Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
1
Introduction Why Vampires Matter
Vampires represent something to us as humans.
They represent our fears and our desires. The
reason they have recurred in our stories over the
last hundred years is that vampires are rich enough
a metaphor to adapt to culture's changing
worldview and interests. We can make a vampire
mean what we want it to mean.
- Susannah Clements (4-5)
Drakul. Nosferatu. Upyr. Vampyre. There have been many names for what we know
today as the vampire. It is believed that the existence of the vampires goes back in time
for almost one thousand years. At least since Bram Stoker's successful novel Dracula
from 1897, almost everyone is familiar with the image of the walking undead that
creeps out of its coffin at night and sucks the blood out of humans. Today's American
popular culture makes it even inevitable to not be faced with vampires on television, in
advertisement, or even in educational programs for children.
The undead has always been appealing to viewers especially of the horror and fantasy
genre. Zombies, ghosts, demons, mummies, and vampires have been present in movies
and on television ever since the invention of the motion picture at the turn of the
twentieth century. It is the "otherness" of such monsters, their frightful darkness and
exoticism that makes them so interesting. Since F.W. Murnau's masterpiece Nosferatu
in 1922, it is not possible anymore to imagine cinema and television without these
nocturnal creatures. Particularly since the turn of the twenty-first century, a striking
popularity of the undead figure of the vampire in American popular culture is notable.
The vampire has always been serving as a metaphor for something strange, for
anxieties and hidden desires in society. What it has in common with other undead
figures in American popular culture is its representation as a monster. The vampires'
"otherness", their mystical darkness, hypnotizing men, seducing women, longing for life
and its taste in human blood that is what makes the figure of the vampire so
extraordinary fascinating and engaging to today's movie and television audience.
1
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
This thesis deals with the figure of the vampire regarded as the "unknown other" and
how it is fictionally represented in the American TV series True Blood (2008 - ). HBO's
True Blood depicts a society in which vampires coexist with humans as well as with
other "supernatural" creatures such as werewolves, mind readers, and shape shifters.
This paper attempts to examine the fictional character of the vampire as it is
represented in the series with particular concern to the concept of the "unknown
other". Questions such as `Why is the fictional undead so appealing to the audience?'
and `What makes the figure of the vampire particularly engaging to the viewer?' shall be
considered. Primarily the thesis will examine how the vampire is depicted in the series,
if and how it is other from the fictional humanity, as well as in how far the figure of the
vampire has transformed compared to its representations in nineteenth and twentieth
century popular culture. Working with the hypothesis that the fictional vampire is not a
"monster" anymore, it shall be analyzed what happens to the undead when it coexists
with humanity. It is presumed that the more the vampire longs for life and assimilates
itself in human society, the more human it gets itself, which leads to the loss of the
image of the frightful monster it used to be. As an undead that disrupts the boundaries
between the self and the other, the figure of the vampire can be regarded as an
ambivalent figure walking on the thin line between life and death, as well as between
human and inhuman.
In the beginning of the thesis, different approaches of "otherness" as well as of the
"unknown other" will be given as an overview. Considering concepts by Sigmund Freud,
Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, among others, this background chapter shall serve as a
basis for the discussion and analysis of the TV series. Ensuing, the thesis will provide a
brief overview of the vampire myth as well as the fictional representation of the
vampire in American popular culture in particular, which shall function as a comparable
foundation to work with in the analysis part of the thesis. The main part of this thesis is
formed by the analysis of the TV series True Blood
1
with focus on the fictional
representation of the undead, in particular the figure of the vampire, regarded as the
"unknown other", whereby several extracts of the series' episodes will be considered in
depth.
1
This paper focuses in particular on the first and the second season of True Blood as season three and
four were not available in Germany by this time.
2
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
2
The Unknown Other Fright and Fascination of the Monster
2.1
The Other, the Self, and the Uncanny
Dealing with the other of both individuals and groups, as well as the contact with
foreign environments and the imagination of the other, have been examined by many
academics in various fields such as philosophy, sociology, political science, theology, and
anthropology (cf. Janz 7). Also psychoanalysis, linguistics, and cultural studies attempt
to define where the notion of the other descends from, what it expresses, and why it is
both shocking and fascinating. The idea of the unknown other was first philosophically
examined by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In his work The Science of Logic
(1812/1813) Hegel outlines that the entity is always something opposing; something or
someone can only be conceived if it is distinguishable from the other (cf. Hegel 98).
The term of the so called other can describe many different phenomena. In English
there are several words describing what in German is expressed by the single word
"fremd": foreign, strange, different, extrinsical, other, alien. All these adjectives signify
what this paper refers to as the "unknown other". According to The Oxford Advanced
Learner's Dictionary (1995), "other" always goes along with something or someone
different or remaining in a group. That definition already implies that the other is closely
connected to the self. In order to be able to identify what is other, it is necessary to
define the self. Being aware of their own identity and characteristics, individuals are
able to distinguish and isolate themselves from others. Vice versa, they are able to
identify themselves by being aware of what they are not. Thus, the concept of the other
has been used in social science to examine groups' and societies' dealings with `others',
particular in terms of exclusions, such as defining who does not fit into their society.
Furthermore, the other is integral to comprehending and constructing roles of
individuals in relation to other people. Besides, othering
2
helps to distinguish between
the self and the other, between home and away, the certain and the uncertain, the
familiar and the foreign.
2
The philosophical term for Otherness is `alterity', meaning the contrast between the entity and the
Other to which an identity is constructed. It also suggests the ability to distinguish between the Self and
the not-Self, the Other. The concept of alterity was established by philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas (cf.
Lévinas 3ff.).
3
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
As philologist Rolf-Peter Janz pointed out, many theorists agree upon the notion that
the other does not involve particular characteristics; something other always stands in
relation to the self and own. Therefore, the theory of the other can be described as a
theory of difference (cf. Janz 8). The other proves to be a projection surface of own
wishes and worries. Janz compares this feeling with the times of Columbus's discovery
of the New World that lead to descriptions of the other (meaning native inhabitants of
the continent) as wild, barbaric, and animal-like. It becomes obvious that the other is
strictly speaking not existent. In the same way as identity is a construct influenced by
certain markers or sources of identity, the other is an artificial and incented product.
The concept of defining as well as differentiating a self from the other is not something
given; it can rather be explained by an individual's feeling towards something or
someone. Each person defines for themselves what is different or other to them. That
always depends on the person's self, meaning their identity having been influenced by
identity sources such as gender, age, religion, class, descent, and ethnicity (cf. Fong
27ff.). Particularly cultural background plays an intrinsic role in the definition of what is
other. Coming from the Old World, meaning Europe, discovering a new, unknown, and
different continent, consequently leads into determination of what is different about it.
The inhabitants, the climate, the animals, the food everything is not as Europeans
were used to and therefore the new and other expressed something frightful and
dangerous to them.
In his book Orientalism (1978), literary theorist Edward Wadie Sad examines the notion
of the other with regards to cultural differences. With the term "Orientalism", Sad
describes the Eurocentric, Western view on societies in the East, meaning the Arabic
World. His central idea is that Western knowledge about the East did not develop from
facts, but from prejudiced archetypes. By defining the known the Western society and
culture inhabitants of the Western world conceive all "Eastern" societies as
fundamentally similar to one another, and in the same way fundamentally dissimilar to
"Western" societies. This discourse defines "the East" as antithetical to "the West".
Thus, Sad argues that "Orient", describing the East, and "Occident", describing the
West, work as oppositional terms, so that the Orient is a construction of a negative
contradiction of the Western culture (cf. MacKenzie 4). Accordingly, Western people's
4
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
thinking towards the East expresses a sense of superiority in which the Orient is
regarded as "weaker than the West, which elided the Orient's difference with its
weakness" (Sad 204).
Anything that is unknown is first of all perceived as different. Therefore, people may
depict the foreign as strange and as not "normal", according to their knowledge and
world view. A reason for that may be a natural, inherent fear of anything not known.
People tend to be suspicious and careful of things they are not familiar with: other
people, places, rites, religions, food anything that is not as they are used to, that is
different, other, and strange, is perceived as "abnormal". As mentioned before, these
perceptions always depend on the perspective and background of each person. Markers
like age, gender, nationality, and culture, or outer influences such as parents, friends, or
society itself have an intrinsic impact on people's perception and reaction towards the
unknown and the other.
In the same way as the unknown presents something frightening, it represents
something astonishing and appealing. The other, the unknown, uncertainty,
inconceivability, the feeling of the uncanny belong to the common attributes linked with
the other. In this matter, neurologist Sigmund Freud's
3
1919 essay "The Uncanny" is of
particular importance. According to Freud, anything that arouses dread and horror
belongs to the realm of the Uncanny (Creed, Phallic, vii). The uncanny effect exposes
when something forgotten returns to consciousness. Therefore, the Uncanny can be
described as follows:
The uncanny is ghostly. It is concerned with the strange, weird and mysterious, with
flickering sense *...+ of something supernatural. The uncanny involves feelings of
uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being
experienced. Suddenly one's sense of oneself *...+ seems strangely questionable. *...+
But the uncanny is not simply an experience of strangeness and alienation. More
specifically, it is peculiar commingling of the familiar and unfamiliar. It can take the
form of something familiar unexpectedly arising in a strange and unfamiliar
context, or of something strange and unfamiliar unexpectedly arising in a familiar
context (Royle 1).
3
Freud founded the discipline of psychoanalysis and is best known for his theories of the unconscious
mind. He also created the clinical method of psychoanalysis for investigating the mind through dialogue
between patient and psychoanalyst. One of his major works is The Interpretation of Dreams (1900).
Works by Freud that deal particularly with the Uncanny are The Uncanny (1919) and Beyond the Pleasure
Principle (1920).
5
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
Something completely unfamiliar can be either fascinating or frightening, as both senses
are closely connected (cf. Janz 9). Going along with the process of identity formation,
the other as well as the experience of foreignness can be regarded as basic constructs of
human ideology. The ambivalence of the fascinating and the frightening, which is
constituent for the other, is complex and difficult to relate to. It may be the lure and
temptation of the other, a mysterious drive to extent one's self to another order which
puts the self in jeopardy of collapsing (cf. 9). The feelings of being both attracted and
deterred may be what makes the other so appealing and desirable. Freud goes even so
far to say that the uncanny is the "species of the frightening that goes back to what was
once well known and had long been familiar" (Freud, Uncanny, 124). According to him,
fear towards the unknown, the uncanny, results from repressed anxieties, having
developed during a person's childhood. Also, he refers to death, and particularly the
return of the death, as motifs that trigger feelings of the uncanny.
Jacques Lacan extended Freud's ideas by the dimension of the mirror stage. With this
notion he was able to broaden the fundaments of psychoanalysis and likewise to
deconstruct the principles of contemporary philosophy, meaning the self (cf. Gekle 30).
The following chapter depicts Lacan's concept of the mirror stage and its role in forming
an individual's sense of its self its identity.
2.2
Jacques Lacan The `I' and the Mirror Stage
While dealing with the phenomenon of the other, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
introduced the theory of the so called "mirror stage" in 1936, meaning images and
development of the function of the "I" or the self. In this early component of his critical
reinterpretation of the work of Freud, Lacan describes a child at its birth as
"unfinished". The infant associates this crudity with helplessness and dependence which
is experienced as extremely frightening.
The mirror stage is a development phase of children between the sixth and the
eighteenth month of life during which infants become capable of recognizing their
mirror images. Apparently, children of that age show a certain reaction which can be
6
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
described as exultant or jubilant towards their own reflection (cf. Suchsland 41).
According to Lacan, this reaction results from the child's identification with the mirror
which allows him/her to imagine itself as a "delimiting autonomous unit", even though
the child is still far away from being able to control its motor and bodily functions (cf.
ibid.). Seeing its own specular image, the child identifies with the reflection, resulting in
a psychic response to the mental representation of an "I".
Lacan describes the function of the mirror stage as a special case of the function of the
`Imago' which is in psychology regarded as the unconsciously developing first image of
attachment figures, usually the mother or the father of a child. The Imago develops a
relationship between an individual and its reality: between its inner world and its outer
world (cf. Gekle 55). With the child's awareness of its mirror image and therefore its
self, it is able to distinguish oneself from the other. Now, the Imago represents the roll
of the other in the self (cf. 55). He defines his theory of the mirror stage: "Das ist das
ursprüngliche Abenteuer, in dem der Mensch zum erstenmal die Erfahrung macht, dass
er sich sieht, sich reflektiert und sich als anders begreift, als er ist *...+" (Lacan qtd. in
Pagel 26). Suchsland formulates Lacan's theory as follows:
Es verhält sich nicht so, dass das Subjekt im Gegenüber etwas Eigenes
wiedererkennt, im Gegenteil, es formt sich erst nach diesem äußeren Bild. *...+ Das
Ich entsteht nicht durch Erkennen, sondern durch Verkennen. Die Identifikation mit
dem Ideal-Ich bringt das Kind in ,,Nichtübereinstimmung mit der eigenen Realität
"
,
denn seine Hilflosigkeit, seine Abhängigkeit und seine motorische Unbeholfenheit
bestehen ja weiterhin (Suchsland 42).
The mirror stage describes the formation of the ego
4
via this process of identification.
For the child, its mirror image suggests an "inviting delusion" of something or someone
perfect and complete, an intact connection between inside and outside. This image may
function as stimulation for the child to imaginatively cope with its helplessness and
dependence, and the child's relation to the reflection becomes a model for all later
identifications and projections (cf. 42). Due to the image's apparent perfection, it serves
4
The ego is part of Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche (cf. Storey 91-93). It introduces the
ego, the super-ego, and the id. The id, as the impersonal part of our nature and subject of natural law, is
the most primitive part of the individual. The ego develops out of the id and cannot exist from the start.
By direct influence from the external world, the ego's development leads to its representation as reason
or common sense, "in contrast to the id, which contains the passions" (Freud qtd. in Storey 92). The
super-ego emerges, according to Freud, out of the Oedipus complex and therefore of the child's
experience with the authority of the parents, especially of the father.
7
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
as a model the child wants to form its own image from. The image the deceit
becomes the focal point of the ego formation and therefore the perfect `I' of the child
(cf. 42). Thus, the self constitutes itself through identification of the own body with the
`I' of another since its image is separated from the own body (cf. Keitel 141). Jacques
Lacan's concept of the "mirror stage" converses the conventional perception of a
mirror: While a mirror usually shows the reflection and imitation of an object
5
, Lacan
asserts that a mirror constitutes the self with the subject attempting to imitate the
completed union of the mirror image (cf. 142).
According to Lacan, the human psyche deploys through symbolic structures and always
represents a desire of the individual. Zizek referring to Lacan defines this as the desire of
or the desire for the other, which makes the other the object of desire (cf. Zizek 191).
Due to its otherness, the other is able to present something desirable and likewise
something appealing. By comparing the self with the other, individuals are able to
develop symbolic relationships with other individuals. This ability is regarded as the
basis of social beings and is therefore the core of what makes someone human (cf.
Suchsland 65). Lacan furthermore describes the ideal-`I' as something that wants to be
achieved the other which is desired. Thus, the invention of the `I' is depicted by the
imaginary; due to its narcissistic characterization, the `I' underlies the illusion of the
desire of being one with itself (cf. Pagel 33). Therefore, according to Lacan, the `I' serves
as an `imaginary function' that always stands in relation to the other.
In Lacan's theories, the term of the other stands for anything that evokes a division in
the operations of the `I' (cf. Keitel 139). In fact, the self is not able to become a unit, to
attain completeness due to the other; the Other keeps the desire continuing (cf. 139).
Psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva referred to Lacan's ideas and advanced his
theories of the other in psychoanalysis.
5
According to Freud, the symbol of the mirror is connected to narcissism (cf. Gast 143 ff.).
8
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
2.3
Julia Kristeva Abjection and The Other in The Self
After Jacques Lacan, it was Julia Kristeva who advanced his theories of psychoanalysis,
of the self and the other. Referring to literary theorist Roland Barthes
6
and his book
L'empire des Signes
7
(1970) (The Empire of Signs), Kristeva assumes that all experiences
are integrated in a system of signs and thus have a certain symbolic meaning. Anything
that we observe is not perceived in a neutral way, but through individual memories and
feelings. Dealing with this thesis, Kristeva published her book Des Chinoises (1974)
(About Chinese Women) which addresses the confrontation with the other as well as
how symbolical orders may affect conscience and perception (cf. Suchsland 8). In the
same way as Barthes, Julia Kristeva uses structural linguistics (semiotics) to determine
social phenomena as the individuals' perceptions are structured by symbol systems (cf.
9). However, Kristeva considers symbolization in terms of its dynamics which
distinguishes her theories from both classical structuralism and Lacan's psychoanalysis.
For her, the symbolic is not a fixed system but rather a process in which two
heterogeneous moments process against each other (cf. 12). Opposing to Lacan, she
focuses her attention on what cannot be captured by the symbolic.
Accordingly, Kristeva determines the concept of the other as both something foreign, or
hostile, and something appealing (cf. Kristeva, Powers, 11). Her main examination
approaches the `abjection', describing something that disturbs an individual's system,
order, and identity (4). In this regards, the abject can be viewed as the other, "the place
where meaning collapses" (2), that is not a person's correlative: "The abject has only
one quality of the object that of being opposed to I" (1). Apparently, the other can be
experienced as anything that is not as one self and that the self is not used to. Referring
to Freud's structural mode of psyche, Kristeva factors the ego, that merged with a
person, and the superego that "has flatly driven it away" as it "lies outside, beyond the
set, and does not seem to agree to the latter's rule of the game" (2). She concludes:
""To each ego its object, to each superego its abject" (2).
6
Roland Barthes is considered to be the most distinctive scientists of structural semiotics. He uses
methods of structuralism and psychoanalysis to examine contemporary sociological phenomena such as
texts, films, advertisement, or art. With his radicalization of methods of structuralism he became one of
the originators of post structuralism (cf. Storey 118f.)
7
L'empire des Signes is a collection of Barthes's observations during his visit to Japan in 1966.
9
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
The abject represents a wide-ranging construction of the other, something or someone
that is being loathed, that disrupts the processes of life. For Kristeva, the abject may be
located in sexual perversity, gender ambiguity, incest, torture, bodily wastes, death, and
murder (cf. Magistrale xv-xvi). She is convinced that nowadays in particular, the border
between countries has become an abject (Kristeva, Powers, 4). People fear foreigners,
regard them as different, abnormal, and even frightening. Abjection does not respect
borders, positions, or rules. "The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. The
traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the shameless rapist, the killer who
claims he is a savior" (4).
However, abjection may also result from something known, from the inner world that
used to be common and familiar. For instance, Kristeva regards food loathing as
"perhaps the most elementary and archaic form of abjection" (2). In relation to the
horror genre, it is relevant to note that food loathing, or in the case of the vampire the
drinking of human blood or the eating of human flesh, represents a major source of
abjection (cf. Creed, Kristeva, 65). Furthermore, the corpse, the body without soul
represented by the vampire, marks the ultimate in abjection (cf. 65). With the concept
of a border being central to the construction of the monstrous, the vampire can be
regarded as the one that crosses the border (cf. 66). The horror film confronts the
audience with the abject. Represented by the figure of the vampire, the abject crosses
the boundaries between the human and non-human.
What seems to express the most astonishing and frightening other is what is connected
to what we already know, what we thought we were used to and what we are familiar
with. We connect symbols, memories, and experiences with good or bad feelings. As
soon as we are confronted with something that used to represent a pleasant feeling in a
completely new and negative context, the feeling of what Kristeva describes as abject is
evoked. Expectations are not fulfilled. Instead, discomfort or even fear is provoked.
Therefore, the most different, foreign, and frightening experiences result from an
individual's personality. As Kristeva points out, the foreign, the other can be found in
our self (cf. 208).
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Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
2.4
The Role of the Other in Gothic and Horror Fiction
From time immemorial, human life has been confronted with new, unknown, and
strange things that represented something scary, dubious, but also fascinating at the
outset. Dangerous animals, destructive natural phenomena, or new discovered land
with foreign inhabitants represent both a threat and something interesting that seems
worth being examined. The United States of America can retrospect to centuries of
discovering and exploring the unknown may it be the continent America with its
inhabitants, animals, and landscapes, or may it be space, the moon, and other
unfamiliar cosmic phenomena. America's citizens may be used to being confronted with
a frontier
8
metaphorically describing a seemingly insurmountable obstacle behind
which God knows may wait for them. Even though this frontier presents a foreign and
dangerous unknown, individuals and groups likewise have been putting effort to
exploring and understanding the other.
Something both frightening but also fascinating encompasses the other which makes it
also a typical motif to be dealt with in American popular culture. Particularly the
eighteenth and nineteenth century, marked by times of uncertainty and intrinsic
development, produced novels, short stories, and plays equally processing a need to
cope with the unknown other. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, American
citizens were confronted with the new republic called USA, an entirely new and modern
democracy built upon values that might have seemed strange to people from the "old
world". Not knowing what may come, how the republic will develop, if the country will
be able to develop and continue at all, or wondering what may lie behind the mountains
and what kind of barbaric beings may be in wait for them, used to be worries and
threats inhabitants of the young United States had to deal with.
The literary stream of Gothic Fiction, after its development in England, reached the new
world. All the works categorized in that literary stream deal with certain strange
phenomena as well as with the other. As Ruth Bienstock Anolik declares, the Gothic "is
8
The border between civilization and wilderness, the frontier, is regarded as a symbol for crossing from a
world with civilizing order over to a world of moral wilderness and anarchy in which the individual is on its
own (cf. Lösche 723-724). The frontier marks a place of probation, enabling the individual's renaissance
with a new identity. Being confronted with the unknown, uncivilized other, the new European arrival,
experiences a rebirth as an American (cf. ibid.).
11
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
marked by an anxious encounter with otherness, with the dark and mysterious
unknown" (1). She continues declaring that people from the eighteenth century on used
literature as a seemingly escapist mode that provided them a ground upon which they
are able to "safely confront very real fears and horrors" (1). With the appearance of the
Gothic, foremost fearful inhuman others were introduced: supernatural, monstrous
manifestations symbolizing anything irrational, uncontrollable and incomprehensible.
However, in the course of the nineteenth century, enlightenment, scientific
advancement, and the vanishing of the American frontier at the very end of the century
lead to new mysteries and new unknown others that needed to be understood.
Enlightenment and empirical science enabled solving apparent supernatural mysteries;
the sources of fear dried up. Yet, Gothic fiction and its mysterious others did not
disappear. Science, change, and discovery introduced new monsters that have been
relocated to new dark spaces in social, racial, and gender politics, as well as
consciousness (cf. 2).
Many authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth century such as Horace Walpole ("The
Castle of Otranto", 1764) or Ann Radcliffe ("The Mysteries of Udolpho", 1797) set their
stories in exotic, Catholic places in south and southeastern Europe. Primitive, irrational
believes and religions as well as ageless superstition seem to distinguish these regions
according to authors of the British and American Gothic Novel (cf. Kührer 126).
American author Edgar Allan Poe, however, set his short story "The Fall of the House of
Usher" (1839) in a mysterious castle on the American continent, in the home of the
narrator's sick friend he is visiting. Suddenly, the other is not a foreign figure anymore,
coming from far away and unknown places. The monster has become an intruder that is
coming from inside our society, our community, of ourselves.
The other can be of all kinds such as the religious, the racial, or the social other. The
fictional figure of the vampire is able to represent all kinds of others and in the same
way all stages between anxiety and appeal. The vampire in popular culture is presented
as an undead creature that was once a human being that rose from their grave in order
to walk through the night and feed on human blood. The figure is therefore depicted as
something that used to be human, that to a certain extent still looks human and may
not even be able to distinguish from unbitten individuals. As an evil that is both coming
12
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
from the inside as well as looking not much different from living beings, the vampire
represents some of the most horrific ideas in horror fiction. What is most frightful is a
figure of visible humanity, "since when it is ambulatory and mimetic of the individual, it
is difficult to distinguish the evil being from a fellow member of the community"
(McClelland 2). Also Thomas Koebner said that the descriptive other always shows
several traces and segments of the known (Koebner 176). Horror movies, the
advancement of literary horror fiction on-screen, work against the common feeling that
anything is familiar, that offers no surprise anymore. The horror genre reacts with
image sequences that are as horrific and gruesome as possible. Janz referring to
Koebner states:
Die Schleimmonster der neueren Horror-Phantastik und die altgediente Dracula-
Gestalt sie werden beide in Szene gesetzt, weil sie das Grauen vor dem absolut
Fremden, dem Tod, und vor der Auflösung des Körpers unter der Erde zu erwecken
vermögen. Dabei wirkt auch hier das Fremde umso befremdlicher und
unheimlicher, wenn er man weiß nicht, wie mit dem Längstvertrauten vereint
auftritt (Janz 15).
Horror movies provide ways of defining "what is evil (and what is good) in societies,
what is monstrous (and what is `normal'), what should be seen (and what should remain
hidden)" (Gelder 1). Therefore, this genre serves as the perfect ground to deal with the
unknown, the familiar and unfamiliar uncanny, personified by horrifying creatures.
Besides other figures in horror fiction unifying the unknown other coming from the
inside such as Frankenstein or the zombie figure, the figure of the vampire represents
one of the most intriguing monsters. The vampire representing a key feature of most
horror narratives, the presence of a foreign or unfamiliar other, unifies the audience's
"fear both of the other and the forcible domination by the other" (Bishop 96). In
contemporary American popular culture, "the vampire has become one of the most
pervasive and recognizable symbols of insidious evil" (McClelland 2). However, its
depiction and representation has been undergoing intrinsic transformation processes
from a frightful creature of the night to a handsome, appealing man (or woman).
How the myth as well as the fictional figure of the vampire emerged and developed is
depicted in the next chapter. Furthermore, the vampires' reading as the unknown other
and its transformation in popular culture is being examined.
13
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
3
The Figure of the Vampire
3.1
Rising from the Grave A Brief History of the Vampire Myth
Throughout the whole vast shadowy world of
ghosts and demons there is no figure so
terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred,
yet dight with such fearful fascination, as the
vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor
demon, but yet who partakes the dark nature
and possesses the mysterious and terrible
qualities of both.
Montague Summer (7)
In order to understand the vampire's depiction as well as its role in twenty-first century
American popular culture, it is essential to know where its legend originated. The
vampire has recurred as a figure in literature and Western culture for the last two
centuries; its history in lore and myth goes back even much further. As many
adaptations of vampire figures are portrayed in literature and film, as many historical
traces of the vampire myth can be found. Anthropologists and historians trace the
existence of vampires back in time for almost one thousand years, to ancient cultures
from all over the world. Hebrew, Roman, Indian, Greek, Egyptian, and Chinese legends
and stories about blood-sucking, undead, evil spirits have been noticed. Causes for the
emergence of legends of the vampire have been very diverse and can be found in
religion, medicine, as well as societal conflicts that resulted in attempts of blaming
someone for inexplicable happenings
9
. Thus, many scholars assume that vampire
stories developed in part "because of early peoples' inability to understand concepts
like decomposition and infection" (Clements 3). Clements summarizes that "the vampire
legend as we understand it today is a mixture of primitive beliefs, European folklore,
and Christian influences" (4). McClelland believes that the "original" vampire can be
regarded as the "primary manifestation of a deep religious and social conflict" (9).
9
Some folkloric vampire narrative derive, for example, from general ignorance by "poor illiterate East
European peasants who simply had no other way of explaining why corpses dug up from shallow graves
by hungry wolves showed signs of lividity" (McClelland 86).
14
Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'
Even though assumptions of the vampire's origin are numerous and diverse it is simply
impossible to declare the actual and `real' source of a phenomenon that can be found
for centuries in so many cultures what is most important to consider is that there is a
difference between the folkloric and the cultural vampire figure. While the folkloric
vampire is based on religious, superstitious beliefs, the latter has been transformed and
adapted to its respective time since the very first vampire fiction. How the fictional
figure of the vampire developed out of folklore, how it is read in culture and society, as
well as its transformation from the frightful creature to the appealing unknown other is
depicted and examined in this chapter.
According to Florian Kührer, it can be said with some certainty that the origin of the
vampire myth lies in Southeast Europe, especially in the regions of today's Serbia,
Macedonia, and Bulgaria (cf. Kührer 15). Western and therefore American images of the
walking (un)dead have been primarily influenced by southeastern European folklore. As
soon as vampire stories developed in folklore, they began to emerge in literature. Bram
Stoker's novel Dracula (1897) was built upon a number of different traditions, but was
focused on the history and culture of Transylvania
10
. "Since Dracula has been so central
to our understanding of vampires in the Western tradition, the way we understand the
vampire is heavily influenced by folklore from that [southeastern European] region"
(Clements 3). Stoker's prototype for his Count Dracula was said to be Vlad III, Prince of
Walachia (1431-1476), who was greatly feared by the Wallachians for his utterly vicious
pleasure in torturing and execution methods. Thus, he allegedly enjoyed dining in the
presence of dozens of impaled corpses and washed his hands in their blood (cf. Axelrod
33). Even though many critics refer to Vlad III, also known as Vlad Tepes or Vlad the
Impaler, as the ultimate template for Stoker's novel Dracula (cf. 34), it is not proven
that Bram Stoker actually knew anything about the Prince of Wallachia (cf. Kührer 270).
As this paper deals with the representation of the figure of the vampire in American
popular culture, it is necessary to know about its depiction in fiction. With so many
different cultures depicting all varieties of vampire myths that are the origins of the
undead in literature, a distinct definition of the vampire seems very difficult. First of all,
10
Transylvania, in German "Siebenbürgen", is a region in the central part of Romania.
15
Ende der Leseprobe aus 69 Seiten
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Details
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- , 2011, The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood", Hamburg, Bedey Media GmbH, https://www.diplom.de/document/273684
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