Ok, so as some of you others may know, I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer from start to finish along with watching* Angel*, so I could get all the cross overs and such … Something occurred to me in the recent Angel episode, “Darla.”
Angel mentions that she has broken all the mirrors in her room, because now that she is restored to a human with a soul, she can’t stand to see herself, because she knows what she used to be. That got me to thinking, though…
How do vampires, more to the point, female vampires, make sure they look good with make-up, hair and what not, if they have no reflection in mirrors?
I know that this may be one of those “just go with it” things and I should probably ignore it, but I still have wonder. I mean, they look all dolled up and everything, so how do they know how good or bad they look?
In the case of Buffy, they like to live in groups, so presumably help each other get put together.
In other settings, the vampires tend to be nobles, who would have servants to help them - and even if not officially so, they’re likely to have thralls to do it for them.
The whole mirror thing is one of the first ‘traditional’ ideas thrown out in other settings.
They do each others hair and make-up, or have their minions do it, as Lauren Hutton had Cleavon Little do hers in Once Bitten. Plus the glamour that burpo mentioned.
Omar is right. Take Twilight. You think it’s ridiculous that vampires are impossibly beautiful sparkle-ponies? Yeah, it is ridiculous, because they actually aren’t. Bella only* thinks* Edward looks like a magic sparkle unicorn. He’s really a rotting corpse that crawled its way out of the grave to feast on the blood of the living. But vampire disciplines can have a strong influence on the weak-minded. He’s literally enthralled her.
Back to BtVS, my non-canonical theory is that they really always look like their “vamp” faces, but they can hide their monsterous face with a bit of concentration on projecting the illusion of humanity. When they forget or don’t bother to make an effort, you see their real face.
There is an episode of Angel where he is able to see his hair in a mirror and says something along the lines of…This is what my hair looks like! Why didn’t anybody tell me.
I’ve often thought about marketing a camera system “mirror” to vampires, just so that they have a way to see how they look.
Of course, like many “folkloric facts” about vampires, this one was invented by Bram Stoker for his novel Dracula. You won’t find anything in vampire lore pre-Stoker about them not being visible in mirrors.
even afterwards, people were inconsistent. Just before he turns into a puff of smoke, Count Orlock in the silent film Nosferatu is very clearly visible in a mirror as he rises from drinking “Ellen”'s blood.
See here at 1:22:07 onwards
You see the same thing, less forgivably, in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein at 52:32 onwards.
Or in this trailer:
Bela Lugosi, of course, played Dracula on stage and onscreen, and in both versions of the original story his not appearing in a mirror is an important plot point.
Those mirrors didn’t HAVE to be in both scenes – it’s a movie, after all – someone deliberately put them there.
No, they don’t. This came up on an episode of Angel, though it’s been too long, and I can barely remember the context…something about Angel and a security video.
Uh, we’re talking about vampires on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.