Vampires have long been romanticized. However, if one reads up on some of the more ancient, classic vampire legends, particularly those from Eastern Europe, it quickly becomes clear that a vampire isn't a beautiful, romantic creature; it's a freaking WALKING CORPSE! As one scholar put it, originally, being bitten by a vampire was about as romantic as being bitten by your dead Uncle Boris.
The concept of the vampire as more than just a walking corpse came about because, as well as being immortal, they were well-nigh invulnerable (fire was bad...and decapitation...but most other stuff was just a scratch. Oh, and staking wasn't originally to kill them...it was to pin them down so you COULD kill them...so you had to drive the stake ALL THE WAY THROUGH.) Invulnerability=you don't rot=you are eternally young/the way you were, which is a very attractive prospect to some.
John Polidori, the doctor to George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron (you know...Lord Byron...the poet) can
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| John Polidori |
The Vampyre, published in 1819, was a popular success, spawning adaptations, imitators, and spin-offs for many years to come. It can be blamed for a good deal of the portrayal of vampires as good-looking or sexually attractive characters, as the character was based on the handsome, seductive, and rather charismatic Byron. Suddenly, the vampire was not simply a walking corpse wandering about at random to find a victim whose blood would sustain its life force. Now, the vampire was a canny creature, befriending and often seducing its prey. Authorship of the tale was originally attributed to Lord Byron, though both he and Polidori later attempted to correct that notion.
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| J. Sheridan Le Fanu |
The year 1872 saw another important development when J. Sheridan Le Fanu published his vampire story Carmilla. The tale introduced a new vampire archetype, one that still fuels male (and some female) fantasies: the lesbian vampire. Some would argue the point, but the character Carmilla pursues only female victims and she approaches them in a manner which, while typically restrained for that era, is rather obviously sexual.
The romanticization of the vampire was a sort of a romanticization of illness as well, since many of the common "symptoms" of a vampire or their victims closely matched those of tuberculosis, often considered a disease of the young and of poets and of lovely, fragile people. In 1897
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| Bram Stoker |
Vampires continued to be a staple of fantasy literature and theater; later, of course, they moved to the big screen, thrilling cinema goers with depictions that were nothing like what a villiager in, say, medieval Romania, would have expected.
With the advent of television, vampires had yet another place to be all seductive and evil. Then came Barnabas.
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| Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins |
But then things turned a corner. The show's viewers, many of them children and teenagers, were so enthralled by Barnabas that what had originally been intended as a one-off character for a few weeks/months became a permanent fixture. And he went from being evil to hating what he was, wanting to change. In short, Barnabas was one of the earliest examples of the tormented vampire in popular culture. Which brings me to my next point.
Most people don't consider the fact that vampirism would, of course, have its downside. You'd live forever, thus watching any non-vampires you loved wither and die around you. Also, due to the time-age-speed paradox, you'd go mad as time flew by the older you got. Barnabas, for example, describes time thusly: "For most men, time moves slowly, oh so slowly, they don't even realize it. But time has revealed itself to me in a very special way. Time is a rushing, howling wind that rages past me, withering me in a single, relentless blast, and then continues on. I've been sitting here passively, submissive to its rage, watching its work. Listen! Time, howling, withering!"
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| Juliet Landau as Drusilla |
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| Anne Rice |
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| Vampire Junction, the first Timmy Valentine novel |
In the previously mentioned "Buffyverse", vampires retain less and less of their human appearance as they age, eventually always having the demonic appearance they originally only bore when feeding.
So, there you have it. We romanticize vampires because immortality seems like a good idea. We want creatures who live forever to be eternally beautiful and, in most cases, sympathetic. We don't want to imagine being bitten by walking corpses 'cos ICKY!
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| Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen: Maybe he's born with it...maybe it's Maybelline. |
***BIG GIANT HONKING ADDENDUM***
An alert reader from Facebook pointed out that I neglected to mention one early example of the "self-loathing" vampire in the form of Varney, a character from a mid-19th century British penny dreadful novel. I didn't mention him initially because many of my readers probably haven't heard of him or read his story, but then it occurred to me that I am here to educate. So yes, Varney was probably the first example of a vampire who was tormented by the facts of his existence, thus leading to Barnabas, Nick Knight, et al. But Barnabas was the first in a filmed medium (I'm sorry, the Bela Lugosi Dracula and most that immediately followed him were pretty happy with what they were, or at least relished the blood-suckage)
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