The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News October 1, 2004

Off the Cuff: Pat Day

Pat Day: Cinema studies chair and vampire hunter.
 

William Patrick Day, OC ’71, is the director of cinema studies and a professor of English. His interests include film, Buffy, literary theory, vampires, popular culture, Transylvania and 19th and 20th century literature.

What got you interested in the subject of vampires?

I can’t recall a time I wasn’t interested in horror stories, but as with a lot of people of my generation, I really got interested in vampire stories because of the 1960s TV daytime serial Dark Shadows, which had a vampire, Barnabas Collins, as the main character. A group of us used to watch the series here at Oberlin when I was an undergraduate. As I recall there was a TV in Wilder Main Lounge where we’d sometimes meet. In addition to Dark Shadows, this was also a time when the British horror movies from Hammer Studios were coming out and the older, early 1930s Universal Studios horror films with Bela Lugosi were appearing on TV. Dark Shadows was particularly striking, though, simply because it was so unlike anything else on TV — particularly daytime TV — at that time.

What makes them so psychologically potent? Is it a sexual thing, an obsession with violence, etc.?

To be honest I think the underlying appeal of the vampire is their immortality. The interest in the vampire as a sexual metaphor comes and goes; it’s very important in some stories, less so in others. Because they are immortal the vampire has the one thing all humans want and can’t have. I think the vampire as an image of sexuality, and violence follows from the idea that they are liberated from the one thing that binds all human beings; death.

Are there any conflicting perspectives in your book? What two examples provide the greatest contrast?

The book is really structured around two extremes.The first is what I called the “Vampire Liberation Front;” stories that made the vampire into an image of what it really means to be human. In these stories — Anne Rice’s novels are a good example — the vampire isn’t so much the opposite of the human, but a heightened version of humanity. The final chapter, “The Return of the Slayer,” discusses stories in which the vampire slayer moves back to the central focus of vampire stories.

As a fan I have to ask...what is the specific significance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a major example of the return of the slayer. There was an episode which clearly parodied the Anne Rice style of vampire story, in which a number of people who thought vampires were romantic figures are set up to be lunch. I think Buffy was an extraordinarily well-written and acted series. It’s greatest strengths were the fact that Joss Whedon kept the characters changing and developing throughout the series and that he was never afraid to change the tone and the mood within a single episode. And, maybe most important, he took the issues the show dealt with seriously and believed that a story about somebody named Buffy the Vampire Slayer could deal with serious themes.

What will your upcoming lecture be about and when is it going to happen?

The lecture is going to focus on what it means to take a piece of popular culture like the vampire story seriously.
 
 

   

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