A recent article in Touchstone magazine opened my eyes to the Catholic moral story of the vampire– which is about more than movie theater titillation. Anglican vicar Robert Hart writes explaining the moral dilemma of the traditional vampire story and how this content has been left out of recent vampire tales. The vampire, as undead, is miserable. He wants eternal life, yet cannot find it. He therefore drinks human blood as an inadequate substitute for the Blood of Christ, prolonging his misery at the expense of others. He therefore serves as an anti-type of Christ, who sheds His own blood and brings life to others. Interestingly, Hart writes positively about Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its understanding of the traditional vampire motif:
Stoker based his vampire upon the genuine superstition of the mountain people of Romania. It had grown up among people who knew that evil—which will be defeated and ultimately destroyed by God and his Church—is inherently weak and unreal. It is not sexy or attractive.
Stoker’s Dracula was ugly, and his breath stank with the foul odor of undead centuries. Being in the grip of evil, he went about spreading his misery by draining the life, the soul of the flesh, which is in the blood, from his victims. The sight of him repelled everyone who suffered the misfortune to behold him. He existed only to perpetuate his unnatural—dead—life.
He is a symbol for everything that sin makes of men, and of the pure evil that ensnares them through it. In the character of Dracula, written to be as minimal as his undead state demands, nothing can be observed except that some of the Seven Deadly Sins had captured his soul. For example, he is quick to wrath so as to be thoroughly exacting in vengeance. He is very proud that he was the greatest of the nobles that his country ever produced, especially in war.
This version of the vampire story Hart compares to more recent television vampires who glamorize their bondage to sin, where the crucifix and the Blessed Sacrament hold no power over them. All in all a fascinating read. To see the whole article, click here.
September 14, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Actually, this is very interesting to me, as I finished reading Dracula last night. It was quite good.
I generally agree with the article, although I think the author reads too much into the deaths of the vampiresses and Drac himself at the end- I didn't feel that Stoker was sympathetic at all. I also don't think that Mina can tell them about Dracula's movements in the latter part (where they are hunting him) because she feels sorry for him. I think she can find out that information because he has bound her to him (he drank her blood and then made her drink some of his, which is, by vampire lore, a method of 'infecting' someone). Also, she gets less able to help, and she does not want to join the vampiresses when they call to her.
Mina's concern with her infection is her immortal soul. According to Stoker, if someone is infected by a vampire and dies- especially if from it, but Mina drinking his blood proves sufficient- they will in turn be undead rather than dead and steal out of their tomb to drink blood. Mina knows that this happened to her best friend Lucy, and knows also that this is a sad fate for a Christian– for it is a torture that one should be imprisoned in his own body while hoping for heaven. Thus Mina extracts a promise from the party that they will kill her dead if she dies before Dracula can be vanquished, and the same if she is not rid of the infection by the same (the sign of which she looks for in the removal of the scar).
The Eucharist is the most powerful against Dracula and the vampires. It is the only thing which cannot be gotten around, really- crosses fall off, garlic blossoms are removed, etc. But the Eucharist despoils the resting places of evil; it is the one thing which cannot be crossed. It does seem like Stoker may not have known quite how one is supposed to treat the Eucharist, but his respect for it is clear, I think.
Most modern vampire things I think we are to have sympathy with. Even Twilight (I admit it, I watched the movie) — the main vampire tells the narrator that vampires are monsters… but she still wants to be one, and the series plays that out.
I think what these things are missing is that a true "vampire cursed with a soul" as Angel in Buffy was would be like Mina- would ask have the pollution cut out to free the soul. Any other vampire is like Dracula- because they choose to remain so.
On the bright side, there is a really good book from 2005 called The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova that is in the tradition of true vampire lore and Stoker (although not so firmly within the religious tradition) in which vampires are unequivocably bad. It's not a completely clean read but it stears clear of most objectionable content and is fabulously written. I'd also recommend Dracula by Stoker- very interesting..
Never saw myself on this kick.. have to start on Frankenstein next, lol.
September 14, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Interesting.
Who/what would have a motive for making the undead attractive? 😉
September 14, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Jeff Hendris here.
If you can get your hands on it, The Addiction (1995) starring Lili Taylor and Christopher Walken illustrates the lust for power coupled with the dread and misery of the undead existence. An added bonus (Spoiler alert), it is a whopping good redemption story with the Sacrament of Reconciliation to boot.
Walken gives, for my money, the most credible depiction of a vampire in film history (Cruise in Interview can't hold a candle to him), and the simple presentation of Catholic truth is breath-taking. Cheers
September 15, 2009 at 12:15 am
I admit to being a Twilight fan, and, while not in the Catholic tradition of the vampire, it does really play with these issues. One of Edward's biggest concerns is that he may have lost his soul when he became a vampire, and one of the reasons he doesn't want Bella to become a vampire is fear that the same will happen to her. The vampires who are main characters are "good" vampires, and it's hard for Bella or the readers to believe that they could be soulless – but how to resolve that with the murderous monsters who are also vampires? There are ways to kill vampires, and the series does touch on the difference between the regular immortality of vampires, and what if any immortality awaits vampires after death.
(I did also love Dracula and The Historian – my taste in vampiric literature does not lie solely in that directed at pre-teens.)
September 15, 2009 at 2:55 am
I prefer E. Michael Jones' take on vampires in his 2000 book, "Monsters from the Id: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film." Jones says convincingly that the vampire is the unchecked sexual predator that spreads syphilis and other debilitating mortal disease rather than the moral foil of all that is virtuous for Fr. Hart. Indeed the vampire is a creation of in a Catholic world with religious weaknesses that have been all but eliminated in modern retelling. What can't be removed from the vampire character is that he represents sexual predation in its most ultimate, deadly and selfish form.
September 15, 2009 at 3:42 am
I think that a modern day version of vampirism is the use of embryonic stem cells to prolong the lives of adults. They are willing to sacrifice the lives of the innocent to prolong their own. It's such a repulsive image that I am surprised anyone considers it desirable. So the Dracula legend is timeless for a reason: evil will always prey on the innocent. Kit
September 15, 2009 at 5:59 am
Vampires have slowly "changed" in popular culture– from "all that is evil" to "creepy outsider/foreigner" to "cursed outsider" (think werewolf) to, well, "noble but evil" and even just "outsider with a big problem."
Sometimes changing it works, sometimes it doesn't. Me, I more enjoy stories that play it straight, whatever they establish their mythology to be; same thing with Dragons– I _LIKE_ well done, good dragons, but the character has to be good for the story, and _then_ the symbolism has to be alright.
September 15, 2009 at 4:35 pm
This was the most intelligent interpretations of Dracula I've ever read. Since last time I read it, I was a Protestant, I think I'll go back and read it Catholic-style now!