(A)Sexual Perspective: "The Blood is the Life"

On November 13, 2020, the rock band Palaye Royale released a music video for their song, “Tonight Is the Night I Die.” In the video, the members of the band are vampires who attend a ball in 1853 per the title card. They feed on the unsuspecting female guests, stalking them throughout the mansion. Towards the end, the lead singer Remington Leith is dragged outside by vampire hunters and staked while the other members escape. The video’s cinematography and gore are pretty impressive and the storyline is easy to follow.

Vampires are my favorite supernatural creature. And no vampire is more popular than Dracula. From Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman to Gerald Butler, the Count has been reincarnated into many versions. Some terrifying. Others more comical. But all with the same lust for blood. I’ve seen every adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and almost every vampire film or TV show in between. I’m sure there are a few I missed but I’ll catch up eventually. When it comes to vampire fiction, I’ve read some of the most popular like Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. I’m always eager to read a new take on the ancient bloodsucker, but I’ll be honest, I prefer the tried and true rules compared to some of the more modern-day tweaks. While I commend the Twilight series for giving vampires a new life in young adult fiction, the sparkling in the sunlight was a bit after school special for my taste. Other series gave them their own unique liberties like tattoos, abilities, and vulnerabilities. While most paid off there were a few that didn’t hold up.

When I came out as asexual, I looked at my love of vampires in a different light. It didn’t change the way I feel about them. It did give me a good chuckle. Why? Because vampires — in most paranormal and supernatural studies — are considered the most sexual of night stalkers. The ritualistic taking of blood is directly related to the act of sex. Female virgins bleed the first time they have sex and since vampires are historically known to prey on virginal women, the connection makes sense. The allure of vampires lies in their appearance. They’re often described as beautiful, charming, and seductive. They can tempt even the most modest and conservative woman to expose her — ahem — neck.

Let’s look at Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. Heralded as one of the best films ever made — not just in the vampire genre — Coppola’s take on the infamous monster is also one of the most tragic love stories next to William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

Gary Oldman plays the Count who travels to London after Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) visits him to complete a real estate transaction. Harker’s betrothed, Mina (Winona Ryder) bears a striking resemblance to Dracula’s lost love. After trapping Harker with his three vampiric brides, Dracula goes in pursuit of Mina. Though she’s still in love with Harker, Mina cannot fight her strange attraction to the Count, ultimately letting him bite and turn her into a vampire. In the film’s climax, Dracula is fatally wounded and he releases the darkness from Mina. She becomes human again. There’s way more to the plot but that’s the gist. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it. The bad accents aside, it’s a hauntingly beautiful film.

Dracula, depending on the adaptation, is often portrayed as a charming, albeit ruthless killer. He kills men and transforms women into vampires. He’s toxic masculinity at its finest. The type of man you know is bad but is irresistible regardless. He has hypnotic powers that trick women into exposing their necks. Mina is different. Dracula doesn’t want to trick her. She is his true love and he doesn’t want to condemn her to darkness but he doesn’t want to lose her again. This conflict is at the heart of most vampire tales involving romance. Forbidden love creates the perfect dramatic tension. When a vampire loves a mortal and doesn’t want to turn her, it heightens the tension.

Rewatching Coppola’s Dracula now, I find myself relating to Mina’s struggle more than I used to. Dubbed the heroine of the novel and film, Mina embodies the virtues of the Christian faith. She’s pure, innocent but also resourceful. Stoker wrote her as such because he needed her to be strong enough to resist Dracula’s advances. Though she is eventually bitten, Mina uses her slow transformation to lead Harker, Van Helsing, and the other men to Dracula so they can kill him. Scholars and critics call Mina the “ultimate Victorian woman.” Her decisions serve the men around her. She is everything her friend Lucy isn’t. Flirtatious, sexualized, and beautiful. Think of Mina as an asexual. Though she is in a relationship with Harker she doesn’t talk about or express much interest in sex. She doesn’t jeopardize her role as the proper Godly woman because this would make her an easy target.

Mina’s most sexualized moment is when she and Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins) are holed up waiting for the others on route to Dracula’s castle. Mina temporarily succumbs to the transformation. She exposes more of her chest, her tone of voice changes, and she seduces Van Helsing. They kiss and when she almost bites him he continuously quotes from the Bible to subdue her.

Let’s look at it another way.

Mina is asexual and is happy to have Harker as a partner. She knows marrying him will not give her the most glamorous life, but she doesn’t mind. Like most asexuals, Mina’s closest friend, Lucy, seeks male attention. She is beautiful and sought after. Along comes Dracula, who for the sake of this analogy, is society. He represents our sexualized culture and the trap it sets for women. We’re meant to be chaste but not prudish. We’re meant to be pretty but not slutty. Dracula is able to seduce Lucy quickly because she is overtly flirtatious and sexual. She still accepts a marriage proposal and is prepared to be a good wife but she continues to tease the men she rejected. More so after she turns into a vampire. Mina’s seduction takes longer. Because Mina is more headstrong and set in her ways, society’s pressure doesn’t ensnare her as fast.

Asexuals are told our orientation is not real. We’re told if we just have sex we’ll realize what we’re missing and enjoy it. There are plenty of aces in committed relationships where they do have sex. These aces may change their orientation to demisexual, which means they feel sexual attraction towards someone they have emotionally bonded with. This person is often their spouse or partner and that attraction comes after months or even years of being together. There are even aces who like sex. Again, this is a very complex orientation. The right person doesn’t automatically make us sexual beings. A simple bite on the neck won’t make us want sex as much as the allosexual person. It doesn’t work like that.

In his book, Understanding Asexuality, Professor Anthony Bogaert writes, “Our very sexualized society often places pressure on asexual people to have sex, perhaps causing tension in some asexual people, if not outright resentment of sexual people.” Julie Sondra Decker goes one step further in her book, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, when she says, “The message asexual people get from society is that they do not exist and/or that they should get help to change themselves.” When Dracula meets Mina, he introduces her to a world of passion and sex. His love is more thrilling than Harker’s. The downside is she’d have to give up her values. In other words, society needs to suck our blood and remove the asexuality from it because once we get a taste for sex, we’ll be like everyone else.

But we don’t need charming vampires seducing us to the other side. Like Mina, we are true to ourselves and don’t care if society doesn’t understand us. Would it be nice if they did? Of course. Ace liberation is on the rise but slow going. In that regard, it also makes asexuals like vampires themselves. We’re misunderstood creatures, doing what we have to do to survive. Sometimes that means hiding our identities, concealing ourselves in the shadows, or keeping ourselves distant from people who could threaten us.

My asexuality hasn’t made me love vampires any less. In fact, it’s made watching films and TV series about them all the more exciting. What would happen if a vampire came across an asexual? What if their hypnotic powers didn’t work against us? Would the image be shattered? Would society have to hold a mirror up to itself and finally accept there is more to life than what they believe? Would a wooden stake to the heart kill the darkness and let the light back in?

Palaye Royale’s music video paints their vampires in the same realm as Dracula or Anne Rice’s Louis. They’re beautiful. A little pale. Hungry, lustful killers. History has proven time and again that being anything outside of “normal” is not acceptable. Conversion therapy, emotional manipulation, and straight-up beatings until people conform continue to take place today. All to make others in the image society demands they be. To be brave enough to stand up to a society that, for the most part, doesn’t accept anything different is the strongest kind of bravery. We sometimes let society think it has us in its grasp, only to use their very rhetoric against them. It isn’t always easy and we’re still in the thick of the fight, but slow progress is better than no progress. Whether we’re Mina or Dracula in certain scenarios, it will take more than a charming face to lure us away from who we truly are.