What is it about a vampyre? [1]
And I don’t mean the modern cheesy pop-ripoffs one sees cluttering the television and movie screens and littering the bookstore shelves.
I mean the honest to goodness real-McCoy genuine article gothic-literature bloodsucking sexy undead fangs-in-the-neck predator by whom we are both attracted and repulsed.
There is a more-than-usual modern-day fixation on vampyres even though they go back a long time.
Not that I’m against more vampyre-awareness in modern culture. I’m for it, of course.
OK, maybe not the Twilight series Edward-and-Bella teen-angst fad…
but as a general rule, yes, I’m for it.
Vampyres, to my mind, must be dangerous.
Gorgeous and sexy, yes… that is the bait…
but cold vicious killers…
…especially when it comes time for them to get down to business.
Another quality of the classic vampyre is that it is generally a solitary hunter. The loneliness of the centuries-old predator. Always on the prowl, always just out of sight, hiding in shadows, watching, waiting.
Times change, styles change, clothes change, societies change…
but the vampyre at its core, in its essence, remains the same. A monster.
How then to explain my lifelong infatuation with vampyres? Ever since I knew what vampyres were, I was fascinated by them. I’m pretty sure I was aware of the character Dracula (as portrayed by Bela Lugosi) from an early age.
Other kids had normal crushes on television characters. My first TV crush was Morticia Addams. I was 9 years old when The Addams Family television show premiered.
I’ve been smitten with her ever since.
I’m afraid that I fancy myself a bit of a vampyre snob. Though I try not to project it too much, a self-satisfied feeling of superiority comes over me as I observe the most recent ‘vampire obsession’ in our modern culture. I’m like the person who enjoyed a particularly delightful vintage long before it became “popular”. I sneer when I walk by the banks of modern vampyre fiction. To me, Anne Rice, bless her little homoerotic-obsessed heart, is an upstart. The HBO series, True Blood, is a campy bit of fun and I do enjoy it.. but it’s not anything to be taken seriously.
To put it in gastronomic terms, True Blood and most of the other manifestations of the present ‘vampire craze’ are cheeseburgers. Definitely fun and popular and people never get tired of them. But it’s not exactly haute cuisine, is it? The present ‘vampire craze’ is rather like that charming little restaurant you discovered decades ago which suddenly became ‘popular’, expanded to take on more and ever-voracious customers, franchised itself across the country and, as a result, was completely ruined. And you mourn over its demise and your loss.
No. The vampyre… as opposed to the vampire… is my dark love. My cold undead paramour. My lifelong infatuation.
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[1] I prefer to spell it vampyre instead of the more traditional ‘vampire’. It looks cooler that way to me and, when it comes down to it, there’s not a lot of things cooler than a vampyre… literally or figuratively.
