so 'Byzantium' (2012) dir. Neil Jordan is based on 'A Vampire Story' by Moira Buffini. this was a play intended for staging by youth theatre troupes, and the following comment was included in the production notes:
Carmilla being an inspiration for this play is...so interesting.
one plot thread revolves around the immortal-teenage vampire Ella/Eleanor and her romance with a human boy named Frank. Claire/Clara is her maybe-mother-who-is-a-vampire, maybe-human-big-sister (it's ambiguous until the very end, whether they're actually vampires), and she has this interaction with Frank where she comments on his relationship with Ella:
the wording is ambiguous - maybe Claire means "use up" in the more conventional sense - but when read through the lens of vampirism, it has a somewhat subversive framing where Ella occupies the role of the seductive "man" / vampire (traditionally a male-coded position) whose love for her helpless victim-lover Frank (traditionally a female-coded role) is genuine but also part of an established trend of hunger and consumption that leads to destruction.
[of course, there is another layer to this, in which the vampires' preying on men to sustain their existence is in some ways a subversion of and retribution for the exploitation and violence they experienced from men in the past.].
the biggest difference between Ella/Eleanor and Claire/Clara is that the former (the daughter/Carmilla figure) is said to love her prey (side note: interesting that it is potentially framed as more "moral", to love someone before you kill them...). this is incredibly reminiscent of the dynamic between Carmilla and Laura in Carmilla:
"Think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die--die, sweetly die--into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love."
[...] Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so."
[...] "You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish...You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after."
Frank's fate takes a very different (if slightly ambiguous) direction in the play versus the movie (Ella and Eleanor are different aspects of the same character, if this excerpt below is confusing):
this moment brings to mind the same scene, reproduced hundreds of times across different movies, of the amorous male vampire and the female damsel caught in a bite that has all the imagery of a kiss:
with Ella/Eleanor's age (or seeming age) adding an element of innocence to the selfish repetition of this cycle - her emotions appear to be genuine, and her attachment to Frank (and rebellion against Claire/Clara) is such that it feels surprising when we read how calmly and deliberately she stages this final conversation with him. it feels like an inevitability; it feels like this was the only way she ever planned to end it. it shakes our perception of her and of their relationship.
ultimately, it brings us back to the predatory vampire, and in particular to Roger Ebert's review of 'Noseratu' (1979):
Dracula’s shame as he exchanges intimacies and elegant courtesies with you is that tonight or sometime soon he will need to drink your blood...The need to know what Dracula is saying at any given moment is bourgeois affectation. Dracula is always saying, ‘I am speaking with you now as a meaningless courtesy in preface to the unspeakable event that we both know is going to take place between us sooner rather than later.’
Ella's conversations with Frank weren't meaningless - in fact, they appear to be very meaningful and important to her - but they were still a preface, in the end.
their relationship (victim-lover, predator-prey) has a different dynamic to that of many female vampires we've seen who prey on men and has a more tender and loving dimension (so often the horror of the female vampire is supposed to come from her subversion of the feminine ideal, after all).
all of this to say that there is a lot to like and a lot to think about in the way that Ella/Eleanor's relationship with Frank is explored, and i can see the thematic connections with Carmilla very clearly...and i do genuinely love this play...
...but i will also always find it a bit strange and disappointing that the author drew such strong inspiration from Carmilla (of all texts!) and yet chose to depict a male victim-lover instead. there's such an underexplored intimacy and subversion to Laura and Carmilla's relationship (separate from the more obvious misogynistic and lesbophobic subversions that Sheridan was building on). the power dynamic is different (and more unexpected, in some ways), the implicit relational trust and expectations are different (and broken in unique ways), and the romantic elements are sublimated into different actions and experiences.
like, i'm always living here:
and there are a lot of potential reasons for the decision to give Ella a male love interest (early-2000s homophobia or censorship, a well-meaning desire to avoid homophobic depictions, wanting to develop a more straight-forward foil between Claire and Ella, a focus on heterosexual gender dynamics via vampirism, etc), but it must have been a conscious choice. so like i said, it's so interesting...
Freedom. Freedom and Democracy. They are the things worth dying for. We must never, never stop resisting those who would take them from us. And when they have been taken we will fight until we get them back.
The act of resistance is our defining act as human beings. To say "No, I will not stand for that." I will not colude, collaborate, negotiate, I will not compromise. To say to the enemies of freedom "You are wrong." To resist, whatever the cost.
