Nobody can shut up about vampires these days. What do they represent? How have they changed from Dracula to Lestat to Spike to Edward? People usually reach for the sexual symbolism. But I just read this post from Slacktivist, one of my favorite political bloggers, about vampires as a reminder that “any of us can have great power if only we are willing to prey on others.” The bit about crosses seems like a reach to me, but maybe that’s because I’m not as steeped in Christian mythology as he is.
And over the summer one of the full-time teachers at the GED center where I tutored was talking with a couple of kids about vampire symbolism and said:
“Vampires clicked for me when I was a street worker in the 80s.* I saw people walking down the streets at 3 in the morning, desperate for crack or heroin. And that’s what vampires are: the addictive substance itself doesn’t hurt you, but once you ingest it — once you let it bite you — it sucks out your spirit, your blood. Vampires and drugs are attractive, they convince you that you want them.”
“Everything about me invites you in,” right? I’m sure people have written about vampires-as-drugs before, but I think this explains Bella — all she wants is more of Edward; she becomes an addict with no personality of her own. Edward doesn’t suck blood, but he sucks out her spirit.
Well, he sucks, anyway. Ba-dum-ching.
* He means he worked with youth on the streets, not as a male prostitute. It threw me the first time, too.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Eric, the last remaining // Sep 22, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Have you tried True Blood? I can’t give it a full-throated endorsement (pun intended) but it swaps vampires in and out of several metaphors, but drugs are one of the main ones.
2 Sam // Sep 22, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I haven’t seen True Blood, no. I’ve heard really mixed things.
(Nice name, btw. We’ll need to rope in some more Erics, lest you get cocky — or maybe an Erica?)
3 mrmorse // Sep 23, 2009 at 11:25 pm
I’m struck by the way the different metaphors play on different elements of vampire mythologies. Vampirism as sexuality invokes very different imagery than vampirism as drug dealing.
Trading power for a willingness to prey on others feels like a common mythical theme, even outside vampire stories. (The first example that comes to my mind is an episode of Babylon 5, although it could be argued that it was really just vampirism without calling it that. I know there are other, more traditional examples, as well.)
I’m not sold on Slactivist’s argument about the cross, but I don’t know the traditional vampire stories in enough detail to say it’s not there. I think it certainly could be successfully written in to vampire stories, but without specific examples of that symbolism in existing stories, that reading feels like a reach.
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