Vampire

Vampires are as big a part of our culture, an they are ever emerging more and more. You can see them at the cinema, on the DVD shelf, in books, in poetry, in popular TV programs, and even in commercials. Vampires are emerging more and more in recent times, and it is at its most notable when Swedish TV, a country not famed for liking horror or indeed vampires, has started to follow the trend and put more and more Vampire based films and shows on their TV circuit. We are seeing a serious emergence of Vampires in popular culture, and it’s happening in many places around the planet. It’s getting pretty bloody in our daily lives, Vampires assailing us on so many fronts.

There are a fair few films out at the moment that depict vampires. In Sweden, a film simply named “Vampires” is premiering now, and will be followed by the award-winning “Let the Right One In” in Sweden. These follow up from the successful “I Am Legend”, which is quite vampyric in its material, and “30 Days of Night” and are soon to be joined by VampireWillem Dafoe and Ethan Hawk’s film “Daybreakers.” Of course, Willem Dafooe is hardly new to the Vampire genre, after his masterful portrayal of Count Orlock in “Shadow of the Vampire,” and we can look forward to a vampire battle between the two costars, as they battle it out for vampire supremacy. And that is not counting the number of B and C grade horror films that inevitably have vampires as the main villain. You can no doubt find your own ones.  

Alongside these hollywood films that are so happy to show vampires, we see TV series such as “True Blood,” the HBO series from Alan Ball (he of “Six Feet Under” fame). Also now on British and Swedish TV (the only guides I bother, I am sure they are not exclusive to these countries) you have shows like ”Moonlight” and the inevitably somewhat satirical look at Teenage angst in the British “Young Count Dracula.” It is yet another interesting twist on the Vampire ideal. And as if that wasn’t a twist enough, apparently there is a childrens show called “Little Dracula” which is based on the childrens litterature by the same name. I gather that it is a tale of a young vampire who enjoys surfing and rock and roll. Not the bloodiest of bloodfests, but it is interesting notwithstanding to see that even the childrens shows are taking up the vampire motif.

And I am told (although I don’t know anything about fashion) that there is a certain trend in fashion, as quoted by Luella Bartley and Prada, of using more dark makeup around the eyes and more black dress with frills. Perhaps the next fashion icons will be equipped with fake fangs. But that is my own aside.

Vampire IncubusThere are a fair few people now who think that there has been no real noticable difference in the sudden appearance of Vampires. After all, have we not endured not only decades of Vampire films, from the films about Dracula, and the popular Blade series, to the hugely popular Anne Rice novels. And even moreso, is the Vampire not a classic tale about monsters, with renditions from the age-old story of Count Dracula, a vampire that was almost as much a seductive predator of young women as a monster. Technically it was John Polidoris’ 1819 novel “The Vampyre” that really marked the arrival of the modern day vampire image, with the antagonist being a near Lord Byon-esque gentleman with a typical sensual overtone, preying on young women. A trend that continued in popular culture. The Painting portrayed above, entitled “Vampire? Alien? Alien or Vampire?” by Warren Criswell, has the image of a small vampireand a beautiful young woman, with the vampire seemingly preying on her in her seductive innocense.

This image persisted until the 70s, when Anne Rice adapted an idea from a Fred Saberhagen novel which lead to the novel “Interview with a Vampire” which of course became a star-studded film some time later. And here we see the turning point of vampires in popular culture, which has recently continued to be popularized. It’s what some would call the concept of the “human vampire” whereby the stories and narratives take the perspective of the vampires, and they are set more and more in our culture and our social settings, often given more human feelings and motivations, rather than the abstract beast-like ideas of the past. Certainly the light-hearted vampire films and series take this perspective, but so do films like “Let the Right One In” and “Vampires.” These vampire films are, like their vampire ‘protagonists,’ characterized by very human deficiencies and qualities. The Vampires experience a certain sense of anomie, a similar hunger socially and a similar characteristic loneliness that we find so often in our modern lives. They are essentially an extension of ourselves in society.

Croglin VampireThis can inevitably be a bit of a problem for our society. I’ve chosen the image of the Croglin Vampire specifically because of the associations it has with the problem at hand, both from its humanization to its succumbing to its hunger. Vampires in modern society are characterized by the need to fit into society, to try and act as though they are human to as great a degree as possible, to supress their hunger and their unnatural urges in order to conform to society and its expectations. What does this say for us as a modern creature? Not only is it easy to draw the obvious parallells between vampires and, say, anorexics, who literally supress hunger in order to look as they think society demands of them. We can blame fashion for its vampirization of our youthful teenage girls perhaps. But more to the point, it says something about all of us, how we act, how we try to conform to society and to suppress the demons within. It is a particularly negative outlook on society when Vampires become such a popular image and ideal. Rather than trying to defeat the beasts without, we seem to be urged to accept and control the demons that rage in our mind and our spirit. In a sense, our modern day culture really is sucking. Perhaps when we learn to not idolize and idealize the image of something that needs to restrict our freedom and our choices in life, and try to idealize and popularize a healthier ideal.

Films almost always reflect the needs and pressures of its time, and clearly modern day vampires being so mainstream seems to be symptomatic of a serious problem. Only time will tell how long we elevate alienation and repressive hunger to a desirable ideal. Hopefully, vampires will disappear into the night, or at least have the decency to just be evil monsters that we have to stab through the heart, rather than being our friends and our image of ourselves.

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