(A companion piece to my earlier article on vampires...)
It is no surprise that, when humanity began to romanticize the vampire, the werewolf would also be enthusiastically reimagined and reinvented.
Where once the two sorts of creature were on something of an equal footing, being night-walking terrors that one wouldn't want to tangle with, they are now rather like opposite sides of the same coin flipped in the dark of a moonlit night. The vampire is now most often seen as the slick, sophisticated monster, a gentleman (or woman) out for blood, seducing their victims along the way. The werewolf, on the other hand, is ever the animal, a person transformed, whether through chance, fate, or will, into a ravening beast.
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Why Vampires are OHMIGOD SOOO Romantic.
(This post started life as a set of comments on the blog of a friend who just doesn't understand why people so romanticize a bunch of walking corpses. It was really an attempt to explain why they are romanticized when, face it...they're just dead people who drink blood. It was first fully posted in this final form on my entertainment and pop culture blog, Exhaust Pipe Potatoes and it seemed a fitting starter for this blog...)
Vampires have long been romanticized. However, if one reads up on some of the more ancient, classic vampire legends, particularly those from Eastern Europe, it quickly becomes clear that a vampire isn't a beautiful, romantic creature; it's a freaking WALKING CORPSE! As one scholar put it, originally, being bitten by a vampire was about as romantic as being bitten by your dead Uncle Boris.
The concept of the vampire as more than just a walking corpse came about because, as well as being immortal, they were well-nigh invulnerable (fire was bad...and decapitation...but most other stuff was just a scratch. Oh, and staking wasn't originally to kill them...it was to pin them down so you COULD kill them...so you had to drive the stake ALL THE WAY THROUGH.) Invulnerability=you don't rot=you are eternally young/the way you were, which is a very attractive prospect to some.
Vampires have long been romanticized. However, if one reads up on some of the more ancient, classic vampire legends, particularly those from Eastern Europe, it quickly becomes clear that a vampire isn't a beautiful, romantic creature; it's a freaking WALKING CORPSE! As one scholar put it, originally, being bitten by a vampire was about as romantic as being bitten by your dead Uncle Boris.
The concept of the vampire as more than just a walking corpse came about because, as well as being immortal, they were well-nigh invulnerable (fire was bad...and decapitation...but most other stuff was just a scratch. Oh, and staking wasn't originally to kill them...it was to pin them down so you COULD kill them...so you had to drive the stake ALL THE WAY THROUGH.) Invulnerability=you don't rot=you are eternally young/the way you were, which is a very attractive prospect to some.
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