Vampires come in all sizes

After reading Anne Rice’s Interview with a vampire, I feel I can say that the pop culture vampires are totally different then the way they started. Anyways, in this blog post I wanted to talk about the social understanding of vampires and some good examples of famous work.

There are certain rules and understanding that vampires have that they must abide by, I think the most understood one is they must drink blood to stay healthy and young.  Being immortal makes them older which in return makes the vampire really powerful. Vampires are photo or mirror sensitive, so they wont show up if you try to get a quick shot of one, but by far my favorite rule is the vampire must be invited in your home before they can come in. The idea of that is so unsettling, you have to basically accept this devil because he tricked you into thinking he or she is something they are not. These rules where established early on with some really popular and powerful works such as Dracula and Nosferatu.

Tod Browing introduced this creature in the early 1900’s with a title called Dracula. This is the first time where the vampire is really seen in our culture. There are old writings of creatures that are life sucking and evil that we could compare this creature too. The vampire is such a interesting idea, a beast that is virtually un killable that haunts you and wants to slowly get closer to you till he or she sucks your blood is so terrifying. Dracula was the birthplace of the vampire culture, but not long after Tod released this movie to the world, a movie by Nosferatu was introduced. Nosferatu was a totally different, but at the same time totally relevant. Actually so relevant Tod and his wife sued the director of Nosferatu and had all the copies burned, we are lucky to still have this movie in our lives due to hidden copies spread throughout Europe. Nosferatu was not as pretty as the Count, he was tall, disgusting and basically resembled a rat.

Some modern day films that took the origins and manipulated them into what people associate with vampires are Twilight and true blood; while these have good characteristics of vampires I think a great example is Byzantium. This movie really embraces important roles from Anne Rice, where the vampires have real emotion and moral, and even the vampire needing companionship and love. The movie is about two sisters who are moving in between towns in search of money and hopes of finding somewhere they can live happily as vampires.

I think as a culture we are moving on from the vampire phenomenon, but I'm excited to see what what pop culture will do to this genre in the future when we bring it back.