On the timelessness of ancient “monsters”
(Note: If the layout and pictures are glitching, just click the blog link above and go back to this post. The background should be mint green, not white)
Sitting in his lavish throne room decked with fluted Greek columns, Dracula belts out one of the most famous lines in gaming history: “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.” I unironically love this line and the general treatment of Dracula as the main antagonist for most of the Castlevania series, games that (with some exceptions) have the player take on the role of a member of a famous clan of vampire hunters: the Belmonts. Dracula’s musing on the nature of mortals can be read and answered in many different ways; some may even point to a chicken and claim it’s a man. I fixate on the pile of secrets. We each harbor many, including secret fears. For Halloween, I want to spend some time discussing the monsters that spawned from fears in antiquity and how these monsters found their way into the dark forces of Dracula in the Castlevania series.
I’m sure the first image that popped into the heads of players who read the title of this post was that of Medusa. She and Gorgons in general appear frequently throughout the series. One of the most annoying enemies in the entire series are the “Medusa Heads,” Gorgon heads that float in patterns purposeful positioned to push the player off perilous platforms. Descriptions from various games in the series reveal that they spawn from Medusa’s head. This mirrors (pun intended) the evidence we have from antiquity with Gorgons and Medusa herself frequently depicted without bodies, echoing the beheading of Medusa by Perseus. Unlike in Castlevania, where the heads are actively hostile and work for the dark forces of Dracula, in antiquity these heads served an apotropaic function, meaning they were actually protective objects meant to ward off evil. In Symphony of the Night, the player can find a “Medusa Shield” from these Gorgon heads that protects the player from being petrified and also summons a friendly Gorgon head. A similar “monsterization” happens with Medusa, although this process is certainly embedded in ancient negative portrayals of her that prop up Perseus. Medusa is a reoccurring boss throughout the Castlevania series and she shows some variation over time. She is most frequently without conventional weapons, using her tail, claws, fire, petrifying gaze or snake projectiles to attack the player. In Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness she holds a bow that SHOOTS LIVE SNAKES INSTEAD OF ARROWS; the bow itself is likely a reference to Ray Harryhausen’s version of Medusa in Clash of the Titans (1981) [Here’s a great article on Harryhausen’s Medusa]. In some variations, the game description mentions she wields “Greek weaponry” which are likely references to the shield and sword of Perseus. Personally, I’m a big fan of this alternate universe that has Medusa apparently beating Perseus and snagging his stuff. Regardless, this “monster” taps into several of our shared fears: snakes (of course), forced immobility, the intermixing of beauty and the grotesque, and the constructed otherness and sexualization of women (a problem that’s sadly modernity still shares with antiquity). Below is a carousel of some depictions of Medusa within Castlevania (click the individual pictures to make them bigger), note that some emphasize her allure and sexuality (Symphony of the Night) while others swing to the other side of the spectrum and emphasize the monstrous (Lament of Innoncence). All, however, tap into different fearful aspects and it’s no surprise she has been a mainstay boss within the series and a fixed member of Dracula’s dark forces.
Another constant in Dracula’s stable of monsters is the Minotaur. I’m sure most are familiar with the story like Medusa so I won’t be diving into his origin story. In Castlevania, he’s another frequent boss and faces the player usually with a flaming breath attack, his fists/horns, and a large axe. This sight evokes an executioner of some dingy dungeon, a theme that is reinforced in some games where his stage is usually underground or in a dungeon. The axe, however, also evokes the λάβρυς, Plutarch’s word to denote the double-headed axe that, among other places, is found in Minoan Crete (where the famed labyrinth and Minotaur were purportedly located in myths). Similar to Medusa, the scariness of the Minotaur stems from the blending of the animal and the human (literally in the case of his conception), a horrid sort of body horror that one would expect delights David Cronenberg. There’s also the horror of transgression into a space that is not your own, the descent into a lair that’s so perfectly encapsulated by the labyrinth. In the series, there’s no direct labyrinth because Dracula’s ENTIRE castle and the stages outside are the labyrinth!
One of my favorite bosses that demands an insane amount of skill to render in pixels is Scylla, a sea monster that guards the Strait of Messina (the strait between Sicily and Italy) along with Charybdis. She’s typically depicted as a huge woman with fish-like tails along with three monstrous dogs emerging from her lower body and is said to punish sailors who wander too close to her lair (a way to explain and give body to the dangerous waters along the strait). In Symphony of the Night, her art is amazing and we can compare it to this awesome coin minted under Sextus Pompey, Pompey the Great’s son, during his campaign in Sicily. In Castlevania, instead of fishy tails she actually has eels that assault the player, some mixture of Scylla and Ursula. The room the player is in also starts to flood as you fight here, recalling her formation in antiquity as the embodiment of the elemental force of water.
There are way more monsters utilized by Dracula. Cerberus, the demonic three-headed dog of Hades, is now present in Dracula’s Castle as the forces of Hell find themselves in our world. Cyclops are frequently seen in addition to Harpies and Sirens that swoop down and annoy the ever living sh*t out of the player. Even Talos shows up! The automaton crafted by Hephaestus is given a sort of medieval makeover in Castlevania which makes sense because he plays off of the modern horror trope of suits of armor coming to life. Similarly, their version of the Furies (Erinyes) are given an updated look, keeping the name but resembling a Valkyrie. Shoutout to the Hydra who has the cutest model in Kid Dracula (see the gallery below). This post would be so much longer if I fixated on each one, but they’re pretty well known and I want to focus on some of the odder additions. For those curious, below is a gallery of some of their sprites.
An odd inclusion is the Amphisbaena, a famed two-headed serpent that was said to roam the Libya in antiquity. In Symphony of the Night and Portrait of Ruin, this monster is depicted as a four-legged reptile-like creature whose tail sprouts the upper half of a woman, echoing the double-headed nature of the ancient beast and the horror of this ambiguity of body shape. Another cool addition is Triton! The son of Poseidon and Amphitrite appears as a boss in Aria of Sorrow and looks pretty much like ancient depictions and in the game resembles the Fontana del Tritone in Rome. This jives with the heavily Neoclassical theme of the setting in many instances (including some wonderfully baroque rooms in Dracula’s Castle). We also have a bevy of goddesses showing up as bosses including Nyx (goddess of Night) who is sexualized as a nurse with a large syringe for some reason. Something about night, death, eternal sleep and the trope of the “angel of mercy nurse”? Nemesis, goddess of retribution and comeuppance, is actually super interesting in the series. She shows up only in two games, but she’s depicted as this ghostly apparition wielding a very real sword, an interesting choice that I think conveys her ethereal and foreboding nature in addition to possibly the consumption of identity if one gives themselves solely to vengeance.
It’s not only Graeco-Roman figures that are incorporated into Dracula’s forces, however. Mummies, a problematic staple whose use in horror media is tied to the archaeological exploitation and looting of Egypt by European powers in the 19th and 20th century, are a recurring enemy and boss throughout the series. Much of their “horror” comes from a largely negative Western lens that “monsterizes” another culture’s funerary practices. This is in addition to the horror of our own mortality, encapsulated by these mummies and the many, many skeletons and zombies that roam the halls of Dracula’s castle. We also see Astarte, an ancient and venerated goddess in the Levant particularly whose worship is tied to notions of war, celestial power/order, and possibly fertility/sexuality. In Castlevania, oddly enough she is depicted as a sort of Kleopatra-like figure, a blending of various orientalizing tropes around women and sexuality that have their roots in Graeco-Roman notions of “Eastern” practices.
Alright, this one, like many things from antiquity, is problematic. Here I put a content warning for sexual violence.
Persephone is also in some Castlevania games. Her portrayal is not flattering. For one, she is a hostile boss and actively fights the player. What’s worse, however, is that she’s depicted as a maid. This choice is odd. My best guess is that since she’s the queen of the Underworld, she’s depicted as a maid cleaning Dracula’s castle in some odd allusion to her being in subservient in the home of Hades. This plays on so many harmful and sexist tropes that I’m at a loss on where to start. This is further exacerbated when you think of how maids are often sexualized in media. She frequently carries a skull-shaped demonic vacuum, likely a reference to her role as queen of the Underworld (although an incredibly sexist and dismissive portrayal). If anything, the real horror of Persephone in Castlevania is her actual depiction as a “demonic maid” (words used in the game description) robbed of agency and caged into a domestic space in the employment of Dracula.
There are more examples dotted throughout the series, but this post would be even longer than it already is. I chose to write about this because I’ve always been interested in enemies in video games more than the actual heroes. The Castlevania series is defined by the very enemies that help Dracula and his minions as they try to engulf the world in darkness. As we have seen, to do so they draw on a range of fears that have been encapsulated in monsters throughout history. They take inspiration from films and the Universal monsters, of course, but some of the inclusions I chose to highlight are specifically not as prominent in modern media. In these games, ancient forms take new (and sometimes incredibly odd) shapes, but still embody the primal fears that initially spawned them into the world. They also reflect in some instances some very real horror in the form of otherizing the practices of ancient cultures and the exploitation of the female form. To finish up the long, spooky post, our miserable pile of secrets include our festering fears that the ancients shared and gave form. Centuries later, these “monsters” continue to haunt and roam the halls of our imaginations like they roam the halls of Dracula’s Castle and the corrupted world beyond.
Images and References
Amber Gorgoneion from Getty Museum [link: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/6808/unknown-maker-gorgoneion-medusa-head-roman-1st-2nd-century-ad/]
Coin of Sextus Pompey from the American Numismatic Society Database [link with references: http://numismatics.org/collection/1937.158.343]
All images from the Castlevania series come from the Castlevania Wiki
Anchors Aweigh 