How does one explain the sensual undertones of vampire lore to someone who spends their days analysing market fluctuations? (Picture: AP)
One of the beautiful things about having a partner is being able to experience new things from their perspective – Even when that includes gently dry heaving into a popcorn bucket in a crowded cinema during Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu.
When we met, my boyfriend’s perspective on movies was the same as most people’s perspective on public transportation: Unremarkable, occasionally tiresome, but ultimately positive features of a functioning modern society.
When I rescued him from the apps – like one might pick up a lovely nine-year-old Lurcher at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home – he was mostly housebroken but needed a bit of additional training.
One of the most well-read, clever, and curious people I’ve ever met, he had simply never gotten around to taking a genuine interest in films. I set out to change this – if for no other reason than because he had added so much to my life that I wanted to add something to his.
This turned out to be a joy. As he patiently filled in profound gaps in my knowledge of the world (you really can’t just ‘print more money’ to solve inflation), I attempted to show him that movies could be more than military propaganda or symmetrical people bickering and closed-mouth kissing.
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‘I think that movie quadrupled the number of times I’ve seen someone vomit blood’ – My poor boyfriend (Picture: AP)
When he reacted to his first black-and-white film (Holiday, 1938) like a Victorian coal miner seeing a monkey for the first time at the World’s Fair (‘They’re just like us!’), I knew we had found a shared interest.
Since it was going so well, I thought taking my student on a field trip to the cinema to see Nosferatu might be fun. This proved to be a dire mistake.
He was hesitant but willing when I suggested the outing and described the brilliance of Egger’s VVitch to him. But he made it clear he was not a horror movie fan, so I reassured him that it definitely wasn’t that scary or graphic.
When Lily-Rose Depp’s character vomited blood for the fifth time, however, he leaned over and said, ‘Do you know that Arsenal are playing right now?’
A few minutes later, when one character graphically ripped the head off a pigeon with their teeth, he (a longtime vegetarian for moral reasons) turned as white as the possessed corpse of Count Orlock and swallowed an actual gag.
Increasingly doubtful my relationship would survive the 2-hour 12-minute run time, I comforted myself by picking apart the film’s themes.
The legacy of how the Vampire genre demonises female sexuality
Written in 1897, Dracula is widely agreed to reflect the societal anxieties about female purity, sexuality, and autonomy (Picture: Bettmann Archive)
Vividly recalling my English class lessons on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I noted (as I tried to tune out the sounds of distress coming from my left) Eggers had leaned into the themes of female lust in his vampire story with an even heavier hand than previous adaptations.
Written in 1897, Dracula is widely agreed to reflect the societal anxieties about female purity, sexuality, and autonomy that arose around the turn of the century when cultural norms began to shift. If a vampire can be reduced to a symbol of any one thing, it’s uncontrolled desire.
According to these tropes, lust corrupting otherwise pure women can only lead to societal decay and chaos.
The original 1922 version of Nosferatu engaged deeply with themes of female purity and shame (Picture: Getty Images)
The way Mina Harker’s sexuality is portrayed in the novel is the clearest example of this (I promise this isn’t an academic paper; bear with me).
As Dracula draws Mina closer to him, she gains power, freedom, and autonomy, all traits that were highly destabilising for the established gender order of the time.
Her final ‘rescue’ and return to innocence – along with her return to her role as a wife and mother – can be seen as society’s way of reasserting control over the perceived dangers of female desire.
The symbol of the vampire was all the more terrifying to Victorian readers because by succumbing to a vampire, one often becomes one. This is a not-so-subtle disguise for the certainty that arose around this time that sexual indecency was a catching affliction, particularly among women.
Eggers did not shy away from the sensuality inherent to vampire lore in his adaptation (Picture: AP)
But what has fascinated us for so long about succubuses, from Dracula to Edward Cullen – beyond their use as moral parables – is that there’s just something undeniably sexy about the whole thing, despite Stoker’s intention to make the creature a revolting warning.
To be so physically desired that someone wants to literally drink your blood is a dark sexual fantasy but not a difficult one to understand. After all, everyone wants to be the subject of absolute devotion – the kind that brings a man into a cinema while the football is on to watch Aaron Taylor Johnson in period dress furrow his eyebrows relentlessly.
And there’s a freedom in giving in to one’s urges, particularly for women who have historically been encouraged to repress anything approaching the carnal or animal. For women, vampire stories can be fantasies of liberation, not victimisation.
While Ellen was empowered in her supernatural abilities by the professor, she ultimately met a grisly fate (Picture: AP)
In more recent years, the psychology of the genre has grown more complex, with books like Twilight reflecting the idea that obsession and lust restrained for the sake of love – as Edward does by refraining from drinking Bella’s blood – is even sexier than giving into carnal desires.
Problematic in its own right, this kind of narrative seems to suggest that a man who desperately wants to hurt you but doesn’t allow himself to is the epitome of desirable. Or perhaps less toxically, that sexual restraint is the mark of true adoration.
Does Nosferatu depict the female orgasm as something evil?
Willem Dafoe was particularly terrifying in the film (Picture: AP)
Eggers’ Nosferatu enters this ongoing discourse intelligently and with evident willingness to engage.
The film even takes it further than its predecessors, signaling that Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen finds literal sexual pleasure in her psychic connection with the demon she summoned in a moment of loneliness as a young girl.
Watching the male characters react with anger and fear as Ellen undulates and moans with pleasure when possessed makes it clear that Eggers is trudging through these themes knowingly and more overtly than in previous adaptations of the famous novel.
This gave me hope for a different ending to a familiar tale.
Nicholas Hoult starred as Thomas in the film (Picture: AP)
As my boyfriend struggled through the final 20 minutes of the film and I tried to soothingly rub his sweaty back, I was certain Ellen wouldn’t end up as another sacrificial lamb – dying to save the purity of all women and cleanse herself of the shame of sexual pleasure.
When she declared to her husband (Nicholas Hoult’s Thomas) that he’d never sexually satisfy her like Nosferatu could, I almost clapped. I thought that, somehow, we’d see her break free of the shackles of shame and reclaim her autonomy from both her husband and her decaying lover.
But, to my surprise, she did sacrifice herself to save the world and, on a symbolic level, the purity of women everywhere; ultimately allowing Nosferatu to suck her blood until the sunrise destroyed him. How disappointing.
The men in the film ultimately benefitted from Ellen’s suffering (Picture: Courtesy of Focus Features)
When asked about this ending, Eggers told The New York Times: ‘This gift and power that she has isn’t in an environment where it’s being cultivated, to put it mildly. It’s pretty tragic. Then she makes the ultimate sacrifice, and she’s able to reclaim this power through death.’
But is a dead woman ever an empowered one? Was Ellen ever free of her shame, or was she paying penance for the sin of seeking pleasure and companionship in a bleak world?
Eggers goes on to weakly defend this: ‘There’s a lot of literary criticism about Victorian male authors who have strong female characters with chthonic energy and understanding, who are then punished unconsciously by the male authors by making them die.’
Robert Eggers defended the ending of the film (Picture: Kevin Winter/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)
He continues: ‘While there’s certainly validity in that [critique], I’ve also read feminist literary criticism that says how it’s interesting that in this very repressed Victorian society, over and over again, this archetype that was needing to consummate itself in the patriarchal imagination is a woman who understands the darkness and the sexuality and the earth juju, and should be the savior of the culture.’
Interesting, maybe, but just another version of the maiden archetype; just another example of women as sacrificial lambs in men’s stories.
The stunning final shot in which a dead Ellen lies in the arms of Nosferatu leaves no doubt that this is her redemption: In willingly letting her own sexual urges kill her, she’s absolved of them.
Did my boyfriend break up with me? Did Arsenal win?
Whether you liked it or not, you have to admit the cinematography in Nosferatu was beautiful (Picture: Courtesy of Focus Features)
Already angry about the film’s feminist failings, I turned to my boyfriend as the credits began to roll: ‘Well…?’
He replied: ‘1-1, second half penalty.’
Me: ‘No, about the film?’
Him: ‘I thought it was good.’
Me: ‘You enjoyed it?!’
Him: ‘No.’
Later, over dinner, he explained that it had made him sick to his stomach several times and his skin crawl repeatedly, so for him, it had indeed been successful as a horror movie.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘But what did you think it was about?’
Confused, he responded through a mouth full of ramen: ‘Vampires?’
I explained my perception of the metaphor at the heart of the film as well as I could, earning only increasingly perplexed looks.
Emma Corrin was criminally underutilised in the film (Picture: AP)
‘But she didn’t sacrifice herself for anyone’s purity. She sacrificed herself so no one else would die?’
‘No, but like on a metaphorical level. What it symbolised. You know, how vampires represent fear about virginity and everything.’
‘They do?’ he responded, skeptical and very good at maths.
I struggled to articulate.
Eventually, he joked: ‘I thought it was a parable about not marrying someone that might have pledged their soul to a demon, and, honestly, you seem like the type, so I’m grateful for the warning.’
Some early audiences who watched the original Nosferatu in all its black and white glory in 1922 – when the possibilities of moviemaking were still mostly nascent – reportedly screamed and ran from the theater in genuine terror, struggling to convince their bodies that what they were seeing wasn’t real.
The film was strikingly atmospheric throughout (Picture: AP)
To be that alive to the transformative powers of cinema is almost certainly the better viewing experience compared to my cynical, overly cerebral approach.
As I consumed dumplings and laughed at my boyfriend’s observation that Lily-Rose Depp had taken ‘snot acting’ a bit far, I wondered if I would have enjoyed the film more if I had experienced it as he did: Two hours of pretty costumes and emetic vampires while desperately fighting the urge to flinch at jump scares or check the football score.
Maybe not every film has to be worthy of a liberal arts college class devoted to its political unpacking; maybe in overanalysing it, I robbed myself of the kind of full-body and sensorial cinematic experience he had.
Perhaps Nosferatu is such a hit because it’s earnestly – without the irony burnout or politicization characteristic of so much of 2020’s cinema – a good, genuinely spooky gothic horror movie featuring a succubus with a silly accent and an inexplicable Tom of Finland-style moustache.
And, afterall, wasn’t it worth the price of admission to hear my normally stoic partner yelp like a chihuahua for two hours? Isn’t that the real joy of cinema?
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