Vampires

The current fascination and infatuation with vampires escapes me. (Oops—I probably just revealed the state of my libido!) But vampires are everywhere. They’re at Barnes and Noble, they’re at the movies and on HBO, and they were in the Sunday paper. According to Tara Dooley in the Houston Chronicle, these days vampires are sexy, “hunky and human,” and they’ve never been more appealing!

My family watches the HBO series, True Blood. I don’t. But I do confess that I love the theme, “Bad Things,” by Jace Everett at the beginning of each episode. While I agree many of the characters in the series are very attractive, and yes—hunky and human, I just don’t like vampires and never have. I didn’t watch the daytime soap, Dark Shadows, when I was a girl, and I only read one of Anne Rice’s vampire books, (and that was because of peer pressure). I refused to see Interview with the Vampire until my husband brought the video home. I didn’t want to watch it then, but it was kind of hypnotic, and sucked me in.

Haven't we met somewhere before?

Maybe I dislike the whole vampire theme because I’ve known some. The woman I worked with who made everyone around her miserable and afraid of her vicious gossip and back-stabbing was most certainly a vampire. We’ve all known people who take and take, sucking our energy and draining our emotions, giving little or nothing back. And then there are politicians like Nixon and Clinton, for example, in whom we staked our trust to do the moral, ethical thing. They didn’t bat an eyelid as they lied to our country and the world. Are they not vampires?

I understand that vampires have represented many things throughout their long and shadowy history. They symbolize our fears; and like gruesome fairy tales, they’ve been used to whip us into shape or persuade us to comply. Consider Vlad the Impaler, the fifteenth century prince who impaled folks on stakes and displayed them like scarecrows to ward off foes. Understandably, his enemies spread rumors that he was a vampire.

Okay, okay. In True Blood and Twilight, the vampires represent our anxieties and fears about the changing world, people who are different from us, and our own mortality. I get it. Dr. Thomas J. Garza, chairman of the Slavic and Eurasian studies department at the University of Texas at Austin, says vampires “play on the questions of our concerns about sexuality and what is right, what is ethical and moral.”

Scholars say “each generation creates its own vampires, a reflection of society’s fears and values.” (Dooley) So how did society leap from fear of hairy-palmed, ugly old men with halitosis to hunky and human, gorgeous and over-sexed young men and women as symbols by which we measure our mores? Does this mean The Good Samaritan and The Boy Who Cried Wolf are permanently retired?

Donna