"Twilight " and Nice Vampires
Due to an irresistible challenge I've been doing a lot of reading* of recent vampire novels, in between making my way through Dracula. Stoker's own life is far more interesting to me than his fiction; trying to find Oscar Wilde in his skinny, pale-faced, red-lipped Count**, and evidence of cultural change in the women*** is keeping me going more than the lead-footed pacing is; I've never had much interest in vamps, and I prefer period lit with some verve and wit.
So last night I finally reached the scene that I suspect grabbed the Victorian audience by the crispies. Wooee, that must have been powerful at the time, just because of all the invisible boundaries ripped through--boundaries nearly invisible, or next thing to, nowadays. The men burst in (after discussion of the propriety of entering a woman's bed chamber, which seems to function both as a sop to the rules of gentility and a bit of titillation) and . . . there are the three of them, Mina in her white nightie (one has to remember that proper women never, ever see nightclothes but her mother or her husband) with blood dripping down it, her face pressed into the Count's naked chest through his ripped-open shirt, while Mina's Jonathan is frozen in helpless fear and anger (and lust? he's in bed, flushed, heavy breathing) in the b.g. Judging from the staying power of this novel, that scene must have been killer, and I'd love to see a paper on the impact at the time.
As for the rest of the novel, I have a vague recollection that Mina must be shoved onto an even higher pedestal (motherhood) to remove the taint of spoiled goods, as the men do manly things and go after the Beast to kill it. The thing is, that scene hasn't a single naughty bit in evidence, or a bad word, but the implications of every bit of visual detail, each action, carried powerful weight.
If I'm right about Mina having to be "restored" in the eyes of the men/reader, then that will (I think) underscore the whole sex and death thing that powers the vampire trope. I recall reading that, at the other end of the century, Byron was messing around with vampires in some of his work--it could very well be that what he wrote was among the papers his trustees burned as being too controversial. There's a sense that Polidori, the rejected lover (or would-be lover) retreated in vexation, taking Byron's idea with him. . . and hashing it. Lord Ruthven just doesn't have the moxie of Childe Harold, or the Giaour, or Don Juan.
Was Stoker ambivalent about his sexuality? Reading around the corners, he seems to have had a fixation on Henry Irving, but his life touched Wilde's at least when he married a woman Wilde had proposed to. At most? I dunno. What I do know is that the book is tense with ambivalence--foremost cultural ambivalence (the women, who have exactly the same personality, reassuring one another that they are good, traditional women even though Mina takes shorthand, and wants to learn how to operate the high tech phonograph as soon as she lays eyes on it), and the men that they have traditional values. There are other ambivalences, but sexual ambivalence imbues the narrative, and I wonder how much was later edited out by Stoker. The signs are there that Dracula was after Jonathan Harker as much as he was the women, and that there was something going on with Renfield, but the clues don't all add up, suggesting to me later hasty smoothings. It also suggests that he was aware to some degree that the blood sucking was a metaphor for sex.
Enough of that. Up the timeline to now. I skipped Anne Rice, as once was enough for me, but revisited P.N. Elrod's vampire detective series set in the thirties--another time of cultural ambivalence. ****
Vamps and sex
One of the biggies facing us humans is the dichotomy between sex and violence. The word 'dichotomy' implies a branching: how much of our sexual drive derives out of violence? How do we deal with the atavistic response to violence being sexy, and sex being violent? I'm engaging with that specific question in another context, but right now I want to focus on the fictive symbol that's so popular today: the vampire.
Different writers have explored vampires, imagining all kinds of types. Barbara Hambly's were the most alien that I recall, while still being civilized. Some horror writers (mostly male) have given us terror-inducing vampires, all ugly distortions of humanity, blood-red eyes and ripping claws, swooping down to leave victims not in a lascivious swoon, but in steaming, eviscerated death. None of these are as popular as the image of the suave vampire in a tuxedo, or evening dress, (or jeans and a black t-shirt) forever young, casually strong, with super-powered attraction that can be switched on and off by a flick of mental effort. Their limitations are few: no sun, and the blood thing. Oh yes, and crosses. Back to that in a moment.
It's been interesting to see how the limitations have been gotten around--some can eat, some can breathe, there are half-vampires--some can deal with sun--the animal blood and blood bank thing--all ways to keep the power but turn vampires into nice guys. Into vampire heroes. It's really interesting to me that it's mostly (maybe all? I haven't read everything out there, just the most popular things) women writing vampire heroes. What's going on here? Is there a whole 'instinct to civilize' thing going on with the sexy vamps who can be good bad guys (or bad good guys), or is it the female sexual exploration thing that is now (sort of, in many circles) okay? Or both? I'm reading stories with vamps that are not just really sexy, but who suffer human emotions, specifically love. Who struggle with emotional issues--with being outcasts from regular life, who are isolated in the teeming city, who have to deal with mortal questions. There are many that I enjoyed to a greater or lesser degree, but for sheer plot twistiness, the most fun was Claudia Gray's YA Evernight. . I also really, really like what Cassandra Clare is doing with vamps in City of Ashes.
Vamps and the Supernatural
It's been really interesting seeing how writers have been dealing (or not dealing) with the implied supernatural questions raised by the term 'undead.' Writers who just don't want any supernatural elements give us scientific rationales, and some of these vamps still breathe, they just heal miraculously fast. Others don't, but the life force is hand-waved. Soon on, of course, someone brandishes a cross and the vamp laughs, or attacks anyway. These vamps have become aliens, because (I think, anyway) part of the attraction of the vamp is the whole weird shadow-world of the supernatural. It's been interesting to see how some writers of vampire stories have either been dialoguing with one another or else inventing on their own (and the Zeitgeist is inspiring them separately) the notion of syncretism: specifically, that faith imbues the symbols with power, and that power engages against the vampire's power, as in Stoker's book. That means the Star of David works as well as a cross, ditto Buddhist symbols, etc. I think my favorite book that engages with questions of the supernatural is Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game . Here's a heroine with emphatically no faith, which impacts the story in clever ways.
So anyway, this brings me in typically roundabout ways to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. If you don't like spoilers, please skip on. Though I had some problems with the first book (the only one I read) I kept reading because there were other aspects that kept me going. My biggest problem was that the central character was a Mary Sue, and I'm way over the age when those are interesting. That is, we're told continually that everyone is fascinated by her, even though she never does anything to earn it. But to the author's credit, she does a smashing good job of depicting the self-involved emo of a typical 17-year-old. At that time of life, one is just about to lose the childhood sense of being the center of the universe, and it hurts! Mary Sues are comfort fiction when the rest of the world is busy battering you with grow-up-fast noise.
Edward the vampire is a good vampire. He's still got all the powers, except sunlight is no problem, and many readers disliked this aspect: he goes all sparkly in sunlight. I pictured the very end of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, when the Beast turns back into the prince, a lovely moment in the film. I liked this image a lot. So it's been interesting to me to see how other readers just won't buy this shifting of the vampire 'rules'. My issue with Edward was not actually his stalking of Bella (slipping into her room and watching her sleep) because I could buy a teenage vampire doing that. In fact, one of the things I've been reading for is how various authors handled the question of being frozen in one age--does the vampire have emotions? Do they mature, or does something else happen? Edward having become a vampire at teen-age and first falling in love with another teenager I could buy...what I couldn't was his utter lack of period awareness, if he was supposed to be over 100 years old. And his intellectual flatness, when supposedly he's been attending college for decades. He seemed to have no intellectual curiosity or knowledge--the mere fact that he could sit and talk on and on with Bella about how special she was, excluding anything of actual interest, suggested he'd become a vamp last week. He was as mentally callow as she, but wow, the super-powered, megadeth doses of sexual tension washed over that for how many hundreds of pages?
The thing that kept me reading (since I didn't find Edward or Bella sexy, though I could see how teens would, and I probably would have loved the book at age 17) was that I sensed Christian underpinnings. Edward and Bella talk on and on about their attraction, but they don't do anything--either biting or nookie. Wow, how unusual! Here was some real ambivalence, and how would the author resolve it? Especially when I got to the end, and the last line seemed to imply that Bella turns vamp. But when I discovered that, no, the second book they're still at square one, and it's all about emo with another guy (a werewolf) entering the mix, I didn't read on. This really seemed a book for teen readers to enjoy, not me: the question of the human predator vis-a-vis the vamps in the first book dwindles to a plot device, without much addressing of bigger questions. Meyer is focusing on other things, and I am not going to fault her for writing the book she wanted to write, instead of the book i wanted to read.
But the book left me thinking about the question of nice vampires, sex, violence, and all the rest, because Twilight appears to be the most popular of all the current crop of vampire novels. Is it appealing because readers can get truckloads of sexiness without crossing over the dangerous boundary into actual sex? Is it because Meyer is excellent at capturing the emotional fraughtness of that teen stage on the borderline of adulthood, when the body says "Okay, I'm done growing, you can mate now!" but the mind and emotions are all, "No way, not ready yet!" ?
So...assuming anyone has made it this far, what are your thoughts?
* and watching Buffy with rachelmanija, first season done so far, and fun enough to keep going
** and failing, as the Count exhibits not one iota of Wilde's wit or perception
*** who are interchangeable, in their determination to be good Victorian ladies and not those horrible "New Women" made fun of early on in the book; really, E. F. Benson was far more interesting on this topic, because he depicted the powerful ambivalence many women must have felt. And I think he gets it right because he must have been feeling the parallel dichotomy between being a gay man and having to hide it, while all around him certain privileged men could be more open, which again leads back to Wilde...
**** Is there a time that isn't rife with ambivalence? When I squint down the timeline of western history, I see ambivalence troubling the waters of developing civilization fairly constantly, though there were low and high tides.
So last night I finally reached the scene that I suspect grabbed the Victorian audience by the crispies. Wooee, that must have been powerful at the time, just because of all the invisible boundaries ripped through--boundaries nearly invisible, or next thing to, nowadays. The men burst in (after discussion of the propriety of entering a woman's bed chamber, which seems to function both as a sop to the rules of gentility and a bit of titillation) and . . . there are the three of them, Mina in her white nightie (one has to remember that proper women never, ever see nightclothes but her mother or her husband) with blood dripping down it, her face pressed into the Count's naked chest through his ripped-open shirt, while Mina's Jonathan is frozen in helpless fear and anger (and lust? he's in bed, flushed, heavy breathing) in the b.g. Judging from the staying power of this novel, that scene must have been killer, and I'd love to see a paper on the impact at the time.
As for the rest of the novel, I have a vague recollection that Mina must be shoved onto an even higher pedestal (motherhood) to remove the taint of spoiled goods, as the men do manly things and go after the Beast to kill it. The thing is, that scene hasn't a single naughty bit in evidence, or a bad word, but the implications of every bit of visual detail, each action, carried powerful weight.
If I'm right about Mina having to be "restored" in the eyes of the men/reader, then that will (I think) underscore the whole sex and death thing that powers the vampire trope. I recall reading that, at the other end of the century, Byron was messing around with vampires in some of his work--it could very well be that what he wrote was among the papers his trustees burned as being too controversial. There's a sense that Polidori, the rejected lover (or would-be lover) retreated in vexation, taking Byron's idea with him. . . and hashing it. Lord Ruthven just doesn't have the moxie of Childe Harold, or the Giaour, or Don Juan.
Was Stoker ambivalent about his sexuality? Reading around the corners, he seems to have had a fixation on Henry Irving, but his life touched Wilde's at least when he married a woman Wilde had proposed to. At most? I dunno. What I do know is that the book is tense with ambivalence--foremost cultural ambivalence (the women, who have exactly the same personality, reassuring one another that they are good, traditional women even though Mina takes shorthand, and wants to learn how to operate the high tech phonograph as soon as she lays eyes on it), and the men that they have traditional values. There are other ambivalences, but sexual ambivalence imbues the narrative, and I wonder how much was later edited out by Stoker. The signs are there that Dracula was after Jonathan Harker as much as he was the women, and that there was something going on with Renfield, but the clues don't all add up, suggesting to me later hasty smoothings. It also suggests that he was aware to some degree that the blood sucking was a metaphor for sex.
Enough of that. Up the timeline to now. I skipped Anne Rice, as once was enough for me, but revisited P.N. Elrod's vampire detective series set in the thirties--another time of cultural ambivalence. ****
Vamps and sex
One of the biggies facing us humans is the dichotomy between sex and violence. The word 'dichotomy' implies a branching: how much of our sexual drive derives out of violence? How do we deal with the atavistic response to violence being sexy, and sex being violent? I'm engaging with that specific question in another context, but right now I want to focus on the fictive symbol that's so popular today: the vampire.
Different writers have explored vampires, imagining all kinds of types. Barbara Hambly's were the most alien that I recall, while still being civilized. Some horror writers (mostly male) have given us terror-inducing vampires, all ugly distortions of humanity, blood-red eyes and ripping claws, swooping down to leave victims not in a lascivious swoon, but in steaming, eviscerated death. None of these are as popular as the image of the suave vampire in a tuxedo, or evening dress, (or jeans and a black t-shirt) forever young, casually strong, with super-powered attraction that can be switched on and off by a flick of mental effort. Their limitations are few: no sun, and the blood thing. Oh yes, and crosses. Back to that in a moment.
It's been interesting to see how the limitations have been gotten around--some can eat, some can breathe, there are half-vampires--some can deal with sun--the animal blood and blood bank thing--all ways to keep the power but turn vampires into nice guys. Into vampire heroes. It's really interesting to me that it's mostly (maybe all? I haven't read everything out there, just the most popular things) women writing vampire heroes. What's going on here? Is there a whole 'instinct to civilize' thing going on with the sexy vamps who can be good bad guys (or bad good guys), or is it the female sexual exploration thing that is now (sort of, in many circles) okay? Or both? I'm reading stories with vamps that are not just really sexy, but who suffer human emotions, specifically love. Who struggle with emotional issues--with being outcasts from regular life, who are isolated in the teeming city, who have to deal with mortal questions. There are many that I enjoyed to a greater or lesser degree, but for sheer plot twistiness, the most fun was Claudia Gray's YA Evernight. . I also really, really like what Cassandra Clare is doing with vamps in City of Ashes.
Vamps and the Supernatural
It's been really interesting seeing how writers have been dealing (or not dealing) with the implied supernatural questions raised by the term 'undead.' Writers who just don't want any supernatural elements give us scientific rationales, and some of these vamps still breathe, they just heal miraculously fast. Others don't, but the life force is hand-waved. Soon on, of course, someone brandishes a cross and the vamp laughs, or attacks anyway. These vamps have become aliens, because (I think, anyway) part of the attraction of the vamp is the whole weird shadow-world of the supernatural. It's been interesting to see how some writers of vampire stories have either been dialoguing with one another or else inventing on their own (and the Zeitgeist is inspiring them separately) the notion of syncretism: specifically, that faith imbues the symbols with power, and that power engages against the vampire's power, as in Stoker's book. That means the Star of David works as well as a cross, ditto Buddhist symbols, etc. I think my favorite book that engages with questions of the supernatural is Jeri Smith-Ready's Wicked Game . Here's a heroine with emphatically no faith, which impacts the story in clever ways.
So anyway, this brings me in typically roundabout ways to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. If you don't like spoilers, please skip on. Though I had some problems with the first book (the only one I read) I kept reading because there were other aspects that kept me going. My biggest problem was that the central character was a Mary Sue, and I'm way over the age when those are interesting. That is, we're told continually that everyone is fascinated by her, even though she never does anything to earn it. But to the author's credit, she does a smashing good job of depicting the self-involved emo of a typical 17-year-old. At that time of life, one is just about to lose the childhood sense of being the center of the universe, and it hurts! Mary Sues are comfort fiction when the rest of the world is busy battering you with grow-up-fast noise.
Edward the vampire is a good vampire. He's still got all the powers, except sunlight is no problem, and many readers disliked this aspect: he goes all sparkly in sunlight. I pictured the very end of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, when the Beast turns back into the prince, a lovely moment in the film. I liked this image a lot. So it's been interesting to me to see how other readers just won't buy this shifting of the vampire 'rules'. My issue with Edward was not actually his stalking of Bella (slipping into her room and watching her sleep) because I could buy a teenage vampire doing that. In fact, one of the things I've been reading for is how various authors handled the question of being frozen in one age--does the vampire have emotions? Do they mature, or does something else happen? Edward having become a vampire at teen-age and first falling in love with another teenager I could buy...what I couldn't was his utter lack of period awareness, if he was supposed to be over 100 years old. And his intellectual flatness, when supposedly he's been attending college for decades. He seemed to have no intellectual curiosity or knowledge--the mere fact that he could sit and talk on and on with Bella about how special she was, excluding anything of actual interest, suggested he'd become a vamp last week. He was as mentally callow as she, but wow, the super-powered, megadeth doses of sexual tension washed over that for how many hundreds of pages?
The thing that kept me reading (since I didn't find Edward or Bella sexy, though I could see how teens would, and I probably would have loved the book at age 17) was that I sensed Christian underpinnings. Edward and Bella talk on and on about their attraction, but they don't do anything--either biting or nookie. Wow, how unusual! Here was some real ambivalence, and how would the author resolve it? Especially when I got to the end, and the last line seemed to imply that Bella turns vamp. But when I discovered that, no, the second book they're still at square one, and it's all about emo with another guy (a werewolf) entering the mix, I didn't read on. This really seemed a book for teen readers to enjoy, not me: the question of the human predator vis-a-vis the vamps in the first book dwindles to a plot device, without much addressing of bigger questions. Meyer is focusing on other things, and I am not going to fault her for writing the book she wanted to write, instead of the book i wanted to read.
But the book left me thinking about the question of nice vampires, sex, violence, and all the rest, because Twilight appears to be the most popular of all the current crop of vampire novels. Is it appealing because readers can get truckloads of sexiness without crossing over the dangerous boundary into actual sex? Is it because Meyer is excellent at capturing the emotional fraughtness of that teen stage on the borderline of adulthood, when the body says "Okay, I'm done growing, you can mate now!" but the mind and emotions are all, "No way, not ready yet!" ?
So...assuming anyone has made it this far, what are your thoughts?
* and watching Buffy with rachelmanija, first season done so far, and fun enough to keep going
** and failing, as the Count exhibits not one iota of Wilde's wit or perception
*** who are interchangeable, in their determination to be good Victorian ladies and not those horrible "New Women" made fun of early on in the book; really, E. F. Benson was far more interesting on this topic, because he depicted the powerful ambivalence many women must have felt. And I think he gets it right because he must have been feeling the parallel dichotomy between being a gay man and having to hide it, while all around him certain privileged men could be more open, which again leads back to Wilde...
**** Is there a time that isn't rife with ambivalence? When I squint down the timeline of western history, I see ambivalence troubling the waters of developing civilization fairly constantly, though there were low and high tides.