While I watched Kathy suck Buffy's soul out today in "Living Conditions," I couldn't help but think about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. For those that don't remember the movie too well, the dementors, who were stationed around Hogwarts to prevent Sirius Black from killing Harry, find Harry and Sirius by a lake in the Forbidden Forest. They quickly overcome Harry's weak patronuses, an attempt at protecting Sirius, and begin to suck out their souls, which take a similar wispy appearance to that of Buffy's. Although dementors can't "use" the souls of their victims as their own, which Kathy apparently can, it is incredibly hard to ignore the similarities between dementors and Kathy. I'm sure, given the attitude of Buffy and her friends towards demons, they would consider dementors to be evil and seek to destroy them. The soul, as we established in class today, is often used as a metaphor for humanity or "humanness. The loss of one's soul, and, by extension, was a central concern of the Gothic tradition, as "Living Conditions" and "Carmilla" both demonstrate. As Kathy reveals to Buffy, she needs her soul in order to avoid the notice of her demon family. When they came to retrieve Kathy, they would see she possessed one and assume she was human. Buffy then would've been taken down into their dimension. In many ways, Carmilla operates similarly to Kathy. Though she doesn't directly try to steal Laura's soul, by drinking her blood she takes away Laura's strength and will to live. Carmilla might as well have been sucking away Laura's soul bit by bit, for, as Harry learns, the dementor's kiss, which drains a person of their soul, leaves them an empty, weak shell with no sense of who s/he was. A similar thing happens to Carmilla's other victims, including the General's niece and the villagers around the castle belong to Laura and her father. As such, "Carmilla" reveals that blood, like a soul, makes one human.
Interesting connections between Buffy, Harry Potter, and Carmilla. I too thought of the dementors "kiss" when watching "Living Conditions." However, I had not yet drawn the comparison between Carmilla's taking of Laura's blood as a means by which she is trying to attain a certain "humanness." Very astute of you.
ReplyDeleteI am not a Harry Potter fan, I couldn't get past the second book, it just wasn't my taste, so I don't know much about the dementors, but I have to disagree about Carmilla's taking Laura's blood to be her trying to grasp her humanity. I think it is rather quite the opposite. In "Living Conditions," Kathy needs a human soul in order to appear human to her kin, so in this case, she is sucking to become human. Contrarily, in Carmilla's case, she isn't trying to gain humanity through blood sucking, but rather is trying to perpetuate the night-walking gene. Carmilla shows her desire to be human through her acting like a Countess and such, but the act of blood sucking is animalistic and shows her true demon side, and she is not hoping to achieve living human status by draining Laura of her blood. Rather, she is trying to bring the vampirical life to Laura. I guess it isn't that dramatic of a difference, as either way one girl is converting to become like the other, but I think in Kathy's case, Kathy wants to be human whereas I percieved Carmilla as wanting Laura to be a vampire. It would be more parallel had Kathy sucked out Buffy's soul so that she could take her back to her dimension with her. That makes sense, right?
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