Metaphoric Reality

Oregon Lottery Poster 2014

Sucking blood from a stone?

Over the past several years I have been musing upon the usage of metaphors. They inundate our daily life: rain = sorrow, a rose = love, a wedding ring = eternal love, and yes, I could continue for a very long time; I possess a (economically useless) Masters in English Literature. The question for the day is if the constant, longstanding use of a metaphor -- such as that of a blood-sucking vampire -- as a stand-in for a regular Jane/Joe human behaving in a way which denudes the impacted "victim"-- somehow waters down the original word / idea / entity.

The secondary question would be, if the word "vampire" as metaphor does indeed water down the idea/word/entity, why would it matter? Science tells us, empirically, that real undead, revivified, returned to life vampires do not exist.

Certainly a wide field of literature and media play with this willful assumption of disbelief. Most notably (if my memory serves), Bram Stoker had Helsing argue in Dracula that the most effective way to hide ones existence was to make people believe you are fiction. I do not think he took it the concept far enough. Far to say one is hiding ones existence is still to posit that one exists.

 I have thought, for a fair length of time as I've worked on the idea of vampire as a metaphor, that the best way to hide ones existence it to water it down, to make the very idea of ones existence so used as an everyday noun/verb that it no longer refers to anything specific. The noun "vampire" becomes synonymous with any person sucking the life -- economically, physically, or emotionally -- from another person. 

They are behaving "vampirically" (adverb describing a verb). And if any Joe/Jane can be a metaphoric vampire; pouf goes any concept whatsoever that these fictional beings might actually share the earth with us for we are all, at one time or another, vampires ourselves.

I will pause to reassure anyone who happens upon this post -- I am not positing the existence of the real creature. Nor do I discount it. I am just noting that one function of a cliche is to water down the power of the idea being cliched. Let's look at an almost useless, but very societally meaningful, cliche: The dark and stormy night. Does the rendering of the concept into an overused, almost meaningless cliche actually water down, make less valid -- less real -- the torrential downpour pushed by high winds that the cliche represents?I do suggest that the overuse of the metaphor is rendering it a cliche with a check-list attached, and that the overuse of the metaphor waters down the original in our collective consciousness. We humanize our concept of the vampire, taming them in our minds, and then use it as a pejorative name for each other.

What do you think? Does overuse of a metaphor water down the reality of the vampire?

Alcoholism as a Vampire: "The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man" 1858

The Traitor's Gate, London.

When I was in London summer of 2013, I was able to spend a fair amount of time reading in the British Library (one of the most magical places on Earth). Given my interest in early usages of the term "Vampire" for a human who metaphorically sucks the life from its victim, the 1858 anonymous booklet, The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man,was a wonderful read.

In short, the author uses the metaphor of the vampire to describe the drunken life -- it is about temperance and the abstainer's pledge and the lure of drink which proves more alluring than keeping ones word. (At this time, temperance referred to abstinence from drinking.)

"She" (the anonymous author states) "Listen to me, whilst I describe to you some of the horrors of a drunkard's home, and some of the privations of the drunkard's wife and children"(2). 

She then goes on to tell the story of a young man, the son of a drunkard father who cannot stand the fact that his son, "Herbert" will not join him in his sodden ways. In spite of his father's beatings and declaration that he will cut his son out of his inheritance, Herbert takes the "Abstainer's Pledge." Not a drop of liquor is to pass his lips. He makes a fair attempt to keep his pledge and to be as good as his word, but his choice of bad companions undercuts his willpower.

At first Herbert is able to disguise the fact that he has broken his pledge from his poor, long-suffering mother, and his  increasingly pushy father, but not for long. Soon his personality changes and he becomes as abusive to his mother and the house-staff as his father has been to himself.

The young man enjoys accompanying his companions to "Mrs. Grasp-the-Air's shop, The Vampyre Inn, where Tommy, the husband serves an increasing amount of liquor to the weak-willed Herbert. Tommy and Mrs. Grasp-the-Air quite enjoy their roles in this story as devil's advocate since it brings their business increased income.

Eventually, Herbert kills one of the "friends" who attempts to talk him into changing his ways, and he is taken to the gallows while his poor mother weeps.

Like any good morality tale, the story ends, "Drink, Strong Drink! had it not, like a vampyre sucked the blood out of his father and grandfather! and finally, expinguish[ed] life itself?"

I will leave it to my reader to question if indeed the giving in to one of the many temptations of life and allowing it to have control over ones thought and deeds is indeed allowing a vampire to entirely suck life out of one.

Works Cited
"The Vampyre by the Wife of a Medical Man." London: A W Bennett, 1858. Print.

Vampire Hunter pt. 2

Lone Star Pioneer Cemetery, Portland, Oregon.

Part one is the last post:

It was seriously eerie, and I could almost hear the shrouded ghosts tittering as I stood with a bull’s-eye on my chest, heart dead center of it waiting to be tapped.

Then I realized that the sounds I had heard could possibly be caused by the breeze rustling the overhanging leaves and branches against the windows of the more economically up-scale mausoleums. Or perhaps the noise was simply a neighborhood cat chasing its prey through the bushes lining the pathway. It did not have to be caused by the stealthy opening of the metal gates by the vampire said to sleep in the nearby crypt.

I wished I was elsewhere with a reasonable job, but how many positions could an English major minoring in photography fill? And I wished I was outside a nightclub in a well lit area trying for a picture of one of the sparkling, vegetarian sort. Damn vampire, as metaphor, boss anyway. He had it in for me, and this assignment really showed it. “It would serve him right if I got bit and came back as a vampire,” I muttered under my breath, sotto-voice, not wanting to make too much noise, but wanting something recognizably human to break up the silence.

“Five more minutes, and I’m out of here,” I muttered a bit more loudly, then cringed as a crow perched among the moss nearby spoke to me. I would swear it murmured “nevermore,” but that was probably my overly active imagination.

My cell phone found its way into my hand, path beaten from long use, and I checked my Twitter account hoping for an update. But it was all promo by the big biz who saw Twitter as a purely marketing tool.

I was by now really uncomfortable, sincerely regretting the double shot venti latte I’d had since there were no public restrooms in the cemetery, even had I been willing to leave my post to find one.

Then I saw something emerging from the crypt across the aisle from me. There were two; no one had mentioned that there would be two! And boy-oh-boy they weren’t sparkly. They barely looked human. They weren’t the sort my boss would plaster across the front page; too creepy.

And then I realized they were looking at me…

I had only the presence of mind to snap one quick photo as I fled, hoping they would not give chase, hoping I could run faster than them. Hoping to see one more dawn. To live.

copyright Leslie Ormandy, all rights reserved.

Vampire Hunter pt. 1

I crept into the cemetery after dark through a narrow opening between the fence and the bushes. It was creepy, but my rent was due and my landlord was not too fond of people of my persuasion; vampire photographers.

I stumbled over the rough ground past tombstones which glowed pale under the strobe of the moonlight filtering though the threatening clouds. It was a bad night to be entering such a place, but I'd heard rumors through the Twitterverse that vampires frequented this particular mausoleum. And if they were there, I needed to immortalize them in digital to pay my rent. The tabloids paid well for "authentic" vampire pictures, even if the vampire was not the hunky sort.

The skull partially buried in mulch but still managing to grin at me gave me pause; and I wondered if this was the right profession for me. But in my biz, it was produce or perish, right? So I crept on as stealthily as possible between the decaying gravestones while trying to find my location on the little map of the cemetery the kind lady at the desk had given me that morning. I kicked myself now for not having taken the time to figure out the right spot in daylight, but the map had made it look deceptively easy.

I almost died when I heard the eerie moaning sound of squeaking metal. I froze in place unwilling to alert any listeners to my presence, even while knowing that if it were the vampire I sought, my heart-beat would be a loud pounding bass drum in the otherwise deserted area.

Tune in again for the next segment.later this week.. (copyright Leslie Ormandy)

Vampire Metaphor: A Rose by Any Other Name

Does a rose by any name smell as sweet? Does saying someone is a vampire mean he is a bloodsucking parasite, or that he sparkles romantically? Arguably this is the problem with any metaphor; it is a shoddy method to communicate meaning since the reader has no idea which is meant by the context in which the metaphor is placed.It is amorphous.

Darkness falls and the banker strolls from the office where he has labored since sunrise. His car lies deep in the underground garage along with the cars of all his office-mates. He is elated from his busy day of trading futures, having made lots of money. His predatory urges have been wakened, and instead of going home, he turns his car towards the clubs where he can find a desperate woman for who will fall for his line of patter. He can get off and walk off.

The apartment complex was, shall we say euphemistically, a fixer-upper complex with some terrace fences clearly needing replacing, and a roof with odd patches of darkness where the moss seemed to have taken over and grown unhealthy under overhanging tree branches. Walking into the unit the woman could smell odd aromas underlying the fresh paint smell and the smell of the newly laid, inappropriately tannish, carpet. Even with all the lights turned on, and there were damned few of them, the place was dim; as though the apartment was attempting to hid its issues from the casual viewer. The woman knew that if she was no longer a casual viewer the issues would become all to clear, and she would have to live with them. But her credit wasn't stellar and the rent, though high, was about standard for the area, and this owner didn't require the expensive background checks or high deposit so many others did.

She was a knock-out. She was an eleven on the scale of one-to-ten. Her little black dress lived up to its name as it clung to her curves, displaying them quite clearly even while saying, "understated." And she, quite clearly, was out of place in this run-down, workingman's pub.
     The men sitting at the bar looked, hell, they gaped and slavered, but they gave her a wide space. The men and women sitting at the tables in their jean and flannels, 'nice' outfits and chinos, whispered among themselves as they kept glancing at her, asking each other, in quite tones, "What is THAT doing HERE?" or some variant thereof. But again, for all their looking and whispering, they just looked and whispered.
     The bartender who had mixed her gin fizz made casual conversation with the men at the bar, watching attentively for her beaconing gesture while giving an appearance of drying the already dry glasses with his bar rag. "She paid with a fifty, and gave me a twenty tip!" he whispered importantly, understand that, for a change, he was the most important person in the bar; he was the only person in the bar she'd spoken to.
      There was a collective intake of breath when the woman swung her bar-stool so that she could look at her audience -- for they had become her audience in all the ways that matter. Many had only seen her figure since her face was turned toward the bar, and she was two stools over from where the bar's back-mirror would have given her reflection. They moved her up to twelve status. Every man, and a few of the women, wondered even more if she were blond all over, since blue eyes indicated her blond hair was natural.  
     She sipped her drink and then smiled. Her very white teeth reflected in the dim light.

The waif stood in the shadows looking very waif-like; small gamine face with a few smudges and huge eyes, jeans and oversize open button-down shirt. Yet her huge eyes had a hint of the predator within them if one looked very closely; she was used to fending for herself. Some kind man or woman would soon come along and want to 'save' her.

Although Josh tried hard to vary his routine, travel to school by a different route every day, and make damn certain they were random; the last leg of the trip required walking down the main street to the only open door of the building, and every few days Trevor would waylay him.
    
Metaphor. Vampire. Predators. Prey.

Leslie Ormandy

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?