- [TV] You may know Dracula, (upbeat music)
but did you know the first vampires were women?
(ominous music)
(tense music)
Spooky! (upbeat music)
- I would identify the vampire tradition
as completely being informed
by an ancient female monster called the Lamiae or Lamia.
The Lamiae encapsulates a type
of supernatural, seductive woman who prays sexually on men
and abducts children as well, often to eat them.
The female vampire character
has historically embraced sexuality
and challenged the patriarchy,
even when these topics were taboo.
- The vampire figure has always been a very potent symbol
for sexual marginalization.
So I think that carries over very nicely
into these lesbian vampire films,
because there is already this cultural understanding
that the vampire is the sexual other.
- [TV] So, what makes female vampires so subversive?
And how does this translate to the genre
of lesbian vampire films?
Let's get a historian's take on the female vampire.
(thunder rumbling)
- People usually think of Bram Stoker's "Dracula"
as the eponymous vampire text, but actually "Carmilla",
published in 1872, (suave mysterious music)
predates the publication of Dracula by about 26 years.
- In "Carmilla", we have a young, virginal character
who's also the narrator of the story named Laura.
One day, she meets the Carmilla of her dreams,
after a carriage accident
and it becomes very apparent
that Carmilla is actually a shapeshifting beautiful vampire.
Carmilla makes multiple advances on Laura
throughout the text that suggests
that she has some kind of same-sex desire for Laura
that goes beyond friendship.
The way these vampire characters were used
in the 19th century,
particularly by the earliest Gothic authors,
was to address sexuality as a whole.
So when you have these Gothic authors writing
in a very patriarchal-heavy society,
anytime a woman is showing sexual desire blatantly
on the page, she's inherently challenging those sort
of institutions and becomes other, becomes monstrous.
And because she's not fulfilling heteronormative desire,
becomes queer.
(tense music)
- There are a lot of films based on the "Carmilla" story.
There's one from 1936 called "Dracula's Daughter."
"Dracula's Daughter" is (mysterious music)
about this Countess, named Countess Zaleska,
and she feels cursed with her vampirism
and very much longs to be cured from it.
- I ask you here tonight because I need your help.
- As a psychiatrist?
- She's kind of the first representation we get
of this suffering, existential vampire character,
that really does not want to be a vampire,
which is very much associated with queerness.
- Something that reaches out from beyond the grave
and fills me with horrible impulses.
- What this film tells us
about how queerness was interpreted
in the 1930s was that it was an affliction.
At the time, people very much believed it could be cured
through modern, Freudian psychiatry.
So, the character of the psychiatrist,
actually very much represents this institutional violence
that was happening in queer life at the time.
- [TV] Hmm. How did the film world address queerness
in the 1930s?
- The Hayes Code is a code (upbeat music)
of conduct that gets implemented in the early 1930s
that is basically a rubric for what you can and cannot show.
For example, you can't have kisses that are longer
than a certain amount of seconds.
Of course, no sex scenes.
You can't show immoral conduct
and if you do show immoral conduct,
the person conducting themselves that way has to die.
So, "Dracula's Daughter", at the end of the film,
Countess Zaleska is killed,
partly because of the Hayes Code.
(upbeat music)
- Once the Hayes Code was dropped
by the American film industry,
there was this revival of showing all the things
on screen that people couldn't before.
So, there was more violence, more gore,
more sexuality that was portrayed on screen.
- In the 1970s with exploitation films, we get a lot
of films that exploit sex between women as a point
of excitement for the viewer and the figure
of the lesbian vampire gets used over and over again
in these films.
"Daughters of Darkness" is a fascinating film
from this period.
Number one, because it's stars, Delphine Seyrig,
who is very much known as this feminist figure.
(speaking in French) (ethereal music)
It's significant that outspoken feminist,
Delphine Seyrig stars in this film,
because there's actually a very feminist message
in the film. (intriguing music)
There is this very abusive husband
that we see sexually assaulting and beating his wife,
and Countess Bathory sort of comes in
and in one point monologues to Valerie,
her victim dujour about how men enslave women
and you need to break free from it.
This movie is unique
in that it is explicitly anti the male characters,
whereas usually the men are the heroes of the story.
- Because these exploitation vampire films were arising
at the same times (upbeat music)
of a lot of the civil rights movements,
both for non-white individuals and for women,
that we see a lot of that tension reflected
in the vampire stories of the period.
And of course, anytime we don't understand something,
we like to make it monstrous.
- [TV] So, what does the genre
of female vampire film look like today?
- Moving into the 1990s, (intriguing music)
we get this new brand of like mainstream feminism,
kind of girl power coming out
of the riot grrrl movement of the time.
Shows like "Buffy",
which bring these feminist sensibilities to the masses
and also has these queer characters later in the show.
- I think that in today's female vampires,
we see a continuation of the longer tradition
of female vampires coming from the Gothic literature
of the early 19th century,
in that they're often women who may have been put
in unfortunate circumstances and now are seizing autonomy
and power from their un-deadness.
- [TV] These modern empowered vampires can be seen
in "Jennifer's Body", "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night",
"True Blood", and "First Kill."
- My personal hope
for the lesbian vampire genre is I want queer women
to be able to make films that are just as perverted
and sleazy and filled with sex and violence
as men have been allowed to make.
- Female vampires are about agency in a lot of ways
and I think that that's a very productive thread
that we've carried on for centuries at this point.
(mellow music)
- [TV] Thank you, Dr. Z
for joining us from PBS "Monstrum".
Make sure to check out Monstrum's channel to learn more
about blood sucking creatures and undead monsters.
And while you're at it, go visit our friends
at PBS Terra and check out their two new shows,
"Far Out" and "Why Am I Like This?"
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