The Vampire Through The Ages: A Study Into The ‘Cultural Obsession’ Of The Vampire And It’s Rebirth Beyond The Literary Medium (May, 2022)
A NOTE TO THE READER:
The following is the presentation and script to my work on American Gothic during my studies of English Literature at The University of Winchester.
It is published, in its entirety, without any amendments - just as it was delivered to my fellow peers and professors, Dr. Eric Lacey, senior lecturer in English, and Dr. Matt Leggatt , senior lecturer in English and American Literature, on Friday 13th May 2022.
Beyond the simple requirement to stand on a stage and present, there is something quietly transformative about the act itself. To speak publicly - to articulate one’s ideas with conviction, to hold a room, to submit your thinking to scrutiny - is, especially in a time of AI, a rite of passage in its own right.
Nevertheless, it was a great experience in terms of being able to delve deeper into the subtext and subtleties of the one of the most culturally significant yet under-discussed superheroes of the modern era.
Hope you enjoy,
Kamal
Click here to access the presentation.
Today I will be discussing the representation of vampires within the 1998, superhero film, Blade. Showing how the vampire mythos has revitalised itself with each culture and generation, now a deviation of its birth in European folklore. I will also attempt to use postcolonial criticism to, ‘read against the grain’ of one of Marvel’s earliest black superheroes.
For American writers, the adoption of the gothic tradition in the nineteenth / twentieth century encapsulated the fear and anxieties that clouded the nation. In her essay, ‘Gothic in the Twentieth Century’, Catherine Spooner suggests that the emergence, and success, of the gothic tradition in America was the perfect marriage to a nation whose tensions were already ‘overtly gothic’. The displacement, degradation of the Native Americans, the enslavement of the black diaspora and the fear and hostility towards foreigners were prejudices and thoughts rendered into the role of monstrous, ‘racialised other’.
We’ve looked at how ethnic minorities in gothic perpetuate the ideolog of white hegemony. Dracula is Romanian, Angel is Irish, and when we look at Lovecraft’s lore, we see how it holds traces of the author’s white supremacist views.
In horror movies, there is a running joke of ‘the black person dying first’. Of course, this isn’t true. We all know there are many times when the black person makes it out alive...
Until recently, minorities were not afforded the three-dimensional, normative, heroic arch, that their white counterparts had. Nor did they possess the full autonomy of the human spirit.
*Stories have been used to taint, distort and produce a singular narrative of a people, sometimes robbing them of their humanity. It’s a term that professor and academic of gothic literature, Maisha L. Webster, called ‘the gothic darkness’.
When undertaking a critique through postcolonial theory, we should always be looking for whether the cultural text we’re analysing is supporting or contesting the notion that the west is central and normal and the non-west is ‘the other’.
*Blade is a voice of the black experience put in the landscape of the gothic tradition. The timeless pattern of vampires remains the same, but now race and identity century is fused with it.
He is mankind’s last hope against the dark forces that threaten humanity. A character representing the anti-colonial body, fighting against the imposing forces of imperialism. He is, then, a character that displaces the west as centralised, as the hero, and brings the non-west, the ‘racialised other’, into the ‘focal image’, in a contemporary gothic setting.
*Blade was influenced by black athletes and actors of the ‘black power era’ and we see traces of that unyielding spirit of the ‘black power’ movement emulated in the stoic persona of Blade. Who embodies the collective defiance against the colonial mindset. The black man has become ‘the hero’ and the ‘white male’, the villain. Blade, then, reverts that once cemented, power dynamic in gothic literature.
In his landmark study, The Souls of Black Folk, American sociologist, Du Bois, introduces a theory called ‘the double-consciousness’. It’s a term alluding to the disparaging and conflicting set of beliefs internalised by the marginalised within an oppressive society. In the context of race, he writes:
*“One ever feels his twoness, —an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
Double consciousness, then, is the underpinning guilt of Blade’s identity as a half human, half-vampire. A hero walking between two polarising worlds. Evident in the scene when Deacon Frost, the white-haired, red-eyed vampire, tells Blade, “The humans will never accept a half-breed like you.” That he will ‘never be one of them’.
Echoing the ‘one-drop rule’ of America, a social classification that viewed anyone with black ancestry as ‘black’ - tainted with impurity.
Blade possesses that double-consciousness. Torn between who he really is and who he wants to be. Yet, it’s this guilt, this possession of ‘two warring ideals’ - that introduces humanity into the two-dimensional vampire archetype. Perhaps highlighting the psychological effect colonialism has on the colonised.
In a journal article published by Spectrum, Tia Tyree and Liezille Jacobs examine the racial representations of superheroes and the presence of black male superheroes in Hollywood film, which focuses on Blade. They state that “film is an important component of society and works to influence how [others] are viewed and constructed in the world.”
Who is your favourite superhero?
*When we envision the world’s greatest superheroes, characters like Spiderman, Superman, Captain America, or Batman may come to mind. They have become the staple image of the American ideal. “Cinematic portrayals have normalised whiteness as the standard”, Tyree and Jacobs write, “A reflection of the white males who hold power positions not only in American society, but the film industry”.
*Unfortunately, minorities have often not always been able to possess that spirit of ‘truth, justice and the American way’. Often reduced to roles such as ‘the savage and the terrorist’, amongst others.
*The film is a product of its time. Spotlighting the goth craze of the eighties and nighties. The black leather jacket, the Oakley-four sunglasses are of a certain period. The traditional landscape of gothic - the haunted castle, is updated to a seedy nightclub where the hedonist, nymphomaniac vampires dance under a ‘blood-sprinkler’ to techno music, represents the era of playboy, MTV and sex positivity.
*More so, it shows how the vampire mythos has become a cultural obsession. Themes like sex and religion, of race, of feminism (such as in Buffy), are being explored alongside the old folklore. The traditional conventions of what gothic ‘should be’ is being dissected, and broken, and sometimes sanitised, in favour of bringing this style to a new audience.
*And, in the context of this presentation, bring the ‘racialised other’ into the forefront of their own story.
Thank you.
