Vampire MILFs

Dear old mom. In our culture, the mother is generally a very wholesome concept–think Norman Rockwell paintings and June Cleaver. Often, mothers are seen as the key figure of a home, being referred to as homemakers, housewives, and stay-at-home moms. For those of us in our culture who actually had this presence in our homes growing up in addition to being bombarded with this socially accepted (and, in many ways, expected) role, the figure of Darla in “Buffy” is extremely uncanny.

Darla is Angel’s mom. She brought him into this life as a vampire and helped “raise” him to be a powerful and violent vampire. In many ways, the way Darla interacts with Angel is reminiscent in how a mother would interact with her son. She seems to truly care for him (as much as an amoral, supernatural being can, anyway), saying she misses him. She’s intensely jealous and (for lack of a better word) belligerent towards Angel’s new love interest, Buffy, falling into the overly jealous and protective mother stereotype (world’s worst mother-in-law?). There is also the sort of bizarre (as well as uncanny) “family” that Angel was formally a part of–the master vampire as the patriarch, Darla as the matriarch, and then perhaps Angel (who the master vampire said he had wanted as his right hand guy) and the little boy as the kids. Darla even has a sweet, almost motherly voice–very calm and in a high, breathy register. Also, technically, there was penetration that began the process of Angel’s conception as a vampire, but that leads us straight into the total uncanny-ness of the motherly role Darla plays.

First of all, that penetration occurs between Darla and Angel in a variety of ways. There is the initial vampire fangs to victim penetration, followed by any number of sexual penetrations between Angel and Darla. This is not how the typical mother-son relationship plays itself out. It directly feeds into Freud’s Oedipal complex, except, instead of the son, Angel, being forced to suppress his desire for his mother, he, as a supernatural creature who seems to dwell only within the Id, he’s able to feed this desire to both his and Darla’s hearts content. Interestingly, we, in our discussions over Freud’s Oedipal complex, never really touched on whether or not the mother desires any sort of sexual encounter with her son. It’s clear Darla does in her continuous attempts to seduce Angel, both with sex and with human blood (when she comes to his home and when she bites Buffy’s mom), and this only adds to her being uncanny. Most of all, Darla is dangerous, most definitely to Buffy, Angel’s love interest, but also quite possibly to him as well. While Darla desired Angel at the time, her volatile behavior suggests that her feelings towards could potentially changed, given enough fear for her own survival. So, of course, mothers in the homely sense, are not dangerous. In fact, they are quite the opposite, but Darla, as the uncanny mother, turns that idea on its head.

This idea of the unhomely/uncanny mother is seen in almost the exact same way in another vampire show, True Blood. Bill, the Angel equivalent for the show, also has a maker/mother who harbors sexual desires for him, and in the same way Darla went around with Angel, wreaking havoc and teaching him just how bad a vampire can be, Bill and his maker had the same relationship. When Bill decided he was tired of being this creature of evil and destruction, he left his maker, but years later he is still dogged by her. The difference here, however, is that Bill doesn’t seem to repress his desire for her because he senses the wrongness of their incestuous relationship, but because he doesn’t like her as a person (she really is a pain in the ass) and because he’s found love with Sookie Stackhouse. I think this is an interesting way to look at vampires (or any sort of creature who typically dwells solely in the id), because Bill, who is considered to be a vampire with a conscience, still doesn’t toe the same moral line as his human counterparts. I probably would have written about this if it hadn’t been months since I last was able to watch True Blood.

The Unhomely in the Homey

Freud speaks extensively about the homely becoming unhomely or uncanny which is seen a lot in the Buffy episode “Angel.” It is seen not only within the episode by by the audience but the word “home” is greatly used in unhomely manner. Buffy, to begin with, is already uncanny because it is a world where people coexist with vampires and other supernatural beings and this seems to be a normal factor for Buffy and the Scooby gang. Of course as the show progresses over the seasons, more and more people come to the realization of the supernatural living around them and Sunnydale, not only the home for the people in town, becomes unhomely by the new realization.

The main focus is not the entire series but the episode “Angel.” The most homey thing in the entire episode is Buffy’s house which is a normal cozy home but due to the continuous setting of the episode is set in almost all darkness. This gives the house a feeling of being unhomely. Darkness is normally seen as being frightening and many children find the darkness to hide the boogey man and other scary monsters. In Buffy’s room when she comes back from school after leaving Angel in her room all day, when they are reunited she calls to Angel in her dark bedroom and he slowly walks out of the shadows to her. This scene shows not only the representation of the “monster” hiding in the shadows but with no real illuminating light in the room, it makes the bedroom seem unhomely. Another scene that shows this is when Darla attacks Buffy’s mom in the Summer’s dark kitchen. What once seemed like cozy and a nice homey place becomes  uncanny and a place that was once considered safe has now become unsafe, uncanny, and potentially dangerous.

Darla in the previous scene, where she attacks Buffy’s mother, she turns to Angel, while tempting him with Buffy’s mother’s blood, she turns to Angel and welcomes him home (in her vampire face). Unlike the traditional home that Freud refers to, Darla welcomes home to his vampire lifestyle by using temptation to trigger his inner instincts. The use of the world “home” and the way it was projected to Angel, while they were both in their most primal stage (their vampire state of mind) making the world seem unhomely to its audience. What is normally seen as a greeting seems like an ultimatum to Angel.

In the episode the audience is introduced to the Master, an old dangerous vampire, and the anointed one, a small innocent child which represents pure evil. The Master mentions how the anointed one, Darla, and himself are “one big happy family.” This is rather uncanny because when someone thinks family they think a safe, happy home involving love. This is almost the complete opposite. For one thing, the anointed one is represented through what seems an innocent child and his family is considered to be two rather old vampires. The only setting that even represents a “home” is the Master thought of as the “father” figure, Darla, the “mother” figure, and the evil child. In all retrospect this is a family, but their “home” is an underground dark cave in the ground.