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The Symbolism of the Vampire in Film
Part 1 of 4
Lilith Blackangel
Sexuality & Psychology of the Vampire
A significant aspect of the vampire in film and in literature has traditionally been as representative of the threat of overt sexuality; the despoliation of purity. This seems to have remained such a predominant factor in film in part due to the vampire in folklore often having the qualities of a sexual predator, and in part due to Stoker's Dracula emphasizing these aspects (albeit not always overtly) as seen in the eyes of his time.
It is an interesting point in relation to this that the vampire is almost always an asexual entity, the focus of it's sensual lust moved from sex to the pleasure offered by it's feeding.
It would seem that the vampire in literature, legend and film is a Freudian's dream. Indeed the vampire's sexual psychology rather invites interpretation in the context of almost all psychological models.
Taking Leary's 8 circuit model, the vampire's primary motivation is that of the first, oral, bio-survival circuit. This circuit relates to the urge to feed, centered upon birth around the maternal breast (or substitute thereof). The emphasis of the teeth, of sucking, and of how vital this is to the vampire's continued existence makes the association between the vampire and this archetypally female circuit model clear.
In Werner Hertzog's 'Nosferatu the Vampire', the oddly empathic revenant of the title states his desire for the feminine, and somewhat motherly, love which the oral model describes. While in the original 'Nosferatu' the vampire is little more than a bestial monster, the eponymous vampire of the remake is a pathetic creature craving love, and despairing and despising his own immortality (in this, he is akin to Rice's Louis). The heroine, Lucy, rejects his begging her for her love in order to give him salvation, saying in one of several Nitche-esq lines, that only we can grant our own salvation.
The typical vampire also typically possesses certain qualities representative of the second, anal, circuit, with relates to hierarchy and territory, and is regarded as epitomizing masculine nature at it's most basic level. The most notable appearance of this circuit in the vampire's sexual and psychological nature is in it's dominance; the vampire, in it's territory, commands.
The vampire's typical prey are nubile young women, who usually, if they aren't wearing remarkably little to start with, end up doing so by the time they get bitten. Presumably, the fact that the victims are divested of their clothing is to emphasise the rapacious aspect of the vampire preying upon sexual innocents. Either that, or an attempt to increase the take at the box office.
An example of this rapacious nature appears in 'Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires', in which the vampires in question are evidently too hideous in appearance to have a chance of seducing their prey in the manner of more typical vampires such as Dracula, so resort to kidnapping their victims and chaining them spread-eagled and half naked in their lair in order to feed upon them.
And always, despite the sexual undertones of the nature of the vampire, he remains a castrati, sometimes to the point of effeminacy.
