Our Fascination With Vampires and the Walking Dead
I have always found
the proliferation of zombies and vampires to be interesting as I had
been interested in them before their major spike, especially vampires. I
think that the spread of vampire literature and film is responding to
something much different than what the zombie culture is responding to.
First I'd like to discuss my ideas on the changes in what vampires were
and what they are now. To me the image of the vampire had always been
Bram Stoker's portrayal of a monster who hid behind the mask of a man,
who was alluring and dark, who lived in an old dark castle. True even
Stoker's image of the vampire is not something terrifying, but it delved
into the idea that evil would hide within a man without any clear signs
until it was too late. Evil in Stoker's
Dracula hid
behind a charismatic man, it was not too far from other renditions of
evil that we saw in class. Although Osmond was not supernatural in any
sense of the word he too put on a charismatic persona to allure his
pray. Nevertheless, what is important here is the idea that evil to me
was terrifying because it could be anywhere, it could be anyone, and
therefore vampires could hold in my mind a sort of status as a monster
and not just an alluring handsome young gentleman. Later on with the
novels of Anne Rice the vampire became more of a tragic Byronic hero
that was a monster because he had to subsist on human blood, but who was
internally tormented by this fact. These types of the vampires are the
type that now prevail in our popular culture and I think in a sense it
is our culture trying to embrace that darkness, that evil, which is
inside of us all. If we look at the type of vampire that are very
popular now and take into consideration their current attributes it
becomes obvious that these vampires are the ground upon which are trying
to reconcile the internal evil that plagues us all. One of the
characteristics which Interview with the Vampire, Vampire Dairies, and Twilight all
have is that their central vampire figures choose to not give into
their dark instinct to take blood from human beings and instead resort
to become “vegetarian” vampires, feeding only on animals. At the same
time these vampires are trying to find a place in the world,
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| The Vampire Diaries |
a person
who will accept the monster that they are and will love them. These main
attributes that connect all these popular text are metaphors for the
fight that we as humans have to fight every day within ourselves. We may
not feed off blood, but we regularly feed on other people's kindness
and their willingness to do things for us. This idea of feeding off the
blood of human beings in the context of these romantic stories
represents the one sided relationships that we humans often carry out.
We use people regularly for our own selfish reasons and never as much
care about them after we have received what we were looking for. This is
the same type of selfishness that was seen in many of the novels we
have read in class thus far but placed within a romantic context, where
matters of the heart are seems to be mainly at stake. However, it is
interesting that these vampiric characters who can take our blood and
life, are pictured as even more human than ourselves. That is to say
that despite the fact that they are suppose to be monsters often they
are the ones who are most sympathetic, they feel more and understand
pain and suffering a lot more than the people who's heart still
literally beat. These vampires are made out to be “super human” so as to
give us home of the idea that despite our selfishness and evil desires
there is a kindness with us that will win out if we let it. For this
reason these “monster” are constantly looking for acceptance and love,
it is this search that gives them soul, the relatively happy endings
that these characters have in their respective worlds give us hope of
not only finding love, but also being able to placate our evil so as to
be able to do what is best for all, and not only for ourselves, so that
we may stop using others as a means to an end.
When it comes to zombies however, there are very rare instance where
they can appear as loveable because where as vampires are responding to
the internal turmoil zombies in our time have to respond to those things
which are beyond our control, that evil in nature which is even more
impossible to reconcile than that which is found within us. Zombies are
the product of world after World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan, but also
after the rise of diseases like AIDS, and a world in which our
consumerist culture has begun to put our lives in mortal danger because
our resources, specifically oil, have begun to rapidly dwindle. Zombie
movies are responding to our biggest fears as a society, when we stop
contemplating the evil within and realize everyone around is capable of
major evil we become paranoid and begin to fear our neighbors. At the
same time zombie movies explore the fact that we cannot trust the
government to protect us in case of natural disasters, wars or even
pandemics. This is in response specifically in American culture to the
post Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 world. There sparked in the American
consciousness a realization that we are vulnerable to the whims of
nature and that even with preventive measures in place they are not
enough to help us neither during or after. This is why zombie movies
often revolve around the time when the pandemic is first starting to
spring, showing how people are trying to desperately survive, or take
place in a devastated world where human kind is left to pick up the
remains and is forced to build up their world once again.
This can be
found in movies like Zombiland
where our hero takes us through his experience during and after the
outbreak and gives us helpful tips on how to survive along the way. The
real message in movies like these is that the only person we can rely on
is ourselves. In The Walking Dead
we see a world that is devastated and we follow a band a survivors, not
much trying rebuild, but trying to survive because a lot of the time
there will not be enough resources to rebuild. In Max Brooks's World War Z
Brooks tackles the consequences of war, the unfairness that occurs
during such hard times in a society where the rich can buy all possible
protection they can for themselves, and where a corrupt government does
more to unsure its survival than the survival of its people. Zombies can
therefore be seen as representing our fear of lacking a safety net on
which to fall on when we rely so much on a social structure previously
built for us, not necessarily by us. When our moral system are simply
rules meant to police our instincts, rather than an actual moral code
which takes into consideration the emotions and well being of others.
Zombies reflect our greatest fear, that when we are left unchecked, that
when our society crumbles, we will not be able to survive.
