Saturday Matinee Cautionary Tales: Science Fiction Vamps and Promethean Scientists

Abstract

In Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Roger’s wife, the sexy, buxom, redheaded Jessica quips, “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way. ” While literally true for the cartoon Jessica, this phrase could have been uttered by any of the vamps that came before or after her. The female vampire or vamp figure has had a long history in Western art. While not a fanged vampire from the Bram Stoker novel, she is a metaphorical bloodsucker who, often merrily, leads men down a primrose path to destruction. As film scholars (including Lea Jacobs, Janet Staiger, and Kristine J. Butler) have noted, the vamp is and has been a protean and persistent feature of the silver screen both in the United States and abroad since the 1910s. Beautiful and dangerous, she functions not only as an archetypal figure representing long held male fears of the female Other, but also foregrounds the anxieties about gender in the specific historical moments in which she appears. She emerges, not surprisingly, during times of political, social and/or economic turmoil. Strong, sexual, and at times all too single-minded, the vamp has delighted and tempted audiences while at the same time served as mass-mediated cautionary tales for men and women alike.