Let's get political

The vampire-as-political metaphor is nothing new. But did you know mainstream interest in vampires might say something about which type of government is in power?

Well, American political party, anyway. S Peter Davis wrote this compelling piece on '6 mind-blowing ways zombies and vampires explain America.' The article is based on data collated from Mr. Science Show, in which a comparison table is drawn up between Republican and Democratic presidencies and the popularity of vampire and zombie films during those interims.

The table kicks off with the presidency of Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in 1953. Davis's caption reads, 'And apparently all our apocalypses started with Eisenhower', as the article notes two zombie flicks released that year.

That's an interesting comment, because the following year, a novel was released which would have a significant impact on fictional vampire and zombie portrayals. The novel in question? Richard Matheson's I am legend (1954), which deals with an apocalyptic vampire plague. How significant was it? Put it this way: if it wasn't for that book, the marauding, flesh-eating zombies you know and love, would not exist.

As I've mentioned before, the modern zombie genre stems from George Romero's 1968 film, Night of the living dead, which is funny, because his creatures weren't intended to be zombies in the first place. Indeed, in the movie, they're called 'ghouls', a name derived from Arabic foklore, for a demon that feasts on the flesh of the dead. The reason they weren't called zombies, is because zombies, traditionally-speaking, aren't undead, flesh-eating, infecting corpses. They're undead slave labourers, controlled by a bokor; a sorcerer. Rather than shooting them in the head, feeding them salt will send 'em back to the grave.

That's why (actual) zombie flicks released before 1968 stick to the zombie-as-slave trope. Take Victor Halperin's White zombie (1932), Jacques Tourneur's I walked with a zombie (1943) and John Gilling's The plague of the zombies (1966). Occasionally, modern representations of the sorcerer (read: mad scientist) were used, as in Jerry Warren's Teenage zombies (1959). Even the cannibalistic overtones in Del Tenney's I eat your skin (1964) are a misnomer: no skin is eaten during the movie.

Somewhere along the line, the 'ghouls' of Romero's flick were morphed into 'zombies', extant Voodoo lore to the contrary. Zombies didn't infect others with their 'curse', a major trope associated with modern zombie flicks. That's a vampire trope, i.e. one featured in Romero's 'inspiration', I am legend. I use quotation marks for 'inspiration', because Romero, himself, admits that he did a little more than simply be 'inspired' by Matheson's novel: 'Then I read I Am Legend and adapted - well, actually ripped off! - the first half. And made it into Night Of The Living dead.'

Anyway, back to the political stuff. I was surprised to see the following image appear in Davis's article:


I wasn't surprised with the startling imagery of Obama as a vampire (not the first time I've seen that), but because the picture has been shamelessly 'vampirised' (heh heh) from Alex Ross's famous cover for The Village Voice:


Ross's image was used to illustrate Rick Perlstein's article, 'The end of democracy: losing America's birthright, the George Bush way.' What we have here is a political tool called zoomorphism. Its purpose is highlighted by Joël Kotek: 'To abuse one's adversaries, one dehumanizes them by turning them into animals.'* Funnily enough, this practice has been deployed against me, during my investigations in the Highgate vampire case.

* Kotek includes vampires in this category: 'The two other predominant anti-Semitic zoomorphic motifs are the blood-thirsty vampire and the octopus.'

Vampire Apocalypse!

In the previous entry, I recounted a discussion on which supernatural entity poses a greater risk to the human race: vampires or zombies.

It touches on both the contagious nature of vampires and zombies in film, and a common zombie movie/literature trope: the zombie apocalypse.

Wikipedia defines "zombie apocalypse" thusly:

a particular scenario of apocalyptic fiction that customarily has a science fiction/horror rationale. In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread (usually global) rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization. Victims of zombies may become zombies themselves. This causes the outbreak to become an exponentially growing crisis: the spreading "zombie plague" swamps normal military and law enforcement organizations, leading to the panicked collapse of civilian society until only isolated pockets of survivors remain, scavenging for food and supplies in a world reduced to a pre-industrial hostile wilderness.

You might be wondering that if the vampire and zombie are both capable of infecting others in their kind, why haven't there been more works on vampire apocalypses? After all, Wikipedia doesn't have a corresponding article for vampires.

That's a good question, and one I might attempt to answer in another entry (cop-out, I know).

In the meantime, I'll give some coverage to a little-explored subgenre of vampire fiction/film - the Vampire Apocalypse. But first, a definition of this term. Let's go with this: 1) fictional scenarios by which vampires have either orchestrated the end of the world or subjugated humanity. An offshoot of these scenarios, are 2) apocalyptic works in which vampires prominently feature, but aren't responsible for civilisation's demise.

We begin with this premise on a microcosmic level.

The prototype - and close parallel - of the Vampire Apocalypse is the vampire-infested village, town or city. Usually, this trope involves depicting the progression of a gradual vampire epidemic, which the protagonists slowly become aware of, and fight against. The best example of this is Stephen King's seminal 'Salem's Lot (1975), set in the fictional town of Jerusalem's Lot, Cumberland County, Maine.

Tony Randel's 1991 comedy-horror movie, Children of the Night, focuses on a vampire plague that sweeps through the nondescript town of Allburg. Steve Niles' 30 Days of Night (2002 - ), began life as a story about a vampiric invasion of Barrow, Alaska, where the sun stays down for 67 days during winter. It was later made into a movie.

The 700-year-old Hungarian vampire prince of Robert R. McCammon's They Thirst (1981) is far more ambitious: the novel chronicles the takeover of Los Angeles.

Ideal contributions to the Vampire Apocalypse genre, however, deal with global infestations of vampirism. Interestingly, when this avenue is pursued, it tends to align itself with the science fiction realm. Thus, Alan Hyder's Vampires Overhead (1935) details the invasion of a horde of giant, bloodsucking vampire bats from outer space, while Richard Matheson's highly-influential I Am Legend (1954) has most of the world's population turned into vampires byway of biological warfare and Colin Wilson's The Space Vampires (1976) has astronauts inadvertently transporting energy-sucking extraterrestrials back to Earth.

On a different, more traditionalist tack, F. Paul Wilson's novella, "Midnight Mass" (1990) heavily relied on Christian symbology and re-introduced the supernatural back into the Vampire Apocalypse world. The story was expanded and published as a novel of a the same name, in 2004.

Derek Gunn's "Vampire Apocalypse" series (A World Torn Asunder, 2006; Descent into Chaos, 2008; Fallout, 2009) posists that vampires have emerged from the shadows of human greed and corruption, to take over the world. But, are also in a supernatural mould in that they, too, fear crosses and holy water and can shapeshift into bats.

Robert R. McCammon edited a 1991 anthology titled Under the Fang, which is composed of a batch of Vampire Apocalypse stories by members of Horror Writers of America.

The last strain in the Vampire Apocalypse genre are works in alternate history; fictional history or real. Or both. Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" series (Anno Dracula, 1992; The Bloody Red Baron, 1995; Dracula Cha Cha Cha, 1998), presents a situation in which Van Helsing and his band of vampire hunters were unable to stop Dracula's invasion of Britain, incorporating a volume of references and characterisations from fiction and real life. Brian Stableford's The Empire of Fear (1988) preceded Newman's work, but had Richard the Lionheart as supreme vampire overlord, rather than the Count.

Vampires or Zombies: Which Takes over First?

Yes, it's a question as old as mankind: zombies or vampires - which one poses a greater threat to civilisation?

Fortunately, the folk at Geek Blips have compiled a pool of experts (read: bloggers) to discuss this contentious issue.

To be honest, the issue seems somewhat redundant, as the vampires and zombies mentioned are primarily of the cinematic variety. I mean, the vampire of, say, the Twilight (ugh) universe has little in common with the meandering, bloodthirsty Slavic corpses of days gone by. Or, as Paul Barber puts it in Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988):

If a typical vampire of folklore, not fiction, were to come to your house this Halloween, you might open the door to encounter a plump Slavic fellow with long fingernails and a stubbly beard, his mouth and left eye open, his face ruddy and swollen. He wears informal attire - in fact, a linen shroud - and he looks for all the world like a disheveled peasant (2).

Not quite Edward Cullen, there.

That's not to say that the modern-day movie zombies fares much better.

Contrast the vicious, flesh-hungry, mindless drones that infect their prey with a single bite, to this:

A zombie is a creature that appears in folklore and popular culture typically as a reanimated corpse or a mindless human being. Stories of zombies originated in the Afro-Caribbean spiritual belief system of Vodou, which told of the people being controlled as laborers by a powerful sorcerer.

That's right. Cheap labour for witchdoctors.

In fact, fictional representations of vampires are largely responsible for the modern conception of zombies on the screen.

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) was the prototype of the modern zombie move. Yet, strangely, the "z" word is not even mentioned in the entire movie.

So, what inspired him?

Here's a snippet from an interview with Fears Magazine, in which he discusses its genus:

GEORGE ROMERO: Well, I ripped off the first idea of dead coming back to life from "I Am Legend" when I did "Night Of The Living Dead."

FEARS: We'll call Richard Matheson up and tell him [laughs].

GEORGE ROMERO: Oh, I've told him. He knows! [laughs] He also knows that I never made any money from it—otherwise, he said "I'd be after your ass!" [laughing]

For those not-in-the-know, Richard Matheson was the author of I Am Legend (1954); a sci-fi/horror novel that sees its protagonist, Robert Neville, as the only known human not to have succumbed to a bacteria that has decimated mankind.

The infected come out at night, react to garlic and are killed with stakes to the heart...I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.