tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/vampires-4380/articles
Vampires – The Conversation
2024-01-22T00:33:57Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218591
2024-01-22T00:33:57Z
2024-01-22T00:33:57Z
My favourite fictional character: Wintering’s grotesque widows reveal the ‘monstrous’ woman as wise and progressive
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</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phil Robson/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>A coven of faces. All women, all weathered. Old, middle-aged, younger; one teenager among them. […] They sat and breathed in each other’s stale exhalations. Breath like the grave. Jessica couldn’t help thinking that they were rotting inside. And now she was one of them. She had started to decompose.</p>
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<p>The widows are foul, unwashed, rank. They gather at an old farmstead with peeling wooden boards and “holes in the veranda you could put a fist though”. They give off a “urinous fug of sweat and unwashed clothing”. A woman in “a brown shapeless dress, sweat-stained at the armpits” grows long, dark hairs from her upper lip and neck. Their partners have all disappeared. And so has Jessica’s.</p>
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<p>These women are from Kris Kneen’s novel <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/wintering">Wintering</a>, which includes one of my favourite depictions of monstrosity – a man–thylacine hybrid, a type of werewolf, that stalks remote southern Tasmania, turning people into monsters (in a recognisable <a href="https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/gothic.2019.0003">gothic tradition</a>). </p>
<p>But it’s not the man–thylacine monster that has stayed with me all these years. It’s the second type of (metaphorical) monster, the widows, who speak to me far more profoundly.</p>
<p>Initially, the stories these widows tell – about monster hunting – are easy for the novel’s protagonist, Jessica, to reject. They’re the kind of ramblings she might hear from people she’d stand next to at the liquor store and joke about afterwards.</p>
<p>But there’s more to their monstrosity than the grotesque. The widows present as a collection of disparate elements — a Frankenstein’s creature composed of fragments. They are a collective aberration, in a society bent on advancing women who meet social expectations while rejecting those who do not. </p>
<h2>What monsters mean</h2>
<p>Monsters – millennia old – continue to populate our imaginations. The gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, have menaced shelves for hundreds of years.</p>
<p>More recently and closer to home, Lisa Fuller’s <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/ghost-bird">Ghost Bird</a> and First Nations anthology <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/this-all-come-back-now">This All Come Back Now</a> (edited by Mykaela Saunders) depict monsters from Indigenous perspectives, while novels such as Trent Jamieson’s <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/day-boy">Day Boy</a>, which inventively reimagines the vampire, breathe new life into gothic monsters.</p>
<p>As American philosopher and cultural theorist <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/431308">Noel Carroll points out</a>, monsters are not just physically threatening – they threaten and challenge our ways of thinking, too. And in this way, Kneen’s mismatched collection of othered women prompts me to reflect on our assumptions about women and the social norms we’ve constructed for them.</p>
<h2>Monsters represent the ‘other’</h2>
<p>I’m fascinated by the many ways we interpret monsters. Dracula represents concerns about <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3827794?searchText=&searchUri=&ab_segments=&searchKey=&refreqid=fastly-default%3A46f3d5f5ebb26c8d1ece805ef054b7d5&seq=2">racial otherness and imperial decline</a>. No, it’s about fears of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337689065_Supernatural_surveillance_and_blood-borne_disease_in_Bram_Stoker%27s_Dracula_Reflections_on_mesmerism_and_HIV">AIDS infection and supernatural surveillance</a> – no, it’s about <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40754849">homoerotic desire</a>. Zombies <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt6zr">illuminate</a> rampant consumerism, slave labour and, by pushing them to their limits, the intricate workings of human communities. (If you’ve read or watched The Walking Dead, this last one will be familiar to you.) </p>
<p>These readings attempt to project and inscribe a specific cultural meaning, belonging to a particular time and place, onto a monstrous creature. “The monstrous body is pure culture,” writes Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsq4d">researches the cultural function of monsters</a>. It “exists only to be read”. And maybe this is why monsters preoccupy me.</p>
<p>Monsters often depict the so-called “other”: the outside, the beyond and all that we perceive as distant and distinct from us … but actually comes from within. Monsters, after all, always require a creator. They exist only because we design them, constructing them from our deepest fears.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Monsters exist because we design them – constructing them from our deepest fears.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Monsters reveal how societies define – and decide how to punish – difference and deviance. And by doing so, they also call into question <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Ashgate-Research-Companion-to-Monsters-and-the-Monstrous/Mittman-Dendle/p/book/9781472418012%20we%20base%20these%20definitions%20on">the very social structures</a> on which those decisions are based.</p>
<p>By creating monsters, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/classic-readings-on-monster-theory/99074C8C5753F78E0B6F677F7C19ECBF">we police</a> social boundaries and define community norms. In Wintering, Jessica does this by rejecting the widows. Initially, she sees them as something other: something to be avoided, something lesser.</p>
<p>At the same time, though, Kneen’s widows subvert and challenge – even reappropriate – their categorisation as “other”. They are women who don’t meet conventional beauty standards, who flout social expectations. They are women who are older, single, who are sole parents. In short, they’re characters who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-16/history-of-female-monsters-greek-mythology-australia-indonesia/102856324">transgress ideas of traditional womanhood</a> – a transgression traditionally punished by derision and exclusion. </p>
<p>But Jessica’s initial repulsion gradually shifts into acceptance and eventually respect. Later, she’ll view widow elder Marijam as a window onto her future self: </p>
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<p>[…] she felt dizzy, seeing her future staring into her eyes. And it wasn’t so bad really. Tough, solitary, self-sufficient. Wise? Maybe.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bram-stokers-dracula-bats-garlic-disturbing-sexualities-and-a-declining-empire-186392">Bram Stoker's Dracula: bats, garlic, disturbing sexualities and a declining empire</a>
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<h2>Reframing ‘monstrous’ women as wise</h2>
<p>Literature is a powerful vehicle for revealing and naturalising different ways of thinking. I first read Wintering after having children, when I was experiencing a newfound respect for the wisdom and strength of my own mother – and by extension, all those who have carried, lost, terminated, delivered or nurtured babies. </p>
<p>It was a time when I really started to unpack monstrous tropes for what I think they are – particularly those of the female monster, so often <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203820513/monstrous-feminine-barbara-creed">maligned for their reproductive experiences</a>. Maybe this is why Kneen’s creation spoke to me so profoundly (especially Marijam, the wise, wrinkled old lady, who’s quick on a walking stick and slick on a monster hunt).</p>
<p>Kneen’s reframing of the widows contributes to our ongoing process of dismantling internalised misogyny. It alerts me to a different view of those women society might have us trivialise or ignore. Certainly, this is the journey Jessica takes in the novel, eventually viewing herself as a member of the widows. </p>
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<p>“Well,” the old lady said, her smile, unbelievably, wrinkling her face even more. “We are glad you are with us, love.”</p>
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<p>Wintering’s widows leave me thinking about the women in my own life – about my own coven – and how they’re strong and wise in ways not always recognised or endorsed by the mainstream. </p>
<p>These covens have seen me through. They have decimated the idea we’re all write-offs to some degree, depending on how near or far we are from meeting “ideal” social expectations. They have shown me that together, we can be monstrously powerful. </p>
<p>And they’ve shown me it’s my job to pass this knowledge forward: the way Marijam passes hers to Jessica. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-clearings-investigation-of-the-family-invites-us-to-ask-whats-the-appeal-and-risk-of-crime-stories-based-on-real-events-206514">The Clearing's investigation of The Family invites us to ask: what's the appeal – and risk – of crime stories based on real events?</a>
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<h2>More work to do</h2>
<p>Unpicking harmful tropes, of course, is an unfinished task. We have more work to do, especially for women whose identities include further marginalisation surrounding disability, race, class and gender. Monsters are particularly well equipped to help us do this. </p>
<p>Wiradjuri writer Jeanine Leane, for instance, writes about <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/saunders-this-all-come-back-now/">how Indigenous speculative fiction</a> – including fiction containing monsters – “unwrites settler control and knowing of the future and the present and the past” and re-establishes First Nations ways of knowing, being and telling.</p>
<p>There’s another, more literal, monster in Wintering – the man–thylacine werewolf – which skilfully picks at the threads of coercive control, domestic abuse and violence. It deserves its own analysis. </p>
<p>But it’s the monstrous widows who have remained with me, long after finishing the novel. They’ve invited me to reject the label of “monstrous” woman as an indication of shame or exclusion – and to reassign it as a symbol of progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martine Kropkowski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Monsters reveal how societies define and punish deviance. Wintering’s widows make me think about the women I know who are strong and wise in ways neither recognised nor endorsed by the mainstream.
Martine Kropkowski, PhD Candidate and Casual Academic, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203958
2023-04-18T10:51:29Z
2023-04-18T10:51:29Z
Renfield: Nicolas Cage’s reimagining of Dracula pulls the vampire film into the 21st century
<p>“Don’t make it a sexual thing!” Nicolas Cage’s Dracula tells Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield in this new interpretation of the classic vampire movie. “I eat boys … I eat girls.” </p>
<p>In a line, the film deftly dismisses a century of <a href="https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dracula-couch">post-Freudian interpretations</a> of Bram Stoker’s vampire story – and with justification. Renfield is not about sex, but about power.</p>
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<p>This is most obvious when Renfield, Dracula’s servant or “familiar”, attends a support group for codependent people. When the group facilitator, Mark (Brandon Scott Jones), asks Renfield what would happen if he were to stop focusing on his boss’s needs, he responds: “He won’t grow to full power.”</p>
<p>The group finds this apparent metaphor weird, but resonant. In its recognition that gaslighting and emotional abuse are about control rather than desire, the film provides a version of the vampire myth in tune with contemporary debates. There is more than a whiff of #TimesUp about Renfield’s mission to distance himself from his abusive employer.</p>
<p>The film’s most striking power move, however, is on behalf of its production company, Universal. In its latest attempt to reboot its <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a829209/universal-dark-universe-the-mummy-bride-of-frankenstein-the-invisible-man-trailer-release-date/">“Dark Universe” franchise</a> – a collection of movies based on the iconic horror film characters the studio established in the 1930s – the production company is aggressively laying claim to the Dracula story.</p>
<h2>Citational vampires</h2>
<p>Vampire films are, according to critic Ken Gelder, “<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/New_Vampire_Cinema/uQn8DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">citational</a>”. This means that they compulsively reference other vampire films, playfully reworking the conventions of the genre. The vampire film talks endlessly about itself.</p>
<p>In Renfield, an eye-catching sequence transposes Cage and Hoult’s faces onto footage from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoaMw91MC9k">Tod Browning’s Dracula</a> (1931). This was the film that forever identified Hungarian actor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bela-Lugosi">Bela Lugosi</a> with the iconic vampire. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vampires-rebirth-from-monstrous-undead-creature-to-sexy-and-romantic-byronic-seducer-in-one-ghost-story-114382">Vampire's rebirth: from monstrous undead creature to sexy and romantic Byronic seducer in one ghost story</a>
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<p>Renfield wants to draw our attention to the “original” (itself an adaptation of a stage version of Stoker’s novel) even as, almost 100 years later, it wants to remodel the vampire movie to 21st century specifications.</p>
<p>Recasting Cage in the image of Lugosi repurposes Browning’s film as an origin story for what is ultimately a kind of superhero movie. Renfield eats insects in order to stimulate turbocharged combat skills reminiscent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-exciting-additions-to-marvels-cinematic-universes-according-to-a-comics-expert-180634">Marvel characters</a>.</p>
<p>It also, however, evokes the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070930173700/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952724,00.html">lawsuit that Lugosi’s heirs brought against Universal Pictures</a> in 1966. They accused the studio of profiting from Lugosi’s image after his death through merchandising, initiating a protracted case they eventually lost. It was a landmark ruling, determining that celebrities do not own their own images after their death.</p>
<p>In Renfield, the retrospective adjustment of the original film to star Cage rather than Lugosi is not only a canny joke that plays on the extreme recognition value of both actors. It is also a strategic move intended to bolster Universal’s association with the Dracula brand, as the Browning film’s copyright is due to expire this decade.</p>
<h2>Action versus comedy</h2>
<p>Renfield has the feel of the first instalment in an action franchise. But unlike previous attempts to hybridise the vampire and action genres, such as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaU2A7KyOu4">Blade</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_IoL7g5Ub8">Underworld</a> series of the early 2000s, it does not take itself too seriously.</p>
<p>Stars Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina deliver their lines as if with permanently arched eyebrows. Indeed, at one point, Cage rapidly raises both eyebrows twice in such an exaggerated manner that it almost breaks the fourth wall. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, extreme gore is exploited for its slapstick potential. In the screening I attended, a scene in which Renfield tears off a villain’s arms with his bare hands and uses them to whack other opponents had some audience members in stitches.</p>
<p>There is a long tradition of vampire comedy. Stoker’s novel has vampire hunter Van Helsing break down in hysterical laughter, blaming “<a href="https://www.shmoop.com/dracula/chapter-13-full-text-11.html">King Laugh</a>”, a grinning skeleton who combines hilarity and death in the manner of the <a href="https://www.thecollector.com/danse-macabre-middle-ages-danse-of-death/">medieval danse macabre</a>.</p>
<p>The self-referential nature of vampire cinema gives rise to comedy. Appreciation of Renfield’s visual gags and snappy one liners is enriched by familiarity with previous vampire films. Cage’s characteristically over-the-top interpretation of his role inevitably recalls any number of his previous performances.</p>
<p>He even seems comparatively restrained besides his extraordinarily unhinged appearance in the 1988 black comedy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnoSxO_2ghQ">Vampire’s Kiss</a> – another film that uses vampirism as a metaphor for gaslighting and abusive relationships.</p>
<p>The film never quite delivers what it promises, however. While comparable contemporary vampire film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAZEWtyhpes">What We Do in the Shadows</a> and its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEg-QGEonI">spin-off TV series</a> allow emotional insights to surface through the comedy, in Renfield any potential profundity is deflected into action stunts.</p>
<p>The gleeful lashings of ultraviolence result in a kind of moral murkiness, in which audiences are never sure whether they are rooting for the underdog or the violent enabler of a centuries-old serial killer.</p>
<p>A film less determined to please its audience might lean into this ambiguity and allow genuine complexity to emerge. Here, however, an uneven tone betrays an uncertainty of purpose. Ultimately, Renfield’s witty attempt to reframe a familiar story is compromised by its corporate brief: to shore up an unstable cinematic empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Spooner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Renfield attempts to remodel the vampire movie to 21st century specifications.
Catherine Spooner, Professor of Literature and Culture, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193157
2022-10-27T15:16:28Z
2022-10-27T15:16:28Z
Three essential tales of black vampirism
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/24/anne-rice-catholic-church-rejection-vampire">Anne Rice’s</a> phenomenally popular 1976 tale of bloodlust and bloodshed, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43763.Interview_with_the_Vampire">Interview with a Vampire</a>, transferred to the small screen recently – but with some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/27/interview-with-the-vampire-review-anne-rice-horror-tv">significant deviations</a> that include shifting the principal character’s story to the narrative of a black man.</p>
<p>In the novel (and the more faithful 1994 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interview_with_the_Vampire_(film)">film adaptation</a> starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise) Louis de Pointe du Lac owns enslaved African people and a plantation in the <a href="https://aaregistry.org/story/the-antebellum-south-a-brief-story/">antebellum</a> south in the 18th century. The 2022 version sets the storyline in the 1910s, where Louis is a black Creole man made rich by the brothels of New Orleans’ red light district. </p>
<p>While this is a big change, this opens up the story to further explore the relationship between vampirism, race and power. Questions of race and vampirism did not arise with Rice’s novel but vampire narratives have long taken on the bloody discourses of race and prejudice. </p>
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<p>There is a long tradition of black vampires that goes back centuries. These stories subvert the vampire mythos traditionally dominated by white men of high social status. The vampire narrative, concerned as it is with dominance, submission, power and exploitation, is the perfect conduit for investigating racial politics over 200 years of literary and cultural history. Here are three groundbreaking tales which explore those politics. </p>
<h2>1.The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St Domingo (1819)</h2>
<p>Around 200 years before the latest TV adaptation of Interview with a Vampire, the first black vampire story was published.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/americas-first-vampire-was-black-and-revolutionary-its-time-to-remember-him-149044">The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St Domingo</a> was written under the pseudonym Uriah Derick D'Arcy. It is <a href="https://andrewbarger.com/bestvampirestories1800.html">considered</a> “the first black vampire story, the first comedic vampire story, the first story to include a mulatto vampire, the first vampire story by an American author, and perhaps the first anti-slavery short story.” </p>
<p>The story is told by Anthony Gibbons who recalls his descendants being transported on a slave ship. They are sold into slavery but just one boy survives, only to be killed by his captor, Mr Personne.</p>
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<p>Personne throws the boy’s body into the sea but it washes ashore and is reanimated by moonlight. Personne tries to kill him again but the boy retaliates and escapes, killing Personne’s son. Many years later he returns to kill Personne and marry his wife. The story’s narrator, Gibbons, is their joint descendent. He may also have inherited the terrible cravings of the vampire.</p>
<p>The story sought to shock and challenge the prevailing ideas and mores of contemporary readers. It makes multiple references to the “mixing” of blood, as Gibbons is both mixed race and part vampire – the descendent from a black vampire and the white widow of the master he killed.</p>
<p>The exchange of blood involved in vampires feeding from humans and in the creation of new vampires (by a human drinking a vampire’s blood) was used to <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article-abstract/87/1/1/5039/A-Climate-More-Prolific-in-Sorcery-The-Black">reflect on contemporary racist ideas</a> that emphasised the importance of racial purity. The Black Vampyre exposes the racial prejudices at the heart of these inquiries by using the vampire to articulate the horror of the transatlantic slave trade.</p>
<h2>2. The Blood of the Vampire (1897)</h2>
<p>Later in the century, Victorian writer Florence Marryat’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6601404-the-blood-of-the-vampire">The Blood of the Vampire</a> introduced readers to Harriet Brandt, a psychic vampire born of a white “mad scientist” and an enslaved Creole woman. The novel was published in the same year as Bram Stoker’s Dracula. </p>
<p>While Dracula sails from Transylvania to England, Harriet sails from Jamaica to England. Unlike Dracula, Harriet is frightened and confused by her powers. She also <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qhdw4.8#metadata_info_tab_content">drains people of energy</a> rather than blood. She is not aware of her feeding, unlike Dracula who chooses his victims. </p>
<p>Marryat’s book, like The Black Vampyre, is concerned with eugenics and inheritance. Eugenicists believe in the racist and <a href="https://theconversation.com/forced-sterilization-policies-in-the-us-targeted-minorities-and-those-with-disabilities-and-lasted-into-the-21st-century-143144">scientifically erroneous idea</a> that desired traits can be selected through breeding to eliminate social ills and create a perfect society.</p>
<p>These ideas were gaining traction in the 19th century and, in the book, Harriet is accused by the mother of one of her accidental victims of being cursed with “vampire blood” and “black blood” – it is her genetics that are to blame.</p>
<p>Monstrosity in literature has frequently been used to explore the ways marginalised people are <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Gothic_Queer_Culture/dZunDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=monstrosity+and+marginalized&pg=PA45&printsec=frontcover">excluded from society</a>. For example, the 1994 adaptation of Interview with a Vampire has been read as using vampirism as a <a href="https://warped-perspective.com/index.php/2014/11/11/the-20th-anniversary-of-interview-with-the-vampire/">metaphor for the AIDS epidemic</a>. Victorian readers would have mapped racist views about people of colour on to the traits of the vampire.</p>
<p>However, Marryat portrays the vampire as a <a href="https://victorianpopularfiction.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/5-Ifill-Maryatt-Blood-of-the-Vampire-VPFA-Vol-1-issue-1-June-2019-1.pdf">sympathetic figure</a>, showing how upset and confused she is by her powers, challenging the preconceptions of the Victorian audience. </p>
<h2>3.Fledgling (2005)</h2>
<p>Octavia E Butler’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/02/fledgling-octavia-butler-reissue-consent/621420/">Fledgling</a> follows Shori, a girl who appears to be an African-American child but is actually a 53-year-old Ina – a vampire species that have seemingly always coexisted with humans.</p>
<p>In typical vampire fashion, the Ina need to feed on human blood to survive, but instead of killing their victims, the venom they produce hugely extends the human lifespan. So the relationship between vampires and humans is symbiotic rather than parasitic. </p>
<p>Shori can’t remember her life before the story begins. This means she also doesn’t remember why she is different. As the story progresses, she gradually and violently becomes aware that society is hostile to her. The Ina are a species of vampire with white skin. Shori learns that she is black because she was experimented upon and mutated in the quest to help the Ina survive the sun – vampires are killed by sunlight.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Blue book cover with girl in centre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492102/original/file-20221027-37683-h5s605.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Headline Publishers</span></span>
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<p>This is a metaphor for the erasure of black histories. It is also an allegory for the “forgetting” of colonising powers, the slave trade, eugenics and the historical horrors of science where black people were used for <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-experimentation-america-tuskegee-study">experimentation</a>. </p>
<p>Butler uses <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/speciesism">speciesism</a> (the idea of treating one species as inherently more important than another) as a way of talking about racism allegorically. Shori’s black skin is a sought-after evolutionary advantage, which could protect her species from the sun, which runs counter to racist constructions of white superiority. Like D'Arcy and Marryat, Butler successfully employs the physicality and blood of the vampire to explore and dismantle the historical and “biological” justifications for racial prejudice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Passey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Black vampires have existed for 200 years in literature.
Joan Passey, Lecturer in Victorian literature and culture, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183084
2022-05-20T12:15:39Z
2022-05-20T12:15:39Z
‘Dracula Daily’ reanimates the classic vampire novel for the age of memes and snark
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464139/original/file-20220519-12-eujbju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C34%2C1075%2C841&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An online audience is reading the vampire novel for the first time, en masse.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vampire-teeth-to-go-with-story-on-boston-ballet-companys-news-photo/141665303">Diane Barros/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’re an active social media user, perhaps you’ve noticed a surge in posts recently <a href="https://dramatic-dolphin.tumblr.com/post/684034902439706624/i-love-how-you-guys-are-discovering-spicy">about paprika</a>, <a href="https://noritaro.tumblr.com/post/683727305352298496/he-threw-out-my-shaving-mirror">reflective shaving glasses</a> and <a href="https://banrionceallach.tumblr.com/post/684435414397927424/darchildre-friends-we-have-reached-the-point-in">castle hospitality in Transylvania</a>. One hundred twenty-five years after its initial publication, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” is having a resurgence. </p>
<p>The current popularity bump is thanks to an email newsletter called “<a href="https://draculadaily.substack.com">Dracula Daily</a>.” The original 1897 version of “Dracula” was told in epistolary format, meaning the novel’s plot is presented through journal entries, letters, newspaper articles and the like. <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/dracula-daily-interview-matt-kirkland/">Matt Kirkland hit on a simple idea</a>: Release the novel “Dracula” by entry, by date. Subscribers to his Substack newsletter receive messages in their inboxes day by day as the vampire tale unfolds in real time. If there’s no action on that date, there’s no message sent.</p>
<p>“Dracula Daily” has become the <a href="https://twitter.com/woniiwasp/status/1522763544751747072">coolest book club on the internet</a>, <a href="https://nienna14.tumblr.com/post/683508500300759040">taking Tumblr, especially, by storm</a>. As <a href="https://skepticalinquirer.org/authors/stanley-stepanic/">a Dracula and vampire scholar</a>, I’m not surprised to see a new example of the story’s persistence and its tendency to find new life with modern audiences. Considered by many to be a classic of horror literature, Stoker’s “Dracula” is frequently <a href="https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=dracula&so=rel">referenced</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/dracula/">discussed</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=dracula&ref_=fn_kw_kw_1">adapted</a>. What makes the phenomenon of “Dracula Daily” so interesting, though, is not just <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856516675256">how it is finding a new audience</a>, but the way the material is being consumed by these fans.</p>
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<h2>Following the action in real time</h2>
<p>Stoker’s “Dracula” is not unique in using an epistolary style; it’s not even the first work of vampire fiction to do so. But by including the new technologies of his time – such as the phonograph and the typewriter – Stoker gave his tale a modern feel, much as if it were written today using Reddit entries composed on a smartphone.</p>
<p>The novel starts on May 3, with Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor, describing his travels to visit a mysterious client in Transylvania. “Dracula Daily” readers received this particular entry on the same date, <a href="https://draculadaily.substack.com/p/dracula-may-3-590?s=r">with a flippant summary stating</a> “Meet Jonathan Harker, on a fun road trip for work, as he collects some new recipes.” With that intro, the opening Stoker wrote in the 19th century to set the scene comes off like a naïve travel blog to 21st-century readers scrolling on their phones.</p>
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<p>The only difference between the original novel and the emailed content is that Kirkland opts to release the material in chronological order. For instance, Jonathan Harker witnesses Count Dracula scaling the wall of his castle in “lizard fashion” for the third and final time on June 29. His fiancee, Mina Murray, writes a letter to her friend Lucy Westenra on May 9. In the novel, the description of Dracula’s uncanny exit is presented before Lucy’s chatty letter. In “Dracula Daily,” it’s the reverse. Subsequent sections are published in the same way.</p>
<p>Newsletter subscribers are thus consuming the novel not just in a different format, but in a different order. While faithful to the original text, “Dracula Daily” is, in a sense, a partial retelling of the book.</p>
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<h2>Protectively mocking ‘my buddy Harker’</h2>
<p>Upon initial publication, “Dracula” was dismissed by some influential critics. One comment was that “the early part goes best.” And it’s these first entries that have grabbed the “Dracula Daily” audience’s attention in 2022. They follow Jonathan Harker’s journey to meet Count Dracula to assist with his purchasing of properties in England. It hardly sounds like the sinister scheming of a centuries-old undead vampire lord. To audiences in 1897, the novel was quite similar to previous vampire literature, and such details were largely overlooked as par for the course. </p>
<p>But today’s audience meets Harker’s descriptions with more critical scrutiny. Readers laugh as Harker marches past <a href="https://hydroflorix.tumblr.com/post/683450842647560192/loving-the-way-time-and-context-has-turned-dracula">what are obviously red flags</a>. When locals stare at him and talk among themselves of Satan, hell, werewolves and vampires after hearing his travel plans, Harker simply adds a parenthetical note to himself: “(Mem., I must ask the Count about these superstitions).” For Harker, who does not believe in vampires, this would hardly seem a nonsensical idea.</p>
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<p>Modern readers, even if tackling Stoker’s writing for the first time, however, are well aware that Count Dracula is a bloodthirsty vampire who has much more than British real estate on his mind. Trained by social media to mockingly scrutinize online content, “Dracula Daily” readers revel in minor details that <a href="https://selkielore.tumblr.com/post/683597812391428097/omg-the-count-kept-him-up-all-night-talking">are easily mocked</a>. For instance, the fact that Dracula, maintaining the pretense that there are servants in this remote vampire’s lair, secretly makes Jonathan Harker’s bed himself, is viewed in a new and humorous light. “<a href="https://ashtry.tumblr.com/post/683781830922698752/i-appreciate-draculas-efforts-in-running-a-one">I appreciate Dracula’s efforts in running a one man hotel</a>,” commented Tumblr user ashtry.</p>
<p>In Stoker’s time, one critic called the book’s descriptions “probably quite uncanny enough to <a href="https://beladraculalugosi.wordpress.com/contemporary-reviews-of-bram-stokers-dracula/">please those for whom they are designed</a>” – meaning, essentially, trash written for trash. Tumblr audiences in particular seem to have picked up on this quality, approaching the material with plenty of snark. It’s the mocking analysis of the novel by modern readers that <a href="https://fandom.tumblr.com/post/683789213230137344/email-isgood-again-the-dracula-daily-newsletter">sent “Dracula Daily” trending</a>.</p>
<h2>Consuming the story as a social experience</h2>
<p>Readers always interpret a book’s style and meaning through the lens of their own knowledge and experiences. But the majority of previous “Dracula” interpretation I’ve seen has been at the hands of scholars and devoted fans. The social media response to “Dracula Daily” is different, with a primarily younger audience riffing on the novel in a new way.</p>
<p>As audiences analyze the novel piece by piece, they are engaging one another with memes and artistic interpretations of the plot as it unfolds. For instance, Harker’s description of Dracula climbing down the walls of his castle in “lizard fashion” has elicited visual art of <a href="https://horseboneologist.tumblr.com/post/684336161182892032/serve-it-id-a-digital-drawing-of-count">fashion looks</a> <a href="https://draculaesque.tumblr.com/post/684328757123842048/looks-for-climbing-vertically-down-the-walls-of">inspired by lizards</a>.</p>
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<p>Because “Dracula Daily” reveals the plot day by day, readers follow the story together and are all at the same place in the narrative at the same time. As in the heyday of radio or network series television, the audience can gather around the (<a href="https://vampirediaries.fandom.com/wiki/Blog:Recent_posts">now virtual</a>) water cooler to discuss the latest revelation and speculate about what’s to come. Anyone could easily read ahead in the novel. But people are waiting with bated breath for the next installment to hit their inboxes.</p>
<p>It’s like a chapter-by-chapter book club. The forced slow pace leaves plenty of time for the ecosystem of memes and posts to flourish as the delicious dread builds about just what Dracula will do. As the plot further unfolds, I look forward to continuing to be entertained by the “Dracula Daily” audience – at least until Nov. 6, when the story will draw to a close for this year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183084/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanley Stepanic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A newsletter sends out chronological snippets from the 125-year-old novel ‘Dracula.’ Fans on the internet go wild.
Stanley Stepanic, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180282
2022-04-01T10:34:31Z
2022-04-01T10:34:31Z
Goblin mode: a gothic expert explains the trend’s mythical origins, and why we should all go ‘vampire mode’ instead
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455529/original/file-20220331-13-ue3s19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C379%2C1263%2C1069&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Arthur Rackham's illustration of the Victorian poem Goblin Market.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/goblin-market-illustrated-by-arthur-rackham">British Library</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Goblin mode” is taking the current pandemic-ridden world by storm. This <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/14/slobbing-out-and-giving-up-why-are-so-many-people-going-goblin-mode">state of being</a> is defined by behaviours that feel reminiscent of deep lockdown days – never getting out of bed, never changing into real clothes, grazing from tins or packets instead of cooking, binge watching television and doom-scrolling.</p>
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<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/goblin-mode-a-gothic-expert-explains-the-trends-mythical-origins-and-why-we-should-all-go-vampire-mode-instead-180282&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>Goblin mode appears to be a reaction to the early pandemic emphasis on home and personal improvement – a “devil may care” attitude in the face of hyper-curated social media content. But this behaviour does not quite align with the goblins of folklore, who take a more playful and mischievous approach to life.</p>
<p>British writer and folklorist Katharine Briggs’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Dictionary_of_Fairies.html?id=TeqJPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Dictionary of Fairies</a> informs us that goblin is a “general name for evil and malicious spirits, usually small and grotesque in appearance”. Interestingly, the word goblin evolved to refer to a subterranean species – not far off from those who languish indoors during lockdown. But that’s where the similarities end.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions, and bring answers, as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>More articles:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/caught-covid-heres-what-you-should-and-shouldnt-do-when-self-isolation-isnt-mandatory-179441?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Caught COVID? Here’s what you should and shouldn’t do when self-isolation isn’t mandatory</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/student-loans-would-a-graduate-tax-be-a-better-option-179253?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Student loans: would a graduate tax be a better option?</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/ivf-add-ons-why-you-should-be-cautious-of-these-expensive-procedures-if-youre-trying-to-conceive-180198?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">IVF add-ons: why you should be cautious of these expensive procedures if you’re trying to conceive</a></em></p>
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<p>There are many variants of goblin, with different characteristics, from the Highland fuath to the English goblin and the French gobelin. Today, the term goblin encompasses any fairy with an injurious intent, such as Knockers, Phookas, Spriggans, Trolls or Trows. </p>
<p>Goblin behaviour can range from mild pranks to acts of outright terror. A goblin is seldom welcomed, even by its own kind. Goblins are certainly a menace in the home. According to mythology expert <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Encyclopedia_of_Fairies_in_World_Folklor.html?id=nSuXAAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">Theresa Bane</a>, “a house goblin, will work against the family living there, making their life more difficult by banging on pots and pans, knocking on doors and walls and rearranging items in the house”. </p>
<p>In British and German lore, they can shapeshift, and will typically take the form of whatever animal best reflects their beastlike nature. This aspect of goblin lore is represented in Christina Rossetti’s 1862 poem <a href="https://poets.org/poem/goblin-market">Goblin Market</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One had a cat’s face, one whisked a tail, one tramped at a rat’s pace, one crawled like a snail. One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry, one like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This Victorian poem is an early example of goblins behaving badly. They stand in for predatory corrupting males, using forbidden faerie fruits to lure female victims to their doom. Most goblins depicted in literature and folklore are active, playing pranks and generally causing trouble for the humans around them. They do not sit passively at home, surrounded by creature comforts, lazing the day away.</p>
<p>The “goblin mode” trend might even be seen to malign certain goblins. Hobgoblins, for example, are helpful and well-disposed towards humankind, if sometimes mischievous and tricksy. Puck in Shakespeare’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/works/a-midsummer-nights-dream">A Midsummer Night’s Dream</a> is one such character. Like all hobgoblins, he’s a shapeshifter, and also performs labours for humans, much like the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/brownie-English-folklore">brownie</a>, a house spirit known for its helpfulness.</p>
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<img alt="A young woman sitting in bed eating cake and drinking juice with a bored expression on her face." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455521/original/file-20220331-11-g82lg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Going goblin mode.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/teen-girl-drinking-soda-eating-cake-485354317">Albina Tiplyashina / Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vampire mode</h2>
<p>A closer look at the goblins of folklore tells us that goblin mode might be somewhat of a misnomer. There is, however, another mythical creature whose characteristics are more fitting for this time period – the vampire.</p>
<p>Vampires have long been associated with disease and contagion. This characterisation draws in part from Dracula, but it also feeds on wider fears and collective obsessions around networks of contagion and contamination. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/resources-events-teachers/resources-teachers/gothic-classroom/film-2-nosferatu-1922">1922</a> film Nosferatu came out shortly after the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which killed more people worldwide than the first world war. The word Nosferatu is similar to the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6x0-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=nosforos+greek+meaning&source=bl&ots=hYjo9r3KOF&sig=ACfU3U23Gaj_sR6Q4gIntlrSL_tv6ctBmg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicmcbXmPD2AhXVPsAKHZJpCfkQ6AF6BAg9EAM#v=onepage&q=nosforos%20greek%20meaning&f=false">Greek word nosforos, meaning “plague bearer”</a>. He even looks like a plague rat, with fangs set at the front of his mouth like the vermin he brings in his wake.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nosferatu-at-100-how-the-seminal-vampire-film-shaped-the-horror-genre-179439">Nosferatu at 100: how the seminal vampire film shaped the horror genre</a>
</strong>
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<p>But over the last 200 years, Vampires in popular culture have evolved from plague-ridden creatures like Nosferatu to sparkling, <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784993627">aspirational sex symbols</a>. Instead of holing up and resigning to a fate forever in goblin mode, we should follow the example set by vampires and aim to emerge from the pandemic as better versions of ourselves.</p>
<p>The Cullen family from the book and movie franchise Twilight is the best representation of this dramatic shift. They are attractive, cool, youthful and partake in normal human social behaviour like going to school and dating – a far cry from plague-bearing, sickly Nosferatu. Repulsion cedes to attraction as horror gives way to romance. Goblins by comparison, are unlikely romantic leads, they’re not sexy – or aspirational.</p>
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<p>Modern vampires also have an association with youthful culture that could be refreshing after two years of pandemic-induced hibernation. The film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/">Lost Boys</a>, in which Kiefer Sutherland’s undead crew inhabits a fashionably grungy underground domain, was released with the strapline “Sleep all day, party all night. Never grow old. Never die”. This would be an appropriate post-lockdown motto. It’s time we stopped languishing like goblins and started flourishing as newly born vampires.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam George has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is the convener of the Open Graves, Open Minds research group who organised the Nosferatu at 100 The Vampire as Contagion and Monstrous Outsider centenary symposium in 2022 <a href="https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/nosferatu-at-100-2022/">https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/nosferatu-at-100-2022/</a>
And an international 3-day conference on gothic fairies in 2021 ‘Ill met by moonlight’: Gothic encounters with enchantment and the Faerie realm in literature and culture, University of Hertfordshire, 8‒11 April 2021 <a href="https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/ill-met-by-moonlight-2021/">https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/ill-met-by-moonlight-2021/</a></span></em></p>
Everyone is going ‘goblin mode’, but does the trend unfairly malign goblins of folklore?
Sam George, Associate Professor of Research, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179439
2022-03-18T13:26:30Z
2022-03-18T13:26:30Z
Nosferatu at 100: how the seminal vampire film shaped the horror genre
<p>It’s the centenary of the cinema premiere of the German horror film Nosferatu. Now recognised as a classic of the silent era and one of the first examples of cinematic horror, it used elements of Gothic style to present a dark dreamworld. Ripe with undertones that link it not only to contemporary troubles, it also offers prescient warnings of horrors to come with the rise of Hitler’s Nazi regime. </p>
<p>The film is now considered one of the key films of German expressionism, a film movement from the 1920s that rejected realism in favour of creating imaginary worlds where stylised and distorted set design expressed psychological states of fear and despair. </p>
<p>Such tortured creation can be linked to external factors, with these films coming out of a Germany still reeling from its defeat in the first world war, plunging the country into a time of turmoil with rising inflation and political unrest. Added to this was the devastation caused by the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-20, which killed more people than the war.</p>
<p>The film remains a sensation of the horror genre and 100 years since its release it’s influence can still be seen within cinema today. </p>
<h2>A complicated legacy</h2>
<p>At the centre of the film is the vampire, Count Orlok. Orlok is unlike the dashing caped figures of Bela Lugosi in the 1931 <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Dracula</a> and Christopher Lee in the series of Dracula films made at <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051554/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Britain’s Hammer Studios</a>. </p>
<p>Actor Max Schreck’s Orlok is strikingly inhuman and repulsive. With his bald head, hooked nose, clawed fingers and pointed ears. He is often surrounded by swarms of rats rather than harems of women. This representation has been compared to hateful <a href="https://thequietus.com/articles/31229-film-nosferatu-bram-stoker-jewish-vampires">anti-Semitic images</a> used in Nazi propaganda. It is unlikely that this was intentional as many of the writers and actors were Jewish. However, the notion of an invading “threat” coming to take over the land and comparisons between Jewish people and vampires were <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/nosferatu-hoberman-murnau">narratives that were used</a> to justify state-sanctioned persecution and murder. </p>
<p>However, a narrative that is inherent in the story of Nosferatu and other expressionist films is the threat of authoritarian and aristocratic figures seeking to take control. The films made in this period foreshadowed a future full of death and terror, tyranny and murder.</p>
<p>In his 1947 history of German expressionism, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691191348/from-caligari-to-hitler">From Caligari to Hitler</a>, the critic Siegfried Kracauer argued that the genre reflects and documents the subconscious of the German people’s fixation with tyranny that would climax in the rise of the Nazi. </p>
<p>In Nosferatu, this plays out in the aristocratic figure of Orlok who exerts his supernatural influence over unsuspecting people, sucking their lifeblood, choosing who dies and who becomes part of his cabal of hateful monsters who enact his will. For Kracauer, the figure of Count Orlock represented the combination of fear and fascination that the spectre of fascism elicited in the German people. </p>
<h2>Immortal and influential</h2>
<p>While it is not the first vampire film, or even the first adaptation of Stoker’s novel (the now-lost Hungarian film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240464/">Dracula’s Death</a> was made a year prior), it established many stylistic and narrative tropes of the vampire story still used today. For instance, Nosferatu was the first time a vampire was killed by sunlight, a trope that has now become canon.</p>
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<p>It also was the first German expressionist film to shoot on location, instead of entirely on studio sets – like the genre’s first film <a href="https://theconversation.com/virginia-woolf-on-the-magic-of-going-to-the-cinema-157939">The Cabinet of Dr Caligari</a>. For Nosferatu, director F.W. Murnau created a Gothic atmosphere in locations such as Orava Castle and the High Tatras mountain range in Slovakia. Such locations allowed audiences to see and sense the history of crumbling ruins and feel the elemental forces present in dark forests and raging storms.</p>
<p>The making of Nosferatu and its cast and crew have been subject to their own mythologising. The 2000 film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189998/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Shadow of the Vampire</a> posits that Max Schreck really was a vampire, entering into a Faustian pact with director F. W. Murnau to give his film the ultimate authenticity – in exchange for the blood of the film’s leading lady.</p>
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<p>The TV series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4217832/">American Horror Story: Hotel</a> has Murnau himself becoming a vampire while researching Nosferatu in the Carpathian Mountains. Once in Hollywood, Murnau turns an actor into a vampire, the immortality of the vampire likened to the immortality of film stardom.</p>
<p>Nosferatu’s blending of genre tropes and arthouse style even foretells the current rise of “elevated horror”, personified by films such as Get Out, The Babadook and Hereditary. In fact, one of horror’s newest auteurs, Robert Eggers (whose film The Lighthouse owes much to German expressionism), has hinted at <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/film/anya-taylor-joy-reunite-robert-eggers-nosferatu-remake-3028703">a remake of Nosferatu</a> (the second remake after Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre).</p>
<p>So, after 100 years, our fascination with Count Orlok lives on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179439/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindsay Hallam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Many of Count Orlok’s characteristics have gone on to be canon in the lore of vampires.
Lindsay Hallam, Senior Lecturer in Film, University of East London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167482
2021-10-14T12:08:35Z
2021-10-14T12:08:35Z
More ‘disease’ than ‘Dracula’ – how the vampire myth was born
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426277/original/file-20211013-17-1oj68zn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=984%2C1205%2C3394%2C2464&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Modern vampires like Dracula may be dashing, but they certainly weren't in the original vampire myths.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/helen-chandler-is-carried-by-bela-lugosi-in-a-scene-from-news-photo/159821076">Archive Photos/ Moviepix via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The vampire is a common image in today’s pop culture, and one that takes many forms: from Alucard, the dashing spawn of Dracula in the PlayStation game “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night”; to Edward, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/vampires-rebirth-from-monstrous-undead-creature-to-sexy-and-romantic-byronic-seducer-in-one-ghost-story-114382">romantic, idealistic lover</a> in the “Twilight” series.</p>
<p>In many respects, the vampire of today is far removed from its roots in Eastern European folklore. As <a href="https://slavic.as.virginia.edu/people/profile/sjs2z">a professor of Slavic studies</a> who has taught a course on vampires <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/dissecting-dracula-chat-vampire-expert-stanley-stepanic">called “Dracula”</a> for more than a decade, I’m always fascinated by the vampire’s popularity, considering its origins – as a demonic creature strongly associated with disease.</p>
<h2>Explaining the unknown</h2>
<p>The first known reference to vampires appeared in written form in Old Russian <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Slavic_Scriptures/-P_huGq9mV4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=upir+etymology+slav&pg=PA218&printsec=frontcover">in A.D. 1047</a>, soon after Orthodox Christianity moved into Eastern Europe. The term for vampire was “<a href="https://starlingdb.org/cgi-bin/response.cgi?basename=dataievasmer&text_word=%D1%83%D0%BF%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%8C&method_word=beginning&ww_word=on">upir</a>,” which has uncertain origins, but its possible literal meaning was “the thing at the feast or sacrifice,” referring to a potentially dangerous spiritual entity that people believed could appear at rituals for the dead. It was a euphemism used to avoid speaking the creature’s name – and unfortunately, historians may never learn its real name, or even when beliefs about it surfaced.</p>
<p>The vampire served a function similar to that of <a href="https://simmonslis.libguides.com/c.php?g=1107583&p=8076095">many other demonic creatures</a> in folklore around the world: They were blamed for a variety of problems, but particularly disease, at a time when knowledge of bacteria and viruses did not exist.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A 19th-century engraving depicts men in coats and hats shooting at a vampire in a cemetery in Romania." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425551/original/file-20211008-18-19q5vyz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers witnessing vampire hysteria in Eastern Europe – such as people desecrating the graves of suspected vampires – carried tales back home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/men-shoot-at-a-vampire-lying-staked-through-the-heart-in-a-news-photo/593280150?adppopup=true">Leemage/ Corbis Historical via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Scholars have put forth <a href="https://theconversation.com/vampire-myths-originated-with-a-real-blood-disorder-140830">several theories</a> about various diseases’ connections to vampires. It is likely that no one disease provides a simple, “pure” origin for vampire myths, since beliefs about vampires changed over time.</p>
<p>But two in particular show solid links. One is rabies, whose name comes from a Latin term for “madness.” It’s <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/308182/rabid-by-bill-wasik-and-monica-murphy/">one of the oldest recognized diseases on the planet</a>, transmissible from animals to humans, and primarily spread through biting – an obvious reference to a classic vampire trait.</p>
<p>There are other curious connections. One central symptom of the disease is hydrophobia, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ccr3.1846">a fear of water</a>. Painful muscle contractions in the esophagus lead rabies victims to avoid eating and drinking, or even swallowing their own saliva, which eventually causes “foaming at the mouth.” In some folklore, vampires cannot cross running water without being carried or assisted in some way, as an extension of this symptom. Furthermore, rabies can lead to a fear of light, altered sleep patterns and increased aggression, elements of how vampires are described in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.51.3.856">a variety of folktales</a>.</p>
<p>The second disease <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014107689709001114">is pellagra</a>, caused by a dietary deficiency of niacin (vitamin B3) or the amino acid tryptophan. Often, pellagra is brought on by diets high in corn products and alcohol. After Europeans landed in the Americas, they transported corn back to Europe. But they ignored <a href="https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1525/nua.1998.22.1.1">a key step in preparing corn</a>: washing it, often using lime – a process called “nixtamalization” that can reduce the risk of pellagra.</p>
<p>Pellagra causes the classic “<a href="https://doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2020.36.219.24806">4 D’s</a>”: dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death. Some sufferers also experience high sensitivity to sunlight – described in some depictions of vampires – which leads to corpselike skin.</p>
<h2>Social scare</h2>
<p>Multiple diseases show connections to folklore about vampires, but they can’t necessarily explain how the myths actually began. Pellagra, for example, did not exist in Eastern Europe <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2018/4597">until the 18th century</a>, centuries after vampire beliefs had originally emerged. </p>
<p>Both pellagra and rabies are important, however, because they were epidemic during a key period in vampire history. During the so-called <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/how-spread-disease-juiced-lore-vampires-pandemic-proportions">Great Vampire Epidemic</a>, from roughly 1725 to 1755, vampire myths “went viral” across the continent. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 110,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>As disease spread in Eastern Europe, supernatural causes were often blamed, and vampire hysteria spread throughout the region. Many people believed that vampires were the “undead” – people who lived on in some way after death – and that the vampire could be stopped by attacking its corpse. They carried out “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774314000754">vampire burials</a>,” which could involve putting a stake through the corpse, covering the body in garlic and a variety of other traditions that had been present in Slavic folklore for centuries.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Austrian and German soldiers fighting the Ottomans in the region witnessed this mass <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Twilight_Symbols/aMnDXCq9hRkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=upir+etymology+slav&pg=PA398&printsec=frontcover">desecration of graves</a> and returned home to Western Europe with stories of the vampire.</p>
<p>But why did so much vampire hysteria spring up in the first place? Disease was a primary culprit, but a sort of “perfect storm” existed in Eastern Europe at the time. The era of the Great Vampire Epidemic was not just a period of disease, but one of political and religious upheaval as well.</p>
<p>During the 18th century, Eastern Europe faced pressure from within and without as domestic and foreign powers exercised their control over the region, with local cultures often suppressed. Serbia, for example, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Serbia/The-disintegration-of-Ottoman-rule">was struggling between the Hapsburg Monarchy in Central Europe and the Ottomans</a>. Poland was increasingly under foreign powers, Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule, and Russia was undergoing <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1pncq7q?turn_away=true">dramatic cultural change</a> due to the policies of Czar Peter the Great.</p>
<p>This is somewhat analogous to today, as the world contends with the COVID-19 pandemic amid political change and uncertainty. Perceived societal breakdown, whether real or imagined, can lead to dramatic responses in society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stanley Stepanic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The past century’s vampires have often been a bit dashing, even romantic. That’s not how the myth started out.
Stanley Stepanic, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/147214
2021-01-31T07:52:53Z
2021-01-31T07:52:53Z
Medical volunteers in rural Zambia: learning from attitudes to angels and vampires
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373344/original/file-20201207-23-t7p4oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Medical volunteers have been a common sight in African countries like Zambia since the colonial era.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Engraving from The Illustrated London News, volume 96, No 2654, March 1, 1890/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past decade, the work of medical volunteers in Africa has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/magazine/the-voluntourists-dilemma.html">heavily debated</a>. These volunteers – often from Western Europe and North America – arrive in African countries to work in clinics and hospitals, providing medical treatment for patients in poor urban and rural settings. </p>
<p>Important criticisms have been made of this kind of work. The Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole coined the term “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/">white saviour industrial complex</a>” to describe a sector that does more to affirm the “sentimental needs” of white volunteers than to engage with the political dynamics that sustain inequality and poverty in African countries. Social scientists have also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441692.2017.1346695?casa_token=m4Rv_SyyBc4AAAAA:TTa5yGDpLwISGrbS80kyqosQMYTIoN2_znrfWTvcSJFq8JA1N-LpvmYgbucClD-vy8KPE8y7i8Hx">studied</a> the work of international medical volunteers. This research shows that these volunteers often cause harm by undermining the authority of African health professionals or by performing risky clinical procedures. </p>
<p>But important voices are sometimes missing from these debates – particularly those of the people on the receiving end of this “help”. </p>
<p>In the area of rural Zambia where I have been conducting research since 2014, international medical volunteers are a common sight. In my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2020.1711749">recent research</a> I have considered how people who live in rural Zambia regard these outsiders and make sense of their behaviour. One of the aims of this research is to examine how people in rural Zambia have come to understand the actions of the many medical volunteers who have been arriving in the area since the colonial period. </p>
<p>But to understand how people in rural Zambia perceive these medical volunteers, it is important to observe that such volunteers have been closely associated with several kinds of non-human actors, whose behaviour is worth examining in more detail. </p>
<h2>Angels and vampires</h2>
<p>Historians and anthropologists have studied how medical interventions by white Europeans – from colonial-era missionary doctors to modern medical researchers – have been perceived by people in African countries in the past. This important work has shown that the presence and behaviour of these outsiders has often produced powerful anxieties and rumours. One of the striking findings of <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520217041/speaking-with-vampires">this research</a> is that white medical doctors in central Africa were often identified as “vampires” (<em>banyama</em>). This was because people thought they sought to enrich themselves by extracting their African patients’ blood and vital body substances. </p>
<p>I found in my own research that white medical volunteers in rural Zambia were sometimes associated with vampire rumours. But I also discovered that they were connected to a less malevolent figure: the “angel spirit” or <em>mungelo</em> (<em>bangelo</em>, plural) in Chitonga, the language spoken in southern Zambia.</p>
<p>Traditional healers in the area explained that these spirits visited them and offered them powerful healing advice. One of these traditional healers – a woman I will call Dr Simamba – described the behaviour of these spirits. Arriving at Dr Simamba’s home with a friend, I was shown her shrine. In it, she had placed a tall white feather. This, she explained, was the kind of object that might attract angel spirits who sometimes visited her in person and in dreams. </p>
<p>Dr Simamba could not say for sure why these angel spirits were attracted to white objects. But she thought it might be because these spirits physically resembled white people (<em>bakuwa</em>) and always dressed in white clothing. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, these angel spirits were notoriously difficult to attract:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They come at whatever time they please … sometimes a whole year goes past and nothing!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These spirits were worth waiting for, though. They offered highly effective guidance on how to treat patients. This included advice about which herbs and plants to pick, how to prepare them, and whether to drink them, smoke them or rub them into an incision.</p>
<p>Sometimes angel spirits offered Dr Simamba advice about patients who were already under her care and living within her homestead. On other occasions <em>bangelo</em> offered advice about patients who were going to visit in the future so that Dr Simamba could prepare in advance for their arrival. </p>
<p>I encountered six traditional healers – and was told of many others – who also received visits from spirits. But Dr Simamba’s account also resembles the descriptions of diviners and healers throughout the region. In her work on vernacular healing in Tanzania, the American medical anthropologist Stacey Langwick <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bodies-Politics-African-Healing-Maladies/dp/0253222451">notes</a> that many people who become healers are “called into relationship with a variety of (new) actors”, including spirits and other non-human actors. And for <em>bangelo</em> diviners, one of the non-human actors with whom they were “called into relationship” was the angel spirit.</p>
<h2>Ambivalent actors</h2>
<p>Despite the advice they could offer, angel spirits were regarded in morally ambivalent terms. Although they could provide effective advice, they were essentially unpredictable. Diviners struggled to sustain long-term relationships with them. </p>
<p>Much like many of the international medical volunteers whom they physically resembled, these spirits acted according to a logic of their own. They arrived and left when they pleased, without offering a reliable and enduring form of care. </p>
<p>In this sense, both medical volunteers and angel spirits depart from the kind of relationships of care and mutual dependence that people in the region often value highly. </p>
<p>The idea that medical volunteers in Zambia stand outside local relationships – and are therefore not bound by social obligations to Zambians – is one that might explain their association with both vampires <em>and</em> angels. I am not suggesting that these non-human actors are simply metaphoric representations of the “real” white people whom they represent. Rather, I think the behaviour of these human and non-human actors should be considered alongside one another. </p>
<p>The moral attitudes that many people in rural Zambia have towards vampires and angels provide an interesting view – even a critique – of the work of medical volunteers. Perhaps it is time to take these criticisms more seriously and include them in debates about medical volunteering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147214/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Wintrup does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
These medical volunteers have been closely associated with several kinds of non-human actors, whose behaviour is worth examining in more detail.
James Wintrup, Research Fellow in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149044
2020-10-30T15:40:06Z
2020-10-30T15:40:06Z
America’s first vampire was Black and revolutionary – it’s time to remember him
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366726/original/file-20201030-15-m56m2i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=39%2C37%2C1153%2C779&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Black Vampyre is an early literary example of an argument for emancipation of slaves. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/429270">Thomas Nast/Harper's Weekly/The Met</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In April of 1819, a London periodical, the New Monthly Magazine, published <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-vampyre-by-john-polidori">The Vampyre: A Tale by Lord Byron</a>. Notice of its publication quickly appeared in papers in the United States. </p>
<p>Byron was at the time enjoying remarkable popularity and this new tale, supposedly by the famous poet, caused a sensation as did its reprintings in Boston’s Atheneum (15 June) and Baltimore’s Robinson’s Magazine (26 June).</p>
<p>The Vampyre did away with the East European peasant vampire of old. It took this monster out of the forests, gave him an aristocratic lineage and placed him into the drawing rooms of Romantic-era England. It was the first sustained fictional treatment of the vampire and completely recast the folklore and mythology on which it drew.</p>
<p>By July, Byron’s denial of authorship was being reported and by August the true author was discovered, John Polidori. </p>
<p>In the meantime, an American response, The Black Vampyre: A Legend of St. Domingo, by one Uriah Derick D’Arcy, appeared. D'Arcy explicitly parodies The Vampyre and even suggests that Lord Ruthven, Polidori’s British vampire aristocrat, had his origins in the Carribean. A later reprinting in 1845 attributed The Black Vampyre to a Robert C Sands; however, many believe the author was more likely a Richard Varick Dey (1801–1837), a near anagram of the named author.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Front page of The Black Vampyre." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1339&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366629/original/file-20201030-18-163govu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1339&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Front page of The Black Vampyre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is so remarkable about this story is that it is an anti-slavery narrative from the early 1800s which also contains America’s first vampire who is Black. It is also perhaps the first short story to advocate the emancipation of slaves, released 14 years before Lydia Child published <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28242">An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans</a>, which is widely considered the first anti-slavery book. </p>
<p>Surprisingly, this ground-breaking text is relatively unknown, even in Gothic circles. It appears in none of the seminal histories of the vampire, for example, and is not included in any of the classic and recent collections of vampire short fiction. There is one <a href="http://jto.common-place.org/just-teach-one-homepage/the-black-vampyre/">online edition</a>, a labour of love, excellently prepared, to enable the teaching of the text by the Americans, Ed White and Duncan Faherty. </p>
<h2>A mixed union</h2>
<p>The Black Vampyre also explores the idea of mixed marriage at a time when interracial love was deemed taboo. </p>
<p>Darcy’s narrative begins with a slave-owner Mr Personne, in what is now Haiti repeatedly trying to kill a 10-year-old slave. As much as he tries though the corpse keeps reviving. Personne orders the child to be burned but the boy moves with supernatural speed and miraculously causes the slave-owner to be flung into the fire instead. Before Mr Personne dies, his wife informs him that the cradle of their unbaptised son is empty apart from his skin, bones, and nails.</p>
<p>Some years later we return to Personne’s widow, Euphemia, who is in mourning for her third husband. She is visited by two strangers, an extremely handsome Black man, dressed as a Moorish prince, accompanied by a pale European boy. He charms her with his elegance and beauty and rapidly wins her hand in marriage, which takes place that evening. That same night he reveals that he is a vampire and converts Euphemia to his bloodthirsty set.</p>
<p>Monsters aside, Published in 1819, an interracial marriage would have made for shocking reading – not to mention between a former slave and his one-time mistress.</p>
<h2>Vampirish children</h2>
<p>Married to a monster and now a monster herself (in the eyes of society too), Euphemia learns that the prince’s pale young companion is her vanished son – now also a vampire. The prince gives the boy named Zemba back to Euphemia along with her first husband’s money so they can escape to Europe.</p>
<p>On their way, they find themselves in a cavern with a group of noble-looking vampires and a crowd of slaves. The prince addresses the crowd in the language of revolutionary Enlightenment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our fetters discarded, and our chains dissolved, we shall stand liberated, – redeemed, – emancipated, – and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION!!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This draws on the then recent <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/haitian-revolution-1791-1804/">Haitian Revolution</a> (1791–1804), which ended slavery and French control of the colony. The vampires, like the slaves, are forced to exist on the fringes of society and so are rebelling against their lot in life. However, unlike Haiti’s, the rebellion is thwarted by a group of soldiers and the vampires are staked to death.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366725/original/file-20201030-17-1b2gq6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=558&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration depicting combat between French and Haitian troops during the Haitian Revolution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution#/media/File:Haitian_Revolution.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Luckily Euphemia and Zemba escape, sipping a potion that can restore a vampire to the human state. They go on to lead a happy family life, Zemba is finally baptised as Barabbas and life goes on. That is until Euphemia gives birth to a mixed-race son (presumably the prince’s) with “vampirish propensities”. This is the first instance of a mixed-race vampire ever recorded in literature. </p>
<p>The Black Vampyre will be celebrated in a special event at the <a href="https://beinghumanfestival.org/">Being Human Festival</a> on November 14. Important for being the first American vampire text and for depicting the first Black vampire in literature, The Black Vampyre has a contemporary resonance. The racism cultivated by slavery lives on; the struggle against it and the dreams of universal humanity expressed in the Haitian Revolution continues. The links The Black Vampyre makes between racial oppression and a vampiric society, though ambivalent, make its resurrection worthwhile. The crude goriness and spookiness of Gothic vampire narratives can still have an ethical force.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149044/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam George receives funding from the AHRC. </span></em></p>
A tale of vampirism would have been shocking to readers at the time if was published, not because of its monsters, but its politics.
Sam George, Associate Professor of Research, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129124
2019-12-30T08:49:08Z
2019-12-30T08:49:08Z
Dracula: free movement of vampires a fitting horror story for the Brexit era
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307872/original/file-20191219-11939-3p89lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C3976%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bloody and unbowed: Claes Bang as Dracula.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Hartswood Films/Netflix/David Ellis</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fictional vampires tend to reflect the politics of the times that produce them: “Because they are always changing, their appeal is dramatically generational,” says the late American scholar Nina Auerbach in her classic work of criticism <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ILOzzQFU8ooC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Our Vampires, Ourselves</a>. The figure of the vampire, she suggests, always tells us as much about ourselves as it does about vampires <em>per se</em>.</p>
<p>With this in mind, the first episode of the new adaptation of Dracula for the BBC and Netflix by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss is at first perplexing. Unlike Moffat’s previous, modernising adaptations of 19th-century fiction – Jekyll (2007) and Sherlock (2010-17) – the series returns to 1897, the year in which Bram Stoker published his novel. </p>
<p>The setting is high Gothic, featuring a crumbling, eastern European castle (Orava Castle in Slovakia) and a convent full of crucifix-toting nuns. Eschewing the sentimental romance of <a href="https://www.headstuff.org/culture/literature/literature-on-film-part-1-francis-ford-coppolas-adaptation-of-bram-stokers-dracula/">Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation</a> or the wildly successful <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/02/ten-years-of-twilight-the-extraordinary-feminist-legacy-of-the-panned-vampire-saga">Twilight franchise</a>, Moffat and Gatiss appear – initially at least – to take us back to the horror of the original text.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IC9TjMNqPEo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But as the episode progresses the European setting becomes more than just spooky window dressing. One of the most famous arguments about the novel, first made by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3827794?seq=8#metadata_info_tab_contents">Stephen D. Arata</a>, is that Dracula enacts “reverse colonisation” – Stoker’s vampire expresses the threat that imperialism might not be a one-way operation. From his home in eastern Europe, the count travels to Britain to buy up its real estate and add its women to his harem, bypassing the need for a passport or immigration documents and threatening British manhood in the process.</p>
<h2>‘Brexit Gothic’</h2>
<p>Seen in this light, Dracula offers a clear application to our times. In an article for The Guardian on “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/feb/11/project-fear-what-will-brexit-gothic-fiction-look-like">Brexit Gothic</a>”, Neil McRobert points out:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When Nigel Farage expresses concern about <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27459923">Romanian men moving in next door</a>, it makes one wonder if he has read Dracula – the story of a Romanian man who literally moves in beside some stuffy British people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Moffat and Gatiss are too canny to give us a straightforward metaphor for Brexit – and yet there are clear nods to contemporary anxieties in the first episode. Dracula quizzes Jonathan Harker on English language and culture out of a desire to “pass among your countrymen as one of their own”. He will be the good immigrant who assimilates, who blends invisibly with the host culture. There is a moment of discomfort, however, as he promises to “absorb” Harker – this immigrant is a parasite who feeds off its host.</p>
<p>There is no direct correlation with itinerant agricultural workers, however, as Dracula seeks to infiltrate the highest echelons of society. In a warped version of late 19th-century eugenics, we discover that Dracula’s choosiness about his victims is the secret to his vampiric success – consuming only the blood of the best enables him to retain his human qualities. Hence his appetite for the British Empire. “Vampires go where power is,” says Auerbach. “You are what you eat,” quips Claes Bang’s Dracula.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307873/original/file-20191219-11904-1o5nl8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dolly Wells as Sister Agatha with Joanna Scanlan as Mother Superior.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Hartswood Films/Netflix/Robert Viglasky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Moreover, this is a tale of two Europeans. Sister Agatha, the Dutch nun who questions Harker after his escape from Dracula’s castle (a significantly expanded role from the book, played with exquisite exasperation by Dolly Wells), scoffs at Jonathan’s English masculinity when he fails to realise the incongruity of a secret message written to him in English in a Transylvanian castle: “Of course not! You are an English man! A combination of presumptions beyond compare.” British exceptionalism looks set to take a tumble as Dracula reaches England in the second instalment.</p>
<h2>Dark humour</h2>
<p>The episode displays the acute self-aware characteristic of vampire films, which are what <a href="http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/book-reviews/new-vampire-cinema-by-ken-gelder/">Ken Gelder calls “citational”</a>, constantly referring to previous examples of the genre. There are multiple moments when viewers anticipating romance have their expectations rudely shattered. Twilight in particular comes in for some sharp debunking, with Mina playing the role of Twilight’s heroine Bella, appealing to her lover’s higher moral fibre and coming in for a shock as she discovers that true love does not trump bloodlust after all. Instead of Twilight’s lingering shots of gleaming male torsos we get intimate body horror in excruciating close up – a fly crawling across an eyeball, a blackened nail flaking off a finger.</p>
<p>One of the most striking features of Moffat and Gatiss’s adaptation is its humour. Comedy has always been a crucial element of Gothic literature, which continually teeters between terror and laughter. “King Laugh,” a metaphorical figure invented by Professor Van Helsing in Bram Stoker’s novel to explain his own hysterics, is a version of death, leading the characters in a kind of <em>danse macabre</em>. The novel exhibits black humour in the character of the lunatic Renfield, in particular, who calculates how many lives he can consume, starting by eating flies and trading up the food chain.</p>
<p>As I argued in my recent book, <a href="https://irishgothichorror.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/catherine-spooner.pdf">Post-Millennial Gothic</a>, a distinguishing characteristic of contemporary vampires is their increasing comic agency. The first self-conscious vampire joke is the iconic one-liner first spoken by Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning’s classic 1931 film: “I never drink … wine.” Moffat and Gatiss get this out of the way in the first few minutes – and even add a callback later in the episode.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>There are more zingers to come as Bang quips his way across Europe like an infernal James Bond. When Harker spots him with a glass and queries that he never drinks, I almost expected him to clarify: “Shaken, not stirred.”</p>
<p>The comparison between Dracula and Bond is not a casual one. Bond props up a crumbling British Empire – Dracula aims to infiltrate it and use it to his own ends. They emerge from the same social and historical concerns, two sides of the same coin. Both reflect us back in multiple ways, and neither offers a flattering picture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Spooner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The latest version of the Gothic vampire chiller is brought to you with the trademark humour of writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.
Catherine Spooner, Professor of Literature and Culture, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/126062
2019-10-31T15:02:43Z
2019-10-31T15:02:43Z
Vampire bats aren’t the monsters we thought they were
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447542/original/file-20220221-25-1vbl6h8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4928%2C3260&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Looks can be deceiving.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/common-vampire-bat-desmodus-rotundus-small-1297856848">Mendesbio/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The closest you’ve ever come to a vampire bat may be a Halloween decoration. But in South America, vampire bats are less feared for their association with Dracula and more for their ability to <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192887">carry and transmit rabies</a>. They also feed on the blood of domestic animals such as horses, donkeys, cattle and even humans. No wonder <a href="https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/30747135">they’re not popular with farmers</a>, but you might be surprised to learn they form stable, long-term relationships, which appear to resemble human friendships.</p>
<p>A new paper published in <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31364-8">Current Biology</a> found that 23 female common vampire bats (<em>Desmodus rotundus</em>) formed close roosting, grooming and feeding partnerships while kept in captivity for 22 months. Once released into the wild, they kept up the habit and stayed in touch.</p>
<p>This was slightly unexpected – such relationships usually deteriorate in wild animals once their physical environment is suddenly changed, but the researchers found that the 23 bats preferred to groom, feed and be fed by the buddies they had made in captivity.</p>
<p>So this parasitic creature of the night is more of a softie than you might think. But that’s not all – vampire bats are among the most misunderstood creatures in the animal kingdom and it’s time to set the record straight.</p>
<h2>Out of the crypt and into our hearts?</h2>
<p>Vampire bats are found in <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042466">many parts of South and Central America</a> and all <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/6520/21982777">three species</a> are nocturnal. Like the mythical creatures they’re named for, they feed entirely on the blood of other animals. </p>
<p>A vampire bat’s incisor <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=20paDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA37&dq=vampire+bats+feeding&ots=UPag756Uy8&sig=hC9YSnIj4sQZf8dL60-YiMP7wbs#v=onepage&q=vampire%20bats%20feeding&f=false">teeth are razor sharp</a> and they’re used to cut a small groove or crater in the skin of the host animal.</p>
<p>The bat then dribbles saliva into the wound, which prevents the blood from clotting. Grooves on the underside of the tongue line up with a groove in the lower lip to form a kind of drinking straw for the blood to flow through. But when the bat has finished feeding, the anti-coagulant in its saliva means that blood will continue to flow from the bite wound for some time, which can seriously weaken the host animal. </p>
<p>So far, so creepy. But what you probably didn’t know is that vampire bats are among the few non-human animals known to show <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karin_Schneeberger/publication/311081824_Food_Sharing_and_Nonhuman_Reciprocal_Altruism/links/5c35d31ba6fdccd6b59de577/Food-Sharing-and-Nonhuman-Reciprocal-Altruism.pdf">altruism</a>. If a vampire bat doesn’t feed for several days it will die of starvation. Fortunately, a bat in this predicament can get by with a little help from its friends. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8ZJOKJNjLuQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>A starving bat will go to her roost mates during the day and beg for food and they’ll often oblige by regurgitating some of the blood they drank during the previous night. In this way, each bat loses a portion of their own food, but the bat who hasn’t fed survives.</p>
<p>Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch and it’s expected that, when one of the bats who has given food is herself hungry, the bat she has fed will return the favour. Those who fail to reciprocate will not be fed on future occasions.</p>
<p>In order to be sure that you aren’t giving out food and receiving nothing in return, it’s necessary to remember who you have fed and who has fed you. This means bats must remember the face, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347216000804">voice</a> or smell of each of the bats they associate with. That’s how this species finds and remembers the friends they share food with.</p>
<p>Those bats who share food <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31364-8">also tend to groom each other</a>. This is a social behaviour that helps to make and keep bonds between bats – it’s a bit like going for a coffee with a friend and having a good gossip.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299478/original/file-20191030-17888-wbqcv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blood brothers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/common-vampire-bat-desmodus-rotundus-651258433?src=Bl6lMnJ7EVwvBDJldHGqHg-1-19">Natalia Kuzmina/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sadly, the researchers found that young female bats that were born in captivity weren’t accepted into the wild colony, even if their mother was. This is particularly poignant as mothers and daughters share the <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0112">strongest bonds</a> between bats.</p>
<p>The researchers suggested that growing up in captivity may prevent bats from developing the necessary social skills for living alongside their own kind in the wild, just as “fitting in” for humans demands being receptive to social cues and knowing how to make friends. The bite marks on rejected young females highlight the toll of marginalisation in bat society.</p>
<p>It seems that friendship bonds are just as important to bats as to humans, and probably for some of the same reasons. Familiarity equals safety – you don’t need to put yourself at risk by approaching a stranger who may be less than friendly, and if you play your cards right, you can strengthen the bond with your “friend” and make them more likely to help you in future.</p>
<p>All of a sudden, vampire bats sound a lot less like cold and scary monsters and a lot more like us. Perhaps that could make us look more kindly on these tiny and much maligned creatures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Hoole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Vampire bats form social bonds similar to human friendships – and they’re good friends to those in need.
Jan Hoole, Fellow, Keele University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125672
2019-10-29T13:14:37Z
2019-10-29T13:14:37Z
Rabies’ horrifying symptoms inspired folktales of humans turned into werewolves, vampires and other monsters
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298932/original/file-20191028-113998-liuu8u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=336%2C266%2C3286%2C2145&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rabid dog's bite can make a person seem to have animal characteristics.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/red-glowing-eyed-doglike-aggressive-demonic-540753655">Taras Verkhovynets/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1855, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on the gruesome murder of a bride by her new husband. The story came from the French countryside, where the woman’s parents had initially prevented the couple’s engagement “on account of the strangeness of conduct sometimes observed in the young man,” although he “otherwise was a most eli[g]ible match.”</p>
<p>The parents eventually consented, and the marriage took place. Shortly after the newlyweds withdrew to consummate their bond, “fearful shrieks” came from their quarters. People quickly arrived to find “the poor girl… in the agonies of death — her bosom torn open and lacerated in a most horrible manner, and the wretched husband in a fit of raving madness and covered with blood, having actually devoured a portion of the unfortunate girl’s breast.” </p>
<p>The bride died a short time later. Her husband, after “a most violent resistance,” also expired.</p>
<p>What could have caused this horrifying incident? “It was then recollected, in answer to searching questions by a physician,” that the groom had previously “been bitten by a strange dog.” The passage of madness from dog to human seemed like the only possible reason for the grisly turn of events. </p>
<p>The Eagle described the episode matter-of-factly as “a sad and distressing case of hydrophobia,” or, in today’s parlance, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/index.html">rabies</a>.</p>
<p>But the account read like a Gothic horror story. It was essentially a werewolf narrative: The mad dog’s bite caused a hideous metamorphosis, which transformed its human victim into a nefarious monster whose vicious sexual impulses led to obscene and loathsome violence.</p>
<p>My new book, “<a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/mad-dogs-and-other-new-yorkers">Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840-1920</a>,” explores the hidden meanings behind the ways people talked about rabies. Variants of the rabid groom story had been told and retold in English language newspapers in North America since at least the beginning of the 18th century, and they continued to appear as late as the 1890s.</p>
<p>The Eagle’s account was, in essence, a folk tale about mad dogs and the thin dividing line between human and animal. Rabies created fear because it was a disease that seemed able to turn people into raging beasts. </p>
<h2>A terrifying and fatal disease</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298838/original/file-20191027-113991-1gz753x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A werewolf wreaks havoc in this 1512 woodcut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Werwolf.png">Lucas Cranach the Elder, Herzogliches Museum/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The historian Eugen Weber once observed that French peasants in the 19th century feared “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3200">above all wolves, mad dogs, and fire</a>.” Canine madness – or the disease that we know today as rabies – conjured up the canine terrors that have formed the stuff of nightmares for centuries.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/hives-of-sickness/9780813521589">Other infectious diseases</a> – including cholera, typhoid and diphtheria – <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3546115&view=1up&seq=493">killed far more people</a> in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The cry of “Mad dog!” nonetheless sparked an immediate sense of terror, because a simple dog bite could mean a protracted ordeal of grueling symptoms, followed by certain death. </p>
<p>Modern medicine knows that rabies is caused by a virus. Once it enters the body, it travels to the brain via the nervous system. The typical lag time of weeks or months between initial exposure and onset of symptoms means that rabies is no longer a death sentence if a patient quickly receives <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/rabies-immune-globulin-intramuscular-route/description/drg-20065738">injections of immune antibodies</a> and vaccine, in order to build immunity soon after encountering a suspect animal. Though it’s rare for people to die of rabies in the U.S., the disease still <a href="https://www.who.int/publications-detail/who-wer9207">kills tens of thousands of people globally every year</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298839/original/file-20191027-114011-1yx3lh0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The virus affects the brain, as seen with the darker purple inclusions, called negri bodies, in the brain cells of someone who died of rabies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rabies_negri_bodies_brain.jpg">CDC/Dr. Makonnen Fekadu</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuo.ark:/13960/t77t2vj2d&view=1up&seq=85">According to 19th-century sources</a>, after an incubation period of between four and 12 weeks, symptoms might start with a vague sense of agitation or restlessness. They then progressed to the wracking spasmodic episodes characteristic of rabies, along with sleeplessness, excitability, feverishness, rapid pulse, drooling and labored breathing. Victims not infrequently exhibited hallucinations or other mental disruptions as well.</p>
<p>Efforts to mitigate violent outbursts with drugs often failed, and physicians could then do little more than stand by and bear witness. Final release came only after the disease ran its inevitably fatal course, usually over a period of two to four days. Even today, rabies remains essentially <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/cjn.2015.331">incurable once clinical signs appear</a>.</p>
<p>Centuries ago, the loss of bodily control and rationality triggered by rabies seemed like an assault on victims’ basic humanity. From a real dreaded disease transmitted by animals emerged spine-tingling visions of supernatural forces that transferred malevolent animals’ powers and turned people into monsters.</p>
<h2>Bites that transform people into animals</h2>
<p>Nineteenth-century American accounts never invoked the supernatural directly. But descriptions of symptoms indicated unspoken assumptions about how the disease transmitted the biting animal’s essence to the suffering human.</p>
<p>Newspapers frequently described those who contracted rabies from dog bites as barking and snarling like dogs, while cat-bite victims scratched and spat. Hallucinations, respiratory spasms and out-of-control convulsions produced fearful impressions of the rabid animal’s evil imprint.</p>
<p>Traditional preventive measures also showed how Americans quietly assumed a blurred boundary between humanity and animality. Folk remedies held that dog-bite victims could protect themselves from rabies by killing the dog that had already bitten them, or applying the offending dog’s hair to the wound, or cutting off its tail.</p>
<p>Such preventatives implied a need to cut an invisible, supernatural tie between a dangerous animal and its human prey.</p>
<p>Sometimes the disease left eerie traces. When a Brooklynite died from rabies in 1886, the New York Herald recorded a freakish occurence: Within minutes after the man’s last breath, “the bluish ring on his hand – the mark of the Newfoundland’s fatal bite…disappeared.” Only death broke the mad dog’s pernicious hold.</p>
<h2>Vampires’ roots in rabid dogs</h2>
<p>It’s possible that, along with werewolves, vampire stories also originated from rabies.</p>
<p>Physician Juan Gómez-Alonso has pointed out <a href="https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.51.3.856">a resonance between vampirism and rabies</a> in the hair-raising symptoms of the disease – the distorted sounds, exaggerated facial appearances, restlessness and sometimes wild and aggressive behaviors that made sufferers seem more monstrous than human.</p>
<p>Extreme oversensitivity to stimuli, which set off the tortuous spasmodic episodes associated with rabies, could have a particularly strange effect. A glance at a mirror might set off a violent response, in a chilling parallel with the living-dead vampire’s inability to cast a reflection.</p>
<p>Moreover, in different eastern European folkloric traditions, vampires turned themselves not into bats, but into wolves or dogs, the key vectors of rabies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298934/original/file-20191028-114011-1wmvy3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fun of a Halloween werewolf hints at the fear of a person becoming an animal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-New-Jersey-Unite-/d8ea2a1fbbe5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/1/0">AP Photo/Daniel Hulshizer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So as aspiring werewolves, vampires and other haunts take to the streets for Halloween, remember that beneath the annual ritual of candy and costumed fun lie the darker recesses of the imagination. Here animals, disease and fear intermingle, and monsters materialize at the crossover point between animality and humanity.</p>
<p>Cave canem – beware the dog.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248894/original/file-20181204-133095-1p2xxs2.png?w=128&h=128">
<div>
<header>Jessica Wang is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/mad-dogs-and-other-new-yorkers">Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840-1920.</a></p>
<footer>Johns Hopkins University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125672/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Wang receives research funding from the University of British Columbia. Over the past decade, she has also received grants and fellowships from the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, the National Science Foundation (U.S.), the Hampton Fund (UBC), the Killam Trusts, Harvard University, and other sources.
</span></em></p>
Fear of a disease that seemed to turn people into beasts might have inspired belief in supernatural beings that live on in today’s creepy Halloween costumes.
Jessica Wang, Associate Professor of U.S. History, University of British Columbia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114382
2019-03-29T12:27:05Z
2019-03-29T12:27:05Z
Vampire’s rebirth: from monstrous undead creature to sexy and romantic Byronic seducer in one ghost story
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266523/original/file-20190329-71006-1y0070f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C1597%2C1281&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Nightmare by John Henry Fuseli.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Detroit Institute of Arts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Victorian physician John Polidori took the vampire out of the forests of eastern Europe, gave him an aristocratic lineage and placed him into the drawing rooms of Romantic-era England. His tale <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-vampyre-by-john-polidori#">The Vampyre</a>, published 200 years ago – on April 1 1819, was the first sustained fictional treatment of the vampire and completely recast the folklore and mythology on which it drew. The vampire figure abandoned its peasant roots and left its calling card in polite society in London. </p>
<p>The story emerged out of the same storytelling contest at the Villa Diodati that gave birth to that other archetype of the Gothic heritage, Frankenstein’s monster. Present at this gathering were Polidori (then Byron’s physician) as well as Mary Godwin, the author of Frankenstein, Claire Clairmont, Mary’s stepsister, Mary’s soon-to-be husband Percy Shelley, and – crucially – Lord Byron. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fantasmagoriana-the-german-book-of-ghost-stories-that-inspired-frankenstein-105236">Fantasmagoriana: the German book of ghost stories that inspired Frankenstein</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Byron’s contribution to the contest was an inconclusive fragment about a mysterious man, <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/fragment-of-a-novel-from-mazeppa-by-lord-george-byron">Augustus Darvell</a>, characterised by “a cureless disquiet”. Polidori took this fragment and turned it into the sensational tale of the vampire Lord Ruthven, preying on the vulnerable women of society.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266516/original/file-20190329-71003-1tasxui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John William Polidori, by F.G. Gainsford.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After its magazine debut the story was published in book form and went through seven English printings in 1819 alone. It was adapted for the stage the following year by melodramatic playwright <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=flzKFymvfj0C&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=.+R.+Planch%C3%A9%E2%80%99s+The+Vampyre+(1820)&source=bl&ots=pOPwgl5oUd&sig=ACfU3U1j-_9XzxuIKmWjCXjPSWpnLoEM_g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi0_rXm4qXhAhU5SxUIHW#v=onepage&q=.%20R.%20Planch%C3%A9%E2%80%99s%20The%20Vampyre%20(1820)&f=false">James Robinson Planché</a>, one of a growing number of vampire theatricals inspired by Polidori, such as those by Charles Nodier and others. </p>
<p>It was then expanded into a two-volume French novel by Cyprien Bérard, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14533129-the-vampire-lord-ruthwen">Lord Ruthwen ou les vampires</a>. By 1830 it had been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish. </p>
<p>Despite all these imitations and adaptations, “Poor Polidori”, as Mary Shelley liked to call him, has all but been forgotten and his lively tale has often been dismissed as a crude narrative, written under the influence of a greater, more subtle talent, Byron. And yet it was Polidori not Byron who succeeded in founding the entire modern tradition of vampire fiction. </p>
<h2>Peasant to patrician</h2>
<p>The vampire prior to this had been a blood-gorged, animalistic monster of the Slavic peasantry. In his study of the origins of Vampire lore, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1nq6gm">Vampires, Burials and Death</a>, American scholar Paul Barber described the traditional image of the undead bloodsucker thus: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>with long fingernails and a stubbly beard […] his face ruddy and swollen. He would wear informal attire — a linen shroud – and would look for all the world like a dishevelled peasant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Polidori transformed the East European peasant vampire of old into a pale-faced, dead-eyed, licentious English aristocrat. This deceiving, dashing and cursed creature was in possession of “irresistible powers of seduction”, haunting the drawing rooms of Western society undetected. In the hands of Polidori, under the influence of Byron, vampires transitioned from dishevelled peasants into alluring, seductive aristocrats in the 19th century.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266517/original/file-20190329-70993-yzgxzm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron by Richard Westall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This elevation in social status is not all. Polidori’s The Vampyre is responsible for a number of groundbreaking innovations. He established links to the aristocracy – where there had never before been an urban vampire, let alone one as educated and high in social rank. He also introduced the notion of the vampire as sexual predator, showing his readers, for the first time, the vampire as rake or libertine – a real “lady killer”. As he <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6087/6087-h/6087-h.htm">wrote in his novella</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The guardians hastened to protect Miss Aubrey; but when they arrived, it was too late. Lord Ruthven had disappeared and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Mad and bad</h2>
<p>Lord Ruthven is a satirical portrait of Byron as a seducer of women in polite society. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to know” – as the aristocratic writer Lady Caroline Lamb described the lover who had spurned her. This is the image we have of the vampire. Lamb cast Byron as the dark and duplicitous Gothic seducer, Lord Ruthven in her 1816 novel Glenarvon. In turn, Polidori took the name Lord Ruthven in order to create the first literary vampire.</p>
<p>Lord Ruthven spawned a series of saturnine or demonic lovers in turn, from the Brontës’ Mr Rochester to the more sexy incarnations of Dracula and the contemporary paranormal romances of mortal women seduced by brooding bad and dangerous vampires.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266461/original/file-20190328-139352-akexc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Cullen, the vampire from the Twilight novels, as played by Robert Pattison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goldcrest Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Polidori’s vampire, despite being something of a blank canvas, is sexualised and mesmeric, providing a template not only for Count Dracula but for the “Byronic hero” that features in Gothic romance from pre-Victorian times down to present-day paranormal romances such as Twilight. Edward Cullen – played by Robert Pattison, continuing the tradition of British actors playing vampires from Christopher Lee to Gary Oldman – is a reproduction of this earlier archetype. He’s something of a consumerist fantasy – as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Twilight.html?id=3WVTPwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">expensive as diamonds, marble or crystal</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His skin white […] literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculptured incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare […] a perfect statue carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Cullen’s aristocratic charm and anachronistic way of speaking (“I endeavoured to secure your hand” he tells Bella) indicate he is a relic of earlier models of vampiric masculinity, further evidence of the long-reaching legacy of Polidori’s vampire. </p>
<p>As Catherine Spooner, Professor of Gothic Literature at Lancaster University, has argued in a <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784993627/">collection of essays</a> about Vampires – Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead which I co-edited in 2012: “Over a period of about 200 years vampires have changed from the grotty living corpses of folklore to witty, sexy, super achievers.” </p>
<p>Polidori <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13248870">died in London in August 1821</a>, weighed down by depression and gambling debts. It is said that he committed suicide by means of cyanide but that, to protect his family’s name, the coroner gave a verdict of death by natural causes. Sadly he wasn’t to know the fame his creation would achieve as the star of hundreds of books, plays and films – and millions of nightmares.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam George has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She is the convener of the Open Graves, Open Minds research group who have organised the Polidori Bi-Centenary Vampyre Symposium 2019, 6-7 April 2019, Keats House, Hampstead, UK <a href="http://www.opengravesopenminds.com/polidori-symposium-2019/">http://www.opengravesopenminds.com/polidori-symposium-2019/</a></span></em></p>
Written in the same house party as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Polidori’s creature was based on the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Lord Byron.
Sam George, Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/110846
2019-03-28T21:19:21Z
2019-03-28T21:19:21Z
Perverse passions that will not die: The modern vampire first walked among us two centuries ago
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265995/original/file-20190326-139364-1md2pk2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 horror film is influenced by John Polidori’s tale of terror, 'The Vampyre,' first published — suggestively — on April Fools’ Day 1819.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vampires have stalked humans for thousands of years, but it was just two hundred years ago that a young English doctor named <a href="https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/the-vampyre-and-other-tales-of-the-macabre-9780199552412?cc=us&lang=en&">John Polidori introduced the modern version of the ancient demon</a>. </p>
<p>Although far less well-known than <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-edition-of-dracula">Bram Stoker’s <em>Dracula</em></a>, Polidori’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-vampyre-by-john-polidori"><em>The Vampyre</em></a> was first published — suggestively — on April Fools’ Day 1819. This brief tale of terror set the pattern for all future representations of the vampire, including Stoker’s, and it launched a vampire craze that after two centuries still retains its ability to grab us by the throat. </p>
<p>It is hard to imagine, but <em>The Vampyre</em> as well as <em>Frankenstein</em>, two of western literature’s most enduring myths, were the results of the same ghost story writing contest.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265944/original/file-20190326-36270-1xdwkb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of John Polidori by F. G. Gainsford, circa 1816.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp03596/john-william-polidori?search=sas&sText=Polidori">F G Gainsford/National Portrait Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vampires today inhabit a wide realm of the popular imagination in everything from novels, films and television shows to cartoons, video games, comic books and advertisements. They are also a powerful metaphor for conceiving and representing all manner of cultural practices and social problems, from the spread of sexually transmitted disease, through the mental and bodily pains of drug addiction, to the many ways in which technology and social media penetrate our daily lives.</p>
<h2>The writing contest</h2>
<p>Handsome, arrogant and hot-tempered, <a href="http://www.keats-shelley-house.org/en/writers/writers-john-polidori/john-polidori-the-vampyre">Polidori</a> was educated at a Catholic boarding school and then at the University of Edinburgh, where in 1815 he received his medical degree at the age of just 19. Less than a year later, the course of his life changed dramatically when <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lord-byron">Lord Byron</a>, the most famous literary man of the day, hired him as his travelling companion and personal physician. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265942/original/file-20190326-36276-x4552d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The poet Lord Byron, oil on canvas, circa 1835, based on a work of 1813.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/">Thomas Phillips/National Portrait Gallery</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quick to see the commercial potential of the arrangement, Byron’s publisher, John Murray, commissioned Polidori to keep a diary of his time with the notorious poet, whose passionate interest in young men and scandalous love affair with his half-sister Augusta had hastened his departure from England. </p>
<p>Polidori immediately saw the predatory side of Byron’s personality. “As soon as he reached his room,” Polidori wrote from Belgium in April 1816, “Lord Byron fell like a thunderbolt upon the chambermaid.”</p>
<p>Shortly thereafter, Byron and Polidori took up residence at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Polidori saw himself as a rival to Byron and relations between them soon deteriorated. “What is there excepting writing poetry that I cannot do better than you?” Polidori demanded. </p>
<p>“First,” Byron snapped in reply, “I can hit with a pistol the keyhole of that door – Secondly, I can swim across that river to yonder point – and thirdly, I can give you a damned good thrashing.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265949/original/file-20190326-36270-coifqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The site of the ghost story writing contest: Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva, 1833.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edward Finden/British Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The aristocrat and his doctor were soon joined by a like-minded trio of literary and sexual renegades: the radical poet and free-love advocate Percy Bysshe Shelley, his 18-year-old lover Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, also 18 and Byron’s most recent amour. It was an extraordinary meeting of minds and bodies.</p>
<p>Bad weather kept the group indoors, and in mid-June <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/16/the-poet-the-physician-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-vampire/">Byron challenged each of them to write a ghost story</a>. Claire defaulted. Shelley may have produced a brief verse fragment as his contribution to the competition. Byron started but did not complete the short tale of terror now known as <em>Augustus Darvell</em>.</p>
<h2>The winners are…</h2>
<p>Godwin (the future Mary Shelley) and Polidori each produced a finished and immensely influential work. She created <em>Frankenstein</em>. He composed <em>The Vampyre</em>. </p>
<p>These spectacular results make the competition the most famous in all of English literary history. It is a striking thought that the same writing contest gave us both <em>Frankenstein</em> and <em>The Vampyre</em>, the two most enduring myths of the modern world.</p>
<p>Before Polidori, vampires were very different creatures. Shaggy, fetid and bestial, they preyed on family members, neighbours or livestock in nocturnal raids that in many accounts approached both the risible and the revolting. Polidori changed all that. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265993/original/file-20190326-139356-8dhpdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After Polidori, vampires became handsome predators, creatures of polite society.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His vampire was highly resourceful and haunted, not the village or the district, but the drawing rooms of polite society and the pleasure dens of international travellers. What is more, instead of the peasant-turned-ghoul of ancient folklore, Polidori elevated the vampire to the ranks of the aristocracy, where as a hypnotically handsome predator he seduced beautiful young women and sucked their life away.</p>
<p>Polidori’s tale centres on fatal vows, paralysis, isolation, betrayal and the return of the dead. <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/605410/the-regency-years-by-robert-morrison/9780393249057">He clearly models his vampire, Lord Ruthven, on Lord Byron, for the two have in common good looks, callousness, high rank, mobility, wealth and keen sexual appetites</a>. Aubrey is Ruthven’s friend and travelling partner, and his relationship with Ruthven is usually read as Polidori’s own complex fascination with Byron — a fascination that both attracts and appals him.</p>
<p>In the tale, Ruthven sucks strength from Aubrey as their relationship declines, but he takes a much more deadly interest in Aubrey’s unnamed sister and Aubrey’s close friend, Ianthe, both of whom he dispatches with his insatiable fangs:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein: – to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, ‘a Vampyre, a Vampyre!’”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A 200-year-long fascination</h2>
<p>There have been many more sophisticated and explicit renderings of vampiric lore in the two centuries since Polidori’s tale first appeared. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu popularized the female vampire in his tale of terror <em>Carmilla</em> (1872), Stoker took the lordly fiend to new heights in <em>Dracula</em> (1897) and over the course of the last 100 years novelists, poets, playwrights, artists, movie makers and screenwriters have returned obsessively to vampires.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265894/original/file-20190326-36252-1egxpdg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from the 1922 silent horror classic, ‘Nosferatu,’ influenced by Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula.’</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Polidori’s tale touched off this fascination. Two centuries ago he corrected the drastic deficiencies of the folklore and reimagined the vampire as a suave, mysterious, sexually dynamic elite who defies time and place, who consumes ravenously and without guilt, and who represents perverse passions that will not die.</p>
<p>But the spread of vampirism does not end there. Vampires terrify us now because, in the hands of the countless writers and artists who have drawn their creative lifeblood from Polidori’s reincarnation, they serve as potent and protean representations of whatever we most fear about foreignness, sexuality, selfhood, disease, the afterlife, history and much else. They represent our undying urge for gratification. They embody the monstrous return of what we bury both in ourselves and in our collective past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Morrison has co-edited an edition of Polidori's The Vampyre for Oxford University Press. He has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>
One of the reasons the myth of vampires endures and captures the popular imagination is that vampires are a powerful metaphor for a wide range of cultural practices and social problems.
Robert Morrison, Professor of English Language and Literature, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105649
2018-10-30T04:15:08Z
2018-10-30T04:15:08Z
Mr Darcy as vampire: a literary hero with bite
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242206/original/file-20181025-71020-awa3vh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Darcy, played here by Colin Firth in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, has morphed from dreamboat to vampire in recent fiction.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever since Colin <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hasKmDr1yrA">“Wet-Shirt”</a> Firth got hearts racing across the globe in Andrew Davies’ BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1995), the cult of Mr Darcy has been in full swing. To many Austen fans, he is a dreamboat — brooding, handsome, not to mention filthy rich. </p>
<p>For others, as heard recently at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/07/mr-darcys-reputation-as-romantic-hero-trashed-at-cheltenham-literature-festival">Cheltenham Literature Festival</a>, Darcy’s behaviour is ghastly, bullish, and emotionally manipulative, while his mythic romantic status has had an “insidious effect on dating culture”. But these two responses aren’t mutually exclusive, especially given the recent literary incarnation of Mr Darcy as a blood-sucking vampire.</p>
<p>This post-<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=Twilight">Twilight</a> merging of two of the most popular literary cults helps to focus on what modern readers value in both Austen and the vampire tradition: undying love. Together, they promise an eternal love of a different sort, not one that persists beyond death and into an incorporeal afterlife, but one that can be enjoyed physically forever.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-revolutionary-vision-of-jane-austen-71000">Friday essay: the revolutionary vision of Jane Austen</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Riding on the wild success of Seth Grahame-Smith’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5899779-pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies">Pride and Prejudice and Zombies</a> (2009), fan fiction writers have rewritten Emma Woodhouse (from Austen’s Emma) as a proto-Buffy vampire slayer, and even transformed Austen herself into a vampire. But in modern, vampiric depictions of Darcy we have a new idealisation of the romantic lover, staking a claim (bad pun intended) alongside Lord Byron, Dracula and Edward Cullen as <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/heres-how-the-vampire-became-literatures-sexiest-monster-12083525">literature’s sexiest monster</a>— but a monster, nevertheless.</p>
<p>In Susan Krinard’s novella Blood and Prejudice (published in the 2010 collection <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7875494-bespelling-jane-austen">Bespelling Jane Austen</a>), Darcy is a business executive who flies into modern-day Manhattan to investigate a potential new acquisition, Bennet Laboratories. But when Darcy meets Lizzy, he becomes less interested in a corporate takeover and more interested in a corporeal one.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242200/original/file-20181025-71020-192fvl9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>When Lizzy notices Darcy “staring at me with his piercing indigo eyes as if we were the only two people in the room and he was about to eat me for lunch,” the simultaneous vampiric pun and sexual innuendo of being “eaten” by Darcy becomes obvious. </p>
<p>The vampire’s bloody, penetrative bite has long been associated with coitus, and it is no different here — much to Lizzie’s tortured delight. But after resisting vampire Wickham’s predatory advances, and warding off an indecent proposal from a vampiric Mr Collins — let’s face it, he would suck the life out of anyone, so why not make him a vampire? — Lizzy is finally convinced that she is not being enthralled by Darcy’s preternatural charms, but is indeed falling in love.</p>
<p>The association of feeding with sex suggests that while this might be an undying love, it is one that Lizzy will have to physically share with others, or risk being consumed to death. “It’s all right, Darcy. I know you can’t live on me alone. I won’t be jealous… Well, maybe just a little.” The solution? Lizzie’s conversion into a vampire, and a polyamorous marriage; after all, Lizzie doesn’t want to have Darcy for “a lifetime,” but “for an eternity.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/older-than-dracula-in-search-of-the-english-vampire-105238">Older than Dracula: in search of the English vampire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Saucier and saucier</h2>
<p>Colette L. Saucier’s Darcy, in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25522862-pulse-and-prejudice?from_search=true">Pulse and Prejudice</a> (2015), is a post-Twilight vampire set in Regency England. Excruciatingly honourable throughout, he is a rather tortured Byronic being, unable to conceal his growing desire for Elizabeth. As measure of his integrity he almost exclusively sustains himself on the blood of animals—served in fine chalices, of course. And as he falls for Elizabeth, he works hard to separate Darcy the man from Darcy the monster.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242176/original/file-20181025-71026-1koi22l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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</figure>
<p>But Colette is Saucier by name, and saucier by nature. In a finale detailing the pre-marital beginnings of Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s sex life, Darcy takes Elizabeth’s virginity. The “sweet metallic taste of blood, her blood, on both their lips” becomes an “exquisitely erotic” one for Elizabeth. </p>
<p>Here, she resembles the young Anastasia of E. L. James’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=Fifty+Shades+of+Grey">Fifty Shades of Grey</a> — itself a rewriting of Twilight — who also tastes “the faint metallic taste” of her own hymeneal blood during her first sexual encounter. It would appear that Lizzie’s desires can only be satisfied by a combination of Darcy the man and monster, the upstanding gentleman of society, and the demon in the sack.</p>
<p>Marrying a hyper-masculine monster, however, carries great risk, as the image of Lizzie with swollen and bloodied lips might suggest; in a different context, this might just as well be an image of domestic violence. Darcy also horrifyingly admits that all sexual restraint had been washed away, to the point that “had she not invited him in, he would’ve taken her still.” </p>
<p>While the novel presents vampire Darcy as a romantic ideal, a perfect combination of integrity, restraint and libidinous passion, the malevolent and deep-seated literary roots of the vampire, as a sexual fiend, cannot be entirely repressed.</p>
<p>Amanda Grange offers instead a sequel to Pride and Prejudice in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6691280-mr-darcy-vampyre?from_search=true">Mr Darcy, Vampyre</a> (2009), a Continental honeymoon adventure that is part Dracula, part Twilight, part Da Vinci Code and part Indiana Jones. This Darcy even transforms into a bat at one point, loitering outside Elizabeth’s bedroom window.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242178/original/file-20181025-71029-15ph5ft.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1148&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p>But Elizabeth, puzzled as to why they have not yet consummated their marriage, cannot see her husband for what he truly is until an ancient vampire comes to claim his right to <em>primae noctis</em>. Protecting Elizabeth with all his super-human strength from this brute, Darcy also reveals that his abstinence comes from a place of love, fearing he too might hurt her. A conversion, it would appear, is needed before he consummates their marriage. </p>
<p>This time, it is Darcy who wishes to be converted back into a human, by way of the only force that can effect his transformation: true love. (Awww!) The vampire is extinguished, and the mortal man restored, as they set their course towards Pemberley, England. This Elizabeth’s wildest desires are met by normality — a physically mortal, but spiritually eternal, love, enjoyed in a comfortable, domestic setting.</p>
<p>So while the fantasy of Mr Darcy as a vampire — handsome, protective, virile, noble, affluent, and most notably, immortal — might be a titillating one, these incarnations serve to remind us that as hard as we might try, the monster always lurks within.</p>
<p>(Mr Darcy Halloween costume, anyone?)</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105649/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Parisot does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A Mr Darcy Halloween costume anyone? How the brooding hero of Pride and Prejudice has been reinvented as a vampire.
Eric Parisot, Lecturer in English, Flinders University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105236
2018-10-29T11:49:01Z
2018-10-29T11:49:01Z
Fantasmagoriana: the German book of ghost stories that inspired Frankenstein
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242705/original/file-20181029-76413-65m8ga.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frontispiece from the original German version of Fantasmagoriana.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Schnorr von Carolsfeld</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story of how Frankenstein was born is well known, and largely relies on the account given by Mary Shelley in her preface to the <a href="https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro">1831 edition</a> to her novel. She and her (soon-to-be) husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were summering on the shores of Lake Geneva and close by Lord Byron and his personal physician John Polidori. It was 1816 – the so-called “<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/1816-the-year-without-summer-excerpt/">year without a summer</a>” and the inclement weather kept the party indoors, reading ghost stories as a pastime. </p>
<p>In one of the most <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati">famous propositions in literary history</a>, Lord Byron suggested that each of them should try their hand at writing a supernatural tale. Ironically, it was the two novice writers, Mary Shelley and Polidori, whose works have endured. Almost out of nothing, the pair invented modern horror. Polidori’s story, The Vampyre, <a href="https://theconversation.com/older-than-dracula-in-search-of-the-english-vampire-105238">would inspire Bram Stoker</a> 80 years later to write Dracula, while the 18-year-old Shelley wrote Frankenstein – which also has a good claim to be the first science fiction novel.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/older-than-dracula-in-search-of-the-english-vampire-105238">Older than Dracula: in search of the English vampire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The book the Shelleys, Byron, and Polidori were reading during their trip was called <a href="http://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=1214">Fantasmagoriana</a>. It was an anthology of eight stories of the supernatural published in Paris in 1812 but translated from the German. No indication of authors or of original sources was given and readers were invited to think of stories as of embellished versions of real supernatural cases. The title joyfully played with this ambiguity, evoking the kind of shows, popular at the time, which were known as <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/phantasmagoria-creating-the-ghosts-of-the-enlightenment/">phantasmagorias</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242519/original/file-20181026-7050-925rrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Victorian depiction of a phantasmagoria, or magic lantern show.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Heath (1794–1840)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Based on the magic lantern (an ancestor of cinema), these shows enabled audiences to see ghosts floating in the air, devils appearing and disappearing, young girls transforming into skeletons. In the end, the impresario came upon the stage, explaining it was all a trick. But in Paris, around 1798-99, such shows had been briefly shut down by the police, when rumours had spread that the phantasmagoria could bring the king, Louis XVI, <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/phantasmagoria-creating-the-ghosts-of-the-enlightenment/">back from the dead</a>. The book read by our holidaying writers proposed a similar gallery of horrors. As Mary Shelley recalled:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There was the History of the Inconstant Lover, who […] found himself in the arms of the pale ghost of her whom he had deserted. There was the tale of the sinful founder of his race, whose miserable doom it was to bestow the kiss of death on all the younger sons of his fated house […] he advanced to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s worth looking into the <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/87949/read-ghost-story-anthology-inspired-three-classic-scary-stories">influence of such stories</a> on Frankenstein. At some point in Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein dreams to hold in his arms the “pale ghost” of his bride to be, which may remind us of the story Shelley referred to as <a href="http://www.romtext.org.uk/frankenstein-and-fantasmagoriana-story-4-la-morte-fiancee/">History of the Inconstant Lover</a> (in truth, La Morte Fiancée or The Corpse Bride, by <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100447843">Friedrich August Schulze</a>). </p>
<p>Frankenstein’s “Creature” is a gigantic being who causes the extermination of an entire family – a plot device that may have been inspired by what she calls “<a href="http://www.romtext.org.uk/fantasmagoriana-2/">tale of the sinful founder of his race</a>” who “bestows the kiss of death” on his descendants (actually a story called <a href="https://archive.org/stream/talesofdead00utte#page/n17/mode/2up">Le Portraits de Famille</a> – or The Family Portraits, by <a href="http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=apel_johann_august">Johann August Apel</a>). </p>
<p>But if we read Frankenstein with Fantasmagoriana in mind, we see that the influence of those stories is definitely more profound than a simple inspiration.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242521/original/file-20181026-7062-1vx3sfd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration from the 1922 edition of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cornhill Publishing Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While trying to describe in the <a href="https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro">preface to the book</a>: “How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea,” Shelley describes her mental processes as a phantasmagorical show. Imagination, in her words, is a screen onto which stories project impressions. At night, in her bed, Shelley sees “with shut eyes, but acute mental vision” the central scene of her novel to be – the idea of the novel comes first as an image, not as a plot. </p>
<p>It is an image she knows perfectly not to be true – but which is nonetheless frightening: like the ghosts of phantasmagoria shows or of Fantasmagoriana, which were explained to be tricks of the mind, but still left the imperceptible feeling of the uncanny. In Les Portrais de Famille, Shelley read of a ghost “advanc(ing) to the couch of the blooming youths, cradled in healthy sleep” – half asleep she imagines a man in bed, beholding “the horrid thing” he created “stand(ing) at his bedside, opening his curtains”. The story read, in other words, mirrors and anticipates the story to be written. </p>
<p>At her bedside, Shelley too is visited by a ghost – in this case, the ghost of the novel: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fabio Camilletti's research on Fantasmagoriana is funded by the British Academy through a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant.</span></em></p>
The story of how Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein is famous. Less well-known, however, is the reading material that inspired her to write.
Fabio Camilletti, Head of Italian Studies, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104957
2018-10-29T07:49:34Z
2018-10-29T07:49:34Z
Five vampire traits that exist in the natural world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242611/original/file-20181028-169196-122hm3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The common vampire bat.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/376769800?src=U2Dhk8_ZaR1K48YccSixDg-1-0&size=medium_jpg">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When asked to describe a vampire, most people think of a tall, pale creature, with fangs and a cloak. But were the creatures of folklore inspired by real traits seen in the animal kingdom? From avoiding sunlight to using a cloak, here are five classic vampire characteristics that exist in the natural world.</p>
<h2>1. Drinking blood</h2>
<p>The primary characteristic of a vampire is feeding on blood. Although many ectoparasites such as mosquitoes and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiQ08f6AoqM">leeches also drink blood</a>, the vampire bat is the only species of mammal that is truly haematophagic (feeds exclusively on blood). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iLp-ls8AoaU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLp-ls8AoaU">Vampire bats</a> prey on warm-blooded animals such as livestock, locating blood hotspots with their inbuilt infra-red heat sensors, and even utilise a protein called <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9795244">“draculin”</a> to keep their prey’s blood flowing.</p>
<p>But they also need to feed every two days in order to survive, and finding prey this frequently is a challenge. Fortunately, vampire bats live in communal roosts, so have evolved a mechanism of <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151117-vampire-bats-blood-food-science-animals/">food sharing</a> whereby they regurgitate blood for starving individuals. This is often done in a tit-for-tat manner – so individuals that have benefited in this way will reciprocate later by donating to the bats that helped them.</p>
<h2>2. Immortality</h2>
<p>Although vampires are often considered immortal, there are few animals that possess the same quality. Animals such as whales and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/400-year-old-greenland-shark-is-the-oldest-vertebrate-animal">sharks can live for over 200 years</a>, and tardigrades (a tiny, water-dwelling creature) can exist in a state of suspended animation indefinitely – coming back to life when hydrated. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242612/original/file-20181028-7059-kqy661.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The immortal jellyfish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/immortal-jellyfish-turritopsis-nutricula-sarigerme-turkey-646161799?src=A5goKi2Xf9xMj5hBuTPU8w-1-0">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://thebiologist.rsb.org.uk/biologist/158-biologist/features/1510-everlasting-life-the-immortal-jellyfish">immortal jellyfish</a>, however, is reborn repeatedly. Rather like a caterpillar starting life as an egg and developing into a butterfly, the jellyfish begins life as an egg, develops into a larva, grows into a polyp, then buds into a medusa that grows to just 4.5mm when fully mature.</p>
<p>The jellyfish is “immortal” because it can change from a medusa back into a polyp when stressed. This “transdifferentiation” – reverting back to a previous form then redeveloping into the latter form – could aid our understanding of <a href="https://singularityhub.com/2011/04/25/immortal-jellyfish-provides-clues-for-regenerative-medicine/#sm.000dzk9t91awufhzyj41dybsrlkxe">repairing and regenerating damaged tissues</a>.</p>
<p>Although most medusae succumb to predation or disease eventually, this jellyfish has the potential to regenerate indefinitely, making it pretty much immortal.</p>
<h2>3. Avoiding sunlight</h2>
<p>Like many vampires, animals often avoid light. These tend to include invertebrates that prefer to inhabit dark conditions, or nocturnal species that are adapted to feeding at night. Nevertheless, there are a few species that are hypersensitive to light and actively avoid it at all costs, including some <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-be-dragons-creatures-you-might-find-on-a-real-journey-to-the-centre-of-the-earth-57905">cave dwellers</a> that spend their lives in permanent darkness.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A5DcOEzW1wA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps one of the strangest-looking creatures is the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5DcOEzW1wA">naked mole rat</a>, which inhabits underground burrows in Africa. Like vampires, they are pale, avoid sunlight and are known for their longevity. They also possess a colonial lifestyle, similar to ants and bees – workers acquire food, maintain the tunnel system and protect the nest of the breeding queen, akin to a vampire sire.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242613/original/file-20181028-7065-2siamu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The naked mole rat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/naked-molerat-guarding-underground-tunnel-heterocephalus-1015648228?src=T6hvdLTTxLT70LfLMytYmA-1-14">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Heightened senses</h2>
<p>Vampires are often depicted with heightened senses such as vision and hearing. But many animals have also evolved <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-comic-book-superpowers-that-really-exist-in-animals-81352">super senses</a> far exceeding those of both humans and vampires.</p>
<p>Vampires, for example, seem to have a particularly keen sense of smell. This characteristic is mirrored in animals such as bears, which can <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ramesh_Padodara/publication/262932824_Olfactory_Sense_in_Different_Animals/links/02e7e53958d94f129c000000/Olfactory-Sense-in-Different-Animals.pdf">smell food from up to 18 miles away</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242614/original/file-20181028-7044-1k4a27u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharks have a directional sense of smell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU0MDc3MTk2NCwiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfNjg3MDk4MDMyIiwiayI6InBob3RvLzY4NzA5ODAzMi9tZWRpdW0uanBnIiwibSI6MSwiZCI6InNodXR0ZXJzdG9jay1tZWRpYSJ9LCJRdG93UzVia1pOWFpPbGtVK0xKQStuS0ZZL00iXQ%2Fshutterstock_687098032.jpg&pi=33421636&m=687098032&src=mjCOakJjF9-oRsl7NjNkbw-1-24">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although it is often stated that sharks can smell a single drop of blood from a mile away, this is an <a href="https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/sharks-smell-blood/">exaggeration</a> – it is more like a single drop in a swimming pool. Nevertheless, sharks have nostrils that give them a directional sense of smell, allowing them to pin-point prey with incredible accuracy. Their nostrils also have only one function: to detect odours. Perhaps undead vampires have such an impressive sense of smell because they don’t have to breathe either. </p>
<h2>5. Morphing</h2>
<p>Vampires can also morph into another form, such as a bat, often behind the shroud of a cloak. Species such as the mimic octopus are similarly capable of <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-shape-shifting-animals-that-can-morph-to-fool-others-39616">changing shape</a> to avoid a tricky situation. Unfortunately, they can’t turn into a bat and fly away, but this is essentially what a caterpillar does when it morphs into a butterfly and flutters skywards – although this process takes them weeks rather than an instant. </p>
<p>Like vampires that disappear in a puff of smoke, squid are also capable of producing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/09/why-do-cephalopods-produce-ink-and-what-on-earth-is-it-anyway">clouds of ink</a> – confusing predators and creating the illusion that they have vanished.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gepRyOILsxE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But what about the cloak? Nothing resembles a textbook vampire quite like the black heron. These birds <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gepRyOILsxE">create a cloak</a> of plumage around themselves, forming a shadow that both enables the birds to see prey in the water, and creates a dark trap that fish dart into, assuming it’s cover.</p>
<p>There are many animals that possess vampiric qualities, so it is likely that stories of vampires or mythical blood suckers, such as the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161109-the-truth-about-a-strange-blood-sucking-monster">chupacabra</a>, are based, in part, on these characteristics. </p>
<p>And they all have one more thing in common, too: all can be killed with a stake through the heart.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University</span></em></p>
From naked mole rats to the immortal jellyfish – the creatures that would make Dracula shudder.
Louise Gentle, Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Ecology, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105238
2018-10-25T15:55:30Z
2018-10-25T15:55:30Z
Older than Dracula: in search of the English vampire
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242277/original/file-20181025-71032-1t7uont.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Premature Burial.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Antoine Wiertz (1854)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The story of Count Dracula as many of us know it was created by Bram Stoker, an Irishman, in 1897. But most of the action takes place in England, from the moment the Transylvanian vampire arrives on a shipwrecked vessel in Whitby, North Yorkshire, with plans to make his lair in the spookily named Carfax estate, west of the river in London. </p>
<p>But Dracula wasn’t the first vampire in English literature, let alone the first to stalk England. The vampire first made its way into English literature in John Polidori’s 1819 short story “<a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-vampyre-by-john-polidor">The Vampyre</a>”. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is inspired by a thinly disguised portrait of the predatory English poet, Lord Byron, in <a href="https://thegothicwanderer.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/lady-caroline-lambs-glenarvon-and-the-byronic-vampire/">Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon</a> (1816). So the first fictional vampire was actually a satanic English Lord.</p>
<p>It is nearly 200 years since this Romantic/Byronic archetype for a vampire emerged – but what do we know about English belief in vampires outside of fiction? <a href="http://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/open-graves-open-minds-vampires-and-the-undead-in-modern-culture(f33cf31d-ae78-44e5-b8a7-88dc6a1a7a0f).html">New research</a> at the University of Hertfordshire has uncovered and reappraised a number of vampire myths – and they are not all confined to the realms of fiction. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.historicmysteries.com/croglin-grange-vampire/">Croglin Vampire</a> reputedly first appeared in Cumberland to a Miss Fisher in the 1750s. Its story is retold by <a href="https://talesofmytery.blogspot.com/2013/12/augustus-hare-vampire-of-croglin-grange.html">Dr Augustus Hare</a>, a clergyman, in his Memorials of a Quiet Life in 1871. According to this legend, the vampire scratches at the window before disappearing into an ancient vault. The vault is later discovered to be full of coffins that have been broken open and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, are scattered over the floor. One coffin only remains intact, but the lid has been loosened. There, shrivelled and mummified – but quite intact – lies the Croglin Vampire.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in Cumbria, the natives of Renwick, were <a href="http://www.strangehistory.net/2016/06/18/the-renwick-cockatrice/">once known as “bats”</a> due to the monstrous creature that is said to have flown out of the foundations of a rebuilt church there in 1733. The existence of vampire bats, which sucked blood wouldn’t be <a href="http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/about/Outreach/Exhibits/Vampire%20Bat%20exhibit.pdf">confirmed until 1832</a>, when Charles Darwin sketched one feeding off a horse on his voyage to South America in The Beagle. The creature in Renwick has been referred to as a “cockatrice” – a mythical creature with a serpent’s head and tail and the feet and wings of a cockerel – by <a href="https://www.cumbriacountyhistory.org.uk/renwick-cockatrice">Cumbrian County History</a>. But it’s the myth of the vampire bat that has prevailed in the surrounding villages and is recorded in conversations in local archives and <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/21st-november-1952/19/crack-a-christ-luck.">journals</a> </p>
<p>What picture emerges then in this history of the English vampire? The Croglin Vampire has never been verified – but it has an afterlife in the 20th century, appearing as The British Vampire in 1977 in an <a href="http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/814/daniel-farson-hamlyn-book-horror">anthology of horror</a> by Daniel Farson, who turns out to be Stoker’s great-grandnephew. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242308/original/file-20181025-71032-1swjmhe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Nightmare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Henry Fuseli (1781)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Nightmare in Buckinghamshire</h2>
<p>But there is one case that has no connection to fiction, the little-known Buckinghamshire Vampire, recorded by William of Newburgh in the 12th century. Historical records show that St Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, was called upon to deal with the terrifying revenant and learned to his astonishment, after contacting other theologians, that similar attacks had happened elsewhere in England.</p>
<p>St Hugh was told that no peace would be had until the corpse was dug up and burned, but it was decided that an absolution – a declaration of forgiveness, by the church, absolving one from sin – would be a more seemly way to disable the vampire. When the tomb was opened the body was found to have not decomposed. The absolution was laid inside on the corpse’s chest by the Archdeacon and the vampire was never again seen wandering from his grave.</p>
<p>The Buckinghamshire revenant did not have a “vampire” burial – but such practices are evidence of a longstanding belief in vampires in Britain. Astonishingly, the medieval remains of the what are thought to be the first English vampires have been found in the Yorkshire village of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/archaeology-scientists-find-medieval-remains-english-vampires-yorkshire-wharram-percy-a7663121.html">Wharram Percy</a>. The bones of over 100 “vampire” corpses have now been uncovered buried deep in village pits. The bones were excavated more than half a century ago and date back to before the 14th century. They were at first thought to be the result of cannibalism during a famine or a massacre in the village but on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/03/medieval-villagers-mutilated-the-dead-to-stop-them-rising-study-finds">further inspection in 2017</a> the burned and broken skeletons were linked instead to deliberate mutilations perpetrated to prevent the dead returning to harm the living – beliefs common in folklore at the time. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242281/original/file-20181025-71042-1u7icnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Vampire graves’ have been found at the abandoned village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Allison via Alchemipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Vile bodies</h2>
<p>The inhabitants of Wharram Percy showed widespread belief in the undead returning as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/03/medieval-villagers-mutilated-the-dead-to-stop-them-rising-study-finds">revenants or reanimated corpses</a> and so fought back against the risk of vampire attacks by deliberately mutilating their own dead, burning bones and dismembering corpses, including those of women, children and teenagers, in an attempt to stave off what they believed could be a plague of vampires. This once flourishing village was completely deserted in the aftermath. </p>
<p>Just recently at an ancient Roman site in Italy the severed skull of a ten-year-old child was discovered with a large rock inserted in the mouth to prevent biting and bloodsucking. Then skull belongs to a suspected <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181012093005.htm">15th-century revenant</a> which they are calling locally the “Vampire of Lugano”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1051690638574522374"}"></div></p>
<p>There has been a wealth of other stories from the UK and other parts of Western Europe – but, despite this, thanks to the Dracula legend, most people still assume such practises and beliefs belong to remote parts of Eastern Europe. But our research is continuing to examine “vampire burials” in the UK and is making connections to local myths and their legacy in English literature, many years before the Byronic fiend Count Dracula arrived in Yorkshire carrying his own supply of Transylvanian soil.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam George has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>
New research is uncovering medieval legends about the undead in Britain.
Sam George, Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/95921
2018-07-19T18:50:40Z
2018-07-19T18:50:40Z
Friday essay: why YA gothic fiction is booming - and girl monsters are on the rise
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227747/original/file-20180716-44094-11ep7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zoey Deutch in the film Vampire Academy (2014).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Angry Films, Kintop Pictures, Preger Entertainment</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>An 18-year-old girl prepares to die to enable the birth of her half-vampire baby. Her spine is broken in the process, and the fanged baby begins to gnaw its way through her stomach before the girl’s husband performs a vampiric Cesarean section. This is a crucial moment in Stephenie Meyer’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3090465-the-twilight-saga?from_search=true">Twilight</a> novel series, published from 2005 to 2008. </p>
<p>Meyer’s books heralded a new, and continuing, wave of Gothic fiction for Young Adult readers, which revisits familiar literary Gothic conventions: ancient, ruined buildings and monstrous supernatural figures like the vampire, werewolf, ghost and witch. </p>
<p>The Gothic romances of the 18th century, such as the novels of Ann Radcliffe, and the enduringly popular Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), sought to recreate feelings of terror and horror for an audience of adult readers. Today, however, most Gothic fiction is being published for, and read by, young people. Surprisingly, it has proved to be the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque and frightening aspects of coming of age, and metaphorically representing pressing social issues such as racism and gender inequality.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-what-might-heaven-be-like-95939">Friday essay: what might heaven be like?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The <a>phenomenally popular</a> YA genre, targeted at readers between 12 and 18 years old, evolved from realist novels of the 1960s. These books were preoccupied with the struggles of adolescence set against a backdrop of social issues. Now, though, the genre often looks to the supernatural. Beyond Twilight, some of the most popular YA Gothic series also focus on the “lives” of vampires who are protagonists rather than foes. </p>
<p>Richelle Mead’s six-book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/42114-vampire-academy">Vampire Academy</a> (2007-2010), now adapted into a TV series, is about a teenage girl who is a Dhampir (half-human, half-vampire). She becomes entangled in a forbidden romance with her instructor as St Vladimir’s Academy, while learning how to defeat evil vampires named Strigoi. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227757/original/file-20180716-44100-s9inmc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ashley Lyn Blair in Vampire Academy: The Officially Unofficial Fan Series (2016).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The YA Gothic revival has also embraced a wide range of supernatural entities. Cassandra Clare’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37672947-2-books-set?from_search=true">Shadowhunter Chronicles</a>, a cross-media franchise that includes the Infernal Devices and Mortal Instruments novel series, charges angel-blooded humans with the task of protecting regular humans from a range of supernatural beings. </p>
<p>The Nephilim, or Shadowhunters, are busy controlling demons, warlocks, werewolves, faeries and vampires, but critically, it is their part-supernatural status that enables them to serve as protectors. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227754/original/file-20180716-44076-r6556j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clare has said that <a href="http://www.cassandraclare.com/about/">she did not write her series</a> for young adults (and indeed <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/53937-new-study-55-of-ya-books-bought-by-adults.html">almost half of the readership</a> of YA fiction might be adults). Nevertheless, her teenage protagonists have resonated with readers of the same age. </p>
<p>The Gothic, and its newer sub-genres like <a href="//www.goodreads.com/genres/paranormal-romance">paranormal romance</a>, have a unique resonance with teenagers. They are poised in a transitional space between childhood and adulthood, neither quite embodying the stage they are leaving behind nor fully the thing that they are in the process of becoming. It is unsurprising, then, that they have eagerly embraced the Gothic’s themes of the liminal and the monstrous, as well as its fixation on romance and sex.</p>
<p>Another significant element of the current YA Gothic revival is the emergence of the girl monster. In earlier manifestions of the <a href="http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/moers.html">“female Gothic”</a>, first published in the 18th century by women writers, female protagonists were often courageous, but simultaneously passive and victimised. The plots of the female Gothic reflected the comparative powerlessness of women at the time and their fears about their vulnerability and entrapment within domestic roles and patriarchal society. </p>
<p>In contemporary YA Gothic, girl monsters, who can constitute a threat to others and themselves, disrupt the plotline of male monster and female victim. </p>
<h2>Why now?</h2>
<p>The most obvious catalyst for the embrace of Gothic conventions in literature for young people is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Its popularity signalled a warm embrace of fantasy fiction that confronted the eternal dilemma of the battle between good and evil, charging a child - and later teenage protagonist - with the ability to save the world. While Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was not necessarily Gothic, the Potter phenomenon opened the way for the publication of numerous titles that embraced the possibilities of young protagonists with supernatural abilities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rethinking-harry-potter-twenty-years-on-86761">Rethinking Harry Potter twenty years on</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Most significantly, Meyer’s Twilight series about human Bella Swan and “sparkling” vampire Edward Cullen, combined this staple figure of Gothic fiction with the teen romance novel. The Twilight novels were <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8457612.stm">bestsellers</a> internationally and the saga was voted into the number one position in Australian book chain Angus & Robertson’s <a href="https://www.giraffedays.com/?page_id=5138">Top 100 Books poll of 2010</a>. The Twilight universe expanded from books into a highly successful film series.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227745/original/file-20180716-44100-wmnryl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Pattinson and Cam Gigandet in Twilight (2008)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Summit Entertainment, Temple Hill Entertainment, Maverick Films.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Gothic has had several major periods of popularity since its first appearance in 18th-century England, with Horace Walpole’s novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12923.The_Castle_of_Otranto">The Castle of Otranto</a> (1764). In each subsequent revival of Gothic fiction, the genre has been reworked and reinvented to address current cultural concerns. </p>
<p>In particular, the monsters that haunt the pages of Gothic novels are transformed with shifting fears and anxieties. In her influential book Our Vampires, Ourselves Nina Auerbach <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Our_Vampires_Ourselves.html?id=ILOzzQFU8ooC&redir_esc=y">explains</a> that “every age embraces the vampire it needs”, and this comment can be extend to Gothic monsters more generally. </p>
<p>Contemporary YA fiction blurs the line between good and evil. In Gothic novels of the 19th century, monsters were usually wholly “Othered”. A Victorian-era vampire such as Stoker’s Dracula, for instance was depicted as evil, foreign, and frighteningly different to the British human. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227755/original/file-20180716-44073-im7yl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gary Oldman as Count Dracula in the 1992 film version of the Bram Stoker novel. Contemporary monsters are no longer set in opposition to the human.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">American Zoetrope, Columbia Pictures Corporation, Osiris Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But contemporary monsters are no longer necessarily imagined as racially different or set in opposition to the human. Moreover, they are often represented sympathetically, especially in stories told from their perspective.</p>
<p>These include the <a href="http://izombie.wikia.com/wiki/IZombie_(Comics)">iZombie</a> comic series, in which the protagonist must eat brains on a monthly basis to survive, and Claudia Gray’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2722413-evernight?from_search=true">Evernight</a> series, in which the reader is not even aware that the girl protagonist is a vampire for half of the first book. Indeed, as Anna Jackson explains in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=oTeFDgAAQBAJ&pg=PT12&lpg=PT12&dq=%22the+monsters+have+become+the+heroes%22+jackson&source=bl&ots=u31LMOUtxk&sig=Rz44kD-qxc7f1v7oaRuL-9bC214&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq-t-MzuPaAhUEf7wKHQsKC7IQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=%">New Directions in Children’s Gothic</a>, “the monsters have become the heroes” in contemporary children’s Gothic.</p>
<h2>The passive heroine</h2>
<p>Most Gothic novels for young people contain a romance plot. This is often because the protagonists’ age places them in the transitional zone for entering adulthood, which is demarcated by sexual experience.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-long-have-we-believed-in-vampires-85639">How long have we believed in vampires?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In a typical YA Gothic novel, such as Twilight, a plot in which a human or monstrous girl protagonist falls for a boy who is not her “type” can dissolve the boundaries between monster and human. These monstrous love interests range from traditional Gothic ones - vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts and witches - to newer figures such as fallen angels and faeries. The key challenge to be overcome in these novels is the barriers posed to love by supernatural monstrosity, including the physical dangers to humans, as well as social discrimination about “cross-species” love.</p>
<p>In one of few major studies of teen romance fiction, published almost 30 years ago, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Becoming_a_woman_through_romance.html?id=yNkmAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Linda Christian-Smith described</a> these novels as a “site of ideological struggles for young women’s hearts and minds”. In particular, she refers to teen romance fiction’s emphasis on heteronormative coupling and motherhood. Little has changed with respect to depictions of sexuality since, despite the YA Gothic’s embrace of diverse human-monster relationships.</p>
<p>Most romances in the genre are heterosexual. They do often emphasise the heroine’s agency through her supernatural abilities and ability to choose between men or move between relationships. However, the human heroines of the Twilight series and Lauren Kate’s Fallen series, in which the heroine becomes drawn to a boy who is a fallen angel, are comparatively indecisive and continue to need rescuing. </p>
<p>Tellingly, Joss Whedon, the creator of the TV series Buffy, The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), <a href="http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/twilight/news/a509522/joss-whedon-criticises-twilight-saga-bella-swan-is-too-passive/">has described Twilight’s Bella as</a> lacking empowerment, overly fixated on her romantic options, and “completely passive”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227742/original/file-20180716-44070-njhjw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kristen Stewart (Bella) and Robert Pattinson (Edward) in Twilight (2008). Bella has been described as a completely passive heroine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Summit Entertainment, Temple Hill Entertainment, Maverick Films.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Novels with passive human heroines allow the reader to use the fantasy of romance as a temporary escape from real-world gender inequality. Yet they also reinforce its reality for female readers. </p>
<h2>The girl monster</h2>
<p>Supernatural heroines, however, are often able to breach the confines of traditional femininity and become extraordinary in ways that Twilight’s Bella and other human characters cannot. In a number of YA Gothic novels, such as Mead’s Vampire Academy, the protagonists disrupt expectations of feminine behaviour because of their unique, and often poorly understood, supernatural abilities. These special powers become the focus of anxieties about the girls’ coming of age, as they pursue romances that place their broader communities under threat.</p>
<p>The Vampire Academy series was sufficiently popular in 2010 for three of its six titles to sell between 300,000 and half a million copies in hardcover in the US alone, according to <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/46543-franchises-flying-high-children-s-books-facts-figures-2010.html">Publishers Weekly</a>. However, unlike the Twilight series, on which it likely attempted to capitalise, its protagonist, Rose, is half-vampire, half-human and a monster in her own right. Rose shares a close bond with vampire Lissa, and is driven to break the Academy’s rules in order to save her friend when she is kidnapped, highlighting that girls are also capable of protecting and rescuing people they love. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227749/original/file-20180716-44088-1ls5wu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ashley Lyn Blair (Lissa) and Jennifer Studnicki (Rose) in Vampire Academy: The Officially Unofficial Fan Series (2016).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vampire Academy positions Rose as a sexual object, particularly in the eyes of a privileged type of vampire (Moroi), who find Dhampir women especially attractive because of racial differences. Rose enjoys her sexuality and dresses to take advantage of it, but this sexuality operates within her definition as a strong young woman: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>First they saw my body and the dress. Testosterone took over as pure male lust shone out of their faces. Then they seemed to realize it was me and promptly turned terrified. Cool. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rose is able to reject unwelcome advances and possesses the physical strength and skills to stand up for herself, suggesting a fantasy of empowerment and equality. </p>
<p>Lissa, meanwhile, thwarts what amounts to an attempted gang rape of a drugged girl. A group of male Moroi students attempt to take advantage of a female feeder (person who permits their blood to be sucked) at a party, “doing a sort of group feeding, taking turns biting her and making gross suggestions. High and oblivious, she let them”.</p>
<p>The supernatural female protagonists in YA gothic novels are responsible for their own safety and protection, yet they also have a responsibility to keep others safe.
These heroines have some romantic and sexual agency in a way that can be considered progressive. However, their desire is also framed as disruptive and dangerous and there is an obsessive fixation on the pursuit of romance above the girl’s own development, education and safety.</p>
<p>In other words, the superficially radical potential of girl heroines with superhuman physical strength, mind-reading abilities, and the potential to kill can merely be a decorative smokescreen for the reinforcement of traditional feminine values.</p>
<h2>The good and monstrous within</h2>
<p>The recent proliferation of Gothic YA novels is skewed toward a female readership with a focus on girl protagonists, and significant emphasis on their quest for romance. Nevertheless, there are a number of series with boy heroes. For example, Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (the first book of which was recently filmed by director Tim Burton), focuses on a 16-year-old human boy, Jacob. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227752/original/file-20180716-44100-14bqrbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eva Green, Asa Butterfield (Jacob) and Georgia Pemberton in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twentieth Century Fox, Chernin Entertainment, TSG Entertainment.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jacob has inherited an ability that makes him uniquely able to help the supernatural peculiar children of the title, who are threatened by creatures named hollowgasts who are driven to murder peculiar children in order to feed upon their souls. For Jacob, his transition to adulthood is less about romance and more about self-discovery, connections with his ancestors, and finding a way to negotiate his new-found abilities and responsibilities. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18049260-the-gothic-child?from_search=true">The Gothic Child</a>, Maria Georgieva <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=AdjQAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=the+growth+and+transformation+of+the+child,+the+crisis+of+adolescence+and+the+sometimes+painful+transition+into+adulthood&source=bl&ots=nYYj7PzA67&sig=B354L2FMpHR3SCtAU4V6hKaZR7">suggests that</a> the traditional Gothic novel is preoccupied with “the growth and transformation of the child, the crisis of adolescence and the sometimes painful transition into adulthood”. She is referring to the child’s potential to grow into the hero, heroine or villain.</p>
<p>However, the recent surge in YA Gothic fiction takes this fascination with the darker aspects of childhood in a different direction. The girl heroine, in learning to manage the physical and emotional shifts of her development and more complex relationships in romance, can both be a threat and a saviour to others.</p>
<p>The fuzziness of her nature reflects both the liminal status of the teenager and new cultural understandings of the monster, who now more often resembles the typical American teen than an undead Romanian count.</p>
<p>Instead of contemplating a child’s potential to head towards either good or evil, recent Gothic YA acknowledges the possibility of both the good and the monstrous residing in one person.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Smith has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>
Gothic fiction has become the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque, frightening aspects of coming of age. And disruptive girls with supernatural powers have replaced the passive heroines of old.
Michelle Smith, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies, Monash University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/87856
2017-11-23T02:10:20Z
2017-11-23T02:10:20Z
Blood on the stage: Let the Right One In is a vampire love story for our times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196012/original/file-20171123-6061-yqptst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sophia Forrest as Eli in Let the Right One In</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo credit Daniel J Grant</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The popularity of vampires has endured since Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/729018.The_Bride_of_Corinth_and_Other_Poems">Bride of Corinth</a> (1797) and Bram Stoker’s better-known <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17245.Dracula?ac=1&from_search=true">Dracula</a> (1897), based on a Transylvanian folk myth. Stoker’s novel set many of the literary conventions for the genre: drinking fresh blood, the constant search for new (young, female) victims, the male vampire as a lonely outsider, superhuman strength and agility, immortality, and many more. </p>
<p>Black Swan Theatre Company’s production of <a href="https://www.bsstc.com.au/plays/let-the-right-one-in">Let the Right One In</a>, directed by Clare Watson, revisits the vampire story and stays true to many of these tropes, using copious amounts of blood. But it has a major difference: the vampire is a teenage girl. </p>
<p>Let the Right One In is Jack Thorne’s adaptation of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/943402.Let_the_Right_One_In">the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist</a> (<em>Låt den rätte komma in</em>) published in 2004, a year before the popular teenage vampire saga Twilight. It was made into a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/">Swedish-language film in 2008</a>, and a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1228987/">Hollywood adaptation</a> followed in 2010. The stage version premiered in Scotland in 2013 and became an international hit after its transfer to London’s West End. </p>
<p>Linqvist began his career as a playwright and screenwriter, and Let the Right One In is a versatile story that can be told in any genre. At its core it is a love story for our times. The vampire, Eli (Sophia Forrest), while able to scale walls and kill people at will (all the victims are men), still wants to share her life with someone. The reasons are practical, such as helping her to feed without detection, but as the play unfolds, she seems to want to have a genuine friendship with 12-year-old Oskar (Ian Michael), and cares enough about him to push him away so he cannot discover her terrible secret. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196013/original/file-20171123-6055-944jcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rory O Keeffe, Alison van Reeken, Clarence Ryan and Ian Michael Let The Right One In.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is in stark contrast to the mature man, Harkan (Steve Turner), who arrives in the Swedish town of Blackeberg with her. At first, it seems he is her father, but we soon learn he is in love with her, and he wants her to love him back. </p>
<p>Even though Eli is several hundred years old she has the body of an immature girl. The sexual overtones between her and Harkan are disturbing to say the least. This is echoed by the overly clingy actions of Oskar’s mother (Alison Van Reeken) who cuddles up on the sofa or in bed with her son after one too many red wines. </p>
<p>As the story unfolds, our perceptions change and Eli shows her true nature. She has an old and very manipulative head on young shoulders, and her kitten-like helplessness comes with fangs.</p>
<p>For her directorial debut with the company, Watson has teamed up with Bruce McKinven (designer) and Richard Vabre (lighting) to create a visually stunning, three-storey set that supports the isolation and loneliness of the main characters. Stark flat surfaces evoke the concrete walls of an apartment or the smooth segments of a Rubric’s cube, and serve as a backdrop for Michael Carmody’s projections of falling snow or bare trees under a dark winter glow. Rachael Dease’s dramatic and often ethereal soundtrack completes the mood.</p>
<p>There are excellent performances particularly from the young cast members. The two thugs who bully Oskar, Jonny (Rory O’Keefe) and Micke (Clarence Ryan), are at times quite terrifying. Both are comfortable in their physicality and navigate the demanding set with ease. Forrest is also exceptional and exhibits the movements of a gravity-defying vampire with grace and agility. Oskar is body-shamed by the bullies, and Michael’s gestures and stance poignantly show his pain and his fear of his persecutors.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196014/original/file-20171123-6020-1lrllb2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sophia Forrest as Eli and Ian Michael as Oskar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel J Grant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The other members of this ensemble cast (completed by Stuart Halusz and Maitland Schnaars) put in fine performances in multiple roles, making the most of their function to move the story along with minimal character development. This is perhaps the result of taking a novel-cum-film and making it into a play. The scenes are all relatively short and jump across time and location; they are framed around physically dramatic action, making the dialogue seem quite sparse; and the coming and going of many minor characters. </p>
<p>The constant sliding to and fro of the nine screens to reveal a new scene is at times slow, and becomes predictable despite attempts to disrupt this with projections, music and occasional choreography. The contained spaces work well for the claustrophobic rooms of the apartment block, but the set loses the isolation of a town surrounded by a wild forest. Sitting near the front of the stalls my view of the upper levels was not ideal and occasionally the onstage lighting was blinding. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, this is a fine debut for Watson and demonstrates a bold vision for the company she now leads. She is unafraid of expanding theatre’s appeal to a younger, screen-driven audience through plays such as this, while keeping the regular and possibly more theatrically sophisticated patrons entertained with strong narrative and visual spectacle. Her previous experience is varied but her work in theatre for young audiences has served her well here. The troubled relationships of the young characters are touching to watch, and their energy and emotional lives on stage are captivating. </p>
<p>Watson has programmed the complete <a href="https://www.bsstc.com.au/seasons/2018">2018 season</a>, titled The Conversation. It aims “to catalyse and contribute to the big conversations” we face at local, national and international levels. It is an opportunity for her to provoke, engage and stimulate an Australian audience and I look forward to it with great interest. </p>
<p><em>Let the Right One In will be on at Black Swan until December 3 2017</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vivienne Glance is a playwright, performer and advocate for the arts, a member of the Australian Writers Guild, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Greens WA. </span></em></p>
Based on the 2004 novel, Let the Right One is a bloody staging of a vampire romance. Except in this show, the predator is a teenage girl.
Vivienne Glance, Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85639
2017-10-27T10:12:04Z
2017-10-27T10:12:04Z
How long have we believed in vampires?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192021/original/file-20171026-13309-1r3s12b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EMVDS-photography/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vampires have a contested history. Some <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Vampyres.html?id=kMVyQgAACAAJ">claim</a> that the creatures are “as old as the world”. But <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Metamorphoses_of_the_Vampire_in_Literatu.html?id=OsZNXfHW9SMC">more recent arguments</a> suggest that our belief in vampires and the undead was born in the 18th century, when the first European accounts appear.</p>
<p>We do know that 1732 was the vampire’s <em>annus mirabilis</em>. There were 12 books and four dissertations on the subject published over that year, as well as the term’s first appearance in the English language, <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2015/04/dracula-vampire-mythology-early-modern-europe/">according to</a> gothic expert Roger Luckhurst. But archaeological discoveries of deviant burials in Europe in the last few years have unearthed a belief in vampirism and revenants before 1500, much earlier than was previously understood by literary scholars. </p>
<p>The body of a 500-year-old “vampire”, for example, is currently on display in an ancient cemetery in the town of Kamien Pomorski, Poland. The vampire corpse, discovered two years ago, has been reported on <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/26/world/europe/vampire-burial-in-poland-keeps-alive-myth/index.html">widely</a> in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/13/vampire-skeleton-stake-unearthed-poland-pictures_n_5316219.html">world’s press</a>. Archaeologists have confirmed that it has a stake through its leg (presumably to prevent it from leaving its coffin) and a rock in its mouth (to stop any unfinished blood sucking). Even older deviant burials have been discovered in villages in Bulgaria.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192023/original/file-20171026-13378-1gp9cqb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 800-year-old skeleton found in Bulgaria stabbed through the chest with iron rod.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vampire_skeleton_of_Sozopol_in_Sofia_PD_2012_06.JPG#/media/File:Vampire_skeleton_of_Sozopol_in_Sofia_PD_2012_06.JPG">Bin im Garten</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, the medieval remains of the first English vampires in <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/archaeology-scientists-find-medieval-remains-english-vampires-yorkshire-wharram-percy-a7663121.html">Yorkshire’s village of Wharram Percy</a> have reputedly been found. The inhabitants who fled the village in 1500 showed widespread belief in the undead returning as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/03/medieval-villagers-mutilated-the-dead-to-stop-them-rising-study-finds?CMP=share_btn_tw">revenants or reanimated corpses</a>. They fought back against the risk of vampire attacks and showed a medieval belief in an English zombie apocalypse, an episode that would not be out of place in a scene from <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-walking-dead-15778">The Walking Dead</a>.</p>
<p>So some form of vampire was evidently believed in throughout much of Europe from the medieval period. But the seductive Romantic vampire does not leave his calling card in polite society in London until 1819, when the first fictional vampire, the satanic Lord Ruthven <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6087/6087-h/6087-h.htm">is born</a> in a story by John Polidori. So how did our understanding of vampires transition from dishevelled peasants into alluring Byronic aristocrats? We must return the creature to its beginnings in early folk belief to fully understand its history.</p>
<h2>Vampire, vrykolakoi, velku</h2>
<p>In the first written accounts of European vampires, the creatures are understood as revenants or returners, often taking the form of a diseased family member who reappears in the unfortunate guise of a vampire. In such tales, “unfinished business”, even something as trivial as the want of clothing or shoes, is enough to make the dead return to the world of the living. </p>
<p>The number of words for “vampire” can frustrate scholars: <em>Krvoijac, vukodlak, wilkolak, varcolac, vurvolak, liderc nadaly, liougat, kullkutha, moroii, strigoi, murony, streghoi, vrykolakoi, upir, dschuma, velku, dlaka, nachzehrer, zaloznye, nosferatu</em> … the list goes on. </p>
<p>The Oxford English Dictionary takes seven pages to define a vampire, but the earliest entry, of 1734, is of most interest here: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>These Vampyres are supposed to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living and thereby destroy them.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192025/original/file-20171026-13355-1wl4yat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Le Vampire, lithograph by R. de Moraine, Les Tribunaux secrets (1864)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moraine_le_vampire.jpg#/media/File:Moraine_le_vampire.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is evidently little appeal or attraction felt for these early revenant figures. Unlike the English aristocratic vampire, modelled on Lord Byron, these early folkloric vampires are peasants and tend to appear en mass like modern-day zombies. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/251706852/The-Vampire-in-Roumania-Agnes-Murgoci">Agnes Murgoci explored</a> this folk belief further. She argued in 1926 that the journey from death to the afterlife is perilous – in Romanian belief it took 40 days for the soul of the deceased to enter paradise. In some cases, it was thought that it lingered for years, and during this time there are a myriad of ways that deceased family members can succumb to vampirism. </p>
<p>It <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_darkling.html?id=ALuBAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">was thought</a> that dying unmarried, unforgiven by one’s parents, through suicide or being murdered could all lead to a person returning as a vampire. Events after death could also have the same effect – beware breezes blowing across corpses before burial, dogs or cats walking over coffins, or leaving a mirror (a soul trap) not turned to the wall at this precarious time.</p>
<h2>Entering literary spheres</h2>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Phantom_World.html?id=TdENAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y">It was a treatise</a> written in 1746 by the French monk Antoine Augustin Calmet that famously gave British writers access to a number of encounters with vampires. Calmet took inspiration from Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a botanising man of science, who had earlier claimed to have come face to face with a plague of bloodsucking vampires in Mykonos in 1702. <a href="https://archive.org/details/avoyageintoleva00tourgoog">His account</a> was still being read in 1741. </p>
<p>Three decades after Tournefort’s encounter, the London Journal of 1732 reported some enquiries into “vampyres” at Madreyga in Hungary (a story later referred to by John Polidori). Greece and Hungary feature prominently in these early accounts – and this is mirrored in Romantic literature: Lord Byron for example makes Greece the setting of his unfinished vampire story <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/fragment-of-a-novel-from-mazeppa-by-lord-george-byron">A Fragment</a> (1819). </p>
<p>But it was Polidori who was responsible for the vampire’s English pedigree and its elevation of social rank. There seems never to have been an urban, nor an educated bourgeois bloodsucker prior to <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-vampyre-by-john-polidori">The Vampyre</a> (1819). A predatory sexuality is also introduced. We see for the first time the vampire as rake or libertine, a real “<a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lady%20killer">lady killer</a>” – a trend that metamorphosed into Bram Stoker’s Dracula and anticipated the arrival of vampire romance in the beautiful undead form of Twilight’s Edward Cullen.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uxjNDE2fMjI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>As this all reveals, the history of vampires is a disputed and uncertain one whatever your perspective, scientific or literary. But the “vampire” burials discovered by archaeologists of late do cohere with practices that are known to suggest a belief in vampirism (such as piercing the corpse, nailing down the tongue, putting a needle in the heart and placing small stones and incense in the mouth and under the finger nails to stop blood sucking and clawing). These “vampire” corpses do therefore go some way towards finding out how old our belief in vampires actually is. </p>
<p>But the history of vampires is still impossible to chart with any certainty, and we should probably take heed from British vampirologist Montague Summers (1880-1948) in our search for the lair of the original fiend. He referred to vampires as “citizens of the world”: to him, they existed beyond temporal or geographical boundaries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam George has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>
How the vampire transitioned from folkloric peasant to Byronic Lord.
Sam George, Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of Hertfordshire
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/73311
2017-03-10T11:40:59Z
2017-03-10T11:40:59Z
Buffy the Vampire Slayer would have had her work cut out in 2017
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160294/original/image-20170310-3669-4jgx8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) arrived in Sunnydale – and on our screens – 20 years ago. She was a teenage girl with supernatural gifts unwillingly “chosen” to slay vampires, demons and monsters in all guises. Sunnydale had all the outward appearance of a typical southern Californian town of the American Dream. But in fact, it was Hellmouth, a crack between earth and the dimensions of hell, and thus a source of power for all evil and a lure for ambitious monsters propelled by a desire for unbridled power.</p>
<p>Hellmouth itself is a metaphor for absolute power – or at least the will to wield it. In the world of Joss Whedon’s brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer, monsters are metaphors for the continuation of human injustice and the hidden injuries of oppression.</p>
<p>But, above all, these monsters are metaphors for the will to power. Often disguised in human form, the monstrous quest for power in the “Buffyverse” often takes the shape of figures of authority – high school principles, local mayors (seasons one and two) and even national authority in the shape of the government “initiative” (seasons three and four). Authority figures are depicted as either corrupt from the outset or corrupted by the seduction of power – and there are many hints throughout the seven series that human authority is in collusion with the forces of darkness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160295/original/image-20170310-3703-1pt5qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some vampires showing their true colours.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Buffy vs absolute power</h2>
<p>The question of power is a central theme in Buffy, and it is explored in a variety of manifestations – including that of those who are on the “right side”. When Buffy first encounters her “watcher” Giles, a member of an ancient Watcher’s Council who sent him to Sunnydale to guide Buffy in her role as the “chosen” vampire slayer, she immediately challenges his authority. </p>
<p>It is only his openness to this challenge and his ability to enter into a relationship of dialogue with Buffy, rather than dispensing ancient rules, that redeems him. When Giles first explains that he is her watcher and his job is to “prepare” her, Buffy puts him firmly in his place:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Prepare me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For spending my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead. Prepare me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Throughout the series, the Watcher’s Council is depicted as overbearing, patriarchal, and interfering. And Buffy defies them more than once. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160296/original/image-20170310-3703-1920jpm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Buffy’s watcher.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show’s exploration of power is also conducted through the character of Buffy herself. Her ambivalence about her own power is what keeps her grounded – she would really like to be a normal teenager, and so feels her power as a burden. This picture is complicated as the fictional universe develops. Buffy builds up a group of friends and helpers (the Scooby gang), but there are times when she decides to act alone. In these cases she is either prevented by the Scooby gang, or else suffers immeasurably – when Buffy tries to wield power alone she comes unstuck.</p>
<p>A further examination of power occurs in the possibility of ambiguity in the monstrous. There are vampires and monsters who are tortured souls or are trying to redeem themselves – but, in each case, that ambivalence is predicated on those characters’ decisions to relinquish their own power, as the story arcs of the vampires Angel and Spike demonstrate. Spike in particular, not only lets go of power, but in the end sacrifices himself for the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160298/original/image-20170310-3696-12lktfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Angel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Buffy on the White House</h2>
<p>So at the heart of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a critique of the quest for absolute power. What, then, would Buffy and the Scooby gang make of the figure currently installed in the White House? Is the White House the new Hellmouth?</p>
<p>Trump is of course not supernatural evil incarnate (although I’m sure many have said as much). But Trump’s own drive for power, and the way in which it is wielded, is fundamentally at odds with the ethical world of Buffy. Dialogue and negotiating are central values in the Buffyverse – Buffy builds bridges with her friends, her family and even other slayers. In contrast, Trump builds walls (or threatens to) and excludes those he disagrees with (even the media – including the BBC – from his press conferences).</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160300/original/image-20170310-3703-vluhzq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demons: watch out.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If there ever was to be an episode of Buffy vs Trump, Buffy, as his central foe, would not just represent “woman” but would be a metaphor for all the outcast, the foreign or the “other” who Trump wishes to expel or discipline. In the Buffyverse, such a human figure would be revealed as monstrous (and probably green and scaly underneath) and Buffy and the rest of the Scooby gang would either dispatch it or drive it away. </p>
<p>Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s conclusion is entirely apt for our own struggles against growing despotism today. Buffy and the Scooby gang decide to overturn the Council rule that insists there is only one slayer – they defy the law that only an individual can hold power. </p>
<p>The final message is to embrace an alternate form of power, one that is collective, embracing and inclusive – a power that connects all of us to each other in our miseries, in our struggles and in our differences. In our own fight against demagoguery, we would do well to keep in mind the inspiring collectivity embodied in Buffy’s final speech when she tells the crowd: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I say we change the rule. From now on any girl who might be a slayer will be a slayer. Every girl who could have the power will have the power, can stand up, will stand up. Slayers everyone of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Milly Williamson is affiliated with the British Labour Party. </span></em></p>
At the heart of this 20-year-old show is a critique of the quest for absolute power.
Milly Williamson, Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, Brunel University London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/43149
2015-06-11T16:43:40Z
2015-06-11T16:43:40Z
Fangs for the memories: death of Christopher Lee draws a veil over golden years of horror
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84730/original/image-20150611-11398-1nea5l3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Love at first bite.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hammer Horror</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>They say your first Dracula marks you for life and that you will forever associate the Count with the actor who played him. My first experience of the most famous vampire of old time was Christopher Lee’s performance for Hammer Studios – and it has definitely stayed with me ever since. </p>
<p>I still remember watching his imposing on-screen figure, a mountain of a man, halfway between the quaintly aristocratic and the sexually feral, on a late-night, poorly Spanish-dubbed rerun of Hammer’s 1958 adaptation. Lee’s commanding presence, alongside his bloodshot eyes and fanged, gory mouth, gave me nightmares for days, but I was also seduced by his tragic, sensuous persona. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84731/original/image-20150611-11396-on6j55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of the author in Lee’s Dracula cape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Years later, when I eventually watched the film in the original English, I was again bowled over by Lee’s performance, although this time for different reasons. Having acquainted myself with Bram Stoker’s novel of 1897 and its other famous film adaptations, I was more clearly on the lookout for what made Lee’s acting distinctive. There were subtleties I had not noticed before: his thunderous voice was deep and seductive; his accent was both elegant and assertive in a way that only a few actors like Dame Judy Dench or Sir Ian McKellen can manage, and also bespoke his aristocratic origin; his outfit (the cape of which I would have a chance to wear a few years later on my visit to the British Film Institute) was clearly the stuff of cinema myth.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"609002452604579840"}"></div></p>
<p>Lee was greatly loved by many, both in and out of the cult horror circuits, especially after his many other classic appearances in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But why was he such an icon for fans of dark cinema and vampire enthusiasts? What made him so distinctive and memorable that, to many, he is still the best Dracula ever to grace cinema screens? </p>
<h2>Gothic tradition</h2>
<p>I recently saw that the cover of <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-903111-01-7">Jonathan Rigby’s updated English Gothic</a> (a landmark cinematic history of the genre) continues to portray a becaped, solemn Lee in all his glory. It is a summation, in one image, of Britain’s major Gothic export to the world: the Hammer Horror films of the late 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, and their various recreations of monsters, which, alongside those of the Universal Studios, are the most popular ever conceived and have influenced countless other filmmakers and studios. </p>
<p>In his continued performances for them, and especially in the Dracula films, Lee managed to epitomise a number of interesting ideas about Britishness. I have mentioned his accent. It is interesting, for example, that the Count sounds recognisably English (as opposed to blatantly “other” in Bela Lugosi’s heavily accented performance) despite being from Transylvania, a fact which did not necessarily bother contemporary audiences. </p>
<p>His mixture of repressed, yet explosive, sensuality was a commendable preface to the swinging 60s and to a more liberal Britain. Lee managed to offer an intrinsically British Dracula that straddled the line between the national and the foreign, between the erotic and the respectable. </p>
<h2>Beyond gravitas</h2>
<p>For horror fans, Lee’s presence, especially over time, has become a marker of quality. His presence in the most Z-budget of eurohorror flicks, as well as performances in co-productions such as the Spanish-British Horror Express, which also featured that other legend of British Gothic cinema, Peter Cushing, has been enough to grant the films a solid and growing interest. </p>
<p>Lee has become shorthand for a respectable and national horror tradition that has made the genre palatable to those who, in the past, may have never gone near it. His Count brought a gravitas and a seductive quality to the vampire that has continued to develop throughout the 20th century and which has reached my generation in the form of Ford Coppola’s love stricken Bram Stoker’s Dracula of 1992, and even the sparkling and, for many, sacrilegious Edward Cullen from the Twilight series. For this, and for many other things, we need to thank Lee and Hammer.</p>
<p>I began by suggesting that our first Dracula is of great importance to our future perception of vampires. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that adaptations of Dracula hinge quite dramatically on who is playing the Count because, more so than with any other monster, he stands in for all other vampires. Lee’s Dracula is nothing short of a national treasure that has further established the British credentials of this longstanding Gothic myth and, I have no doubt, will continue to be viewed as a landmark performance in cinema.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43149/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xavier Aldana Reyes does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.</span></em></p>
He was the best of the Draculas, an Anglo-European vampire who could be tragic and sensuous at the same time.
Xavier Aldana Reyes, Lecturer in English, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/39208
2015-03-25T08:57:51Z
2015-03-25T08:57:51Z
What they do in the shadows: my encounters with the real vampires of New Orleans
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75863/original/image-20150324-17693-116j6ge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Before you ask, they probably haven't seen Twilight.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonyjcase/6352832884">Great Beyond</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vampires walk among us. But these people aren’t the stuff of nightmares – far from it actually. Just sit down for a drink with one of them and ask for yourself. That’s if you can find one. They aren’t necessarily looking to be found. </p>
<p>I’ve spent five years conducting <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/articles/palcomms20156">ethnographic studies</a> of the real vampires living in New Orleans and Buffalo. They are not easy to find, but when you do track them down, they can be quite friendly.</p>
<p>“Real vampires” is the collective term by which these people are known. They’re not “real” in the sense that they turn into bats and live forever but many do sport fangs and just as many live a primarily nocturnal existence. These are just some of the cultural markers real vampires adopt to express a shared (and, according to them, biological) essence – they need blood (human or animal) or psychic energy from donors in order to feel healthy.</p>
<p>Their self-described nature begins to manifest around or just after puberty. It derives, according to them, from the lack of subtle energies their bodies produce – energies other people take for granted. That’s the general consensus anyway. It’s a condition they claim to be unable to change. So, they embrace it.</p>
<p>The real vampire community, like the legendary figure it emulates, knows few national boundaries, from Russia and South Africa to England and the United States. Particularly in the internet age, vampires are often well attuned to community issues.</p>
<p>This is more true for some than others though. I found the vampires of Buffalo to be keen to keep up to date with the global community, while those in New Orleans were often more interested in the activities of their local vampire houses (an affiliated group of vampires usually led by a vampire elder who helps his or her house members to acclimate to their vampiric nature).</p>
<p>Some houses, and indeed whole vampire communities, as in the case of New Orleans, will combine their efforts to organise charity events, like feeding (not feeding on) the homeless. However, despite their humanitarian efforts, real vampires don’t go around advertising who they are for fear of discrimination by people who simply don’t understand them. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75867/original/image-20150324-17678-1uvr6bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hunting for vampires in New Orleans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some semblance of the real vampire community has existed since at least the early to mid-1970s, but my own dealings began in 2009 when I entered the New Orleans community clinging to my digital voice recorder.</p>
<p>I eventually met around 35 real vampires there, but the total number in New Orleans is easily double that. They ranged in age from 18 to 50 and represented both sexes equally. They practised sanguinarian (blood) and psychic feeding – taking energy using, for example, the mind or hands.</p>
<p>Blood is generally described by my study participants as tasting metallic, or “coppery” but can also be influenced by the donor’s physiology, or even how well he or she is hydrated. Some psychic vampires use tantric feeding, that is through erotic or sexual encounters, while others use what could be described as astral feeding or feeding on another from afar. And others feed through emotion.</p>
<p>Afterwards, blood-drinking and psychic vampires feel energised or otherwise better than they would if they were to sustain themselves on regular food alone, like fruits, fish, and vegetables (which they eat too). </p>
<p>These vampires described themselves as atheistic, monotheistic or polytheistic. Some identified as heterosexual, some homosexual and some bisexual. Some were married, some were divorced and some were parents.</p>
<p>Unquestionably, I found the vampires I met to be competent and generally outwardly “normal” citizens. They performed blood-letting rituals safely and only with willing donors and participated regularly in medical exams that scarcely (if ever) indicated complications from their feeding practises. </p>
<h2>Tales of the unexpected</h2>
<p>What was perhaps most surprising about the vampires I met though was their marked lack of knowledge about vampires in popular culture. They seemed to know much less than you might expect – at least for vampires – about how their kind were depicted in books and films. By this I mean to say that the people I met with and interviewed hadn’t turned to drinking blood or taking psychic energy simply because they had read too many Anne Rice novels. </p>
<p>In fact, the real vampire community in general seems to have appropriated very few of the trappings mainstream culture attaches to creatures of the night. Many do dress in gothic clothes but certainly not all the time, and very, very few sleep in coffins. In fact, those vampire who do dress a certain way or wear fangs do so long after realising their desire to take blood.</p>
<p>This is what might be called a “defiant culture”. Real vampires embrace their instinctual need to feed on blood or energy and use what mainstream culture sees as a negative, deviant figure like the vampire to achieve a sense of self-empowerment. They identify others with a similar need and have produced a community from that need.</p>
<p>But real vampires can also help us understand, and perhaps even shed, some of the ideological baggage each of us carries. They show us how repressive and oppressive categories can lead to marginalisation. Through them, we see the dark side of ourselves. </p>
<p>More generally, this community shows that being different doesn’t have to force you onto the margins of society. Real vampires can and do exist in both “normal” society and their own communities, and that’s okay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39208/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Edgar Browning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Real life blood suckers live among us but they don’t want you to know about it.
John Edgar Browning, Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Literature, Media and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/34462
2014-11-21T06:00:35Z
2014-11-21T06:00:35Z
What We Do in the Shadows is unmissable – whether you like vampires or not
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65099/original/image-20141120-4490-o16x7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The housemate sitcom encounters vampires.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metrodome</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vampire films come in cycles. After the recent successes of the Twilight franchise and seven seasons of True Blood, comes the parody mockumentary, co-written and co-directed by Jemaine Clement, one half of the New Zealand comedy duo <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0863046/">Flight of the Conchords</a>.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be a handmaiden to the Dark Lord to enjoy What We Do in the Shadows. It’s perfect watching for those who scoff at Edward Cullen and miss the more self-reflexive episodes of Buffy – after all, this is a vampire movie that takes the piss out of vampires. And of course, it will certainly appeal to those well versed in vampire lore and psyched up to spot the references. Like all films in the genre, there are references aplenty.</p>
<p>The film opens with a banner saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every few years a secret society gathers in New Zealand for a special event: THE UNHOLY MASQUERADE. In the months leading up to the ball, a documentary crew was granted full access to a small group of this society. Each crew member wore a crucifix and was granted protection by the subjects of the film.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65098/original/image-20141120-4475-1ugjqnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vladislav, aged 862.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metrodome</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We then follow the timid dandy Viago (think Spike, pre-vampire transformation in Buffy), the once-powerful Vladislav (late Nick Cave meets Gary Oldman as Dracula circa 1992) and Deacon (a fellow with a penchant for leather trousers and belly dancing). Together, they share a run-down house in Wellington, New Zealand. We have a glimpse into their everynight life in the run up to the much-anticipated event. </p>
<p>Along the way they welcome a new vampire called Nick into their midst, though he soon runs afoul of Deacon for copying his taste in faux-military jackets. Not unlike the early seasons of the BBC’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349938/">Being Human</a>, the mundane practicalities of shared living are what provide much of the comedy here. The housemates try to make the best of their lack of social cachet – it’s a high point when they are finally admitted to one of the more popular local night clubs, Boogie Wonderland. </p>
<p>The charm of the film hinges on the total sincerity of Viago (Taika Waititi, who also co-wrote and co-directed the film) who fussily looks after his fellow vampires and pines for his ageing beloved, now in her 90s. “This is always really scary part for me”, he says at the opening of the film, cautiously peeping past the curtains. “Yesss! Night-time.” He is the foil to Vlad and Deacon as they tirelessly attempt to re-assert their vampire alpha-masculinity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65106/original/image-20141120-4478-19hdfle.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Viago, aged 379.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metrodome</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this line, much of the humour arises from vampire powers and peculiarities and imagining them in a housemate context – joking around with the fact that they don’t appear in mirrors or being able to levitate. As such, the film successfully combines this comic documentary format whilst invoking other vampire texts.</p>
<p>There are many pleasurable references to modern classics and cult favourites, such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Lost Boys</a> (1987) as well as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/">Twilight</a>. The nods to Bram Stoker’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/">Dracula</a> (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) are particularly numerous, from Deacon’s chosen sleeping position to Vlad’s bouffant hairstyle and white Transylvanian high camp ensemble at The Unholy Masquerade. The most frequently cited film here in terms of visual style is <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013442/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Nosferatu</a> (1922). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65108/original/image-20141120-4469-xvt6sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Deacon, aged 183.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metrodome</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like many house-shares, there is a rarely glimpsed, basement dwelling flatmate with poor hygiene skills. This is 8000-year-old Petyr, obviously styled as the twin of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Orlok#mediaviewer/File:Schreck.jpg">Max Schreck’s Count Orlok</a> in Nosferatu. In terms of its use of documentary technique and style, the film is also indebted to both <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Blair Witch Project</a> (1999) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013257/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages</a> (1922). And one of the most hilarious moments comes when Deacon performs what can only be described as something closely akin to the lascivious snake dance performed by Amanda Donohoe in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095488/">Lair of the White Worm</a> (1988) for the benefit of his bored housemates. What We Do in the Shadows is certainly citational, but the camp and cult go alongside the classics here. </p>
<p>Another recent addition to the vampire cinema genre is the sublime <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714915/">Only Lovers Left Alive</a> (2013), and they’re well worth comparing. What We Do in the Shadows explores the the idea that eternal life means scraping by and remaining hopelessly uncool forever. Only Lovers Left Alive, on the other hand, suggests eternal life as the ideal situation for the artist and the truly curious. Eve (Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) have used eternity to learn multiple languages, read everything, and create complex musical compositions (not unlike the Cullens in Twilight). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65109/original/image-20141120-4496-uiny6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">An encounter with the werewolves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metrodome</span></span>
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<p>These two films illustrate the flexibility of the vampire genre. Only Lovers Left Alive is a continuation of the sincere, high-minded philosophical vampire film, while What We Do in the Shadows signals the genre’s ability to openly mock its own conventions.</p>
<p>The vampire genre thrives just because of of this flexibility. It’s a world in which certain rules remain coherent (silver is poisonous to vampires, werewolves and vampires have an age-old enmity, vampires can’t go out in the daylight) and so different interlinking stories can be built up around this scaffolding. The immortality of vampires also adds to this – it’s attractive to imagine that all these sub-groups of vampires exist at once, that Petyr in the basement really is Count Orlok’s twin – or Count Orlok himself.</p>
<p>So What We Do in the Shadows is much more than a spoof on the vampire film. It’s thoughtful, knowingly drawing on a long history of a variety of vampire cinema as well as a clever satire. And it’s downright hilarious. Watch it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Artt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Vampire films come in cycles. After the recent successes of the Twilight franchise and seven seasons of True Blood, comes the parody mockumentary, co-written and co-directed by Jemaine Clement, one half…
Sarah Artt, Lecturer in English and Film, Edinburgh Napier University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.