The Lost Boys - Critical Readings

I'm currently in the midst of teaching Bram Stoker's Dracula for Preliminary HSC Extension English 1 as part of the module Texts, Culture and Value and really enjoying it. At the crux of the course is the idea of exploring a key text (in this case, Dracula) and the subsequent reiterations of its ideas in other media and contexts. For most of Term 1 my class looked at Dracula and a range of critical readings that deal with the vampire myth promulgated by Stoker's text. Finding academic texts related to Dracula wasn't difficult, in fact - the difficult part is sifting through the muck to find those two or three diamonds that fit my educational context and aren't going to just leave my students feeling confused. 

The tricky part is looking at a text that parallels, challenges or offers alternatives to the key text. Vampires are everywhere in our culture, and I settled on the 1987 film The Lost Boys as a different enough take that comes with its own set of values, but then finding some non-fiction writing that explored these values was the harder part.  

Two good ones that present very different interpretations on the film can be found here:

• Boomers, Neglect and 'The Lost Boys' at 25 - this criticism focuses on Lucy's characterisation as a neglectful mother who has been corrupted by the wave of feminism that empowered women in the 1970s and '80s.
• 'The Lost Boys' Subtly Radical Vision of Family - an opposing and more positive viewpoint offered on the same online news source, albeit published five years later.

Here's another piece that discusses the way the film uses vampires to explore the values of its time:

The Lost Boys as Dark Future: The Anxieties of the 1980s Immortalised

The film's prologue plays out like a silent film with its minimal dialogue, broad action conveyed through body language, and self-contained narrative. It also acts as a summary of one of the film's overarching themes; society's increasing fear of wayward youth, exemplified by this sequences's depiction of David's gangs of 'Lost Boys' as violent, animalistic, scruffy, uncontrollable, and (with their long hair, piercings, and midriff-baring tanktops) somewhat gender-fluid.

The anxiety of the older generation had been on the rise ever since teens had emerged in the 1950s with an explosion of motorbikes, leather jackets, rock 'n' roll, and the apathetic retort of "what have you got?" when asked what they were, exactly, rebelling against. In the 1980s this fear hit an all new high with the skyrocketing divorce rates of America's post-feminist landscape provoking increased concern over the demise of the traditional family structure. Suddenly youth culture never seemed more dangerous.

Lucy and her two sons, Michael and Sam, arrive in Santa Carla (the supposed 'murder capital' of the world), in a freshly father-free state. Mention is made of an unpleasant separation and neither boy  seems overly concerned with the absence of their dad, though both seem resentful of having to move in with their Grandpa. The film's theme of disaffected youth becomes amplified during the opening credits as the viewer is treated to a montage of unkempt and nameless teenagers lazily holding up walls while smoking cigarettes and aggressively gazing off into the middle of nowhere. This is quickly followed by some shots of a wall plastered in a multitude of missing posters - a sad but familiar sight to Americans living in the Reagan era with ubiquitous materialistic pressure and rising crime rates.

By night, Santa Carla transforms into a heaving mass of teenage flesh, hundreds of bodies pressing against each other in an insatiable urge to party while a muscular chain-wearing saxophonist gyrates suggestively on a stage. It's a mildly disturbing sight, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but the sexual undertones are made obvious enough to highlight every parent's worst nightmare regarding letting their teenage kids out at night. It's all too much for Michael and he becomes mesmerised by Star, a homeless girl with mysterious connections to the Lost Boys. In the words of his younger brother, he is now at the mercy of his sex glands.

From here, Michael is lured into David's gang of vampires through a series of initiation rites that mimic the bonding rituals of teenage boys. Step by step, David pushes Michael closer to becoming a vampire - testing his resolve in an allegorical fashion that demonstrates the seductive power of peer pressure. Michael is unable to resist and he becomes a vampire. He gets his ear pierced and, much to the annoyance of his mother, begins wearing sunglasses inside. (This is where divorce will lead you! Your kid will become a vampire!) The relationship between mother and son becomes strained, and the distance between them grows as Michael becomes closer with David and Star.

Nearly every element in The Lost Boys can be seen as reflective of the breakdown of the nuclear family. The Lost Boys are the metaphorical forgotten boys of parents no longer able to able to provide guidance or responsible supervision; a twisted take on the Peter Pan narrative that sees David and his crew taking great delight in flying from victim in exchange for staying young forever. When local video store owner Max comes on the scene as a potential suitor for Lucy, her younger son Sam becomes obsessed with trying to prove that the man is a vampire, an allegory for the resent felt by children for adults who seek to replace their absent parents. The idea of the blended family - a unit made up of two single parents and their own sets of kids - is revealed as the ultimate horror in the film's final scenes. And the role of Grandpa in saving the day at the very end of the film also demonstrates the shifting nature of the family unit, with those in extended family roles now playing a bigger part in the lives of their children - helping to care for their grandchildren while single parents work to make ends meet.

As far as new takes on the vampire myth go, The Lost Boys provides a new perspective that represents the concerns of its time. David both adheres to an subverts the conventions associated with the vampire, providing the gender-fluid mesmerism of Count Dracula whilst subverting the stoic nature of such a character. These 1980s vampires are immortalised in teenage form, and so it makes perfect sense for the Lost Boys to seek nothing more than to party every night and revel in being forever young. The seductive nature of this lifestyle is understandable and makes it easy for the audience to buy into Michael's quick transformation. 

What's less palatable, however, is the idea that a single parent automatically seals the fate of their children as doomed figures. The fact that Michael's redemption at the film's end primarily comes thanks to the intervention of his younger brother and grandfather speaks volumes about the filmmakers' lack of faith in the ability of teenagers to advocate for themselves in this bold landscape of crumbling morality. Lucy's resignation to becoming undead when faced with the threat of vampirism is also similarly problematic.

The above reading is provided here as a PDF. Students can read this as a 'primer' before watching the film so that they might actively look out for particular values and ideas while they watch.