VAMPIRES!!!!

[AhabsOtherLeg]

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I like vampires. Do you like vampires? By talking about vampires, I believe we can expand our common knowledge of vampires. This might help those of us who like vampires to increase our enjoyment of vampires.

This interesting short video is interesting.

It's about vampires.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/ ... movie.html

[Maddy]

Ah, but are we talking Hollywood vampires? Mythological vampires? Narcissistic vampires? Or "real" vampires (people who live such a lifestyle)?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

All vampires, of all kinds. The narcissistic ones - psychic vampires who drain the will to live - maybe not so much. But there's no real reason to exclude them.

As well as the people who choose to live the vampire lifestyle, we can even have unwilling vampires like Richard Chase who genuinely believe they are vampires. There's no rules.

Did you watch the video? I thought it was interesting how he said fictional vampires tend to be more popular during times of economic hardship, hence the current throng of them, and their original filmic popularity in the late nineteen twenties/thirties.

We can have economic vampires too, but best not to have to many of them.

And political vampires:



Giuilio Andreotti

"Power is a disease one has no desire to be cured of."

This, coupled with his protruding ears, hunchback and long white fingers - all exaggerated characteristics of the real Andreotti - recalls Murnau’s Nosferatu, implying that Sorrentino sees Andreotti as a vampire who fed on the blood of Italy.

http://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/ ... 1/il-divo/

[Maddy]

I did watch the clip. It was cute! I'd heard that theory before, but I'm more inclined to go with the vampires = sex theory than the far-reaching one about economic crisis. And the comment about the kid movie (I'm horrible with names, sorry!) about it being revenge. I think there's a real connection there, as well. Vampires, as themselves, are supposed to be a form of undead spiritual demon (in their varying forms), and only Stoker began bringing them to light as sexual creatures. (Poor Stoker, having to live with his overbearing, feminist mother and so forth, I'm sure he had about a ton of sexual issues, not including his possible repressed homosexuality; e.g. Henry Irving.)

I'm a firm believer in psychic/narcissistic "vampires". I believe many of them do exist in the political realm, or any control-oriented environment (but certainly not only there). That guy you posted the picture of above is really spooky! He reminds me of the little guy in the Black Lodge.

I think those in the vampire "lifestyle" are generally harmless Goth kids/adults who see a beauty in darkness, but honestly have little true "darkness" in them. Their bloodletting is similar to bonding rituals, and also reminds me of those who "cut" for psychological release. Again, the sex thing surrounds this lifestyle, mixing with BD/SM. Lots of fantasy mixed up in this group, but very interesting people!

I'll have to actually wake up more and put some effort into a response about movies with vampires coming out now, but I've noticed that, as well as the resurgence of alien flicks. And I'm not functional enough to talk about mythology yet either. But I love this topic!

[IanEye]

HBO's True Blood- anyone watching?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I haven't actually seen True Blood yet, but I love the way Sunny describes it. She might be interested in the short analysis of it in the vid in the OP.

It definitely sounds like something I'd enjoy. Plus, my pal said he'd murder me if I had nothing to say about it next time he saw me, so I suppose I better check it out.

My favourite recent vampire programme is the comedy/drama Being Human, made by the BBC, about a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost living together in a house. It sounds stupid, but is surprisingly dark and adult at times - at one point equating vampirism with paedophilia, but more as a way of pointing out the dangers of vigilanteism. The vampires have a political structure in it too, and use targetted attacks to transform prominent people into vamps in order to infiltrate human power structures.

The head vamp is a cop as well, and not physically imposing, but scary nonetheless.

Some more political vampires from the UK:

The Conservative Party leader has been forced to step down after it emerged he had denied allegations he is a vampire. However, after extensive analysis of his DNA, Tory officials discovered that Mr Howard has all the necessary genes to be genetically classified as a vampire. In line with the recent dismissal of their Shadow Cabinet Minister Boris Johnson, the Tory Leader has been asked to step down with immediate effect.

http://www.randomperspective.com/page.asp?1news/2/075

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"Are you a friend of Peter Mandelson?" LBC's Andrew Pierce asked me when I walked into his studio at the weekend. Oh please. Do I look like a vampire?

After a further barrage of phone calls from Mandelsonhating listeners, he finally put out a desperate plea.

"Is there any Peter pal out there who will put in a word for the Prince of Darkness?" Strangely, the switchboard didn't light up. Not once.

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Maddy, I agree with everything you said, especially the "lifestyle vampires" acting dark and mysterious because, at heart, they're not.

The sexual angle will be interesting as well, but having just posted the pics I have I'm, eh, not in the mood right now.

[teamdaemon]

Peter Tosh - Vampire

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Vampires, as themselves, are supposed to be a form of undead spiritual demon (in their varying forms), and only Stoker began bringing them to light as sexual creatures. (Poor Stoker, having to live with his overbearing, feminist mother and so forth, I'm sure he had about a ton of sexual issues, not including his possible repressed homosexuality; e.g. Henry Irving.)

It's odd, I knew about Stoker's sexual repression, but not possible homosexuality. Repression of urges is definitely a central theme of the whole vampire thing. I think even in some of the older Central European myths the vampires had a sort of sexual function, like updated incubi and succubi. People talked of dead neighbours and spirits coming into their beds and "laying upon them". Hardly any mention of biting in the older stories - although of course vampires go a lot further back, and range far wider than medieval Eastern/Central Europe.

The Salem girls during the witch trials, most on the cusp of puberty (the time when most poltergeists also manifest) also talked of spirits laying on them and basically molesting them. Like you said, vampires were seen as spirits rather than physical beings - though they could inhabit physical beings.

I'm a firm believer in psychic/narcissistic "vampires". I believe many of them do exist in the political realm, or any control-oriented environment (but certainly not only there). That guy you posted the picture of above is really spooky! He reminds me of the little guy in the Black Lodge.

The Black Lodge is terrifying, and not only in fiction. But I always quite liked that little guy. Was more scared of Jimmy Scott for some reason... quite a vampiric figure himself, though not in reality.

There are definitely psychic vampires in the world. I don;t think many of them know what they are, though, or do it through deliberate choice. Either way, they can debilitate and weaken just by their presence.

Their bloodletting is similar to bonding rituals, and also reminds me of those who "cut" for psychological release. Again, the sex thing surrounds this lifestyle, mixing with BD/SM. Lots of fantasy mixed up in this group, but very interesting people!

Yes, I can understand how they see it as a kind of "sharing of the essence" and a "giving" thing, rather than anything sinister. Of course, there are those who cross the line, but I tend to think they're just bog-standard average murderers dressed up funny. It's a niche group, like the BDSM scene, so it'll draw unusual types, even ones who aren't there for the primary reason.

I love this topic!

Me too. Should say, though... I haven't actually watched a vampire film in years, and it's a long time since I read heavily about them. But it's The Lounge, so there's nothing to prove. Thanks for your thoughts, and lookin' forward to hearing more.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Peter Tosh - Vampire

That's awesome! Never heard that before. Thanks daemon.

[barracuda]

Don't forget this sweetheart.

[compared2what?]

I love vampires! I've always loved vampires! I mean in film and print, not in life, metaphorically or otherwise. Mark Kermode's wrong, though. Vampire narratives are always about sex. Including the ones that not only aren't remotely about sex in any way, but are emphatically about death, or isolation, or love, or power, or powerlessness, or the exploitation of the usefully idiotic bourgeoisie by the aristocratic ruling class, or the inherently socially traumatic nature of going to high school in Southern California, or....As a matter of fact, even some of the ones that are about sex aren't really about sex. Like Carmilla, for example.

Despite which, they're still all, without exception, universally about sex. Because all vampire narratives always are.

Unless they're the originally pre-Christian, unromanticized, Slavic folklore-type narratives that were drawn upon by both Bram Stoker and the earlier, less influential vampire-story-writers of the romantic and/or gothic (and/ or other unnamed and less formal, counter-Enlightenment, return-of-the-repressed Western-aesthetic/cultural) movements in which the basic vampire mythos and ethos as we know it unto this very day were developed. In which case, who knows what the fuck they're about? Apart from people whose ancient pagan traditions and beliefs happened to have been fully assimilated by Christianity over the course of eight or nine centuries during which their cultural views of sex and death and so on were entirely uninfluenced by any of the hang-ups commonly attached to those things irrespective of religion by pretty much every member of all the Western societies that evolved primarily under the auspices of Roman Catholicism, rather than some form of Eastern or Russian Orthodoxy?

Not me, that's for damn sure. But happily, my ignorance is 100 percent irrelevant. Because all vampires still derive their scarily alluring eternally undead strength and power from the same strong and powerful drives that have been refusing to stay dead for as long as every Western society that reached the early modern era by way of the formerly-Roman-Catholic route has been trying to bury them. As, for example, during the Victorian era, that having been when the progenitor of all subsequent vampires emerged into the world invested with the eternal attributes he'd picked up in the mind of Bram Stoker (an Irish Protestant with an interest in the occult, but whatever). Regardless of how rebellious some of his progeny have occasionally gotten wrt his old-fashioned and traditional ways, I'd say. Because rebellion is a reaction to the status quo, not an enduring replacement of it. And personally, I'm perfectly content to keep putting off any decision about whether they can count me out/in either (a) indefinitely; or (b) if and when they stop being rebels and start being revolutionaries. Because, for one thing, until then, they're always about sex, no matter what they're about. And I'm good with that. I mean, where's the problem?

I'm an unreconstructed social conservative on vampire-related issues, basically.

[compared2what?]

Also, there's nothing you can do to make me untrue to my guy. And Nosferatu is absolutely right up there on the list of my five most favorite movies that he did with Werner Herzog.



Such a cutie.

The opening credits of that move are actually kind of a little too reminiscent of the then-undiscovered vampire in barracuda's post for comfort. Which are also

WARNING: pretty frightening in a potentially triggering way just as they stand, here at this link

[Cosmic Cowbell]

Vampires suck....

[IanEye]

Disco Sucks

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Don't forget this sweetheart.

Check out the jaw on her! And for a minute I thought that thing was a fossilized tongue - though of course the tongue tends to be one of the first bits to decay.

The shrouds used to cover the faces of the dead were often decayed by bacteria in the mouth, revealing the corpse's teeth, and vampires became known as "shroud-eaters."

"To kill the vampire you had to remove the shroud from its mouth, which was its food like the milk of a child..."

Dear God, that's creepy. The sustenance of the grave. I like that people back then were always somewhat practically-minded and pragmatic about the undead, though - "Dig 'er up and stick a brick in 'er mouth. Problem solved."

Barra, you should definitely check out the video link C2W mentions above to the credits for Herzog's Nosferatu. Those mummies are very reminiscent of the brick-mouthed skull. Did you know those were actually filmed in Mexico, though, C2W? Neither did I, but apparently they were. They're incredibly strange to see, and I feel sorry for the people they once were, but I didn't find them frightening. Only the thought of one day being like them.

Who is like unto Werner Herzog, though?
And who can stand against him?

Nobody, that's who. Mark Kermode was interviewing him once at his house in LA when he heard a distant popping noise, and Herzog grabbed his own leg. "What was that?" Kermode asked. Herzog: "I've been shot."

He had too.

"Will I drive you to the hospital?!"
"No. No. It will pass."

Got to love that.

Klaus Kinski was scarier in real life than in any of his films as well, though he's great in Nosferatu.
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