Of Mice, Men, and Vampires

“A man’s voice called from up the river, and another man answered.

‘Go on,’ said Lennie.

George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the

ground again.

‘Go on,’ said Lennie. ‘How’s it gonna be. We gonna get a little place.’

‘We’ll have a cow,’ said George. ‘An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens .

. . . an’ down the flat we’ll have a . . . . little piece alfalfa—’

‘For the rabbits,’ Lennie shouted.

‘For the rabbits,’ George repeated.

‘And I get to tend the rabbits.’

‘An’ you get to tend the rabbits.’

Lennie giggled with happiness. ‘An’ live on the fatta the lan’.’

‘Yes.’

Lennie turned his head,” (Steinbeck)

and saw that in a flash of light a great stone castle had appeared.

Lennie hesitated. “George, is that castle part of the fatta the lan?”

George turned his head too and noticed the strange citadel. “Why, yes Lennie I do believe it is.”

And as the man’s voice up the river grew louder, the two friends hastened towards the fortress and into the impending darkness.

But seriously, it just doesn’t work anywhere else.

One of the aspects I like about the Gothic is how all things brooding and ominous can just appear from seemingly nowhere and make perfect sense. What’s more, they seem absolutely essential to the plot. For example, in Dracula we see this with the strange flashes of blue light on Harker’s carriage ride, and in Stoker’s descriptions of the doom and gloom of Translyvania. In “Buffy vs. Dracula” we see it in the opening scene with the flash storm at the beach, as well as the appearance of the castle in Sunnydale. In this instance, Riley is taken aback when he sees the it for the first time. However, he and Giles then begin a series of sarcastic dialogue that makes the edifice seem absolutely obvious.

It is in situations like these that the Gothic offers the distinct opportunity for the writer/director to mess with the minds of its followers. To set up a situation for something mundane, look out the window, and see a man scaling the wall like a reptile. To me, the Gothic is a twisted commentary on society. These distortions are all part of the idea of inversion we keep returning to in class. As a commentary on a commentary, “Buffy vs. Dracula” is Joss Whedon’s way of inverting the Gothic onto itself. On the first level, if the viewer has any knowledge of the Gothic, then they are in on the joke. But the second level operates on traditional Gothic themes, surprising the viewer with its contortions. Without these twists and turns, books like Dracula and episodes like “Buffy vs. Dracula” would simply die. Or rather, un-die.

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.