On Vampires
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:42 pm (musings)
Unless you’ve totally got your head in some really deep sand, you might have noticed that vampires are currently all the rage. Now, I will be the first to admit that I have loved vampires and their associated myths for a long time, (well, at least since high school) but recently it’s like we are caught up in a vampire zeitgeist that is even affecting my 14 year old sister-in-law and late thirties cousin. Initially I was a little jealous…after all, vampires were my thing…or at least the thing of me and several high school friends. Hell, we even assigned each other names from Anne Rice’s books and I still am called mine at times.
Since I am a big girl, I am entirely willing to share vampires with everyone, but I’d like to understand more about how the modern mythos of vampires as sexy, charismatic, objects came into being. If you look at the old myths, vampires aren’t really meant to be sexy. They were examples of people not really understanding the decomposition process. They were explanations for various diseases and plagues. They were meant to strike fear into our collective hearts. I mean, what is hot about an old moldering revenant gnashing on your neck? Little.
I think our current fascination with vampires has to do with several things, sexuality, power and fear. Read the rest of this entry »