Imparting Distortion

An attraction to lust, mystery and dominance has remained a prevalent theme in literature and storytelling in general throughout history.  In the beginning of “Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires”, the third chapter in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, the author, Thomas C. Foster, discusses this entrancement that audiences have towards menacing characters.  He uses the classic tale of Dracula as an example. In tales, such as Dracula, and older man is found preying on younger, innocent girls.  When put in such a straightforward way it is, honestly, very creepy.  However, when glorified by making a dark tale of lust and mythical creatures, the creepiness factor leaves the cringing stage and delves into a curious lust.  In fact, even without the mythical side, simply the dark atmosphere and men asserting their male dominance over, essentially, young virgins, has drawn in audiences of all kinds.

A prime example that I’m led to think of is Attila the hun.  More specifically, the miniseries Attila made in 1999 starring, none other than, Gerard Butler.  A very attractive leading male is cast to play a vicious, ruthless, most likely disgusting hun.  A leader of a “clan” that kills men, women, and children mercilessly, yet will spare the life of a beautiful women IF he can, to put it bluntly, sleep with her.  And considering it would be a woman of a warring tribe whose family was killed by Attila, a more accurate term would be rape.  So, Attila would kill anyone in his way, except for a woman that he planned on raping; often times she would even be forced into marriage.  However, in this glorified telling of Attila’s life, women would overcome their despise and vengeful attitude that they fostered towards Attila, and… fall in love with him? Yes, these women being held as sex slaves for Attila would fall in love with him because of this seductive charm that exuded from the character.  What’s worse is that the audience actually routes for Attila.  An vile man that kill families in cold blood, steals their daughters, forces said daughter into marriage, and rapes her… we want this woman, this girl, to fall in love with her captor and her family’s murderer.  How sick and convoluted is that? One can accurately describe Attila as evil. Yet, he is still portrayed as this sexy, mysterious man.  Why?  As Foster explains it, “Evil has had to do with sex since the serpent seduced Eve…unwholesome lust, seduction, temptation, danger, among other ills.” (pg 13).  Men find comfort in this reassurance of their male dominance, believing that women have accepted and embraced a submissive, dependent position in relation to their male counterparts.  Women have found this alluring quality of the fictional leading male all too attractive and have been seduced by the dominant, dangerous portrayal. 

Main theme: Sexualized Exploitation 

My next question is: is this a primal quality of men and women? Or is it a societal brainwashing? Many will argue that it is primal, beginning with Eve and continuing on. However, I do not believe this perspective began at the beginning of time, but rather happened to be popular opinion when that particular version of the “beginning of time” was written. Why? Because it was a male’s way of ingraining their superiority into the minds of generations to come.  I believe that authority and power are primal desires, but I do not believe that acceptance of a submissive position is natural at all.  In fact, it seems to go against every human instinct.  Women have been raised to believe it is their duty to “take their place” next to their male partner, to rely on him, to forfeit their rights to him, and to become his inferior.

Now, to step off my feminist soapbox, and continue on with the remainder of the chapter…

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had already crossed my mind before reaching the mentioning of it in this chapter.  I thought of the musical, and how the most enthralling parts were those in which he was Mr. Hyde and was out fulfilling his dark side.  One of the most climactic scenes is when he kills Lucy, the main female character who also happens to be a prostitute.  The show is written in a way that makes this horrible act of selfishness and exploitation almost intimate.  That is where its most disturbing nature lies, and I believe that is what makes it so mesmerizing. 

Foster mentions Franz Kafka, and coincidentally the only two works of his that I have read. The Hunger Artist is the work that stuck with me more intensely.  A man in a cage who starves himself for the public’s entertainment, or so it seems.  He has had a forty day limit (a shout out to Christian influence which is talked about in a later chapter) put on his fasting because the impresario says the public will “lose interest” after that time.  The Hunger Artist is angered that there is a limit because it prevents him from beating his own record, and bettering himself.  Ultimately, the public does lose interest and no one cares for the Hunger Artist’s “talent” anymore.  He is found under the straw, near dead, in his cage.  In the end he confesses he never ate because he could not find any food that he liked. This last statement is imperative to the meaning of the story.  I’m still not positive as to its meaning, except perhaps if this separated him from society in such a way that he took it to the extreme turning it into a form of art to entertain those he was unable to connect to. Th

is could serve as a metaphor for Kafka, as the story does, an artist unable to reach a connection to humanity so he shares this torture with those he is distant from through writing.  In the context of this blog, the most important nature of this short story is the fact that the “vampire” is society all against one man.  Foster talks of the constant theme of exploitation that human kind is so fascinated by.  He says that a vampire must place his own need to remain undead over another human being’s life.  In the case of The Hunger Artist, Kafka goes as far to say the vampires of the world (everyone) place their short-lived entertainment interests over that of a man’s life.  Yet he does not struggle, he wishes to go further because he respects his craft as something more than entertainment, for him it is his self worth which is nothing to anybody else.  Finding entertainment in such torture takes away the humanity of his audience, similar to a vampire’s undead existence.  The Hunger Artist becomes complacent to this mistreatment as a victim of a vampire would, as they seek out their own victims.  However, the hunger artist preys on himself and his own livelihood.