VIDAR THE VAMPIRE: A Misogynistic Affront To Decent Humanity

***TRIGGER WARNING***

With the dawn of a worldwide #MeToo movement, one would think that filmmakers and distributors alike would start to be more careful with their choices and how they depict women. But let’s face it, the industry is still run by men with huge egos and privilege.

I’m not usually one who gets offended. Having watched the torture porn in Hostel, to the despicable crime against humanity in The Human Centipede, I’ve seen some nasty stuff. When it comes to the use of rape and sexual assault, filmmakers have a moral and ethical responsibility to make sure it is used with great care and out of necessity.

Vidar The Vampire is a supposed dark “comedy” out of Norway, but nothing about it is funny. What could have been a clever twist of a vampire film, is instead, steeped in a juvenile delinquent, misogynistic, “What Were They Thinking?”, study of oral fixation that Freud would’ve had a field day with. Its over the top use of disgusting, unnecessary scenes of assault shadows over the film too considerably to be overlooked.

Satan Christ?

Thomas Aske Berg writes, directs and stars as Vidar, a lifelong mommy’s boy and farmer, disillusioned with his life. He has spent the majority of his 33 years taking care of his ailing, ultra right-wing, Christian mother (Marit Sanden), and as the only child, keeping their farm running. A veritable shut-in, his only sexual outlets have been with a small collection of adult magazines.

One night, when he can’t take anymore, he begs Jesus to help him change his life in any way possible. Jesus (Brigt Skrettingland) shows up to him in a “dream” as both Jesus and Satan mixed, a religious paradigm that is explored throughout. In the first scene of oral assault (yes there is more than one -consider yourselves warned), Jesus compels Vidar to “accept him” through oral assault. The next day, he wakes up sick and is literally unrecoverable. His mother ends up taking him to church for an exorcism, as a last-ditch effort to save his life.

After he dies, he is resurrected as a “vampire”, though demon would be more appropriate. Jesus’s entire goal is to make Vidar a man by getting him laid as much as possible and partying the rest of the time. Though there also could’ve been an interesting twist on the use of Jesus and Satan as the same person, the narrative is, instead, used to degrade and humiliate every woman in this film. In fact, if a woman is not an actual prostitute in this film, she is either an object of sex, assault, or overtly misogynistic comments. This film hates women, which leads me to wonder if the filmmaker does too.

Misogyny As Comedy?

Female characters have been the butt of the joke in male-written comedies for, basically, ever. Women in film have run the gamut from male supporter; sexual object; object of beauty on a man’s arm; object of beauty to be claimed; victims of kidnapping, assault, rape, abuse, and multiple other arrays of degradation. Rarely, does the woman “save herself”; she is almost never loud or fearless; never taller or bigger than the male lead; generally depicted working in stereotypically female occupations such as teachers, nurses and mothers to strippers and prostitutes; and, most importantly, she MUST be thin and attractive. ALL of which, as women, we are supposed to just laugh off, so we don’t seem too “feminist” “bitchy” or seen to offend a poor man’s fragile masculinity.

Pardon my use of strong words dear reader, but, f*ck. That.

You know why? Because when little boys grow up in this sort of culture, they can become the Harvey Weinstein’s of this industry. They also can feel entitled enough to create a repugnant film about an imbecile “vampire”, who publicly degrades, stalks then orally assaults a passed out woman to suck out her period blood. Then, show him later regurgitating the used tampon, all in the name of comedy. There are SO MANY other parts of the body where a vampire can extract blood that this, frankly, perverted, creepy decision made by Berg, as the director and writer, is unforgivable.

Instead of giving this film any more of a description or my precious time, I’m going to focus the rest of my article on the victimology of women in film, because even though it’s 2018, it seems that many men in film still need the lessons.

The Sad Reality For Women In Film

From the Women And Hollywood resources site:

In 2017:

• Females comprised 24% of sole protagonists, 37% of major characters, and 34% of all speaking characters
• In films with exclusively male directors and/or writers, females accounted for 20% of protagonists, 33% of major characters, and 32% of all speaking characters.
• Sole female protagonists were much more likely to appear in independent features (65%) than studio features (35%)
• Female protagonists were most likely to appear in comedies (30%) and dramas (30%), followed by action films (17%), horror films (13%), animated features (4%), and science fiction films (4%).

Kate Hagen, Director of Community at The Blacklist and script reader, did her own study on the depiction of sexual violence in spec screenplays. Here are just a few of the things she found in this troubling, extensive investigation.

• The MPAA does not track the number of incidents of sexual violence in feature films, in which they are responsible for rating.
• Of the 45 thousand scripts on The Blacklist, 2400 were tagged with “rape”, of which, the overwhelming majority were written by men.
• Violence depicted in film is almost always towards women, again, mostly written by men.
• Of the other screenplay readers Kate interviewed, she found there were “numerous scripts that promoted the coercion of women into sex as an admirable ability in a male character. It is not uncommon to find such tropes of “toxic masculinity” presented in a favorable light” and that “Quite a few times — this feels like it usually happens in a ‘comedy’ where the joke is that a woman will only sleep with a man because she is too drunk to say no, or the men specifically target the drunkest woman in the room so they have the best chance of having sex — there seems to be an extremely loose understanding of consent. This is too often accompanied by descriptions of these female characters as LITERALLY ‘dressed like a slut’ or ‘wearing too much makeup’ or ‘acts like a whore, in the worst cases, the character’s name is Slutty Girl #1 as if it’s the woman’s fault for getting raped”.
• Among the “poorest depiction of sexual violence” screenplay readers had seen in the scripts they read was this: “A very violent sequence of a demon/serial killer targeting women who were out in the park running, saying terrible things about how he was going to rape them, and then showing the attacks. It felt like the writer was using this scene as an outlet for their own violent, sexual thoughts“

That last comment sure rang true with me in thinking about Vidar The Vampire. It felt to me that Berg was also using this film to serve as an outlet for his outright hatred of women and his own perverse sexual thoughts.

Vidar The Vampire: Conclusion

If you still don’t get it and want to vilify me for being too harsh, here‘s another educational read for you from The Village Voice.

Halfway through Vidar The Vampire, I wanted to turn it off, but I continued to watch because another female reviewer said there “was a point” to all of the offensive scenes. Sadly, there was not and I can’t believe that another woman can justify giving this film a good review in good consciousness. No matter how well a film is acted, filmed or technically created, if it uses overt sexual assault and Cro-Magnon behavior towards women, intended for comedic purposes, there is no excuse in the world to justify giving it a good review. I struggled myself on whether or not I should’ve even given this film a review, but decided it was necessary to speak out.

Shame on the filmmaker for making this. Shame on the distributors who are distributing this. Shame on the festivals that gave awards to this and shame on the reviewers and moviegoers that don’t also denounce this. You are all complicit in why the #MeToo movement is necessary. You are all complicit in carrying out and supporting the degradation of women and the idea that assault of any kind, to any person, is funny.

Thomas Aske Berg, seek help.