Playing Vampire Cool: The Strange Postmodern Romances of Michael Almereyda’s Nadja (1994) | Adrian Martin
Summary: Vampires, Vamps and Va Va Voom | Adrian Martin <a name="adrian-martin" id="adrian-martin"><strong>Playing Vampire Cool: The Strange Postmodern Romances of Michael <em>Almereyda’s Nadja</em> (1994) and Abel Ferrara’s <em>The Addiction</em> (1995)</strong></a> Since at least the 1950s, popular culture has deployed various figures, types and tropes of the supernatural or fantastique – aliens, zombies, ghosts, vampires, body-snatchers, etc – as metaphors for common human and political problems: alienation, non-communication, social exclusion, and so on. From the 1980s, and the popular spread of postmodern cultural sensibilities, this metaphoric work on the supernatural (whether conscious or unconscious, latent or manifest) takes a highly ‘second degree’, self-conscious, and frequently comic (or camp), turn. Nadja and The Addiction, two important, ingeniously stylised films of the mid ‘90s by key figures of American independent cinema, re-introduce a definite seriousness into this cultural discussion. Vampiric romance comes to mean many things in these films: on the one hand, for Almereyda, a metaphor for ‘Generation X’ lifestyles and interpersonal relationships; for Ferrara, a vehicle to channel the unspeakable horrors of the 20th century. I want to look at the ambience of ‘vampire cool’ in these grandly self-conscious but deadly earnest movies, and in particular at how this is ‘played’ or performed by the actors, including Christopher Walken, Elina Lowensöhn and Lili Taylor. The talk will be illustrated by several film clips. Dr. Adrian Martin is Senior Research Fellow in Film and Television Studies, Monash University. He is the author of <em>Phantasms</em> (Penguin 1994), <em>Once Upon a Time in America</em> (British Film Institute 1997), <em>The Mad Max Movies</em> (Currency 2003), <em>Raúl Ruiz: sublimes obsesiones</em> (Altamira 2004) and <em>¿Que es el cine moderno?</em> (Uqbar 2008), and Co-Editor of <em>Movie Mutations</em> (BFI 2003) and the on-line film journal <em>Rouge</em> (<a href="http://www.rouge.com.au/">www.rouge.com.au</a>).
