Macron says Morrison lied to him about AUKUS submarine deal

French President Emmanuel Macron said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison lied to him over the cancellation of a submarine building contract in September, and indicated more was needed to be done to rebuild trust between the two allies.

 French President Emmanuel Macron looks on at the end of the annual Bastille Day military ceremony on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, on July 14, 2020. - France holds a reduced version of its traditional Bastille Day parade this year due to safety measures over the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) pandemic, and with the country's national day celebrations including a homage to health workers and others fighting the outbreak. 

(Photo by Ludovic Marin / POOL / AFP) 

Story by Reuters and Angus Watson, CNN 

Macron and Morrison were in Rome for the G20 summit, the first time they had met since Australia scrapped a multibillion dollar submarine deal with France as part of a new security alliance with the United States and Britain announced in September.

The new security alliance, dubbed AUKUS and which could give Australia access to nuclear-powered submarines, caught Paris off guard and saw the French ambassadors recalled from Washington and Canberra amid accusations France had been betrayed.

"I have a lot of respect for your country. I have a lot of respect and a lot of friendship for your people. I just say when we have respect, you have to be true and you have to behave in line and consistently with this value," Macron told a group of Australian reporters who had traveled to cover the G20.

Asked if he thought Morrison had lied to him, Macron replied "I don't think, I know."

Morrison, speaking later at a media conference on Sunday in Rome, said he had not lied and that he had previously explained to Macron that conventional submarines would no longer meet Australia's needs.

"I was very clear that what was going to be provided to us was not going to meet our strategic interests, and there was still a process we were engaged in, and we then engaged in, over the months that followed. And then we communicated to him (Macron) our ultimate decision," Morrison said.

Morrison repeated the acquisition of at least eight nuclear propelled submarines in a new deal with the US and UK was preferable to the 2016 agreement with France.

"The Australian Government secured this, something that no previous government has been able to secure in 50 years, and this has well-positioned Australia to defend ourselves into the future. So I make no apologies for getting the right result from Australia. And we knew it would be a difficult decision."

Asked about how his administration would move forward with France, Morrison said that his administration has begun to fix relations on projects of shared and mutual interest, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, but admitted that "these things take time."

On Friday, US President Joe Biden said he had thought France had been informed of the contract cancellation before the AUKUS pact was announced, and said that the handling of the new security agreement had been clumsy.

Are Arab Americans people of color? Mayor vote raises issue

BOSTON (AP) — Are Arab Americans people of color?

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The question has been bubbling beneath the surface of Boston's historic mayor's race, where one of the two candidates, Annissa Essaibi George, has found herself challenged on the campaign trail about her decision to identify as one.

On Tuesday, Essaibi George faces off against fellow Boston City Councilor and Democrat Michelle Wu, a daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. Whoever wins will be the first woman and first person of color elected to the city's top political office.

Essaibi George, who describes herself as Polish-Arab American, acknowledges she hasn’t always identified as a person of color — in part because Arab Americans don’t fit neatly into the boxes Americans are typically asked to check off on official forms, including on the U.S. Census.

“We have found ourselves in this weird position where there isn’t a place for us to identify as Arab," Essaibi George said in a recent interview on GBH News. “It’s unfortunate that Arabs don’t have that proverbial box to check and it is important for the Arab community to be counted, to be seen, to be heard and to be recognized."

She has identified as a person of color during her years in elected office, Essaibi George said.

Essaibi George has frequently talked about the obstacles faced by her father, a Muslim immigrant from Tunisia, and the challenges he believed she would also face as his daughter. Her mother, a Catholic, immigrated from Poland.

In a city like Boston with its long history of electing white men, particularly of Irish and Italian descent, a girl with an Arab name could never be successful in politics, her father warned, with no chance of becoming mayor.

But the 47-year-old Essaibi George, a lifelong Boston resident and former public school teacher, went on to win an at-large seat on the Boston City Council in 2015 and came in second in a September preliminary election, setting up the head-to-head match with Wu, who won the preliminary.

Although she identifies as a person of color, Essaibi George acknowledges her physical presence — including a heavy Boston accent — allows her a certain amount of privilege as “a woman who can maneuver in different rooms in different spaces."

She has also said that while her father's family came from North Africa, she doesn't consider herself African American, a term meant to refer to Black people.

The question of whether Arab Americans should identify as people of color extends to the Arab American community itself.

Nuha E. Muntasser, who describes herself as an Muslim Arab American or Muslim Libyan American, said she cringes whenever she has to check the box for “white” instead of being given the option of identifying as North African or Middle Eastern.

“I do not identify as white and it’s frustrating when I have to identify as that,” she said.

The choice is all the more discouraging because many Arab Americans don’t share the same experience as white Americans, she said. That sense of otherness can be even more pronounced among Arab or Muslim American women who wear the hijab, she said.

“People like me, we have to prove our Americanness,” said the 26-year-old, who lives in Sudbury, 45 miles west of Boston, and serves on the town’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee.

Muntasser also hesitates to call herself a person of color. “Because I understand the difference of what Black women experience in this country, I am not comfortable with saying I am a person of color,” she said.

The lack of a box to check for Arab Americans can also limit economic opportunities, said former Cambridge City Councilor Nadeem Mazen, an Arab American and an American Muslim.

That’s particularly relevant when dealing with possible business contracts, especially with the federal government.

“When you’re a minority- or veteran- or women-owned business, that’s important,” Mazen said. “People make a lot of assumptions about which boxes you can check.”

Mazen, who lives in Cambridge, said he doesn’t look like a Black person but also isn’t seen as white, occupying what he described as a kind of moving window.

“I don’t go around saying I’m a person of color or not a person of color, but I know someone like me faces a lot more discrimination than your average upper class white Cambridge resident,” Mazen said.

A pivotal moment in the trajectory of the lives of many Arab Americans came with the Sept. 11 attacks, with many still feeling singled out and under suspicion 20 years later.

A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted ahead of this year’s 9/11 anniversary found that 53% of Americans have unfavorable views toward Islam, compared with 42% who have favorable ones.

Mohammed Missouri, 38, executive director of Massachusetts-based Jetpac, a nonprofit seeking to build political power among American Muslims, said earlier generations of Arab Americans tended to focus on assimilation rather than leaning into their identity.

“With younger people in the Arab American community, you’re seeing people whose goal is to build actual power and not just power for themselves but for the community at large,” said Missouri, an Arab American. “Younger Arab Americans are very proud of their heritage and see that as integral to their identity as Americans.”

Missouri also said that while he’s forced to check “white” on Census forms — defined as “all individuals who identify with one or more nationalities or ethnic groups originating in Europe, the Middle East or North Africa” — he doesn’t consider himself white.

Whether Arab Americans fall into the broader category as persons of color is still a matter of debate within the community he said, adding that some “white-passing Arab Americans” prefer to identify as white.

“It’s going to be a fluid conversation we’re going to keep having,” he said.

The city’s previous elected mayor — Democrat Marty Walsh — stepped down to become U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joe Biden.

Walsh was replaced on an acting basis by Kim Janey, sworn in March 24 as Boston’s first female and first Black mayor.

Steve Leblanc , The Associated Press

Enrolment drops in N.L.'s oil-focused engineering programs; students in it for change

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Newfoundland and Labrador's post-secondary institutions are seeing a steep drop in enrolment in oil-focused engineering programs as the province's offshore oil industry tries to claw its way out of a downturn.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

And many of those who have enrolled say they did so because they want to bring change to the industry in the era of climate change.

"What I would like to do is to make it more sustainable," said Brooklyn Hollett, a fourth-year undergraduate student in process engineering at Memorial University in St. John's. "To make it so there's less emissions and it's not so hard on the environment."

Figures from the College of the North Atlantic show the number of students in its programs geared toward the oil industry — petroleum and chemical process engineering technology — declined steadily from 157 students in 2016-2017 to 73 in 2020-2021. The school did not provide data for this academic year.

At Memorial, the number of students completing a master's degree in oil and gas engineering went from 56 in 2016-17 to 69 in 2017-18, before falling to 30, then 20, then 19 in successive years.

Just two students are enrolled in the university's oil and gas engineering PhD program this year, down from 11 students in 2016-2017.

"With COVID, oil took a big downturn, so I think people were hesitant to put all their eggs in that basket," Hollett said in a recent interview, adding that she's one of 15 students in her fourth-year class.

Her program allows students two paths: one with a strict focus on petroleum, the other with a wider scope that includes sustainability methods, renewable energy and even mining. "Usually, there's a lot of students in the petroleum stream, but this year, my class, not a single person is in it. All 15 of us are in the sustainability stream," she said.

Hollet said her classmates are on "both sides of the oil spectrum." One woman wants to work at a big operator and just keep producing oil, she said, "and there's other people that are, like, totally against it, and they want to work in green energy, wind energy, that type of thing."

Hollett grew up in the small community of Arnold's Cove, where the Come By Chance oil refinery is the town's biggest employer, so she knows how unpredictable jobs in the sector can be. She wants to improve the oil industry, but she's made sure she can work in renewables or even in mining if those goals don't work out.

Newfoundland and Labrador's oil industry was hit hard in recent years by a crash in global oil prices, which was promptly followed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.In response, three of the province's four offshore oil projects halted some or all of their plans or operations, and the provincial government parcelled out $320 million in aid provided by Ottawa.

All four projects are big polluters: in 2019, they were among the top six per cent of greenhouse gas emitters among over 700 Canadian oil and gas extraction projects, according to data from the federal Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. All are expected to keep pumping for at least another decade.

A request for an interview with a College of the North Atlantic representative wasn't granted, but spokesman Roger Hulan noted by email that the oil and gas sector is a cyclical industry, and there are signs of a strong recovery. "Enrolment for both programs is beginning to improve, and now would be the optimal time for students ... to enter this field and prepare for this recovery and future demand," he said.

Greg Naterer, dean of engineering and applied science at Memorial, said the pandemic had an impact on enrolment. But students are also driven by growing concern about climate change and the need for the industry to curb emissions and develop renewable energy sources, he said.

The university is looking to adapt its programs, "largely because of what's happening in the world around us, to be more environmentally responsible," Naterer said in a recent interview. "We're broadening the scope of the current undergraduate programs in process engineering ... incorporating other forms of green energy like biodiesel, hydrogen fuel cells and others."

The University of Calgary has suspended admissions for its undergraduate program inoil and gas engineering, citing a growing student interest in more renewable forms of energy. A similar move wouldn't make sense at Memorial, Naterer said. "This is not the first time that we've ever seen fluctuations in enrolments," he said. "The students want to be part of the solution rather than the problem, and that's what our programs allow them to do."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2021.

Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press

Major study finds that people who believe
in COVID-19 conspiracies are more likely
to catch the virus, lose their jobs, and be socially isolated

Bethany Dawson

Sun, October 31, 2021, 

COVID-19 conspiracy theories. A sample of four books on the first page of a search for "COVID" on Amazon.com's bookstore. Amazon/Insider

• A new study has shown that those who believe in COVID-19 conspiracies are more likely to catch the virus.

• They are also more likely to break rules, lose their jobs, and face social isolation.

• Conspiracy theories are a "quick" solution to the fear of the unknown, said an expert.

New research has found that people who believe in COVID-19 conspiracy theories are more likely to be infected by the virus.

The Dutch study, published by Cambridge University Press, found that those who believe in COVID-19 conspiracies are less likely to be tested for COVID-19, but when tested, are more likely to be infected.

It also notes that there is a higher probability of this group violating coronavirus regulations and experiencing social rejection, job losses, reduced income, and decreased overall well-being.

The authors of the study, from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, wrote, "one basic property of conspiracy theories is that they are consequential, even if a conspiracy theory is extremely implausible according to logic or scientific evidence, if it seems real to a perceiver, it has a genuine impact on attitudes, emotions, and behavior."

Led by first author and social psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooijen, the study's researchers surveyed 5,745 people to provide a large sample from a cross-section of Netherlands' society, first in April 2020 and then again in December 2020.

The study concluded: "Conspiracy beliefs predict how well people cope with the challenges of a global pandemic and therefore has substantial implications for private and public health, as well as perceivers' economic and social well-being."

Conspiracy theories are often used within a time of heightened anxiety to explain events beyond our control, Geoffrey Dancy, an expert in conspiracy theories, told Insider in March.

He explained that it is often comforting to have something, or someone, to blame for a vast problem, like a pandemic.

"The great power of conspiracy theories is that you can offer them quickly, and you can point to somebody to blame for problems," he said.

"So, if you've got a pandemic, it's actually a 'plan-demic,' people planned it. Either it was Anthony Fauci or Bill Gates that planned this with their research, or they caused it with their research in China."

There has been repeated evidence disproving a number of the most widely discussed conspiracy theories, including that the virus was built as a bio-weapon, or that it was created by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Maxime Bernier Went To Florida Without Getting Vaxxed & Explained Why On Twitter (VIDEO)

People's Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier has explained his decision to visit Florida without getting vaccinated against COVID-19, revealing that he did not need a vaccine passport to travel to the U.S.© Provided by Narcity

In a video shared on Twitter on Sunday, October 31, he responded to those asking how he was able to travel across the border to the United States without being fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

"As you know, I didn't take the two shots and I won't," Bernier told his followers. "But an unvaccinated person can travel to the U.S. until the 8th of November without having the vaccine passport."

The party leader explained that this was the reason he and his wife decided to visit Florida ahead of that date, which is when the new travel rules kick in.

Although the U.S. land border remains closed to non-essential travel right now, both vaccinated and unvaccinated Canadians are able to enter the country via plane. Until November 8, a negative COVID-19 test is accepted as an alternative to vaccination.

In order to skip travel restrictions like on-arrival COVID-19 testing, day-eight COVID-19 testing and quarantine, travellers entering Canada and Canadians returning home from abroad must be fully vaccinated.

Bernier didn't address whether he would be quarantining upon his return to Canada and did not confirm the reason for his visit to Florida.

Health Canada has a robust website with all the latest information on the vaccines and can answer any questions you may have. Click here for more information.

OF COURSE HE DID HE IS A FASCIST WHO ESPOUSES AMERICAN STYLE LIBERTARIANISM WHEN IT SUITS HIM

New federal minister says it's 'great honour' to represent Alberta at the cabinet table

Ashley Joannou 

© Provided by Edmonton Journal CP-Web. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and Gov. Gen. Mary May Simon, right, pose with Randy Boissonnault, minister of tourism and associate minister of finance, at a cabinet swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021.

Alberta’s first federal cabinet minister in two years says that he recognizes his responsibility to be a voice for the province in the federal government.

Randy Boissonnault, MP for Edmonton Centre, was named tourism minister and associate minister of finance by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week in Ottawa. He is the only representative of Alberta in cabinet and the first Alberta cabinet minister since 2019 when the Liberals were shut out of the province.

“It’s a great honour for me to represent Alberta at the cabinet table and we wanted Albertans in caucus and cabinet,” he said in an interview with Postmedia the day after the cabinet was announced.

“I take these dual responsibilities very seriously and I’m looking very much forward to making sure that the concerns and priorities of our province are voiced.”

Boissonnault’s appointment comes following an October referendum in Alberta where 61.7 per cent of Albertans who voted said they wanted to remove the principle of equalization from the constitution.

While Alberta doesn’t have the power to do that, Premier Jason Kenney has argued that a yes vote could be used as leverage to negotiate a “fair deal” with Ottawa.

“This is a powerful statement today — a democratic statement — where Albertans are demanding to be respected,” Kenney said following the release of the referendum results.

“We fully expect the prime minister to respect the constitutional amendment process and to sit down and negotiate with Alberta in good faith.”

When asked whether he thought negotiations would actually happen, Boissonnault pointed to the amount of federal money and support — including from the armed forces — that Alberta has received during the pandemic.

“That’s the very principle behind equalization, making sure that every Canadian has a fair chance of success, no matter where they live,” he said.

“Every province, including us in Alberta, has benefited from the program at some point and that equalization program enables provinces to deliver education, world-class health care, and other services that Canadians rely on. So it’s a fundamental example of Canadians supporting each other and of Canadian values.”

Though a formal request to begin negotiations with Ottawa has yet to pass in the Alberta legislature, Kenney has suggested topics for negotiation could include changes to the fiscal stabilization program, or federal legislation around oil tankers and energy projects.

Boissonnault said those are the type of concerns Kenney should discuss with other premiers at the Council of the Federation meetings because they require “significant consensus across the country to achieve.”

On the day the new cabinet was announced, Alberta politicians, including Kenney, began raising concerns about the appointment of Steven Guilbeault as Canada’s new environment and climate change minister.

Kenney called the appointment of Guilbeault, a well-known environmental activist who has been vocally opposed to pipelines and once climbed onto the roof of then-premier Ralph Klein’s home, “very problematic.”

Boissonault said concerns over climate change were the top issue he heard from voters while campaigning.

“When we have (energy) companies like Cenovus and Suncor committing to a net zero future and to decarbonizing their industry, that is something that we can and must do as a federal government and every minister has a responsibility to making sure that that happens,” he said.

Parliament is set to return on Nov. 22.

— With files from Hamdi Issawi

Stay posted with 10/3, our Canadian affairs podcast featuring expert perspectives, wherever you get your podcasts . Listen to the latest episode:

THE WEEK HE ANNOUNCES HIS REFERENDUM VICTORY
Braid: Kenney hit with hostile federal minister one day, an office scandal the next

Two more bad days for Kenney just when Albertans desperately need a respected, popular and effective leader of a united government

Author of the article: Don Braid • Calgary Herald
Publishing date:Oct 27, 2021 • 

Premier Jason Kenney provided an update on COVID-19 and the ongoing work to protect public health at the McDougall Centre in Calgary on Tuesday, September 28, 2021. PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA


Tuesday: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau names an environment minister with a long record of hostility to Alberta’s main industry.

Wednesday: News breaks of a lawsuit by a woman who says she was fired for reporting alleged sexual harassment and drunkenness among some of Premier Jason Kenney’s ministers and officials.

Two more bad days for Kenney just when Albertans desperately need a respected, popular and effective leader of a united government.

Unity is a shaky thing. One of Kenney’s own MLAs, demoted minister Leela Aheer , said on Twitter: “Ariella Kimmel is an incredible and courageous women. Premier Kenney – you knew! Step down!”

She added in an interview: “She is a rock star. She was our connection to the premier’s office. We couldn’t get anything done without her.”

Now, Kimmel is going to court. That news broke Wednesday on the CBC.

Kimmel’s lawyer, Kathryn Marshall, says: “Every political office should have a clear sexual-harassment policy and no political staffer should ever be fired from his or her job for blowing the whistle on sexual harassment, as was done in this case.”

Kenney said there will be a review of government policy on harassment and reporting.

Kimmel’s suit alleges that some ministers boozed to the point of stupor in their offices. Sexist comments were made and she was fired for continuing to press for solutions, she claims.

Aheer was furious to learn of the lawsuit.

When one person urged her on Twitter to cross the legislature floor, she said: “It’s always interesting to me that people always tell women that THEY should leave. No, actually. I earned my position. PREMIER KENNY needs to leave. Not me.”



This is an expulsion offence for a government caucus member anywhere in Canada.

But Kenney is on a tightrope — two more firings and he’ll face four angry Independent MLAs who could form their own official caucus with full legislature funding.

Then-Minister of Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women Leela Sharon Aheer leaves the legislature chamber following the delivery of the 2021 Alberta provincial budget at the Alberta Legislature, in Edmonton on Feb. 25, 2021

. PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM/POSTMEDIA

Then we come to the federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault.

He is a walking insult to Kenney, the Alberta government and the thousands who work in the energy business.

He has been a constant foe with his public pranks — such as the assault on Ralph Klein’s roof — but also through decades of fierce opposition to every oil and gas project or pipeline.

Guilbeault has played a big hand in Quebec’s almost universal hostility to pipelines and Alberta oil and gas.

Coincidentally, Leela Aheer has been one of the Alberta government’s few connections to Guilbeault.

When she was minister of heritage, he was the federal minister in the same post.

She said he was willing to compromise on policy — somewhat. “He became a good friend and he’s a good human being.”

But Alberta “really needs to do a lot of work” to make him understand how hard the industry is trying to reduce emissions and meet targets.

Is Guilbeault capable of any compromise at all?

In his first interview after the appointment, he said: “I will be happy to work with Alberta, with Premier Kenney, and all the other provinces and territories, and municipalities and the business sector and civil society to ensure that we do this wisely in a way that makes sense for people, for communities, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our environment.”

Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, on October 26, 2021.

 PHOTO BY LARS HAGBERG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

But he doesn’t accept that federal measures will threaten jobs, he said in a later interview on CBC’s Power and Politics.

The most conversion to renewables “is in Alberta, this is the place in Canada where there is the most renewable development . . . the idea of jobs disappearing is not supported by facts in Alberta.”

Then he went on to say Ottawa will “cap emissions from the oil and gas sector.”

And then — proudly — “we’re not doing that with any other sectors — not steel, not the auto sector, forestry, cement. We’re doing it for oil and gas because it represents 45 per cent of emissions in Canada.”

He was also asked if he supports Ottawa’s drive to keep Line 5 through Michigan open .

Yes, he said. “Line 5 is a very different subject. It’s an existing pipeline that provides all kinds of services to Eastern Canada.”

Guilbeault explained how the transition away from oil and gas will be very gradual — in Quebec. There will, however, will be a steady decline in consumption.

Kenney looked shocked when he first spoke of Guilbeault’s appointment. He should be. It marks the end of federal compromise.

And shows, perhaps, the disdain Ottawa will bring to Kenney’s equalization demands stemming from the referendum.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

Twitter: @DonBraid

Facebook: Don Braid Politics

Researcher: American industrial revolution helped shape gothic literature

UMass Lowell scholar explores how factory life, urbanization gave rise to real-life horrors and exploitation of workers

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL

 

IMAGE: UMASS LOWELL ENGLISH ASSOCIATE PROF. BRIDGET MARSHALL HAS PUBLISHED A NEW BOOK THAT EXPLORES HOW THE AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION CONTRIBUTED TO GOTHIC LITERATURE, (PHOTO CREDIT: KATHARINE WEBSTER) view more 

CREDIT: KATHARINE WEBSTER

Growing up in Pennsylvania as the daughter of a casket salesman, UMass Lowell’s Bridget Marshall, associate professor of English, became more familiar with death than most children.

As a teenager, she loved Stephen King novels. Then in college, she took a course on early Gothic novels. It cemented her fascination with stories of heroines trapped in creepy homes and troubled by ancestral curses. 

She ultimately became an expert in the genre, earning a Ph.D. in English and American Literature with a focus on Gothic literature.

A year after graduating, she was hired by the English Department at UMass Lowell, where shares her enthusiasm in popular courses including The Horror Story, The Gothic Tradition in Literature and a new honors seminar, Factory Gothic: Horror and Industrialization.

“There’s a general obsession with the Gothic because we don’t talk about the ‘bad stuff’ in polite company. The Gothic lets us delve into the darkness from the safety of our reading nook,” said Marshall, who has won several teaching awards at UMass Lowell.

Marshall has written extensively on Gothic literature, including the book “The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790 – 1860,” and “Transnational Gothic: Literary and Social Exchanges in the Long Nineteenth Century,” which she co-edited.

Now, after two decades in Lowell, the first planned industrial city in the U.S., Marshall has come out with a new book: “Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature.” 

Industrial Gothic: Workers, Exploitation and Urbanization in Transatlantic Nineteenth-Century Literature (Gothic Literary Studies) eBook : Marshall, Bridget M.: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store

In it, she becomes the first scholar to argue that the Industrial Revolution contributed to the development of the Gothic genre by “recasting the ‘maiden-in-peril in a castle’ plot as the ‘factory-girl-in-peril in a mill.’”

Gothic novels originated in England in the late 1700s, and many scholars have argued that the genre was fueled by “explosive” historical events, including the American, French and Haitian revolutions. Marshall makes the case that the Industrial Revolution, although slower, was equally disruptive and contributed to the later development of Gothic literature on both sides of the Atlantic.

As single girls and young women left their family farms to work in the textile mills of Lowell and other New England cities in the early 1800s, a parallel industry grew up alongside the factories: sensational stories about the murders of “mill girls,” she said.

Newspapers and printing businesses fed a bottomless public appetite for articles, books, plays and broadsheets about young women under siege by dangerous men: mill owners, overseers, ministers, married men and doctors who drew them into intimate relationships, and in several real-life cases killed them to cover up pregnancies or botched abortions, Marshall said.

Marshall demonstrates how the authors of popular “factory fiction” and true crime books of the period used many of the same lurid literary devices, plot elements and images as the earliest Gothic novels from England, such as “The Castle of Otranto” (1764) and “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794), including innocent heroines, depraved villains, gloomy settings, demonic imagery and portents of doom.

And just as those earlier books helped people deal with the fears inspired by social and political revolutions, “factory Gothic” helped later generations cope with the fears and disruption of technological change.

“It’s a reminder that scary things aren’t just supernatural monsters and the deep, dark past,” she said. “The Industrial Revolution also has its deep, dark parts.”

Terrifying dungeons and isolated castles find parallels in terrifying factory collapses and fires, as well as a new kind of isolation – young women leaving family farms in the countryside to live alone and unprotected in big cities, where they are prey not only to human villains, but to disease, death and dismemberment by factory machinery, she said. 

One example Marshall cites is the 1832 death of pregnant “mill girl” Sarah Cornell. Although first believed to be a suicide, further investigation revealed she had been murdered. Her death and the murder trial of the Rev. Ephraim Avery, a married Methodist minister, spawned a host of books, broadsides, trial transcripts and plays, she said.

While Gothic novels are often viewed as essentially conservative, harking back with nostalgia to simpler times, some authors used their melodramatic plots and descriptions to expose social ills, according to Marshall. 

Those works engaged the sympathies of readers who otherwise might not have cared about the plight of factory workers, enslaved people, orphaned children and debtors, she said, and they may have helped stimulate popular support for better wages and working conditions in factories, the abolition of slavery and reforms to orphanages and workhouses.

Gothic literature continues to develop and flourish, while the 19th century “mill girls” remain a perennial topic for popular novels because, Marshall said, many of the themes of “violence, destruction and dislocation” feel so contemporary.

“Factory girls were often hopeless victims, not just of men, but of systems of men,” Marshall said. “Their stories were ‘ripped from the headlines’ and then retold and reframed in very Gothic ways.”

###

The Sacred and the Profane: Religious Themes in Vampire Fiction

Almost from the beginning, vampire fiction has been a battleground between the powers of heaven and hell.

Bela Lugosi portrays Count Dracula in the classic 1931 film from Universal Pictures. (photo: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Deacon Steven D. Greydanus Arts & Entertainment

October 29, 2021
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER

Nearly 80 years before Bram Stoker introduced the world to Count Dracula, a strikingly similar figure debuted in a pioneering 1819 short story: William Polidori’s The Vampyre. His name was Lord Ruthven, and in many respects, he was a clear forerunner to his better-known literary heir: aristocratic, immortal, pale-skinned, suavely seductive, preying at night when his powers were greatest.

Polidori’s influence on Stoker was substantial, but Ruthven lacked one element crucial to Dracula’s identity: Ruthven was a creature of privileged social status and sexual allure as well as paranormal evil, but there was little if anything about him specifically demonic, and no explicit religious implications of his existence.

Rosaries, the Eucharist and other tokens of the sacred that would figure significantly in Stoker’s novel play no role in the earlier work. Lord Ruthven slew his victims’ bodies, but there was no indication that the fate of their souls was at stake. The story ends with the grisly discovery of Ruthven’s latest victim, but death here is the crowning misfortune.

In Dracula, mere natural death was a mercy compared to the diabolical mockery of life that resulted from the Count’s predations. “The devil’s un-Dead” is what the learned Abraham Van Helsing called Lucy Westenra while she was in the vampiric state, but, after her fiancé Arthur drove a stake through her heart, her soul was freed and she was accounted “God’s true dead, whose soul is with him!”

This is not to say that the earlier Lord Ruthven was a mere serial killer. A creature of decadence who seduced women before glutting himself on their blood, he was also a quasi-Satanic figure who perversely manipulated the lives of all around him like a cat “dallying with a half-dead mouse,” working for their moral or material ruin. The story ends not only with the murder of the protagonist’s sister, but also with the protagonist himself, a young man named Aubrey, dying in an asylum after a bout of madness.

The malice of Ruthven’s actions was an eye-opening revelation to Aubrey, a naive, romantic man with a complacently inflated view of human goodness and of his own talents and merits. Polidori wrote that Aubrey believed “that dreams of poets were the realities of life.” Part of the theme of the story, then, is that the world is a darker, more perilous place than the comfortable imagine, and that predatory evil is a terrifying reality.

Literary Vampires of Le Fanu and Stoker

Another vampire story that influenced Dracula, the 1872 novella Carmilla by Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, further developed the mythology. Like Dracula, the vampire Carmilla slept in a coffin and drained her victims progressively over a period of time, until in death they became vampires themselves. Anticipating Van Helsing, Le Fanu introduced a vampire expert, Baron Vordenburg, by whose hand Carmilla was dispatched in a strikingly thorough concatenation of what would become classic means of destroying vampires: staked through the heart, decapitated, and burned to ashes. (The ashes were thrown into a river, possibly evoking a fourth vulnerability of vampires and other evil creatures, to whom running water, symbolically linked to baptism, is often a deterrent.)

Notably, Le Fanu infused his tale with religious elements absent in Polidori’s short story. Carmilla manifests an aversion for the sacred when a funeral procession for her latest victim passes by. Laura, the teenaged protagonist and narrator, joins in the hymn being sung by the procession, at which Carmilla, angrily protesting and making a futile effort to plug her ears, is left trembling violently and crying out in duress. Later, as Laura herself begins to succumb to Carmilla, a priest is enlisted to offer “certain solemn rites” on Laura’s behalf (possibly anointing of the sick, exorcism, or a fictional ritual specifically for vampirism) and to help protect her while she sleeps. Laura is ultimately spared becoming a vampire, though the vampire’s memory continues to haunt her imagination.

Although Le Fanu’s family was Huguenot and his father was a Church of Ireland clergyman, Le Fanu’s writings show a level of imaginative interest in Catholicism. For example, one of his recurring characters, an 18th-century Irish Catholic priest named Father Francis Purcell, narrates a dozen short stories (The Purcell Papers), giving Le Fanu room to engage topics like purgatory in the context of ghost stories.

Like Le Fanu, Stoker was an Irish Protestant, but his wife, Florence, was attracted to Catholicism and converted in 1904, just a few years after Dracula was published. Among the many elements borrowed from Le Fanu’s story, Stoker greatly expanded the religious themes, making overt the Catholicism implicit in Le Fanu’s treatment. There is an almost evangelistic dynamic to the way that icons of Catholicism like rosaries and the Eucharist are initially presented as alien and shadowed by suspicions of idolatry or superstition by respectable Anglicans like Jonathan Harker, only to be vindicated in their power over evil, triumphing over all skeptical resistance.

For all that, Dracula is not a work of Catholic imagination — a reality nowhere more apparent than in Stoker’s sacrilegious treatment of the Blessed Sacrament. Van Helsing carries consecrated Hosts around with him in his bag and uses them for vampire deterrence, at times placing fragments of them in coffins or even crushing them into tiny particles and sprinkling them on the ground or pressing them into putty to make a barrier uncrossable by the undead. “I have an Indulgence,” Van Helsing says by way of purported explanation for these actions. Whether the reader is meant to understand an indulgence as forgiveness in advance for sins yet to be committed, or as a kind of dispensation to commit otherwise sinful actions, is unclear, but it’s incoherent either way.

Vampires on Screen

The 1931 Universal adaptation of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, streamlined Stoker’s religious themes, eliding the novel’s Catholicism with more ecumenical imagery: Dracula and the vampirized Mina flinch from crosses and crucifixes, but rosaries and the Eucharist are omitted. Hammer Films’ 1958 Dracula (also known in the U.S. as Horror of Dracula), directed by Terence Fisher, a High Church Anglican, continued the ecumenical trend — with a highly influential twist. Fisher weaponized the cross, giving the world vampires so vulnerable to the cross that their undead flesh would burn at its touch. Even a pair of candlesticks held at right angles was so powerful that Van Helsing could use them to drive Christopher Lee’s Dracula into the full rays of the sun, where he slowly disintegrated into dust (a vulnerability pioneered by the 1922 silent film Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau).

Fisher’s weaponization of the sacred became a mainstay in vampire fiction, from Francis Ford Coppola’s wildly revisionist, Catholicism-haunted 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the agnostic, mythologically dense world of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Other vampire stories have reduced or even eliminated the religious dimension of the mythos, returning to Polidori’s non-religious conception (or something like it). The original silent Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, offered vestigial references to religious concepts like sin, the devil and magic. Werner Herzog’s 1979 art-house remake Nosferatu the Vampyre went only slightly further, with a shot or two of Dracula flinching from crosses. Holy artifacts have reduced power at best in John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998) and the Hugh Jackman action movie Van Helsing (2004). Even so, Catholicism is very much present in both films and opposed to the forces of darkness, including vampires — even if the Vatican relies in this regard on professional vampire hunters rather than priests.

Still other takes are wholly secular, or effectively so. Religion plays no role in Kathryn Bigelow’s vampire neo-Western Near Dark (1987) or in the acclaimed Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (2008).

Among the knottiest treatments of vampirism and Catholicism are films with vampire priests, like Father Paul in the recent Netflix series Midnight Mass by Mike Flanagan and Father Sang-hyun in the 2009 South Korean film Thirst by Park Chan-wook. Both priests experience dramatic physical healings in connection with their vampirization, and both come to be venerated by others for their association with the apparently miraculous. The difference is that Father Sang-hyun recognizes from the outset that he has become a monster and is disgusted when a blind religious superior expresses a wish to become a vampire so that he can see again. Father Paul, on the other hand, regards the hideous bat-winged predator who turned him as an “angel” bestowing divine “miracles” and is only too eager to share the “blessings” of vampirism with his flock.

Eventually, amid a downward spiral of increasing depravity, including adultery and serial murder, Father Sang-hyun comes to recognize that, despite his efforts to control his evil passions, there is no way to live morally as a vampire, and he commits suicide by sunlight. In Father Paul’s case, the scales fall from his eyes only after his actions lead to a horrific bloodbath, and he eventually accepts his inevitable death, also by sunlight. Although both priests’ actions are depicted as antithetical to their religion, aversion to holy things is no part of the vampiric condition.

For a recent example of the traditional power of the sacred over vampires, see Netflix’s 2020 horror-comedy Vampires vs. the Bronx, which pits Afro-Latino teenagers against affluent, gentrifying vampires. Highlighting the role of the local Catholic parish and its stern but caring priest (Cliff “Method Man” Smith) in the life of the community, the movie also depicts its young heroes absconding with (unnecessarily) pilfered holy water and a (sacrilegiously) pocketed Host.

Crosses and crucifixes repel the vampires; holy-water balloons do damage; and, when Father Jackson smacks one with a large processional crucifix, it leaves a burn mark. The high and low point in the depiction of the sacred is when one of the boys tosses the Host into a vampire’s mouth with the words “Body of Christ”: St. Paul’s warnings in 1 Corinthians 11 about the potentially fatal consequences of unworthy reception of Holy Communion couldn’t be more dramatically realized.

Sacrilegious, yes — but this is a movie that knows the Host is no mere symbol.

More than 200 years after their horror-fiction debut, vampires are still going strong. In 2022 the Marvel vampire antihero Morbius will get his big-screen debut, while on the small screen AMC will launch a series based on Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire. Don’t look for religious iconography to play a power role in either of those; neither Morbius nor Rice’s vampires are affected by crucifixes and the like.

On the other hand, considering the provocative theological themes that Robert Eggers brought to The Witch (2015), if he succeeds in getting his too-long-delayed remake of Nosferatu out of development hell, I’m intrigued to see what he might do with Dracula’s religious milieu.

Deacon Steven D. Greydanus Deacon Steven D. Greydanus is film critic for the National Catholic Register, creator of Decent Films, a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Newark, and a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. For 10 years he co-hosted the Gabriel Award–winning cable TV show “Reel Faith” for New Evangelization Television. Steven has degrees in media arts and religious studies, and has contributed several entries to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, including “The Church and Film” and a number of filmmaker biographies. He has also written about film for the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy. He has a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, an MA in Religious Studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA, and an MA in Theology from Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ. Steven’s writing for the Register has been recognized many times by the Catholic Press Association Awards, with first-place wins in 2017 and 2016 and second-place wins in 2019 and 2015. Steven and his wife Suzanne have seven children.

Count Dracula and the Holy Cross

“Enter freely, and leave some of the happiness you bring”

Bela Lugosi as Dracula, anonymous photograph from 1931, Universal Studios 

(photo: Public Domain)
K.V. Turley Blogs

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER

September 14, 2021

Ninety years ago, Count Dracula came to haunt America.

Released in 1931, Dracula, the film adaptation of the celebrated 1897 novel, starred Bela Lugosi.

On account of the film’s success, its eponymous lead actor became an international movie star overnight. A respected stage performer, Lugosi’s life thereafter was transformed, not least because the role of Dracula and the actor who played it now became synonymous.

What Lugosi did not know then was that as a name shines brighter in lights above the movie theater so, inevitably, the shadows must lengthen below. In what was to follow, the actor’s life took on the appearance of a never-ending struggle to escape the confines of the vampire cape that slowly began to envelope him.

According to Universal Studio’s publicity machine, the star of its latest box office smash was born of noble stock in the land beyond the mountains, in the realm of the vampire itself, namely, Transylvania. The truth was more mundane. Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskówas was born in 1882 in the industrial town of Lugos, hundreds of miles from Transylvania. His family was middle class and Catholic.

That said, his life prior to his most famous role was eventful, even more so than any studio could invent. Lugosi had “played” many roles: a child runaway, a decorated World War One veteran, an intellectual, Shakespearean actor, husband, revolutionary, movie star in Berlin with the renowned UFA studios, lover, husband again, husband once more, and much else besides. These were just some of Lugosi’s roles before in the winter of 1920 he bluffed his way onto a merchant ship bound for New Orleans.

After he landed in America, he was to become identified with only one role; the role that would slowly drain the creative lifeblood from his veins.

It began on Broadway. Lugosi played the part of the vampire count in the stage adaptation of the novel. The play was a hit. But for him success on the New York stage with Dracula was welcome, if hardly unexpected. Remember Lugosi was a serious actor. He looked forward to many more nights of standing ovations and rave reviews for his performance. He also looked forward to other parts, more demanding roles. In fact, he wished to explore the full repertoire of classical theatre. Soon he would move on, he thought, when, like any actor, he grew tired of the role.

For Lugosi, however, Dracula proved to be something else.

“Enter freely, and leave some of the happiness you bring.” So says Count Dracula to Jonathan Harker, the innocent who, at the start of Bram Stoker’s novel, travels to the vampire’s lair. Perhaps these fictional words might also apply to Lugosi. In an interview he had this to say: “The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.”

Ominous signs appeared of this even while he played the role on Broadway. Take a look at this curious newspaper report (“‘Dracula’ Star: Same at Home”) from the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 10, 1929:

“Bela Lugosi, star of “Dracula,” a play which has had long runs where it has been shown, carried his temperament into the home and was unable to cast aside his irascible part of the role when he entered his home, his wife, Beatrice W. Lugosi, testified in the divorce court here to substantiate her plea for divorce…”

Ultimately all roles are masks that actors put on and remove at will. But what if the mask cannot be dislodged? What if after the lights have faded and the crowds long since departed for home the mask remains? The success on Broadway would be nothing in comparison to that which subsequently Hollywood would gift. After the release of the film version of Dracula, there was to be no way out for Lugosi, no way to remove the mask he had created — and no matter how hard he tried.

Those last years were filled with bathos. Success, at best a mercurial element, had vanished for the actor almost as quickly as it had unexpectedly swamped his life. Lugosi had known the heights of worldly success if for a shorter time than one might imagine; by the close, he had come to know the depths of despair more. Only a few years after his stunning entrée into the collective consciousness of the world, he was acting in, or perhaps more aptly toiling in, the “factory” of what was termed Poverty Row films. The name given to this genre speaks for itself. Artistically, he had become “undead.”

“I look in the mirror and say to myself: Can it be you once played Romeo?”

Broken film contracts, broken relationships, five marriages and myriad drug problems were in time to exacerbate Lugosi’s sorrows. Yet even as the end draws near, he is still working. But the part, if no longer called that, is still Dracula.

The B-movie Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) was to be his concluding film. Today, it is regularly voted one of the worst movies ever made. Lugosi died four days into its shooting — his part was later filled by the director’s wife’s chiropractor, as a favor. Yet, in the final edit of the film, the last footage of this most mysterious of movie stars we see Lugosi, still dressed in the vampire cape, standing beside an open grave.

In the small hours of Aug. 16, 1956, Bela Lugosi died.

Subsequently he was buried in his Dracula cape at Holy Cross, Hollywood’s Catholic cemetery. Upon the grave stone are written the words:

BELA LUGOSI
BELOVED FATHER
1882 – 1956
Alongside the inscription is a cross. On it are carved the letters: IHS.
In hoc signo vinces.

One can only pray that, as in the best horror tales, the Cross did indeed prevail.

BEST POST MODERN VAMPIRE FILM
The Vampires of The Hunger Haunt Eternity in Endlessly Considered Glamour

A little hydrogen peroxide will get that right out.

Photo: MGM/UA Entertainment Company

By Rina Nkulu
Vampire Week

Tony Scott’s The Hunger, his 1983 adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s 1981 book of the same name, opens in the most perfect way a vampire movie can: Catherine Deneuve’s Miriam Blaylock and her husband, John (David Bowie), are cruising for snacks in a goth nightclub, Bauhaus is performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” everything is glowing blue and cloaked in shadows. Miriam’s smoking a cigarette in a pillbox hat and cat-eye frames, John’s in a tailored black shirt with a stand collar and teashades. Strobe lights shrink into the reflections of their sunglasses. The pair spots a couple dancing together and all they have to do is wave. Soon, the woman’s leather jacket has been pried open to expose more neck and more collarbone; the man’s T-shirt collar has been cut off to reveal the same. They look a little less polished, and a lot more vulnerable. After slashing their victims’ throats with blades hidden in matching golden ankh pendants, John and Miriam drink them up and immediately burn the remains in a basement incinerator. Clean eating.

The Hunger was Tony Scott’s feature film debut after 15 years of making commercials for his brother Ridley Scott’s production outfit. Reviewers decried its slickness, but never failed to make note of its incredible sense of style. Scott enlisted master costumer Milena Canonero, of A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, who imbued the Blaylocks with a relentless cool. The word “vampire” is never once uttered in the film; every little thing hinges on knowing it when you see it. Thus, the Blaylocks check a multitude of boxes that one would expect from immortals of a certain class position: They have an enormous Manhattan townhouse filled to the brim with antiquities once-contemporary to them, they give private classical music lessons, they spend their days “mostly idle” in head-to-toe couture. (Deneuve was outfitted by friend and collaborator Yves Saint Laurent.) They wear what looks good and do what feels good, and once a week, in order to sustain their lifestyles and lifespans, they feed on human blood. Everything feels apparent in the film’s supernatural, slightly knowing sense of chic.

At the beginning of the movie, John is beginning to find that Miriam’s promise of eternal life is true, but the guarantee of eternal youth holds only for her. Catching a glimpse of himself in a Polaroid, he notices some new wrinkles, not in his crisp beige suit but in his face. In just one day, John ages 170 years — courtesy of the excellent special-effects makeup done by Dick Smith, of The Exorcist and The Godfather — unknowingly doomed to the same fate as Miriam’s previous lovers: mind intact and body rotting, locked away in a coffin in the attic. In a last-ditch effort to find something resembling a cure, he pursues Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), a researcher studying rapid aging in chimpanzees.

Bowie does a lot with his limited screen time, and John’s decay is wonderfully grotesque. As his age catches up with him, his movements grow clumsier, everything once-instinctual becomes torturously labored. He hesitates to draw his blade in a men’s restroom. He tries to kill a roller-skater in Central Park but only manages to cut him. When he does claim one last victim — one of the couple’s classical music students (and Miriam’s intended replacement for him) — he makes a big, sloppy mess of her. As his youth slips away, so does his power. And you can see it: The sleek, strong lines of his double-breasted jacket, one of inscrutable age that he wore as a young man just the day before, seem to rumple and collapse under the weight of his circumstances. So quickly does he become a withered old man in a withered old suit, pathetically begging his partner of 200 years for one last kiss.

Though Sarah initially dismisses John as an old crank, she takes him seriously after witnessing him age multiple decades in two hours. But it’s too late. After John is laid to eternal restlessness in the attic, Sarah shows up feeling guilty at the Blaylocks’ front door, where Miriam casts a glamour spell. The next time that Sarah shows up on that doorstep, she doesn’t really know why she’s there, but Miriam invites her in anyway. Sarah peers around and lingers in front of a sculpture. “This is real, isn’t it?” she asks, to which Miriam responds, yes, it is 2,000 years old. “You’ve got so many beautiful things,” Sarah goes on to say, and Miriam’s response doesn’t warrant any questioning: “Most of it comes from my family.” After living through centuries of trend cycles, it’s easy for one’s tastes to become frighteningly refined.

The two women talk over glasses of sherry. Miriam’s in a structured black dress with shoulder-pads and a plunging neckline, hair sculpted into a perfect chignon; Sarah is in a blazer and a plain white T-shirt. At some point, Sarah takes the blazer off. She seems a little overwhelmed, though not unnerved, by this beautiful woman and all her beautiful things, by the ankh pendant resting between her breasts. Miriam sits at the piano and plays the Flower Duet from Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, bluish, diffuse light comes through the sheer curtains and bounces off her jewelry. It gives her a cold, glimmering aura — everything about Miriam and her surroundings is a reflection of 2,000 years of practice, an opulence only attainable with an excess of time.

When Sarah asks Miriam what she does in her leisure and Miriam says, “My time is my own,” Sarah fantasizes out loud for a moment: “That’s great,” she says. “Plenty of time for your friends, lots of lunches and dinners, cocktail parties at the Museum of Modern Art …” She lounges in a chair behind the piano and listens. The sleeves of her T-shirt are rolled up, she isn’t wearing a bra, you see the smallest glimpses of some nondescript post earrings and a smart-looking watch. Her look is emblematic of the increasingly-casual ’80s, her fantasies are those of the proto-yuppie who’s not quite there yet but definitely on her way.

Sarah asks if Miriam is lonely, now that her husband is away, then spills sherry on herself. Miriam helps Sarah take her T-shirt off, and the two have sex, Miriam giving Sarah the gift-curse of everlasting life in the process. At dinner that evening with her boyfriend, Tom Haver (Cliff DeYoung), Sarah is unfocused and shaky, barely able to look at him. She stares at women swimming in the adjacent building’s pool. She orders a rare steak and can’t eat a single bite. And she’s wearing an ankh pendant of her own. Tom is immediately suspicious: “You just met her and she gives you a present?” he asks, and Sarah is immediately defensive. “She’s that kind of a woman. She’s European.”

At night, Sarah is restlessly, ravenously hungry, vomiting nonstop. Tom forces her to get a blood test, and they find two different strains of blood fighting for dominance in her veins. One is nonhuman and “stronger than ours,” and when Sarah asks who’s winning, there is no response. A furious Sarah storms over to Miriam’s building, clammy-skinned and slightly delirious in a weakly billowing trench coat. Miriam is honest about her “gift,” the fact that the second strain of blood is hers. “You belong to me. We belong to each other,” Miriam says, as she has repeatedly done for centuries. (There’s an older interview with the vampiric designer Rick Owens that I think about a lot, published in DM Magazine in March 2002. He’s asked about “the persistent allure of vampires” and responds: “Well, we know it’s about sex. Most everything is. The idea of devouring, consuming, possessing someone we desire.”)

Sarah flees, but, experiencing a supernatural withdrawal, soon returns sweating through her clothing. Miriam then initiates her into the ranks of the immortal aristocracy, her baptismal drink coming from Tom when he shows up at the townhouse looking for her. Sarah must get used to the role of Miriam’s lover. “Soon you will forget what you were,” Miriam says. As the two kiss, Sarah rejects Miriam’s “gift,” reaching for the ankh pendant and stabbing herself in the throat, her blood spurting into Miriam’s mouth. Miriam begins another mournful march into the attic, but as she lays Sarah down, wood creaks, doves fly, and the rest of her legion of undead lovers climb out of their coffins to confront her. She screams in horror as they descend upon her in a flurry of rotting limbs and tattered fabric, tulle veils and lace skirts falling apart as they grab at her.

Fashion loves vampires and vampires love fashion. Like Harry Kümel’s Daughters of Darkness and Jean Rollin’s Fascination before it, The Hunger depicts both a designer’s ideal subjects and ideal clients: undying, inhumanly beautiful beings who possess endless time and money. (Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 1996 collection, best-known for featuring a clear bodice full of live worms, was named after it.) The Hunger stands apart in how immediately seductive its modern-day vampires were — the look and feel of the film directly influenced the aesthetic of Propaganda, Fred H. Berger’s foundational goth zine. It’s fun to imagine how these supernatural elites adapt to each era; if your body remains forever young and your mind contains an endless number of referents, the distinction between contemporary and retro and vintage and even antique ceases to matter when you’re sustained by an infinite supply of new blood.