Work Text:
Vampires: To Suck or Not To Suck, That is the Question
An Essay
It was a quiet night. The night was quiet. It was October 3, 2017, in the small town of Transylvania, Louisiana. Two slinky slinkers emerged from the shadows of a dilapidated building. One was tall and brooding. The other was smaller and blonde. They crossed the street and entered a seedy café. In the back sat a man in black hunched over a plate of steak. It was rare, blood lazily making its way across the plate. They slid into the booth, then recoiled at the sight before them. The man was haggard and pale. His skin sagged, crinkling everywhere gravity could get a hold on it. An inch of eyelid drooped under his eyeball and a single strand of black lint hung precariously on the edge. Three voluptuous women sauntered in and sit at the table next to the men. They all make eye contact from their peripherals, never fully acknowledging the other. The tension is broken when a pimply waiter comes over with a dish of pasta. The first whiff of garlic and the two tables are cleared like there was no one there in the first place. The two men crawled backwards up the wall and skittered across the ceiling. The creepy old man hissed and tried to curl into himself. The young women burst out of their clothes, growing wings, and clawed feet. They flew straight through the ceiling knocking the two men off and onto the ground. The rising sun came up over the neighboring buildings and petrified all of them. The pimply waiter had to sweep and vacuum for a week to get rid of all the dust that was produced by the three bodies.
The vampire genre is robust in size and aggressive in nature. It is eternal (at present date) and does not seem to have an end in sight. Prepubescents eat fang-littered literature up like a ravenous man does a trampled hotdog in a subway station. It does not stop there either. it spreads like a disease, plaguing the young, then the weak, then the mothers. It strikes when one’s guard is down and least expecting it. Even though it takes casualties of all ages, people are still drawn to it like sex and the resulting STDs. As humans, we are drawn to danger, as Bella Swan clearly illustrates. Even when completely cognizant of the danger that vampires present, humans still are attracted to them. Back in the good old days, people at least had the common sense to take cautionary steps to protect themselves from vampires. From Africa to Europe to Asia to the Middle East, vampires pop out of lore with pokey teeth and weird food preferences. No matter where an angsty, 120-pound white girl goes, there is bound to be a lanky, depressed, well-dressed vampire in the same exact place. Vampires are where we are because we are there. They are the alpha and omega to humans. Vampires exist solely because we as humans created them and they only exist to be us.
Modern culture has grown into a bustling commercialism-based organism that lives, sleeps, and breathes. It can create and destroy in split seconds; it caters to those who feed it. It is also a fickle taskmaster. Vampires feed into this culture by reflecting people back onto themselves. What we want is what we see in them. As Edward Cullen states in Twilight, they are the perfect predator due to their ability to draw their prey in without lifting a finger (Myers). This can be seen in social and fashion trends. One era it is undesirable to be skin and bones, but in another, it is the peak of physical attractiveness. A man with a nice jiggly belly is the bee's knees one-time period, then "repulsive" to the next. When a vampire comes on screen, he is aesthetically built, symmetrical, and basically a hunk. Female vampires exude raw sexuality and danger, like Lara Croft on Viagra. At the age of about twelve, girls begin to buy into the booby trap of pop culture. They have checklists a mile long of products that will make them “desirable” and “enticing”. Boys begin to think it is a good idea to play the predator to get girls to like them, possibly developing an unhealthy demeanor of an abuser, no, a “bad boy”, because girls love a boy who is bad. Vampires are the literal embodiment of humanity’s desires. As we grow, they grow with us.
Louis de Pointe du Lac and his lovely foil, Lestat de Lioncourt, appearing tonight as the yin and yangs of humanity! Two dueling sides of the spectrum vie for domination over the frail hearts of the young and afflicted alike. Will Louis, sweet, sensitive, and conflicted by his entire existence, succeed at wooing the crowd? Or will it be Lestat, primal, sensual, and ready for action, to walk away with the figurative innocence of the swooning audience? From the Stone Age to the Phone Age vampires are still seen as symbols of carnality. They poetically prey on the virtue of blushing maids, whispering tragic words of woe in their virgin ears. They leave a trail of corruption and death behind them. They do not slither away from between the legs of naive girls, but from the darkness that lurks in their hearts. They tempt men into sacrificing their souls for a life of indulgence and vitality. They promise the sweet nectar of the forbidden fruit, wrapped in plastic that does not decompose. Forever haunting society and silently reminding society of its mistakes.
The best part about reminiscing the past is remembering our roots. Vampires have been around for who knows how long, so a good, definite starting point for cultural impact is 1922’s Nosferatu with Max Schreck. His spooky, yet hilarious performance of the generic brand Dracula is a cornerstone of cinematic vampire culture. Oh, how far we have come. Graf Orlok is the perfect specimen of pre-sexualized vampire and embodies the fear people had of their kind originally. His discomforting appearance and leering eyes immediately put one on alert. He did not visually invite anyone in for a frisky romp between the sheets. He unsettled people on an instinctual level. Orlok was an honest depiction of age-old fears that are no longer in fashion. Orlok was a monster. He represented the fears of thousands of years of death and fear. The diseases, the plagues, the unexplained disappearances, the dead infants, all because of the ancient vampire. He was the scapegoat that was not worshipped or envied for his looks. He was hated because he was the “cause” of everything wrong with the world, boiled down, pressed, and dressed in funeral shrouds.
In a time when there was only ever darkness to look forward to, the vampire was there to keep people in the light. They have been there from the start, watching us from the shadows. Vampires know us better than we know ourselves. They have taken the time to learn our ways, live among us and understand us. They are monsters. They are reflections of what we want and fear from the world. They are us. There is no way to hide from your own reflection.