I don’t know why I start so many of my introductory monologues saying I was a horny teenager, but… to elaborate on what I’ve stated before, I was a horny GOTH teenager. Black clothes, black hair, leather spiked chokers, a love for vampires and – much like Ellen in Nosferatu – I didn’t know the source of my obsession. Now I do: I was 14 and felt like an outcast, and Spike from Buffy was really hot. Sometimes it’s just not that deep. As mentioned in the intro, the immortal vampire is so back in cinema’s this year, and I started wondering: how did we get here? How did we move from the bat-like creature to, like… Robert Pattinson with sixpack abs.
In film we often refer back to Dracula, the book written in 1897 by Irish author Bram Stoker, but the idea of blood-drinking night-walkers goes back way further. One of the earliest known vampire legends comes from ancient Mesopotamia and, even with being blood sucking pests, women did it first and get very little credit for it. The Lilitu or Lilith was said to be a demon-like entity who loved sucking blood, which like: don’t tempt me with a good time am i right?
But since the invention of cinema, Dracula has been the gold standard. Famously Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu pulled a “can I copy your homework, I won’t make it obvious” in 1922, which got him sued by Stoker’s estate for copyright infringement and all copies of the film destroyed. That iteration of vampire mostly represented sexual repression, an unholy power against the catholic church aaaand fear of immigration, with some saying Max Schrek’s Nosferatu quite closely resembles some pretty bleak antisemetic stereotypes of the time. The big hooked nose, thick brows, hunched back and, you know, immigrating from the east bringing plague and destruction…
But vampires, both as a myth and as a figure in cinema have evolved to reflect whatever society fears at the time, as well as its desires. Over time vampires have come to represent so much more: desire, immortality, loneliness. Each era’s vampire tells us something about the culture it came from; the fears of disease from the black plague to the AIDS epidemic, the sexual liberation of the ’60s, the yearning for eternal love in the ’00s.
While we mostly think of vampires as bloodthirsty monsters, in recent decades, the idea of the “good vampire” has become popular. With Ann Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, but also characters like Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Edward Cullen from Twilight show hot vampires struggling with their ‘can’t have your cake and eat it too’-nature, where they’re like: “oh no I wanna suck your blood but also: I love you.” Self aware kings, capable of love, remorse and self-control, making them more than the blood-thirsty symbol of pure evil, and more like tragic heroes.
At the end of the day, the vampire is a – pun intended – reflection of our darkest longings and our most painful realities. Whether it’s a grotesque, blood-drinking heavy breather or a sparkling himbo, the vampire continues to capture something about what it means to be human. And maybe that’s why we keep coming back to them—because, in the end, the vampire story is just a story about us.