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Monster Movie Month: “The Blood is the Life”, Guest Post by Krista Cox

Both movies and books lend themselves to new interpretations of existing works- some that can be taken more seriously than others. Dracula, the classic novel by Bram Stoker, is an excellent example of this. In the original novel, and in early movies based on the story such as Nosferatu and Universal Studios’ Dracula (reviewed on our Monster Movie Month page in the section on Vampires, women are depicted as passive victims, but more recent versions (such as the novel Dracula in Love by Karen Essex, reviewed here, and Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, ) suggest that they may be more independent both in their thinking and in their sexuality. It’s worthwhile, I think, to consider how the horror in the story, or at least the way it’s perceived,  has changed with the times. Krista Cox addresses this in a paper published in the journal New Views on Gender, titled “The Blood is the Life: How Bram Stoker’s Dracula Puts Life Back in Women’s Hands”, and she offered to share her take on the differences between the original novel and the Coppola movie. Agree or disagree, it’s clear that there’s a lot of room for new visions of  this classic tale in many forms. Fair warning: Krista writes pretty explicitly about sex and blood-drinking…. so you might want to make sure you don’t have a nosy kid attempting to look over your shoulder. Or skim down to the bottom for some Dracula-related links. And now, here’s what she has to say.

The Blood is the Life

Sexy vampires are “in” these days, but they’re nothing new. The sexual themes in Bram Stoker’sDraculaare impossible to miss; the novel has several scenes with vivid sexual imagery, fangs are phallic in shape, and the act of vampirism is literally penetration. Joseph Valente writes in his 2003 introduction to the novel that blood in Dracula is “a metaphor of sexual fluids,” vampirism “a metaphor of sexual appetite,” and vamping “a metaphor of sexual conquest.” If vampirism is an allegory for the surfacing of repressed sexual desires, Valente contends that the efforts of Van Helsing and the four men who love Lucy and Mina to rescue them from Dracula are “the enforcing of orthodox Victorian constraints on female sexuality.” In short, the women must be saved from becoming sexually-driven beings so that they can remain pure, as expected of them by their men. To show what’s expected of a lady in Dracula, Stoker completely desexualizes the female characters. Lucy wins the love of three of the men in the novel. But even in their private journals, the men don’t write a single sexual word about her. Even more dramatically, Mina is completely desexualized and is seen, even by her husband, as an odd combination of mother and child. The women can’t help but welcome Dracula’s vampiric advances, though. After she is bitten, Mina recalls, “I did not want to hinder him.” Lucy actively participates in the vamping, sleepwalking to the most likely location for vampiric intercourse and repeatedly removing the garlic necklace meant to repel Dracula while she slept. Ultimately, Lucy becomes undead herself, and begins not only accepting vampiric advances, but initiating them herself. Lucy is violently punished for this conversion to undaunted sexuality. The men take savage delight in driving a stake through her heart and decapitating her, and the scene is full of vivid sexual imagery. Lucy’s fiancée must thrust the stake again and again, “deeper and deeper,” as Lucy moans and writhes. When he finishes, he collapses, gasping and sweaty, reminiscent of post-orgasmic relief. Lucy returns, suddenly, to the pristine, virginal creature she was before. The men send a clear message that sexuality is reserved for them, alone by “saving” Lucy from sexuality. It’s not just sexual dominance, though, that the men wish to reestablish. Vampirism is the means by which vampires procreate. The mingling of blood creates a new vampire, blood in the novel is a symbol for sexual fluids, and the mingling of sexual fluids creates a new human. Vampirism and intercourse are both acts of passion and procreation. This allegory becomes even more interesting when you consider that blood plays an indispensable role in human procreation. Just as blood is sustenance to the vampires, blood is a life-giving fluid for humans, providing oxygen and nutrients to a fetus in utero. Without the blood of a mother, human procreation is impossible. This gives women a very particular, special role in human procreation. In human women, the blood is the life. By controlling female sexuality, the men of Dracula seek not only to control women, but to control the creation of new life. The film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, clearly embraces Valente’s theory of vampirism as a symbol of sexuality. In fact, it lifts it out of metaphor and makes vampirism an actual act of sex. In the film, every act of vamping is accompanied by an explicit sexual act. Coppola departs from Stoker’s message of male dominance over female sexuality and the creation of life, though. Rather than being desexualized, the women in the film are overtly and independently sexual. They speak freely about the pleasures of sex and openly pursue their suitors. Mina even willingly participates in infidelity with Dracula. By contrast, the men are presented as bumbling, inept fools, rather than the dashing saviors of the novel. When Lucy becomes a vampire in the film, her offing is dramatically different from the novel. In the novel, the undead Lucy is “more radiantly beautiful than ever,” but the undead Lucy of the film is unattractive and asexual. The destruction of the undead Lucy carries none the sexual undertones of the scene in the novel; she lies perfectly still as the stake is driven into her heart, and her killer does not collapse in post-coital exhaustion after the deed is complete. There is no sense that Lucy is being punished for her sexuality; rather, it would appear she is being punished for her departure from it. The power and control of women in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is further reinforced by Mina’s relationship with Dracula. When they first meet, she coldly rejects him. Later, as he confesses that he is soulless, he cowers away from her, weak and filled with shame. In the novel, Dracula forces himself upon Mina, but in the film, Mina consciously chooses to drinks his blood despite his protests. Like Lucy, Mina is in control of her sexuality and in control of the men in her life. While the finale of the novel sees the men gallantly “saving” Mina from the fate of a life of “voluptuous wantonness” as a vampire, the finale of the film is the ultimate display of feminine mastery of life. When Mina selflessly sacrifices her love, Dracula, she is released from the life of the undead. Further, she releases Dracula from his prison of immortality to join his first love in eternal life. From what was undead, she created life. Dracula made heroes of those who pursued Dracula to preserve the paternalistic construct that gave them power over female sexuality and the creation of life. Bram Stoker’s Dracula rejected that construct, making women the ultimate controllers of both female and male sexuality. It made a hero of the woman who embraced her power and sexuality and allowed no man to claim them – even Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mina created life where the men in Dracula only destroyed it.

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Are you intrigued enough to try out additional interpretations of Dracula? Here’s a good Dracula filmography from PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre. Want to try a book instead? Check out our reviews of adult vampire fiction here, and our reviews of young adult vampire fiction here (including Kate Cary’s excellent novel Bloodline, loosely based on Dracula). We have some graphic novel adaptations of Dracula on ouryoung adult graphic novels page, and if that doesn’t satisfy your appetite, you can visit our YA vampire fiction blog Reading Bites. Be warned, though, when making recommendations, that Dracula doesn’t sparkle. Stoker’s novel, and its children, have sharp teeth.

 

 

Posted on July 9, 2012 by , Reply

Interview with a Vampire Novelist: Kim Newman

As the announcement for HWA Vampire Novel of the Century drew near, intrepid reviewer Wendy Zazo-Philips approached Kim Newman, author of nominee Anno Dracula, for an interview, and he graciously answered her questions.  Wendy asked some pretty interesting questions- you can check out his answers below.

 

 

Interview with Kim Newman, with an introduction by Wendy Zazo-Philips

I’m not sure if there has ever been a more prolific writer than Kim Newman. He is an English writer, journalist, and film critic whose works have spanned over four decades and have earned him many accolades, including the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award.  In horror fiction, perhaps his best-known novel is Anno Dracula, which was followed by Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron, and Dracula Cha Cha Cha. Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron have recently been republished by Titan Books.  One of his latest works is Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles , which is a collection of short stories based on the characters of Professor James Moriarty and Colonel Sebastian ‘Basher’ Moran.

 

Wendy:     When you adopt a well-known character like Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty, you must satisfy two groups of readers: the fans (or potential fans) of your work as well as the fans of the character himself.  Can you tell us more about how these two groups will be satisfied with your new collection Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles?

 

Kim: It’s a little presumptuous to assume these groups will be satisfied with the book, but I hope they are.  I tend not to think too hard about how readers will respond to the work while I’m writing it – sometimes in revisions, I’ll change or delete things that strike me as too obvious or too obscure or generally in the way.  I did know with this book that there would be a significant percentage of readers who are very familiar with the Conan Doyle stories, and so I salted through a lot of things that they might pick up – though I assume the general reader gets many of the Holmes jokes too.  I did want to give my particular spin to the characters – and, like the Holmes stories as a whole, it’s a book about two characters rather than one – but it still derives from Doyle.  I decided early on that I wouldn’t contradict anything Doyle writes in order to make things easier for me, though I do point out where he contradicted himself.  I know there are people who follow my work, but I also know that I’m unlikely ever to attract the level of minute analysis that the Holmes stories have had over the years.  I hope Thomas Hardy’s fans won’t be too upset by The Hound of the D’Urbervilles either.

 

 

Wendy:    In the short story “The Adventure of the Six Maledictions” in Gaslight Arcanum: The Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes, one of the pivotal plot points is a recounting (with commentation by Moran) of “The Ballad of Mad Carew,” which was an actual poem written in 1911 by J. Milton Hayes.  Was the poem the genesis of the story, or was it (and the Mad Carew character) added later?

 

Kim: Yes, I started with the poem – though it was a way to get into the recurrent 19th century motif of the cursed jewel or object.  The initial idea was that the component stories of Professor Moriarty would all arise from a collision of Doyle’s world with that of another writer – Zane Grey, Anthony Hope, Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, etc. – and Hayes certainly isn’t as famous or well-remembered as they are.  The poem is obviously influenced by Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, which is the best of the cursed jewel of Empire stories (Doyle’s “The Sign of the Four” is another key entry in the cycle), but that takes place a bit before the 1880s/90s time period of Professor Moriarty.  I also wanted to make something of the character of Carew.

 

 

Wendy:   You mentioned in a previous interview that there are people that will claim not to enjoy reading or watching horror stories, but yet almost everyone has read or seen (i.e.) A Christmas Carol and/or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  What is it about horror stories that draw people to them, and why do you think people are generally skittish about admitting to liking them?

 

Kim: Horror is one of those forms that thrives on being disreputable, and probably needs to be in order to do its job – which ranges from just being harmlessly spooky to addressing the deepest, darkest material there is.

 

 

Wendy:  There has been a deluge of young adult vampire novels in recent years, to the point that we had to launch a sister site, Reading Bites, for those reviews.  Can there be such a thing as oversaturation of the vampire genre?

 

Kim: As someone interested in vampire fiction, I think there is now such a proliferation of material that I find it impossible to keep up with.  In the reissue of The Bloody Red Baron, there’s a new novella (“Vampire Romance”) which was written partly to address developments in vampire fiction since I last worked on the Anno Dracula series.

 

 

Wendy:    You’ve mentioned a couple of times before and in your biography that you used to work in cabaret, but (at least where I’ve read) you never discussed it in detail.  Did working in musical theater affect your writing process?

 

Kim: In the early 1980s, I wrote plays and musicals and performed with a group called Club Whoopee.  Based in Somerset, we appeared at Arts Centres, pubs, a few parties, etc., under the aegis of an organization called Sheep Worrying, which published a fanzine, put on stage shows, prompted local bands, issued a few tapes and records and did other vaguely countercultural (the buzzword of the time was “alternative”) things.  One of the groups we toured with evolved into P.J. Harvey’s band.  We weren’t very successful or, frankly, very good, though we did generate some good material.  Some of my later fiction grew out of things I wrote for the stage, and I’d like to work in that medium again sometime (I’ve enjoyed writing plays for radio in the last few years).  I certainly grew as a writer while doing this stuff, and a couple of odd things stay with me – in the musicals I wrote, I was working with a large group of people with a range of ages, talents and commitments but I learned to make sure that everyone in every show had some bit of business (a funny line, a character trait) that let them show off a bit.  I did this because I noticed other people didn’t, and that small-part actors (who still had to show up all the time) got fed up with just standing about feeding nothing lines to the few “stars” in a show.  Now I try to make sure every little character I write has something going for them, even if it’s very small.  I enjoyed the technical stuff: writing to cover scene changes or contriving the action so it all takes place in a single space, directing the audience’s attention to one part of the stage to set up a surprise somewhere else, etc.  One of the things that made it fun also led in the end to me moving on – you have to rely so much on other people, whereas writing prose it’s just your fault.

 

 

Wendy:  I read with delight about the “Peace and Love Corporation,” which was a company of writers that included you, Eugene Byrne, Stefan Jaworzyn, Neil Gaiman, and Phil Nutman.  What was that like?

 

Kim: Being in a small room throwing jokes at each other, with someone designated to take notes and write up the articles.  We mostly wrote humorous pieces, firstly for men’s magazines and then for a short-lived comedy magazine called The Truth, though Neil, Eugene and I fiddled with some fiction projects that didn’t get finished, and Neil, Stefan, Phil and I worked up film outlines that didn’t get bought (I turned some into novels – Bad Dreams and Orgy of the Blood Parasites).  The last real P&L project was Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock Rock – a parody of rock musicals (music by Brian Smedley) that Eugene and I wrote, with a few scenes and songs involving Neil.

 

 

Wendy:  More and more, we are receiving requests to review independent and self-published works.  How do you see these changes in the industry, and what do you think the future holds for authors?

 

Kim: I still think it’s difficult to reach an audience without a conventional publisher – they have publicists, etc. – and I personally value the process of editing that tends to get skipped in self-publishing.  I think the future will be difficult, but it’s never been easy for most authors.  George Gissing’s New Grub Street (1891) is still horribly pertinent about how hard it is to earn a living as a writer.

 

 

Wendy:   Was going to the library a part of your childhood?  Do you still go?

 

Kim: Yes.  I spent a lot of time in libraries as a kid, a teenager and in my twenties – I even went through a staying-out-of-the-cold-and-reading-a-novel-off-the-shelves-in-an-afternoon phase when I was really poverty-stricken.  I’m afraid I don’t go these days – I have more books here than I can possibly read, and even when not using the internet to research I tend to track down and buy reference books for particular projects.  I passionately believe in the importance of libraries and think that there’s no real replacement for them.

 

 

Wendy:  If you could suggest one or two books for librarians to purchase to introduce their patrons to Kim Newman, which ones would you suggest?

 

Kim: My novel Anno Dracula and my non-fiction book Nightmare Movies, both recently reissued in expanded editions.

 

 

Wendy:  The purpose of our website is to help librarians make well-informed decisions about which horror-genre books to purchase for their collections.  What books written by other authors do you feel are “must have” titles for libraries?

 

Kim: I’d cite two other books with my name on the spine – Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books, edited with Stephen Jones, which each contain a hundred essays by horror authors on their favourite horror titles and an extensive list of further reading suggestions by me and Steve.

 

 

Wendy:  What projects are you working on now?

 

Kim: I’m doing a new Anno Dracula novel (the long-delayed Johnny Alucard) and pondering some other long-in-the-works projects, a novel called An English Ghost Story and a 1920s schoolgirl adventure called Kentish Glory.  Just now, I’m writing a new novella (set in swinging London) to go in the reissue of Dracula Cha Cha Cha.

 

 

Wendy:  Is there anything else you’d like librarians and readers to know?

 

Kim: Just that I appreciate them very much.

 

 

Posted on April 2, 2012 by , Reply
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