Vampires:
Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

Thursday 22nd May - Saturday 24th May 2003
Budapest, Hungary

Session 8: Buffy
Milly Williamson - Vampire Transformations: From Gothic Demon to Domestication?
Mass Communications and Cultural Studies, London Metropolitan University, London, United Kingdom

This paper will combine an historical examination of the evolution of the vampire with accounts from vampire fans, to examine recent scholarly laments about the domestication of the ‘new’ vampire figure in popular culture.
The vampire today is considered to have lost its dimension of Gothic evil. It is deemed to be ordinary and mundane; in short – domesticated (Zanger, 1997; Tomc, 1997). For instance, Tomc discusses the ‘bland domestication’ (96) of the vampire, particularly in relation to the vampires of Anne Rice, who deploys the ‘twin paradigms of androgyny and weight loss’ (96) to write self-abnegating vampires. For Tomc, ‘ridding the vampire of his desire and self-deprivation is at the heart of his eventual domestication’ (105).
From a different perspective, Zanger mourns the demotion of the vampire from its status as a figure of metaphysical and cosmic evil to that of a ‘demystified…next door neighbour (19). Zanger identifies a ‘new’ vampire whose cravings and motivations have become individualised and personalised rather than the ‘cosmic conflict between God and Satan’ (18) which Dracula characterised. For Zanger, the new vampire narratives provide an experience that readers and viewers engage in, ‘not voyeuristically, as in the case of Dracula, but as conjoiners and communicants’ (25).
This paper will examine the claims about the ‘newness’ of this ‘domesticated’ vampire by examining the links between Gothic and melodrama and the long tradition of Romantic vampires whose legacy can be found in many of today’s popular vampires. It will suggest that there is nothing new about the depiction of intimacy between vampire and human, nor the portrayal of emotional states and interior conflicts in vampire tales. As Auerbach reminds us, ‘[v]ampires were not demon lovers or snarling aliens in the early nineteenth century, but singular friends. In those days it was a privilege to walk with a vampire’ (13). By drawing on accounts from fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and the Vampire Chronicles, this paper will demonstrate the continued appeal of walking with vampires. It will suggest that the bonds of outsiderdom found in this intimacy dramatise important contemporary dilemmas of the self that can be found in the themes and structures of the most popular contemporary vampire narratives, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
It is acknowledged that these arc television series have emotional structures ‘more in common with soap opera relationships than with most genre series’ (Kaveney, 2002: 5). But rather than producing a mundane narrative, the domestic and everyday context of these shows privileges some of modernity’s enduring emotional and ethical dilemmas in a manner that has spawned a huge fandom.

M K Berry-Kluender- Take it Like a Man: Buffy Drives a Stake into the Heart of Lacan
Amber, Pennsylvania, USA

The Gothic literary tradition has long been a source of fascination for scholars, and none more so than the sub-genre of vampire fiction. One possible answer for its enduring allure may be found in a reading of the myth based in post-structuralist psychoanalytic semiotic theory.

Carla T. Kungl- Fears and Femininity at the fin de siecle: Of Vampires and Vampire Slayers
Department of English, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, PA, USA

At the end of the nineteenth century, images of the female as vampire, or at least as vampiric--sucking the life out of healthy manhood--were widespread. In English literature especially female vampires seemed to outnumber their male counterparts; Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Duncayne are just two of many examples. This symbolic representation is figured more concretely in society's fear of the single woman, who didn't want children or who sought to work outside the home--situations that threatened masculinity or weakened patriarchal strongholds.
In contrast, one of the most popular figures at the turning of the twenty-first century is a woman who slays vampires, a seeming reversal of fortune for the female character.
Now the woman warrior instead of the draining virago, Buffy (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) works like many fantasy women characters of popular culture, who, while fantastic, nonetheless provide a site to contest the dominant imagery and ideology of womanhood.
This paper argues that, despite their overt dissimilarity, nineteenth century vampires and Buffy the vampire slayer have more in common than a cursory glance would suggest. Nineteenth century fin de siecle fears of either woman's strength (as the suffragette or New Woman) or her ability to drain the strength of men (as a vampiric image) are both reified and re-imagined in Buffy: after all, it is Buffy's preternatural strength that makes her "a freak," as she puts it. Thus, today’s popularly-produced anxieties about women are still imagined around fear of women's strength; modern-day fears are potently distilled and contained in Buffy, as the One Girl in all the world who has the power to slay vampires. This paper examines each society's popular images, whether as vampire or vampire slayer, to provide insight into the paradoxes that consistently surround established female forms.

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