Vampires 102 – the blood thing
Vampires are blood suckers, right? It’s sort of the whole point. Yet the original myths don’t focus on drinking the victim’s blood.
Originally, everybody knew what vampires (or the local equivalent – the stories stretch across Europe, through Asia, and around the Pacific, each time under a different name) were. No-one needed to be told about the abilities or the anatomy. Lament that the days of vigilance have gone.
Instead, the stories hammered home the idea that, no matter what, you do not go anywhere near vampires. The punishment was quite consistent; if you didn’t run away from the vampire and hide yourself beneath a pile of protective herbs, amulets, and religious symbols, you were going to die. The method changed with the different locations (the award for most artistic method has to go to the strigoi, or Baltic region vampire, who decapitated its victims, then tore off their lips and used them as a paintbrush), but it was always painfull.
Only when the legends reached English literature did the focus change. Interestingly, England doesn’t have a base of vampiric legends and never has. This meant that people like Bram Stoker had to first establish exactly what a vampire was. And then they weren’t believed. Don McLean’s Starry, Starry Night applies just as much to Stoker’s Dracula as to Van Gogh’s Vincent. Alas, they did not listen and they believed the legends to be false. Lord, lord, what fools these mortals be…
And so, because the English know nothing about the vampiric threat that menaces them, we must cover the sordid issue of blood. “The blood is the life!” cries Renfield, mad servant of the count in Stoker’s Dracula. This is the main reason for drinking blood throughout the legends. Once the vampire develops as more than a brighter-than-usual zombie, the legends state that the vampire must drink blood in order to survive. Different vampires have different tastes as to the victim and the type of blood. Some appear to be just as content to drink animal blood as human, whereas others insist, not just on human, but on type of human. Many of the Pacific region vampires demand pregnant women as their victims, drinking the blood of both mother and babe. This is partly because they consider the taste to be better, but also partly revenge. These stories say that the vampires were created from women who died in childbirth and are trying to revenge themselves on the world by bring the same fate to other women. Clearly, these are twisted creatures.
The above covers the older vampire stories; stories from a time when people knew the perils they faced. Today, people have no such understanding. Unlike many other forms of undead, vampires are not stupid. They are insidious, and worm their way into society, hiding who they are under claims of “make-up” and “dieting”. This has led modern authors to forget the dangers that vampires pose, and thus modern fiction is full of the “nice” vampire”, the “misunderstood” vampire, and the “vampire as a metaphor for alienation, lack of acceptance, and ethical dilemas in modern society”. The obvious example is, of course, Twilight, a clear attempt by the vampires of today’s society to make themselves seem acceptable, and even pitiable. Do not be fooled. Other examples are less blatant. Neil Gaiman wrote a collection of short stories (called Smoke and Mirrors), containing several about vampires, and how they are to be pitied. A most unfortunately deluded individual. These modern vampires insist that they do not drink blood, or at least that they do not drink human blood (here the animal rights activists join our cause). This is a lie. Leopards do no change their spots, and vampires do not change thei drinking habits.
Be watchful. Be wary. Be armed with the truth.
