The Hunger is a 1983 vampire film starring Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon. The directorial debut of Tony Scott, the erotic thriller received mixed reception upon its initial release, but has in the intervening decades developed a passionate cult following as well as a fair amount of academic and critical reappraisal. Debate about the film is especially popular among feminist film academics, as any film so deeply focused on the female vampire is expected to be. There is, however, a prevalent argument that the film heavily caters to the male gaze while engaging in the “predatory” lesbian vampire trope. What this interpretation fails to consider though is that The Hunger envisions a far more sympathetic and emotionally layered depiction of the female vampire, and of two women's romantic relationships, than had previously been depicted on screen.
The female vampire has always been its own can of worms in cinema, her depictions vary wildly from her male counterpart, and the type of fear she evokes often comes from a different place. It is common parlance to say the vampire represents a fear of sex, sexuality, and sexual desire, and if so then the female vampire represents how men fear women’s self directed sexuality. Prior to the 1970s the female vampire was a sparsely seen figure, and even more rarely a deeply thought out empathetic figure, with the only notable exception possibly being the 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter. So the boom of the vampire film, and in particular the female vampire film in the 1970’s and ‘80s invites questions about the state of society at the time.
The 1970s was the era where the women’s liberation movement and the ideology of second wave feminism was really coming into itself, so many social anxieties at the time were highly centered around women having autonomy over themselves, and especially their sexuality. In her books The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis film academic Barbara Creed observes that the female vampire “threatens to seduce the daughters of patriarchy away from their proper gender roles.”
The 1970s was also the era that the queer right movement began gaining serious political traction in the United States, so the other big anxiety of main stream America was that of the corrupting homosexuals coming to seduce the pure children. And so came the the massive influx of films about seductive lesbian vampires. But the female vampire being depicted as a lesbian was hardly new, “her lesbianism arises from the nature of the vampire act itself”, as Creed put is. There is an inherent eroticism to the vampire and what they do, after all it involves passionate embraces and an exchange of bodily fluids.
The Hunger further literalizes this eroticism by having Miriam feed on her victims and transform her partners during literal sex. Of course, The Hunger was not the first vampire film to do this, but in the context of Miriam, the sexual nature of the transformation takes on a dual meaning. The female vampire functions as both mother and lover. She “rebirths” her lovers in a sense, recreating them as vampires and nurturing their newfound vampiric instincts afterwards. This is, again, especially literal in The Hunger when Miriam transforms all her “children” while they’re having sex. Creed described Miriam as the “overbearing”, “cruel”, and “ nurturing” mother. She loves and protects her children/lovers. As we see with Alice she often tries to rear them even from childhood. However she also refuses to let them go, even while they are in great torment, never allowing them to die. If the film is being looked at as a response to modern social anxieties about women’s liberation, this mother/lover reading is especially poignant. If Sarah represents the fear of daughters being seduced by liberation, Miriam could be read as the foremother of that liberation, as well the seductive agent.
As previously mentioned many commentators, including Creed, has described the films depiction of two women in a sexual relationship as “reinforcing the notion that lesbian desire is deadly.” However Miriam is hardly behaving as the “bisexual vampires” seen previously. There is an empathy for Miriam not present in say a similarly characterized Elizabeth Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) in 1971’s Daughters of Darkness, where in the queer vampire is far more intentionally cruel and knowingly predatory towards her lovers. In The Hunger Miriam, at the very least believes herself, to be very much in love with all of her children/lovers. She hopes and prays for them to last, mourns them when they’re “lost”, her cruelty comes from selfish desire not to let them die rather than malice or indifference to their pain. She attempts to give them comfort by “symbolically returning them to the womb” when she lays them in their own coffins and confines all her lovers in the attic. This attempt is folly, of course, but her desire to provide it makes her a character the audience can empathize with in the face of her monstrous actions.
Sarah’s seduction also stands out as being something different from other famous vampire seductions of the past. In that it comes across significantly more consensual. From Countess Marya in Dracula's Daughter to Elizabeth Bathory in Daughters of Darkness previous lesbian seductions were predominantly caused by hypnosis, the female target rather explicitly does not desire the literal or metaphorical sex, but finds herself mystically walking towards it anyways. There is nothing supernatural in Miriam’s seduction of Sarah, it is presented as a genuine courtship, which Sarah reciprocates. In this context the relationship between Sarah and Miriam reads less like a monster hunting her latest victim, and more like two lonely people connecting. The sex scene its self is so tender, almost wholesome in how its filmed. Sensual and romantic rather than erotic or pornographic. A love scene between consenting lovers rather than predator and prey.
Of course Sarah and Miriam's relationship goes beyond the love making scene. Miriam used a time of consenting intimacy to force something upon Sarah that she did not consent to, that being her rebirth as a vampire, but what is interesting is that Sarah’s reaction is not one of fear. It’s anger. Sarah reacts like someone who’s been betrayed by a person she trusted. While Sarah protests her fate, Miriam re-professes her love for Sarah. Between Sarah and Miriam exists genuine, if complicated and confused, feelings.
Miriam expresses her need for love and affection through control. She re-birthed Sarah without her permission, knowing Sarah would have no choice but to stay with her to be taken care of. Creed observes how this further reinforces the simultaneous position as mother and lover, drawing parallels between feeding off of blood and breast milk. Miriam is so afraid of her lovers leaving her that she deems herself the arbiter of their existence so she can keep them with her forever. While Miriam is still controlling and dangerous, the depth of emotion at play here is far more nuanced than previous depictions of similar relationships.
There are many interpretations of the ending, some suggest Miriam's lovers finally rise up and attack her, perhaps she was just off guard in her unexpected mourning, perhaps she was weakened from ingesting Sarah’s blood. Or perhaps what happened, was Sarah’s refusal to be under her control symbolically broke Miriam’s cycle. If Sarah can refuse Miriam’s control, so too can all her other suffering lovers.
In her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws Carol Clover observes that women’s stories “trace a circle”. The ending scene of The Hunger shows Sarah having apparently survived her suicide attempt, in London, with two partners, and Miriam now agonizing in her own coffin. Sarah hasn’t ended Miriam’s cycle, she has simply taken Miriam’s place in it. Her keeping of Miriam, as Miriam kept her lovers, further proves Sarah’s genuine feelings for her.
The Hunger is an admittedly unconventional film. It wears its era, one of rising queer and women's rights, sharply on its sleeve and due to the growing pains of the ever burgeoning queer cinema of its time it's easy to look at in an uncharitable light. But a closer inspection shows a far more nuanced and empathetic look at the complicated existence of the female vampire, of women/women relationships, and of the vicious cycles of abuse. Much like the film's complicated study on these subjects, so too should discussions on it allow for these shades of grey.
Commentaires