Post by max on Aug 16, 2010 12:42:21 GMT -5
Having just read and thoroughly enjoyed Eleanor Bourg Donlon's "Cinemania, or the Revenge of the Bloodsucked," I thought the essay worth some additional discussion.
For those who haven't read it, the point, essentially, is that the vampire genre has been almost entirely stripped of its religious content and quandaries (certainly in comparison to Stoker's classic). What remains is a self-referential wish-fulfillment for consumers who long for an enchanted reality wholly other than the world they currently inhabit.
Of course, vampire tales specifically, and the Gothic romance generally, from the beginning inclined to some degree to those sort of psychological cravings, but in their Victorian heyday they also were stories of the seductiveness of evil and the necessary rigors of resistance against it.
More rudimentary than Ms. Donlon's innovative and nuanced theory of vampirism as the anti-Eucharist (worth a protracted discussion all by itself) is the sense in which the Victorian vampire and Gothic romances acnowledged and indulged the attraction of their readers to the medieval (and Catholic) yet ultimately reified the triumph of the modern and progressive (and Protestant).
The formula went thusly: a dainty and proper bourgeois maiden, betrothed (at least informally) to a proper and productive up-and-comer in the progressive world of commerce and enlightened ideas, has a chance encounter with some minor scion of old-world royalty--a duke or prince of some sort (or a count). The Duke is Southern or Eastern European, dark-haired, swarthy, well-educated, cultured, elegant, charming, chivalrous, and Catholic (or at least of quasi-Catholic derivation).
The Duke kisses her hand a little too long, holds her gaze too intently, and has so many chance encounters with her that they can no longer be chance. He exudes everything contrary to the sterile and bloodless (!) life she has lived in her few years, and everything contrary to the future she foresees with the proper mercantilist fiance. The Duke's world is enchanted, chivalrous, sexual, imbued with old-world good and evil rather than mechanical "progress." (I should point out here that Ms. Donlon writes of the vampire that "[t]the overtly sexual threat and the threat of foreign invasion were present as well, though not to the degree that literary critics would like us to believe." She does not elaborate.)
The fiance learns of the Duke and grows jealous and seemingly over-protective. The maiden is conflicted, professing her loyalty to the fiance yet defending the Duke. By some plot contrivance (a kidnapping? by the Duke? by a third party?), the maiden finds herself running through the wilderness, finding refuge and then terror in the ruins of medieval castles, cathedrals and abbeys until a daring rescue by her fiance and his modern progressive allies.
The maiden's rescue in some fashion results in the Duke's death, a consequent termination of the threat to the new order, and a full reconciliation of the maiden with the triumphantly modern. (Men could play the maiden role, too, torn between the earthy and exotic "dark woman" and the pristine blond princess of the ascendant industrialist). Marriage to the fiance hastily occurs with an epilogue mentioning their beautiful and well-behaved children (although, not TOO many children).
The most fascinating thing about the Twilight movies (I haven't read the books) is how *completely* they invert the old Gothic romance formula. Ms. Donlon alludes to this when she points out "the rise of the patently absurd notion of the 'good vampyre.'" The vampires of Twilight, though, are not just not-evil, but are positively good. Unlike the only-child female protagonist with her divorced parents living thousands of miles apart, the Cullens are a large-ish, loving and mutually supportive family. In contrast to the subtle sexual entreaties of the Duke in the old Gothic romances (including Dracula), Edward Cullen actually *refuses* to have sex with his pushy girlfriend, explaining that he is old-fashioned and wants to wait for marriage. Although, as Ms. Donlon points out, the supernatural in Twilight is devoid of religious content, Edward at least maintains a devotion to the idea of Bella's "soul" (of all his features, this is the one that the movies portray least sympathetically, of course).
In sum, just as the old Gothic romance offered up a kind of momentary relief from the stultifying domesticity and progressivist disenchantment of the Victorian era, the Twilight films acknowledge the value of large, intact and loving families, romance without fornication, devoted love, and at least a passing concern with one's soul.
As it did then, the vampire now represents a sort of antidote to the emptiness of the modern world, but the nature of the antidote is most informative in the way it clarifies the nature of the social sickness it proposes to remedy. That sickness today consists in large part in the glorification of the abandonment of family life, meaningless and promiscuous sex, rejection of the concept of the soul, and the view that the world and everything in it exists only to appease our whims and appetites.
The most obvious shortcoming of the alternative world that the vampires offer Bella is that it rests on nothing. The "good" vampires do at least in their way acknowledge original sin (for them, the compulsion to kill and devour humans) and the necessity of endless struggle (with the support of a strong family) against evil. But we have no idea what motivates or sustains them other than Dr. Cullen's notion that it's bad to eat people. The rest just appears to be a kind of personal psychological programming designed to control the appetite. How this works or why we should believe it will be an enduring achievement is not evident.
Whatever its shortcomings, Twilight is unlikely to end in the revenge of the status quo the way the old Gothic romances did. Bella appears disinclined to go back to the youth culture world of friends-with-benefits, smouldering credit cards, anxious narcissism and drunken, sleazy Facebook pictures. So there's that.
For those who haven't read it, the point, essentially, is that the vampire genre has been almost entirely stripped of its religious content and quandaries (certainly in comparison to Stoker's classic). What remains is a self-referential wish-fulfillment for consumers who long for an enchanted reality wholly other than the world they currently inhabit.
Of course, vampire tales specifically, and the Gothic romance generally, from the beginning inclined to some degree to those sort of psychological cravings, but in their Victorian heyday they also were stories of the seductiveness of evil and the necessary rigors of resistance against it.
More rudimentary than Ms. Donlon's innovative and nuanced theory of vampirism as the anti-Eucharist (worth a protracted discussion all by itself) is the sense in which the Victorian vampire and Gothic romances acnowledged and indulged the attraction of their readers to the medieval (and Catholic) yet ultimately reified the triumph of the modern and progressive (and Protestant).
The formula went thusly: a dainty and proper bourgeois maiden, betrothed (at least informally) to a proper and productive up-and-comer in the progressive world of commerce and enlightened ideas, has a chance encounter with some minor scion of old-world royalty--a duke or prince of some sort (or a count). The Duke is Southern or Eastern European, dark-haired, swarthy, well-educated, cultured, elegant, charming, chivalrous, and Catholic (or at least of quasi-Catholic derivation).
The Duke kisses her hand a little too long, holds her gaze too intently, and has so many chance encounters with her that they can no longer be chance. He exudes everything contrary to the sterile and bloodless (!) life she has lived in her few years, and everything contrary to the future she foresees with the proper mercantilist fiance. The Duke's world is enchanted, chivalrous, sexual, imbued with old-world good and evil rather than mechanical "progress." (I should point out here that Ms. Donlon writes of the vampire that "[t]the overtly sexual threat and the threat of foreign invasion were present as well, though not to the degree that literary critics would like us to believe." She does not elaborate.)
The fiance learns of the Duke and grows jealous and seemingly over-protective. The maiden is conflicted, professing her loyalty to the fiance yet defending the Duke. By some plot contrivance (a kidnapping? by the Duke? by a third party?), the maiden finds herself running through the wilderness, finding refuge and then terror in the ruins of medieval castles, cathedrals and abbeys until a daring rescue by her fiance and his modern progressive allies.
The maiden's rescue in some fashion results in the Duke's death, a consequent termination of the threat to the new order, and a full reconciliation of the maiden with the triumphantly modern. (Men could play the maiden role, too, torn between the earthy and exotic "dark woman" and the pristine blond princess of the ascendant industrialist). Marriage to the fiance hastily occurs with an epilogue mentioning their beautiful and well-behaved children (although, not TOO many children).
The most fascinating thing about the Twilight movies (I haven't read the books) is how *completely* they invert the old Gothic romance formula. Ms. Donlon alludes to this when she points out "the rise of the patently absurd notion of the 'good vampyre.'" The vampires of Twilight, though, are not just not-evil, but are positively good. Unlike the only-child female protagonist with her divorced parents living thousands of miles apart, the Cullens are a large-ish, loving and mutually supportive family. In contrast to the subtle sexual entreaties of the Duke in the old Gothic romances (including Dracula), Edward Cullen actually *refuses* to have sex with his pushy girlfriend, explaining that he is old-fashioned and wants to wait for marriage. Although, as Ms. Donlon points out, the supernatural in Twilight is devoid of religious content, Edward at least maintains a devotion to the idea of Bella's "soul" (of all his features, this is the one that the movies portray least sympathetically, of course).
In sum, just as the old Gothic romance offered up a kind of momentary relief from the stultifying domesticity and progressivist disenchantment of the Victorian era, the Twilight films acknowledge the value of large, intact and loving families, romance without fornication, devoted love, and at least a passing concern with one's soul.
As it did then, the vampire now represents a sort of antidote to the emptiness of the modern world, but the nature of the antidote is most informative in the way it clarifies the nature of the social sickness it proposes to remedy. That sickness today consists in large part in the glorification of the abandonment of family life, meaningless and promiscuous sex, rejection of the concept of the soul, and the view that the world and everything in it exists only to appease our whims and appetites.
The most obvious shortcoming of the alternative world that the vampires offer Bella is that it rests on nothing. The "good" vampires do at least in their way acknowledge original sin (for them, the compulsion to kill and devour humans) and the necessity of endless struggle (with the support of a strong family) against evil. But we have no idea what motivates or sustains them other than Dr. Cullen's notion that it's bad to eat people. The rest just appears to be a kind of personal psychological programming designed to control the appetite. How this works or why we should believe it will be an enduring achievement is not evident.
Whatever its shortcomings, Twilight is unlikely to end in the revenge of the status quo the way the old Gothic romances did. Bella appears disinclined to go back to the youth culture world of friends-with-benefits, smouldering credit cards, anxious narcissism and drunken, sleazy Facebook pictures. So there's that.