Category Archives: vampires

On Van Helsing

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Professor Van Helsing is a tribute to rational empiricism that has met the supernatural and had to back off because the experience did not square with reality. I like Van Helsing because he is so grounded in his science and empiricism that he is the true paradigm of rational thinking and practice. Yet, Van Helsing is faced with a situation that does not fit within the neat theories and hypothesis of his enlightened scientific experience. Through observation and experimentation, Van Helsing has cast his lot in life far from emotion, superstition, irrationality, and the supernatural. He writes books, carries out experiments, teaches his classes, is a paradigm of the enlightened scientist, the rock on which we build our reality. Yet, his situation, though a completely imaginary one, is problematic in the sense that he is faced with the larger problem of a reality–an undead, dead person–that cannot exist in his world. The philosophical implications of facing the existence of Dracula are vast and troubling. You are either a rational empiricist who cannot “believe” in such things, or you abandon your empiricism and throw in with the holy water, garlic, cross, and stake. Our empiricism protects us from foolish pseudo-science such as astrology, palmistry, quiromancy, numerology, tarot, Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster, werewolves, vampires, and necromancy, but is that all there is in this world? I have always sided with Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – Hamlet (1.5.167-8). Still, the philosophical problem persists even if only in our imaginations, hoping against hope that we never have to face this situation in the real world.

On cemeteries and graveyards

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What could I possibly say about cemeteries that has not already been said? Seriously creepy, still, morbid, sad, pastoral, cold, lonely, desolate, the destination from which no one returns but the gravedigger and the clergy. You can call the local bone pile anything you want, but it never stops be exactly that: a bone pile, a pile of bones. That which is left when we die, the mortal combination of bone and flesh, unmoving, unfeeling, unseeing, is not but the leftovers of a life that burned brightly for a short amount of time before the soul took its leave, leaving only ash and emptiness behind. I am not convinced that there is any point in burying bodies in the ground. There are health issues for doing it, but the mortal remains of any person are only what remains after death. In spite of what Dr. Frankenstein might have alleged at some point in the past, bodies cannot be regenerated or reanimated once the end has come. There is a limit to what modern medicine and empirical sciences can do with the spark of life, but then again cemeteries are monuments to defeat and the inevitability of death, an inevitability that gives us all energy and passion, knowing that all mortal things are finite. Cemeteries are clearly about memory, creating memory, creating a monument, mourning, loss, the past, and leaving it behind. We build cemeteries because we fear death and need to put it inside an official area where we normally don’t go. Yes, we go to cemeteries to leave flowers, mourn for the dead, and to leave the newly dead, but otherwise our legends and mythologies are designed to scare away the curious and the foolish. The living know only too well that death is only always too close, but that by isolating death in a special place, death is far away and removed. The tombstones are iconic of both death and memory, and although they carry the names of the dead, the stones are a reassurance to the living that they are, indeed, alive because no stone yet carries their particular name. The cemetery is then both attractive and repellant to the living, a normal by-product of a healthy society which cannot conceive or understand the true nature of life’s final mystery. All will go to the cemetery in their time, and so in our sadness and loss, we erect monuments and stones to the memory of the departed. The stones do nothing to alleviate the sadness of loss, but the simulacrum of funerals, burial, and departure are traditions and rituals which distract us from the business at hand, saying goodbye to a loved one. For outsiders, the cemetery is a completely different kind of place: an inscribed history of a place, the people who lived there, and the people who still live there. Cemeteries, when cared for, are pleasant, quiet, pastoral scenes which are good for thinking and relaxing. What is sad, however, are the forgotten cemeteries which herald changing times and displaced civilizations, forgotten families, the abandoned dead. Perhaps cemeteries exist because the living fear being forgotten at all. Yet the brutal reality of time and memory is the cruel truth that at some point in the future, we will all be forgotten. The physical never endures. Poetry endures, words endure, stories endure. The details may fade, but the essence of art, poetry, words, will endure even when the faces are forgotten. So we dig the graves and plant the headstones.

On vampires

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Seriously? Vampires? The rational empiricist in me says this topic is dead even before it gets started. Some people are totally obsessed with the figure of the vampire, but the vampire only has life because people fear death, the dark, and premature burial. The “life” of a vampire is completely antithetical to the sun-loving, light-loving normal human being who wears a cross and eats garlic bread until it bleeds from their pores. People generally fear that which is completely unlike them. Unless we can see our mirror image, we are afraid of all “others”. The vampire couldn’t be more “other” because they don’t drink…wine. Vampires “live” at night, sleep in their coffin during the day, drink blood, simulate sex by biting their partner (okay, forget that, some people also bite, or so I’ve heard), cannot bear to be out in the daylight, don’t eat food, don’t age, and don’t die. A psychologist might suggest that humans construct the vampire in order to embody all of their own irrational fears about life. The very solitary nature of the vampire’s so-called existence is also antithetical to the gregarious nature of most humans. The thing is, vampires don’t exist, but human fears do. The vampire moves through the dark of night, inhabiting the shadows and corners of the human mind where fear dwells and the unknown makes its nest. With all the pressure of the modern industrial world, and let’s face it, the vampire is a product of modern industrialism, unbridled commerce, and uninhibited capitalism, human beings cannot for a minute pretend to cover all of their responsibilities brought on by work, school, marriage, children, church, and social organizations that pull on their time and energy. The vampire appears on the urban scene when time poverty is everywhere, sleep comes at a premium, and the pressure to succeed at all costs comes from every corner–business, home, society. The vampire is a cold, blood-thirsty primitive animal that arises out of that primordial mass of irrational thought that resides at the bottom of the brain, driven and fed by all of the really negative energy of emotion, fear, and hate. What makes the vampire particularly interesting is that it feeds by sinking its fangs into the throats of its victims and sucking out their life’s blood and recreating itself by killing its victim, engendering a new line of vampires, of the undead. Undead is neither alive nor dead, but something interminable between the two where life neither progresses nor ends. The undead are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, not fitting the criteria for either one. Why humans fear all of this is, of course, highly irrational because no such beast has ever existed, exists now, or will exist at some time in the future, but the strange erotic attraction people feel toward the figure of the vampire is real and creepy. Some goes as far as having actual fang dental work done, so they can more easily simulate the most notable characteristic of the vampire. The necro-erotic, homo-erotic, and hemo-erotic psycho-sexual undertones that run through all vampire literature only add to the global attraction that mortals feel toward this dangerous supernatural creature. It is weirdly ironic that it is usually a man of science a la Van Helsing that occupies itself with eradicating the menace. Vampires are a real physical manifestation of our irrational fears—creating a literal body upon which these fears are inscribed: undead, darkness, fear, violence, self-loathing, hate, ire, violence, death, and blood. The vampire is then, by default, us.

On vampires

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Seriously? Vampires? The rational empiricist in me says this topic is dead even before it gets started. Some people are totally obsessed with the figure of the vampire, but the vampire only has life because people fear death, the dark, and premature burial. The “life” of a vampire is completely antithetical to the sun-loving, light-loving normal human being who wears a cross and eats garlic bread until it bleeds from their pores. People generally fear that which is completely unlike them. Unless we can see our mirror image, we are afraid of all “others”. The vampire couldn’t be more “other” because they don’t drink…wine. Vampires “live” at night, sleep in their coffin during the day, drink blood, simulate sex by biting their partner (okay, forget that, some people also bite, or so I’ve heard), cannot bear to be out in the daylight, don’t eat food, don’t age, and don’t die. A psychologist might suggest that humans construct the vampire in order to embody all of their own irrational fears about life. The very solitary nature of the vampire’s so-called existence is also antithetical to the gregarious nature of most humans. The thing is, vampires don’t exist, but human fears do. The vampire moves through the dark of night, inhabiting the shadows and corners of the human mind where fear dwells and the unknown makes its nest. With all the pressure of the modern industrial world, and let’s face it, the vampire is a product of modern industrialism, unbridled commerce, and uninhibited capitalism, human beings cannot for a minute pretend to cover all of their responsibilities brought on by work, school, marriage, children, church, and social organizations that pull on their time and energy. The vampire appears on the urban scene when time poverty is everywhere, sleep comes at a premium, and the pressure to succeed at all costs comes from every corner–business, home, society. The vampire is a cold, blood-thirsty primitive animal that arises out of that primordial mass of irrational thought that resides at the bottom of the brain, driven and fed by all of the really negative energy of emotion, fear, and hate. What makes the vampire particularly interesting is that it feeds by sinking its fangs into the throats of its victims and sucking out their life’s blood and recreating itself by killing its victim, engendering a new line of vampires, of the undead. Undead is neither alive nor dead, but something interminable between the two where life neither progresses nor ends. The undead are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, not fitting the criteria for either one. Why humans fear all of this is, of course, highly irrational because no such beast has ever existed, exists now, or will exist at some time in the future, but the strange erotic attraction people feel toward the figure of the vampire is real and creepy. Some goes as far as having actual fang dental work done, so they can more easily simulate the most notable characteristic of the vampire. The necro-erotic, homo-erotic, and hemo-erotic psycho-sexual undertones that run through all vampire literature only add to the global attraction that mortals feel toward this dangerous supernatural creature. It is weirdly ironic that it is usually a man of science a la Van Helsing that occupies itself with eradicating the menace. Vampires are a real physical manifestation of our irrational fears—creating a literal body upon which these fears are inscribed: undead, darkness, fear, violence, self-loathing, hate, ire, violence, death, and blood. The vampire is then, by default, us.

On horror stories

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Human beings are fascinated by horror stories–obsessed, one might say. From our earliest times we have created narratives filled with monsters, ghouls, trolls, ghosts, and creatures whose only purpose seems to be threatening or killing people in out of the way places, dark houses, empty castles, lonely highways, cold mountain passes, haunted spaceships, lonely planets, and creepy little towns. The very space created within the horror narrative is menacing, ghastly, deserted, dusty, filled with cobwebs, forgotten spaces. Both attics and basements are particularly hazardous spaces, but empty jungles, strange swamps, and wind-swept mountains can also be problematic, especially if you are a scientist in an out of the way place such as Antarctica, a space ship on its way to Mars, an old freighter navigating a long way from its home port, at the bottom of the sea. All of these spaces are a long distance from a safe port and speak to the inherent danger of far away places, places that are unknown and unsafe. Strange beings–half man, half reptile–inhabit these places waiting for their next meal to come along. Most of these narratives begin innocently enough with calm seas and smooth sailing, blue skies and light winds, before things start to go wrong. A crisis ensues, a problem arises, a computer goes haywire, a storm blows up, somebody ignores a warning, and the bottom falls out–a ship sinks, a monster gets loose, communications break down, an earthquake occurs, a volcano erupts, a typhoon strikes, and the characters start to die in horrible and miserable ways. In the middle of these narratives, a hero arises who must fight to overcome the obstacles, monsters, and spaces that lie between him/her and safety. We consume these stories as if there were no tomorrow. They seem to reflect some of our darkest fears of abandonment, of the unknown, of the dark, of technology, of power, of the future, of change. We fear that we are poisoning our world, that technology is moving ahead too fast, that space is a dangerous place, that there are unexplainable supernatural things that are not dreamt of in our philosophy. The archetypal ghost stories seems to be a paradigm inherent in any serious discussion of the genre–a strange place, a vengeful ghost, isolation, mayhem. Perhaps horror stories haunt our collective psyche because the raise existential questions of the highest order: who are we, what is our purpose in life, what does all of this (life) mean? So we let the vampires, werewolves, and mummies run through our nightmares, hoping against hope that they will stay there.

On horror stories

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Human beings are fascinated by horror stories–obsessed, one might say. From our earliest times we have created narratives filled with monsters, ghouls, trolls, ghosts, and creatures whose only purpose seems to be threatening or killing people in out of the way places, dark houses, empty castles, lonely highways, cold mountain passes, haunted spaceships, lonely planets, and creepy little towns. The very space created within the horror narrative is menacing, ghastly, deserted, dusty, filled with cobwebs, forgotten spaces. Both attics and basements are particularly hazardous spaces, but empty jungles, strange swamps, and wind-swept mountains can also be problematic, especially if you are a scientist in an out of the way place such as Antarctica, a space ship on its way to Mars, an old freighter navigating a long way from its home port, at the bottom of the sea. All of these spaces are a long distance from a safe port and speak to the inherent danger of far away places, places that are unknown and unsafe. Strange beings–half man, half reptile–inhabit these places waiting for their next meal to come along. Most of these narratives begin innocently enough with calm seas and smooth sailing, blue skies and light winds, before things start to go wrong. A crisis ensues, a problem arises, a computer goes haywire, a storm blows up, somebody ignores a warning, and the bottom falls out–a ship sinks, a monster gets loose, communications break down, an earthquake occurs, a volcano erupts, a typhoon strikes, and the characters start to die in horrible and miserable ways. In the middle of these narratives, a hero arises who must fight to overcome the obstacles, monsters, and spaces that lie between him/her and safety. We consume these stories as if there were no tomorrow. They seem to reflect some of our darkest fears of abandonment, of the unknown, of the dark, of technology, of power, of the future, of change. We fear that we are poisoning our world, that technology is moving ahead too fast, that space is a dangerous place, that there are unexplainable supernatural things that are not dreamt of in our philosophy. The archetypal ghost stories seems to be a paradigm inherent in any serious discussion of the genre–a strange place, a vengeful ghost, isolation, mayhem. Perhaps horror stories haunt our collective psyche because the raise existential questions of the highest order: who are we, what is our purpose in life, what does all of this (life) mean? So we let the vampires, werewolves, and mummies run through our nightmares, hoping against hope that they will stay there.

On Dark Shadows star Jonathan Frid/Barnabas Collins

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Jonathan Frid, the Canadian actor who played the melancholy vampire of the ultimately campy and strange soap opera, Dark Shadows, died Friday in Hamilton, Ontario. He was 87. The production values were low, the dialogues were melodramatic, and the special effects were horrific, but not because the show was scary. For an eight-year-old, the show was incredibly spooky, frightening, and creepy. I guess the production values for a daily soap opera lent themselves to a campy, gothic, soap opera about witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, curses, the undead, and general supernatural salad that probably invented a few new ghouls and goblins. The best part of this outrageous production was watching all the actors play their roles straight as if they believed every word. One often did not know whether to scream in terror or laugh because it was so funny. The show was a parody, a complicated riff as it were, on the whole idea of soap operas: people fall in love, they fall out of love, they are greedy, they fall in love with the wrong person, violence ensues, people disappear, they reappear, somebody gets their arm cut off, there is a fire, a monster lurks somewhere in this dark old house, at least one character turns into a werewolf, somebody lets the vampire out of his coffin, someone gets pregnant, another fire ensues, and so on. Soap operas are played with no specific end in mind. They are continuous, which is particularly interesting if you are a 175 year-old vampire who is looking for a lost love who has been reincarnated, conveniently, in the ravishing 21 year-old daughter of the creaky (creepy) mansion’s patriarch, the great-great-great grandnephew of said vampire. So now we can add incest to the list of creepy behaviors crawling through this soap. Frid fell into this role and became an instant pop icon of the period. In an era before video-taping, people would stay home to watch the soap, which was filmed and shot in a very tantalizing way: never show the monsters or the blood, unless it’s the Friday episode and you want to leave people hanging. The show would be immersed in the most inane dialogues about ghosts and witches and such and the thing would never really progress. Show me the monster! Yet it would progress just enough to keep it interesting, a kind of soap opera striptease. Frid played the role of the melancholy, misunderstood, but blood-thirsty vampire probably better than he ever wanted to. Fangs, cane, strange bangs, ruddy cheeks, he oozed vampire from every pore, and of course, the women watching from home could only guess what those fangs might feel like on their own throats. The show was a campy romp through repressed Victorian sexuality that played quite well on television, and Frid starred in more than six hundred episodes before it finally burned itself out, which is the only logical end for a soap opera this strange. Tip-of-the-hat to a great actor who turned into a pop icon vampire, and only ever flashed a smile when he knew lunch was about to be served. He never drank…wine.