Vampires: An Essay Collection

Taking A Bite Out of Vampires: What Does the Vampire Represent?

While other little girls dreamt of twirling amongst the stars in dresses of sparkle-stitched tulle or tap-dancing on the powdery stage of a distant moon, I imagined what it would be like to live forever; to traverse nighttime throngs of louvre-curious tourists and spend my days buried beneath texts of abandoned gothic libraries. But even the most spectacular dreams are often squashed by parental urging to follow the practical pipeline: College, Career, Family, Retirement. With age, urging gave way to nagging and I left the vampire among my forgotten playthings, among illustrated books of leprechauns and witches and fairies. But the vampire never left me. He sat on my shelf, a silent sentinel, cocooned in his poetic pages...waiting. For what, I couldn't then determine, but a decade and a pandemic of vampiric proportion later, I've realized he was waiting for me. For my insight, for my pen. Waiting for someone to prove his relevance and abolish the image of a cape wearing, stone-faced, vestige of sixteenth century folklore. I can't promise that unshakeable specter of childhood imagination resurrection, in truth he doesn't need it, but I can promise attention. And so, I write the following:

The vampire is a metaphor for the hunter and hunted in each of us, a mirror reflecting the sociopolitical complexities of every era in which he has risen to prominence, a clue to understanding our ever-evolving perception of everyday evil and identifying the similarities between man and monster.

Branded as evil and shunned by stiff-shirted society, the vampire is maligned, but not completely divorced from humanity; and as such, neither inherently demonic nor pure. It is for this reason that we so hungrily devour the vampire's tale. We see ourselves in his suffering, his hurt, his doubts and fears and wants. Our ability to identify the malevolent vampire and subsequently see our face in his confirms not only the existence of evil, but the existence of good. This recognition of evil, both within the vampire and ourselves, provides a juxtaposition against the goodness of Christ; a juxtaposition that allows us to understand the nature of evil in comprehensible terms. This, contends Hallab, in chapter five of Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead, is why the vampire is such a fascinating figure. When asked to define evil, Hallab noted that most individuals mentioned the usual suspects first, the Lecters and Kruegers and Meyers and Bates of the world, then invariably wound their way to Dracula, Carmilla, Varney, and Lestat. And, while none of these popular film fiends are the textbook definition of 'evil', they provide an easily identifiable example of 'wickedness', allowing us to discuss humanity's malicious nature in comprehensible terms. For this reason, Hallab asserts, every vampire tale, to some extent, compels the author to deal with moral and metaphysical issues, mainly, "What separates man from monster?" and "How does one define good and evil?" While every author addresses these questions to varying degrees of success, one thing is certain, the vampire is no less relevant now than he was over a century ago. In fact, the vampire has become a touchstone of popular culture, growing in importance as a point of identification for self-labeled 'outcasts' and 'others'. But why?

In Linda Heidenreich's Vampires Among Us, she emphasizes that the vampire's allure is directly tied to times of crisis. When the dominant culture fears social upheaval and cultural change, the vampire is used to articulate this fear and contain potential cultural threats. In modern times the vampire has seen a resurgence in popularity, morphing from a pedantic myth into a symbol reflective of a nation grappling with ever-changing gender-identity norms. A nation keen to label the unknown as, 'enemy'. Others argue the current fascination with vampires, is tied not to social upheaval, but the relatable psychodynamic themes present in vampire myths. Dr. Steven Schlozman, author of Vampires and Those Who Slay Them Using the Television Program Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Adolescent Therapy, believes the vampire represents frustrated tensions unique to adolescents. When a mother or father's capacity to care for a child falls short of that child's expectations, an internal conflict arises, Scholzman argues. This conflict results in the projection of the child's 'hunger', often for love or attention, onto an external object. While the vampire hungers for blood and the child only for attention, this shared commonality has resulted in a cultural obsession with vampirism. Where once the vampire was a cloaked harbinger of death, he has become a cornerstone of popular literature, film, and television. But despite the prevalence of vampire-centric stories, it is a genre largely dominated by masculine metaphor.

Interview With the Vampire has long been exalted as brimming with cultural significance and feminist undertones, but Lorna Jowett, author of "Mute and Beautiful: The Representation of the Female in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire", vehemently disagrees. Jowett contends that the only significant female figure present in Rice's first installment of the Vampire Chronicles is Claudia, who is forced into the common gothic literary trope of the woman-child neglected by the world around her. Jowett asserts that in affording her vampires a gender-free perspective Rice effectively erases Claudia as a strong female character. Dependent, mute, and beautiful, Claudia is bound by her sex and perceived age to the whims of the male patriarchy until she is ultimately erased from the narrative in a brutal, fiery death. Far from an isolated incident, Claudia is just one member of a growing group of strong female vampires relegated to the role of 'victim' by their masculine counterparts. Carmilla in Carmilla, Lucy Westerna in Dracula, Drusilla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elena Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries, and Akasha in Queen of the Damned are all beheaded, raped, staked, or otherwise vanquished by the end of their respective novels, movies, and television programs. If the vampire is truly a motif for nearly every ailment, malady, and struggle, as I believe it is, why have we yet to see a movie, novel, or television program depicting a strong female vampire standing with, or preferably ahead, of her male counterparts? In the modern age the vampire has become a mirror that provides us with a comprehensible depiction of mankind's propensity for good and evil, gaining popularity as a point of identification for America's youth, but has, until now, been a poor reflection of female power. Why must we continue to wait for the female vampire to bear her fangs against the male patriarchy? Why, I ask, when there are so many women eager to read such a tale?

I'm no longer a child, but I still remember those childhood visions of eternal wanderings; I still remember those girls who longed to hold the moon in the palm of their hand. I see the same dream mirrored in the faces of little girls every day as I step through daycare doors, my bag brimming with enough picture books to build a castle. I wish I could give them something more, something inspiring, something that sparks their imagination and sharpens their wit. I would give them the vampire cocooned in its pages on my shelf, but he's an antique; out- of -touch with time and taste, ignorant of the powerful female vampire knocking on his door, ignorant that his relevance is waning in a world hungry for more. More love, more attention, more understanding, more acceptance. More of what makes vampire tales so enthralling.