Vampire in Lit and Film - Lecture notes HALF PDF

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Vampire in Lit and Film Introduction Folklore: Legend of an ancient human—like being feeding on the life essence of others to perpetuate its own existence after death. ● Way a vampire in image evolved over time ● Belief that vampires are entirely subject of imagination ● First interest in vampires in film was scientific—doctors of the time o 1725-1740 doctor visitation on the subject of vampires. Literature: Gothic writing about the creature during Romanticism ● End of 18th, early 19th century ● Gothic fiction—pinnacles of imagination Film: Modern visual imagination of global cultures permeated by the vampire. ● Vampires move into visual culture o Vampires → films ● Moved quickly into television, internet, images, commercials, video games, role playing games; now everywhere. -● Study this trace over the centuries. How the desires and feelings of each century go into vampires. Post about your favorite vampire book/TV show/film -- etc Post 1x week, comment 3x Day 2 F.M. Murnau, Nosferatu (1922) The Symphony of Horror ● Author trying to transpose musical form → visual form as well. o Carried on from romantic art → early modern impressionism ▪ Intermedia thing: conveying visual materials by sound, etc. ● First time the vampire was visualized in film ● Max Schreck plays Nosferatu in the film based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula with German alterations ● Nosferatu’s origin is the seed of Belial, the Old Testament demon o Folklore of the dark side o Vampires associated with some sort of cultural underground ▪ Things that are not accepted, forbidden, outside of accepted religious views. ● Stereotypes held about the racial “other,” the uncivilized creature of extreme aggression in the midst of Europe. o Vampire = the other o Aggression and sexuality – the west is unsure what do do about ▪ West pushes them into underground – not come to terms with ● Characters associated with the vampire have the same overtly “oriental” and/or Semitic appearance.

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o Looking Jewish o Ominous – few decades later the Holocaust era occurs The Aryan-looking protagonists suffer from these decidedly evil influences. Bram Stoker’s widow sued Murnau over copyrighted issues, and all of copies of the film were ordered burned. o Only one copy escaped burning – only reason we have film preserved today The film as a vampire: survived certain annihilation to infect/affect global imagination Start of the vampire genre within horror film o Visual culture: vampire films = subculture of horror genre

Catania Saviour: Absent Presences in Liminal Places ● Title shows how the technique and language of film deals with this material entity of vampire. o How do you present something that really is not there? Absent o Using light and shadow to achieve this effect ● Related to general aesthetic question o Liminal place: ▪ How things change from 1 → another German Romantic Roots ● Expressionism in cinema is a visual representation of Romantic ideals. ● Romanticism: Tied to the beginning of 19th century in West → spreads to other parts of Europe. o Germans were major proponents of ideas ▪ Rejecting values based on things happening previously ● Enlightenment ● Reason o More interested in aesthetics o Searching for cultures that were not corrupted by American western approach to life ▪ Rise of capitalism ● The Cult of the Past ● The Cult of the Senses o Present moment carries o Literature not based in the real o Modern sense Expressionism in the Arts ● Rejection of reality and Realism ● Importance of subjective emotions o Expressionism: What you have inside and project out ● Strong contrasts in color and meaning o Dark v. light ● Symbols as condensed and intensified forms of reality o Symbolism

Gothic motifs Gothic Period: Literary and artistic movement in the 19th-20th century ● Absent presence: o Ethereal body o No mirror reflection – always present with vampires ▪ No mirror reflection = demon, vampire, not real. o Shadow rather than body ▪ No full-fledged body ▪ Light v. dark ● Vampire of Dark Light o Destroyed by the sunlight o Making visible the invisible o Evil that permeates everything ▪ Darkness = evil ● Post first world war – increased national identity David Caspar Friedrich The Monk by the Sea (1809) ● Subject from a rear point of view in contemplation of another scene in front of the subject. ● Focusing on the destiny of each single individual watching film o Isolation, loneliness, separation from world ● Ruckenfigure: ***midterm*** o Subject from rear point-of-view in contemplation of another scene o No visible face o Subject is shown in isolation within the composition Liminal Landscape: Rudolf Otto: “The magical is nothing but a suppressed and dimmed form of the numinous, a crude form of it which great art purifies and ennobles.” ● A sublime force permeating the landscape brings foreboding of a doom and a sense of human smallness in the face of the negative force ruling the universe. Fear of Finality ● Repulsion/attraction – you fear but also attracted to – not sure why. o Vampires o Something in unconscious that drives us to explore deeper/ more attractive things that also can be very dark? ● Immorality of the non-living ● Spectral quality of the vampire Arnold Boecklin “The Isle of the Dead” (1880) ● Cypress trees related to graveyards/cemeteries Phantom Ship

● Notion from classical mythology ● Ferrying the Dead to the Other Side ● Horror vacui—fear of nothingness/emptiness o Effects of the first world war – PTSD ▪ Emptiness, nothing to hope for ● Spirit possession: Being robbed of the self o Of one’s control o Psychoanalytic terms – takes charge of who you are and directs ego/self Grisaille ● Gothic style: Shades of grey o No colors ● Twilight is preferred to daylight ● Vampire’s negative landscape in film Day 3 BAMNP – original word in Serbian The Black Death ● Bubonic Plague – 16th-18th century o Vampire is associated with the plague ▪ “Vampire plagues” in literature o Medical misconceptions what caused diseases – especially infectious ▪ Certain undead people cause plague ● Rats – often times carriers of plague o Show up in film as vampire’s allies ● Nosferatu’s fangs – different than canine’s o More rat-like, modeled on rodent o Animal-human interface is important in development of vampire Vampire’s Names ● Origin of the word vampire is “clouded in mystery” (Wilson 3) – like the creature itself. ● To DRINK – pi, piti, etc. o Greek/Slavic root ▪ VamPIre ● Associated with blood later on ● South and East European Origins ● Turkish, Greek, Slavic, Hungarian o Peninsula home of vampires – place of great cultural mixing Vampire’s Origins ● Pagan Dualism of Slavic tribes – 2 supreme gods ● Byelobog (White God) & Chernobog (Dark God) o White tied to day (above) o Dark tied to night (below) o Appease dark and white God

● Demonic Double of God the Father ● Incarnated in the Vampire legend o Balkan peninsula → rest of Europe Magical Narrative ● Magical universe is faith-based since it presumes categorical certainties in the face of reason and learning ● Explains the world by associating persons, things, and events based on isomorphism, and proximity. o Isomorphism: A narrative is created around a perceived similarity between persons. Things, and events. ▪ Ex. Shape, similar color, etc. ● Bat – vampire o Dracula turning into bat with his cape o Proximity: A narrative is created around persons, things, and events occupying the same time frame. ▪ Ex. Plague – vampire ● 2 events occur close in time – we associate them o Same time frame ● Narratives are stories created to make sense of the universe based on contingency and exception to the rule. o Especially when things defy us – faith based narratives o Not only magic is based in this. Travel ● Travel always occurs from West → East of Europe o Arrival of evil from West ● The land of ghosts and thieves ● Carries potential danger and evil with it – chance something will occur out of the ordinary o Extraordinary and supernatural Bram Stoker: Dracula’s Guest ● Irish novelist and theater manager ● Remembered as the author of the vampire novel, Dracula ● Bram Stoker’s Deleted Chapter o Englishman Jonathan Harker is in Munich on his way to Transylvania o Traveling East or South – common to most vampire stories o It is a Walpurgis night – and in spite of Johann’s warnings, he leaves the coach and wanders through a forest by himself. ● German folk belief about Walpurgis Night (May day eve) o The dead come forth and walk the Earth o Similar to our belief in Halloween o Past comes back to haunt us ● During his walk, Johnatan gets the feeling he is being watched

o “Other” overlooking your progress ● Encounters an old graveyard o Connection with the dead ● A marble tomb with a large iron stake is driven through it ● Engraved on the stone: The dead travel fast ● The assumption is that the dead have only a “spirit matter” or “astral body” o No longer in real body – only spirit and can more much faster ● Can travel as spirit with great speed over large distances o Consider parallels with media technologies ▪ Ex. Internet ● Virtual space – we turn ourselves into virtual selves ● Float around the world ● Electronic body ● A female vampire Countess Dolingen from Styria (Austria/Slovenia” ● A large snowstorm: vampire is connected to bad weather o Always something with bad weather – always associated with the appearance of unholy presence ▪ Gothic motive ● Wolf: Animal/shamanic roots of sorcery o Connection between vampire and the warewolf o Powerful person in community acting as witch doctor was the one who possesses spirit animal of certain animal – Wolf is this animal in Shamanic culture. o Not supposed to touch – embody spirit of ancestors ● Harker flees from lightening and returns to her tomb ● Appearance of ectoplasm “vague, white, moving mass, as if all the graves around me had send out the phantoms of their sheeteded” (170). o Astro body, invisible body ▪ Unholy creature – can influence it ● Suicides treated as potential vampires ● Crossroads as haunted locations o Churches do not allow suicides to be buried near graveyards ▪ Commonly buried near train tracks, etc. o Source of haunting later on ● Magic vs. reason o Harker – representative of the night? Represents man? Day 4 The Dead Travels Fast: Ghostly rider and we are never really sure if she is dead or alive. In end, turns out because the rider is riding fast – he is dead himself. ● Romantic imagination ● Stoker using this in his novel relates back to centuries before o Signing across the centuries ▪ Intertextuality Why Wolf? ● Ancestral animal that was associated with pagan test ● Serbia – proposition against killing wolves

● Blood thirsty animal that causes damage to livestock o Forbidden from killing

Dracula’s Guest cont. ● Dracula is capable of controlling the animals ● His wolves are “more than wolves” since they are possessed by a demonic spirit. ● Saving Jonathan Harker for himself at the end of the story “Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire” ● Come up for scientific explanations for the vampire phenomenon. ● 18th century vampire plague phenomenon – believed in their existence tied to the plague o People looking for souls vampires would possess o Power to rise from the grace. ● “If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well known people, of surgeons of priests of magistrates. The judicial proof is almost complete…” ● Poor and foreign corpses ● Fluckinger’s Account: o 1720 Arnold Paole near Belgrade ▪ Now Serbia, then Hungary o Not up to communicative standards ▪ “Weirdness and queerness” – connection to nonstandard sexual practices ● 18c Vampiric Plagues o Due to appearance of black death, people explain them with supernatural causes because they don’t know what else to explain it with. ▪ Context of dead body causes disease to happen ▪ Supernatural explanation ● Magical narrative: Plague caused by vampire attacks o Proximity of vampires + proximity of illness = causation Dead and the Undead ● What happens to the body after death? – controversial topics o Groaning corpses o Bleeding corpses o Criminal corpses ● Prominent examples of the vampire plague at this time ^ ● Suicides – considered not standard by community o Suspicious of vampire possession Burial Rites ● Death is an event in human life causing widespread cultural anxiety o Ground for many diff kinds of explanations ▪ Religion stepping in to explain? ▪ Now – science

o People begin to make up their own stories – folklore ● No one has ever come back to tell about the other side o Part of narrative complex o Vampires in the sense of hope that the life will continue o Desire to know and explain what happens o Carries hopeful signs with it despite its horrible nature ● The vampire expresses this desire to know and explain what happens Death and Disease ● Unexplained diseases and epidemics before the age of modern science are explained by vampiric infection ● Endemic syphilis and babies born of mother infected by syphilis have the “Nosferatu” appearance ● Burial rites insure the dead won’t return Countering Religion ● World religions postulate certainties about what happens to the soul after death ● Vampire represents the demonic reversal of the story of Resurrection ● The ultimate evil comes back to haunt us as the undead body of the vampire ● Folklore Demonic Afterlife of the Body ● In ancient religions of Asia, bodies are cremated or left out to be consumed by animals of prey. ● Afterlife and rebirth concern only the soul ● Burial in the ground prevalent in the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam o Becomes demonic counterpart to story/religion Barber on Vampires ● Preserving the body for the end times when the righteous will rise from the graves ● Barber: Bodies buried in bogs have little/no exposure to air and cannot properly decay ● In extremely dry conditions such as in loose sand, bodies will become desiccated and undergo a process similar to mummification Enemies of Enlightenment ● Decadence of aristocracy in Europe o Aristocrats seen as leeches—living off family wealth o Not working or contributing to their social status o Continuing on o Therefore, Dracula is portrayed as Aristocrats ▪ Switch from belonging to marginal characters → aristocrats o On the other hand, … ● Oriental threat of “other” Europe o Balkan peninsula always seen as other in Europe o Also the source of Europe

▪ Ancient Greece – cradle of civilization o Paradox: One singular space that is in symbolic terms – the source of civilization but also the “other” of civilization ● Symbolic geography: East and South as “under-civilized.” o How maps are visualized. o This is why travel is West → East ▪ East/South is where the creatures live who are “not like us” ● Different Symbolic Geography ● Southeastern Europe: The Balkans o “European other” ● Original 18c scientific interest in the vampire arises as Hasbburg official respond to the vampire plagues in the Southeast of the Empire ● Cultural Otherness perceived as source of evil o People who are not like us carry something terrible. o This is because we do not understand it o Vampires have many political interpretations as well The Mysterious Stranger “To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream, ay, there’s the rub…” ● Common literary device – dream and wake up ● Setting: ● 17c Carpathian Mountains o Adriatic Sea (not even near^) o Imaginary geography ▪ Connecting different places ● BOREALE – strong northern win ● Francizka seeks dominant male o Bold, aspirating, even despotic, must be the man who is to gain my heart; these soft, patient, and thoughtful natures are utterly distasteful to me.” (38). ● Border area: Wars with Turks involved Female Desire ● Romantics venerate to a new woman, liberated from the constraints of traditional family values. ● ENNUI: boredom and dissatisfaction o Doesn’t do anything all day long o Looking for some excitement ● Azzo Klatka is the vampire haunting the ancient state o Name is supposed to sound very Slavic ▪ Contrasted with Germanic ● Animals obey his orders and he saves the party from wolves in a snowstorm o **Sound familiar? o Common topic

Day 5 Falling for a Vampire ● Francizks can’t stop thinking about Azzo ● Bertha is her counterpart, in tune with traditional values o Not representing any woman o Traditional values o Not romantic ideal ● Woislaw is Bertha’s love interest- the opposite of “effeminate” Franz ● Conflict between 2 types of manhood: the old warrior vs. the new rational man of means. Historical Context ● Austro-Turkish wars mark the period of c17 ● Over territories in southern and eastern Europe ● Aristocratic values replaced by the bourgeois ones o Reps the elderly aristocrat o Social system slowly going out of the way ▪ Social feudal system o New capitalism – self-made man ▪ Prospers in economy ▪ Value of capital ● Vampire is a figure of the ancient power haunting the present o Common in Gothic literature o Ex. Seen in Nosferatu ● Intertextuality – o The dead travels fast ▪ Older German poem – Stoker quoted o Here: Anonymous quotes the ▪ Epigraph in beginning of store ▪ Interpret Shakespeare in different key… (See below) Hamlet Intertext ● “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.” ● Shakespeare implies that there may not be rest even in death o This is the destiny of the vampire. Reason vs. Superstition ● Always driving vampire ● Kumpan, the servant, is the representative of the magical worldview ● On one hand—magical, superstitions o Other hand—reason o Lower classes usually have magical worldview (peasants) ● Like the peasants in Nosferatu, he is terrified of the Klata ruins ● Franz is the man of reason, whose outlook is proven wrong by the reality of the vampire.

The Fiend of Klatka ● Shows himself on moonlight nights o Connection of vampire to the full moon and werewolf ● Castle was the center of crime, violence, and moral corruption o Abduction of girls o Implication of criminal scene that vampire hovers over ● Owner slain by the peasant mob near the old oak tree, where he comes back to haunt the place ● Stranger shows up only when Francizka expresses her desire to see him. Klatka’s Visit ● Vampire comes only when invited (rule of the genre) ● His diet is exclusively liquid o Alludes to feeding on Francizka soon ● “There was contempt and sarcasm in the cold grey eyes… the features: ti could be called pale nor yellow; it was a sort of grey. Vampire Life ● Love of the peculiar and uncommon ● Hunting: the pursuer and the pursued ● “At night I am merry enough…” ● “Even pain may become pleasure…” o Interesting psychosexual connotation ● Nomadic credo: “Life consists in change.” o Culture – stability, routines o But he insists on the opposite ● Vampire embodies romantic spirit o Challenges boundaries of everyday life o Our way of viewing the world Franziczka’ Dream ● Azzo appears in her bedroom in a mist o Mist—popular 18 and 19c – indicates other worldly presence ● Kiss on the neck ● Blood streaked wound o Blood sucking ● Franzizka grows weaker, Azzo rosier ● Dream is repeated often Enter Woislaw ● The Man with the Golden Hand o Manufactured prosthetic hand o Very strong o Lost hand fighting with the Turks ● War hero returns to marry Bertha

o Turkish war ● Blood-brothers Confrontation ● Azzo withdraws ● The secret cure for Francizska’s ailment o She is growing weaker and weaker Quieting the Vampire ● Magic and faith o How to cure yourself from vampire ● Woislaw’s story – encounter with vampires ● The vampire’s grip o How vampires recognize each other ● Piercing the undead ● Francizka’s transformation o Done away with—Francizka comes back o Gets married ● Happily ever after? o But do they really Eastern European Vampire ● The eye of the person may become a vampire o Roman belief ● Evil eye: A sign of curse extremely prominent in the middle east o Also carried into the Balkans ● Eye – being watched by powerful and evil force that can takeaway all your power o Contrast to watchful eye of the divinity that takes care of us ● Marginal social groups, who are usually “watched” by those in power due to their difference (deemed unbearabl...