Attractive Nuisance or Dehumanized Predatory Vampire

Sweet Goth has been lucky enough to get to vamp out every Tuesday night with a group of like-minded students. We have been looking at the representation of child vampires (and the motif occurs with all ages of vampire in literature) as they morph from human into vampire. In the Claudia section of Interview with a Vampire -- the film -- she changes from a scruffy human child into a beautiful child vampire. I never really wondered about the function of this oft-depicted change, writing it off as just offering the vampire better access to food sources (prey).  Then one of my students' speculated that this alteration in appearance, this metamorphosis, could function as a de-humanizing moment, marking the transition from living human to undead human. It was a good catch on the student's part, and one that bears considering. (Perhaps my next conference paper?)

Of course, there is nothing to say that both could not be occurring -- access to prey and dehumanization. We see these "make-overs" all the time on television as a "sow's ear" gets turned into a "silks purse" as the Cinderella sheds her old tattered and torn clothing and changes into a bright shining gown fit for the handsome prince and the ball. This metaphor is of course flawed since it likens the living human to a "sow's ear" and the newly emerged vampire into the "silk purse."  And attractive folks do get preferential treatment in society -- you know, the 4 doesn't go out with the 10 sort of treatment. As a vampire, I'd like to move closer to a 10.

Then randomly throw in the even more modern vampire representation in which one is stuck with the body one "died" in. And toss in the newish MTV series Teen Wolf where new-made werewolves not only are healed of any preexisting illnesses but are turned into 10's, and one sees the werewolf genre appropriating the idea even as the vampire genre releases it.

So this week I am offering no answers, just a pool of sort of random observations, and ask, are vampires an attractive nuisance (like a dangerous swimming pool in the neighbor's back yard), or is this "death" and "rebirth" a representation of dehumanization?

Risen from the Grave: a Heads-up

This week Sir Francis Varney emerged from the shadows he is more comfortable with and allowed Stacy Easton an interview. She has posted it on the World Literary Cafe website (here).

In the interview they discuss some of the reasons he began to change into a more romantic vampire,  He freely speaks out about the safety concerns any undead citizen must have when they are so misunderstood by the human society they hid within: mobs, staking, beheading, burning alive (all the usual...).

Sir Francis Varney also shares his opinion on where his biographers (James Rymer and Leslie Ormandy) went wrong when they told his tale. He allowed them some creative license, and in his opinion, they went too far.

Risen from the Grave: The Varney the Vampire Saga book 1; The Feast of Blood (here) is the first segment of Varney's story, totally revamped for a 21st century audience. This first of three projected tomes (tome = 519 pages, 391,000 words) is in its almost fully revamped form on Kindle. This version (cover tells different incarnation) differs from the "modernized" version in that the fully revamped combines the first two volumes (for a very long time there were five) into one and fully moves the novel into a more modern form.

Image copyright Ormandy, Leslie 2003

As for me, let my bones and flesh be burned, and the ashes dropped in the moving waters, and if my name shall live at all, let it be found among Books, the only garden of forget-me-nots, the only human device for perpetuating  this personality. 

         Dr. Frank Crane (1919)

(Yes, I know this is a blog usually concerned only with vampires, but what of us who are not undead, who will not live eternally?)

Picture from Wikipedia "Barnabas Collins" Page

At a conference recently, the conversation turned to a discussion of vampire fans. I have been thinking about the idea since then; asking myself the question: Is is creepy if I, and older female, ogle the young "vampire" characters trotting across my small screen?

 I remember when Dark Shadows arrived on our small black and white television (the picture was delivered in black and white for those of you who have never experienced it). All of us very young girls were "in love" with Barnabas Collins. He was the topic of lunch conversation, and the bane of teachers who had to endure the continued whispers about him in class. We giggled over him as he suffered the angst of having been made a vampire through a curse cast upon him; he did not choose to become one. He did not choose eternal blood-sucking, undead life.

For many of us, if not most, it was our first real experience with a vampire (discounting the vamping of Bella Lugosi's Dracula which was the stuff of Halloween costumes, and the vampires of Abbot and Costello).

Did you note above that I said that we were in love with Barnabas Collin? We KNEW that he was a character, an actor pretending to be a vampire. We were hot (well, as hot as elementary girls could be) about the character -- I doubt many of us were attracted to the actor himself. I will grant that given the age difference between a post-pubescent child and the actor, our fandom had elements of creep even when not considering that our real attraction was to the character of a couple-of-hundred year old vampire. But our gaze, our fan-mentality, saw the power and attraction of the character.

I am not sure, and this is true speculation and my thoughts are ongoing, but I have to wonder if the issue is less the age of the person gazing at the character (remembering that the actor playing Barnabas was Johnathan Frith who was certainly waaaayyyy older than much of his fanbase), and more about fans who fail to understand that the actor is not the character -- and then behave towards the actor inappropriately? Does "reality TV" have anything to do with our cultural loss of the separation of actor and character? And why shouldn't an older person enjoy the attractive vampire, such as Eric Northman, trotting across the screen? I think all these issues and questions need answering since they, in part, concern the sort of society we live inside of.

Fresh Blood in Academia

Vampires want fresh blood. They want "new blood" to reinvigorate their hearts and allow them to continue their unchanging existence. They are not really interested in letting the new blood change them -- they only want to ingest it. Vampires are not interested in the post-use health of the donor.

Sweet Goth (AKA Leslie) has been playing with the vampire metaphor as used by Kipling, and others, and has had an "ah ha!" moment concerning academia and their search for "Fresh Blood," or an endless supply of part-time marginalized instructors to be used until their blood is no longer new. (Read blood as innocence concerning the reason they are hired, enthusiasm for the department that hired them, and ignorance of the price they will pay... "Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste/ and the work of our head and our hands/ belong to the [person] who did not know why..."(Kipling).

Or as William Rex phrased it in his 1909 "Laborers" version of "The Vampire:"

A fool there was and he lived a slave
(Even as you or I)
To a master who drove him remourseless to grave
(And the master did not heed the wounds he gave)

-----

Oh the miseries he lived for the crumbs he received
And the kicks which a dog would abhor:
He took from the man who cared not to know why --
And now we know he never cared why)
And did not understand.

I think maybe we need to begin opening our hearts and our minds to "understand."

Kipling's "Vampire"

Sweet Goth (AKA Leslie) is working on a discussion of Kipling's poem, "The Vampire," for the American Popular Culture Conference in Boston (2012). Since I'll probably post about snippits surrounding the presentation, I feel it appropriate to post the poem here so that my readers will have some idea of what I'm on about.

The picture at the right was painted by Phillip Burne-Jones the same year, and Kipling stated that it inspired his poem. Interestingly, some reviews of the painting consider Kipling's poem the only reason the painting became famous.

“The Vampire”

Rudyard Kipling : (1897)

A fool there was and he made his prayer

(Even as you or I!)

To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,

(We called her the woman who did not care),

But the fool he called her his lady fair--

(Even as you or I!)

Oh, the years we waste and the tears we waste,

And the work of our head and hand

Belong to the woman who did not know

(And now we know that she never could know)

And did not understand!

A fool there was and his goods he spent,

(Even as you or I!)

Honour and faith and a sure intent

(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),

But a fool must follow his natural bent

(Even as you or I!)

Oh, the toil we lost and the spoil we lost

And the excellent things we planned

Belong to the woman who didn't know why

(And now we know that she never knew why)

And did not understand!

The fool was stripped to his foolish hide,

(Even as you or I!)

Which she might have seen when she threw him aside--

(But it isn't on record the lady tried)

So some of him lived but the most of him died--

(Even as you or I!)

"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!"

Sir Francis Varney, the Vampire

What happened when a vampire attempted to "pass" as a human back in Victorian times? Well, about the same things that would occur if anybody discovered that their nearest neighbor was an undead blood-sucking fiend who had broken into their home for an uninvited dinner off their sister.

Would they need proof? Well, when the Bannerworth's made their discovery, they needed none. They began proclaiming loudly to anyone nearby that Varney was a vampire. They knew he wasn't attractive, and he fit their idea of what a vampire would look like: pale, odd eyes, outdated clothing, and big white protruding teeth. He looked like a vampire, they named him a vampire, thus; he was a vampire. That was all the proof needed before polishing the stakes and checking the local crypts for possible post-human inhabitants.

For Varney, unfortunately, he really was a vampire. So when the rumors began to fly, he had to take to his heels as well, fleeing hordes of lower-class villagers who knew just how to take care of local vampires: cut their heads off and fill the mouths with garlic, impale them to the ground so they can't flee, burn them and scatter the ashes in running water. Effective treatment for slaying just about anything.

The Varney the Vampire Saga The Feast of Blood has been abridged and modernized from its original 20th century version, and is available on Kindle. for only $5.99 (Free for Prime Members).

Eternal Life Eternal Youth Eternal You

"Eternal life," he whispers into my ear, his breath a warm and honeyed moistness against the tender skin behind it. "You will never age," he continues softly as he presses his body into my back, rubbing his head against my own. "You will never die," he finishes as his lips dip to my neck and he nips it.

Such is the vampire promise. Eternal life. Eternal youth. What could be wrong with that? Honestly, in our youth obsessed culture, it sound pretty darn good.

The advertising is great. Usually it features a hot young thing offering eternal love and mind-blowing sex, at least in the paranormal romance field. It usually features companionship and willing blood-donors who are "special" in that they are allowed to know about vampires.

The package comes with super-powers also: super strength, enhanced senses, mesmerizing skills, ability to shape-shift and to heal from most wounds. It makes you more attractive since all the best predators are beautiful.

The problems do not appear in the disclaimer: You have to reinvent yourself constantly as fashions, social mores, and technology changes around you, and you don't physically change.

And you are yourself for all eternity. Can the dead change?

Think about it for awhile, and I will return to the conversation later. Meanwhile, a cup of blood.

Blood is the Life part 1

"The blood is the life" is both a biblical tenet, and a fact. Without blood rushing through our veins pumping oxygen into every cell of our body, our bodies stop. Full stop. Die. Bite the big one. We need pretty much every drop of blood we have safe inside our veins. Our blood is our life. So it behooves us to keep our blood firmly inside our own veins, right?

Then donors go out and share it, donating it willy-nilly to blood-banks and vampires. Why do they do it? Well, in the case of donating to blood-banks it is quite normal and everyday. A kind effort at sharing from one human to another, and honestly, we can share some without ill effect. But donating life-blood to vampires, now that is the proverbial horse of a different color. Technicolor even. Why do it?

All the usual reasons, one suspects. A search for love and glory? A hope that quid pro quo will be in effect and one will eventually go from donor to donor-ee? The hope that sharing a bit of the good-stuff will satisfy the vampire and the donor gets to stay alive? The purely Samaritan impulse to be of help to someone in need -- even if they are no longer quite, well, living? But this is a kind impulse nonetheless. A combination of the reasons? The reasons will be different for each donor, as will the requests whispered by the vampire. The vampire will say, "save me."

It is human to attempt to save someone, anyone, who needs saving. Loosing that urge, arguably, means that one is becoming a bit less human. I believe strongly in free will, in personal choice, and the reasons to become a walking McMeal are personal. But remember, the blood is the life.

Blood Brotherhood

Blood brotherhood, or blood sisterhood, or even blood acquaintance, is an idea that is older than I am, and definitely predates AIDs or other blood born disease worries. At rock-bottom, its promise is that of two person's blood-lines merging one to another brought about by physically mixing two person's blood. You become my true-born brother when your blood enters me, and I become your true-born brother when my blood enters you. As our bloods mix, our lives merge.

In olden-times blood brotherhood was a staple of pirates and boy scouts (and girl scouts I might add.)

So "what is the relationship of blood-bothers to vampires," you might ask; and rightly so.

It seems to SweetGoth that this idea of blood merging two lives together is metaphorically similar to the idea of a vampire drinking my blood, and my life energy entering him/her/it and allowing him/her/it to "live." The relationship becomes stronger if one considers the methods most vampires use to propagate their species -- a blood exchange through which the vampire takes the life energy of the "victim" and in exchange joins the "victim" to the vampire's undead family, an eternal joining.

With his long talon-like nails he gnashed his wrist vein and then pressed it to my own which he had opened and fed from. As his blood merged with my own, I felt heat running up my arm though the large vein. I felt light-headed, and then the world went away. When I woke three days later, he was there waiting for me; his brother.

Favorite Vampire Stories -- Vintage Style

Who has time to read these days, what with victims to find or vampires to slay. Well, this wonderful audio will allow you to take care of business while educating yourself about earlier vampires and their victims.

It contains:

• "The Vampire of Croglin Grange" by Augustus Hare
• "The Vampyre" by John Polodari
• "For the Blood is the Life" by F. Marion Crawford
• "Blood Lust" by Dion Foutune
• "Alymer Vance and the Vampire" by Alice and Claude Askew
• "Wake Not the Dead" by Johann Ludwig Tieck (my own up-dated and modernized version)
  
• "The Vampire" by Jan Naruda
• "The Vampire Nemesis" by J. Dolly
• "Good Lady Ducayne" by Mary E. Braddon
• "Mrs. Amworth" by E. F. Benson
• "The Vampire Maid" by Hume Nisbit
• "Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker
• "The True Story of a Vampire" By Eric Count Stenbock
• "Luella Miller" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• "The House of the Vampire" by George Sylvester Vierec
• "The Tomb of Sara" by F. G. Loring

At just over 12 hours, this selection would give you lots of time for hands-free entertainment. It is being sold by Jimcin Recordings over on Audible.com. (Click here if you want to go there direct.)

I have to say, it is a very different experience to listen to the stories than it is to read them. They are much more frightening and goose-bumpy.