European Children's Film Association
Association Européenne du Cinéma pour l'Enfance et la Jeunesse
COLUMN
A vampire used to mean something…
During the ECFA seminar ‘Study Guides: The Perfect Tool’ Jerzy Moszkowicz (Ale Kino Festival in Poznan, Polen) was appointed as Devil’s Advocate, pledging against writing study guides on popular blockbusters, with TWILIGHT as a case study.
I am a descendant of people from the Carpathians, ancient home of vampires. My grandfather, the colonel – whom I never met as he died before the war – looks at me from old photos. He does not look like the thin Kinsky’s Nosferatu, though he might actually resemble the same historical archetype: Wallachia Prince, Vlad III Palovnik - mighty, short and stout, dark-skinned, with eyes deep as Carpathian mountain lakes. If it were not for his smile, which seems tinged with mystery anyway, he might look frightening.
In the wooden peasant house of my paternal grandparents, bunches of herbs were hanging in the doorway, with a string of garlic in the most prominent place. For my ancestors, vampires used to mean something. They were real, or at least really believed in. They were rooted in folk beliefs. According to the eminent Polish professor Maria Janion, the vampire story is part of an alternative human history, in which death and resurrection have their own, separate interpretations (1). Nowadays, vampires have become just mascots of popular culture.
In stories such as ‘Twilight’, the vampire loses his true and original value. His significance in the age-old order gets lost. He becomes a gadget in a teenage love story. Mass culture changes cultural codes. The “vegetarian” vampire in ‘Twilight’ (he drinks only animal blood – but what about our humble brethren, as St Francis used to call them?) becomes a doctor, helps people. It would not be surprising if he set up a voluntary blood donation centre in town! Or even, horror of horrors, protects people from real vampires.
Where is the ancient world order with a special role and position for the Prince of Darkness in the pantheon of the Greatest Monsters and Demons? French researcher Gilles Menegallo accuses Coppola’s DRACULA of “trivialising the vampire character who, by becoming more human, loses his status of an entirely foreign, enigmatic and horrifying creature” (2). If the Dracula stylishly played by Gary Oldman is trivial, then what can be said about Edward Cullen as if taken straight from a teenage magazine and played by pretty-faced Robert Pattison? A real vampire will always be defeated by a film one, as was wittily proved in the movie SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE (E. Elias Merhige), when the real Prince of Darkness (Willem Dafoe) appears on the set to play the role of Nosferatu in a film by Murnau (Malkovich).
The vampire means a lot, indeed, for the film industry, since he boosts box office takings. The audience wants to be horrified, because cinema fear is a substitute for other, real experiences. Cinema-goers, hollowed out by popular culture and consumerism, want fear and sex, but not too much, preferably in disguise, so as not to experience a real shock or taboo breaking scandal. The vampire story is changed to match the expectations of the short skirted audience, a mixture of a kitsch horror movie and a love story, bold enough to attract teenagers and censored enough to prevent revealing too much. A vampire film, however, works only when it raises fear. Therefore, it is in the interest of the film industry not to educate youngsters about the marketing mechanisms of mass culture. It might turn out that fear loses its appeal as soon as the audience gets used to it. Which might mean they will not buy a ticket to see the film…
Since Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ was published, close and distant relatives of the original Carpathian vampires have been populating literature, theatre and musicals (see, for example, THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS by Polanski). They found their home in the cinemas soon after the birth of cinematic art. Film is entertainment for the masses, based on illusion, which makes it a great medium for imaginary creatures trying to imitate the real-life models. If we are really interested in good and evil, in life and death, we’d better read ‘Faust’. TWILIGHT is nothing but a perfect tool to give the youngsters safety instructions when dealing with young love versus the bloodsucking dilemma.
There is one clever sentence in TWILIGHT: “Death is peaceful… easy. Life is harder.” And the hardest part is films about life. About teenage life in particular.
Jerzy Moszkowicz, with the help of Ryszard Pempera
Devil’s Advocate in the ‘Perfect Tool’ Seminar (Kristiandsand, April 30th)
Footnotes:
(1) Maria Janion: The Vampire. A Symbolic Biography. Gdansk 2002. (Monograph on the vampire motif in culture)
(2) G. Menegallo: Du texte a l’image: figurations du fantastique (...). Quoted after Maria Janion’s The Vampire.