by Matt Kaplan
Yet above all else, Stoker made Dracula a charmer. He was eloquent, aristocratic, and exceptionally good at winning over women. This element of Stoker’s monster may well have had a connection to the hypersexuality associated with rabies, may have stemmed from fears of rapists, or may have simply been an attempt to play upon societal fears of innocents becoming sexually corrupted in cities through manipulation. Regardless, the result was the construction of a monster that chilled readers to the bone.
Today, werewolves, vampires, and zombies still hold a deep fascination for society on the whole. Books like Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot and movies like Zombieland, Lost Boys, and The Wolfman (among many others) tie into the ancient fears of deadly corruption being contagious. Although rabies is no longer as much of a threat to the Western world as it once was, contagious disease certainly is. With the SARS, swine flu, and avian flu threats that have struck society in recent years, fear of disease is very high. Anyone can be a carrier… the plumber, the cabdriver, the waitress at the coffeehouse, a spouse, a child. They mean no harm, but in this modern age of emerging diseases, everyone is a threat, bringing us very close to the concept of the innocent who has become infected with vampirism. This could be the reason for the continued appearance of vampires and vampire-like monsters that spread their curse as an infection.
But there is more. Diseases have appeared in recent decades that, because of their ability to make people lose control of their minds, are somewhat similar to rabies and the poisons used by zombie makers. Dementia and the hardening of the arteries in the brain are well known to cause mental malfunction, but among the most dreaded is Alzheimer’s disease, where the mind is slowly attacked, memories are destroyed, and identity is stripped away. Worse, Alzheimer’s causes people to forget not only their friends and family but also social rules. Indeed, it is common for sufferers of the disease to lose their inhibitions, make rude comments, and exhibit sexually inappropriate behaviors.
Admittedly, Alzheimer’s and other disorders that lead to mental degradation are not caused by a bite or even airborne particles, but the fact that they are becoming ever more common makes the fear of losing control of oneself a very real threat. Fears associated with these diseases are likely leading to a certain level of modern vampire evolution.
In the novel Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Dementors, which guard the wizard prison Azkaban, are ghostly creatures that cast a chill over all that surrounds them and attack by feeding on happy thoughts. They do not bite with fangs or drain blood; rather, they drain away their victims’ happiness. Alfonso Cuarón’s cinematic portrayal of them is distinctly vampiric in nature—they make sucking noises as they hover over their victims and siphon off happy memories.
While Dementors seem somewhat undead in nature, what is scary about them is not so much that they might have returned from the grave but that they can damage the mind to the point where a person is left with nothing but his or her worst experiences. They leave their victims as husks of their former selves, tainted individuals who will never again be truly human. This is not much different from what happens to the victims of vampires who lose their humanity as they rise up as undead themselves, hinting that although the Dementor appears to be an entirely new monster, to some degree it is the vampire adapted to play upon the fears of today’s audiences.
Twilight years
Much of the discussion of how modern vampires terrify people leaves out a huge chunk of modern vampiric representation that is as popular as ever—the role of vampires as heroes. Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Blade, and Interview with the Vampire, to name just a few, all contain vampires that are partially or entirely good. Why establish a reversal from monster to hero? Nobody is putting Medusa, Chimera, or the Minotaur in the role of hero today. Why vampires? Part of the answer may be related to an ever increasing awareness of how easily corrupted we are that is leading us to be fascinated by heroes who must relentlessly fight their inner demons.
Unethical human behaviors are scientifically better understood today than ever before, and it is becoming increasingly obvious that there are not bad people and good people in society. There are just people who can, under specific conditions, be driven bad. As a zoological example, researchers can look at the behaviors of other species and predict what sorts of circumstances might make a typically helpful and devoted member of a couple give up on family responsibilities. Some marvelous work by Judith Morales and Alberto Velando at the University of Vigo in Spain and Roxana Torres of the National Autonomous University in Mexico looked at blue-footed booby males and worked out the precise conditions under which some males stayed to help look after the eggs and chicks that they fathered and others left the females to do all the chick rearing on their own.
The degree to which a male booby involves itself in family life depends upon two factors: how blue the feet of the female are and how large and colorful the eggs are. Females with very blue feet are deemed healthy because vibrant blue means they are eating well and not particularly stressed. Large and colorful eggs are also considered a positive sign of health. You’d think males would stick around with healthy females raising healthy chicks, but you would be wrong. Males give up on family participation under these conditions, presumably because they know they are leaving behind a family situation that can manage itself. However, males also give up when they discover that their mates have inadequate foot coloration and have laid poorly colored eggs, presumably because they figure the chicks are doomed and there is no way for them to make a difference. So when do males actually help? When things are bad, but not too bad, meaning the mother has poorly colored feet or the eggs are unhealthy-looking, but not both.69 Something about this mix of stimuli triggers a damage control mechanism in the male’s head that leads him to stick around and do what he can to look after the young. And it isn’t crazy to consider that fatherly behavior in humans might be somewhat similar. The deadbeat dad phenomenon could very easily be a simple matter of some fathers being exposed to specific conditions that trigger a difficult-to-control evolutionary response.
Psychologists are also conducting studies to determine what sorts of conditions must be present for a normally law-abiding member of a community to engage in criminal activity. Rather remarkably, a 2008 study led by Kees Keizer at the University of Groningen and published in the journal Science found that people littered and trespassed far more often if they were placed in an environment where garbage and graffiti were present than if they were in a clean environment. Yet the effects generated by the filthy environment were not limited to these minor transgressions. During one part of the study, Keizer’s team secretly monitored people who discovered an envelope with cash visible inside it (there was a small window in the envelope) that the researchers had placed sticking out of either a tidy and clean mailbox or a mailbox covered in graffiti and surrounded by litter. The envelope was stolen only 13 percent of the time when it was in a clean mailbox, but that figure rose to 27 percent in the filthy conditions. And these findings are not alone. A 2010 study led by Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto revealed that people are much more likely to behave selfishly when it is dark and they are unlikely to be seen. Similarly, a 2012 study led by Shaul Shalvi of the University of Amsterdam found that when people are asked questions, they are far more likely to lie if they must answer quickly than if they are given ample time to think things over. Indeed, just as the booby equivalent of deadbeat dad behavior is triggered by simple stimuli, it is becoming increasingly obvious that people tend to behave badly when specific conditions are present. In short, we are becoming sensitized to the idea that we are often in no more control of our lives than animals. And if a filthy alley can lead a person who would not otherwise steal to engage in acts of theft, and the wrong foot and egg colors can lead booby males to abandon their families, what conditions need to be present in a marriage to lead a husband or wife to enter an extramarital affair or resort to domestic violence?
Is
a rising awareness of just how easy it is for good people to go bad increasing our interest in heroes who are battling their own bestial natures in a very visible way? Vampires, it seems, display this beautifully. Certainly Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga fits this mold by choosing to feed only on the blood of animals and to befriend, rather than eat, Bella, the girl he finds so fascinating. Bill in True Blood behaves similarly in the first episodes of the series by spilling his own blood to save the life of Sookie. Angel, the love interest in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series, is in the same position, passionately kissing a woman whose protective crucifix burns his flesh. Even vampires who are sort of confusing to place as decidedly good or bad, like Louis in Interview with the Vampire, who refuses to take human life and chooses to feed on the blood of sewer rats for the first half of the story, endure this struggle. Moreover, many of these vampires experience pivotal moments where they are forced to duel with the monsters they truly are. To save Bella after she is attacked by another vampire, Edward must drink her blood and siphon away just enough of the evil vampire’s essence to keep her from being corrupted but not drink so much that she dies. Similarly, Louis fights his desire to feed on the servants of his plantation, trying—and failing—to protect human lives from his own nature.
An explanation of why vampires are being viewed more positively over time could also be similar to the reason why snakes turn up in mythology as both monsters and godlike creatures of creation and fertility. As discussed with dragons, in spite of their long history of killing people, snakes have sometimes been viewed as something akin to divine because they seemingly survive off of no food and appear to stay perpetually young by shedding their skins. It is possible that the element of immortality that has woven its way into the modern vampire myth is causing perceptions of vampires to function in a similar way. They evolved from a long history of fear of contagious disease but have now attained a form in the human imagination that possesses a trait many today covet. Just as snakes historically have been both feared as monsters and worshipped as symbols of fertility, the vampires’ role in society is changing as fear of them turns to enthrallment with their status as undying creatures. Could a key reason why vampires are now viewed as sexually attractive heroes be that they are presented as lovers who know no pain and who will be eternally young? It seems plausible, but there might be another element at work.
Vampires, as they have been known for so long, might now be entering their twilight years as the result of increasing scientific awareness. People knew next to nothing about communicable diseases when vampires first emerged as monsters, but this is no longer the case. When swine flu broke out, epidemiologists were quick to spot where the disease was appearing, how it was spreading, and, most important, how to contain it. Avian flu is an even better example. Researchers around the world are aware that the virus can, under rare circumstances, leap from birds to people and that some strains of avian flu inflict high mortality. This is why the disease is getting so much attention and why monitoring stations have been set up worldwide to keep track of how the disease is behaving (and evolving) in other animals.70 So fear of contagious disease is as present as ever, just as it was with the rise of vampires, but there is now a major difference: The vast majority of the population understands where the true monster resides.
Thrillers like The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak, The Hot Zone, and Contagion all give audiences a white-knuckle ride through the panic that could realistically strike if a horrific disease were to emerge. There is no question that the monster in these films is the disease, but this fact raises an intriguing question. Are these disease monsters merely a new form that the fears responsible for the rise of vampires are starting to take as scientific understanding spreads?
In Interview with the Vampire, the ancient vampire Armand comments, “The world changes, we do not. Therein lies the irony that finally kills us.” The point is that a vampire’s inability to cope with the ever-changing human world eventually leads to the vampire’s destruction. However, when taken in the context of vampires and their life span in society as monsters, the statement could not be more true. The world is changing, and vampires as they have been known for so long may soon no longer find a place in it. Their only choice seems to be to evolve into heroes that feed on animal blood, like the Cullens in Twilight, or on artificial blood, like Bill in True Blood. To do otherwise may be to face extinction.
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59 The Latin word sanguisuga literally means “blood” (sanguis) “sucker” (suga). It is understandable that the original translation used the word “leech” in place of “bloodsucker” since “bloodsucker” is not really a word typically thrown around in scholarly English… unless, of course, you happen to be writing a book about monsters.
60 Driving a stake through a corpse’s chest counts as meddling at the highest level.
61 “Buy our life insurance and we promise that our greed will ensure you are most certainly dead before we pay.” Not exactly an advertisement that any company is likely to use today, but let’s face it, they saved Hays’s life.
62 In some tales, these berserking warriors are said to have transformed into bears to maul their enemies. Whether the drugs they were taking led the warriors to view themselves as werebears or whether the sight of them charging in a bestial fury covered in animal furs led their foes to believe they had become animals is difficult to determine. Either way, it seems the toad was involved.
63 From a survival perspective, a bacterium or virus is in serious trouble if it finds itself in a small and isolated population. The disease will either kill off everyone and then die too when no hosts are left to infect or, under sunnier circumstances, everyone in the population will catch the disease, survive, and develop resistance to the disease so they never catch it again, a situation that also often destroys the disease. Pathogens depend upon having large numbers of people available to move through. This is why international travel is as much a boon to the diseases of the world as it is to economic development.
64 Romania is of course home to Transylvania and thus the epicenter of all things vampiric. At least, that is what the tourism industry would have you believe. Historically, though, there is nothing that connects Romania any more tightly to the origins of vampires than England, Belgium, or Hungary. It just happens to be the place that Bram Stoker chose as Dracula’s homeland.
65 Sounds almost like something out of a horror movie. Oh wait…
66 In case you are curious, the sources that document this do not specify whether this was with one partner or many.
67 Rabies is not the only condition that could have led the soldier to behave in this way. There are numerous drugs that can make people act like beasts and then fall ill. There is also a condition known as “excited delirium” that is starting to be recognized by medical communities. Sufferers strip out of their clothes, snarl and grunt like animals, lose control of their actions, become resistant to pain, and struggle fiercely when confronted. What causes the disorder is, to date, unknown but, like drug overdoses, it does not appear to be transmitted by a bite.
68 Yes, the antagonistic relationship between the werewolf Jacob and the vampire Edward in Twilight has a potentially scientific basis surrounding the scavenging behaviors of wolves in graveyards.
69 How do booby researchers test this stuff? They kidnap females when the males aren’t looking and use crayons to color their feet gray. Seriously, folks, this is cutting-edge science in action.
70 One of the coolest monitoring systems is in zoos in the United States. Because zoos have a wide variety of animals that are very closely watched by veterinarians, and because these animals have good access to wild birds (think pigeons and ducks), if a virus evolves that is capable of jumping from birds to other animals, it is likely to be spotted first in a zoo, where experts are now watching.
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8
The Created—The Golem, Frankenstein, HAL 9000, Terminator
“I’m sorry,
Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
—HAL 9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey
The idea of life being created by the hand of humanity is hardly new. The mythological Greek inventor Daedalus was famous for constructing wings that allowed him to fly out of the labyrinth he designed for the imprisonment of the Minotaur, but these wings were not his only invention. Classical writers described other wonders he built, including statues with lifelike qualities. The only evidence of these inventions having existed comes in the form of notes made by Plato in Meno: “The images of Daedalus… if they are not fastened up they play truant and run away; but, if fastened, they stay where they are.” Daedalus, it seems, had found a way to bring his sculptures to life, and if they were not chained to a wall, they ran off.
Yet Daedalus’s mechanical creations did not threaten anyone. They were curious and odd but never found harming humans, and it is this point that defines them as wonders rather than monsters.71 While many creatures “created” by the hands of gods turned out to function as monsters—Medusa, Scylla, and Chimera, for instance—there are no classical texts suggesting people ever created such things.