The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood"

Schott, Felicitas

The Undead Among Us - The Figure of the Vampire as the "Unknown Other" and Its Representation in "True Blood"

von Master of Arts Felicitas Schott (Autor:in)

Zusammenfassung

Initial point and working hypothesis

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, on cereal boxes, 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 the turn of the twenty-first century, a striking popularity of the undead figure of the vampire in American popular culture is particularly notable. Since F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece Nosferatu in 1922, it is not possible anymore to imagine cinema and television without these nocturnal creatures. 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.
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 - ). The thesis argues that the figure of the vampire in postmodern American popular culture lost some of its “otherness” to a certain extent and cannot be regarded as a “monster” per se anymore.

Leseprobe

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'

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.

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

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.

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.

Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'

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

helps to distinguish between

the self and the other, between home and away, the certain and the uncertain, the

familiar and the foreign.

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.).

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

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

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).

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).

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

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

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

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.

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

, 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.

According to Freud, the symbol of the mirror is connected to narcissism (cf. Gast 143 ff.).

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

and his book

L'empire des Signes

(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).

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.)

L'empire des Signes is a collection of Barthes's observations during his visit to Japan in 1966.

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).

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

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

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.).

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

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.

Felicitas Schott, `The Undead Among Us'

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

. 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).

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).

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

. "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,

Transylvania, in German "Siebenbürgen", is a region in the central part of Romania.

Details

Seiten
Erscheinungsform: Originalausgabe
Jahr: 2011
ISBN (PDF): 9783961162444
ISBN (Paperback): 9783842871854
Dateigröße: 490 KB
Sprache: Englisch
Institution / Hochschule: Technische Universität Chemnitz – Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Erscheinungsdatum: 2018 (Juni)
Note: 1,3
Schlagworte: Amerikanistik TV Studies Fernsehen Vampir Untote

Autor

Master of Arts Felicitas Schott (Autor:in)