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| Cynthia Sharp |
The Inverse of Traditional Supernatural Mysticism in The
Vampire Diaries
By Cynthia Sharp
Abstract
This feature
explores how the contemporary romantasy genre reverses the traditional model of
vampires and werewolves as pure danger into edgy love stories, examining
screenwriting, shooting and editing strengths such as symbolism, juxtaposition
and theme that carry The Vampire Diaries television series. Building on
dramatic and thematic stage and literary traditions through centuries, writers
like Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson adapt the coming-of-age group of high
school and college friends from L. J. Smith’s books into a television series
where love—family, friendship and romantic—takes precedence over difference,
expanding and exploring changing relationships between once natural enemies
evolving into community. Spoiler alert—endings discussed.
From Monsters to Heroes
The Inverse of Traditional Supernatural Mysticism in The
Vampire Diaries
The
resonance of supernatural mysticism in epic storytelling has been built upon
for millenniums, since the beginning of
culture. For the past six thousand years of the hero’s
journey, supernatural figures and symbols have held a powerful place in story,
often connecting with the nonverbal, inherent emotional and psychological depth
of the collective consciousness of humanity. As spirituality in western popular
culture, such as films, television and fiction, changes from a basis in
organized religion to openminded, adventurous mysticism, feeding collective
human hunger for meaning, traditions like horror are inverted into romance and
hybrids (Nelson), such as in the dramatic teleplays of The Vampire Diaries. In this
inversion, once outcast antagonists such as vampires and werewolves become
protagonists audiences root for as they struggle to become more compassionate
and human-like, now viable but still dangerous love interests for humans.
Through symbolism, contrast, imagery and dialogue, this inverse captivates
twenty-first century viewers with a penchant for redemption, suggesting that
love really can conquer all even against dangerous odds, combining the rollercoaster
action of the horror genre with satisfying contemporary romance. Rather than
human heroes killing monsters or religiously emulating Christ on the cross
sacrificing his life in the hopes of altruism changing monstrous human
behaviour with grace, a theme through past centuries of western literature,
monsters themselves, along with humans who love them, now sacrifice for each
other and their human loved ones, always riding the dramatic tension of
potentially snapping and giving in to the satisfying instinct to feast and kill
without remorse. The Vampire Diaries delivers this new form of hybrid
through the innovative use of image, sound and action to construct layers of
depth in each shot in this age of radical epic storytelling.
Though
shows like The Vampire Diaries have taken the inversion of horror and
romance to new extremes with hellish monsters now ending up human themselves,
often married to the innocent citizens they once terrorized, the idea of
inverting audience expectations by revering violence, such as inverting murder
by performing it with actions associated with religious sanction can be seen in
Shakespeare. For millennia, writers have told underlying stories through
symbols and subtexts, actions and gestures, fresh takes on character
development and other approaches to flushing out the messages of their varied
perspectives on merging traditional opposites such as murder and sacrifice.
This has been an ongoing development in the arts, as literary and dramatic
epochs, movements and genres react to and build on each other in large and small ways. In the scholarly essay, “Speak
Hands for Me: Gesture as Language in Julius Caesar,” published in Drama
Survey 5 in 1966,
and reprinted at the back of the Folger’s edition
of Julius Caesar,
Robert Hapgood notes that “Shakespeare’s use of nonverbal elements (props, gestures, stage
pictures) involves a pattern of reversal” (Hapgood, 230). He gives the example
of Brutus’s gesture of stabbing Caesar. In
this case, the trusted, ethical Brutus is manipulated into believing that
Caesar has too much power and must be killed for the greater good of the state.
Caesar’s assassination in daylight in the heart of the republic appears like a
religious sacrifice in its presentation. Brutus’s
later death stabbing himself on his sword becomes a visual reference to Caesar’s
murder, an emotional pictorial reminder of earlier dramatic events. Artists
have known the importance of crafting every element of structure to seamlessly
and rhythmically serve the theme and angle of a narrative since Homer’s epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. The example that
Shakespeare and his troupe set in weaving theatrical devices together to convey story and create meaning, often
inverting expectation for shock and dramatic effect, is a tradition that
continues today in generously budgeted television dramas that deliver a
well-produced range of emotional experience. This new hybrid of horror-romance
draws on centuries of dramatic reversal of expectation, such as Brutus
assassinating Caesar as though he is making a religious offering. Writers of
current day vampire-human romance follow in the footsteps of great playwrights
like the Bard, who himself leaned on earlier classics, expanding the notion of
reversal of expectation to a subversion of traditional religion as characters
find purpose and potential in compassionately befriending creatures once
banished to hell.
This
dramatic reversal of expectation as an overarching structural element
incorporates typical themes of twentieth century drama, such as the
resurrection of virtue in fallen characters, only this time with vampires,
werewolves and witches capable of both destruction and healing, narcissism and
selflessness, including the courage to be honest even when it might mean loss
or death. The theatre has a history of meaningful dramatic moments, such as the
point in Arthur Miller’s 1953
play The Crucible, set in a
fictionalized version of Salem during the 1692–93 witch trials, when John
Proctor, who has been blackmailed into falsely accusing others of witchcraft in
order to save his life and keep his adultery secret, finally accepts
responsibility for his affair. In honesty that moves him beyond the constraints
of excessive religious control to the exhilarating freedom achieved in ethics,
he professes: “I can. And there’s your
first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic now, for now I do think I
see some shred of goodness in John Proctor” (Miller, 105). Screenwriters like
Kevin Williamson and Julia Plec who wrote the pilot and many of the teleplays
in The Vampire Diaries series now give this human type of dramatic
catharsis to traditional monsters, restoring them to human status.
Building
on 1950s drama of an ordinary flawed character like Proctor standing up and
doing what’s right, heroism in ordinary acts
of courage from fallen people is built on in this century with an allure of
supernaturalism in compelling entertainment that resonates deeply with current
times. The transcendent act of ordinary grace that characters like Proctor find
in The Crucible is now tested out on once stereotypical villains,
monsters like vampires and werewolves, with an extra edge; they are not only dangerous and powerful,
but also young and sexy immortals who have the capacity to become altruistic.
This drives audience interest in their journey to redemption, the power of
ordinary love as a driving force of change. Beneath the alluring exteriors and
chemistry between attractive lead stars in shows like The Vampire Diaries,
the thematic hook is the influence of ordinary human love to transform the
mythical, to shape destiny and bend overarching laws of existence, to move the
collective conscious to an overall greater good as active participants in its
evolution, that an ordinary girl like Elena Gilbert can shine with such purity
that even monsters seek to be worthy in her eyes, that her respect for their
inner character becomes the holy grail of their existence. Rather than just the
supernatural controlling the human world, as in much literature of earlier
millennia, in twenty-first century spiritual vampirism, it’s
dangerous but possible for humans to alter the supernatural, to reconnect lost
demons with authentic love as an overall purpose, a utopian hope of eradicating
darkness from the binary paradigm, beginning with demonic characters that are
essentially mass murderers who turn off their humanity and behave like
sociopaths, feasting on blood for pleasure.
In
Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New Supernatural, Victoria
Nelson explains how contemporary society that has
mostly moved on from religion seeks to replace the norms of cultural meaning
once found in mainstream structures like Christianity with spirituality arising
from supernaturalism, which is a strong thematic appeal of The Vampire
Diaries books and television series, a world in which, “antagonist-villains
(vampires, werewolves, assorted demons and imps of hell) have become
protagonist-heroes who struggle with their darkness even as they incarnate on
earth as gods” (Nelson, 8). The
Vampire Diaries teleplays take this dramatic turn to a new
level, especially in later seasons of the series, with a magnetic aesthetic
resplendent in meaningful symbolism, visual and sound imagery and contrast.
The
Vampire Diaries began as a series of four novels by New
York Times bestselling author L. J. Smith, first published from 1991-92,
reissued in 2007, and then followed by new instalments in 2009 and 2010,
coinciding with the television series, which first premiered on September 10,
2009, running eight seasons until March 10, 2017. L. J. Smith’s
The Vampire Diaries books include the original series: The Awakening:
Volume I (1991), The Struggle: Volume 2 (1991), The Fury: Volume
3, (1991), and Dark Reunion: Volume 4
(1992), which were rereleased in two volumes in 2007, followed by: The
Return Trilogy: The Return: Nightfall (2009), The Return: Shadow Souls (2010),
and The Return: Midnight (2011). Smith also wrote other book series
in the supernatural genre before and after her Vampire Diaries trilogies: The
Night of the Solstice, published by MacMillan in 1987, along with Heart
of Valor (1990), The Secret Circle (1992), The Forbidden Game (1994) and Dark
Visions (1995). When Alloy Entertainment, which had purchased the rights to
Smith’s The Vampire Diaries series,
let her go as its novelist due to creative differences about which Salvatore
brother Elena should eventually end up with, Stephan or Damon, more books, The
Vampire Diaries,
The Hunters Trilogy and The Salvation Trilogy were then written
by ghost writers and Aubrey Clark. Passionate about her vision for her
characters, Smith went on to write The Vampire Diaries short stories, in
a sense fan fiction to her own books, which she published on her website in
2010 and 2011. She also wrote several of The Vampire Diaries
teleplays for CW.
Why
the appeal? What gives this supernatural story such pull? The Vampire
Diaries is a culmination of strong acting, editing, cinematography and
story, launching in the right place at the right time to ride the wave of Twilight fandom. The phenomena
of monsters to creatures with heart is woven exquisitely in subtle,
subconscious symbolism, imagery and contrast to carry the transformation of
once evil vampires into almost human family, friends and partners, capable of
love, sacrifice and altruism.
With
the first of the Twilight films, supernatural adventure love stories
based on Stephenie Meyer’s four novels about vampire Edward Cullen falling
eternally in love with human high school student Bella Swan, released on
November 21, 2008, and the second one, New Moon, on November 20, 2009, the hitherto
scoffed idea of supernatural beings as acceptable love interest for human
beings was embraced by captivated teen readers. The frequent use of natural
west coast rainforest settings surrounding the small town of Forks in
Washington creates a symbolic contrast between good and evil. Vampire
antagonist James, who killed Charlie Swan’s friend Whalen, stalks Bella into
the act three climax, a contrast to the caring Cullen characters who only hunt
animals.
CW’s
The Vampire Diaries aired its first season right at the pinnacle of the
vampire-human love fervor, feeding into a hungry market of fans, particularly
young women. The Vampire Diaries contains elements of Twilight, even
replicating lines of dialogue and shots, but with a darker edge, not
being afraid to kill off important characters for shock value and horror, to
give viewers an emotional rollercoaster ride. In the first few episodes, Vicki
Donovan, main character Matt Donovan’s sister,
is turned to a vampire by Damon Salvatore, then staked by Stephan Salvatore
when she tries to kill female lead, Elena Gilbert. Stephan’s
best friend, good vampire Lexi Branson, is staked by Damon in the first season
as well, in a shocking move to take police suspicion off of himself and his
brother as potential vampires in the town. The Vampire Diaries takes the
romance of Twilight, fuses it with the thrilling suspense of horror,
then lands firmly in love triangles.
Building
on a book series without being married to it gave The Vampire Diaries
television producers Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson a perfect palette to work
from, a jumping off point of established characters and symbolism without
having to invent all the world building from scratch, allowing them to achieve
greater depth with the symbols and backstory from the books that work for their
format than may have been possible if they’d had to
create everything in a limited timeframe.
The
character names L. J. Smith chose, for example, enhance the theme of a
metaphorically murky guy, vampire Damon Salvatore, being tempted to selfishly
lure an innocent human girl, Elena Gilbert, into his life, and instead being
transformed to his true pre-vampire self in the radiance of her light. The name
Damon sounds like “demon,"
which might throw people off his potential for redemption for a few episodes,
but means “loyalty,”
which is perfectly fitting for his character, someone who always stands by his
brother in the long run, regardless of how much they irritate each other from
day to day or decade to decade, and who will always choose to save Elena’s life
when difficult decisions arise. The last name Salvatore means “savior,”
which Damon and Stephan ultimately are to each other and to Elena. It’s especially fitting for Stephan, whose first contact
with Elena is when he saves her from drowning in backstory, unbeknownst to
Elena, who didn’t know why she had survived her family car going off the
Wickery Bridge until he reveals their earlier meeting. Beyond just saving his
brother and Elena, “savior”
in the family name Salvator is martyrdom for Damon to aspire to, which he does
at the end of Season 5, when he sacrifices himself to save the town of Mystic
Falls and ends up on the crumbling Other Side, a void for dead supernatural
beings, perhaps gone forever. The name Elena means “bright light, shining one,”
a light so enriching when her humanity is on that her presence in the world
gives the fallen Damon irresistible reason to become the best version of
himself. Their love is sunlight. This transforms into cinematography with
natural looking light in shots of them together as lovers when they are finally
a couple in Season 5.
The
most obvious symbolism in The Vampire Diaries centers around the
mystical powers of blood, moving from its shock value in traditional vampire
horror films to sophisticated layers of interpretation, an ongoing contrast of
danger and love, as vampires, witches, werewolves and other supernatural creatures
attempt to control their lust for power and instead serve others. The crossover
of blood from menstrual mysticism associated with the life-giving force of
women in ancient Goddess cultures, treated reverently for the first
approximately 200 000 years of human existence preceding that last 6000 years
of patriarchy, to its use in patriarchal religions, (Mor and Sj├╢├╢) most
dominantly in western culture, the eucharist as the body and blood of Christ,
is now reappropriated by teleplays like The Vampire Diaries in a hybrid
of horror and love, danger and magic, death and rebirth. Where for many
millennia, blood on stage has come to represent murder and injury, the
menstruation myths that patriarchy appropriated and distorted over the past
thousands of years are born anew in dramas that make the most of every
connotation of blood possible, whether or not it’s
palpable, finding positive as well as negative interpretations for it, as it
moves plots forward, sometimes as a key to unlocking a mystery like a few drops
of blood on a map leading the way to where a loved one is, other times
representing mass murder. Menstruation itself is not
outright acknowledged in The Vampire Diaries, but the novels and shows
are written for a predominantly teen girl audience whose bodies are changing as
they begin to menstruate, an unspoken draw of contemporary vampire fiction for
the age group, that ritualized renditions of their mineral-laden blood have
enticing power.
Blood
sharing from a human to a vampire as a symbol of love and support in an effort
to help him manage his addiction is especially sensual at the beginning of the
last few episodes of Season 1 when grade eleven girl Elena feeds her
pure-hearted vampire boyfriend Stephan a drop of her blood a day from her palm
to build up his physical strength. He had been surviving the past few decades
on animal blood, due to his alcoholic-like addiction to human blood. While
animal blood kept Stephan “alive,” it’s no match
for battling vampires who live on human blood, which resulted in him not being
able to protect himself or his loved ones from escaped tomb vampires like
Frederick who were plotting to take revenge on the town of Mystic Falls that
had locked them up and starved them for over a hundred years when it was
learned in 1865 that they were vampires. It becomes a sensual moment for Elena
to feed Stephan just a drop of her precious blood every day, an inverse of the
traditional vampire model of a monster attacking vulnerable humans to a love
story of a human willingly trying to help him.
In
that moment, the love story between Elena and Stephan, the first Salvatore
brother she dates, is sweet and idyllic. Julie Plec and Kevin Williamson,
producers and writers for this episode, don’t waste
any potential though. Stephan’s
relationship with blood soon transitions to a metaphor for addiction when Damon
finds him in the cellar of the mansion they share, feasting on stolen hospital
blood bags. By Season 1, Episode 19, “Miss
Mystic Falls,” Stephan loses control and feeds viscously on pageant contestants,
a reminder of the complexity and danger even well-intentioned vampires pose to
the regular humans of the town. Yet the heart of the story is redemption,
perseverance, forgiveness and support. All of the main protagonists, whether
human, witch, vampire, vampire hunter, or werewolf, have lapses in self-control
and selflessness, but ultimately come together as a reliable group of high
school and university peers protecting their town from other supernatural
dangers outside themselves. To this end, Damon and Elena lock Stephan in the
Salvatore cellar to dry him out, then support him in coming back into a
meaningful life, saving him from suicide with their belief that he is worth
fighting for, that he is capable of controlling his addiction and being a worthy
partner, brother and member of the community.
Blood
is many things for the range of characters on the show and its symbolism
changes through their relationships. For Elena’s
fifteen-year-old brother Jeremy, in the second part of Season 1, the vile of
blood that his vampire love Anna leaves him symbolizes her love for him in
being willing to turn him into a vampire to share eternity with her. Depending
on perspective, his desire to drink her blood and die with it in his system
could also be seen as suicide to escape the overwhelming problems of human life.
Though Anna falls genuinely in love with Jeremy, when they first meet, she
flirts because she wants his blood for revenge. She intends to use Gilbert
blood to revive her mother Pearl Zhu, who had been locked in the tomb by John
Gilbert, a distant relative of Jeremy’s from
1865. Anna’s original plan was to trick Jeremy
into being the blood that would bring her mother back to life and to allow him
to be sacrificed in the process. Jeremy knows Anna is a vampire and has an
ulterior motive of his own. He’s looking
for Vicki, his girlfriend from the summer, not realizing that Vicki had been
killed when Stephan drove a stake through her heart to keep her from killing
Elena. Along the way, Anna and Jeremy fall in love. When he pushes her to feed
on him, it’s erotic, a lifeline connection,
though she gets angry at him for putting himself in potential danger if she had
lost control. For vampire Anna and human Jeremy, blood symbolizes passion,
love, romance, family connection, revenge and the power to give and take life,
mortal and immortal, given the supernatural rule on the show that drinking
vampire blood can heal human injuries, but if a human dies with vampire blood
in his/her/their system, he/she/they will come back as a vampire and have to
decide whether to drink human blood to complete the transition, or die again
forever. The witches in the series have blood in their rituals too. The
Vampire Diaries continually uses blood as an evolving symbol of
mystery, life and death, with original incarnations from location spells to
doppelg├дnger mysteries.
The
thread of symbolic imagery has clearly been drawn from one serial story to
another in the movement to redeem vampires into human-like gods, dream hunks
and unattainable models with enviable manners and courting rituals of earlier
centuries. There are obvious borrowed shots and lines from the Twilight series
like Alarick Saltzman using one of Edward Cullen’s lines for Bella, “You
are my life now,” and Stephan being very similar to Edward Cullen in
personality and appearance, complete with jokes from other characters about his
sexy hair, but the allusions go deeper and wider into popular stories. As a
whole, especially in later seasons, The Vampire Diaries plays on classic
fairy tales, borrowing shots and symbolism from stories like Cinderella
and Sleeping Beauty, but keeping them in tune with the fast-paced, edgy
overall style. Metaphor in the composition of shots is a classic The Vampire
Diaries move. Not only do the writers establish the ever-classic
Romeo and Juliet forbidden young love stories with traditional enemies such as
werewolf Tyler Lockwood and vampire Caroline Forbes falling passionately in
love when she risks her life to help him adjust to having triggered his
werewolf gene, but they are filmed in poses that evoke fairy tale and romantic
emotions. When Tyler rescues Caroline from a dungeon her father has
locked her in to torture her out of craving blood by exposing her to sunlight
without her daylight ring that protects her from burning to death, an irony
since she accepts that her father is gay but he can’t
accept that she’s a vampire, Tyler
kneels in front of Caroline to place her daylight ring (that keeps her from
bursting into flames in the sun) back on her finger as though he has just
proposed, a symbolic gesture that is not lost on the audience. The actors are
purposely positioned in this posture as a means of creating a correlation with
traditional proposal scenes in the minds of viewers. Fairy tale shots
continue through the series, with Elena put to sleep in a casket like Sleeping
Beauty at the end of Season 6 when the actress who plays her, Nina
Dobrev, decided to leave the show. Elena must wait out a witch’s
curse that she and Bonnie will both get to live, but not at the same time, so
Elena will sleep for a hundred years, a curse that’s broken near the end of
the series so she can share her life with Damon. Subtle postures are used
symbolically to equate fairy tale love stories with the viewers’ feelings
for The Vampire Diaries characters, deep nonverbal messages that need no
explanation for the youthful audience, suggesting that these once demons like
vampires and werewolves are the new princes and princesses of happily ever
after romantic love.
The
ultimate desire of a large population of The Vampire Diaries viewers is
for the redeemed Damon to know and trust he is good for the pure-hearted Elena,
and this is teased out with a multi-layered use of media and action.
Juxtaposition drives the intensity of the drama in many ways, sometimes with
contrast in the subtext, such as the lyrics in a song cutting against the grain
of action in different ways. There’s intense
juxtaposition, for example, when Original Vampire Klaus Mikaelson, an
all-powerful entity stronger than all other vampires, an antagonist in Seasons
2 and 3, is so angry at feeling alone and betrayed, that he murders his
vampire-werewolf hybrids while a Christmas hymn leftover from a holiday party
plays beneath the scene, creating a jolting contrast between the peaceful
lyrics and the depravity of the action on camera, blood and gore flying
savagely. In scenes with main character love stories, it cuts the other way.
For altruistic reasons, characters who should be together sometimes aren’t, so the lyrics speak for them. This happens several
times with Damon and Elena near the end of Season 5. Even the way they break up
plays with audience expectation. This is Damon who opened the series as an out
of control, creepy murderer, who impulsively took away Elena’s
choice to die a human by making her into a vampire so he wouldn’t
lose her, so there’s an expectation when
a break up is on the way that he’ll beg
Elena to stay with him and she will leave, but the writers cleverly play it the
other way, Damon leaving out of altruism because he thinks that Elena is better
off without him and Elena forgiving him and wanting him to stay with her. They
both obtusely think that they should stay apart for their own good while
chemistry sizzles between them at every moment and supernatural enemies force
them to stay together. In Season 5, Episode 20, where they’re
still broken up for all the wrong reasons, but hiding out together from the
season’s antagonists, the Travellers,
Elena comes to Damon, who’s hurriedly packing his car, to see how he feels
about her having lied to protect him from spiralling out of control. The
passion between them erupts into a kiss and as that happens the delicate female
singer Kerli sings underneath the action, “Every time the darkness falls around me, I can feel you move
beneath my skin…this love is more than chemical…” “Chemical” is edited to
perfection so that lyrics land perfectly in the scene. It’s
been cut to perfectly align with the scene for the greatest emotional impact.
Elena is the sun Damon connects with in his core, and despite the action on
camera being the sizzling chemistry between the attractive characters, the
lyrics shout what they can’t figure
out, that their love is deep and meaningful in addition to being hot. Ian
Somerhalder, who plays Damon, puts his whole body into the acting, which helps
establish the tension in scenes that keep turning dramatically with up and down
surprises. Sound placement and editing is one more careful factor that’s in tune with the thematic whole, evidence of what can
be done when a team of producers, editors, writers, directors and actors work
closely together. It’s also refreshing to
hear a healthy amount of women’s voices
in the music under the scenes. Visuals and sound emphasize the two leads not
yet embracing the undeniable truth that they are good for each other and should
be a romantic couple for life.
Music
contrasting action is a common element of the series to heighten viewer
emotions with the longing for the characters to trust that humans and vampires
can successfully share their lives, that the supernatural among their peers are
as worthy a mate as any other. There’s another
evocative scene in Season 7, Episode 13, when vampires Stephan and Caroline,
who was once human but is now a vampire, who had a crush on Stephan from the
first day she saw him back when she was a human, are meant to be together, long
after their romantic relationships with Elena and Tyler have ended and they’ve become friends. Caroline gives birth to Alaric and
Josette’s twin girls who were magically transferred into her when Josette was
killed and just when Caroline and Stephan should be together, Stephan leaves to
protect his brother from a vampire hunter. As Caroline holds her newborns and
Stephan drives away from her in the opposite direction, “The Highest Tide” by The Wealthy West speaks the characters’
real feelings, while realities beyond their control split them. “During
the highest tide while the water is rising, will you still keep me in your
sights?” the singers ask over acoustic music. Cutting opposites together
intensifies emotion and tension, in this case lyrics and actions exemplifying
heartbreaking contrast between the relationship Caroline and Stephan want and
deserve and the sacrifices they make for the greater good, always putting
others first to a painful degree when their humanity is on. (Young vampires in
this series can switch off their humanity and behave without remorse, making
them an ongoing danger to humans, which Stephan and Caroline have both done at
times in earlier seasons, but at this point their connection is pure of heart
and meant to be.) At the end of Season 8, the last of the run, Stephan and
Caroline marry in the second last episode and he dies sacrificing himself in
the finale while she tries to reach him with the heartbreaking purity of her
love in the last voicemail message she leaves through tears on his cell,
understanding that he chose to save others instead of joining her and the twin
girls she birthed: “Stephan,
please call me, please. I need you to know that I understand. I love you. I
will love you forever. I understand.” Stephan and Caroline had promised “Family
first,” and that meant her driving away with her daughters while he gave his
life to save his brother and the town. Whenever one good thing happens like
Elena’s life is saved, a consequence is
paid, like Bonnie’s mother is turned to
a vampire, or Stephan and Caroline get to marry, but he dies immediately after.
The writers and directors employ dramatic contrast with every element possible,
from the music under the shots to characters only getting part of what they
want, creating a story where scenes move sharply from positive to negative and
negative to positive, an ideal dramatic formula, as Robert McKee exemplifies in
Story: Substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting
(McKee).
Lighting
and color in the shots makes the television series look like film, especially
in later seasons, sealing in the theme of redemption, that a vampire can be a
worthy life partner, with outstanding cinematography. In the finale of Season
5, Episode 22, “Home,”
lighting is a gentle layer of symbolism in many key thematic settings,
particularly for Damon and Elena’s love
story and his ultimate sacrifice that lands him on the disintegrating Other
Side, the dimension where the spirits of dead vampires, witches, werewolves,
hybrids and magical beings go that is now dissolving to oblivion, as the season
goes out on a cliffhanger with fans wondering if he’s
really gone. Can they really kill off a main character while the actor still
has a solid contract? The writing and directing create high suspense, backed up
with layers of symbolism to feed the audience rewatching the finale through a
long summer of waiting to see what will happen in Season 6, all of it
highlighting Damon’s transformation from
potential villain in the pilot to beloved life partner for Elena.
In
the Season 5 finale, Damon and Elena, who officially resumed their relationship
in the previous episode, are cast in sunlight in the forest right before
midpoint, promising to be together forever. The screenwriters got them together
at the end of Season 4, giving them a whole summer of freedom and love
offscreen, but wisely kept them in close proximity but forbidding themselves
from dating once Season 5 got going, to intensify the tension. Right before
midpoint of the Season 5 finale, they are filmed in the forest in daytime
sunlight, in love and committed to each other for life, as Damon confesses that
he’ll be the one to trigger a gas
explosion needed to get their enemies, the Travellers, out of their town of
Mystic Falls and over to the Other Side, where these antagonists can be
prevented from returning. He promises Elena that he’ll
make it back safely, that Bonnie, the anchor between the worlds, can let him
back through. There is a fade to black after their close up in sun to mark the
significance of the scene. Even the transitions between shots, generally cuts,
are symbolic. There’s a fade down again
near the end of the teleplay when Damon can’t come
back through from the dissolving Other Side because the witch Liv’s
twin brother blows out the candles to save her from the toll the spell was
taking on her before the last protagonist, Damon, is able to return. The only
way supernatural spirits can return to life from the Other Side is to have a
huge phenomena like all the Travellers passing at once from the gas explosion
and a witch performing a spell at the same time. With the candles blown
out, it appears that Damon is doomed. Writer and executive producer Julie Plec’s commitment to consequence comes into play. Damon gets
to have Elena’s love and he gets to
be a redeemed good guy who finally does everything right, but he doesn’t get to share his life with her, at least, not yet. At
this point, the end of Season 5, it looks like he’s
doomed to oblivion. Damon’s scenes
on the Other Side are in cold, dark, blue lighting at night to symbolize death,
disconnection and isolation.
When
Damon gets to say goodbye to Elena from the Other Side before it completely
disintegrates, the actors are in sunlight again in a small room with doors wide
open and the lush, natural green of the forest behind Damon, the heart chakra
in an open, peaceful setting. Symbolically, it appears that he’ll
be exiting into a rich and liberating green light. It’s
soft. Though most of the candles from the spell are out, he’s
filmed with four-five still on behind him, closest to the exit of the green
forest behind the open doors. The cream candles on either side of the doors
behind him glow, another symbol of the inner peace he’s
achieved with death, though the ones around Elena, who is sobbing on the floor,
are out. Damon stands peacefully while Elena is crumpled, trying to reach out
to him. Bonnie, who can see both worlds, tells Elena that Damon’s
here and that she can say goodbye. The audience sees both of them. Contrast is
established in the scene by the fact that Damon can see, hear and touch Elena,
but she can’t see or hear him, just responds to
him stroking her hair, wiping her tears and touching her hand. “You lied to
me,” she says, referring to his earlier vow that he would make it back to her
alive, part of the powerful screenwriting of the series, that seemingly casual
comments in the first half of an episode come back and turn significantly in
the end. There is a close up of Elena and Damon with sunlight streaming on them
as he bends down and says goodbye, his inner peace and love pouring through his
tone, “You are, by far, the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my 173
years on this Earth. I get to die knowing I was loved—not just by anyone—by
you, Elena Gilbert. It's the epitome of a fulfilled life.” She begs him to come
back as he gently leaves the chapel setting. Then Damon and Bonnie stand
courageously together in the blowing wind in the last moments of the Other Side
until the screen goes completely white, cutting off their last words, the white
representing the hope of an afterlife or sense of peace with their lives and
decisions as they hold hands into the void.
The
integration of passionate, committed actors, writers, directors and producers
with a smooth veneer of multi-layered symbolism, juxtaposition and imagery
makes The Vampire Diaries a master of epic world building, drama and
love stories. Of course, in real life, a theme of altruistic love alone being
capable of reversing evil is a concept that’s flawed
when met with the behaviour of psychopaths and sociopaths abusing power, since
altruistic love from a place of less power is not
in itself enough to alter dictators, especially from a place of oppression.
From a social and political perspective, the dichotomy between real and ideal
needs to be addressed with systematic and structural prevention of abuse, but
for entertainment, the hope of human love impacting positively on supernatural
monsters to turn traditional models of religion from humans living in fear of
their wrath to monsters worshipping mortals is gripping. That human love can
inspire monsters to alter their view of humans as play things to toy with or
feast on at will to respecting purity to such a degree that serving and
protecting the vulnerable becomes their motivation is exciting television.
Instead of humans being expected to orbit around and bow down to narcissistic,
badly behaving Greek and Roman gods, the model of worship is reversed and a
faction of vampires, werewolves and other supernatural dangers seek to embody
humanity by reigniting it in themselves. They take religion outside of its
parameters and test the worth of altruism for its own sake. In twenty-first
century supernaturalism like The Vampire Diaries, the gods are jealous
of the meaning and integrity found in mortal lives and seek to become human.
Works Cited
Campbell,
Joseph, and Phil Cousineau. The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His
Life and Work. New World Library, 2014.
Dries,
Caroline and Young, Brian. “Home,” The
Vampire Diaries, Season 5, Episode 22, https://vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/Home/Transcript.
Teleplay.
Hapgood,
Robert. “Speak
Hands for Me: Gesture as Language in Julius Caesar.” Drama Survey 5. Article
in Folger Shakespeare: Julius Ceasar by
William Shakespeare. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Book.
Kerli, “Chemical,”
Utopia. Island Def Jam Music Group, 2013. Song.
McKee,
Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of
Screenwriting. Methuen, 1999.
Miller,
Authur. The Crucible. Penguin Books, 1976.
Nelson,
Victoria. Gothicka: Vampire Heroes, Human Gods, and the New
Supernatural. Harvard University Press, 2013.
Sj├╢├╢,
Monica, and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the
Religion of the Earth. HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,
2012.
Snyder, Blake. Save the
Cat!: The Last Book On Screenwriting That You'll Ever Need. Michael Wiese Productions, 2005.
***
About the Author: Cynthia Sharp has been featured in July 2024 edition of Setu. She studied screenwriting as part of her Creative Writing and Literature Honours B.A. and continues to analyze films, novels and poetry since completing her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing in 2022.
