Fascination of the Monster: Nosferatu (1922)

In Benshoff’s article, “The Monster and the Homosexual”, he writes

…the heterosexualized couple in these [horror] films is invariably banal and underdeveloped in relation to the sadomasochistic villain(s), whose outrageous exploits are, after all, the raison d’etre of the genre… As the titular stars of their own filmic stories, perhaps it is the monsters that the audience comes to enjoy, experience, and identify with; in many films, normative heterosexuality is reduced to a trifling narrative convention, one which becomes increasingly unnecessary ad outmoded as the genre evolves over the years.

An okay starting point if you ask me.

Nosferatu is the character of fascination in the movie. It’s evident by how many times I forgot, many that the vampire we see on screen is called Orlok, and not Nosferatu. It’s evident in how the only reason I remember the other characters, Nina, Renfield, and the husband, is because of how recently I re-watched the movie, not because they’re memorable. Heck, other than Orlock, the character names differ throughout different versions of the movie in one edition, the husband is Harker, the next he’s called Hutter with his wife Ellen. Even the movie can’t care to keep the heterosexual couple’s name straight.

I think this says a lot about both what we take as important from horror films and iconography.

When thinking to today, Nosferatu isn’t widely remembered as the story of how a plague was swept across the small town in Germany caused by a Nosferatu and a young couple, with the only way to end it was to sacrifice the one “pure,” “untainted” thing… a woman (that’s a whole other exploration). Rather today, I think most people either don’t know what Nosferatu is, know the SpongeBob episode where he was flickering the lights, or have a vague recognition of the name or vampire with pointy ears and pointy fingers. To be fair, it has been like, almost 100 years since the 1922 movie premiered, of course over time it’s meaning has shaped into our model today differently. Still, why has this smiling vampire thing stayed in the conversation for so long, further than the historical and cinematic importance. What makes these villains and monsters more endearing to our minds than the stereotyped hero and heroine? Because for how much we claim to reject and look down upon “the other,” there’s sure a strange obsession of it. Maybe fascination would be a better word?

Part of it, I think, is that the concept of monster is a flexible thing, the thing that makes Dracula, Nosferatu, all vampires as monstrous is the ability to unnaturally suck the life from something. Rather than the character itself the idea of the monstrous and the power that they have that can incite fear. That’s not to say that good character design doesn’t help, Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is scary partially because his seemingly lifeless eyes, face covered with presumably human skin, and his recognizable movements. Yet it’s just as scary to think of all the things that emerge from the idea that over there, in the rural country, is a horrific family of cannibals that could find you when you’re on the road. Nosferatu presents something similar, as soon as Orlock reaches the town from the country, a plague follows. So, it’s not just the whole monster thing, but what the monster could do to society and the consequences of being ignorant to the monster. An idea is much more translatable than a character, no matter how cool the character is, and when those ideas are still relevant, like the fear of the unknown provided by TCM and Nosferatu, it’s easier for that imagery to stick in one’s mind. Another part of this relevancy and fascination is the curiosity about the unknown. Yes, new things are scary, but isn’t there also something seductive about the unknown. Who knows what could lie beyond, something great? Terrible? Guess one needs to keep watching to find out. There are so many adventure type movies where the unknown turns out to be helpful, or amazing, or actually rather disappointing, and I believe in horror movies we’re given the scenario where the unknown results in bad things.

I think there’s also something to be said about this relationship between the heterosexual ideals and the monstrous couple. In Nosferatu, Nina and Harker act as any couple in love is supposed to, doting, caring, communicating, the whole shebang; but as soon as Nosferatu sees Nina’s picture, he’s enthralled, complimenting Harker on his beautiful wife and staring creepily. Throughout the movie we see Nina pine and worry for Harker, but upon his return she reads the Nosferatu book and in later gives herself up to Orlock to save the city. There’s this kind of, monstrous relationship. established between Nina and Orlock, where he preys upon her and it’s framed like Nina is a victim, however she chooses to open the window and let Orlock in. However, it’s also possible that to Nina, when she reads the book, she is such the pure, ideal, untainted woman who just, knows in her heart, that the right thing to do is self sacrifice for the greater good (I hope you imagined the big quotation marks where I did). That’s entirely possible, but multiplicity of readings is possible to. If there was no choice involved, then why even include her inner turmoil regarding opening the window? Why not have Harker read the phrase saying that a woman pure of heart is the only way to end the Nosferatu, and then have Nosferatu just appear and prey on Nina, batta boom, batta bing, movie over, same sacrifice, but now Nina had no agency, there’s no inkling of a mutual relationship to be seen.

This kind of reading complicates the norm, and this is just one of many ways to queer the film like how Benshoff suggests. This multiplicity of readings allows audiences, in my opinion, to believe what they want in a film, to impose their own narrative which may or may not adhere to the most common reading. I think this ambiguity in what to take from the film is another way we can become fascinated with the monsters, as by placing whatever we want to see, the message we create may stick harder, and why we still remember Nosferatu.

It’s getting kind of late and I need to turn this in, but other things I want to look into are how vampires have changed to fit the times, especially in regards to their physical appearance. Count Orlock with his beady eyes is QUITE different than the 1992 Bram Stroker’s Dracula’s vampires, and different from Only Lovers Left Alive from 2014, or my absolute favorite vampire movie, What We Do In The Shadows (2014). There are all these other extrapolations and abstractions of vampires that also say interesting things about society and cultural shifts, and yes, I’m including Twilight here because it happened, it was a thing, and there were attractive, sparkling vampires that were romanticized galore. Also, I think another interesting thing to really think about is this monstrous relationship, and how it’s evolved over time. Heck, look at Creature from the Black Lagoon, and compare it to The Shape of Water, like, what happened in society for a shift as such to happen?

Regardless, I'm at least glad to have this weird smiling image of Orlock, thanks SpongeBob.