Vampires and the Twilight of Thought

Color me red. Blood red. I love vampires in all their splendor, from the crypt dwelling coffin sleeping nightmares of classic vamps to the suited, elegant vampires of their current incarnation, they all please me. What doesn't please me are the suited lawyers (now there's vampires for you) of Summit Entertainment: Owners and promoters of the Twilight Saga, who have just made another sweep of the internet seeking to keep the free world safe for Edward: oh, and their ownership of the thought/word connection.

They claim that the following definition of vampires infringes on the copyright of one -- they don't bother saying which -- of the Twilight Saga.

Vampires are evil undead creatures who avoid sunlight. They aren't sweet, and do not want to marry young ladies.

Do you see any reference to their blasted saga there? I see an opinion. Yes, the opinion is not the one they use to sell their many products. But, as holder of eleven copyrights myself, I understand that copyright does not give me ownership of thought. It especially doesn't give me ownership of thoughts that displease me.

As I said: Color me red, blood red. And you should be too.

Telepath as Vampire

The Sweet Goth has been spending a few hours perusing the Library of Congress holdings, looking for holdings of vampire books for young children, and holdings between 1897 and 1950, and she stumbled upon The mental vampire per telepathy; sketch and revelations to science of the invisible world, by August M. Becker (published in NY, 1928). It caught my attention because while vampire (and Zombie) economic metaphors are prevalent, as are gold-digger (pimp) metaphors and employer metaphors, Sweet Goth has never really considered the idea of telepaths as being sort of mental vampires.

I had always just considered the idea of being able to look into someones mind as somewhat cool and freaky. But as a metaphor, now that I think about it, it works. A telepath looks into someones mind without their permission (except Spock) taking away someone's very private view of the world. It again plays with a trinity (vampire, victim, blood) = (telepathic human, victim, thought), and what is more personal than thought? Our thoughts are as integral to us as our blood, because without either, we cease.

Bram Stoker's seminal Dracula of course does lead this direction with Dracula's ability to read the minds of the women he has vampirized. He is able -- as are they -- to share telepathically what they are seeing as they see it. This is seen most obviously in Mina Harker -- nee Murray as the slayers, through the hypnotism of Helsing, use Mina's connection to Dracula to trace his travels from England back to Romania.

Pretty cool that someone back in 1928 was making the connections for me. I will be all vampiric and use his/her thoughts send across the invisible time/space world in the form of a book, and spend some time communing in someone's brain. Cool.

Vampire's Soul, Conscience, or Chip

The Sweet Goth household has been main-lining Buffy lately, and the question regarding Buffy's relationship -- or refusal to have one -- with Spike has been under discussion. Her main stated reason for refusing to return his love (although she returns his attraction) is that he has no soul. What he does have is the chip that prevents him causing direct damage to humans. Of note is that he has no conscience as well: witness him as the Dr. willing to sell demon hatchlings to foreign governments. Yet I maintain it as inarguable that he does love her. He demonstrates his love by taking care of her irritating sibling Dawn, assisting the Scoobie gang in any way he can, and in his willingness to sacrifice his first love, Drucilla for her. He is even willing to fight to get his soul back if that will make her willing to love him. Spike is capable of love. Isn't the ability to love the main part of having a soul?

Yet the eternal triangle maintains that she loves Angel, the vampire with a soul -- a soul not attained by personal choice; it was a curse that returned it to him, a punishment for killing a gypsy girl and meant him to suffer. And with the return of his soul, his conscience came too. When in season two he loses his soul and becomes Angelus -- a true menace who murders at least one of her friends -- she doesn't stop loving him. He is a soulless monster that she refuses to kill until truly forced in order to save the world. His soul and his conscience are intertwined, and when he is Angelus, he has neither.

Okay, good enough. One loves where one loves, right? But are the soul and the conscience the same thing? Can one have a conscience without a soul or a soul without a conscience? I personally know several people who have no consciences yet who would, I am certain, maintain they have souls. And since they are still; technically alive, they must still have souls?

Is the problem with Spike more a problem of science running headlong into metaphysics? The chip can force him to amend his behavior, but it can't make him want to do what it forces upon him. It can't humanize him into caring about people much beyond the sphere of his beloved. But the cursed soul restored to Angel is metaphysics running into metaphysics. He is forced to have a conscience.

Okay, I am stumped. So what do you think about the question: Is the conscience the same as a soul?

Stalking the Vampire: Kipling's poem "The Vampire"

Preparing for the Victorian Vampire presentation, I have just reread Kipling's poem, "The Vampire," for what must be the hundredth time. Somehow through the artistry of his writing, I have always felt sorry for the male whom the speaker is telling us about --since he is the subject -- the main actor -- within the poem (And I, too, have burned with unrequited lust) while the "Vampire" is the object of his desire and action. Finally it struck me: isn't the "fool" we are being told about really, in essence, stalking this nameless female whom he tells us, and we believe, is a "vampire?" But why is she a "vampire?" Because she fails to appreciate the marvels he is "giving" her? Why should she? Just because he takes her out for dinner and drinks, need she spend eternity with him? What sort of social contract is that? Does that make her a "vampire?" Do note that it is a male poet telling us the male side of the situation.

I argue that there is textual evidence suggesting that Kipling's friend who is a "fool" is stalking the woman. (And name-calling on top of the stalking.) According to Mullen in "A Study of Stalkers1" there are five basic types of stalkers: "Rejected stalkers" who pursue their victims after the break up of a relationship. "Resentful stalkers" who are "motivated by the desire to frighten and distress the victim." "Intimacy seekers" who want so badly to establish a relationship with the victim that they will do anything to be with them. "Incompetent suitors" who seek to have relationships with women who are already taken. And finally "predatory stalkers" who spy on the victim preparatory to attacking them. I argue that Kipling's protagonist fits three of the stalking types.

Kipling tells us that his "fool" of a friend "was stripped to his foolish hide,/[...]/Which she might have seen when she threw him aside...." after the dissolution of the relationship. But he kept right on chasing the woman, refusing to acknowledge that she had moved on. He kept right on working and attempting to buy his way back into her life. "Rejected stalker" anyone?

Kipling plays his own role, as poet and writer in the retaliatory name calling of the "resentful stalker." The "vampire" is described as, "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair," after being called a vampire. Thus Kipling dehumanizes the female who has done his friend wrong by allowing him to buy her a few pretty unnamed and un-valued baubles. She is a no longer a flesh and blood woman, instead reduced to a skeleton ("bone") , unkempt hair unattached to a head, and a body covered by old, torn, smelly "rag[s]." Yet not only is she unattractive, she is the walking dead seeking to drink the "fool" dry while all the while being unaware that she is part of a parasitic relationship.

Arguably Kipling's "fool" is an "intimacy stalker," so desperate for affection and a close loving relationship with the nameless female that he will willing to do anything for her, short of treating her with the respect of a name. She has refused to acknowledge "the fool" again and again:

And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame
That stings like a white-hot brand--
It's coming to know that she never knew why
(Seeing, at last, she could never know why)
And never could understand!"

Kipling tells us. Yet does a woman who has dated a man a few times need to understand the reasons behind his refusing to let her go? Does she not have the right to live her life (unlife?) as she please; associating with those she wishes to and loving those she wishes to?

Yet history -- through Kipling's poem -- tells only the side of the abandoned, unwanted, used "fool." It tells us that, in Kipling's nameless narrator's opinion, the woman should have appreciated the attentions she was paid.

1. Mullen et al.. Stalkers and Their Victims. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

This is the flyer for my Victorian Vampires in Literature presentation later this month. I plan on summarizing the various stories, then discussing the characteristics of the vampire in each story. Since I have only allowed an hour and a half for the presentation, it would be hard to do much more. Of course, I can't decide if I really want many people or not. This is my home audience, and I will have to see them again even if I blow the presentation.

I am lucky to work for a college that will allow time for non-canonical, popular culture classes and presentations.

Animal Blood-Drinking Vegetarian Vampires

Does anyone besides me wonder at the terminology of "vegetarian vampire" when referring to vampires who don't drink human blood? It isn't as though they are suddenly going on a regimen of broccoli and carrots with a fruit salad chaser. They are still drinking blood, just not the blood of humans. They are now drinking the blood of animals they kill in order to obtain the requisite blood (and I don't quite see the Cullens doing the whole Little Vampire cosying up to the cow thing).

So it is okay to kill animals instead of humans if one is a vampire, and doing so is a sign of the retention of humanity? But it is not okay to kill and eat animals if one is a still-living human (which presumes that vampires are not still-living humans)? And if one is a vampire the term vegetarian means animal eater, while for a human it means not-an-animal eater? Are you catching the problem here? Why the lexical drift? Why is it viewed as necessary? Does the necessity have to do with the drift of vampire from the horror genre to the romance genre? We don't have sex with our food, so we want vampires who no longer "see" us as food which thereby enables us to have sex with them?

I have no answers. I just know that the terminology irritates me. Vampires are not in a symbiotic relationship with the still-living blood donors. They are parasitic. They live off our blood. They return nothing, supply nothing, of value to the life of their blood donor. And isn't vegetarianism the attempt of humans to break the food chain parasitic relationship with the animals they share the planet with?

Vampire Pedophile

I have been working with Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "The Good Lady Ducayne" (1896) which features the first scientific vampire, Lady Ducayne. She victimizes (vampirizes) several young girls, having their blood -- and their energy -- transfused into herself by her creepy Dr. She has been doing it thirty years by the time we join the story, and she is exposed. In my conference paper I note that she is never accused of lesbianism the way Le Fenu's "Carmilla" is, but she is ancient, so all we say is ... yyyyyuuuuccck ... at that very idea. I assume the difference is the blood is drawn through a test tube instead of by lips on a neck or breast. But the same reason we react so quickly to say yuck to the idea of sexual exchange between the two should, I believe, be the same reason we begin talking about pedophilia. That is if we assume that the Pedophile gets off as much on the power as on the sexual release, as modern psychologists tell us they do.

Let's bring it home. Edward Cullen is OLD. Bella is a virginal sixteen. From what I hear/read, none of the Twilight fans raise the specter of pedophilia when Edward is attracted to her youth and vigor. Yes, he looks young, but his reality, his identity, is that of an old man -- in fact a very very old man. So, since his outside appearance seems to match her outward appearance, the reaction to the sexual tension is "WoW!" The same with True Bood's vampires, Eric and Bill (and I would imagine Pam) each have a wide following of admirers, none of whom are particularly concerned by the age difference, except possibly to wonder if a long life = more sexual experience = better sex. As though the vampires even think of their human blood donors in terms of sex instead of in terms of food source.

A few months back I wrote an ezine article about May/December relationships between humans and vampires; I'm not sure now that I took it far enough. At what point in the age span difference does it matter if the human side of the equation "wants" to be in the relationship? Is it possible for an eight year old to really want to be in a relationship with a much much much much much older person? Has there been some sort of manipulation on the part of the older person, either economic or social that has unduly impacted the younger party? Taking the discussion back to a safe place, does Carmilla manipulate her young female acquaintance into a quasi-sexual relationship (I don't believe it ever crosses that line), so that she can "be" with her, or so that she can more readily obtain her blood? Ask yourself if Carmilla is a pedophile because she is really really old sharing a bed with a very young virgin? Again, is Edward?

No, I am not certain of the answers which I believe each of us will come to individually. But it makes food for thought.

Vampires Are in Our Heads!

I now have the rough draft of the conference paper done, and good timing too since school resumes tomorrow with all the distractions of students. But then, in many ways my students are a blessing to the vampire side of me: they keep me young, they keep me current, and they force my mind to think about old issues in new ways -- as well as reminding me of resources which are old to me (and I forget them), and new to them.

One of these forgotten, but wonderful, resources is Katerhine Ramsland's The Science of Vampires. In her rather marveolous text, she takes a look at what would have to happen for vampires to become real. She includes chapters focusing on "Dracula's Shadow" -- the part I was reminded of today -- among many others since it has particular relevance upon my conference paper, and the thesis of the conference itself, that our perceptions of vampires change over time. Ramsland says, "Our monsters are based in our fears and our fears derive from our understanding of reality: if reality changes, so do our fears"(51). Of course, with vampires, they are now as much a creature of romance as they are of fear.

I receive paper after paper which equates pain and fear with sex and love. Personally -- and on this blog I can state my opinion as my opinion (don't try it on me in a class paper, my students!) : I am not buying it. Maybe it is a facet of having too many shots, too much blood drawn over the years (Medical Doctors -- not vampires), but pain is pain. And I am not turned on by fear. A really scary man doesn't turn me on; he makes me want to go find a safe house. To be blunt, having sex with someone who could rather easily accidentally kill me due to super-strength or excessive hunger is just scary. And yet author after author is making a fair living selling novels positing that vampires are sexy, and that a "monster" can be tamed.

Buried Beneath Vampires

I am buried beneath vampires as details work themselves out for the "Open Graves Open Minds" conference in London April 16-17 (2010). I am manically working on creating the handout/overhead and catching up on the Victorian vampires I haven't met before. I thought I knew them all, then discovered a slew of them that are more available in the UK than they are in the US. Now I wonder how many are hiding in the EU and other National archives that nobody is mentioning. It would be nice if there were a international listing somewhere, but even my own over at simplysupernatural-vampire.com is incomplete. Some vampires aren't available anywhere online and the books or stories are extremely rare, and some require a request to the Library of Congress. Who would have thought that the Library of Congress actually will send its materials out through inter-library loan? I certainly didn't. My Victorian vampires are leading me on a treasure hunt through libraries all over the world.

The conference papers look interesting, and I am sad that I won't get to hear them all. But while I am reading my own paper, two other sessions of three papers will be going on, so for every session I attend, I miss six papers. I will have to choose sessions carefully. I will definitely miss anything that sounds jargony. I have no desire to listen to obscure over-erudite papers where you have to bend, fold, and mutilate to find the thesis and details. I read too many student papers that try to do that -- add enough words and the reader will believe that the paper contains meaning, when it doesn't. Sleight of hand papers irritate me.

Let the graves give up their dead...(paraphrase of Revelations).