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Blood, vampire stories are more popular than ever--and more varied in
their message.

March 19, 2009

VAMPIRES ARE everywhere: House of Night, Twilight, Southern Vampire
Mysteries, Night Huntress, Savannah Vampire Chronicles, Guardians of
the Night, Blood Ties, Being Human, Demons, Let the Right One In...

Ever since Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, vampire stories have
exerted a consistent fascination, but the seemingly limitless list of
contemporary versions is remarkable. The legend of the bloodsucking
"undead" provides a potent and flexible metaphor within the rapidly
changing political currents of our time.

Stoker's Dracula is rich in contradictions. It is a "St. George versus
the Dragon" Christian allegory ("dracula" derives from words meaning
"dragon" and "devil"). It is steeped in British imperialism's
orientalist fascination with the mythical East, which represents both
the evil antithesis of the West, but also the irresistible lure of
forbidden desire.

The figure of the centuries-old count, inhabiting a gothic castle in
Transylvania, feeding on the local peasantry, expresses bourgeois
distaste for aristocratic decadence and parasitism. But the vampire
offers an equally apt allegory for capitalism: the soulless boss who
bleeds workers dry. (Think of Thievery Corporation's song "Vampires,"
dedicated "to the world banking system.")

Paradoxically the vampire also represents the outcast--the
unfathomable other, who is beyond the pale and a threat to civil
society--but at the same time the mysterious bohemian non-conformist,
perennially appealing to the repressed middle classes.

The primary source of anxiety in Stoker's novel is female sexuality.
Dracula contaminates pure virgins--through exchange of bodily
fluids--to make them monstrous. The three "voluptuous, wanton" female
vampires in Dracula's castle provoke "a wicked, burning desire" in the
upstanding citizen Jonathan Harker. Such women must obviously be
staked through the heart and beheaded.