chiascuro

As we've discussed in class, one of the most striking features of the show Buffy is the contrast between the "ditzy valley girl" heroine and the dark, grotesque elements of the world around her. Aesthetically speaking, it's a pretty pleasing concept: what's cooler than a blonde high-schooler sassing up a league of eldritch abominations? But I think it also hits a bit deeper.

It's really pretty disturbing, clashing two ends of the spectrum like that. Take for example Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. It's a pretty wacked movie in general, but the scene that stands out is when Alex, the protagonist, brutally rapes a random stranger while singing, of all things, Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain." I'm hardpressed to think of another movie scene that so effectively enmeshes something so horrifying and something so (supposedly) cheery. The effect on the viewer is profoundly unsettling... perhaps because it somehow makes the horror aspect more personal, more intimate. Similarly, I think that's why all of those gruesome fairy tales (Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella) continue to endure, to fascinate generation after generation -- they tap into some deeper, shadowy consciousness that captures our childlike imaginations and continues to enthrall us even as adults.

Look at the setting of Carmilla, for example: "Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies." It sounds like a fairy kingdom. And while, yes, it's a very lonely place, ripe for disquiet and horror, there's a certain beauty about it that makes the aforementioned horror that much more... horrifying.

Also, can we talk about how, in this strand of the mythos, vampires bite into the chest, and not into the neck? I think you could look at it two ways (or both): either it seems ~sensual~ and increases the homoeroticism of the story, or it seems analogous to a baby nursing from its mother's breast. Except it's not milk. You know.