MICA

Semiotic Study of Vampires and Vampire Lore

Individual Assignment for Semiotics
Submitted by:

Payel Basu Roll No: 113B

A semiotic study of vampires and vampire lore, with an eye on the different cultural implications that arise through the ages.

A semiotic study of vampires and vampire lore.

The field of semiotics exists because of the realization that society has a desire to create and produce signs because it serves as an important aspect and purpose to life. We are capable of performing semiosis and representation to demonstrate the knowledge in which we come to understand the world, and conversely, it is through the same process that the world becomes familiar with the culture in which we inhabit. (WriteWork, 2003) The vampire is one of the most popular and widely recognised myth/folklore of modern times. The semiotic analysis of vampires has changed along with changes in society, making the vampire a vehicle for the oppositional of the era. Marxists considered Dracula as an allegory for capitalism. At various times the vampire has been thought to symbolise everything from gay acceptance to homophobia, womens subjugation to empowerment. Vampires have also gone through the whole gamut of representation. Starting off with the despicable creature that lurks in the night and feeds off peasants, to the elusive, mysterious nobleman, to now, somehow, the glittering teenager. The present day vampire narrative resembles a sort of parallel alternative universe to human existence. Replete with human behaviour and morality. These stories have imbued familial structures, emotional depth and hierarchies and interpersonal conflicts into the previous dark hued world of the vampire. Initial representation of vampires was quite crude. Almost self explanatory. The vampire was shown to sleep in a coffin. Using Saussures model to analyse this, a coffin was a place where you placed the dead. It signified death, hence denoting that the person laid inside was dead. The symbolic rising from coffin connoted the vampire rising from death, i.e. he was un-dead, i.e. resurrected from the dead. Rising from the dead, being un-dead was unnatural hence leading to the final understating that the vampire was unnatural and a thing to be feared. The vampire was portrayed as a predator. This was depicted by the vampire going for the kill by biting the victims neck. The imagery used here is that of a predator; say a lion, or a tiger or even a Rottweiler going for the kill. They aim for the neck, for the jugular. The vampire also went straight for the neck. Signifying his predator-like instincts. Denoting that he went for the kill, hence the connotation that he should be feared. Vampires feed on blood. Blood is signified as the giver of life. In this case blood IS life. This denotes that blood or drinking blood would prolong life, and increase vitality. This connotation has actually been around for centuries, an accepted ancient social view point. Vampire stories have also always had strong religious undertones. Vampires cannot enter churches. They can be warded off by the cross and holy water. They are creatures of the night and cannot come out during the day. Night signifies opposite of day. Day signifies light. As per Christian beliefs, God is Light. Similarly, their apparent adverseness to

churches, the cross, holy water or anything that denotes God, or apparently blessed by God. The significance that they are evil creatures, and anything blessed by God is physically agonising to them. These stories also go a long way in propagating the influence and power of the church. In the end, it is the appearance of daylight, the cross or the stake that does in these vile creatures of the night, these object all signify God, denoting that in the end the Lord had a hand to play in striking them down and hence, the final connotation that in the Church lies the salvation of man. This is similar theme has been used, but with a twist in modern day movies. The champion here is not the Christian Church, but the Christian value of love. The modern day vampire stories are mostly all converted to love stories, and it is love in the end that makes the wheels turn. John S. Bak, in his essay Post/modern Dracula: from Victorian themes to postmodern praxis says. Coppola inverts Stokers horror story and turns it into a love story, in order to establish the central theme that universal love, not hate is what will ultimately save humanity from evil. Another interesting angle to using the vampire narrative as a tool in Christian hegemony is that holy ground is never the deterrent to the vampire. It is always holy Christian ground. Religious artefacts dont prove fatal to the vampire, Christian religious artefacts do. The idea that all religions are equal, and other religions may also play a deterrent role never comes up. This, despite the fact that modern day vampire narratives are exploring the realms of vampire history, and have traced vampiric lineage all the way to Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs. However, the Christian undercurrents remain. The image of a vampire unable to enter a mosque, or a temple or a synagogue are yet to be seen, even though the concepts of vampires have existed for millennia with demonic entities considered the precursor to the modern vampire seen in ancient cultures ranging from Mesopotamians, Romans, Ancient Greeks and Hebrews.

However, as time progressed, vampires and the connotations attached also evolved. Vampires have always connected with the sexual. Working with this angle, a semiotic analysis can be made likening the vampire bite to phallic penetration. For instance, vampire fangs have a phallic connotation. As per Daniel Chandler in his article Semiotics for Beginners, we all know that 'a thing is a phallic symbol if it's longer than its wide. Thus vampire fangs denote a phallic symbol, and the act of biting the victim is an act of phallic penetration. In the olden days, vampire bites were always viewed as attacks making them akin to rape. This went with the socially accepted puritan view point of being faithful, women should be demure and not put themselves in a position where or act in a way that attracted undue male attention. And those who did not live by this strict moral code were considered fallen. This is also something whose connotation comes across in the vampire movies, where Draculas (or the main male characters) female brides are all shown as seductresses, and as a result of being vampires, ostracized by society. Another point to note is that the main male vampire always had number of vampire brides. This denotes a harem which signifies that no one vampire bride had precedence over the other, again signifying that no one bride was the mistress of the castle, or the favourite of the male vampire, unlike the good Christian women in the house, who did not give in to temptation, did not tempt other men, and hence ruled over the house and the hearts of their husbands.

In modern society, post the sexual revolution and womens empowerment, vampire bites are not always viewed or portrayed as attacks. The concept of vampire bites as a source of pleasure, and human-vampire relationships, are themes that are gaining popularity in main stream media. This concept is portrayed by image of humans who willingly let themselves be bitten by vampires, signifying that the vampire bite is pleasurable. This denotes that the human made a free choice about his/her pleasure which in turn connotes sexual liberation. A recent and significant development in vampire narrative is the appearance of the strong and sometimes central female vampire character. This is symbolic of the rise in womens empowerment, connoting the rise of the status of women in society, both the human society we exist in and the vampiric society that evolves simultaneously. Vampires, and their lifestyle were recently also considered to signify AIDS. This underlying logic behind this can be concluded by drawing up parallels between the vampiric lifestyle and the AIDS infliction course. It is a well known part of the modern day vampire narrative that to become a vampire or to be turned you do not have to be killed by a vampire. The turning process consists of the original vampires blood being ingested or consumed or simply inserted/injected into the body of the human or victim that is to be converted into a vampire. This could be interpreted to denote that the victim was subjected to a foreign matter that changed his/her physiology. Further connoting that vampirism is a communicable disease. Similarly, in the case of AIDS, it is through sexual intercourse with an infected person, or the use of an infected syringe, wherein the AIDS virus is transmitted to the victim. On a lighter note, there is also a semiotic reasoning to the sudden popularity of vampire genre in main stream media. Broadcast journalist Miranda Shafer wrote Vampires used to lurk on the fringes of pop culture: but these days they are heroes, heartthrobs, and the family next door. The answer, quite simply put, is teenagers. Not just girls who swoon over Edward Cullen, or Stephan Salvatore. The vampire genre was gaining popularity since the time of Interview with a Vampire. The target audience for vampire flicks are teenagers, coming of age, filled with angst and anger. This juncture in life signals the start of formation of darker impulses. The cusp of adolescence and your body changing, or threatening to change, and the fact that there is nothing to be done to stop it is paralleled to the transformation of the vampire, the losing of control of the body due to blood-lust. The modern humanisation of the vampire shows the emotional changes the vampire goes through during transformation, the guilt, the rage, the angst, almost the identical portrayal of the modern day teenager as he turns from a child to a teenager to an adult. These parallels are what fuel the feeling of relate-ability and hence the popularity of the vampire in todays main stream, young adult oriented media.