanity, and my common sense, it turns out, I have complicated feelings for a monster.”63 As Camille’s disclosure shows, Klaus has undergone a development, which – although clearly still marked by relational failures and violent behavior – has made him gain her sympathy and affection and possibly simultaneously the viewers’. Camille’s feelings for Klaus progress not the least of which is due to his high regard for family, which she repeatedly experiences when Klaus tries to move heaven and earth to help Camille find some kind of closure with her family legacy.64 However, deviating from other twenty-first century television or cinematic depictions of sympathetic vampires (e.g. Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries), The Originals does not focus on a love story – although several are in progress – but is marked by the continuous main discussion of family membership, as well as the pleasures and hardships family brings with it. Elijah notes in the very beginning of the first episode, “Over the course of my long life I have come to believe that we are bound forever to those with whom we share blood. And while we may not choose our family that bond can be our greatest strength or our deepest regret.”65 Although Klaus, when accepting Marcel into the fold, explained to the young boy “The truth is, Marcellus, family can be more than just those with whom we share blood. We can choose,”66 it appears that he has never followed his own advice, rather

The Originals, “House of the Rising Son,” Ep. 1.02. The Originals, “Ashes to Ashes,” Ep. 2.22. 64 See, e.g. Julie Plec et al., “An Unblinking Death” (Ep. 1.19), The Originals, Season 1, directed by Kellie Cyrus (2014; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2014.), DVD., when Klaus turns Camille’s uncle, Father Kieran, into a vampire, thus momentarily lifting his curse, to enable Camille to properly say goodbye – knowing full well that Father Kieran will not complete the turn. 65 The Originals, “Always and Forever,” Ep. 1.1. 66 The Originals, “A Closer Walk with Thee,” Ep. 1.20. 62 63

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living according to Elijah’s understanding that a connection by blood is the only true form of family. Whereas Klaus has never accepted being told what to do by anyone, it is Hayley’s and Camille’s stubbornness and challenge to his authority67 which he admires and which eventually brings him to slowly, but surely, alter his views. Camille’s persistence in questioning his perception of what makes family during their continuous sessions – which eventually turn into working on his “progress as a person striving for empathy”68 – lead Klaus to break with his belief in consanguinity and the acceptance of a patriarchal rule as mandatory prerequisites for family membership. Once he acknowledges that love, trust, loyalty and equal measures of authority form a sounder foundation, he puts himself on the path to experience true happiness. Whereas the evolution of Klaus’s personality from “the most ruthless, wicked beast to ever live”69 to functioning and solicitous family member has been slow, the second half of season three eventually shows a huge surge in this development. After he saves Camille from a precarious situation with the help of his siblings and a number of other people, the formerly egoistic and patriarchal Klaus suddenly begins to commit almost heroic deeds out of the kindness of his heart. Trying to overwrite Lucien’s compulsion on Detective Kinney to the best of his ability, for example, he explains to Camille that he did it “Because you wished it. Because what's important to you is important to me. What makes you happy makes me want to keep you so. What scares you I want to tear apart.”70 As Klaus has finally realized that kind and selfless acts towards those you love, be they truly kin or not, can go a long way, the original siblings, Hayley, Jackson, Camille and Hope spend Christmas together like “one big happy Frankenstein family.”71 This event, highlighted by Klaus and Camille’s acknowledgement of their attraction for one another – here goes the love story – marks a true turning point for Klaus. Almost completely shrugging off his patriarchal and controlling mentality, he grasps

67 See, e.g. ibid. when Camille lectures Klaus about reconciling with Marcel before she storms of and Elijah says “I like her spirit” to which Klaus replies “So do I.” 68 Julie Plec et al., “The Next Millenium” (Ep. 3.01), The Originals, Season 3, directed by Lance Anderson (2015; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2016.), DVD. 69 Ibid. 70 Julie Plec et al., “Savior” (Ep. 3.09), The Originals, Season 3, directed by Matt Hastings (2015; Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video; 2016.), DVD. 71 This phrase is borrowed from The Originals, “Après Moi, Le Déluge”, Ep. 1.08, when Marcel asks Davina to make peace to which she replies “Why? So we can be one big happy Frankenstein family?”

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the helpfulness of “constructing networks of real and fictive kin as strategies of survival”72 and admits to the capabilities of those around him to fight side by side at eye level with him. Even though this realization brings down their latest and most threatening enemy Lucien, it does not save Camille from dying after being bitten by Lucien. The true extent of the change in Klaus’s character becomes apparent when, instead of lashing out, he admits that Marcel’s anger about losing the young witch Davina in the process is justified. When the attempt at reconciliation with his former ward and friend is unsuccessful and his family faces their biggest threat, Klaus commits the final act to complete his transformation and the dismantling of his patriarchy. Surrendering to Marcel, Klaus lets himself be daggered and immured into a wall of the Mikaelson compound, ultimately clandestinely – with the end of season three – handing over the fate of his family to Hayley to protect their family from those wanting to kill them. As this chapter has shown, The Originals confirms that “the ‘familistic package,’ is a multi-dimensional set of private experiences and public developments that leaves no one untouched.”73 Proving that family is a flexible concept, the originals, and Klaus in particular, appear to somewhat redefine their concept of family in regular intervals throughout seasons one to three, depending on whether or not they get along with one another and who is alive to join in, (purportedly) dead, or daggered in a coffin. What had remained the same for over a thousand years, however, is that Klaus had always been the leader of their family. As the series points out through flashbacks and current events, this patriarchal rule has been cause for much unhappiness of as well as many disputes between and threats to their family members. It is only through the slow, but progressive, dismantling of Klaus’s patriarchal rule – especially by strong female characters like Hayley and Camille – and its replacement by democratic decision-making that their family can ultimately be saved. As Steinmetz and Peterson argue family discourse needs to be viewed “as a social process by which ‘family,’ as a social form, is brought into being as a matter of practice.”74 Hence, it is more important to evaluate people’s actions and behavior than actual kinship.

Gerson and Torres, “Changing Family Patterns,” 8. Ibid, 16. 74 Suzanne K. Steinmetz and Gary W. Peterson, introduction to Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, ed. Barbara H. Settles et al. (New York: The Haworth Press, 1999), 4. 72 73

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Hayley notes early on in the series, “This family gets more complicated by the second.”75 As the fact that she is in love with her baby-daddy’s brother – albeit for a while married to Jackson – as well as Camille’s emotional and sexual involvement with first Marcel and then Klaus show, The Originals stresses that “’The Nuclear Family’ does not exist except as a powerful image in the minds of most people”76 and that the consideration of “family pathways” might help achieve a more accurate understanding of the twenty-first century notion of family.77 The Gothic genre is known for its use of monsters as depictions of what threatens the society of its respective time and place. Halberstam argues, the “Gothic monster represents many answers to the question of who must be removed from the community at large.”78 In case of The Originals, this appears to be the – though improved and somewhat reformed – patriarch Klaus Mikaelson, who needs to be locked away so that a resemblance of peace can be restored to the supernatural community of New Orleans. However, that his imprisonment, or rather self-sacrifice, is not on behalf of the community, but for his family’s safety, remains a secret only Hayley knows. Conclusion The finale of season three – leaving the single-mom Hayley holding the destiny of those she loves in the palm of her hands – lets viewers hope that The Originals will continue to be more successful in its subversion of the traditional concept of a patriarchal family than other serial or cinematic twenty-first-century vampire depictions. Considering Twilight and True Blood, for example, both finish with heteronormative happy-ever-after endings. While Edward and Bella are happily married parents and help save all those they love, Bill Compton forces his onetrue love Sookie to kill him, so she can finally live a normal life only after he married off his daughter/progeny Jessica, hence assuming once more a Southern patriarch attitude. Although it is unknown yet what season four might bring, it remains to hope that The Originals will continue to dismantle patriarchal behavior and will successfully progress towards gender strength and equality in its depiction of the Mikaelson family. As this chapter has shown on the example of Klaus

The Originals, “Après Moi, Le Déluge”, Ep. 1.11. Jon Bernardes, “We Must Not Define “The Family!”” in Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, ed. Barbara H. Settles et al. (New York: The Haworth Press, 1999), 23. 77 Gerson and Torres, Changing Family Patterns, 6-7. 78 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 3. 75 76

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Mikaelson and the occasional mention of other examples of sympathetic vampires, the twenty-first-century depictions of these monsters are shaped by their search and longing for family, or even only the reconciliation between family members. Never before has there been such a large number of almost simultaneous TV and movie representations of vampires with actual bloodrelated kin or family-like groupings than in the twenty-first century. Relating to Louis, Lestat and Claudia in Interview with the Vampire, Benefiel points out that the vampire figure, “aloof from human considerations ... stands in for the reader,” and that vampire families allow “the reader to explore issues of alternative family structures and incestuous attraction within the family, and to play out the consequences for good or ill of these imagined scenarios.”79 The Originals clearly scrutinizes a patriarchal family makeup, hence, echoing the growing number of alternative contemporary family lifestyles. With slowly progressing measures towards gender equality and the increasing independence of women, twenty-first-century Western societies see strong female emancipations. The vampire’s background of successfully serving as a metaphor for societal issues, hence, makes vampire fiction the perfect medium to discuss and reflect these changes. It remains to hope that The Originals will continue to show strong women standing their ground in a patriarchal supernatural world and will not revert back to the representation of female characters in need of saving by a domineering man (see, e.g., Sookie in True Blood and Bella in Twilight). Works Cited Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995. Benefiel, Candace R. “Blood Relations: The Gothic Perversion of the Nuclear Family in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.” The Journal of Popular Culture 38, no. 2 (2004): 261-273. Bernardes, Jon. “We Must Not Define “The Family!”” In Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, edited by Barbara H. Settles, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Gary W. Peterson, and Marvin B. Sussman, 21-41. New York: The Haworth Press, 1999. Bernardi, Verena. “Come on in! The Interrelation of Home, Family and Hospitality in the Construction of Power in The Originals.” In Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture: Letting the Wrong One In, edited by David Baker, Stephanie Green and Agnieszka StasiewiczBienkowska, Palgrave Gothic Series. (forthcoming).

79

Benefiel, “Blood Relations,” 270.

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—. “Us versus Them, or We? Post-2000 Vampiric Reflections of Family, Home and Hospitality in True Blood and The Originals.” PhD Thesis, University of Saarland, Germany, 2018. doi:10.22028/D291-2754. Campos, Belinda, Dacher Keltner, Jennifer M. Beck, Gian C. Gonzaga, and Oliver P. John. “Culture and Teasing: The Relational Benefits of Reduced Desire for Positive Self-Differentiation.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33, no. 1 (2007): 3-16. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 3-25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Gerson, Kathleen, and Stacy Torres. “Changing Family Patterns and Family Life.” In Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by Robert A. Scott and Stephen M. Kosslyn. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons., 2015. Accessed March 28, 2017, http://sociology.as.nyu.edu/docs/ IO/220/Gerson-Torres_ChangingFamilyPatternsand FamilyLife.pdf Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. hooks, bell. All about Love. London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 2000. Levin, Irene. “What Phenomenon Is Family?” In Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, edited by Barbara H. Settles, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Gary W. Peterson, and Marvin B. Sussman, 93-104. New York: The Haworth Press, 1999. McClimans, Leah and J. Jeremy Wisnewski, “Undead Patriarchy and the Possibility of Love.” In Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality, ed. Rebecca Housel and J. Jeremy Wisnewski, 163-75. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2009, 165. McKee Charnas, Suzy. “Meditations in Red: On Writing The Vampire Tapestry.” In Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, eds. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, 59-68. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Murdock, George Peter. Social Structure. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1994. Nazarian, Vera. “A Kinder, Gentler Vampire.” In A Taste of True Blood: A Fangbanger’s Guide, edited by Leah Wilson, 123-36. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, Inc., 2010. Rice, Anne. Interview with a Vampire. Random House Digital, Inc., 1976. Stein, Atara. The Byronic Hero in Film, Fiction, and Television. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. EBSCOhost. Accessed March 23, 2017. Steinmetz, Suzanne K., and Gary W. Peterson. Introduction to Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, edited by Barbara H. Settles, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Gary W. Peterson, and Marvin B. Sussman. New York: The Haworth Press, 1999.

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Films Cited Rice, Ann and Neil Jordan. Interview with a Vampire. Directed by Neil Jordan. 1994. Ball, Alan et al. True Blood. Season 1. Directed by Alan Ball et al. 2008, Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2009. DVD. Plec, Julie, et al. The Originals. Season 1. Directed by Chris Grismer et al. 2013, Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2014. DVD. Plec, Julie, et al. The Originals. Season 2. Directed by Lance Anderson et al. 2014, Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2015. DVD. Plec, Julie, et al. The Originals. Season 3. Directed by Lance Anderson et al. 2015, Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2016. DVD.

Chapter 10

From Tokyo’s Destroyer to International Icon: Godzilla and Japanese Monstrosity in the Postwar Age Frank Jacob

What is trivial, in fact, is the lingering view of popular culture, be it Japan’s or our own, as a subject that need not be studied in earnest because such efforts can only seldom lead to valuable insight into the fundamental workings of a society.1 Introduction Popular culture mirrors a society very well, which is why American Japanese Studies scholar John Whittier Treat is absolutely right with his statement emphasizing the value of studying it. He also highlights that popular culture can be both material and immaterial, real and symbolic; it is actively constitutive of experience … [and] passively reflective of it; it is in fact always plural, a set of cultures, some of which we are born into, some we fashion for ourselves, some we reject, and some we inhabit ambiguously.2 In the case of Japan, this ambivalence is twofold. On the one hand, Japanese popular culture can be all of what Treat highlighted within Japan or for the Japanese. On the other hand, Japanese popular culture can be redefined by its export to and reimport from different cultural environments, including, and

John Whittier Treat, “Symposium on Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture: Introduction,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 2 (1993): 289. 2 Ibid., 290. 1

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especially, the United States, where, to quote American Godzilla expert William Tsutsui, “Japanese popular culture exports have had a profound influence in America.”3 When considering Japan’s film exports, it becomes obvious that it has been one of the most important export goods of Japanese culture. Since Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon won the Venice Festival Prize in 1951, as American scholar Susan J. Napier emphasizes, “Western art house audiences and critics have been impressed and moved by the variety and artistry of the Japanese cinematic oeuvre.”4 While these films were usually consumed by the ‘intellectual elites’ of Western countries, they were popular and consumed by millions of Japanese at the same time. Nevertheless, especially the popular cinema, as Napier highlights, “was ignored or bemoaned by critics in the West, who saw the rise of mass-produced and mass-marketed films as a link to a perceived decline in the quality of Japanese cinema overall.”5 Donald Richie (1924-2013), probably the most famous American critic of Japanese films, went so far as to say that Japan’s popular cinema was nothing more than “a plethora of nudity, teenage heroes, science-fiction monsters, animated cartoons, and pictures about cute animals.”6 Regardless of such negative voices, Japanese popular cinema in general, and some films, like Godzilla (1954), in particular, had much more to offer. The radiated and mutated dinosaur was at least, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll from 1985, one of the three most famous Japanese in the United States, alongside Emperor Hirohito and Bruce Lee!7 In fact, the first Japanese film about Godzilla (released as Godzilla: King of Monsters in 1956) was “a major cult hit,”8 “Japan’s first international postwar media event,”9 and would create “a global pop culture icon.”10 Regardless of mostly Western critics’ negative perspective of the Godzilla films as “movies in which stunt men wearing

3 William

Tsutsui, Godzilla On My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004), 7. 4 Susan J. Napier, “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 2 (1993): 327. 5 Ibid. 6 Donald Richie, Japanese Cinema: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 80. 7 Tsutsui, Godzilla On My Mind, 6-7. 8 Napier, “Panic Sites,” 328. 9 Barak Kushner, “Gojira as Japan’s First Postwar Media Event,” in In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 41. 10 Tsutsui, Godzilla On My Mind, 6.

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rubber monster suits stomp on toy tanks and model trains,”11 the films were popular hits in Japan, from where they were exported abroad. The first film also, as Barak Kushner correctly claims, “marks Japan’s return to the international stage—before the 1964 Olympics, before the success of the shinkansen (bullet trains), and before the postwar economic miracle that launched headlines about Japan’s dominant workforce.”12 Especially in the 1980s, when Japan expanded economically on a global scale, it was Godzilla that symbolized the Japanese rise to power.13 And powerful it was, not only as an image or symbol, but also with regard to its financial implications. Godzilla, like many other representatives of Japan’s popular culture abroad — Hello Kitty, Nintendo, Pokémon, Power Rangers, etc. — became a financial success story when it became a global export good, especially to the United States. Before Pikachu, Kitty, or other famous characters related to Japanese popular culture were known in the West, Godzilla had been “the pioneering and most prominent character in the globalization of Japanese pop culture.”14 Americans never realized, partly because they had never had a chance to see the original versions of the Godzilla films, how serious the plots and messages were. The films were rather known for old-fashioned special effects, inaccurate dubbing, and the rather bad acting presented.15 Regardless of these features, Godzilla would star in the “longest-running film series in world movie history,”16 with its 35th film — the Hollywood production Godzilla: King of the Monsters — to be released in 2019. William Tsutsui is correct when he emphasizes that “[e]ven the most diehard aficionados will admit that Godzilla is not among the greatest achievements of world cinema or one of the proudest creations of Japan’s ancient culture,”17 but the series has obviously been an essential element of Japan’s postwar popular culture ever since its debut with Godzilla in 1954. Regardless of a later switch to a rather young audience, the initial film by

David Kalat, A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series, second edition (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017), 3. 12 Kushner, “Gojira,” 41. 13 Ken Belson and Brian Bremner, Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Phenomenon (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2004), 25. 14 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 7. See also William M. Tsutsui, “Introduction,” in In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 2. 15 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 8. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 11

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Tōhō “was a somber, gripping, and thought-provoking film”18 that was often misrepresented or misunderstood in the West. Godzilla was also Japan’s first international economic film hit abroad and eventually reached the status of an icon on both sides of the Pacific.19 Obviously, as Napier highlights, “science fiction [was] a particularly appropriate vehicle for treating the complexities of the [postwar] Japanese success story. The very vocabulary of the genre—that of technological, social, and cultural advancement—reflects the cultural instrumentalities that characterize modern capitalism.”20 The “dystopian trend” of the prewar science fiction of Japan was therefore successfully continued or revived as a genre after Japan’s atomic bomb experiences in the aftermath of the Second World War.21 While the films about Godzilla were not highly regarded by critics and intellectuals abroad, they provide a distinct historical representation of nuclear nightmares and their effects or impact on 1950s Japan and beyond. Horror and science fiction films on both sides of the Pacific, as film philosopher Noël Carroll explains, “poignantly expresse[d] the sense of powerlessness and anxiety that correlates with times of depression, recession, Cold War strife, galloping inflation, and national confusion.”22 Yet these expressions were no longer visible in the versions that were filling movie theaters around the globe in the mid-1950s. The Japanese box office success therefore could be recreated on a global scale, although with a totally different film. With this initial success, a really dominant franchise was born, one that reconquers international cinema screens every few years. Over the years, the films might have changed “from sober adult fare to lighthearted children’s entertainment to high-tech action thrillers,”23 but regardless of their specific audiences and standing within their time of initial broadcast, the monster Godzilla achieved cult status within the popular culture of Japan and other countries alike. The Japanese monster consequently, as Tsutsui remarks, can be considered “an ambassador as well as a trailblazer, an unlikely cinematic hero who accustomed generations of global consumers to the excitement, humor, creativity, distinctive sensibility, dark subtexts, and addictive charms of the

Ibid., 13. Chon Noriega, “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When ‘Them!' Is U.S.,” Cinema Journal 27, no. 1 (1987): 63. 20 Napier, “Panic Sites,” 329. 21 Ibid., 330. 22 Noel Carroll, “Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings,” Film Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1981): 16. 23 Tsutsui, “Introduction,” 2. 18 19

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Japanese pop culture industry.”24 The “global grand-daddy of Japanese mass entertainment”25 and the first among many monsters in the genre of Japanese monster films — kaijū eiga — also “established a vocabulary—thematic, visual, and ideological—that would be consistently deployed, explored, and reinforced by the mainstream of Japanese popular culture right up to the present day.”26 Nevertheless, Godzilla films still tend to share some of the initial values or messages of the first film that dealt with Japan’s past and highlighted the dangers of modern science at the same time. The present chapter will analyze these developments in more detail. After an introductory discussion of the first Godzilla film of 1954 and its meaning with regard to Japan’s past and present — from the perspective of the early 1950s, i.e. the role of the monster as a resemblance of the atomic bomb in its specific Japanese context — as a first part, I will deal with three sequels, namely Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974), Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989), and Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991), to show how the image of the monster had changed during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. I will, however, also try to emphasize which similarities link these later films to the messages of the first Godzilla movie. I shall highlight that, regardless of the changes within the genre and its audience, some of the original elements of the Godzilla story were kept alive through the ages, and probably continue to determine new productions as well. Godzilla: Origins and First Success When Godzilla was produced and shot, the film was the first of its kind, not relating to any “monster cum science film”27 tradition in Japan. Therefore, the Korean-American scholar Helen J. S. Lee correctly named the release of this first Japanese monster film a “pivotal moment” that “coincided with the rise of grassroots anti-nuclear movements in Japan ignited by American testing of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb and the subsequent radioactive contamination of a Japanese fishing vessel.”28 In 1954 science fiction, spearheaded by Godzilla, might have become one of the major film genres in Japan, but, nevertheless, the rise of the genre was also related to historical and political events of its time, like the experience of the atomic bombs that “vaporize[d] a quarter of a million of Japan’s citizens in Hiroshima and

Ibid. Ibid., 3. 26 Ibid., 4. 27 Noriega, “Godzilla,” 64-65. 28 Helen J. S. Lee, “Unending Stories of the Battleship ‘Yamato': Narrating the Past, Creating a Phantom,” Japanese Language and Literature 50, no. 2 (2016): 257. 24 25

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Nagasaki” as well as the “grossly miscalculated … hydrogen bomb test-blast on the Bikini Atoll”, due to which Japanese sailors suffered again from a radioactive “attack.”29 The film set records, and with more than 9 million tickets sold was one of the big hits of the year, although critics did not like the film very much.30 The film was expensive. The studio spent $175,000 (62 million Yen), which made Godzilla two to three times more expensive than a usual film production in Japan. It is therefore also “one of the most expensive Japanese films ever made,”31 but the investment obviously turned out to have been well placed. On 3rd November 1954, Japanese “[a]udiences waited hours in line for tickets”32 and the ticket sales on the opening day were higher than ever before. In Japan alone the film generated box office sales of 152 million Yen and surpassed expectations.33 In an age when cinema was not yet competing with television, Godzilla, however, was not the only choice for the audience. Two years before Japan had produced more than 300 motion pictures that were shown to audiences in close to 4,500 cinemas across the country.34 It was not by accident that Godzilla was a success. There was sufficient competition and the audience had plenty of different options for entertainment, yet they chose Godzilla for more than one reason. In contrast to internationally renowned Japanese films of the 1950s like Seven Samurai (1954) or Rashōmon (1950), Godzilla was able to attract a larger international audience and to generate remarkable revenue for Tōhō abroad. It launched a franchise and was the first of many films to follow, telling stories about a radioactive dinosaur that is for Western audiences as Japanese as sushi and karate. Barak Kushner highlights the role of the film when he states that “by avoiding the artsy while embracing the popular, and by not appearing to be a “traditional” Japanese movie, Gojira fit the bill in all regards … [and] served as a bridge film to mainstream audiences in a way that exotic period-piece Japanese films never could.”35 Godzilla was nevertheless not an ordinary horror movie, but played with and used the fear of the

Grady Hendrix, “From Nuclear Nightmare to Networked Nirvana: Futuristic Utopianism in Japanese SFFilms of the 2000s,” World Literature Today 84, no. 3 (2010): 55. 30 Asahi Shinbun, November 3, 1954 only spoke of an “interesting concept.” Cited in Kushner, “Gojira,” 42. 31 Kalat, Critical History, 18. Also see: Tsutsui, Godzilla, 22. 32 Kalat, Critical History, 19. 33 Ibid. 34 Kushner, “Gojira,” 42. 35 Ibid., 43. 29

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audience, the fear that an atomic disaster could happen at any time again, that an atomic war would cause the deaths of millions, and that the abuse of science could create humanity’s own nadir, represented by Godzilla as the expression of human evil: “Godzilla was a warning to mankind.”36 The Japanese monster film genre, as a global one, is, however, strongly connected to the first Godzilla film, although its deeper meaning has been camouflaged by its foreign reinterpretation. Regardless of such cultural mistranslations, Godzilla was more than a film; it spearheaded a new genre, meaning that it was able to attract a critical mass of consumers who were interested in further films about the radioactive dinosaur. The fact that Godzilla was able to launch such a genre already highlights its impact on Japanese pop culture. The Canadian scholar David H. Stymeist describes this process very accurately: Studios and independent filmmakers produce a great number of different kinds of movies (variants). … With each repetition the public’s familiarity with the original work … deepens (reproductive success), and at some point a cinematic genre emerges as a “species” in the unfolding taxonomy of a living, contemporary mythology.37 The film’s financial success in the United States, in contrast, was due to the existence of a demand for monster movies, stimulated by the success of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in 1953. In the early Cold War, the nuclear destruction of the world was considered an imminent threat, which is why destructive scenarios such as those depicted in these monster films were more than credible, and thrilling, not to say horrifying. The audiences of the 1950s therefore might have responded differently to the material shown to them compared to current day audiences.38 Modern life in urban centers was the target of the new monsters, which targeted their anger towards civilization per se, reflected in the masses of people destroyed during the rampages through a metropolis like Tokyo or New York. It is therefore, to quote Stymeist again, the modern industrial city itself that is imperilled by the monster’s existence. Monsters crash through oil refineries, electrical installations,

Stuart Galbraith IV, Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998), 30. David H. Stymeist, “Myth and the Monster Cinema,” Anthropologica 51, no. 2 (2009): 396. 38 Ibid., 402. 36 37

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docks, factories and office towers.… the monster also takes keen delight in threatening, occupying or destroying the key symbols of the nation-states it visits.39 The dichotomy between monster and civilization, monster and the city, is therefore one of the central topics of the genre. It is always Tokyo that will be Godzilla’s main target, and it is therefore challenging Japan’s identity as an industrialized nation state, unable to get rid of the menace of the radioactively polluted dinosaur. Its power is directed against Japan and its people, and is therefore not only destructive, but anti-social as well. It consequently violates “cherished boundaries and categories”40 of human life, although it was created by humans in the first place. Godzilla could be one way for Japan’s population to deal with the Other itself, regardless of the fact that “finding identity through embracing the Other is dangerous, and part of a higher quest—a quest often defined in religious terms.”41 In the aftermath of the Second World War, whose end marked the decline and fall of the Japanese Empire, Japan’s people found themselves, as film historian David Kalat expresses it, in the paradoxical and “painful position of having to reconcile their patriotic beliefs with a new world order that condemned their nation.”42 While “now accepting help from the very people it had demonized, the very people who had turned its cities into ash,” Japan’s position was everything but easy, especially when one takes into consideration that “pride and honor were the primary currency of all interactions.”43 Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in the Pacific, ruled the country like an American shogun and did not accept any form of direct or indirect criticism.44 Until Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, it was under American surveillance and had to rebuild itself from the ashes. When the Godzilla film was screened in 1954 people felt like revisiting their own past, especially since “[i]mages designed to mimic newsreel footage of the war

Ibid. Ibid., 403. 41 Rhonda V. Wilcox, “From the Editor: A Pilgrimage of Monsters,” Studies in Popular Culture 36, no. 2 (2014): v. 42 Kalat, Critical History, 4. 43 Ibid. 44 On MacArthur’s rule of Japan see: Frank Jacob, “MacArthur’s Legacy: Japan and the Early Years of the Cold War,” in Peripheries of the Cold War, ed. Frank Jacob (Würzburg: Königshausen&Neumann, 2015), 207-227. 39 40

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gave audiences a cathartic thrill but painted Japan as an innocent victim of forces outside its control.”45 Godzilla was, however, not only a hit in Japan, but can be considered, as cinema scholar Peter H. Brothers remarks, “the greatest international success in the history of Japanese filmmaking,”46 due to which a Japanese monster ended up influencing generations of teenagers and other moviegoers around the globe. It simply hit a nerve at the right time, and although Godzilla might have been perceived as trash cinema in the United States, it was the green monster from the sea that would remain one of the most Japanese things people would refer to when talking about the East Asian country. While Japanese audiences were confronted with images branded into their “national psyche,”47 other audiences were just enjoying another monster feature, yet one that was so specific that it would be the start of a major international franchise. The franchise would eventually overshadow Godzilla’s original intention; to quote William Tsutsui again, “Well before the series degenerated into big-time wrestling in seedy latex suits … Gojira was a solemn affair, an earnest attempt to grapple with compelling and timely issues, more meditative and elegiac than blockbusting and spine chilling.”48 The original film was “a sincere horror film, intended to frighten rather than amuse, which engaged honestly … with contemporary Japanese unease over a mounting nuclear menace, untrammeled environmental degradation, and the long shadows of World War II,”49 and although the quality of the films decreased, mostly to generate quick box office income, this message, as the later discussion of some of the newer Godzilla films will show, was preserved. In the beginning, however, the film was nothing more than a project to fill a gap. Producer Tanaka Tomoyuki (1910-1997)50 was supposed to create a big hit in the summer of 1954, namely a “big-budget Japanese-Indonesian coproduction that would be Tōhō’s headlining blockbuster in the competitive fall movie season.”51 In the Shadow of Glory (Eikō no kage ni) was supposed to be this film

Kalat, Critical History, 4. Peter H. Brothers, “Japan's Nuclear Nightmare: How the Bomb Became a Beast Called ’Godzilla',” Cinéaste 36, no. 3 (2011): 40. 47 Ibid. 48 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 13-14. 49 Ibid., 14. 50 For his life and work see Tanaka Fumio, Kami wo hanatta otoko: Eigaseisaku-sha Tanaka Tomoyuki to sono jidai (Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 1993). 51 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 14. 45 46

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and Tōhō’s first production in color.52 Yet political tension between Tokyo and the Indonesian government led to the cancellation of this project and a “replacement project with blockbuster potential”53 was urgently needed, especially since the project had been cancelled in early April, just before the shooting of the film was supposed to begin. Tanaka needed a real blockbuster and he needed it fast;54 it is needless to say that he was under “intense pressure”55 from the studio as well. A box office hit was due within six months, and while the legend would later tell cinema enthusiasts that Tanaka had the idea while staring at the ocean during his flight back to Japan from Indonesia, it is more likely that he was inspired by the success of monster films in the United States and the actual radiation incident that had poisoned Japanese fishermen, the Lucky Dragon V Incident (Dai-go Fukuryū-maru) of March 1954.56 Tanaka, who “would go on to become the most prolific producer of fantasy entertainment in cinema history”57 simply realized the potential of a story that would combine a monster and the radioactive menace, especially since in the “Japanese context, the monster is less a reaction to the bomb than a symbol of the bomb.”58 Society, especially in Japan, was concerned about the abuse of atomic power and Tanaka understood it well to combine common fears with common thrills about the monstrous on the screen. It is therefore not an overemphasis by William Tsutsui to underline that “Godzilla in all his glory was spawned from a virtual primordial soup of political concerns, cultural influences, cinematic inspirations, genre traditions, economic crassness, simple opportunism, and sheer creativity.”59 While the film particularly played with the Japanese emotions and psychic trauma, it was also inspired by foreign productions, when it comes to its aesthetics and plot.

Alan Dirk Lester, “Godzilla vs. the Military-Industrial Complex,” in Science Fiction America: Essays on SF Cinema, ed. David J. Hogan (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 131. 53 Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017), 86. 54 Kalat, Critical History, 15. 55 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 15. 56 Lucky Dragon V was the name of the Japanese ship. For a Japanese account of the events see: Ōishi Matashichi, The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I, transl. by Richard H. Minear (Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawai’i Press, 2011). 57 Kalat, Critical History, 14. 58 Ibid., 15. 59 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 15. 52

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In 1952 King Kong (1933) was reissued and again conquered not only the Empire State Building but the screens around the globe; it was a film that was also an important inspiration for Tsuburaya Eiji (1901-1970), who was responsible for the special effects of the Godzilla film, and who was animated by the original screening in 1933 to go into this kind of business in the first place. King Kong, although almost two decades old, was a major box office hit, as would The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) a year later. It was therefore no surprise, that “[w]ith monsters making box office and nuclear fears making news, Tanaka’s new proposal was savvy, timely, and relevant.”60 The similarities between Godzilla and the latter film in particular show that Tanaka might have been more than simply inspired. In the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, an American nuclear test in the Baffin Bay radioactively poisons and mutates a prehistoric dinosaur that then attacks Manhattan, before it is eventually destroyed in a fire on Coney Island after scientists were able to shoot a radioactive isotope into its neck.61 Based on a story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) and with special effects by Willis O’Brien’s (1886-1962) disciple Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), the film became “a financial bonanza for its creators and distributors.”62 While King Kong might have defined a new genre, the Beast had proven that studios could generate high income at a relatively low cost. With an investment of “only” $400,000, Warner Brothers’ generated income of almost $5 million. At the same time the film was, as Kalat highlights, “a platform for spectacular effects that demonstrated how the field had matured in just twenty years.”63 It is consequently not surprising that the number of such “monster-on-theloose thrillers”64 would increase, and “monster movies that started to flood into American theaters were low-budget and low ambition, with crude special effects, lazy scripting, and rushed filmmaking the rules of the game.”65 There is no question that Godzilla shows some obvious plot parallels with the American production66 and was claimed to be a copy, yet the differences are far more nuanced and it would be too easy to simply speak of a Japanese duplicate of an American film.

Ryfle and Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda, 86. Godzilla, 19. 62 Ibid., 20. 63 Kalat, Critical History, 13. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 14. 66 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 20 provides a detailed analysis of the similarities. 60

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Kayama Shigeru (1904-1975) might of course have taken the initial plot line from the Beast and was also inspired by King Kong, but, as William Tsutsui emphatically argues, “the message of the original Godzilla film is so much more nuanced, the special effects so different, and the emotions stirred so much more profound that any charges of cinematic plagiarism seem all but irrelevant.”67 Yet for Kayama, it was a novelty to write about monsters like Godzilla, since he was an experienced popular writer who usually worked on detective or mystery stories. The name Godzilla, or Gojira in Japanese, supposedly, according to one of the studio legends at Tōhō, is related to a former employee, whose nickname, due to his girth, was Gojira, referring to a hybrid of a gorilla and a whale (kujira). How far this story is true or not can unfortunately not be proven, but it might just be one of many instances of post-fact “studio folklore.”68 In contrast to such rather obscure stories, one thing must be taken seriously. The people involved in the production of Godzilla were well-established professionals, a fact that highlights the value of the film for the studio from the start. Director Honda Ishirō (1911-1993) was already looking back on quite a career, since he had worked as an assistant to Kurosawa Akira (1910-1988) before and was well experienced.69 As somebody who had witnessed the destructive power of war in general and the atomic bomb attacks on Japan in particular, the director “felt compelled to translate the horrors of modern war into a film”70 and took the work on Godzilla more than seriously. Honda was aware of the risk the work on such a project meant for actors, directive staff, etc. and therefore asked everybody to make a clear decision about the film before starting to work. The director wanted everyone to be fully dedicated to the project, which he considered to be as serious as any other film.71 Godzilla, i.e., the monster, was seen to be “a narrative device”72 by Honda, who did not want to focus the film on it, but rather to use it to tell a more important story. The idea that Godzilla could emit radiation as a weapon from his mouth was based on one of Honda’s ideas, who wanted the audience to be able to see radiation as an actual threat on the screen. One can therefore argue that Godzilla was as much Honda’s creation as it was Tanaka’s. For

Tsutsui, Godzilla, 20. Also see Kalat, Critical History, 15 and Ryfle and Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda, 88. 68 Ryfle and Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda, 88. Also see Kalat, Critical History, 15. 69 Kushner, “Gojira,” 45. 70 Kalat, Critical History, 16. 71 Ryfle and Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda, 84. 72 Kalat, Critical History, 16. 67

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Honda, Godzilla was a metaphor that should resemble “the growing fears of a nation living in the shadow of doomsday,”73 and for him, the radioactively poisoned and mutated dinosaur became the atomic bomb itself, which threatened to destroy Japan again. What others considered a monster was “a sincere protest against nuclear destruction.”74 Honda had seen the horrors of war and wanted to warn his contemporaries. He “had been deeply affected by the unspeakable destruction wrought on Hiroshima, which he passed through on his return to Tokyo in early 1946 after eight years of military service,”75 and Godzilla provided him with a chance to share his sorrows and fears with a larger audience. Therefore, he, as historian Sayuri GuthrieShimizu emphasizes, “invested his sense of horror about war’s senselessness and the monstrous potential of nuclear weaponry into Gojira and never, even remotely, envisioned children and youth as the film’s intended audience.”76 It is no surprise that a dedicated director like that received praise from international colleagues, including Martin Scorsese, who called Honda “an extraordinary artist and craftsman.”77 Skeptics had warned Honda about taking on the engagement, since the plot was considered only worthy of a B movie, yet the director had other plans. He wanted to “depict the attack of a giant monster as if it were a real event, with the seriousness of a documentary” and the production team should eventually create a serious film without any trace of “humor … [or] self-conscious joking.”78 What was eventually produced and shown to the audiences in Japan’s cinemas was not simply another monster movie, it was “a plea for sanity amid the madness of the nuclear arms race”79 that provided a deep insight into Honda’s fears, which at the beginning of the 1950s resembled the fears of so many others, and not only in Japan. That the “father” of the Godzilla films was also partly responsible for the famous and more prestigious Kurosawa movies that excited the Western world at the beginning of the 1950s is not an accident. The original Brothers, “Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare,” 36. Mark Schilling, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture (Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1997), 58. 75 Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, “Lost in Translation and Morphed in Transit: Godzilla in Cold War America,” in In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 53. 76 Ibid. 77 Ryfle and Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda, vii. 78 Ibid., 85. 79 Ibid. 73 74

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Japanese monster film was also a work of art, produced and filmed with the same energy and dedication as the other famous films. Nevertheless, Godzilla was not receiving similar praise when critics talked about it. Honda had defined a new genre, the monster film (kaiju eiga), yet it was considered to be inferior and less art related. The cast for the film were well-known Japanese actors, who would usually be talked about very positively by critics, yet in the discussions about Godzilla hardly anything was ever said about acting at all. In the American version, due to cuts, dubbing, etc. the original artistic merits, as mentioned before, would even fully disappear or at least go by unacknowledged.80 Like Honda, the man responsible for the special effects, Tsuburuya Eiji, was a “sophisticated m[a]n working in a highly unsophisticated genre,”81 who could look back on years of experience, and although he “was not easy to work with”82 the director and the special effects specialist forged a successful partnership.83 Since the film was shot in a two-director system, with one group responsible for the live action and one for the special effects scenes, which means that the two parts of the film were shot separately, both needed to rely upon the professionalism of the other to achieve a final result that would look good on the screen.84 It needed to be communicated from the start how the two parts were supposed to fit together and both directors had to follow their initial plan exactly. Due to the wish to keep the costs for special effects down, a stop-motion animation of the monster was out of the question. Therefore, Tsuburuya had to find an alternative. With expertise in the design of miniatures, he eventually found a cost-effective way to screen the destruction of Japanese cities that would become a typical characteristic for all Godzilla films. A man in a monster costume would act as Godzilla and destroy these miniature models. The techniques, i.e., miniature effects and an actor in a costume, were nothing spectacular or new per se, but the combination of the two was something totally new.85 It was an “innovative hybrid method” that had been “[b]orn of necessity,”86 but it worked just fine and would be used for decades. The directors thoughtfully planned the monster’s rampage through Tokyo,

Kalat, Critical History, 11. Galbraith, Monsters, 19. 82 Ryfle and Godziszewski, Ishiro Honda, 87. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid., 87-88. 85 Ibid., 89. 86 Ibid. 80 81

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discussing it on the rooftop of a department store in Ginza. A security guard was worried about such talk and called the police, who initially speculated about a terror attack on the Japanese metropolis.87 In early August 1954, the shooting of the film began. Three teams were created: Team A (Honda) shot the live action scenes, Team B (Tsuburaya) shot the monster scenes, and Team C (Mukoyama Hiroshi) provided composite shots that would later link the materials of the other two teams. That the studio had not only recruited production specialists is obvious, because Shimura Takashi (1905-1982), a famous Japanese actor known from Kurosawa’s films, also appeared in Godzilla. This also showed that the film was a “flashy, big-budget spectacle”88 for which the studio was willing to invest money to recruit the best possible actors. Regardless of his fame and the fact that the New York Times had called Shimura “the best actor in the world,”89 there was hardly any mention of the actors in the reviews of the Godzilla film. The star of the film, of course, was Godzilla. It was the composer, Ikufube Akira (1914-2006), who not only composed the music for the film within one week without ever seeing the footage, but who also created Godzilla’s roar.90 The design of the beast was a combination of a dinosaur and a Chinese dragon,91 and two men, Nakajima Haruo (1929-2017) and Tezuka Katsumi (b. 1912), performed as the monster, although only footage of the former was eventually used in the film. To prepare for his role, Nakajima is said to have studied the movements of bears in Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo. Eventually, he not only lacked a clear idea or sense of how to move the costume, but it was also hard to wear during shooting. Not only did the Godzilla impersonator lose 20 pounds, he also suffered from blisters and muscle cramps. Hardly able to see anything, he moved wearing the heavy costume while he destroyed the miniature cities which had been built for this purpose.92 Regardless of the simplicity of the production and the means used to bring Godzilla to life, the film was much more than another monster film. It was, to quote Brothers again, “a virtual re-creation of the Japanese military and civilian experience during the final months of WWII, even to Godzilla itself, as Honda insisted that the monster’s roar sound like an air-raid siren while its

Kalat, Critical History, 18; Tsutsui, Godzilla, 23. Kalat, Critical History, 17. 89 Cited in Tsutsui, Godzilla, 23. 90 Kalat, Critical History, 22-23. 91 Ibid., 18.; Tsutsui, Godzilla, 23-24. 92 Kalat, Critical History, 17-18; Tsutsui, Godzilla, 24. 87 88

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footsteps should sound like exploding bombs.”93 The similarities were obvious and those who had experienced the firestorms of the late period of the war were forcefully drawn back into a set of memories they had long since left behind. A US critic would, to name just one example, later remark about the hospital scenes: “They look suspiciously like actual films taken after the dropping of the atom[ic] bombs in Japan. They are uncomfortable views.”94 By bringing back such memories, the film also criticizes the American role in Japan’s recent nuclear past. The atomic bombs were not a necessary evil, like they had been for the American public. In Japan, they were simply related to destruction and loss.95 Godzilla would do the same to the Japanese people that the Americans had done a decade before. The monster destroyed the metropolitan region of the country through or with radiation. It is therefore not just a monster film, but “a superbly-crafted and engaging motion picture with more conviction, drama, and mood.”96 Godzilla also might have impressed so many since the atomic threat existed for the audiences of the early Cold War and total annihilation was a real threat. Therefore, in contrast to King Kong, which “is pure fantasy told in storybook style meant to entertain, Godzilla is a window to an alternate reality meant to enlighten. Kong is a film about a giant gorilla, Godzilla is a film about men. There is a difference.”97 The mutated dinosaur is a warning for humanity to not play with the fate of humanity in the name of science and to be aware of the dangers of some technologies that should not be used by women and men. It is obvious that Godzilla is not the real monster in the story, but rather “a victim of man's tampering with forbidden Promethean knowledge.”98 Godzilla documents the fears of the early 1950s and, like a documentary, introduces the audience to a scenario that acts as much as a horror movie about the world’s end99 as it acts as a commentary on the early 1950s in general and recent Japanese history in particular. Due to its story and setting, there is no film that could have been more Japanese than Godzilla, especially since the atomic bombs had been dropped on Japanese cities, urban centers that were now on the cinema screen haunted by another atomic demon. The real monsters are those who created Godzilla, i.e., the

Brothers, “Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare,” 37. Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 38. 99 Kalat, Critical History, 20. 93 94

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Americans, whose tests created the beast and who therefore ‘atomically abused’ Japan again. That it was not interpreted in the same way in the United States is not really surprising, considering that it was not the original film that was presented to the audiences there. Godzilla’s popularity in the United States was rather unrelated to the specific plot of the first movie, but merchandising would attract fans and create a new fan culture. The American audiences had not had access to the original Japanese version of the film, which is why the monster, yet not the intended message, attracted them more easily. The success of Godzilla was, therefore, in Japan and in other countries, “based on two entirely different sets of criteria.”100 Regardless of the differences, without the American success of the film — with $2.5 million gross income the film was one of the rather more successful monster movies — further productions might not have existed, which is why it is more than right to argue that “Godzilla is as American as he is Japanese.”101 Although Godzilla should be perceived as “a rather different beast”102 in the United States, the radioactive dinosaur “is arguably among the pop culture icons most enduringly inscribed into the experiential memories of a generation of Americans.”103 As an icon, Godzilla would naturally mean different things for different people, yet the Japanese films, as trashy as they might have become over the years, kept some of the original message of not to open Pandora’s box, because science and scientists would always play a specifically important role in the films, as the later analysis will also show. When Godzilla hit the US theaters in the spring and summer of 1956, it was advertized as another monster film, of which audiences had seen many and were quite familiar with. The genre had gained momentum since the Beast marked its genesis three years before. Now, this Japanese film was advertised as a representative of the same genre. While cinemas in New York and Washington, D.C. advertised the film as oriental science fiction drama, theaters in the Midwest would highlight the monster in their advertisement campaigns, referring to “Bestial Monster Madness.”104 It was therefore announced as “a gore

Kushner, Barak. “Gojira,” 46. Susan Napier, “When Godzilla Speaks,” in In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 18. 102 Kalat, Critical History, 24. 103 Guthrie-Shimizu, “Lost in Translation,” 51. 104 Ibid., 53. 100 101

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ridden creature film”105 and the version presented to the US audiences was exactly this. It was the film distributor Embassy Pictures that, after learning about the film’s big success in Japan, secured the distribution rights for North America from Tōhō for just $25,000. Gojira was retitled Godzilla: The King of Monsters and executive producer Joseph E. Levine (1905-1987) and director Terry O. Morse (1906-1984) would transform the film, especially since they considered the original version as being too offensive for an American audience.106 To be fit for Western audiences, it was decided to add scenes with the American actor Raymond Burr (1917-1993) and, at the same time, scenes which were too offensive or that referred too openly to the atomic bomb were cut, bringing the running time down from the original version’s 98 minutes to only 80.107 In particular, the human plots, like the story about a love triangle, were victimized and transformed the sensitive drama into a film that solely focused on the monster. It might have eventually been the unexpected financial success that undermined Godzilla’s original message, especially since “over two dozen sequels of inferior quality … have tended to cheapen the original film’s intent by simply attempting to cash in on a major merchandising enterprise.”108 Since then, however, many film scholars have highlighted the value and true meanings of the Japanese Godzilla film and it “will forever remain a portal to a past many Americans would prefer to forget and that the Japanese will never be able to forget. It is now recognized as not only the cinema's first antinuclear film but also the finest recreation of the mood and desperation of a civilian population devastated by the worst weapon ever used.”109 How far Godzilla was therefore used and interpreted as a metaphor for the atomic bomb will be discussed in the next part. Godzilla and the Bomb — Godzilla as the Bomb In the first decade after the end of the Second World War, it was “the shadows of war [that] tenaciously haunted the Japanese people” and the “memories of war … remained fresh and traumatic”110 for those who had seen the horrors of bombed cities in general and the atomic annihilation of two Japanese cities

Ibid. Ibid., 54. 107 This was not the only film of the Godzilla series adjusted for the US market. Godzilla vs. King Kong (1962) was also changed before it was shown in the US. See Robert Cashill, “All Things Kong-Sidered,” Cinéaste 31, no. 2 (2006): 43. 108 Brothers, “Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare,” 39. 109 Ibid., 40. 110 Tsutsui, Godzilla, 18. 105 106

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and their people in particular. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had caused a national trauma that was connected to radioactivity and the existence of atomic bombs. During the early Cold War years, it is therefore not surprising that some kind of “nuclear anxiety,” as Tsutsui calls it, was on the minds of Japan’s people. The incident due to which 23 Japanese sailors became victims of radiation poisoning in early 1954, when the United States tested a hydrogen bomb at the Bikini Atoll, further increased this specific anxiety. It is not surprising that anti-American sentiments also gained momentum in the aftermath of the incident. Again, the United States were responsible for the radiation of Japanese people. The memories related to 1945 were just too fresh to not trigger anger and anxiety at the same time. Such feelings were also stimulated because “tainted tuna entered Japanese markets before the radioactive contamination was discovered, and the news media erupted in a fury of nuclear fear and anti-American hostility.”111 In this moment of national anger and anxiety came the premiere of Godzilla, and the monster was almost naturally perceived as a symbol for the atomic bombs, and for the nuclear anxiety of Japan. Considering its historical context, the film, as Kalat correctly remarks, “is an allegory about Japan’s experience with nuclear history.”112 This level of symbolism should remain one essential part of later Godzilla films, even those hastily produced to simply cash in as fast as possible. Of course, to quote Kalat again, “[t]o pretend that Godzilla movies did not veer into absurdity and rampant silliness is futile,”113 however, it would also not be accurate to claim that the Godzilla films lost all their symbolism. While the later films might have “represented the worst aspects of commercial filmmaking, and the worst in technical quality as well,”114 they still offer an insight into Japan’s historical past and the current anxiety related to it. And, not to omit important facts, most of the things that were criticized about the films, especially in the US, were related to measures taken by American distributors, e.g., new scene cuts, different music, or the addition of alternative footage. Regardless of the qualitative decline, Godzilla remained what one Japanese scholar refers to as the “ultimately disastrous other.”115 This might be true for Ibid., 19. Kalat, Critical History, 5. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Takayuki Tatsumi, “Waiting for Godzilla: Chaotic Negotiations between Post Orientalism and Hyper-Occidentalism,” in Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan, eds. Heide Fehrenbach and Uta G. Poiger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 228. 111 112

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the initial Godzilla, but, as will be shown later, Godzilla was later also considered an essential part of Japan, especially when the monster was shown as a defender of the island nation. Godzilla, however, is no utopian fiction. Namely, this is because the story is not happening, to follow Rex Bossert’s definition of utopian fiction, in “a fully articulated imaginary world radically displaced in space, in time, or in nature from the world of the author, which engages the reader in a critique of specific aspects of his world (customs, values, institutions, etc.) suggesting other alternatives, whether better or worse.”116 The “notion of disaster”117 brought upon Japan is not imagined or invented, it collides with and probably triggers real memories about real events. For the genre, Godzilla defined some basics, when it “both established and exemplifies certain fundamental conventions of the genre.”118 The message also seems to be rather clear and easy. The danger of science, with scrupulous scientists as the real monsters, is emphasized, although Godzilla comes with “a nationalistic twist,”119 because Godzilla was created by American science, the one that had already hit Japan so hard a decade before. The world is only saved by the Japanese scientist who sacrifices his life to destroy the monster — which in the series always somehow reappears— in a heroic act of selflessness. The film consequently “demonizes American nuclear science”120 and therefore must be critically interpreted, as it also resembles the rise of nationalism in post-occupation Japan.121 It is the latter that eventually gains and secures the victory over the monster. Therefore, Godzilla offered its Japanese film audience “an experience that was both cathartic and compensatory”122 for their own suffering in the past. With the humans’ success in the end, it is furthermore part of the so-called “secure horror” genre.123 Nevertheless, the relationship between Godzilla as the monster and Japan as the society in danger is an integral part of the narrative of all the following films dealing with the radioactive monster. It also

Rex Bossert, “Godzilla in Cloudcuckooland; or, Literary Theory Comes to Utopia,” Utopian Studies 1 (1987): 143. 117 Napier, “Panic Sites,” 330. 118 Ibid., 331. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Noriega, “Godzilla,” 65. 122 Napier, “Panic Sites,” 332. 123 Andrew Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), 214. 116

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“reveals fundamentally different cultural and political attitudes toward nuclear history and the Other”124 that exist in the United States, where monsters very often simply represented beasts of brute force that were less nuanced than the Japanese Godzilla. In The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a dinosaur is awakened and mutated by a nuclear explosion as well, yet it is also destroyed by another nuclear missile. For the audience, there remains no critical view on nuclear weapons, but a clear and probably very American narrative: “nuclear weapons can solve the problems and anxieties they create.”125 The Japanese perspective, in contrast, is more nuanced, and the existence of the monster is not easily reversed. Humanity cannot simply call and ban the dangers of science by pushing a button. It better highlights that such technologies are only available for a price. In the American films, the monster becomes a “complete Other,”126 something that can easily be killed to rescue the world. In the Japanese case, the situation is far more complex. The monsters like Godzilla are personalized and do, in contrast to the Western monster that can usually be used to represent “re-pressed sexual energy …, class struggle …, or ‘archaic, conflicting impulses’,”127 relate much more to the specifics of Japanese history than any other monster would with regard to the West. In the Japanese case, the Other also belongs to their own culture, which means that there is room for an “other-oriented self-designation”128 that makes Godzilla, i.e., the monster, part of Japan’s self as well. By their names and stories, the monsters of the Japanese context, like Godzilla of course, are already connected to their Japanese context and cannot simply be pushed out of it, which is why most of these monsters never really die and can take ambivalent roles within the different plots of the films. They can be good or evil, and their character might even change. While the films are usually historicized in relation to the Japanese memories of the Second World War or the Cold War,129 the monsters provide much more complex perspectives on the history and culture of Japan than just a simple reflection of recent events.

Noriega, “Godzilla,” 66. Ibid. 126 Ibid., 67. 127 Ibid. 128 Takao Suzuki, Words in Context: A Japanese Perspective on Language and Culture (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984), 169. 129 Yoshikuni Igarashi, Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 114-122 and Takahashi Toshio, Gojira no nazo: kaijū shinwa to Nihonjin (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998) are two works that argue along these lines. 124 125

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Godzilla also provided audiences with a common identity that allowed them to mourn about the past as a community, united by the experience of the past they all shared.130 People who are trying to escape or are being evacuated during the films resemble those who were seeking refuge from the bombings during the war. Yet, Godzilla is not only the monster that destroys the city but is also the menace in the dark, that such a destruction can happen anytime as long as science is not able to contain dangerous technologies from being abused. It is the heroic act by the scientist depicted in Godzilla, who “proves himself to be more ethically engaged and concerned for others than the implicitly negligent U.S. scientists who unleashed the A-bomb and the Hbomb upon humanity in general and Japan in particular,”131 because he destroys the notes about his invention before he uses it to destroy the danger for Japan. This act frees Japan from the monstrosity, which is not so much the monstrosity of Godzilla, but the monstrosity of mankind. The film therefore also constructs what the famous political scientist Benedict Anderson (19362015) called an “imagined community,”132 because the film, as a modern form of media, connects all those who share the past and the same experiences. The scientist Serizawa, who saves Japan, is not only marked as a veteran by his eye-patch, and is therefore also as a member of the imagined community, but at the same time, he is displayed as abnormal. He stands in line with other mad scientists such as Dr. Frankenstein and his laboratory evokes feelings of horror as well. Yet by his honorary act, Serizawa does not only prove that he is not evil, but his Japaneseness is emphasized. Eventually, even Godzilla must be considered “an honorary Japanese citizen by virtue of suffering nuclear attack by the United States,”133 sharing the same group identity as the audience. The monster therefore does not only represent the consequences of the atomic bomb, it increasingly resembles the bomb itself, or to be more precise, nuclear technology as a whole. Whoever thinks of Godzilla thinks of radioactivity, and thereby almost automatically of the atomic bomb.

Mark Anderson, “Mobilizing Gojira: Mourning Modernity as Monstrosity,” in In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 23. 131 Ibid., 25. 132 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London/New York: Verso, 2016). 133 Anderson, “Mobilizing Gojira,” 33. Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, 116 states that Ifukube Akira connected Godzilla to the Japanese Service Men who had lost their lives during the Pacific War. 130

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The plot for the following films seems to have been set by the simple narrative that a monster appears and needs to be destroyed, or at least put in check to save Japan and, from a long term perspective, the world as well. Since Godzilla is almost indestructible, the quest of the films for the main characters and the audiences alike is to find out what exactly the monster wants. In later years Godzilla’s role then becomes far more nuanced; a monster that does not only destroy, but can be used to defend Japan against other monsters, i.e., a necessary evil like the atomic bomb itself, which has the potential to destroy the world but at the same time saves it from such destruction. Within the original narrative, Godzilla could also be interpreted as playing or resembling, as Chon Noriega highlights, the role of the United States in order to symbolically re-enact a problematic United States-Japan relationship that includes atomic war, occupation, and thermonuclear tests. … Japan in 1954 is a transitional monster caught between the imperial past and the postwar industrial future, aroused by United States H-bomb tests.134 Godzilla is consequently, in this interpretation, as American as it is Japanese, although such an identification would usually be related to the context of Japan. The Godzilla series is eventually less interested in discussing the role of the monsters per se, but rather in emphasizing that no matter how much destruction is brought upon Japan, it can always be rebuilt from the ashes, like it has been rebuilt after the fire storms of 1945.135 The way it is presented to the audiences is that “the destruction is both more impersonal and less catastrophic”136 yet the political implications of the film are more than visible, since the “testing of the H-bomb is the hottest political issue raised,”137 and which is why so many scenes were cut before it was distributed in the United States. The makers of Godzilla were consequently able to “address the ghosts of the Japanese past playfully and at the same time seriously, in a way calculated to exorcize those ghosts.”138 What started as a serious issue would, however, be followed by a series of low budget films that continued the legacy of the original film. That these nevertheless continued to

Noriega, “Godzilla,” 68. Napier, “Panic Sites,” 334. 136 Ibid. 137 Thomas Schnellbächer, “Has the Empire Sunk Yet? The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction,” Science Fiction Studies 29, no. 3 (2002): Japanese Science Fiction, 385. 138 Ibid., 386. 134 135

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confront the audiences with messages that went beyond monstrosity and destruction will be shown in the next part of this chapter. Later Interpretations of Godzilla In 1965 Tōhō decided that Godzilla would in the future be presented for a different audience, namely children. Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (Sandai Kaijū: Chikyū Saidai no Kessen, 1965) sees Godzilla teaming up with Mothra and Rodan, two other monsters, to fight and save the world from Ghidorah, a “three-headed monster from outer space.”139 With this film Godzilla turned into a heroic figure in the monster universe, as his decision to join a team of monsters was responsible for the saving of Japan. That his role was open for renegotiation and reinterpretation was also shown in 1985, when Godzilla 1985, another extreme re-edit of a Japanese original — Godzilla 1985 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the monster and is referred to in Japan as Gojira 1984 — by American distributors, dealt with a specific Cold War-related plot. American and Soviet delegates try to persuade the Japanese Prime Minister to use nuclear weapons to destroy the monster, yet Japan’s leadership refuses to allow such an action. While the Japanese Self-Defense Forces can destroy the menace, an accident with nuclear missiles, fired on Tokyo by the Soviet Union, causes Godzilla to rise again, because although the missiles are intercepted by the United States, there is a blast of radioactivity as a consequence of the missiles’ destruction. Eventually, the monster can only be destroyed in a volcano, where it is put to rest.140 The Japanese prove that they do not need foreign assistance in dealing with Godzilla and it was the intervention by foreign powers that made the story much more complicated, which might have sounded like a political statement of a wish for independence from Cold War politics as well. Like the original from 1954, the film deals with the problems related to the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Godzilla is again reawakened by radioactive poisoning and represents the danger of total annihilation, as it was actually existent. Once a weapon of mass destruction was erroneously used, the monster appeared and therefore again rather resembled the human monster within everybody in the audience more than the monster as something other. The film is therefore “a nuclear parable”141 presenting and highlighting the fears of a generation that, instead of having

Noriega, “Godzilla,” 71. Ibid., 72. 141 Ibid., 73. 139 140

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experienced the events of 1945, would have grown up in a world where the existence of atomic bombs was quite natural. Again, the Godzilla films usually offer much more than the first look makes visible and the fact that they are very often judged based on their aesthetics makes it hard to argue for the historical value of these productions, which always offer a mirror into the time of their creation and the societies that would not only watch the films, but be impacted by the semantics and semiotics of these monster films. Already in the 1980s, the special effects of the Godzilla films appeared to be antiquated and no longer up-to-date, which is why the films were often simply dismissed for their appearance. With regard to the plot, however, they were as actual and important as the 1954 original.142 It is consequently also not surprising that, in most cases, Godzilla is not dead at the end of the film, but rather on the way out to the open sea, covered by a volcano or deep in the ground under the ocean, waiting to reawaken for the next film. Therefore, the monster is never completely destroyed, just like the menace of total annihilation by a nuclear threat. The monster, and with it the destruction of Japan, can always be repeated and humans have to be aware of that. Almost like a forgotten burden from the past, “[t]he monster surfaces only when-as in the case of rapid postwar industrialization and the new cold war-the lessons of the past are overlooked in writing the future.”143 Why and in which contexts that can happen will now be shown by discussing three different Godzilla films. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Gojira tai Mekagojira, 1974) The film begins on Okinawa, where an Azumi priestess (Beru-bara Lin) has a vision of a city destroyed by a monster. Shimizu Masahiko (Aoyama Kazuya) at the same time discovers an unknown metal in a cave, which is later identified by Professor Miyajima (Hirata Akihiko) as space titanium. An excavation on the islands, which is led by Shimizu Keisuke (Daimon Masaaki) discovers a hidden chamber full of artifacts of ancient origin. They find an inscription that gives an old prophecy: “When a black mountain appears above the clouds, a huge monster will arise and try to destroy the world; but then, when the red moon sets and the sun rises in the west, two more shall appear to save humanity.” Next to this inscription, they also find a statue of King Caesar, the old protector of the Azumi. The archaeologist Kaneshiro Saeko (Tajima Reiko) takes the statue with her for further study. While on the plane to Tokyo, Azumi

142 143

Ibid., 75. Ibid.

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and Keisuke see a black mountain appear above the clouds. The prophecy seems to begin to be fulfilled. In the capital, Keisuke’s uncle Professor Wagura (Koizumi Hiroshi) is supposed to study the statue, although an intruder tries to steal it, but fails. At the same time, Godzilla emerges out of Mount Fuji, but is attacked by another monster, Anguirus, although the two usually get along well. After Godzilla has wounded the other monster, the former rampages through a refinery. However, now, a second Godzilla appears. The two fight and one eventually loses its artificial skin and shows its real face: Mechagodzilla. A Godzilla built from space titanium. During the fight that follows, the real Godzilla is wounded and disappears into the ocean. In a storm, the monster is later shown to regenerate its power by absorbing lightning on a small island in the sea. Keisuke and Saeko decided to bring the statue of King Caesar back to the Azumi Temple on Okinawa, to help the priests there to uncover the hiding place of the famous defender of the islands. Again, somebody tries to steal the statue, but Keisuke is able to wound his face. An ape-like face appears and the creature is shot by a hidden shooter. In the meantime Miyajima, his daughter Ikuko (Matsushita Hiromi), and Masahiko are looking for a control station for Mechagodzilla, since the big robot, the Professor assumes, must be controlled from somewhere. They are taken prisoner, and a commander of the so-called Black Hole Aliens, Kuronuma (Mutsumi Gorō), introduces himself. Mechagodzilla is presented as the weapon to destroy Earth, but, due to the fight with Godzilla, its control mechanism was damaged and Professor Miyajima is forced to help the aliens with repairs to save the lives of his daughter and Masahiko. When Saeko and Keisuke return to Okinawa, the latter begins to look for the three missing people, since nobody had seen them or known their whereabouts for some days. Keisuke, together with an Interpol agent called Tamura (Torii Takayasu), rescues the group with Miyajima. When they escape, they can see a blood moon, which means that the prophecy is continuing. Afterwards, the group splits up. While Keisuke and the women go to the Azumi Temple to free King Caesar, the others — Miyajima, Masahiko, and Tamura — return to the alien headquarters. Mechagodzilla was sent to Okinawa in the meantime as well, to destroy King Caesar while still asleep. The Azumi priestess therefore sings to awaken the sleeping giant. The monster wakes up just in time and begins to fight against Mechagodzilla. Yet alone, he does not stand a chance. However, Godzilla shows up as well and together the two monsters are able to destroy Mechagodzilla, while Miyajima and the others are able to destroy the alien

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headquarters. In the end, King Caesar is buried under a mountain again while Godzilla moves out to the sea and disappears. In this film, we have similar semiotic levels as in the original Godzilla film. The monster still represents nuclear technology, and the sunrise in the West — how the Japanese fishermen described the atomic explosion in 1954 and therefore Godzilla’s own origin — indicates that Godzilla will appear. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla also displays the problem of the scientist. Miyajima has to help the aliens to repair Mechagodzilla and therefore, with his knowledge, supports something destructive. In the end, he is, however, able to make up for his mistakes by destroying the alien headquarters. The union of the Okinawan King Caesar and the radioactively poisoned Godzilla could be interpreted as a reflection of Wakon Yōsai, the idea of merging Japanese traditions with Western knowledge, as was advocated during the Meiji Period (1868-1912). King Caesar resembled the traditional Japanese (or Okinawan) element, while Godzilla acted as a representative of Western nuclear science. Both together are able to save the world from the Black Hole Aliens’ invasion. Godzilla therefore occupies a positive role in the film, where he is fighting against evil. Yet his existence alone is dangerous to the Japanese people, as another film, 15 years later, would depict. Godzilla vs. Biollante (Gojira tai Biorante, 1989) After the last time Godzilla destroyed Tokyo, he fell into the volcano of Mount Mihara and was sealed within it. Yet Japanese scientists were able to collect Godzilla cells, which were also wanted by foreign governments. Americans are shown trying to steal these cells from Japan, but are eventually killed by a Saradian (a fictitious Middle Eastern state) agent who brings them back to Saradia. At the Saradia Institute of Technology and Science the Japanese scientist Dr. Shiragami Genshiro (Takahashi Kōji) is working with the cells to combine them with plant cells. New genetically crossed plants will then be used to grow food in the desert. Due to a terrorist attack against the facility, Shiragami’s daughter Erika (Sawaguchi Yasuko) is killed. Five years later, the scientist is back in Japan. In the meantime, he had crossed the cells of his daughter with a rose, trying to save the soul of his daughter in this new kind of container. At the same time, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) had been working on anti-nuclear energy bacteria, which could be used against Godzilla, since it, in theory, would absorb nuclear energy. However, the JSDF also need the monster cells to be able to complete the project. The project is complicated by the fact that the existence of such bacteria would change the hegemonial situation in the world, since they could be used to neutralize any

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nuclear weapon as well and therefore provide Japan with an uncontestable military position in the world. When Ōkōchi Makoto (Kaneda Ryūnosuke), whose company has held the Godzilla cells so far, gives them to scientist Kirishima Kazuhito (Mitamura Kunihiko), who is also dating Ōkōchi’s daughter Asuka (Tanaka Yoshiko), for further development, he states: “Japan suffered from nuclear devastation. And now there is Godzilla. It is only right that we should have a weapon that could protect us from our enemies.” When an explosion at Mount Mihara destroys Shiragami’s roses, he agrees to work with the scientists of the JSDF, who had requested his assistance earlier. He, however, demands to be able to work with the cells alone for a while, and secretly crosses them with those of the roses that supposedly contain the soul of his daughter. At the same time, the American Bio Major Organization (ABMO) wants to gain possession of Godzilla cells and threatens to detonate bombs at Mount Mihara to free Godzilla. Meanwhile, the rose Shiragami had genetically changed escaped from his lab after killing two members of the ABMO, who had tried to steal plans for the anti-nuclear energy bacteria directly from Shiragami’s laboratory. A new monster, the mutated rose called Biollante, shows up at Lake Ashino and is calling for Godzilla. The Japanese government decides to hand over the bacteria to the ABMO, but a Saradian agent intervenes and steals them. Explosions eventually cause Godzilla to awaken from his sleep at Mount Mihara. Freed from his volcano prison, Godzilla follows the call of Biollante and the two monsters fight. In the end, the former wins and Biollante, which also contained Erika’s soul, is burnt. Godzilla is now on the move underwater and looking for an atomic power plant to refresh its energies, which would throw the surrounding area into a nuclear catastrophe. The JSDF prepare for a counter attack, yet the psychic Saegusa Miki (Odaka Megumi) is able to change Godzilla’s course. Now the monster is on its way to Osaka and begins to destroy the city. Kirishima and Col. Gondō Gorō (Minegishi Tōru) were in the meantime able to get the bacteria back, and the latter and his men use rocket launchers to shoot missiles with bacteria to infect Godzilla with it. Gondō dies when Godzilla destroys the building he is in, yet the officer is able to fire a last rocket directly into the monster’s mouth. Regardless of the many hits, the bacteria seem to be inefficient, because Godzilla’s body temperature is too low. The idea is that his temperature must be raised before the bacteria can actually work. With the help of plates that emit microwaves, the military wants to heat the monster up, however, the bacteria simply will not work. In the meantime, Miki senses that Biollante is still alive and a new fight between the two monsters begins. Eventually, the mutated rose is able to defeat Godzilla and at the end of the film the latter is seen falling into the sea — but

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not without reappearing once more just to turn around and disappear — after being weakened by the bacteria. Biollante disappears and dissolves into glimmering particles that take Erika’s shape for the last time. Shiragami, who decides to not continue his work, is killed by the Saradian agent, whom Kirishima pursues until the former stands on one of the microwave plates that is activated by Major Kuroki Shō (Takashima Masanobu). It is obvious that in this film Godzilla is not the hero, but rather a dangerous weapon that Shiragami and others want to exploit for their own selfish reasons, either to revive a beloved lost one, to make Japan a strong and important nation again, or to gain an advantage in a current conflict through new and better technology. All the actors have a need to access Godzilla’s cells and it becomes clear that they are the real monsters. Godzilla is only awakened due to blackmail and conflict and therefore can also be seen as an expression of the worst of human nature. Considering that the scientists in the film realize their mistakes makes them also realize that the real monsters are not the creatures, which have both been created by scientific tests, but the humans who created them. Godzilla vs. Biollante, released 35 years after the original Godzilla, therefore has similar messages for the audience and a “close reading” of the content shows quite a few similarities. It highlights that Godzilla is a weapon and that the monster can be abused to create more monsters based on the same technology. That this is not the only film in the series that turns to the original to reflect about some of the genuine messages of Godzilla can be seen in the next case as well. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (Gojira tai Kingu Gidora, 1991) The conflict of the monsters is human-made as well in the 1991 Godzilla film Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. The story begins in the year 2204 when a submarine that is trying to locate King Ghidorah’s body on the floor of the ocean, and finds the three-headed monster with only two of its heads left, since one was cut off in a previous fight against Godzilla. The film then goes back in time to 1992 when a UFO is sighted over Tokyo. At the same time, the science fiction author Terasawa Ken’ichirō (Toyohara Kōsuke) is currently working on a book about Godzilla. He found out that Japanese soldiers who had been stationed on Lagos Island during the Pacific War had seen a dinosaur, which due to the later radioactive poisoning in 1954, according to the author’s theory, had become Godzilla. The former commander of the Japanese troops on the island Shindō Yasuaki (Tsuchiya Yoshio), now a wealthy businessman, confirms the existence of the dinosaur. In the meantime, three people, named Wilson (Chuck Wilson), Grenchiko (Richard Berger), and Kano Emi (Nakagawa Anna), who call themselves Futurians, leave the UFO and explain that they have come from 2204 to save Japan from destruction by Godzilla. They warn the people of a future attack by the monster

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which would lead to the radioactive destruction of the whole country. Their plan is to travel back in time and to prevent the radioactive poisoning of Godzilla. Terasawa, Professor Mazaki (Sasaki Katsuhiko), a Godzilla specialist, and the psychic Saegusa Miki, who reappears in this Godzilla film, will accompany Emi and M-11 (Robert Scott Field), an android, on their journey. Once the dinosaur had helped to drive the American troops away, during which it was wounded, Shindō and his men left the island. M-11 teleports the creature to the Bering Strait, where the dinosaur would lie uninterrupted. The danger of Godzilla’s existence was eased, however, by the Futurians leaving three small creatures, called Dorats, on the island. Due to the hydrogen bomb test, these were radioactively poisoned and become King Ghidorah. This new monster could be controlled and directed by the Futurians, who demanded that the Japanese government submit to their rule. Emi tells Terasawa that they had come from the future to prevent Japan’s rise to become the mightiest power in the 22nd century, which was why they had stolen a time machine and developed the plan to create King Ghidorah. The Japanese government then discusses a plan to create Godzilla by firing nuclear missiles on the dinosaur in the Bering Strait. Godzilla, however, attacks the submarine. It had already been created by a former nuclear accident in the region and now received more power through this second bout of radiation. Shindō prophetically says: “He will fight for us again. Our savior has come back to protect us.” Godzilla actually attacks King Ghidorah and due to Emi, M-11 and Terasawa being successful in destroying the Futurians’ control device for the monster, it loses one of its heads in the fight against the “King of Monsters.” The UFO, which the three have beamed close to the battle scene, is also destroyed by Godzilla. Now it is almost inevitable that Tokyo will be destroyed. Godzilla won the battle against King Ghidorah and is now on a rampage through the country, starting in Sapporo. Emi and M-11 return to the future to come back with help, but in the meantime, Godzilla destroys Tokyo and kills Shindō. Then, however, Emi returns with Mecha-King Ghidorah and attacks Godzilla. She eventually flies both monsters out to the open sea, where both disappear. Godzilla drifts away and Emi returns to the future, but not without letting Terasawa know that she is one of his descendants. Before the film ends, Godzilla’s awakening under the water is shown to open up the possibility of another sequel, of course. Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, like other films before, refers to the original plot of Godzilla, a dinosaur that has been radioactively poisoned. It is discussed again that Godzilla is a monster created by humans, and in the present storyline, the Japanese government needs it as a weapon to protect itself from the Futurians and their man-created monster. The battle of the monsters is consequently a battle of human interests, which makes the metaphorical use

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of Godzilla as a weapon of mass destruction far more obvious. Japan cannot survive without Godzilla, although it is regularly destroyed by the monster as well. Therefore, the crux of the danger of radioactive radiation, but at the same time, the need for nuclear power, becomes obvious. Godzilla represents this crux. It is dangerous to awaken the monster, but without it, Japan is not strong enough to resist an attack, e.g., by the Futurians. It is in general a symbolic discussion about whether nuclear energy should be used at all. As an island nation without many resources, energy needs to be produced in nuclear power plants. The kinds of dangers that are related to this have been patently clear since 2011 and the Fukushima incident. Dealing with Godzilla from a Japanese perspective therefore also means dealing with the country’s nuclear past, present, and future. Conclusion Since 1992 Japan has risen, as American sociologist Albert Bergesen calls it, as “an Asian challenger for world systemic hegemony” and therefore “a state carrying the cognitive maps of an Asian heritage will very likely assume the hegemonic position in world culture.”144 The influence of Asian culture in popular media has, of course, grown in the last 25 years and probably will even more in the years to come. Godzilla has been an essential part of global popular culture and, although its original intent was a very serious one, the interpretatorial levels related to the films are quite different around the globe. Godzilla is definitely “the most popular movie monster since Frankenstein, Dracula, and King Kong”145 and will remain the “King of Monsters,” as he appears on the screens again in 2019. Godzilla, however, was meant to be far more. As has been shown, the original film was a piece of art and those involved in its creation wanted to use the monster as a metaphor for the atomic bomb and, even more generally, for nuclear science or science as such. There is always a danger involved when new technologies are introduced, as an idea that was humanitarian in the beginning might become militarily abused. Godzilla is therefore an ambivalent monster, a necessary evil. Sometimes it is needed to defend Japan against other monsters, sometimes it rampages through the country and destroys its cities, most likely Tokyo. However, the Japanese

Albert Bergesen, “Godzilla, Durkheim, and the World-System,” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 18, no. 1 (1992): World-Systems Analysis, 200. 145 S.R. Bissette, “Thirty Years of Godzilla,” in Godzilla, King of the Monsters Special # 1 (August). (Portland: Dark Horse Comics, 1987), cited in ibid. 144

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cannot live with or without Godzilla and therefore the monster presented to the audiences is much more ambivalent than many others. As has been shown in the three examples, Godzilla always seems to be close to Japan’s conscience and appears as a reminder about its nuclear past, while also defining its nuclear present and reminding it of the dangers related to the country’s possible future. Historically speaking, the Godzilla films are mirrors of Japanese society at a specific moment in time. Therefore they also act as historical documents for Japan’s nuclear history and the public awareness related to such issues. One, of course, very often has to spend more time with the material and watch it carefully, but the warning is always there, emphasizing that the monsters on the screen are the result of human hubris and that the real monsters are part of the audience as well. It is probably this symbolism that also made the Godzilla films successful over the decades, since every generation has something to learn from them. Besides that, economic interests have naturally played an important role, and Godzilla emphasized two things in an interview in 1998: “To say I’m outdated really chaps my ass,” and “As long as there’s a yen to be made, I’ll be around.”146 One can only agree on both. Godzilla will never lose its actuality as the plot will always refer to the dangers of the total annihilation of mankind, and since the series of films has not ended yet, there is obviously still sufficient money to be made from the brand. Works Cited Anderson, Mark. “Mobilizing Gojira: Mourning Modernity as Monstrosity.” In: In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 21-40. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Belson, Ken and Brian Bremner. Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Phenomenon. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2004. Bergesen, Albert. “Godzilla, Durkheim, and the World-System.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 18, no. 1 (1992): World-Systems Analysis, 195-216. Bossert, Rex. “Godzilla in Cloudcuckooland; or, Literary Theory Comes to Utopia.” Utopian Studies 1 (1987): 138-146. Brothers, Peter H. “Japan’s Nuclear Nightmare: How the Bomb Became a Beast Called ‘Godzilla’.” Cinéaste 36, no. 3 (2011): 36-40.

J.J. Martin and Godzilla, “The Thunder Lizard Speaks! An Interview with Godzilla,” Cinéaste 23, no. 3 (1998): 24-25.

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Carroll, Noel. “Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings.” Film Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1981): 16-25. Cashill, Robert. “All Things Kong-Sidered.” Cinéaste 31, no. 2 (2006): 39-43. Galbraith, Stuart, IV. Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo! (Venice, CA: Feral House, 1998). Guthrie-Shimizu, Sayuri. “Lost in Translation and Morphed in Transit: Godzilla in Cold War America.” In: In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 51-62. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Hendrix, Grady. “From Nuclear Nightmare to Networked Nirvana: Futuristic Utopianism in Japanese SFFilms of the 2000s.” World Literature Today 84, no. 3 (2010): 55-57. Igarashi, Yoshikuni. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Jacob, Frank. “MacArthur’s Legacy: Japan and the Early Years of the Cold War.” In: Peripheries of the Cold War, ed. Frank Jacob, 207-227. Würzburg: Königshausen&Neumann, 2015. Kalat, David. A Critical History and Filmography of Toho’s Godzilla Series, second edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017. Kushner, Barak. “Gojira as Japan’s First Postwar Media Event.” In: In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 41-50. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Lee, Helen J. S. “Unending Stories of the Battleship ‘Yamato': Narrating the Past, Creating a Phantom.” Japanese Language and Literature 50, no. 2 (2016): 247-271. Lester, Alan Dirk. “Godzilla vs. the Military-Industrial Complex,” in Science Fiction America: Essays on SF Cinema, ed. David J. Hogan, 130-137. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Martin, J.J. and Godzilla. “The Thunder Lizard Speaks! An Interview with Godzilla.” Cinéaste 23, no. 3 (1998): 24-25. Napier, Susan J. “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 2 (1993): 327-351. Napier, Susan. “When Godzilla Speaks.” In: In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 9-19. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Noriega, Chon. “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When ‘Them!' Is U.S.” Cinema Journal 27, no. 1 (1987): 63-77. Ōishi Matashichi. The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I. Transl. by Richard H. Minear. Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawai’i Press, 2011. Richie, Donald. Japanese Cinema: An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Ryfle, Steve and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017. Schilling, Mark. The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture. Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1997.

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Schnellbächer, Thomas. “Has the Empire Sunk Yet? The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 29, no. 3 (2002): Japanese Science Fiction, 382-396. Stymeist, David H. “Myth and the Monster Cinema.” Anthropologica 51, no. 2 (2009): 395-406. Suzuki, Takao. Words in Context: A Japanese Perspective on Language and Culture. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984. Tanaka Fumio. Kami wo hanatta otoko: Eigaseisaku-sha Tanaka Tomoyuki to sono jidai. Tokyo: Kinema Junpōsha, 1993. Tatsumi, Takayuki. “Waiting for Godzilla: Chaotic Negotiations between Post Orientalism and Hyper-Occidentalism.” In: Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan, eds. Heide Fehrenbach and Uta G. Poiger, 224-236. New York: Berghahn Books, 2000. Treat, John Whittier. “Symposium on Contemporary Japanese Popular Culture: Introduction.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 2 (1993), 289293. Tsutsui, William. Godzilla On My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2004. Tsutsui, William M. “Introduction.” In: In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the Global Stage, eds. William M. Tsutsui and Michiko Ito, 18. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Wilcox, Rhonda V. “From the Editor: A Pilgrimage of Monsters.” Studies in Popular Culture 36, no. 2 (2014): v-vi. Films Cited Godzilla (1954) Godzilla vs. King Kong (1962) Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (Gojira Tai Mekagojira, 1974) The Return of Godzilla (1984) Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (1991) Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

Chapter 11

Music to Save an Audience: Two Melodramatic Vampires of 1820 and the Music that Betrays Them Ryan D. Whittington1

“Tonight, you or someone you love will likely be visited by a vampire—on cable television or the big screen, or in the bookstore.”2 So opens Guillermo del Toro’s and Chuck Hogan’s article “Why Vampires Never Die” for the New York Times. Similarly, Jeffrey Weinstock playfully writes that “You would have to live in a coffin not to have your path regularly crossed by vampires.”3 Indeed, popular culture is and has been in the throes of a vampire craze, but this is not the first such obsession (and if Del Toro and Hogan are to be believed, this will not be the last); that sobriquet belongs to the 1820s in Paris and London. The first vampire novel was published in 1819: The Vampyre by John Polidori (1795–1821), the personal physician and traveling companion of Lord Byron (1788–1824). Owing partly to false advertising that Byron authored the story, the novel was received sensationally and Polidori’s vampire Lord Ruthven became a household name. Within a year, not only had a French author written a sequel,4 but playwrights quickly began adapting the plot for the melodramatic stage in

1 This

project began as a master’s thesis at the Florida State University College of Music, completed in 2016. I would like to thank my thesis advisor Douglass Seaton and committee members Alina Weber and Stanley Pelkey. I also owe thanks to my readers Bruce Bickley and McKenna Milici. I am grateful to the staff members of the Bodleian Library and the Bibliothèque municipale d’Avignon for their patience and guidance. 2 Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, “Why Vampires Never Die,” The New York Times, July 30, 2009, sec. The Opinion Pages. 3 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, “Vampires, Vampires, Everywhere,” Phi Kappa Phi Forum 90, 3 (2010), 4. 4 Cyprien Bérard, Lord Ruthwen, ou Les vampires, 2 vols. (Paris: Ladvocat, 1820).

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the minor theaters of Paris and London. After the first two adaptations proved successful, one in each city, the cities became a point of origin for bursts of spinoffs and imitations until the theater districts in both capitals were awash in vampires. A writer for the Journal des débats politiques et littéraires wrote as early as March of 1820 that “There is not one of our small theaters that does not have its vampire in rehearsal; and it is Lord Ruthven who gave birth to all these monsters.”5 Two months later the same journal reported that “At the Porte Saint-Martin they are rehearsing Le Vampire, and at the theater of the Rue de Chartres, Le Vampire Amoureux. Thus, we are well supplied with vampires, despite the budget.”6 Echoes of the vampire’s popularity also reverberated in London. An article from November 1820 in the New Monthly Magazine (the magazine that, the prior year, first published Polidori’s novel), describes the vampire’s popularity in social circles: Since the appearance of the story of the Vampire, the conversation of private parties has frequently turned on the subject; and the discussion has been prolonged and invigorated by the pieces brought out at the theatres, as well of Paris as of London. […] This article deserves attention, no less from its temporary interest, than from its peculiar character as part of the history of the human mind.7 The points of departure for this chapter—and epicenters of these explosions of vampire interest—are the melodramas Le Vampire by Charles Nodier (1780–1844), which premiered on 13 June 1820, in Paris, and The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles by James Robinson Planché (1796–1880), which premiered on 9 August 1820, in London. Both plays begin in the caves of Staffa, Scotland, in the Inner Hebrides, specifically Fingal’s Cave. The swirling ghosts in Le Vampire’s prologue declare the fate of the female protagonist, Miss Malvina Aubray, who lies asleep in the cave. Benevolent spirits guarding her explain that she is unknowingly betrothed to marry a vampire masquerading as a count, who is required to feed on the blood of a virgin bride within the next thirty-six hours, lest he

5 “Nouvelle

étrangères,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, March 6, 1820, 2. “Feuilleton du journal des debats,” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, May 29, 1820, 2. 7 “On Vampires and Vampirism,” The New Monthly Magazine 14, 82 (1820), 548. 6

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“finally submit to nothingness.”8 The next day Malvina returns to her family’s castle and prepares to meet her betrothed for the first time, a man using the title of Count Marsden, but who is actually Lord Rutwen, the Count’s brother. Meanwhile, nuptials are also planned for the chamber maid Lovette and the valet Edgar. Ever the opportunist, Rutwen attempts to feed on Lovette, and Edgar shoots him dead. True to form, however, Rutwen resurrects the next day and resumes his original plan. Finally, at the wedding altar, confusion delays Rutwen’s attack until his time expires. In the final tableau, he is dragged to hell: “Phantoms rise from the earth and drag him down with them; the exterminating angel appears in a cloud; lightning flashes, and the phantoms disappear with Rutwen [in a] rain of fire.”9 Planché’s adaptation, The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles, premiered quickly on the coattails of Nodier’s success and both are remarkably similar in broad outline. The differences that occur musically will be addressed later. Again, in Fingal’s Cave, spirits sing solos and choruses to explain the dangerous predicament in which the female protagonist Lady Margaret finds herself. As with Malvina, she is soon to marry the Earl of Marsden, whom no one has met. Paralleling Nodier’s Count, the Earl turns out to be Lord Ruthven, the Earl’s brother. To match Nodier’s subplot, the chamber maid Effie also plans to marry the valet, Robert. As in Le Vampire, Robert shoots and kills Ruthven when he attacks Effie; however, as before Ruthven remains dead for only a night before resurrecting and attempted an attack on Margaret again. His plan is foiled by similar imbroglio and “a terrific peal of Thunder is heard: [the spirits] Unda and Ariel appear; a Thunder Bolt strikes Ruthven to the ground, who immediately vanishes.”10 Both playwrights drew from Polidori’s original text with significant faithfulness, yet each made his own additions to the plot. For example, the second couple’s sub-plot is not present in Polidori’s novel—this is purely Nodier’s invention. Nonetheless, as a foundation of the plot, Polidori’s The 8 Charles Nodier, Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, ed. Ginette PicatGuinoiseau (Genéve: Librairie Droz S.A., 1990), 39; original: “il dont enfin subir le néant,” translated by Frank Morlock in Charles Nodier, The Vampire, trans. Frank J. Morlock, Etext edition (Dagny, 2000). 9 Charles Nodier, Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, 126. Original: “Il laisse tomber son poignard et cherche à s'enfuir; des ombres sortent de la terre et l'entraînent avec elles; l'Ange exterminateur paraît dans un nuage; la foudre éclate et les Ombres s'engloutissent avec Rutwen. Pluie de feu,” from a marginal emendation to the play's manuscript, translation mine. 10 James Robinson Planché, The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles: A Romantic Melodrama in Two Acts (London: John Dicks, 1874), 13.

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Vampyre wields remarkable influence. The idea for the novel originated during what is perhaps history’s most famous ghost story competition. Seeking asylum from a messy divorce in 1816, Byron and Polidori, retreated to Villa Diodati in Switzerland. They were joined that summer by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (soon to become Mary Shelley), and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister and mother of Byron’s daughter Allegra.11 One night after reading a French collection of German ghost stories, Fantasmagoriana, ou recueil d’histoires d’apparitions de spectres, revenans, fantômes, etc. by JeanBaptiste Benôit Eyriès, Byron issued a challenge that the friends should write their own ghost stories. Famously, Mary Godwin’s contribution would later evolve into her novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and Byron’s fragment of a ghost story, later published as Fragment of a Novel, served as Polidori’s inspiration for The Vampyre (1819). The origin and sensationalism of these stories, as well as the temporal proximity in which they were published, bind the vampire to Frankenstein’s infamous creature. Both monsters originated when the way monsters were created and identified was in flux. Abigail Six and Hannah Thompson assert that in the 19th-century monsters shifted “from hideous to hedonist.” “By the end of the century, monstrosity was no longer necessarily being viewed as an aberration of nature visited upon the very few, but as something residing within apparently normal, respectable, and respected individuals.”12 Jeffrey Weinstock believes that Shelley’s Frankenstein catalyzed this shift. Shelley’s novel decoupled physical appearance from monstrosity. Though the creature in the novel is certainly physically aberrant, a patchwork, humanoid figure cobbled together from disparate corpses, it is Victor’s abhorrent moral character and society’s cold response to the creature that are the true manifestations of monstrosity in the novel. This decoupling meant that anyone could be a monster; physical appearance was not the primary determining factor.13

Andrew McConnell Stott, The Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature’s Greatest Monsters (New York: Pegasus, 2014), 5. 12 Abigail Lee Six and Hannah Thompson, “From Hideous to Hedonist: The Changing Face of the Nineteenth-Century Monster,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), 255. 13 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, “Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), 289. 11

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Published only a year after Frankenstein, The Vampyre poses a similar threat. The infamous vampire Lord Ruthven is charming, enthralling, and a wealthy, successful aristocrat, popular among London’s drawing rooms and salons. Polidori’s prose indicates that the vampire’s only abnormal quality is one dead-looking grey eye that can pierce a person’s soul. Lord Ruthven embodies a concoction of Victor Frankenstein’s detestable moral character with the creature’s superhuman abilities, a recipe for a compelling and terrifying villain—an implacable threat to society.14 Critics and contemporary writers considered this monster’s threat an urgent matter, especially given the public’s insatiable appetite for melodramas on the subject. An unnamed writer for the New Monthly Magazine wrote in 1823, Voltaire was astonished that, in the eighteenth century, people should believe in vampyres; and that the doctors of the Sorbonne should give their imprimatur to a dissertation on these unpleasant personages. The philosopher Ferney would scarcely have experienced less surprise had he lived to see them introduced into popular novels, represented as figuring at the drawing-room, shining in fashionable assemblies, favourites with the ladies, and this not alone in barbarous London, but forming the delight and admiration of elegant audiences in the superlatively polished capital of his own country.15 For many writers the vampire triggered Enlightenment angst, threatening to reverse progress, should the figure become so lodged in the popular imagination as to revive deplorable superstitions. Other writers, however, decried the vampire’s ambiguous state of existence, somewhere between life and death: A being in whom death and life are strangely mingled—with all the coldness of the grave and all the seeming immunities of existence— sustained by the blood of female victims whom he first is permitted to fascinate—has a spell far more fearful than ordinary spectres.16

Certainly, Lord Ruthven is a member of a lineage of Gothic villains who are humans with corrupt moral character, traceable back to Manfred in Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764). However, Ruthven is the first Gothic vampire. 15 “On Vampyrism,” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 7 (1823), 140. 16 “English Opera House,” The New Monthly Magazine 14, 80 (1820), 321. 14

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This anonymous author was not the only writer to compare the vampire to other “spectres” and judge it to be more insidious. The above unnamed critic from 1823 compared the vampire to Gnomes, who “are sulky and splenetic persons, but there is a certain impotence about them which prevents their becoming very terrific; the Lamiae and the Larvae of the ancients were, indeed, horrid creatures—but the latter were mere shadows, which takes off much of their monstrosity.” By contrast, however, the vampire is more nefarious, “a corporeal creature of blood and unquenchable bloodthirst—a ravenous corpse, who rises in body and soul from his grave for the sole purpose of glutting its sanguinary appetite.”17 For this author, the vampire’s ability to mingle among humans registers the crux of its threat. A reviewer of Planché’s The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles shared this opinion, writing in September 1820 that “On the stage it is a little shocking to the feelings, and incongruous to the sense, to see a spirit in human shape,—in the shape of a real Earl, and, what is more, of a Scotch Earl—going about seeking whom it may marry and then devour, to lengthen out its own abhorred and anomalous being.”18 Not only was the vampire human, but it was a Scottish human, uncanny in his proximity to London theater audiences. Somewhat comically to modern readers, the writer of “On Vampyrism” suggests a hypothetical situation in which different monsters are placed to gauge differences in threat: Fancy your friend with whom you are walking arm-in-arm, or your mistress on whose bosom your head reposes, a spirit—a Gnome or an Undine—or any mere spirit—the idea is startling; if pursued it may lead an active imagination to a disagreeable sense of the possibility of happiness being an imposition, and pleasure “an unreal mockery,”—but it is not overpoweringly painful;—but let the idea of your companion or your mistress being a Vampyre cross the brain—the blood would run chill, and every sense be oppressed by the bare supposition, childish and absurd as it would be felt to be—“twould shake the disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.”19 This shift in how monstrosity is embodied is in conflict with the genre of melodrama. The vampire in this manifestation, a “harbinger of category

17 “On Vampyrism,”

141. Drama,” The London Magazine 2, 9 (1820), 323. 19 “On Vampyrism,” 141. 18 “The

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crisis,”20 confused the boundary between human and monster. For audiences in 1820, this may have been the key to the monster’s terror. The author above continues, He reappears among [his family and friends] from the world of the tomb, not to tell its secrets of joy or of woe, not to invite or to warn by the testimony of his experience, but to appall and assassinate those who were dearest to him on earth—and this, not for the gratification of revenge or any human feeling, which, however depraved, might find something common with it in human nature, but to banquet a monstrous thirst acquired in the tomb, and which, though he walks in human form and human lineaments, has swallowed up every human motive in its brutal ferocity.21 According to this anonymous author’s understanding of the vampire myth, the vampire’s first fated targets after resurrecting from the grave are the most beloved of its previous life.22 An anti-human instinct seems to govern the vampire’s behaviors, yet this instinct is housed in a distinctly human form that cannot be distinguished as monstrous by visual observation. Thus, the vampire was understood as a prototypical serial killer more than a supernatural boogeyman from beyond the grave. Audiences of this story would have been forced to confront the unsavory conclusion that anyone can be a vampire, perhaps the person sitting in the theater seat beside them, if not themselves. The genre of melodrama had a function similar to that in modern horror films, an overall conservative and reactionary genre that allows viewers vicariously to exercise their basest urges and fears, while setting everything aright before the final credits—or curtain in the case of melodrama. Given the melodrama’s dualistic worldview, in which good and evil are clearly delineated, a villain who looks like every other person, a human monster with powers to charm and eclipse the will and thoughts of others, poses a distinct danger. Resourceful villains propel the plots of melodrama, and the villains must be clearly recognizable for the moral ending to function correctly; good

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Theses: (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 6–7. 21 “On Vampyrism,” 141. 22 That the vampire’s first victims must be his family and friends has its origins in eighteenth-century folklore. See Paul Barber, Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Byron’s poem The Giaour (1813) features this tragic fate as a prominent plot point. 20

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must always triumph in melodrama. To guide the audience’s allegiance to the correct character, the incidental music—the music accompanying the stage action—in both melodramas interjects signals into the narrative stream that warn listeners of whom they should be afraid, lest they be as charmed as the vampire’s victims. A network of allusions and references, both in the music and the script, serves the same purpose: to position the aristocratic vampire in a league of other confirmed villains, e.g., Don Giovanni, Satan, and a historical murderer from Scottish history. No matter how charming the vampire may be, the textual company he keeps is undeniably indicting. For theater-going audiences in 1820, the webs of intertextual references would have inspired fear and suspense. Perhaps most salient is the vampire’s literary likeness to Don Juan, popularized among theater audiences by Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni of 1787. Likenesses are many and have been enumerated in detail by Thomas Grey in his article “The Gothic Libertine: The Shadow of Don Giovanni in Romantic Music and Culture.”23 Most important and obvious are the similar denouements of the opera and both melodramas. In each case, the rakish libertines are dragged to a hell-like underworld as punishment for their misdeeds. In Nodier’s Le Vampire, after Lord Rutwen’s attempts to take Lovette and Malvina are both foiled and his time has run out, thunder rolls, and he shrieks, “Nothingness! Nothingness!” before phantoms rise from the floor and drag him to some nondescript abyss. Similarly, Planché’s The Vampire ends with a hell scene. After a peal of thunder, a lightning bolt strikes the vampire, who disappears through the stage floor. In addition to their similar denouements, the opera and melodramas also share a second, lower-class couple in their plots. In Da Ponte’s libretto the Don, discontented with his sexual exploits up to this point in the opera, goes after Zerlina who has only just married Masetto. Likewise, Nodier’s Le Vampire features Lovette and Edgar, a couple planning to wed on the night of the vampire’s arrival; like the Don, Lord Rutwen is dissatisfied imbibing only from Malvina, but must have Lovette, as well. Planché’s The Vampire follows suit with Effie and Robert, similarly affected by the vampire’s unquenchable bloodlust. Besides the hellish denouements, references to tableaux from Milton’s Paradise Lost emphasize a connection between the vampire and the devil archetype. In Milton’s epic, Satan is cast as an anti-hero; we read his motivations and his thoughts, just as the vampire is an anti-hero in Le

23 Thomas S. Grey, “The Gothic Libertine: The Shadow of Don Giovanni in Romantic Music and Culture,” in The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 75–106.

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Vampire and even more obviously so in The Vampire. References to Paradise Lost are achieved via the names of the spirits in the prologue of Le Vampire, where Oscar and Ithuriel guarded Malvina in Fingal’s Cave after she fell asleep. The name Ithuriel comes directly from Paradise Lost; he is one of the faithful angels and, in conjunction with the angel Zephon, is ordered to search for Satan in the Garden of Eden: Ithuriel and Zephon, with wingd speed Search through this Garden, leave unsearcht no nook, But chiefly where those two fair Creatures Lodge, Now laid perhaps asleep secure of harme. This Evening from the Sun’s decline arriv’d Who tells of som infernal Spirit seen Hitherward bent (who could have thought?) escap’d The barrs of Hell on errand bad no doubt: Such where ye find, seise fast, and hither bring.24 Ithuriel and Zephon finally find Satan in the form of a toad whispering in Eve’s ear while she sleeps. At the beginning of Book 5 and the next day, Eve recounts to Adam these events, which she believes to have been a dream. Malvina and Margaret similarly believe their encounters with the phantoms in Fingal’s Cave to be dreams and recount them in Act 1 to their respective handmaidens, Brigette and Bridget. Certain staging designs of the two melodramas could have also reminded the audience of the events of Satan’s discovery and capture. Engravings of scenes survive for The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles and were printed with later editions of the play’s libretto. The tableau of Margaret being protected from the vampire in the English melodrama resembles the ways in which artists have imagined Ithuriel and Zephon protecting Adam and Eve from Satan.25 While no engravings exist of Le Vampire’s staging, similar staging is likely, given the similar nature of their prologues. The next lines of Paradise Lost describe Satan’s discovery. A William Blake watercolor shows Satan in the form of a toad sitting by Eve’s ear and the two

24 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Thomas H. Luxon, The Milton Reading Room (Dartmouth College, 2016), Book 4: 788–796. Accessed, June 15, 2017. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_4/text.shtml. 25 Marion Linhardt, “Ruthven’s Song: Der Vampir in Mélodame, Melodrama und Romantischer Oper,” in Dracula Unbound: Kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren des Vampirs (Freiburg: Rombach, 2008), 226.

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angels hovering above the sleeping couple (see Figure 1). The branches in the background seem to arch like a gothic window, and each angel holds a spear.

Figure 1: William Blake, Adam and Eve Sleeping, 1808.26

26 William Blake, Illustrations to Paradise Lost: Adam and Eve Sleeping, 1808, pen and watercolor on paper, 49.2 x 38.7 cm, 1808, 90.102, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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In Paradise Lost Ithuriel touches the toad with his spear of “celestial temper” that “no falsehood can endure” and Satan starts backward in his true form.27 Henry Fuseli’s painting of this scene shows Satan transformed and retreating from the sleeping Adam and Eve (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Henry Fuseli, Satan von Ithuriels Speer berührt, 1779.28

The engraving of the prologue tableau from Planché’s The Vampire, published as the title page of the edition for Dick’s Standard Plays, displays striking likenesses to this painting and Blake’s watercolor (see Figure 3). Similar to the angels’ positions in Paradise Lost, one of the angels in the engraving is holding a spear-like object. While the stage directions of the 1820 edition of The Vampire do not mention a spear or scepter held by either spirit,

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 4: 810–814. Johann Heinrich Füssli, Satan, von Ithuriels Speer Berührt, oil on canvas, 1779, 3708, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. 27 28

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costume information in the undated Dick’s Standard Plays edition indicates that both spirits carried wands.29 The kilt-clad vampire, like Fuseli’s Satan in Figure 2, starts away from Margaret, sleeping in repose like Eve; both villains have twisted toward the viewer in the course of their retreat.

Figure 3: Title image from Dick’s Standard Play, No. 875, The Vampire.30

James Robinson Planché, The Vampire; Or, the Bride of the Isles: A Romantic Melodrama in Two Acts (London: John Dicks, 1874), 2. “Unda.—White satin dress, trimmed with shells, &c.; blue satin robe; hair in long ringlets; tiara; wand. Ariel.— White muslin dress, with spangles; sky blue robe; wings; tiara; silver wand.” 30 Planché, 1. 29

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Furthering the connection to Paradise Lost, Marion Linhardt points out that in an early sketch of Le Vampire Nodier had named the bard in the prologue “Abdiel, ange des Amours” instead of “Oscar, genie des Mariages.” Abdiel, like Ithuriel, is a faithful angel in God’s war against Satan.31 In fact, in Milton’s Book 5, the angel Raphael explains that Abdiel was a charge of Satan’s before the uprising against God. Abdiel refused to rebel, however, and remained faithful. These reminders of Milton’s epic in the prologues of the vampire melodramas connect the villain to the diabolical anti-hero Satan from the initial moments of the action.

Figure 4: Title page of “The Hour When First We Met” from The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles.32

Charles Nodier, Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, ed. Ginette PicatGuinoiseau (Genéve: Librairie Droz S.A., 1990), 32. Quoted in Linhardt, “Ruthven’s Song: Der Vampir in Mélodrame, Melodrama und Romantischer Oper,” 226. 32 Joseph Binns Hart, The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles (London: T. Williams, 1820), 16. The only copy exists in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, shelfmark Harding Mus. D 320. 31

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The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles makes one more significant reference crucial to understanding how inextricably the vampire was linked to a tradition of villains. The title page for Joseph Binns Hart’s second song for the melodrama, “The Hour When First We Met,” from Act 1, Scene 1, mentions that the song was popularized by the tenor John Braham in the melodrama David Rizzio: a Serious Opera, in Three Acts: Founded upon Scottish History (see Figure 4). Colonel Ralph Hamilton’s David Rizzio came to the stage in June of 1820, to the unanimous dislike of theater critics. While titled an opera, David Rizzio is more aptly described as melodrama, mixing spoken dialogue with sung text. In the play, David Rizzio, an Italian musician in the court of Mary, Queen of Scots, is engaged to Mary Livingston, the principal lady of the bedchamber to the Queen. (Coincidentally, Miss Carew, who played the role of Mary Livingston, would play the role of Effie in The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles later that year.) The villains of each melodrama also share a name. In David Rizzio the baron Earl Ruthven intends to steal Livingston from Rizzio, desiring to make her his own bride. To do so, he fails multiple times to have Rizzio murdered, and finally, in frustration, he persuades Lord Darnley, husband of the queen, that Rizzio is involved in a secret affair with his wife. With Ruthven whispering in Darnley’s ear, a plan develops to attack and brutally murder the Italian courtier. Darnley learns, tragically, that Rizzio is innocent only when it is too late to stop the attack. As the subtitle of the melodrama suggests, this scenario is “founded upon Scottish history.” David Rizzio (1525–1566) was indeed a courtier and musician for Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) in the 16th century, and while rumors of an affair between him and the Queen existed, no confirmation of such a liaison exists. Rizzio was, however, close enough to the Queen that she appointed him as one of her ministers, much to the chagrin of certain Protestant councilors, chief among them Patrick Ruthven, Third Lord Ruthven (1520–1566). In 1566 a group of councilors, including Lord Ruthven, brutally murdered Rizzio in the Queen’s presence and tossed him down a flight of stairs.33 Because Hamilton’s David Rizzio had premiered just two months before Planché’s The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles, the name Ruthven, both of the melodrama and Scottish history, would have been fresh in the audience’s collective memory. Connecting this villain with the vampire—both murderers, both attempting to steal women from their fiancés (Rizzo was

33 Rosalind K. Marshall, “Riccio, David,” in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Accessed June 15, 2017, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23475.

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engaged to Mary Livingston)—further confirms that any character named Ruthven is not to be trusted but to be feared, despite his hypnotic charms. This connection is supported aurally by the contrafacting of a popular tune from David Rizzio for one of Robert’s love songs to Effie in The Vampire. In fact, in this song, Robert professes his love for Effie at the beginning of Act 1. In the plot of David Rizzio, however, the song serves quite a different function. In this case, the song had appeared in Act 2, Scene 4, when Rizzio sings about his love for Mary Livingston: O turn thee, love that heavenly smile! O turn again to me. With buoyant hope my heart beguile, For thou are all to me—Mary! On Lybia’s sands, o’er Iceland’s snows, I’d traverse—with thee, To Etna’s fires my breast oppose, Brave every risque for thee—Mary.34 Just before this song, Ruthven plants seeds of jealousy in Darnley’s mind, implying that Rizzio is having an affair with the Queen. When they hear Rizzio strike a chord on his lyre or harp, they decide to hide and listen to his song. Tragically, the interjections of the name Mary (intended as Mary Livingston) are heard by the jealousy-blinded Darnley as referring to Mary Stuart, the Queen. Lords Rutwen/Ruthven in the vampire melodramas similarly deceive and manipulate, behavior the audience would have known to expect from a character named Ruthven. The incidental music for each melodrama also demonstrates great signifying power. Relying on systems of topoi—common and commonly recognized musico-rhetorical devices, important means of musical signification in the 18th and 19th centuries—the composer for each melodrama could sonically place the audience within the mise en scène. A prime example occurs in the overture of Nodier’s Le Vampire. The overture composed by Alexandre Piccinni, is unmistakably stormy. The stage directions in the printed program describe a foreboding opening: As the curtain rises, the heaven is dark and all objects confused. It lights up little by little. The scene takes place in a basalt grotto whose 34 Colonel Ralph Hamilton, David Rizzio: A Serious Opera, in Three Acts (London: Printed for John Lowndes, 1820), 23–24.

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long prisms end in unequal angles facing heaven, the arch is bare; the circle of the grotto is strewn with tombs and diverse shapes, columns, pyramids, cubes of rough and clumsy workmanship. On a tomb in the foreground one sees a young girl lying on a bed, plunged in the most profound sleep. Her head is leaning on her arm and covered by her veil and hair.35 A storm topos underscores this tableau. Several musical characteristics of this overture participate in a tradition of musical evocations of the supernatural. Writing about these conventions in 18th-century French opera, David Buch describes these musical codes. “Rapid scales and repeated notes, rhythmic variety, and dotted rhythms accompanied monsters, demons, magicians, and scenic transformations. Low-pitched sonorities, dissonance, pictorial imagery, and unusual instrumental and vocal combinations were also common in [storm] scenes.”36 Buch also locates these conventions in instrumental genres of Haydn and Mozart. For example, Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor begins with a similarly stormy opening.37 The first movement has alla zoppa syncopation, string tremolos, rapid descending and ascending scales, octave-and-unison sonority, … infernal blasts of the winds (oboes, horns, and bassoons) … All of these devices suggest an infernal scene or a tempest invoked by a divine or magical character with supernatural power.38 Piccinni’s overture for Le Vampire contains nearly all of these characteristics. The music eases the listener into the melodrama with only strings at first, playing a plagal, static, chord progression alternating I and IV over a drone, a device traditionally linked to the pastoral in music (see Example 1).

Charles Nodier, Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, 35; translation from Charles Nodier, The Vampire, trans. Frank J. Morlock, Etext edition (Dagny, 2000). 36 David Joseph Buch, Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 36–37. 37 It should also be noted that similar characteristics mark the music of the Don Giovanni hell scene. 38 Buch, Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests, 360. 35

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Example 1: Le Vampire Overture, mm. 1–5.

After woodwinds and horns are added, cross rhythms and syncopations cloud the bucolic scene by measure 31 (see Example 2).

Example 2: Le Vampire Overture mm. 31–34.

By measure 36 a dissonant G-sharp sneaks into the cellos and basses against the pitch-class A in several upper voices, marking the beginning of

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music conjuring the infernal (see Example 3). The A against the G-sharp creates a strident, biting effect. Made even more unsettling by the rapid tremolos in the first violin part, this overture sonically marks the ensuing melodrama as supernatural by musical devices with supernatural connotations, made conventional through repeated use in opera and theater in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Example 3: Le Vampire Overture mm. 36–39.

This overture also presents a motive that recurs throughout the melodrama. This motive, shown in Example 1 in the first violin part, is a measured trill between the leading tone of the key and the tonic pitch. It is the first musical idea presented to the audience in Le Vampire and is repeated at the end of the overture; therefore, the audience would recall this musical motive as the action proceeds onstage. Easily recognizable by its wavering motion, the motive alternates between D and C-sharp, comparatively unstable against the drones beneath it. Each successive time the motive is conjured in the musical accompaniment, the infernal and supernatural connotations of the overture are conjured with it, making each of the motive’s returns a signifier of the stormy, infernal, otherworldly opening. The first echoes of the motive occur in the second number of the prologue and concern the vampire’s victims. Still in Fingal’s Cave after Oscar says to Ithuriel, “Stop and look,” the stage directions read: All the tombs open from the moment the hour strikes. Pale shades half leave and fall back under the tombstones, in proportion as the noise vanishes in echoes. A spectre dressed in a shroud escapes from the

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most noticeable of tombs. His face is revealed. He rushes to the place where Miss Aubray is sleeping shouting “Malvina!”39 According to instructions written in the extant manuscript part-books for the music, the second number of the prologue plays immediately after Oscar’s line (see Example 4). The Largo section would most likely have played while the vampire’s victims rose from their tombs. The echoing noise described in the stage directions is mimicked by the abrupt changes in dynamic intensity from the initial pianissimo to forte and back to piano. The stage directions at this moment indicate that tam-tams were also used to mimic the echo. “We hear the hour ringing [one o’clock] in the silvery tone of a distant bell. The tam-tam repeats it, echoing in response by gradation.”40

Example 4: Le Vampire, number 2, Largo—Allegro.

The measures before and during the Allegro all demonstrate semitone movement that recalls the wavering semitone motive from the overture’s opening. The striking position of this semitone motive during a scene directly related to the vampire’s victims confirms the connection of the motive with the villain.

Charles Nodier, Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, 40.Original: “Toutes les tombes se soulèvent du moment où l'heure retentit. Des ombres pâles en sortent à demi et retombent sous la pierre tumulaire, à mesure que le bruit s'évanouit dans l'écho. Un spectre vêtu d'un linceul s'échappe de la plus apparente de ces tombes. Son visage est à découvert. Il s'élance jusqu' à la place où miss Aubrey est endormie, en criant: Malvina!”; translation from Charles Nodier, The Vampire, trans. Frank J. Morlock, Etext edition (Dagny, 2000), 4. 40 Charles Nodier, Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, 40. “On entend sonner une heure au timbre argentin d’une cloche éloignée. Le tam-tam la répète d’écho en écho par gradation.” 39

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As becomes increasingly evident, the musical accompaniment consistently interjects echoes of this motive to signal the vampire’s presence and malevolence. At this point in the evolution of the literary vampire, no visual characteristics reveal to the audience that the person is a threat; no physical features of Lord Rutwen distinguish him as a vampire. The tropes of elongated maxillary canines or transformations into bats or wolves were only added to the lore later on, primarily in the penny dreadful by Thomas Preskett Prest and James Malcolm Rhymer Varney the Vampire; or the Feast of Blood (1847) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Indeed, even the original Lord Ruthven from Polidori’s novel only stands out because of a gray, dead-looking eye. Otherwise, the aristocrat is handsome, charming, and, not unlike a prototypical serial killer in modern films, high-functioning in civilized society, seeming perfectly normal. Therefore, it is even more necessary for the music to interject motives at key moments to confirm Lord Rutwen’s nefariousness and villainy. One such example occurs in number 10, Allegro vivace. At this point, the main characters have travelled to Castle Marsden for the wedding of Edgar and Lovette. The news that Lord Rutwen will be joining the festivities reaches the castle caretaker, who responds in disbelief. Attempting to disabuse a servant just before Rutwen enters, he states unequivocally, “The man who took his name is an imposter.”41 Immediately following this line, number 10 begins (see Example 5). Despite its brevity, this short tune makes a menacing statement. After the first four measures, the fifth measure begins as if it will reprise the melody from the start of the number. However, this is not the case. In measure 6, practically under the radar of the listener’s attention, the alternating semitone motive from the overture is interjected, where the listener is otherwise primed to expect the descending sixteenth-note pattern from measure 1.

Example 5: Le Vampire, number 10, Allegro vivace.

41 Nodier, Jouffroy, and Carmouche, 32. “L’homme qui a pris son nom est un imposteur.”

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When the castle caretaker voices his suspicions about Rutwen’s identity, the semitone motive emerges in a disguised form in the second phrase (mm. 5– 12), masquerading as the motive of the first phrase (mm. 1–4). The music for Le Vampire underscores the words and poetizes the action. This signal was typical in melodrama, especially by the end of the 19th century. “Music clarified whether an entering actor was portraying a character morally sound or devious, whether the character represented was comic or serious, cheerful or depressed, hardheaded or sentimental …”—and in this case, whether a vampire lurked in the stage’s shadows.42 Joseph Binns Hart’s (1797–1844) music for Planché’s The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles was of a different ilk.43 The only extant musical source for this melodrama is a piano score, complete with dialogue cues but missing orchestrations. Still, instrumental indications can provide clues when necessary. Another significant difference is the number of songs in Hart’s score. The bard Oscar sings only one song in Le Vampire, but Hart’s accompaniment is punctuated throughout with Scottish folk tunes. Planché explained in his autobiography that he would have preferred moving the setting of the play to Eastern Europe, but he was overruled by the theater manager, citing practical and economic reasons for maintaining the Scottish locale. Not only were Scottish folk tunes in vogue, but the English Opera House where the melodrama was to premiere already had Scottish costumes. Interspersed between the songs are short pieces of instrumental music to punctuate scenes in the same manner as Piccinni’s score for Le Vampire. Like Piccinni, Hart also uses melodic and harmonic clues to create musical unrest, foreshadowing that a character will soon be deceived. In number 17, Allegro, which occurs at a similar plot point as number 10, Allegro vivace, in Le Vampire, the castle caretaker is again skeptical that Lord Ruthven is who he says he is. Parallel with his French analogue, he exclaims, “I tell you it must be some imposter.”44 Immediately thereafter number 17 plays. Both phrases of this tune end on minor harmonies, a gesture common in Scottish and pseudo-Scottish

42 Alfred Edward Cooper and Michael Connelly, Four Bars of “Agit”: Incidental Music for Victorian and Edwardian Melodrama, ed. David Mayer and Matthew Scott (London: Samuel French, 1983), 1. 43 Hart composed most of the incidental music from scratch, but Matthew Moss composed the opening incantation and charm of the prologue. See Linhardt, “Ruthven’s Song: Der Vampir in Mélodame, Melodrama und Romantischer Oper,” 230. It appears that the music for this opening is no longer extant. 44 Planché, The Vampire, 22.

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music. In effect, however, this ends a jaunty, major-mode tune on a minor harmony, an unexpected and unsettling effect (see Example 6).

Example 6: The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles, number 17, Allegro.

Music also comments on the plot by increased amounts of chromaticism. A particularly striking example occurs in number 38, Allegro, after Ruthven has all but dragged Margaret to the altar. This piece features a descending chromatic bass line, heightening the tension with a dissonant C natural (see Example 7).

Example 7: The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles, number 38, Allegro.

These few measures exhibit oddities of composition. Several chords are missing chord members, the downbeat of measure 2 is a tritone spread across two- and- a- half octaves, and the remaining sonorities are similarly widespread. This music makes sense in its context: Margaret’s father has just burst through the door, interrupting the wedding proceedings. His bickering with Ruthven caused such a delay that the impatient Ruthven tried to take his bride by force, drawing his dagger. Number 38 plays during this tumult, making the incomplete chords, chromaticism, and harmonic instability all apropos.

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Most aurally terrifying, however, is the final number that plays as the vampire disappears through the floor. Ruthven shouts, “I am lost,” as “a terrific Peal of Thunder is heard; Unda and Ariel appear; a Thunder Bolt strikes Ruthven to the ground, who immediately vanishes.”45 The music accompanying this scene has the expressive indication agitato—the only piece in the melodrama with this marking. Following rapid repeated notes, the music suddenly halts on a diminished seventh chord in measure 5, which corresponds to the peals of thunder mentioned in the stage directions (see Example 8).

Examples 8: The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles, number 39, Agitato.

The ending, however, is far less conclusive; this is an ambiguous ending, to say the least. After practically beating the listener over the head with an A minor key area, the agitated accompaniment moves to an E minor tonality in its last three measures before abruptly ceasing on an E minor chord. The nine-measure finale is short already, making a change in key in the last three measures highly uncharacteristic for this play’s incidental music. Perhaps this opens the possibility for the vampire to return, as there is the possibility to return to the first key of A minor. Scholars have pointed out that Planché incorporated both Polidori’s The Vampyre and Byron’s Fragment of a Novel 45

Ibid., 19.

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into his adaptation of Nodier’s play.46 Because the Vampire successfully sates his bloodthirst and escapes in Polidori’s novel, the unresolved ending could be a musical manifestation of that. Frederick Burwick also points out that Planché’s adaptation made it seem that vampires were lurking along the streets of Britain.47 In Polidori’s novel, Lord Ruthven’s death and resurrection take place in Greece. Nodier, however, transplanted the myth to the Scottish Isles, where vampire lore did not exist.48 When Planché took his turn at adapting the drama, he acknowledged that the Scottish setting did not make sense; yet he proceeded with “the experiment” anyway. He writes in the preface to the printed dialogue, The Author must apologize to the Public for the liberty which has been taken with a Levantic Superstition, by transplanting it to the Scottish Isles; but the unprecedented success of the French Piece … induced him to hazard the same experiment, for the sake of the same Dramatic effect.49 According to Burwick, a Scottish setting for a London audience “insists that the vampire lurked amidst Britain’s own mists and shadows.”50 The inclusion of Scottish folk tunes in the Planché version reinforces this suggestion. If vampires could make it into the Inner Hebrides, what was to keep them out of London? The ambiguous finale bolsters the uncanniness. After strange harmonic progressions, the finale ends on an offbeat and the E minor harmony is not the key area in which the finale began, challenging listeners’ expectations for music to return to its original key before the final cadence. Perhaps the story will continue. After all, as Cohen’s theses state, the monster always escapes.51 These musical and intertextual interventions are best understood in the context of the shift in monster-making previously mentioned. This decoupling of monstrosity from physical appearance meant that anyone

Frederick Burwick, “Vampire auf der Bühne der 1820er Jahre,” in Dracula Unbound: Kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren des Vampirs, ed. Christian Begemann, Britta Herrmann, and Harald Neumeyer (Freiburg: Rombach, 2008), 193–194. 47 Ibid., 195. 48 Frederick Burwick, Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 234. 49 Planché, The Vampire; Or, the Bride of the Isles: A Romantic Melo-Drama, in Two Acts Preceded by an Introductory Vision, 3. 50 Burwick, Romantic Drama, 235. 51 Cohen, “Monster Theses: (Seven Theses),” 4. 46

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could be a monster.52 For the audience members at the Théâtre de la PorteSaint-Martin and the English Opera House, this insight meant that the theatergoers sitting right beside them could very well be monsters, if they were not monsters themselves! Conclusion Encountering a vampire story, we expect certain motifs. For example, we might expect seduction, pointed fangs, blood consumption, and probably symbols of death and the macabre—after all, vampires are reanimated corpses, no matter how attractive they may appear. Every new incarnation of the vampire figure, in whatever genre, must also in some way confront the incarnations that preceded it. An adaptation might continue a vampire lineage, like the enduring image of Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film Dracula, which came to epitomize the famous Count. A new adaptation might render previous tropes as misconceptions and supplant them with new tropes, as in the case of sunlight’s effect on the vampires in Twilight. Whatever mode of confronting the past an author adopts, John Polidori’s source text must inevitably be consulted. The vampire Lestat in the second installment of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles does just that, musing over the representations of vampires in literature: [D]uring the nineteenth century, vampires were “discovered” by the literary writers of Europe. Lord Ruthven … gave way to Sir Francis Varney in the penny dreadfuls, and later came Sheridan Le Fanu’s magnificent and sensuous Countess Carmilla Karnstein, and finally the big ape of the vampires, the hirsute Slav Count Dracula.53 Indeed, the 19th century offered the perfect breeding ground for the vampire figure. One need look no farther than the craze of vampire theater in the 1820s. These melodramas pinned down the figure of the vampire in the popular imagination—a last nail in the coffin, if you will. Following inroads provided by Shelley’s Frankenstein and a shift in the politics of monster creation, these melodramas and the waves of imitations that followed them introduced the theatergoing public to a terrifying human monster, one with powers of hypnotic fascination, whose danger is revealed only when it is too late. As Lestat concluded, these vampires were the perfect blend of monster

52 Weinstock, 53

“Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture,” 289. Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), 387.

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and human: attractive, wealthy, and practically invisible in a crowd. The musical warning signals had to be heeded if the audience expected to survive. Not only did the music reward careful listening and attention by helping to keep audience members safe, but in a certain sense, the music was just as dangerous as the vampire it uncloaked. The vampire was alluring in 1820 because he was everything the audience was not. Likewise, music was everything the Paris and London soundscapes were not. Music in the theaters was an escape from the sounds of the industrializing city, a development that, at least in London, had been in process since 1760. The industrialized city took longer to develop in France, but by 1830 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) wrote in his novel The Red and the Black, “Scarcely inside the town, one is stunned by the racket of a roaring machine, frightful in its appearance. Twenty ponderous hammers, falling with a crash which makes the street shudder, are lifted for each new stroke by the power of a water wheel.”54 Music in the theaters lured its audience members out of this harsh, metallic sound world with its entertaining melodies—and in the case of Planché’s melodrama, popular Scottish folk tunes. These theaters offered music that was comfortable and familiar, seducing its listeners out of the noisy city streets. Once inside the theater, audience members physically encountered the live music the way the female protagonists physically encountered the vampire. Audience members likely jumped at a stinger chord or a cymbal crash, reacted with goosebumps at eerie storm music, or started tapping their feet during jaunty drinking songs; they no doubt left the theater humming a tune or two from the melodramas—in other words, they were literally taking the music home with them. Even once they left the theaters, audiences were lured back time and again for more escapism—the music had sunk its teeth into them. These interactions between the music and its audience reveal a vampiric dimension of music. By virtue of music’s propensity to seduce listeners into itself with its charm and create an escapist illusion that transcends everyday banality, music in general might even be read as seductive or vampiric, in which case, the music’s vampiric characteristics are even more poignant and explicit because of the melodramas’ subject matter.

R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1993), 73; Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir: chronique du XIXe siécle (Paris: Librairie Garnier Frêres, 1830), 2. “A peine entre-t-on dans la ville que l'on est étourdi par le fracas d'un machine bruyante et terrible en apparence. Vingt marteaux pesants, et retombant avec un bruit qui fait trembler le pavé, sont élevés par une roue que l'eau du torrent fait mouvoir.” 54

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The music was vampiric similar to the villain it accompanied. In fact, this seductive music lured audience members directly into the vampire’s arms. Works Cited Barber, Paul. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988. Bérard, Cyprien. Lord Ruthwen, ou Les vampires. 2 vols. Paris: Ladvocat, 1820. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1056764r. Blake, William. Illustrations to Paradise Lost: Adam and Eve Sleeping. Pen and watercolor on paper, 1808. 90.102. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Buch, David Joseph. Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Burwick, Frederick. Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. —. “Vampire Auf Der Bühne Der 1820er Jahre.” In Dracula Unbound: Kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren Des Vampirs, eds. Christian Begemann, Britta Herrmann, and Harald Neumeyer, 191–212. Freiburg: Rombach, 2008. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Theses: (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, 3–20. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Cooper, Alfred Edward, and Michael Connelly. Four Bars Of “agit”: Incidental Music for Victorian and Edwardian Melodrama, eds. David Mayer and Matthew Scott. London: Samuel French, 1983. Del Toro, Guillermo, and Chuck Hogan. “Why Vampires Never Die.” The New York Times. July 30, 2009, sec. The Opinion Pages. “English Opera House.” The New Monthly Magazine 14, no. 80 (September 1820): 321–22. “Feuilleton du journal des debats.” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, May 29, 1820, 2. Füssli, Johann Heinrich. Satan, von Ithuriels Speer Berührt. Oil on canvas, 1779. 3708. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Grey, Thomas S. “The Gothic Libertine: The Shadow of Don Giovanni in Romantic Music and Culture.” In The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera, 75–106. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Hamilton, Colonel Ralph. David Rizzio: A Serious Opera, in Three Acts: Founded upon Scottish History. London: Printed for John Lowndes, 1820. Hart, Joseph Binns. The Vampire; Or, the Bride of the Isles. London: T. Williams, 1820. Linhardt, Marion. “Ruthven’s Song: Der Vampir in Mélodame, Melodrama und Romantischer Oper.” In Dracula Unbound: Kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüren des Vampirs, 213–40. Freiburg: Rombach, 2008. Marshall, Rosalind K. “Riccio, David.” In The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eds. by H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23475.

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Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited by Thomas H. Luxon. The Milton Reading Room. Dartmouth College, 2016. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_4/text.shtml. Nodier, Charles. Oeuvres Dramatiques, I: Le Vampire, Le Délateur, ed. Ginette Picat-Guinoiseau. Genéve: Librairie Droz S.A., 1990. —. The Vampire. Translated by Frank J. Morlock. Etext edition. Dagny, 2000. Nodier, Charles, Achille de Jouffroy, and Pierre-Frédéric-Adolphe Carmouche. Le Vampire, mélodrame en trois actes. Paris: J.-N. Barba, 1820. “Nouvelle étrangères.” Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, March 6, 1820, 2. “On Vampires and Vampirism.” The New Monthly Magazine 14, no. 82 (November 1820): 548–52. “On Vampyrism.” The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 7 (1823): 140–49. Planché, James Robinson. The Vampire; Or, the Bride of the Isles: A Romantic Melodrama in Two Acts. London: John Dicks, 1874. —. The Vampire; Or, the Bride of the Isles: A Romantic Melo-Drama, in Two Acts Preceded by an Introductory Vision. London: W. Flint, 1820. Rice, Anne. The Vampire Lestat. New York: Ballantine, 1986. Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny, 1993. Six, Abigail Lee, and Hannah Thompson. “From Hideous to Hedonist: The Changing Face of the Nineteenth-Century Monster.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, 237–56. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. Stendhal. Le Rouge et Le Noir: Chronique Du XIXe Siécle. Paris: Garnier Frêres, 1830. Stott, Andrew McConnell. The Poet and the Vampyre: the Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature’s Greatest Monsters. New York: Pegasus, 2014. “The Drama.” The London Magazine 2, no. 9 (September 1820): 321–26. Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. “Invisible Monsters: Vision, Horror, and Contemporary Culture.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, eds. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle, 275–89. Ashgate Research Companions. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. —. “Vampires, Vampires, Everywhere.” Phi Kappa Phi Forum 90, no. 3 (2010): 4–5.

Contributors Simon Bacon is an Independent Scholar based in Poznan, Poland. He has edited books on various subjects including Undead Memory: Vampires and Human Memory in Popular Culture (2014), and Growing Up with Vampires: Essays on the Undead in Children’s Media (2018) both with Katarzyna Bronk, and edited Gothic: A Reader (2018), and Horror: A Companion (2019). He has published two monographs, Becoming Vampire: Difference and the Vampire in Popular Culture (2016), and Dracula as Absolute Other: The Troubling and Distracting Specter of Stoker’s Vampire on Screen (2019), and is currently working on his third, Eco-Vampires: The Vampire as Environmentalist and Undead Eco-activist.

Verena Bernardi is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English and American Studies at Saarland University, Germany. She holds a PhD in North American Cultural Studies and is the author of Us versus Them, or We? Post-2000 Vampiric Reflections of Family, Home and Hospitality in True Blood and The Originals. Her research interests lie in Vampire Studies, Television Studies, Cultural Studies (North America), and Southern Regionalism (Louisiana).

Octavia Cade is a New Zealand writer with a PhD in science communication. Her stories have appeared in a number of venues, including Asimov's, Clarkesworld, and Cosmos. Academic work on speculative fiction has appeared in Horror Studies, Scandinavica, and the BFS Journal, and she is the author of the award-winning collection Food and Horror, which looks at the use and manipulation of food in aspects of the genre from fairy tales to monster movies.

Jessica Doble is a PhD candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her current project, titled “Reading, Community and the Politics of Authority: Fanfiction of Popular Media,” focuses on digital media and the reception of popular texts in the context of community. Her work has been published in a special issue on Jesmyn Ward’s work in the Xavier Review. She expects to graduate in 2020.

Stephanie M. Flint is a doctoral candidate in comparative studies at Florida Atlantic University, where she teaches courses in English literature and interdisciplinary studies. Her research focuses on representations of

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Contributors

monstrosity in literature, film and popular culture, particularly in relation to gender and disability studies.

Frank Jacob is a professor of Global History (19th and 20th centuries) at Nord Universitet, Norway. Holding a PhD in Japanese Studies from Erlangen University (Germany), he also published, next to several books and articles in history, works on Japanese literature and film.

Almudena Nido is currently working at Isabel I University (Spain), teaching in the Department of Modern Languages and Social Sciences. After completing her PhD thesis at University of Oviedo she has published articles about the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf and the interactions of power and resistance. Her current research and scholarship reflect an interest in investigating the depictions and interpretations of the female monster.

Kendra R. Parker, author of She Bites Back: Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977-2011 (Lexington 2018), is an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Literature at Georgia Southern University-Armstrong.

Tatiana Prorokova is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. Her current project examines representations of the environment and climate change in fiction since the Industrial Revolution. She holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Marburg, Germany. She was an Ebeling Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society (2018) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of South Alabama, USA (2016). She is the coeditor of Cultures of War in Graphic Novels: Violence, Trauma, and Memory (Rutgers University Press, 2018).

Svetlana Seibel is currently a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the department of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University, Germany. Her research interests include Indigenous popular culture in North America, genre fiction, literatures of the Pacific Northwest, TV Studies, and Vampire Studies.

Ryan Whittington is a PhD candidate in historical musicology at Florida State University. His research seeks to understand difference and otherness in cultural history by using music and monsters as the primary artifacts. He

Contributors

275

possesses Bachelor of Arts degrees in music and German from Wake Forest University and a Master of Music degree in historical musicology from Florida State University. The research for this book chapter began as his master’s thesis. His current research engages with music and monstrosity in composers’ adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Index

A Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein 25 Abbott, Bud 25 Academy Award 129 Addams, Morticia 25 Amenábar, Alejandro vii America 27, 29, 32, 33, 36, 41, 58, 59, 81, 212, 228 American Horror Story 88, 89, 91 An American Werewolf in London 129, 136 Asian or Afro-Caribbean immigrant identity 40 Auerbach, Nina 45, 188

B Baker, Rick 129 Bakhtin, Mikhail viii Baring-Gould, Sabine 128, 129, 134 Bauman, Richard 3 BBC 35 Beaugrand, Honoré 130 Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and other Difficult Positions 87 Beowulf 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123 Beowulf & Grendel 115 Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands 118

Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media, and the Vampire Franchise 167 Black female vampires xiv, 161, 162, 164, 165, 167, 175, 181, 182 Black Skin, White Masks 38 black vampires 167, 181 Blade 161, 164, 167 Bogden, Robert 86 Boylen, Andrew 26 Briggs, Charles L. 3, 4, 6 Brown, Rebecca A. ix Browning, Tod xiv, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93 Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery 23, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 38, 39, 40 Butler, Christopher 49, 51 Byronic patriarchal monster 188

C Carmilla 53, 191, 269 Carroll, John 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 Ceaușescu, Nicolae 28 children’s books 23, 29, 31, 39 children’s culture 27 Children of the Night 33 Chopra, Deepak 67 Christianity 9, 11, 49, 173 Cohen, Jerome xi, xii, 188, 189, 192, 193, 268 Cold War 24, 25, 28, 32, 33, 34, 40, 214, 217, 226, 229, 231, 234, 235 Columbo, Enzo 40 Corpus Juris Civilis 64

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Index

Costello, Lou 25, 27 Craven, Wes 161, 164, 165, 182 Crichton, Michael 104, 105 cultural assimilation 37, 174 cultural milieu 48, 52 Cushing, Peter 26

D Daemonologie 2, 3, 7 Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning 74, 75 Dark Harvest 47 Dark Shadows 26 Dawn of the Dead 148 Day, William Partick 47 demon 5, 7, 16, 21, 111, 151, 226, 260 Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) 36 Device, Alizon 10, 18, 19 Disability Studies 10, 74, 79, 86, 87 Dracula 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 39, 41, 54, 165, 269 Dracula 24, 27, 28, 29, 41, 53, 72, 77, 165, 191, 241, 264, 269 Dracula A.D. 1972 26

E Eaters of the Dead 104 Enlightenment 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 249 Europe viii, 27, 32, 33, 40, 55, 177, 265, 269 Extraordinary Bodies 79, 86

F Fanon, Frantz 38 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 76 Fleischer, Ruben 148

Foucault, Michel v Frankenstein 72, 77, 248, 269 Frankenstein’s monster v, vi, 24, 25 Freakery 86, 92 Freaks xiv, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93 Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit 73, 77, 86, 88 Freak Studies 74, 86, 87 Freud, Sigmund 8 “friendlification” 25

G Gabriel, John 35 Garland-Thomson, Rosalind 6, 7, 79, 86, 87 Gender 1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 20, 27, 89, 90, 93, 98, 119, 148, 159, 162, 163, 166, 167, 168, 172, 182, 188, 192, 199, 207, 208 gender-based violence 91 Godzilla vii, xiv, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242 Godzilla 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244 Godzilla: King of Monsters 212, 213, 244 Godzilla vs. Biollante 215, 237, 238, 239, 244 Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah 215, 239, 240, 244

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Index

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla 215, 235, 236, 237, 244 Good Friday 11 Grady, Frank vi Grendel xiv, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123 Gruesome and Bloodsocks 36, 37, 40

Imagination ix, 2, 5, 25, 26, 46, 132, 249, 250, 269 Interview with the Vampire 31, 36, 45, 46, 47, 188, 189, 194, 201, 203, 208 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers 25 It Came From Outer Space 25 iZombie xiv, 147, 148, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159

H

James I of England 2 Japan 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242 Jesuit 1, 6, 18, 20 Jim Crow 163 Jones, Ann Rosalind 14 Jungman, Ann 32 Jurassic Park vi Justinian, Roman Emperor 64

Halperin, Victor 147, Hammer studio 26 Hausmannin, Walpurga 5 Herzogenrath, Bernd 72, 73, 74, 77, 81 Hilburn, Lynda 47 Hirohito, Emperor of Japan 212 historical narrative 2, 20 Hobbit 118 Holiday, Jane 36 Hollywood vii, 73, 90, 92, 93, 182, 213 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 79 Honda, Ishirō 222, 223, 225 horror cinema 82 horror film vii, 27, 82, 132, 164, 166, 219, 251 Horror of Dracula 26 Howe, Deborah 29, 31 Howe, James 29, 31 Hufford, David 4 Humanism 48, 49, 51, 52, 58, 60 Hutchison, Sharla ix, x

I Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad 104, 105, 106, 107

J

K kaijū eiga 215, 224 Kayama, Shigeru 222 King Kong vii, 241, 244 King Kong (1933) vi, 221, 222, 226 Kirk, Terry viii Kostova, Elizabeth 33 Kouri, Kristyan M. 27 Kristeva, Julia 9, 19 Kuhling, Carmen 49

L Lancashire, England 1, 4 Lee, Christopher 26, 180 Le Fanu, Sheridan 53, 191, 269

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Index

Le Vampire 246, 247, 252, 253, 257, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265 LGBTQ community 163 Lockhart, Hannah 21 Lord of the Rings 97, 118 Love at First Bite 28, 29, 33 Lucky Dragon V Incident 220 Lugosi, Bela (Bella) 25, 27, 28, 180, 269

New Age movement 48 New York Times 80, 81, 212, 225, 245 Night of the Living Dead 148 Nodier, Charles 246, 247, 252, 257, 259, 268 Nowell, Roger 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 Nutter, Alice 1, 5, 6, 11, 12, 19, 20

O M Malchow, Howard L. vi Martin 29 Mayer, Louis B. 76, 80 McKee Charnas, Suzy 47, 191 mental illness 5, 133, 134, 135 Meteling, Arno vii Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) 72, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 92 Miller, Jeffrey S. 25 misinterpretation of reality 5 Monastery of the Cave 61, 62 Mongols 62 monstrosity vi, vii, viii, x, xi, xiii, xiv, 20, 47, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 91, 93, 98, 99, 103, 105, 108, 109, 112, 115, 119, 121, 122, 123, 134, 135, 148, 151, 152, 182, 189, 191, 211, 232, 234, 248, 250, 268, 274, 275 monstrousness 15, 19, 102, 119 Motion Picture Daily 80 Mummy 24 Munsey’s Magazine 75

N Nakata, Hideo vii National Association of Evangelicals 33 NATO 33

On the Nightmare 24 “otherness” 5, 6, 7, 40 Outlander 115, 122

P patriarchal society 5, 7, 14, 20 Partridge, Christopher 48, 51, 52, 53, 54 Pearson, Margaret 17 Peeper, Tom 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17 Pendle Hill Witch 1 Planché, James Robinson 246, 247, 250, 252, 255, 258, 265, 267, 268, 270 Polidori, John 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 264, 267, 268, 269 Poole, Robert 4 Poole, W. Scott 24 popular culture 19, 23, 27, 45, 52, 53, 72, 87, 88, 98, 143, 147, 162, 164, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 241, 245 popular media ix, x, xiii, xiv, 241 postmodernism 49, 51, 52 Powell, Enoch 35 primitive natures 8 Protestantism 2, 3

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Index

Q Queen of the Damned 161, 164, 165 Quinn Yarbro, Chelsea 46, 47

R Rashōmon 212, 216 Reagan, Ronald 33, 36 red-eyed vampirism 174 Redfern, Nancy 18, 19 Renaissance man 55, 56, 68 Rice, Anne vi, xiii, 31, 36, 45, 46, 47, 48, 54, 55, 188, 194, 269 Richards, Evelleen v Richie, Donald 212 Robbins, Tod 72, 75, 91 Romania 28, 33, 34 Romero, George A. 148, 151, 152

S Savada, Elias 73, 75, 79, 83, 85, 86 Scandinavian lore 115 Seabrook, William 147 semiotics x, 235 Senn, Bryan 127 Sesame Street 27, 28 Seven Samurai 216 sex with the Devil 6 Sharpe, James 4 Shelley, Mary vi, 248, 269 Shyamalan, Manoj “Night” vii silent film 82, 130 Simmon, Dan 33 Skal, David J. 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86 soap opera 26 sound era 82 Soviet Union 24, 32, 33, 40, 234 Stephens, Walter 5

stigma 7 Stoker, Bram 24, 26, 30, 41, 53, 54, 165, 191, 264 Summers, Montague 24 Superhero film 97

T Tanaka, Tomoyuki 219, 220, 221, 222, 238 Tatars 62 The 13th Warrior 104, 106, 108, 109, 110 The Addams Family 25, 26 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 217, 221, 231 The Book of Werewolves 128 The Daylight Gate xiii, 1, 3, 6, 9, 10, 14, 16, 20, 21 The Historian 33 The Hunchback of Notre Dame 77 Them 214, 245 The Magic Island 147 The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror 76 The Munsters 25 The Originals xiv, 162, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 194, 200, 202, 204, 206, 207, 208 Theorizing Twilight: Essays on What’s at Stake in a PostVampire World 167 The Phantom of the Opera 77 The Twilight Saga 31, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168, 169, 173, 180, 182, 193 The Vampire Armand 45, 48, 50, 52, 54, 55, 62, 68, 69 The Vampire Chronicles 31, 48, 50, 55, 62, 68 The Vampire Diaries 162, 189, 190, 193, 200, 204

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Index

The Vampire Lestat 269 The Vampire; or, The Bride of the Isles 246, 247, 250, 253, 257, 258, 265, 266, 267 The Vampyre 245, 248, 249, 267 The Walking Dead 148 The Werewolf 127, 128, 130 The Werewolf Filmography 127 The Wolfman 129, 135 time-space continuum v, vi, xi, xii Tōhō 214, 216, 219, 220, 222, 228, 234 Tolkien, J.R.R. 101, 102, 103, 118, 121 “tradition of disbelief” 4, 5, 8, 10 Transylvania 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 39, 180 True Blood 162, 189, 190, 193, 204, 207, 208 Trumpington 36, 40 Tsutsui, William 212, 214, 219, 220, 222, 229 Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 xiv

U uncanny 2, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 72, 100, 105, 108, 113, 250 Underworld 142, 143, 161, 162 Universal Pictures 131, 132

V Vampire in Brooklyn 161, 164, 165, 182 vampire novel xiii, 46, 47, 245 vampirism 31, 56, 134, 163, 167, 172, 173, 174 Van Helsing 26, 30 Vikings 104, 105 Vilification 33, 167, 168, 171, 174

Vlad the Drac 23, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37

W Waller, Gregory A. 46 Warm Bodies 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159 Warner Brothers 161, 221 Webb, Kenneth 147 Werewolf of London 130, 131, 132, 134, 139, 141 White Zombie 147 Winterson, Jeanette xiii, 1, 2, 10, 13, 17, 21 witchcraft 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20 Wolf Man 24, 25, 131, 132, 133, 134, 139, 143 “womanness” 6, 8, 9 World War II 24, 27, 139, 143, 219 Wray, Fay vii

X xenophobia 32

Z Zombie 147 zombie film 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 156, 159 Zombieland 148