A Different Take on Vampires

“Listen to them, the children of the night, what music they make!” -Count Dracula from Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula

When we hear the word vampire, we immediately think of two things. One, an immortal creature that longs for blood, and two, the essential star vampire Dracula, the vampire whom other vampires long to be. In a nutshell, we think of vampires as creatures and supernatural beings with extraordinary powers who we love to read about and watch on television. The tale of the vampire has been told over the years in so many ways, from Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight (with lots and lots of vampire tales in between).

The one thing to note and consider here, however, is our perception of the vampire and how it is that we now glamorize something that simply shouldn’t be glamorized. Why is it that we don’t fear vampires? Where exactly did we go wrong, and why did this change? Well, technically, Dracula is a romance novel just like Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but I’ll save that discussion for another day. The way the media and authors have portrayed vampires usually runs the same...until now.

For every Dracula story and film, there’s always the same premise, the same idea: that Dracula is a vampire who wants his beloved back and stalks Mina because he longs for her while causing havoc around him. Underworld tells of the classic vampires versus werewolves battle, which, while fun to watch, is your typical beast A versus beast B fighting for supremacy of who’s the best of the best. Then you have your Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, which shows the flamboyant and sometimes over-the-top vampire Lestat and his many adventures. Then, of course, there’s the love and sex appeal we have given the vampire, the glamorization I referred to in the beginning. I’m not sure of the very book or film that did this, but it’s taken us to now, we have this affection and sex appeal for the vampire that just doesn’t make sense, yet we are used to it because it’s become the norm.

I myself have found a new approach to the vampire, one that I have not really come across in any other story or portrayal. In my series, Vampires, I talk about how vampires should be feared in the first poem, but then I tell of how vampires have become depressed and almost suicidal, and longing for death because no one fears them anymore. It goes into detail about how many just wish to walk into the sun or wish to get stabbed in the heart. The most recent poem in the series shows how the vampires are tired of feeling bad for themselves, and makes you remember who they are and just why they should be feared.

At first, when I wrote about the vampires being depressed and suicidal, it wasn’t my intention at all, as I just wrote what came to me at the time. From there, it took on a more interesting idea for me, so I expanded on it. I felt it was a different approach to the vampire lore, and there’s nothing sexy or glittery about them. The series is up to about six or seven(yes I’m not sure how many I’ve written at this point) but with the most recent being the fact that they want to strike fear into people again it will be interesting to see if I could keep it going but so far nothing is in the works of another poem in the series. Vampires can be portrayed in many different ways, and even as suicidal, depressed immortals who are just so over life.

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