October Fangs

The following comments were not pre-planned for October, but by chance they are seasonally appropriate. A couple months ago after finishing Matt Haig’s scifi novel The Humans (see my August 6 review) I opened his earlier book The Radleys. The Radleys are a middle class suburban family who are Abstainers – not from alcohol but from blood. They are vampires, you see. I finished the book in a few days, but decided to pair a review with one of a TV series with similar night creatures. The critically well-regarded series Angel will be 20 years old in 2019. Somehow during all those years I ignored it thoroughly, but, in the way that one thought leads to another, The Radleys brought it to mind and prompted a belated look. The series lasted 5 seasons, and there are limits to my binge watching tendencies, so only now am I done with it.

First, The Radleys. I know what you’re thinking. Actually, I don’t but I can guess: “Not another book about vampires. You know it’s been done.” Yes it has, but this is worth a read anyway. Haig’s vampires crave blood the way an addict craves a drug, but they don’t actually need it. They lose all their special abilities (including supernormal longevity) if they abstain, but some do anyway for ethical reasons. There is an Abstainer’s Handbook that reads like a 12-step program. Abstainers can live more or less normal lives and even go out in daytime if they wear enough sunblock.

Peter and Helen Radley left the London nightlife behind in order to raise a family. They are Abstainers residing in the Yorkshire village of Bishopthorpe on Orchard Lane. They raise no suspicions from the neighbors of being anything other than a bit quirky. Their teen children Rowan and Clara are vampires, too, but they don’t know it. In fact they don’t know anything about the family vampirism; they have been told that their photosensitivity is an inherited medical condition, as in a sense it is. Peter and Helen maintain this prevarication even as Clara makes herself sick with a vegan diet that is unhealthy to vampiric metabolism. When a drunk boy gets pushy with Clara during her walk back from a party, however, her fangs come out for the first time. Instinct takes over. She kills the boy, drains his blood, and is physically and mentally transformed. The lives of the whole family are upended by Clara’s act of homicide, by the subsequent family revelations, and by the sudden risk of exposure. Peter Radley calls on his emphatically non-abstaining brother Will to help with the family crisis, apparently unaware that Will and Helen share a secret about Rowan. Will, however, attracts the interest of authorities and of a vigilante.

The Radleys’ embattled vampiric drives are described not just in the terms of addiction but (not coincidentally) much in the same way Freud describes the animal drives we all have and repress in order to be civilized. (See Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud.) We do this with varying degrees of success, and if we are too successful we make ourselves sick, as did the Radleys for so many years. The adult Radleys encounter crises, choices, and betrayals of a sort that are largely ordinary, if one allows for the vampire element, and these things get their due satiric treatment. The true focus of the novel, though, is the struggle faced by Rowan and Clara with adolescence, told through the metaphor of vampirism. Their young lives are enhanced by discovering and accepting what they are, but at the same time this poses dangers. It is one thing to know oneself and another fully to act out all one's desires. Part of growing up, they learn, is “knowing which secrets need keeping.”

Haig has written a funny and clever book. Thumbs Up.

Next up: Angel (1999-2004), created by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt, stars David Boreanaz, the fellow from Bones and Seal Team. Boreanaz’ first big break came in 1997 when he was cast as the 240-year-old vampire Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003). Angel, unlike other vampires, has a soul due to a curse by Gypsies back in 1898. A “soul” in Whedon terms is a moral compass, so Angel is as capable of regret and self-recrimination as normal people. (Normal vampires are guilt-free sociopaths.) Accordingly, he chooses not to hunt people for dinner anymore, which on the whole makes him a better date for Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) than otherwise would be the case. In the final episode of Buffy Season 3 in 1999, Angel leaves Buffy and Sunnydale for Los Angeles – and for his own spin-off TV show Angel.

It is not necessary to be a fan of Buffy to watch Angel, but it helps. Buffy fans already understand the backstories of several characters. Cordelia and Wesley, characters in the first three seasons of Buffy, are regulars on Angel, and there are appearances (some in flashbacks, some in crossover episodes) by other Buffy characters including Darla, Drusilla, Spike, Buffy, Faith, and Willow. Though the two shows take place in the same Buffyverse, there are differences in how the para-world is presented in each. In Sunnydale only a handful of people are aware that vampires, werewolves, demons, and the like are real; Buffy and her small circle of allies therefore are pretty much on their own in combatting them. In Los Angeles the demons are much more in the open and a sizeable minority of people are aware of them and interact with them regularly. (There is a cheap shot at L.A. in there somewhere.) Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley operate a detective agency specializing in cases where those paranormal interactions with humans go bad. Whereas Buffy is a show that metaphorically is about growing up, Angel is about the ongoing trials of life once you’ve done that. What if you never watched an episode of Buffy? You’ll miss “in” references, but the show still works on its own; only rarely (as in the season 1 “Five by Five” episode when Faith comes to town) would an absence of familiarity with Buffy make a character somewhat puzzling.

Joss Whedon likes to genre-bend and genre-blend. Angel is a film-noir/horror/comedy. It’s actually not the first such mix in a TV series: Kolchak: The Night Stalker back in the 1970s had just this combination. What Kolchak didn’t have was character evolution, multi-episode story arcs, and meaningful themes. (Kolchak had more of a “monster of the week” format.) Joss Whedon just can’t help waxing philosophical even at his silliest, and his taste for existentialism informs Angel as it does Buffy. The show is better for it. There also are thoughts about corporatism and how it affects private ethics in the evil law firm (the reader can decide if that is redundant) Wolfram and Hart. The show can be sentimental, gruesome, and funny at the same time. Its characters range from baldly credible to colorfully fanciful – including a demon who owns a karaoke bar. The result isn’t Buffy, but it’s not bad. Yet another Thumbs Up.

Vampires persist in the lore of our popular culture and don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. The prevailing explanation is that they allow us to express our hidden impulses through them. The sexual aspects of vampires have been understood from the beginning – bisexual, one might note, since they are open-minded about their victims. In much of the 19^th and 20^th centuries guilt over fantasies that were at variance with traditional morality could be lessened by employing fictional creatures to explore them. In the 21^st century guilt about violating PC morality (just as puritanical in its own way) can be assuaged in the same manner. In a broader sense, we can see vampires and other monstrous creatures as our own dark sides. Carl Jung talked about the shadow: the part of the personality that is wild, dark, and savage. Jung believed that only by acknowledging and coming to terms with one’s shadow – rather than just denying its existence or projecting it on to others – can one truly be healthy. The Radleys and Angel manage to do it in fiction. Perhaps they can help us do it for real.

Stevie Lange – Remember