Morality In Tanz Der Vampire: An Essay

(I know what you're thinking: More  essays about this musical? Yep. This was also written for a school project, so at some points it may seem like I'm telling you things you already know. I did my best to edit most of the parts out, but some might still remain - especially in how the general tone of the writing sounds. But anyway, this is a debate over the messages of morality in Tanz, about life, killing, and greed.)

            I will be perfectly honest: The first couple of weeks after I had gained a sizeable appreciation for Tanz, my appreciation really only extended as far as “Ooh, pretty music!” This was partly because it’s easier to listen to music in my busy life that it is to sit down and watch a story, and partly because the music is just that good. Also, as much  as I’m an advocate for cross-lingual understanding, I can’t lie and say that my inability to understand German apart from a meager vocabulary wasn’t a major factor to my hesitance to think about the plot and characters.

            Soon, though, I realized that there was a depth in this story, a statement behind the sweeping music and dark humor. Or, as I came to understand after working hard to overcome the language barrier, it wasn’t exactly a statement. It was a question. Several questions, actually.

            After thinking for a while, I gathered up my analytical skills, and extracted the three main questions asked to you, the audience, in the show. They’re all related, and all very dependent on personal values:
            1.Is it better to be cruel to prevent harm to yourself, or be a “good guy” and be victimized?

            2.Is it morally alright to kill human beings if it is necessary for your own survival, and if you only kill as many as it necessary?

            3.Is it morally alright to kill those beings that kill humans, even if they do it out of necessity, and are otherwise peaceful, and have families and emotions? Are human lives worth more than other species’?

            These questions are the driving force of the plot. The two main characters (Alfred and Sarah) have to make the decision of whether to gain invincibility, immortality, and the ability to whatever they want – at the price of having to kill humans. They both have different opinions about it. And the second and third are also what our villains struggle with.

            Let’s look at that first question. This is the primary thing that the vampires (Krolocks or not) use to try to convince people to join them. When Alfred first enters the castle, the very first thing the count does is start offering him things – knowledge, freedom, but most importantly: Protection through power. He argues that life (or un-life, if you want to be technical) cannot be lived to the fullest if you live in fear, and the only way to get rid of the fear is to become predator instead of prey.

            The other vampires agree with him on that: It is better to be the killer than the victim. The opening lines of the finale translate as follows: “Take what you want, or it will be taken from you…show your fist, or you’ll be hit. Push yourself forward, or you will be overlooked.” *

            The song “Carpe Noctem” is Alfred’s nightmare, a look into what exactly he fears will happen if he takes control and becomes the predator. At first, he sees the world the other vampires try to tempt him with: He gets anything and everything he wants, is powerful, happy. Then, of course, comes his problem: Killing. And along with the killing, another big fear of his seems to be his fear that he won’t care about those killings – after the dream-embodiment of Sarah is killed, Alfred’s dream-double simply drags her body to the front of the stage, dumps it there, grins to himself, and walks off.

Alfred spends the show as the assistant to a vampire hunter – already we’ve got something going here: The prey (human) is trying to reverse the set-up of predator and prey, making the hunter (vampire) the hunted. Kill before you’re killed. He doesn’t seem to question whether what he’s doing is moral or not. When he later has to actually kill who he’s been hunting this whole time, it turns out he can’t bring himself to do it – he’s on the “thou shalt not kill” side. This is important because of how he sees the first question – he’s so opposed to the vampires’ killing, yet he himself is on a mission to kill. Technically, he’s a rather hypocritical figure to the audience up until that revealing point.

And in the gray-upon-gray morality of Tanz, this moment is where we can finally decide that Alfred is a “good” (i.e. moral) hero. But what about Sarah?

Sarah is an incredibly complex character. But what I want to focus on here is her opinion of the first question. The whole entire reason she runs off to the castle is that she wants to be free, and she sees becoming a vampire as the way to do that. She wants to be powerful – after a lifetime of being locked up and bossed around by those more powerful than her, she wants to become the most powerful of them all. But you can look at it two ways, and each way creates a very different view of Sarah’s character:

1.She wants to be powerful not for protection (like Alfred), but simply to be the most powerful creature. No one can boss her around. Looking at her this way, she can seem like an incredibly selfish person.

2.She wants that security and protection that comes with power. She knows that becoming a vampire means that she won’t have to deal with problems that could plague her otherwise, whether they’re from the adults who try to keep her from doing what she wishes, or anything else. To quote commenter Valancy from a Tanz  discussion board: “There's thing big, scary yet enticing adult world on the one hand, and there are vampires: to Alfred they're everything that's scary about the adult world, to Sarah they're a way to be strong, to be a beast yourself so that nobody can scare you and lock you in. Sarah accepts this scary side of the world and wants to be in it…”

And really, I think that’s her biggest motivation: She’s a child, under everyone else’s control, and this is her way to take control of her own life. To Alfred, who is also a child but has a completely different outlook on freedom (he’s scared of it), the transformation from human to vampire is forcing him to be independent – which is the last thing he wants. And that’s why the vampires are so enticing to Sarah, and so frightening to Alfred.

Now, where does this fall on the moral spectrum? I know there are many people who would say that Sarah is selfish for giving herself to a life that will force her to kill humans. Is she selfish? It really is all up to you.

Interestingly, on the note of the second and third questions, Count von Krolock himself seems to have a stronger opinion than any of the protagonists. He is of the mind that he’s immoral, a monster. I don’t think it’s a far cry to say that, if Alfred or the Professor had actually succeeded in killing him, he would have welcomed death rather than fled from it. He clearly doesn’t like  killing.

So, does this mean that he’s still a monster? He has no choice in the matter – he has to kill humans to live. In my opinion, he’s actually better than humans who eat meat – humans don’t need meat to live.

Am I being rude in saying that you can’t call a vampire a monster if you’re not a vegetarian? Perhaps. But it’s a moral feeling I hold strongly, and that’s what these questions are about.

One of the easiest arguments for people to make about hunting is that “Animals don’t have emotions.” (That’s ridiculous, but that’s a subject for another essay.) Can we apply this to the question of is-vampire-slaying-okay? Of course. The most powerful moment in the show, for me, is just after “Die Unstillbare Gier”. The song is where he laments to himself that he will never be able to exist without doing harm to others, a scene that clearly puts a damper on the “He wants to kill, so we can kill him” argument. The moment is: After the song is over, Alfred, who was eavesdropping, whispers to himself, “They…have feelings. Like us.” There’s the completion of the effect on the audience: The hunters cannot simply kill anyone now and still be considered heroes.

            And to further the humanization of the “monster”, he has a son. Families are perhaps the most recognizable feature of human civilization, a social construct that, though it belonged to other animals first, we have come to clearly associate with human compassion and care. And when these villains are revealed to be compassionate enough to have children, it’s once again asking you “How evil are these guys, really? Is the killing a deal-breaker for you?”

            Speaking of humanization, I want to draw on one last point before closing this essay and leaving the questions open. It’s one of the biggest elements of the show. It is: Parallels between the human and vampire world in the show. “Die Unstillbare Gier” is not simply about bloodlust. The lyrics address all sorts of human sins: Greed, lust, the hunger for power, wealth, everything. The last lines address the audience directly. To quote from the fan translation: “Many believe in humanity, and many in money and glory. Many believe in art and science; in love and in heroism. Many believe in gods of many different kinds, in miracles and in signs. In Heaven and Hell, in sin and virtue, and in the Bible and breviary. But the true power that rules over us is the disgraceful, endless, consuming, destroying, and eternal, insatiable greed. You mortals of tomorrow, I prophesize here and now: Before the next millennium begins, the only God whom everyone serves will be the insatiable greed.”

            And there are many parallels even more subtle than the “They have feelings like us” line. For example, Chagal is honest about being just as greedy as the other vampires in “Geil Zu Sein Ist Komisch”, in which he says that everyone always wants more than what they have. (Vampire or human.)

And take another look at the families – from what little we see of each family, the vampire is a better parent to his son than Sarah’s father is to her. Also, as mentioned a while back in Valancy’s quote about Sarah, the whole musical is a parallel to growing up: Is the human adult world, full of competition and greed, any better than an eternal world?

            Overall, the questions are all up to you. But Tanz der Vampire  certainly has some of its own opinions about monsters.

           

            *Also taken from the fan translation.