Fangs and Crosses: Religion in Vampire Fiction

Fangs and Crosses: Religion in Vampire Fiction
by Catlyn Keenan
© 2010
The Western world is in love with the vampire and has been since
the age of the Victorians. Some of the first films featured
vampires – Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931) serve as
excellent examples. Vampires appear in television shows, books,
and movies. A vampire teaches our children to count on Sesame
Street and fills their stomachs with chocolaty sweetness.
Of all of the literary monsters that have
Fig 1.1
prowled our fantasies the vampire is the most ubiquitous. Over the
past century and a half the vampire character has grown from a
shambling visage of death to a creature of otherworldly beauty and
irresistible seduction. The vampire represents our twenty-first
century American obsessions with eternal youth, supernatural
power, and irresistible sex appeal. The first vampires of the Victorian age thirsted only
for blood. Modern vampires long for companionship, answers to the most profound
philosophic questions, and even redemption. The earliest vampires were understood as
demons - filled with satanic power, they did the devil’s work on earth, replicating
themselves with each new victim, an army of the dead and damned. Priests and even
Grand Inquisitors rose to do battle, armed with the powers of Christianity.i The literary
vampire characters of the Victorian age fled before the cross, screamed as holy water
burned their flesh like acid, and quivered before the Lord’s Prayer. A century later
vampires wear the trappings of Christianity, sleep in churches, and immolate crosses with
a mere glance of telekinetic power. Christianity appears to have lost its supremacy. Or
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have vampires grown stronger, gained strength from their adoring audience, fed on the
voracious American appetite?
While it is impossible to address all vampire fiction (there are more than two
hundred films featuring Dracula alone) I have selected a range of fiction I feel best
represents the vampire’s relationship with Christianity. These pieces also impacted
vampire fiction and changed the archetype itself. I begin with a history of the vampire in
the Victorian era in order to understand how the character came to be associated with
Christianity and then I move into an analysis of fiction, beginning with Bram Stoker’s
Dracula, followed by three film representations of Count Dracula. Then I address The
Vampire Lestat from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, Joss Whedon’s television shows
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, and HBO’s True
Blood. Each of the vampire characters exemplifies archetypal themes found in Western
religion, particularly Christianity, and best illustrate the ways in which attitudes toward
Christianity, and organized religion in general, have shifted.
Monsters who come in the night and steal life, either by sucking the breath or
blood, exist in almost every culture in the world and have a history at as old as the written
word (Auerbach 1995). What I refer to as the Western vampire, which will appear
familiar to us in many ways, arose during the dark ages of Eastern Europe as early as the
eleventh century. This very early form of the vampire was understood to be a real
creature lurking in graveyards, rising to prey on the living (Twitchell 1981). As the
centuries passed the vampire took on many of the characteristics we still see today: the
ability to transform into an animal such as a bat or wolf, to turn into mist (all the better
for slipping into the bedrooms of sleeping victims), vulnerability to wooden stakes,
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garlic, and of course the cross. However, the ancient vampire of Eastern Europe had none
of the appealing characteristics we find today – this undead creature resembled a zombie
more than anything.
It took the Victorians to shape the vampire into its modern incarnation and to
make the link between the vampire and Christianity explicit.
“The English vampire by the end of the eighteenth century was not
simply a ghost or wraith but the devil’s spirit which had possessed the
body and trapped the soul of a dead sinner. In more precise terms, the
vampire was an energumen – the devil’s avatar, for although the human
body was literally dead, the entrapped soul lived eternally under the
devil’s control. [sic] The vampire’s body had not always been under the
control of the devil; in fact, it had once belonged to a perfectly normal
human being who by some sin lost the protection of Christian
guardianship, thereby allowing the devil admittance. This usually
happened either because the sinner refused to obey religious law or was
himself the victim of a vampire attack” (Twitchell 1981: 8).
The use of the Christian worldview is clear: the vampire is woven into the Christian
cosmology and explained using Christian concepts. In the West the vampire becomes one
of the most popular representations of evil and the literature dedicated to the character
modeled itself after the cosmic war image of the battle between God and Satan. God,
being more powerful, always wins but the devil is difficult to banish and, now housed in
an undead creature who cannot die (or at least is extremely difficult to kill), is tough to
eradicate. This makes for a good story: the priest is the hero, the vampire is the devil and
the two wage endless battles: “The priest is understandably the logical choice in any
vampire hunt, as he has both the knowledge of how evil operates and access to the
armory of Christian icons” (Twitchell 1981: 11). The priest is the Christian warrior taking
up his cross to battle evil. Unfortunately, evil is amorphous, shifting to meet the needs
and desires of each new generation.
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The literary character of the vampire is a chameleon: “with each new civilization
and each new generation refashioning and recreating the vampire until he emerges as the
Western monster we recognize today: a demonic spirit in a human body who nocturnally
attacks the living, a destroyer of others, a preserver of himself” (Twitchell 1981: 7). For
most of recent history the vampire has been vulnerable only to sunlight and Christianity:
“(I)n Christian cultures the vampire is terrified by all icons of the church – the cross, holy
water, the Bible, the rosary; even the words ‘God’ and ‘Christ,’ when spoken by the
devout, can send vampires into a paroxysm of fear” (Twitchell 1981: 11).
The most famous vampire to date was born out of the imagination of an Irishman
– Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897 and the book quickly became a pop culture
phenomenon. Drawing heavily on the vampire lore that developed over the course of the
centuries, Stoker’s vampire could walk in sunlight but lost his paranormal powers in
daytime. The hero van Helsing, while not a priest, utilized the consecrated icons of the
Church in his battle to vanquish the monster.
With the advent of film the Count quickly gained a permanent place in western
consciousness. One of the earliest films to feature a vampire – in fact, one of the earliest
films made - was Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, released in 1922. Unable to obtain
film rights to Stoker’s novel, F.W. Murnau, the director, changed the story just enough to
avoid copyright infringement.ii This vampire
is much less human than the Count in
Dracula the film, released only nine years
later in 1931. The vampire in Nosferatu is a
Fig 1.3
monstrous, demonic creature, clearly other
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than human. He is bat-like, shambling, more zombie than anything. Tim Dirks of AMC
Filmsite calls the vampire “rodent-like” – an examination of the accompanying screen
shot lends credence to his assessment.
The first certified film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula began its life as a
Broadway stage play and was made into a film directed by Tod Browning. The movie
was released in 1931 by Universal Studios and quickly became a hit. References to
Christianity abound in the film: a resolute Renfield receives a crucifix around his neck
from a superstitious peasant when he
announces his intention to continue on
toward Dracula’s Castle after nightfall.
Later in the film our hero van Helsing
thrusts a cross in Count Dracula’s face and
the vampire recoils in horror.
In 1958 The Horror of Dracula,
staring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, premiered. Resulting in a series of vampire
films, these are collectively known as “The Hammer Films.” In the 1958 film van
Helsing’s character “pay(s) lip service to
the supernatural by making a cross out of
Dracula’s elegant candlesticks and
advancing on the vampire with this
unconsecrated artifact … but this pseudocross only reinforces the potency of the
sun. [sic] Stoker’s van Helsing needed carefully consecrated weapons: presumably
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nothing without clerical sanction would work against the vampire. For the Hammer
Dracula, symbol becomes body; he recoils from the mere shape of a cross” (Auerbach
1995: 121). The symbol has become empty, divorced from the power of the institution of
Christianity. Its power is based on mere tradition and anyone can wield it.
The Hammer films mark a shift in the vampire archetype matching the national
attitude toward religion - “(t)he alacrity with which vampires shape themselves to
personal and national moods is an adaptive trait their apparent uniformity masks”
(Auerbach 1995: 5). The shifts in the relationship between vampires and their
conventional nemesis – Christianity – mirror the place religion occupies in American
consciousness. The vampire, like other literary icons, can be seen to “detail the fears,
hopes, and desires of a society in turmoil and search” (Iwamura 2005: 27) and America
had developed some serious questions about Christianity at the dawn of the 1960s.
Prior to the publication of Dracula in 1897 “vampires embodied forbidden ideals
of intimacy; after Dracula they moved to America and turned into rulers” (Auerbach
1995: 101). They became a literary barometer for cultural attitudes toward religion and
by the 1970s vampires “become authorities. Hovering between animal and angel, they are
paragons of emotional complexity and discernment” (Auerbach 1995: 131) just like
humans. No longer content to just stalk and drain the blood from victims the modern
vampire has very human interests. And his questions regarding religion mirror those of
his audience – he is skeptical and deeply concerned with metaphysics.iii
The relationship between vampires and the symbols of Christianity is no more
clearly visually illustrated than in Francis Ford Copella’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992).
Purporting to tell the same story as the 1931 version, which also claimed to be based on
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the book, Dracula (Gary Oldman) lights
crosses on fire with a telekinetic glance. This
Count Dracula is no more cowed by a symbol
of Christian power than by any other symbol
– all are empty before his fury.
Of course, Francis Ford Coppella did
not invent this new version of Count Dracula
all by himself. He drew on developments
within literature. By the time he released his film in 1992, The Vampire Chronicles by
Anne Rice were the most widely read vampire fiction since Dracula.
Interview with the Vampire, the first in the series, was published in 1976 (the film
was released in 1994) and I argue that these books have had as much of an impact on the
vampire archetype as Bram Stoker. Rice’s vampires embody growing concerns with
mortality and have a very ambiguous attitude toward religion. They retain the predatory
brutality of earlier vampires but now their bloodlust is combined with very human
concerns. They want love, companionship, and for their lives to have meaning.
Furthermore, the symbols of Christianity are powerless before the protagonists of Rice’s
creatures:
Interviewer: “Rosaries have crosses on them, don’t they?”
Vampire: “Oh, the rumor about crosses!” The vampire
laughed. “You refer to our being afraid of crosses?”
Interviewer: “Unable to look on them, I thought.”
Vampire: “Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look
on anything I like. And I rather like looking on crucifixes
in particular.” (Rice 23).
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The film Interview with the Vampire premiered in 1994 and featured superstars
Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Christian Slater, and Antonio Bandaras as the protagonists. The
film poster featured the tag line “Drink From Me and Live Forever.” With Interview we
find the first examples of
vampires taking on a role
analogous to Jesus: offering
their blood as communion,
they present the gift of eternal
life.
Furthermore, Rice’s
Fig. 1.7
characters address the question
of their origin explicitly. Consider this exchange between the vampires Armand and
Louis. Louis speaks first:
“Then Satan … some satanic power doesn’t give you your
power here, either as a leader or a vampire?”
“No,” he said calmly, so calmly it was impossible to know
what he thought of my questions, if he thought of them at all in the
manner which I knew to be thinking.
“And the other vampires?”
“No,” he said.
“Then we are not…” I sat forward. “… the children of Satan?”
“How could we be the children of Satan?” he asked. “Do you
believe that Satan made this world around you?”
“No, I believe that God made it, if anyone made it. But He
must have also made Satan, and I want to know if we are his children!”
“Exactly, and consequently if you believe that God made
Satan, you must realize that all of Satan’s power must come from God
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and that Satan is simply God’s child, and that we are God’s children
also. There are no children, really” (Rice 1976: 234).
In the film (1994) the scene unfolds a bit differently:
LOUIS: You mean we are not children of Satan?
ARMAND: No. He smiles at Louis. A smile of infinite compassion.
ARMAND: I understand. [sic] You die when you kill, you feel you
deserve to die and you stint on nothing. But does that make you evil?
Or, since you comprehend what you call goodness, does it not make
you good?
LOUIS: Then there is nothing.
ARMAND: Perhaps... He passes his finger through the candle flame.
ARMAND: And perhaps this is the only real evil left...
LOUIS: Then God does not exist...
ARMAND: I have not spoken to him...
LOUIS: And no vampire here has discourse with God or the Devil?
ARMAND: None that I've ever known. I know nothing of God or the
Devil, I have never seen a vision nor learnt a secret that would damn or
save my soul.
In the book (1976) Rice engages in a bit of theology, taking the position that, assuming
that God exists then, if the devil exists, then he must have been brought into being by the
omnipotent, omnipresent, God. In the film (1994) a more atheistic cosmology is
presented as Armand states that, after 400 years, he has seen no sign of the existence of
God or Satan. This is a more existentialist view: vampires, like any other being, are selfcreating.
The fifth book in The Vampire Chronicles is Memnoch the Devil, featuring
Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, and published in 1995. The plot of the book runs thusly: the
Vampire Lestat is approached by a being calling himself Memnoch, who claims to know
the “truth” about God. Furthermore, Memnoch is the devil and he’s on the verge of
winning the war against God. He approaches Lestat seeking help. Over the course of the
story, the reader learns that, in a reversal of typical Christian understanding, it is Satan
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who is on the side of humanity, not God. In order to convince Lestat of the truth of what
he is saying, Memnoch takes Lestat to Hell. Rice’s Lestat thus becomes the first vampire
to descend into Hell and be resurrected.
Furthermore, when Lestat returns from Hell he brings with him Veronica’s Veil,
the real one. His possession of such a talisman results in the beginning of Armageddon
as the Veil is shared with humanity, resulting in mass conversions worldwide. Lestat, a
vampire, descends to Hell, learns the truth of the cosmic war, and is resurrected, starting
the End of Days.
Following in the footsteps of Lestat - the death, passage through Hell, and
resurrection of vampire protagonists - Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS)
premiered on the WB in 1997 and ran for seven seasons. The spinoff show Angel
(following Buffy’s dark, vampire hero), hit the television waves three years later and ran
for five seasons. Whedon’s vampires are not the anthropomorphized creatures of Rice’s
fantasies and they are a very long way indeed from the vampires of Stephanie Meyer’s
Twilight series (addressed briefly below). Whedon’s vampires are predators in every
respect, torturing, raping, killing with no thought of consequence or effect. And yet BtVS
indicates that even these evil beings are capable of redemption. One author notes “That
vampires Angel and Spike find intermittent redemption, upon either losing their ability to
kill humans or regaining their human souls … (this) updates the Manichean philosophy to
an Augustinian split between kinds of evil” (King 2003: 201). Furthermore, “while BtVS
had borrowed the use of crosses and holy water from standard horror/vampire mythology,
it … left their relation to Christianity or any other official religion quite deliberately
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unanswered” (Anderson 2003: 213). In fact, in season four, we get the following
exchange between Buffy and an evangelist:
Girl:
Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?
Buffy: Uh, you know, I meant to … and then I just got really busy.
(4.1 The Freshman)
This from a Slayer who routinely wears crosses and splashes vampiric attackers with holy
water! Similar to vampire films through the
1980s, Whedon’s vampires smoke and burn
when touched by Christian icons but they
evidence no awareness of the existence or
reality of the Christian God or Christianity. In
fact, Buffy herself is an ambiguous character
far indeed from the priests and Christians who battled the vampires of earlier eras.
According to BtVS, in the beginning, “the story goes, the earth was created and
populated by demons and men. To fight the demons, the men enslaved a girl by chaining
her to the earth [sic] by mating a girl with the essence of a demon” (Reiss 2004: 108-9).
This is the first Slayer: a human girl with supernatural abilities, engineered to battle evil.
“Chaining to the earth,” we are told, involved draining the power from demons and
imbuing the girl with it – the Slayer’s power is not divine but demonic, a way of fighting
fire with fire.
BtVS shares a deep concern with the ways in which to live righteously, albeit
rather radically updated for a contemporary audience. While the show is populated with a
myriad of demons, each more fantastic and brutal than the last, what the show is really
about is surviving as a young adult in America. The themes are thus about living in
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relationship with others, facing one’s own destructive desires and urges, encountering
sexuality in all of its messiness, and negotiating the line between immaturity and
adulthood. However, BtVS (and other shows of the modern era) leaves out one traditional
source of answers to these difficult areas of life: BtVS “told stories of a spiritual battle
between good and evil with an almost complete disinterest in organized religion” (Clark
2003: 47). However, many of the archetypes found in Christianity abound in the show,
though they have been severed from organized religion. The “hero” is one such symbol.
The hero is a prevalent archetype in Western thought and appears consistently in
the religions of the western world. Christianity, deeply influenced by Greek themes and
beliefs, has many hero figures in its mythic system, not the least of whom is Jesus Christ.
The Greek hero, like Jesus, is a half-breed – half human, half god. Hesiod, in Works and
Days, draws upon a more ancient tradition when he speaks of hemitheoi, “half-gods,”
who are heroic men with a human parent and a divine parent (Riley 34). From the
Greeks, we inherit the hero as encompassing “two related ideas: a person of
distinguished courage, admired for bravery and noble character; and one of such qualities
who stands as an ideal and an example” – an archetype (Riley 2000: 36). From the
Greeks, early Christians built their hero Jesus: “Jesus stood as the hero who would
descend to Hades’ kingdom and open the gates for his followers, as had Hercules and
Orpheus and Dionysus, so that they would find the way out of the kingdom of death”
(Riley 2000: 201).
So here we have a number of elements for a hero: a being with a divine or
otherworldly lineage who shows remarkable characteristics such as perseverance and
courage, and who leads at least partially by example. Another necessary characteristic for
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a hero that becomes especially prevalent in Christianity is passage through suffering:
“That he (Jesus) should learn through and be perfected through suffering and then be
killed is the heroic model. For the hero, pathei mathos, ‘learning comes through
suffering’” (Riley 2000: 87). That Jesus suffers death on the cross is essential to his role
as a hero archetype.
A bit of attention has been given to Buffy and the vampire Angel as heroes and
“(s)ome have even tried to claim that both shows’ heroes are Christ figures, thanks to
their self-sacrificial habits and occasional trips to hell and back” (Anderson 2003: 213).
All in all, the characters Angel, Buffy, and Spike all die and are resurrected during the
eight years of the two shows’ run. The death with which I will concern myself with here
is that of the vampire Spike who, through the final seasons of the show, is shown in
increasingly Christlike ways.
In the opposite image Spike is
shown supporting himself on a cross, the
smoke rising from his charring flesh. In the
figure on the left he is crucified, hanging
from the ceiling, his flesh marred by
demonic symbols carved in order to allow
his blood to drip – a blood offering. The visual impact of overtly Christian imagery sets
the stage for Spike’s sacrifice, the culminating event of the series.
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The series finale brings us to the town of Sunnydale, the setting for the show. The
bad guy of season seven is THE bad guy: described as The First Evil, this demon has no
physical form but enters the hearts and minds to corrupt and lead to moral downfall. It is
a form of the Protestant Satan (though it’s important to note that the show never labels it
as such). The evil plot afoot involves opening the “Hellmouth,” a portal into one of the
many hell dimensions the show references. This opening will unleash legions of vampires
and suck the world into Hell. Spike is given a talisman that beams pure sunlight down
into the opened Hellmouth and incinerates all of the vampires pouring forth. The sideeffect is that it also incinerates Spike. However, “(w)e will not save the world unless we
know fundamentally that we are saving it
not only from external threats but also from
the monster inside ourselves” (Reiss 2004:
107). Spike conquers his own demon and
fights to restore his soul, thus finding the
strength to sacrifice himself in the series
finale. “I wanna see how it ends,” he says,
even as deadly sunlight reflects through him, setting him afire, turning his body to dust
(“Chosen”).iv His arms are outspread, fire licking from his fingers, crucified by flame.
Dying a hero, “Spike’s self-immolation has a kind of purity about it. His road to
redemption has required the ultimate sacrifice, and his life goes up in the refining flames
of the explosion that saves the world” (Reiss 2004: 124).
Our intrepid hero is not finished, however. On the season five premier of Angel,
Spike resurrects from inside of the talisman he used to destroy the world, rising from the
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dead. We learn that he has been in a hell dimension suffering punishment for all of his
vampiric misdeeds. Like Jesus, he has made a trip to hell. It is also important that he
returns as a ghost initially, able to pass through solid objects and unable to interact with
the physical world. One could draw parallels between Spike’s nebulous body and the
disciples of Jesus reporting that, upon resurrection, he was “changed” or
“unrecognizable.” (Mat 28:17; Mark 16:11-13; Luke 24:37).
Despite the use of overt religious symbolism “What is striking about the
Buffyverse conception of religion is how regularly and frequently it is demonized, in both
the literal and figurative sense of the term [sic] (the) most religiously motivated
characters turn out to be Buffy’s opponents” (Anderson 2003: 214). The same is true for
HBO’s True Blood, a show based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris,
in which the season two antagonists are the Fellowship of the Sun, an explicitly Christian
sect that preys on the vampire protagonists. Though the book differs a bit from the show,
both portray the members of the Fellowship as evangelical Christians – in the second
book in the series Living Dead in Dallas, the Fellowship temple sign reads “Only Jesus
Rose from the Dead” (Harris 2002: 126) a clear indication that the characters are aware
of the similarities between Jesus and vampires when it comes to resurrection. The
members of the Fellowship are successful in converting some vampires to their views –
the ancient vampire plans Godric “meets the sun” on a giant cross, committing suicide in
the light of dawn. Though this is a very different sacrifice than Spike’s, the correlation
between vampires and Christian iconography remains strong in the first decade of the
twenty-first century.
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Stephanie Meyer’s published Twilight, the first of four novels dedicated to her
vampire Edward, in 2005. While some attention has been given to Meyer’s membership
in the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (LDS) and the ways in which her
Mormon faith influences themes in the books, I will restrict my comments here to one
exchange between the vampire Edward and his human lover, Bella. A few months into
their relationship, after having a close call with death, Bella asks Edward to make her a
vampire, arguing, “A man and a woman have to be somewhat equal … as in, one of them
can’t always be swooping in and saving the other one. They have to save each other
equally” (Meyer 2005: 473-4). While this is an interesting updated form of feminism and
reflects on Meyer’s LDS faith with regards to gender relations, I am more interested in
Edward’s response. “I shouldn’t exist,” he responds. “I refuse to damn you to an eternity
of night and that’s the end of it” (Meyer 2005: 476). This comment is particularly
interesting given that Meyer’s vampires are immune to sunlight – Edward is using
“night” here metaphorically. Later, in the next book New Moon, he expresses doubt with
regards to a soul – he is concerned that he has lost his soul through the transformation
into a vampire but he doesn’t know for sure. Meyer’s, like Whedon, refuses to take a
stance on the state of a vampire’s soul. However, Bella does ultimately become a vampire
– apparently, fears for her immortal soul are not that important.
The ambiguity of religion and religious themes within vampire fiction is not
restricted to the western world. The South Korean film Thirst, released in 2009, is a
favorite of vampire fans worldwide. The vampire in the film is a Catholic priest who
receives vampire blood by accident during a blood transfusion. Once he transforms, he
wrestles with the new urges brought about through the process of becoming a vampire –
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these urges are both for blood and for sex. The bishop of his diocese, an elderly blind
man in a wheelchair, upon discovering the priest’s new vampiric life, requests to be
transformed as well, saying, “Be the miracle worker. Make the blind see” a clear
reference to Jesus’ role as a healer. Of course, this vampire is a priest, the Victorian
warrior against vampires. The warrior has left the light and entered the darkness.
The vampire in the first decades of the twenty-first century is a whole new
creature, deeply connected to the audience’s concerns, both about death and about the
waning power of Christianity. “Eternally alive, they embody not fear of death, but fear of
life: their power and their curse is their undying vitality” (Auerbach 1995: 5). Life brings
with it age, sickness, decrepitude and death. Modern vampires are locked in perpetual
stasis, forever young. In philosophy, the Problem of Evil is posited as a question: if God
is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving, then why does evil exist?v The human life
seems too short to answer this question. We watch loved ones die and evil men live.
Hitler killed millions and God allowed the genocide. We swore it would never happen
again and then there was Vietnam, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan. As the twentieth
century drew to a close we became more cynical and our vampires reflected our
anxieties, our fears that the gravest concerns of our existence had no answers. “The
creatures who seem to fear death the most are those who have cheated it: vampires”
(Reiss 2004: 29). Even though this life is filled with apprehension and the unknown, it is
far better to continue existence on this plane than to face the daunting array of
possibilities of what might lurk after death: oblivion, hell. Even heaven is an unknown
quantity. “(V)ampires in the twentieth century inhabit a lush but senseless world”
(Auerbach 1995:161), our world, filled with boundless possibility and limitless ability to
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work evil. The literary character of the vampire, the archetype, allows viewers to
negotiate the anxieties of the Problem of Evil in a relatively safe space, that of fantasy.
The overarching argument of this paper is that vampires can be used as windows
into American society’s understanding of religion. Put more bluntly, “the psychological
use of this mythic figure (is used) as an analogy to explain human interactions”
(Twitchell 1981: 4) with Christianity. Vampires began their existence as metaphors for
anxieties surrounding death and disease. The Victorians reshaped them into allegories of
repression: sexuality, desire, homoeroticism, and most importantly, the battle between
good and evil. The priest became the hero battling satanic forces hungering for the human
soul. The genre of horror is a vehicle for exploring the nature of the universe, understood
by Christianity in extremely dualistic terms. Horrific themes, such as evil, death, and
punishment worked their way into sermons because, “the ‘Holy could not be expressed in
language at all except by negation: as absence, as ineffable – or by contrast and inversion,
negation: as demonic.’ In other words, it is easier to talk about the holy in relation to that
which it contrasts: evil, demons, and hell” (Clark 2003, qting Ingebretsen: 65). The use of
vampires as symbols of evil, understood in religious (Christian) terms set the stage for the
slow evolution of the literary figure over the course of the twentieth century as seen in
films such as Nosferatu (1922), the two films purporting to be renditions of Bram
Stoker’s Dracula (1931 and 1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994) based on a book
by the same name (1976), and, of course, the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 –
2003) and Angel (1999 – 2004), Twilight (2005), and True Blood (2008 – present). Not to
mention The Vampire Diaries (running presently) or the vampire protagonist on Being
Human (running presently).
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Over the course of a century American attitudes toward Christianity, and
organized religion in general, changed rather drastically. Though the country remains
largely Protestant and more than eighty percent of Americans claim belief in the JudeoChristian God,vi “(t)oday’s young people do not come to notions of religion with an
empty slate; religion is not seen by them as an unquestioned good … The implication is a
far more relativistic and tentative approach to religion, particularly of the organized,
institutional kind: religion might be used by some for good, but religion’s power can also
be marshaled in ways the ‘good guys’ never intended” (Clark 2003: 57). The shifting
positions of vampires in popular culture reflect the place of religion in the western world.
From demon to hero to savior, vampires are taking the place of Christ: “Whoso eateth my
flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life” (John 6:54). “The … vampire is the
analogue, not the enemy, of Christ” (Auerbach 1995: 104). Like the pagan gods of old,
like Jesus Christ himself, now vampires die, are resurrected, and save the world. What’s
next? Jesus Christ: Vampire.
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i
The handbook used by the Grand Inquisitors, originally published in 1486, mentions vampires in its
introduction: http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/
ii
See: http://www.filmsite.org/drac.html
iii
I refer consistently to the vampire as “he” because vampires are mostly male. Female vampires such as
the three sisters and Lucy in Dracula fiction, Drucilla in Buffy, or Darla in Angel are ancillary characters.
The vampire is a male predator and his activities are analogous to the penetration – a female vampire, when
she penetrates, is committing an act of masculine aggression. For more see Nina Auerbach’s Woman and
the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Harvard University Press: 1984).
iv
I find it significant that the title for the series finale of BtVS is “Chosen” a clear reference to Spike’s
choice to save the world through self-sacrifice. It is reminiscent of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,
often interpreted as the point at which he chose to drink of the cup set before him.
v
In my opinion, The Problem of Evil is best summarized by the late, great J.L. Mackie.
vi
I’m referencing statistics from the PEW Forum.
Works Referenced
Anderson, Wendy Love. “Prophecy Girl and the Powers that Be: The Philosophy of
Religion in the Buffyverse.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and
Trembling in Sunnydale. James B. South, ed. Chicago: Open Court, 2003.
Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1995.
Bram Stoker's Dracula (Collector's Edition). Film. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures, 1992.
Buffy Episode #72: "Who Are You?" Transcript.
http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/buffy/season4/buffy-416.htm
Carl Jung Resources for Home Study and Practice. “Archetypes.” http://www.carljung.net/archetypes.html
Clark, Lynn Schofield. From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the
Supernatural. Oxford University Press, 2003.
Dirks, Tim. AMC Filmsight. http://www.filmsite.org/drac.html
Dracula (75th Anniversary Edition) (Universal Legacy Series). Film. Directed by Tod
Browning. Washington DC: Universal Studios, 1931.
Forbes, Bruce David and Jeffrey H. Mahan, eds. Religion and Popular Culture in
America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Harris, Charlaine. Living Dead in Dallas. New York: Ace Books, 2002.
Horror of Dracula. Film. Directed by Terence Fisher. Burbank: Warner Home Video,
1958.
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Imawura, Jane Naomi. “The Oriental Monk in American Culture.” Religion and Popular
Culture in America, Bruce David Forbes and Jeffrey H. Mahan (eds). Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005.
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. Film. Directed by Neil Jordan.
Burbank: Warner Home Video, 1994.
King, Neal. “Brownskirts: Fascicm, Christianity, and the Eternal Demon.” Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. James B. South, ed.
Chicago: Open Court, 2003.
Lynch, Gordon. Understanding Theology and Popular Culture. Victoria: Blackwell
Publishing, 2005.
Mackie, J.L. “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind. Oxford University Press. Vol. 64, No. 254.
(Apr., 1955), pp. 200-212.
Nosferatu. Film. Directed by F.W. Murnau. Hollywood: Image Entertainment, 1922.
Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. New York: Ballantine Books, 1976.
Riess, Jana. What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide. San
Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
Riley, Gregory J. One Jesus, Many Christs: How Jesus Inspired not one True Christianity
but Many. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
Sakal, Gregory J. “No Big Win: Themes of Sacrifice, Salvation, and Redemption.” Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. James B. South,
ed. Chicago: Open Court, 2003.
Summers, Montague (trans). Malleus Maleficarum. (1928) http://www.sacredtexts.com/pag/mm/
Thirst. Film. Directed by Chan-Wook Park. Moho Films, 2009.
Twitchell, James B. The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature.
Durham: Duke University Press, 1981.
Virtue Defense.
http://www.uwsp.edu/philosophy/dwarren/IntroBook/Metaphysics%5CProblemEvil%5C
VirtueDefense.htm
Whedon, Joss, Writer/Director/Producer. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Seasons 1 – 7, DVD.
Twentieth Century Fox, 1997 – 2003.
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-- Contner, James A. (dir) “Entropy.” 4.30.2002
--Marck, Nick (dir). “Beneath You.” 10.1.2002.
--Soloman, David (dir). “Never Leave Me.” 11.26.2002.
--Whedon, Joss (dir). “The Freshman.” 10.5.1999.
--Whedon, Joss (dir). “Chosen.” 5.20.2003.
--Angel, Seasons 1 – 5, DVD. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999 – 2004.
Figure Sources
1.1 – The Count: http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Politics/images-2/the-countsesame-street.jpg
1.2 – Count Chocula: http://blogs.babycenter.com/wpcontent/uploads/2009/03/count_chocula.jpg
1.3 - Nosferatu: http://artseblis.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/max-shreck-in-nosferatuthe-movie.jpg
1.4 – van Helsing and Count Dracula: http://cyclopscentral.com/wpcontent/uploads/2010/02/LugosiSloan.jpg
1.5 – Count Dracula: http://www.unofficialhammerfilms.com/images/dracula58.jpg
1.6 Screenshot: Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
1.7 – Interview film poster:
1.8: Screenshot, Episode 7.2, “From Beneath”
1.9:
1.10 – Spike, Crucified: Screenshot, Episode 7:2 “Chosen”
1.11 – Jesus Christ, vampire:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/jesus%20christ%20vampire/angelturgot/JesusChrist
VampireB-715737.jpg
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