In 1976, Anne Rice published her first novel, Interview
with the Vampire. Three years later, the first installment
of The
Vampire Tapestry, “The Ancient Mind at Work” by Suzy McKee
Charnas was seen in Omni Magazine. Also in 1979, Frank Langella
established Count Dracula as a bona-fide romantic matinee idol
in yet another re-make of Dracula. And, in 1985 the blood-sucker
on everybody's lips was The Vampire Lestat.*
After that, a twittering madness seemed to take hold of the vampire
franchise.
This malaise was first spied in 1967 when 175-year old vampire
Barnabas Collins appeared on the year-old and failing daytime soap
opera Dark
Shadows. Barnabas was chewing through humanity for an appealingly
romantic cause: to hook back up with his long-lost yet now-resurrected
lover. Although it had pre-stardom fans like Madonna, Tim Burton,
and Johnny Depp, it was rightly ignored at the time and considered
mawkish and histrionic. The show closed in 1971 and is a true anomaly.
It has some interest as nostalgia or a fulmination, but only attempted
today by either old ladies in rest homes or balding stoners permanently
couch surfing.
Another odd bump along this trail of modern vampire humanism
is Whitley Strieber's The Hunger of 1981, adapted into
Tony Scott's first film in 1983. Its main concern--the loneliness
of the immortal—almost upstages the vampire's need for food as
its driving force for intimate contact with people. Again, the
sole vampire—this
time an ancient Egyptian female named Miriam Blaylock—is questing
a new companion in a historically-long series of paramours that can't
keep up with her youthful beauty or stamina. The drippings of her
sentimental—or phenomenally perverse--notions are revealed in the
end when she can't seem to summon the beastliness to kill her past
lovers. The film version contains a whopping example of exploitative
vampire sexuality in the nude scene between Catherine Deneuve and
Susan Sarandon.
Of course, the crowning achievement of this New Age Vampirism
was Rice's The Vampire Chronicles ranging from 1976 to
2003. Any notions that vampires are chiefly Satan's minions are
dispelled as early as The Vampire Lestat. But, more importantly,
it declares that the current indulgences of society are decadent
enough to welcome the vampire by making him a celebrity, thereby
glossing over his anti-social behavior as artful passion. Rock
star and glamorama novelist indeed.
Out of this freshly tilled acreage sprouted a mandrake root for
the juvenile audience in the form of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)**
and its hunkthrob spin-off, Angel (1999-2004). By tapping
the juices of the youth, the vampire could now double for adolescent
concerns ranging from pimples to popularity, demonized fathers to
soul-sucking mothers, and even bad beddings to abortions. Tweens
could plan for their upcoming high school days in Hades with cross-your-heart-bras
and garlic lipgloss.
That the 21st Century vampire would live in a world of acknowledgement
and even admiration was inevitable. In 1993, Anita Blake, Vampire
Hunter, hit the boards with Laurell Hamilton's first novel, Guilty
Pleasures. Into the new millennium with her 10th outing, Narcissus
in Chains, Anita acquired the ardeur, essentially
a Mexican Fly psychic cocktail that induces nymphomania into all
sexual encounters, and, in the beginning, Anita forces sex multiple
times a day to keep her new abilities intact. Coincidentally, the
series ignited with the mainstream and drove sales into the millions.
Throughout the 16 novels and counting—Skin Trade is due
mid-2009—these and other deus ex machina moments occur
so frequently, scorecards are available here and
there.
As if in response to the wagging finger of shame directed
at Hamilton for her Vampirella having lots of sex for all the wrong
reasons, a new and more prissy vampire/human contact was developing
in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series,
started in 2005. Here the tension between the young lovers is written
in saliva not blood. Since plasmasucking has always been historically
euphemistic for copulation--or, at the very least, the desire for
forbidden fondlings--the message is to love with abstinence. Apparently,
sexual refrain is more important than entering a relationship with
a boyfriend who is saddled with a blood-addictive misfortune ranking
above crystal meth or heroin. Stephen King, in an interview with
USA Weekend in December of 2008, said “Stephenie Meyer can't write
worth a darn. She's not very good.” But with 40 million copies
in print worldwide, his criticism begs the question, “who's noticing?”
The Vampire Tapestry is so good
because it does not follow these trendy dance steps. Now admittedly,
even in the earliest novelistic interpretations of the vampire
legend exampled by Le Fanu's Carmilla in
1872 and Stoker's Dracula 25 years later, eroticism was
associated with the “vampire's kiss.” Author Charnas acknowledges
the fancy in the victim's role, but her vampire is too much of a
realist to give the notion any warrant. “You are mixing up dinner
with sex” (Tor PB, ISBN 0812532937, c.1980, p.28), instructs anthropology
professor Edward Lewis Weyland. “Predators
in nature do not indulge in the sort of romantic mooning that humans
impute to them (p.29). . . Would you mate with your livestock?” (p.138)
Dr. Weyland is a deductive, Scientific Method kinda vampire.
There is no supernatural origin. He is simply a different species,
and, unfortunately for humans, the greatest, most sophisticated
hunter on the planet. That is also the reason why he does not usually
kill his victims, but simply sucks enough for sustenance through
a tiny tube on the underside of this tongue. He has no fangs. Daylight
doesn't bother him. He is not immortal, yet he can hibernate for
decades. He is the only vampire he knows, and his bite is not infectious.
A jaguar in alpaca fleece, he is a survivalist. And the ultimate
outlaw.
Author Charnas is not un-sympathetic to her vampire, just
rational. He is “a sort of leftover saber-tooth tiger prowling
the pavements, a truly endangered species” (p.31). If there is
any envy for his longevity—Charnas uses this brilliantly to illustrate
the way humanity abstracts death by disregarding the past—it is
certainly balanced by our uneasiness with the vampire's endless
loneliness. There is respect, even admiration, but it is the kind
associated with competence, professionalism, authority.
But there can be a further relationship beyond predator
to prey. Through all his chilly posturings, Weyland discovers buried,
human-like emotions in himself through Art. A performance of Puccini's Tosca triggers
a hunting frenzy that blurs the line between appetite and passion,
causing him to question his entrusted animal instincts. Weyland realizes
he does care, but that it is also his demise. “I am not the monster
who falls in love and is destroyed by his human feelings,” he says. “I
am the monster who stays true” (p.293). Thus, Charnas' vampire becomes
the unsettled but consummate romantic—and tragic--hero by acknowledging
emotional attachment through sacrifice. This is the difference between
swooning from the vapors of callow allure and the maturity of true
concern.
That vampires belong in the Horror genre seems self-evident.
They have always been the legendary, archetypal terrors in humanity's
nightmares. Horror is created to frighten you, or, at the least,
add some uneasy thoughts into the banality of your world. New Age
Vampirism seems bent on breaking out of the genre's confines and
establishing a new role for the modern vampire as the exiled
outsider, that bad boy/girl/it sexy renegade who, beneath the scary
reputation, is really worth the emotional effort.
But in a day when even your bankers and brokers join the
mistrusted list along with lawyers and politicians, it seems maladjusted
to propagate intimate, reliant relationships with things dependent
if not determined to consume your lifeforce. Is
this the captive tarsier, bludgeoning himself to death against
the bars of his cage, or merely the whimsy of a society so insulated
in denial it can't tell the difference between titillating and
terminal?
You decide, Timothy Treadwell.
*
I am not including the Count Saint-Germain series by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro which encompasses 20 novels written between 1978 and
2006 because they are historical excursions and not set in present time.
**
Forget the 1992 precursor film. Even its creator says Buffy's real mettle lies
within the TV screen.
