The rise of the vampire reached its peak in the year 2009. Riding on the waves of a tumultuous decade, the figure was dominating screens big and small, along with bookshelves and magazines. The popularity of the figure presents an interesting puzzle: why the vampire, and why at that point? Arguably, its ability to embody evil and the idea of new beginnings, along with its defiance of death and the quasi-religious status vampires hold found a niche in a post-9/11 society. This is the underlying argument of this bookâthe vampireâs popularity, particularly in the US, surged due to the ways in which it could be used to represent politically and culturally sensitive topics, and in turn, the consumption of vampire narratives in the US in the decade following 9/11 exhibits a need to confront issues of identity, belief and belonging. It is this year, 2009, in which the textual pillars of this argumentâTrue Blood, Being Human and The Strainâbegan to establish themselves. 1 Nearly a decade later, the issues and anxieties mediated by these texts are still relevant; with a fresh wave of terrorist attacks across Europe in the last decade, we can use this particular response to 9/11 to understand how we might begin to tackle the difficult questions they evoke.
Yet, this millennial conception of the vampire differs dramatically from its predecessors. Unlike the umbrous Nosferatu or the shapeshifting figure that is Dracula, the twenty-first century vampire seems to be remarkably human. The vampire has emerged from the shadows of the horror genre and found a keen market across various genres and media. They are now linked to teenage romance novels (Twilight) and Southern Gothic tales (True Blood) amongst other things, fulfilling a role that is closer to angel than demon. Articles discussing the change in the figure, such as a 2009 piece by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker comparing the new recruits to Stokerâs Dracula, merely illustrated the surface differences rather than probing deeper into why the vampire had changed. 2 Changes in culturally embedded figures happen due to societal need; in the case of the vampire, as Nina Auerbach argues: âevery age embraces the vampire it needs.â 3 In the post-millennial age, weâve created and embraced a vampire that embodies a religious impulse and questions how we construct our identity. The vampire has been firmly Americanised, as is discussed in Chapter 2, and thus the focus of culture and society across the book is primarily American. Here, we piece together the social (the aftermath of trauma), political (the George W. Bush administration) and spiritual (the state of religion in the US) factors that surround the conception of the modern vampire, showing how it arose due to a need for a metaphorical figure to mediate these struggles in that cultural moment. The positioning of the vampire in culture and its history are key to its importance; it is at once marked by its spiritual foundations and ability to recast itself in numerous roles. This comes perhaps from the nature of the figure itself, that of a perpetual remake; turning humans into something more and altering their very nature enables the cycle to continue. The vampireâs lack of boundariesâwhen compared to the social, physical and metaphysical boundaries of the humanâmeans endless possibilities for exploration of identities, meaning and experience. It is this absence of human limitations that facilitates the copious changes made over the years to the figure. The vampire is no longer merely âotherâ, its history and current use have created a new figure that appears to be an amalgamation of aspects of previous incarnations, which exemplifies its flexibility. In a world where, as Shannon Winnubst asserts, an âobsession with strictly defined and rigidly upheld boundaries haunts Western concepts of subjectivity,â then âthe figure who lives by crossing these boundaries tells us something about how they are made and how they might be dismantled.â 4 Through this defiance of boundaries, vampires give the opportunity to symbolically use death to an advantage and explore what it means to be human by watching a figure that is defined as âinhumanâ struggle to attain a sense of humanity. This sense of humanity, evident in the texts under discussion, includes religious belief; this has become increasingly prevalent in the figure within the last decade, indicating a cultural resurgence in the importance of religion. In particular, these narratives focusing on the vampire answer the need to represent religious minorities such as Muslims (as seen in Chapter 3), along with working through the traumas invested in the figure of the vampire that provoke a re-evaluation of faith (as discussed in Chapter 4).
Cultural narratives have long figured as a reflection of the anxieties and situations of the time, mediating scenarios and taboo topics in a memorable way through the guise of fiction. Vampires have a privileged position 5 in the realm of storytelling and cultural narratives, which gives them an importance that should be explored. The popularity or dominance of certain tropes in these narratives often reflects a cultural preoccupation with a particular topic or viewpoint. The vampire is one such popular figure, and it represents a variety of issues, some latent and others evident through the ways in which they are consumed. For the recent manifestations of the metaphor, much has been said about it representing gay rights, such as in True Blood, 6 or the dangers of adolescent sex, such as in Twilight. 7 Yet there is a more apparent meaning that has been barely unpacked in responses to these shows and books, either critical or academic. The very nature of the consumption of these narratives and the reverence awarded to the figure positions it as god-like, particularly through both the presentation of the vampire and the nature of the televisual medium which we explore here.
The current vampire, (in part) symptomatic of religious impulses and sublimation, teases out the implications of the struggle with identity and religion in a world where communication and representation are increasingly mediated through screens. As the figure changes, so should approaches to it, incorporating a broader understanding of fandom and methods of textual dissemination. The result is that all three texts are looked at with an awareness of current cultural consumption of narratives, along with an up-to-date perspective on the importance of metaphorical figures such as the vampire in contemporary texts. Many previous investigations into the vampire have been Freudianâthe oozing blood from the lips, the phallic fangs penetrating and possessing. Yet this book is not primarily psychoanalyticâFreud is used briefly in later chapters, but in relation to trauma theory rather than to sexualize the figure. This is, in part, due to the idea that sex is no longer the taboo topic, but instead has been replaced by the issue of faith (which here is figured differently to religion, as explained in more detail in Chapter 2). 8
These narratives have been consumed at a growing pace since 2000, when arguably the vampire became an increasingly dominant presence in all forms of mediaâonline, television, books, film and comicsâand thus this period (2001â2011) is the central focus of this study. Television is a staple medium of many households and provides content in a more âaccessibleâ form, so it was the televisual vampires that most clearly displayed a new form of the figure. To understand clearly the difference between the vampires discussed here from their predecessors, it is necessary to briefly outline the pre-millennial televisual vampires. Dark Shadows , a long running gothic soap opera, was the first show to instil the vampire regularly on the small screen, with a total of 1225 episodes between 1966 and 1971. It told the story (amidst other storylines) of Barnabas Collins, an eighteenth century vampire who is revived in the 1960s and introduces himself to the modern Collins family as a cousin from England. The characterization seems similar at first to that of Dracula, with the vampire Barnabas being a mysterious intruder, but over time, he becomes something of a protagonist through his selfless actions. The series was remade in 1991, initially successfully, but due to ratings was later cancelled. Other 1990s televisual vampires include Forever Knight, the story of an 800-year-old vampire who becomes a police officer bringing criminals to justice after feeling remorse for his previous behaviour. The most notable of 1990s vampire television is undoubtedly Joss Whedonâs Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series ran between 1997 and 2003, and has been discussed in academic writing by such scholars as Milly Williamson and Stacey Abbott whose exploration of the text attests to its cultural importance. Buffy the Vampire Slayer focused on Buffy Summers, a pretty, blonde teenager in high school who discovers she is the âchosen oneâ and must commit to a life of slaying vampires. It was notable for providing a strong female character who could physically assert herself, look good, and save the day. As Anne Billson notes, Buffy âwould simultaneously embrace and subvert the clichĂ©s of slasher movies in a post-modern approach.â 9 The vampires in the series were primarily evil targets but several managed to gain the position of more positive, recurring characters, such as Angel, Buffyâs most prominent love interest, and Spike, a British vampire who loses the ability to attack humans, thus rendering him trustworthy. Although some of the vampires in Buffy were ânot so much a villain as a romantic role model,â 10 they were still clearly separated from humans aesthetically by their ridged foreheads and protruding fangs. Whedonâs reasoning for this was because he âdidnât want to put a show on the air about a high-school student who was stabbing normal-looking people in the heart [âŠ] when they are clearly monsters it takes it to a level of fantasy that is safer.â 11 This perhaps exemplifies the biggest difference between 1990s televisual vampires and more recent ones. Although texts such as True Blood and Being Human are rendered as fantasy worlds by the very nature of the vampireâs existence, the portrayal of the vampire figure is closer to human. Now, these televisual vampires live amongst humans (knowingly, in the case of True Blood) and both look and act more like humans than their predecessors. This change moves away from the aesthetics of the monstrous and instead focuses on the moral implications of actions. Vampires exemplify the idea that anyone could be a monster and, in particular, it is the idea of the familiar being evil that has been embedded in these narratives. As Timothy Beal notes, âmonsters are paradoxical personifications of otherness within sameness.â 12 This element of similarity gives readers and audiences a way to empathise with the figure. Yet, at the same time, the uncanny nature of it makes us question even our firmest assumptions. This arguably reflects the ...