At the end of my last thought experiment, I was left with the discovery that I needed to eventually find a thesis, but it’ll take me entire papers to reach it. I find that extremely interesting because it’s the exact opposite way I’ve learned to write papers all throughout high school. First you find a thesis, then you write a couple pages about how right you are. Of course, by the end of those papers I’ve reached a completely different level of understanding; the mind needs time to work though something, winding and wending its way through dead ends and false starts until it finds the cheese. It’s a different task entirely to start with cheese and backtrack. Often you’re just stuck in a maze with rotting cheese. Having said all that, let’s completely forget about it. I’m not going to pick off from my last experiment because I don’t remember what I was talking about and I don’t really want to open the file and read through all of that shit. I got things to do. Instead, I have a rough goal. I want to find something by the end of this paper. I only have no idea what it will be. I’ll find my questions by starting with answers. Answers, the easiest of things mankind can provide, will mostly stem from thoughts of the vampiric. That has been a popular topic in class and culture, as well as personal interest. To instantaneously narrate my own process of discovery, that last statement was an answer, leading me to a basic question that I feel can never be sufficiently answered in any capacity of human effort:
Why?
In this case, the mighty “Why” pertains to the popularity of vampirism and its culture. This isn’t a final question, this is just something to get my feet wet. Or maybe I’ll run with it all the way through. Who knows? Let’s take a look.
The closest source of information on this topic is myself. I like vampires. I think the reason I like them is that I enjoy the literary and narrative concept of corruption. Seeing a character degrade and deteriorate is incredibly compelling. The most resonating moment of corruption that instantly comes to mind is that of Prince Arthas Menethil from the game Warcraft III. Arthas is a righteous young prince when, in the name of defending his own kingdom, takes up the cursed sword Frostmourne to gain incredible power. He is instantly corrupted and twisted by Frostmourne, and kills his father, King Menethil, and his benevolent mentor, Uther the Lightbringer. I will provide a clip.
This clip, and specifically the scene with the flower pedals and the bells has resonated with me for years as a work of literary brilliance. I can’t provide a complete answer as to why, but part of it at least stems from that hollowness, the emptiness. He crushes the flower pedal--a rejection of the living world, he’s above it (or below it-either way it makes him special). Such is the allure of power, and coolness. Many (myself included) would see that scene and think that Prince Arthas is a badass. An evil badass. The cool dude in black. Darth Vader is the same way. In fact, I wish that we could’ve gotten this same superb corruption story of Prince Arthas from Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels. Arthas didn’t whine and throw a lot of shit-fit tantrums. We were on the same level with Arthas all the way until he made a few wrong decisions. We’re just as capable of making some bad choices. We’re just as tempted to be cool and to make a few Faustian Bargains in our lives. How often do we ‘sell our souls’? We get boob jobs and botox to look younger for longer, and all we have to do is trade away a little part of ourselves. Sounds kind of like vampirism to me. How many of us are tempted to trade away our souls to live forever, stay beautiful, and maintain power over the ignorant masses? How many of us these days would trade away their bodies to live on the planet Pandora with the Na’vi? Vampires may be frightening to us for the covert sexual thrall they could command over us (something’s often scarier when you can’t see it), but we think they’re cool because we have a lust for power (and blood). ‘Coolness’ is of course only a recent redefinition of class and caste systems. Someone wealthy and powerful, like say a Count, Prince, or Dark Lord of the Sith all look good in black. The allure of the badass, the anti-hero, or the vampire is that of wish-fulfillment: those characters must inherently be us to begin with, but corruption changes and distorts us. Physical distortion or discoloration is often a crucial part of it. Vampires are pale, Prince Arthas’ hair turned white, the Emperor from Star Wars is wrinkly and pale. As you can see, beauty doesn’t often result from it, but power is sexy (or you have the power to seem sexy), and we try to ignore or don’t see the ugly bits. Even Botox and boob jobs have extremely ugly procedures. Robert Pattinson’s Edward may have the ladies aflutter, but he doesn’t look so hot when he’s draining a rat carcass for its blood. I’m getting a little off-track here because I mentioned ‘wish-fulfillment’ and I wanted to address that. We all sometimes want to punch somebody, and these characters get to do that. Han Solo shoots Greedo first. They (and by proxy ‘we’) get to be unforgiving, cold, irresponsible, and irresistible. The most recent trend of “good” vampires seems to be about making the vampire into more of a romantic (in all definitions of the word) figure than an identifiable anti-hero. While vampires have always been about lust (for blood, power, sex, all three are the same) but now that lust has been curbed, domesticated, and straightened out. To make a few (potentially unfair and over-generalized) gender-based assumptions, the idea of the tamed, domesticated vampire is a female fantasy. Women have tamed the ‘wild man’ with his instincts and urges, to be monogamous and loyal, smolderingly attractive, and they stay young forever so they’ll never grow old and fat, nor will they ever die before the woman and leave them alone. The vampire remains powerful and tortured, with the ability to help the woman physically, yet be helped by the woman emotionally. He’s just about the perfect partner. A wild, feral vampire doesn’t quite have the same allure. Gender and vampires have a lot to do with each other. Having just spoken on the male castration of the ‘good’ vampire, many have stated that the Twilight novels are degrading to women’s rights and quite unashamedly promote Mormon values like abstinence and traditional gender roles. Having not read the books, I’m tentatively inclined to agree with them. They were still written by a woman, and I think it’s completely possible that both elements exist together.
Well, that was quite interesting, wasn’t it? That’s where I am now. These were my thoughts.
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