Vampires:
Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

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

Session 9: Buffy Returns
Dee Amy-Chinn- Good Vampires don’t Suck: Inscribing Sexual Celibacy on the Body of Angel
Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom

Of all the monsters and metaphors of evil that haunt the popular imagination none is more sexualised than the vampire. So how does popular culture negotiate a vampire who, rather than serving evil, is an agent for good? Angel, previously a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and now eponymous hero of his own TV series, is an enforced celibate. Cursed with a soul by gypsies in 1898 and now seeking redemption for his evil past, his soul will be lost if he experiences perfect happiness, identified within the mythology of the series as sex with a woman he loves.
Yet despite his celibate status the body of Angel is highly sexualised. Indeed Angel’s refusal to have sex, and the passivity this entails, enables his body to become a canvass on which can be inscribed a range of sexual personae that cover the range of sexualities traditionally associated with the evil vampire. Denial becomes the vehicle for excess. At various points in the series Angel, and his soulless incarnation Angelus, embody:

? the incestuous vampire of eighteenth century folklore;
? the dark, brooding, Byronic vampire of nineteenth century fiction;
? the homo-erotic vampire of the twentieth century; and
? the perverse sado-masochistic sexuality of vampires throughout history.

The paper will consider the way in which sexuality is used as a base from which to explore the tension between good and evil as it manifests itself in the fine line between Angel and Angelus. In particular it will focus on the way Angel’s celibacy enables the show to play with multiple signifiers of sexuality, exploring how each of the four sexualities outlined above are made visible on the body of Angel, and the mythic and metaphoric function they serve.

Marina Levina- How the Vampire got Neutered: Boundary Surveillance and Technoscientific Discourse on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL USA

This essay examines the narratives of boundary keeping on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. In the fourth season, the traditional methods, which acted directly on vampires’ bodies, (via the stake through the heart) were challenged by the introduction of a technoscientific Army laboratory, which studied and controlled vampires through the use of the cyborg technology (via a chip in the brain). I use a Foucauldian perspective to examine what is at ‘stake’ in this switch to the scientific method of control and surveillance. I argue that the Initiative represents the transformation of the existing discursive regime, associated with ancient moral values, specific investigative and interpretive practices, and particular ways of knowing the ‘Other’, into a technocratic regime, radically different in relation to its subjects, practices, and knowledge. Prior to the introduction of the Initiative, the interactions with demons and vampires in Buffyverse have always been deeply personal and morally ambiguous. The knowledge of the monstrous ‘Other’ relied heavily on historically specific context. Buffy’s job could be seen as preserving a delicate balance between this world and the supernatural or, in other words, between the self and the other. The Initiative marked an introduction of a different mentality into the Buffyverse. The Initiative relied on the binary thinking to mechanistically organize good and evil without regard for the particular. The Initiative dehumanized the ‘Other’ (or “Hostile Sub-Terrestrials”), striped it of any complexity and represented it as pure monstrosity. I argue that the Initiative is an example of a modern disciplinary institution both in its practices and architecture. The monsters are rendered compulsory visible through the use of scientific experiments, radars, cameras and cells. Thus, demons and vampires become a source of information and examination. Through the Initiative’s practices they are reconstituted as subjects of the technoscientific discourse. I argue that the appropriation of the monstrous ‘Other’ into the technoscientific discourse challenges the possibility of subversive identity and behaviour represented by the vampire. This paper conceptualizes the season’s conflict between different ways of knowing and re-constructs the monsters’ bodies as metaphors for cultural anxieties about technology and especially about technoscience.

Suzanne Scott- All Bark and No Bite: Siring the Neutered Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California, USA

I would like to argue that the media (specifically the critically acclaimed television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer) has come to embrace a deviation from the archetypal depictions of the "romantic" male vampire: namely, the neutered vampire. This new manifestation of vampiric myth is directly linked to both issues of feminism and more traditional themes of addiction and recovery. Gone is the male vampire who guiltlessly satiates his bloodlust (and, by extension, his sexual thirst). Buffy has reinvigorated the maudlin romantic underpinnings of the vampire myth while simultaneously de-fanging them in the name of feminine empowerment.
Over the course of the series, two vampires in particular have elevated themselves beyond mere fight fodder. As Buffy’s love interests, both Angel (a.k.a. Angelus) and Spike (a.k.a. William the Bloody) are founded in the conventions of the romantic vampire: beautiful, brooding, fostering less than modern views on the nature of love (eternal love, love at first sight), etc. To be deemed viable romantic pairings for Buffy, however, each must be rendered "safe," dismantling the longstanding vampiric binary of romance and violence. Angel is neutered emotionally via the restoration of his soul, thereby allowing him to feel remorse for any wrongdoings he inflicted in his demonic form. Spike is neutered physically, by way of a government chip implanted in his brain that renders him incapable of harming humans. Fittingly, Buffy’s relationship with Angel is defined in emotional terms, while her liaison with Spike is sexual in nature.
What is the historic and thematic impact of the emergence of the neutered vampire? Is this depiction merely a ploy to humanize the inhuman, or simply a convenient loophole in a series that purports to spout feminist ideology? These are merely some of the questions I wish to explore.

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