Analysis of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
What do vampires mean? Monsters aren’t just randomly scary. They perform a specific function. Monsters turn up when our identity is in crisis. The vampire, particularly Bram Stoker’s Dracula, tells us very specifically where the Victorians were facing some serious issues about who they thought they were. Dracula blurs and challenges the boundaries between Us and Them.
Monsters, Heroes, and Villains are all about identity. Our identities, both individual and collective, are shaped against other things–often, heroes and villains. Monsters turn up when we sense that these categories don’t capture the whole story. We can learn about other people by looking at their monsters–we can learn a lot about ourselves by looking at our monsters.
In recent years, some have taken to calling Easter, Zombie Jesus Day. That’s not cool. But what is cool is that the zombie horde is a picture or the resurrection if materialism is correct.
The ubiquitous zombie monster is questioning, by its very presence and form, some of our culture’s foundational assumptions.
The Apostle Paul faced a similar problem in his day–many Greeks also had an inaccurate anthropology. They too saw a zombie when Christians told of a bodily resurrection. His challenge to that culture if just as fitting for ours.
Happy Easter!
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading and watching The Walking Dead it’s that the Zombie Apocalypse is filled with life-and-death moral decisions.
The Covid-19 pandemic has created conditions in which hospitals have had to make difficult decisions–life-and-death, moral decisions–about who gets a ventilator and who does not.
There are two ways to go in this.
Either you give them to the patients in the most need at the moment, or you give them to patients most likely to recover. If you go the first route, more people will die, if you take the second path, you are denying treatment to people who need it.
A recent Pew Research Center discovered that religious people tend to say we should give the life-giving treatment to the people who need it most. And the less religious folks lean toward the more utilitarian–give it to those most likely to recover.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Pew survey shows that Christians are less likely to survive the zombie apocalypse. #zombies ” quote=”Pew survey shows that Christians are less likely to survive the zombie apocalypse. “]
When zombies lurch through our streets, the life-and-death, moral decisions increase–it’s like you need to make one every 20 minutes or so.
Zombie narratives are about these moral dilemmas. Actually, they are about the difficulty and the necessity of making a practical decision–no matter how hard it is, and it’s usually agonizing.
The research by the Pew Research Center shows us that religious people will not necessarily take the practical path. With the increase in the number of deadly decisions that need to be made during the zombie infestation, consistently taking the non-utilitarian route will result in the death of more people.
Would anything be gained by the less practical approach? More people would likely die, but society would be built on the idea that those who are sick or old would receive the care that they need. That foundation is worth considering.
Ahmadreza89 / Pixabay
Have you ever not said something that you truly believed was true for fear of the backlash?
If so, your individuality may have already been absorbed into the horde.
In his recently uploaded YouTube critique of news media, Is CNN FAKE NEWS? – Existentialism and Mass Media, PlasticPills describes the power of the media to shape public opinion to the point that individuality is absorbed into the mindless whole.
Advertising determines desire. Celebrity determines taste. News Media determine orthodoxy.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Advertising determines desire. Celebrity determines taste. News Media determine orthodoxy. https://youtu.be/SvZZNIwUm-Q #FakeNews #CNN #NewsMedia #Zombies ” quote=”Advertising determines desire. Celebrity determines taste. News Media determine orthodoxy. “]
And you know what happens when you stray from orthodoxy. The same thing that happens to all heretics, they are burned at the stake.
Mass media creates and maintains orthodoxy by pruning away individuality, that is, “anything that is different, abnormal, or special.” It does this by attacking what diverges from whatever values it deems to be orthodox at a given moment.
Mass media also suppresses individuality by making the ordinary seem exceptional. Look at what your favourite 24-hour news channel is calling “BREAKING NEWS.” This used to mean a president was shot or a new genocide was underway. Now it means a president sneezed or someone misused the term genocide.
According to PlasticPills, although news media would like to pretend its purpose is to inform us of significant or extraordinary events, the actual purpose is to entertain, and in doing so it “literally creates a mass audience of idle, reflective [not in the sense of ‘thoughtful’] people, all with the same opinions and desires and discourages independent thought.”
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The leveling of all events to entertainment makes it impossible for people to differentiate important events from unimportant events. #CNN #TheMedia #ZombieHorde #FakeNews https://youtu.be/SvZZNIwUm-Q” quote=”The leveling of all events to entertainment makes it impossible for people to differentiate important events from unimportant”]
PlasticPills is basing his argument on ideas of Soren Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard is critical of the “monstrous abstraction” which he called “the public.” Existentialist philosophers Nietzsche and Heidegger commented on the same entity calling it the “herd” and “Das Man” respectively.
The public is, for Kierkegaard, “the concept of an anonymous group that dictates everyone’s proper behavior.” And the news media creates this entity.
Perhaps the central tenet of existentialist philosophy is the importance of individual, free, authentic choice. So they are antagonistic toward “The Public” (the horde) because it discourages independent thought and negates individual freedom.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Because of outlets like CNN, there are no individuals, just masses with opinions. #Kierkegaard #MassMedia #CNN #FakeNews https://youtu.be/SvZZNIwUm-Q” quote=”Because of outlets like CNN, there are no individuals, just masses with opinions. “]
So what does this have to do with zombies?
Monsters are about what we fear. Popular monsters are a product of our collective fears. The zombie horde is our monster because it embodies our Modern identity crisis. We like to think of ourselves as autonomous individuals, but the very presence of a monster indicates that deep down we may have our doubts.
Individuality and individual freedom are strongly valued, worshipped even, in our society. But there are forces in our society that threaten the individual. Kierkegaard and PlasticPills assert that one of these forces is the mass media. It creates “the public,” this mass of opinions from which deviation means metaphorical burning at the stake.
Kierkegaard’s Public is analogous to the zombie horde. It mindlessly walks through our streets and the mall looking for any movement or sound that diverges from the norm as defined by the horde. When it senses heterodoxy, the mindless herd turns toward the thinking individual on mass and rips out his entrails and eats his brains.
We are intrigued to watch this scene play out on the screen because we feel it play out in our lives. We fear our individuality being absorbed into the group, but the fact that the horde already exists (on television and in the theatres) indicates that the absorption we fear may have already occurred.
jplenio / Pixabay
I have this theory about monsters and what they mean.
Although they are antagonists, they are not the same as villains. They are much more interesting. Heroes are about what we want to be. Villains are what we don’t want to be. Monsters are what don’t want to be, but we might be anyway whether we like it or not.
Heroes are our ideal. They represent our best selves. They stand for what we want to stand for as a group. They have the characteristics that we value, and wish we had more of. Heroes are always courageous because this is a universally admired characteristic. Heroes tend to defend the innocent and the collective good. We normal humans don’t always do these things, but we like to think of ourselves type of person who would. We project all this awesomeness onto our heroes.
Our heroes change because we change. The great hero Beowulf bragged about his heroic exploits. Today, we’d find his sort of arrogant pride to be villainous, but Anglo-Saxon listeners loved boasting if you could back it up. When the great Achilles wasn’t harvesting Trojans, he could be found weeping by the seashore. For Greek audiences, this wasn’t a sign of weakness, but passion–a virtue, until he took it a little too far; the Greeks also liked a tragic flaw.
Villains are the opposite of heroes. They have qualities and characteristics that we castigate. Villains break promises or they are cowards or they threaten the lives of the innocent and the virtue of women. They possess the characteristics for which we punish our children. Not all otherness is a threat. Villains represent the bad side of “otherness.”
And so we have a fence around our identity. Within the fence, we find our people and the values we espouse. What lies outside the fence is otherness–other people and the values that we don’t hold, some of which we reject.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Heroes are how we see ourselves, villains are the opposite, and monsters represent the nasty bits of ourselves we’d rather not admit to. #Heroes #Villains #Monsters ” quote=”Heroes are how we see ourselves, villains are the opposite, and monsters represent the nasty bits of ourselves we’d rather not admit to. “]
Philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) describes the relationship between narrative and identity suggesting that when we tell our stories, we are clarifying our identity. Stories constitute the identity of individuals, but the mechanism is the same for collective identities.
Ricoeur suggests that identity is revealed through the interplay of two competing forces within narratives. The first force presses on the narrator to represent his role in the story in a way that is consistent with his view of himself—this Ricoeur calls the “demand for concordance.” We like to think of our identity as having some permanence, so we are compelled to tell our stories in a way that is consistent with this idea we have of ourselves.
The second force at work in the recounting of past events is what Ricoeur calls the “admission of discordance.” This force presses the teller to accurately represent himself in thought, word, and deed.
These two forces are not always in concert. Sometimes how we think of ourselves is inconsistent with reality. A small divergence can be easily suppressed, but small divergences can build up and large ones are not easily ignored. The discordant force threatens the supposed permanence of the teller’s identity. The competition between these stories can create tension in our narratives. It is out of this tension, says Ricoeur, that his identity is shaped and expressed.
Let me tell you a personal story that which illustrates this dynamic.
When I was around 19, I went to a midnight movie with three friends, Jim, Marylou, and Stewart—I think the movie was Animal House. After the show, I stopped briefly to chat another friend in the theatre lobby, so I left the theatre alone a few minutes later. As I stepped outside, four guys in an old car aggressively pulled up to the curb and, completely unprovoked, flipped me the bird. Without thinking, I responded in kind, then turned to walk down the dark alley in the direction of the car.
I sensed that I might be in some danger when I heard the car doors slam behind me. I knew they were coming when I heard the sounds of pursuit behind me. I picked up my pace, just a little. I didn’t need to go any faster because I saw that I would make it around the corner before they caught me.
My friends were ready. Jim had already told MaryLou to get into the car and lock the door. He stood leaning against the car, waiting. Stewart had taken off his jacket and was lighting a cigarette. I don’t know how they knew what was happening but, I was glad they did. I turned and prepared to meet the threat, with fists if necessary. It’s all we had, and I hoped it would be enough.
My would-be assailants, thinking they would catch a vulnerable victim, rounded the corner at a run, eager for blood. When they saw that it was going to have to be a fair fight, they slowed to a walk, nodded, said “Hey,” and kept walking past us.
I’ve told this story many times, and it’s the same every time. When I analyze these events, it’s not to hard to find some tension between the demand for concordance and the admission of discordance.
I think of myself as a nice person and a peacemaker. I am good at navigating around conflict. In my recounting of the above story, I suppressed those little things which were inconsistent with this identity as I saw it. I didn’t really behave like a peacemaker when I returned the obscene gesture, but I soften this inconsistency by describing my attackers as aggressive and my role in this altercation as, merely unthinking. But there is an even more powerful challenge to my identity than the one against my peacekeeping ideals.
Am I a coward?
In my narrative, there is no mention of the fear I felt at the time, but I was scared. This omission is a result of my reluctance to admit the possibility of cowardice. I don’t remember if there were four or three attackers, but I went with four because it excuses the fear that still clings to this memory. In the retelling, I emphasize that I picking up my pace was strategic, and not out of any fear. Their unwillingness to fight even with numerical superiority transfers cowardice onto them. Lastly, I don’t know if Stewart calmly lit a cigarette and, although I think Jim leaned against the car, I’m not sure he was that casual. These details suggest a calm in my friends, which is transferred to me by association. I also remember trying not to hurry, but was I as successful as my story recounts? There is no lie here, just nuance that comes from the demand that my story concords with my held identity.
It is conceivable that new experiences would reveal that I was not a peacemaker, or I was in fact, a coward. If this turned out to be true it would have gotten harder and harder to admit this discordance relative to me self-understanding.
This can happen on a collective level as well.
Here is where the monsters come in.
Monsters show up–with any kind of strength–only under particular circumstances—when our collective identity is in crisis. When the stuff we’ve been suppressing begins to create weak points in the boundaries between the “us” and otherness. The monster is what prowls around the fence and attack it at its weakest point. The weak points of our identity are those places in the boundaries of our collective identity where we begin to lack certainty about who we are. The parts that are getting harder to suppress. Discordance that is beginning to demand admission.
The fascinating thing about monsters is they don’t simply represent otherness. This is too simplistic. Monsters are the projection of uncomfortable possibilities. The monsters that intrigue us, the ones that, again and again, find their way into our stories, are the ones that most directly challenge our understanding of ourselves. By their very presence, they ask us the questions that, deep down, we have already been asking ourselves—Is this really who you are?
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The hero is what we are, or at least want to be. The villain is what we are not. Monsters are the embodiment of what is perhaps the truth that we want to suppress. They appear as the suppression begins to fail. #Monsters #Heroes #Villains” quote=”The hero is what we are, or at least want to be. The villain is what we are not. Monsters are the embodiment of what is perhaps the truth that we want to suppress. They appear as the suppression begins to fail.”]
The Greek’s had the Minotaur and Medusa. The Anglo-Saxons told stories about the monster of the moors and marshes, Grendel and dragons. Demons and witches terrorized the medieval identity. Later came Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman, and the vampire who attacked the boundaries of Modern identities.
Each of these monsters terrorized a particular cultural identity that was in crisis. If Anglo-Saxon storyteller had conceived of Frankenstein’s monster and, the next night in the mead hall, told his story about a creature made from corpses, he’d receive an awkward silence and some puzzled grunts from his Anglo-Saxon audience. Such a monster would not have intrigued them, and the first telling would also have been the last.
Monsters scare and fascinate a people because the monster is tailor-made for that culture. Its form is the embodiment of particular doubts about who we are. It attacks the fence that surrounds our identity at exactly the point where it is the weakest. This is why we can learn a lot about a culture by studying its monsters.
This is why we can learn a lot about ourselves by studying our monster—the zombie horde.
A manufactured object obviously has a purpose that was built into it by its designers, but a lot of people do not believe this is true for human beings.
A comment on TED in response to the question, “Does humanity have a purpose?” says, “Humanity has no unified purpose and I suggest that history shows us that giving humanity a single purpose can be disastrous (religion, eugenics…).”
It is true that giving humanity a single purpose can be disastrous, but perhaps this is only true when the single purpose is one for which we were not designed. If I use a swivel office chair as a ladder, the results can be disastrous, but this doesn’t mean that the swivel chair has no purpose.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Giving humanity a single purpose can be disastrous, but perhaps this is only true when it’s one for which we weren’t designed. If I use a swivel office chair as a ladder–disastrous, but this doesn’t mean that the swivel chair has no purpose. ” quote=”Giving humanity a single purpose can be disastrous, but perhaps this is only true when it’s one for which we weren’t designed. If I use a swivel office chair as a ladder–disastrous, but this doesn’t mean that the swivel chair has no purpose. “]
There is a danger in living for the wrong purpose, but perhaps it is just as dangerous to avoid purpose if we were actually created for one.
In our culture, one of the purposes we have collectively chosen for ourselves (or perhaps it has been subtly imposed upon us) is that of consumer–we buy things, lots of things. The things we buy are designed to wear out after a time, or they are improved upon, so we throw out the old thing and buy another thing. We are manipulated to be ever discontent and then offered things that will make us content. It doesn’t work, of course, but that’s OK because contentment would be bad for the economy.
Were we made to consume? Is this the purpose for which we were designed?
This question is a weak spot in the fence of our cultural identity and the hands of the undead are pawing at it.
The zombie is the picture of humanity which lives only to consume. It ever eats, but is never satisfied. It takes and takes, but no matter how much it takes–brains, liver, thigh–it’s still empty.
Perhaps humans were not made for religion, but the zombie tells us that we weren’t made for consumption either.
If we were made for another purpose, the cure for the zombie is to orient its whole life toward that purpose.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The zombie is the picture of humanity which lives only to consume. It ever eats, but is never satisfied. It takes and takes, but no matter how much it takes–brains, liver, thigh–it’s still empty. #zombie #meaningoflife #human purpose #consumerism” quote=”The zombie is the picture of humanity which lives only to consume. It ever eats, but is never satisfied. It takes and takes, but no matter how much it takes–brains, liver, thigh–it’s still empty.”]
I suggest that humanity is designed for relationship.
Not just any relationship, but the kind that is more interested in the flourishing of the other than the flourishing of the self. Most people have caught at least a glimpse of what this relationship can be like. Some lovers are like this–they are so interested in the happiness of the other one that they forget themselves. Parents constantly set the needs of their children higher than their own.
The paradox in these sorts of relationships is the more you give, the more you get back–and not usually from the kids or even your lover. It comes from someplace else and it’s so fulfilling. It’s like you are a swivel chair being used as a swivel chair.
Sadly, not everyone has experienced this sort of relationship.
Zombies haven’t. They are too busy eating other people.
In a consumer culture, other people can easily be reduced to something we can to use–in essence, something to consume–it makes us zombies. Some people treat their employees this way. Some men treat women this way, and women men. Some kings, their subjects and some mothers, their children.
The good news is that there is a cure for zombies.
Here’s more analysis of the meaning of zombies.
I liked Word War Z.
Brad Pitt was pretty good and because he was in it, my wife would see the movie with me. And that’s a good thing.
I especially liked the representation of the zombies which embodied the characteristics of both raging water and marauding ants. This combination was new and interesting and scary.
I liked it, and there were zombies in it, but it wasn’t a zombie movie.
I make this claim because it doesn’t line up with some of the most important characteristics established by the first modern zombie movie, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and most of the zombie movies that followed.
In a true zombie movie, there is no immediately identifiable cause for the zombie infestation. Characters often speculate, but there’s no definitive answer. To have a cause would confer meaning on the catastrophe and the true zombie movie is far more interested in shredding meaning along with the living flesh of the victims.
In World War Z, where Brad Pitt’s character, Gerry Lane, sets out to find the cause of the zombie infestation. If a cause can be identified, a solution will certainly follow. Gerry Lane’s courage, character, and analytical skills result in his discovery of the cause and through the greater power of science, the menace is eradicated.
This sort of optimism is not found in zombie movies.
The true zombie movie is fundamentally about how all the things in which we put our faith are inadequate. Government, friendship, money, true love, God, these things are all equally ineffective in helping us with the zombies. Zombie movies are sort of depressing that way, but its what they are about.
In World War Z we go back to that old savior of modernity, science. A true zombie movie is anti-modern, but this one is an affirmation of our faith that science will solve all our problems.
A second way in which World War Z strays from the conventions of zombie narratives is its view of human beings. This movie contains several examples of humans playing nicely with others. The most poignant of which is Israel’s response to the crisis. Because of their foresight, they’ve built a huge wall and have systems in place to keep the zombies at bay. They are safe and secure. The incredible part of the story is that they’ve opened up their gates to help the rest of humanity–the neighbours on that cul-de-sac don’t usually get along at all. Even more poignant is this “love your neighbour” attitude results in the annihilation of Israel (this sort of irony is typical of zombie movies). Almost everywhere Lane goes, he runs across people who are basically good, often scared, but good.
The idea that human beings are essentially good is exactly the opposite presentment of humanity in a true zombie movie. Usually, once the doors are secured and the windows boarded up, the zombies would cease to be a problem if it weren’t for the actual people who are with you behind the barricades. Here the selfishness and fear and pettiness and every other human vice are amplified by the threat of the zombies outside the door. To make matters worse, there is almost always a pack of hoodlums, bent on exploiting the absence of authority. The living are more of a threat to the survival of the protagonists than are the zombies. Movies in the zombie genre are consistent in their portrayal of humanity as selfish and brutal. Again, World War Z goes back about (about a hundred years) to claim that human beings are inherently good.
I don’t think any of this accidental–someone involved in the making of this move is optimistic about human nature and has faith that science will ultimately save us. Or perhaps, given the environmental, political and economic concerns under which we travail, perhaps the filmmakers wanted to encourage us with a story where we come out on top after some very difficult times.
That’s fine. And I enjoyed this very aspect of the movie, but that doesn’t make it a zombie movie, just a movie with zombies.
I’ve watched Dead Snow (2009). In it, a horde of frozen Nazi zombies attacks a group of young people in their mountain retreat.
If I recall correctly, the zombies aren’t just the zombified remains of a WWII German army killed in a mountain pass; they are still ideologically Nazis.
Or at least, really, really mean.
Movies that feature Nazi zombies, and the other bad guy zombies–Imperial Japanese, Soviet Russian, and Viet Cong varieties–are not zombie movies. They are movies with zombies.
At least, they aren’t real zombies if they maintain their ideological nastiness.
Yes, I am old school–the true zombie is the Romero zombie (Night of the Living Dead [1968]). These are the standard by which all other zombies are to be measured.
As I’ve written earlier, zombies cannot be fit into categories of evil. Zombies are monsters that embody philosophical materialism, a philosophy for which there is no room for moral classification of evil. Nazis are evil. Zombies can’t be evil. There is no such thing as Nazi zombies, only zombies wearing Nazi clothes.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Zombies embody philosophical materialism, a philosophy for which there is no room for moral classification of evil. Nazis are evil. Zombies can’t be evil. There is no such thing as Nazi zombies, only zombies wearing Nazi clothes. #zombies #NaziZombies” quote=”Zombies are monsters that embody philosophical materialism, a philosophy for which there is no room for moral classification of evil. Nazis are evil. Zombies can’t be evil. There is no such thing as Nazi zombies, only zombies wearing Nazi clothes.”]
Zombies are only hungry, they are not evil.
Nazi zombies break the rule. When they don Nazi ideology with the uniform, they aren’t true zombies.
The film Dead Snow goes so far as to imbue its zombies in a stereotypical Nazi hatred of, well . . . everybody, and also gives them, if I recall, a revenge narrative.
Perhaps we are not comfortable with a monster that isn’t evil; we cannot face the implications of our own worldviews that the zombie monster interrogates.
But just because we hid under the blanket, doesn’t mean the monsters disappear.
Next Zombie Post: World War Z is not a Zombie Film
Like the book, the movie, as social commentary, suggests the modern-secular self is already largely zombie. Early in the film, R walks through the airport with a bunch of zombies sitting around or bumping into each other. He recounts an earlier, better time, when humanity meaningfully interacted with others—the scene shows an airport full of people absorbed by their electronic devices bumping into each other like zombies.
Many zombies have gathered at the airport—airports are about waiting, and they are all waiting for something. R tells us what he’s waiting for: “I just want to connect.”
This desire is reflected in his collection. R collects a lot of things, and, from what we are shown, everything reflects this craving for connection. Every slide in the stereoscope shows a boy interacting meaningfully with a girl. The snow globe he acquires on the same excursion on which he acquires Julie presents lovers holding hands on a footbridge. And all the songs we hear from his record collection are about missing someone.
The connection issue is shown in the community of the Living as well. Their major project involves the construction of a huge wall to separate the Living from the Dead. Lead by Julie’s father, the Living strive for the symbol of division.
Like the figures in the snow globe, R and Julia supply the bridge between the Living and the Dead.
When the zombies see R and Julia holding hands, they are profoundly affected–the cure has begun. R describes the effect of the gesture when he says, “Julie and I were giving the others hope.” All this is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the movie, but, sadly, they resorted to mere convention.
This is where, disappointingly, the movie takes a significantly different approach to the cure than does the book.
In the book, romantic love is metonymy; it is one of several things that represents all things transcendent, like beauty, soul, and mystery. Not so with the movie; here the cure is simply romantic love. All the indicators of “true love” are present: hand holding, kissing, accelerated pulse, the inability to look away when her shirt is off and taking stupid risks, not to mention a literal balcony scene.
This is not a surprising solution to the zombie problem. Mainstream movies almost always solve all their problems with romantic love. It is able to overcome all barriers of social class, age, race and ethnicity, and personal conflicts. Why not overcome death?
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Disappointed in Warm Bodies, the movie where romantic love is salvation. Not a surprise given it overcomes every other barrier: class, age, race and ethnicity, and species. Why not overcome death? #WarmBodies #zombies #IsaacMarion” quote=”In Warm Bodies, the movie, romantic love is salvation. Not a surprise given it overcomes every other barrier: social class, age, race and ethnicity, and species. Why not overcome death? “]
I was a little disappointed at this, for it seems like a cheap solution, especially when the book offered romantic love as one of the means, rather than the end in itself.
In the end, we are asked to put our faith in romantic love, for only this is powerful enough to “exhume the world.”
Where the book hints that we need to recover of a view of reality beyond philosophical materialism, the movie suggests romantic love is the solution to all our problems. This is not to condemn the film, I actually enjoyed it, it just means it is a romantic comedy — and little more.
Next Zombie post: Nazi Zombies
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