Sex, Sympathy, and the Undead

Copyright 2021 Published 6/14/21

A lot has happened to the vampire, hasn’t it?

The sexy, scary, pale bloodsucker has evolved. But I’m not so sure I like the evolution. I’m not so sure the evolution is good for us. Which is why I wrote a book about it.

Prior to penning Nobody Leaves Moss Crest Alive, I was taken aback at just how chic vampires had become. We were, for a while there, saturated with vampirism. From the silver screen to the small screen to the publishing houses, vampires were totally en vogue. They were sexy. They were charming. And even when they were dangerous, their plight somehow resonated with their audience. Then came the zombie craze around 2010, and the vampire moment ebbed. But the pathos remained. Hence, even though the vampire may not be Big Man on Campus anymore, he hasn’t exactly vanished either; meanwhile, he’s retained his cool status, which seems inapposite with the vampire’s origins:

The first vampire story, The Vampyre, was written by John Polidori in 1819. It hasn’t held up very well over the years. It is difficult to read and altogether uninvolving. It’s also in the public domain, so those interested should give it a glance. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 contribution, Carmilla, holds up far better; it is downright chilling. As I alluded to in my own novel, Hammer really did make Carmilla into a movie. In 1970, they produced The Vampire Lovers, starring Ingrid Pitt. A loose remake was made sometime in the last decade. It doesn’t do anything for me.

The Vampyre tells the tale of a bloodthirsty count who preys on innocents. Groundbreaking at the time of publication, it probably seems trite and cliché to modern audiences. Likewise with Carmilla, in which a seemingly young and pretty girl befriends and seduces the daughter of a widower; the young girl, of course, turns out to be a centuries-old vampire, which probably fails to send chills up anyone’s spines anymore: “lesbian bloodsucker” has a different connotation in 2020 than it did in 1872.

At any rate, to the extent that The Vampyre is discussed at all – in horror and literature circles, but certainly not in the mainstream – it is usually to discuss the notion that the titular count was based on Lord Byron.

Both stories eventually paved the way for Bram Stoker’s far more famous classic, which debuted in 1897. Despite these earlier efforts, Dracula is, in many ways, ground zero and a matter of first impression, at least as far as mainstream audiences are concerned. Not many people have read Polidori. But everyone knows about Count Dracula.

Readers can trace a great deal of Stoker throughout the history of most vampire literature. Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot is no exception. My own book is in small part a rebuttal to Lot, which is among my favorites of King’s catalogue and one of my favorite books in general. It was always billed as a horror novel. But I have always thought of it as literature. King, himself, once said something about wanting to write the Moby Dick of vampire books. I rather think he succeeded.   

In King’s masterpiece – one of his many masterpieces, I should say – one of the characters, Father Callahan, is tricked by the undead Frances Barlow into renouncing his faith. The scene in question is one of the better scenes of the novel, but it has, alas, never been accurately captured on screen. And even though it has haunted me for many years, I have always vehemently refuted the scene’s resolution. A weak man who succumbs to fear isn’t lost to Christ, or faith, as happens to Father Callahan, simply because of his fallible human nature. In fact, the shame that later comes from refusing Jesus is often the cornerstone of faith for many Christians. That’s something that most nonbelievers don’t really understand, and it was an impelling factor for writing my own vampire novel. I simply wanted, in my own way, to argue Father Callahan’s case.

But that wasn’t all I wanted to write about. There are reasons vampires haunt us. Or should…

Sex and the Single Vampire

 It has been argued by some conservative critics that vampires were rather asexual monsters, preying on innocent communities, but not so much seducing them. Rest assured, this isn’t so. Sex was always a large, even central, part of the vampire’s story. The moral of most early vampire fiction was to caution readers to restrain their sexual appetites. In The Vampyre, supra, for example, Lord Ruthven, our inaugural bloodsucking nobleman, has as devious a fetish for “those females who form the boast of their sex from their domestic virtues” as he does for “those who sully it by their vices.” Carmilla was all the more meretricious. Though her prey never really succumbs to Carmilla’s advances, she is nevertheless spellbound:

From [our] foolish embraces, which were not of very frequent occurrence, I must allow, I used to wish to extricate myself; but my energies seemed to fail me. Her murmured words sounded like a lullaby in my ear, and soothed my resistance into a trance, from which I only seemed to recover myself when she withdrew her arms.

In these mysterious moods I did not like her. I experienced a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust…

…Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, "You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever." Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling.

Dracula portrays the same sort of sensual pleasure, forbidden and strange and even foreboding. When the novel’s protagonist, Jonathan Harker, begins to drift to sleep one night, in the Count’s castle, he recalls:

I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on.

 One said, "Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin."

 The other added, "He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all."

 I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.     

Now consider, for a moment, that Victorian England was really no different than modern America in that sex was often on the brain, if not also on the tips of tongues. And indeed, within us all is a natural, primal, carnal thirst. The need to ravish and to be ravished is known to every man and woman alike; it burns so vividly within us that it calls on every bit of our civilized training to quell it. But this is one of the central points of civilization – to channel sexual energy into a productive outlet. It is likewise why I don’t understand the sexual mores of our time. They are adverse – even adversarial – to a sustained civilization. Say what you will about freedom or liberty or license – and I am sure you will; everyone does – but appetites which aren’t channeled are passions, and passions tend to undo things. Passions cause cultures to erode, and it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a traditional culture or progressive one - passions don’t discriminate. They raze and sunder and sometimes even eat people, one neck vein at a time.  

Today, of course, unlike Victorian England, sex is no longer verboten to talk about. In fact, little about sex is left to the private side of our bedroom doors. Divorces and bastards aren’t stigmas, and alternative lifestyles are not only accepted but endorsed.

In other words, how can the vampire story scare us anymore? The main thing the vampire was scaring us from is no longer verboten…     

Fear of the Unknown – it’s not really that unhealthy…

Of course, there’s more than just sexual deviancy at the (staked) heart of undead fiction.   The vampire, in most tellings, is often an unknown Eastern figure, wreaking havoc on the West. This depiction was traditionally never an accident, and bully for it. After all:

Fear of the unknown can be a healthy thing, albeit, when taken to the extreme, it can be quite unhealthy as well. To explore and discover without prejudice is dangerous, even if to refrain and ignore without fail is likewise. Moderation. That is the key. A healthy and checked sense of both is necessary for order and survival. The vampire, nocturnal and dangerous and altogether Eastern, taught Western men and women to adhere to Western values and the Western dynamic. But do vampires also tacitly teach us to be anti-immigration? No - merely to be wary of crewless ships which run aground along the English shore.

This wariness is a virtue seldom pursued by contemporary vampire fiction. Most writers and directors are too busy trying to make the vampire embraceable; empathetic; loveable.

Stephanie Meyer’s Edward, for instance, is a “vegetarian” in the Twilight series. He doesn’t drink human blood and he wants to walk among the living. This is, of course, utterly and inanely stupid.  Flaunting human blood around a vampire, by logic, is exactly like setting tumblers of single malt in front of an alcoholic. No matter how long the alcoholic’s been dry, you’re testing his sobriety. No good can come of that. But, of course, teenage girls just love a mopey rebel to reform…

Meyer certainly isn’t the only artist to give the vampire a relatable and encompassing sympathy. And it is for this reason that the supposedly “great” vampire fictions of recent years aren’t really all that great at all. Consider:

Werner Herzog’s creepy 1979 classic, Nosferatu: The Vampyre, which is a remake of Nosferatu, is chilling and brooding and melancholic. It is widely considered one of the classics. Its mood can be entrancing, its sounds and images spellbinding. Its scariness, in turn, is of the sort that should stay with you long after you watch it… In the still of night, when the moon’s glow shines pale blue through your window shades, you should see Klaus Kinski, as Dracula, standing there in the shadows, looming…

…and yet, much of the film lacks staying power. Why? Because once you’ve had time to compute the images that first engulfed you, your recoil from Kinski’s Dracula gives way to something more pitiful. Kinski, whose performance is pitch-perfect for what the film intends, has a scene where he laments the weariness that comes with centuries of loneliness. Touching, yes. But scary?

Kinski is shown-up years later in a related film, Shadow of the Vampire, where Willem Dafoe plays Count Orlock, the vampire from the original Nosferatu. In Shadow, the movie ponders a play on reality: what if Max Shreck, the actor who played Orlock in the original, was actually a real life vampire? Mayhem and murder, of course, ensue as the vampire plays an actor playing himself. But amidst the death and carnage, Dafoe out-emotes Kinski, channeling the same, pitiful, sad feelings. He remarks in one scene that the saddest part of Stoker’s Dracula is when the Count is depicted as having no servants during Harker’s visit to the castle. The crewman laugh at his observation. What could possibly be so sad about not having servants? Dafoe’s character elaborates: It’s not that Count Dracula didn’t have servants; it’s that he hadn’t had servants for four hundred years; he’d been alone, in no need of food or water or spirits for nearly half a millennium. How could he possibly remember how to host a guest? How could he remember how to set the table? The sum total of this observation is simply that Count Dracula, in his advanced age and isolation, couldn’t possibly remember his humanity or, for that matter, any human connection. It is a sad commentary to be sure. But then, as Shadow unfolds, Orlock proceeds to feed off the living, reminding characters and audiences alike that evil is evil, regardless of its otherwise mitigating circumstances.

Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Dracula, in 1992, is no different in its cheapening humanization. In Coppola’s version, the Count even gets the girl in the end, conjuring up, at least in this writer’s mind, the debate among some scholars about Helen – did she go with Paris to Troy against her will or willingly? It is a question that maybe is not so pointless.

Keep in mind, of course, that my arguments against humanization do not mean that one shouldn’t sympathize at all with the vampire. Good characters are hard to write if you can’t find some sympathy for them. Sympathy and empathy, though, are different things, as is sympathy and endorsement, a point which most moderns don’t understand.  

All this is to say that the best vampire films and some of the best vampire books aren’t always the “great” ones.

Sometimes campy, sometimes shallow, and often low-brow, films like Fright Night, John Carpenter’s Vampires, and the vastly underrated 30 Days of Night show the vampire at his menacing best, as do many of those pre-modern films that have slipped into movie oblivion – the Hammer classics with Christopher Lee, for example, which are still astoundingly fun to watch.

_________________

 A society that celebrates the undead can’t possibly possess the moral fortitude to champion sobriety, marital commitment, sexual restraint, and any of the other virtues necessary for ordered living. The vampire, according to its legend, is without virtue. Yes, while living, he may have had virtue, or maybe pursued it, but once undead, his virtuousness is altogether an impossibility.

Which brings me to my final point on the nosferatu:

Sympathy for the devil may not bring about damnation. But empathy for the crucifixion is guaranteed to bring about eternal life. Recall, then, one last passage from Stoker: when Harker finds himself surrounded by evil in Dracula’s castle, he finds solace in the cross that hangs around his neck; it was given to him by a village woman before he embarked on the final leg of his journey into darkness:

Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! For it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort.

Stoker was on to something, there, as was the good woman who hung the crucifix around Harker’s neck.

It is hard to have an ordered society without such good women, keeping an eye out against the unknown and the deviants, giving inspiration to the men, and reading lines between the lines and the pages between the pages and the spaces between the spaces.

That’s something the moderns – from feminists to moral relativists – don’t get and is just one of the many points I’d hoped to muse over with Moss Crest. There are others. And I think it is, in the end, a fine piece of work.