Denis Lukyanov Why do we read about vampires 13:53

When you think about what to write on the occasion of Bram Stoker’s birthday, you surely come across a banal connotation that you want to criticize. Of course, “Dracula” comes to mind. And since running away from the paranormal is a pointless attempt (it did not lead to anything good for Gogol’s Homu Brut, and so did the heroes of Turgenev’s mystical stories), it’s time to look into the face of it, that is, the paranormal, and see it. Here it is… true, not tragic, rethinking Vlad the Impaler, but charming vampires, the trend of which has long been thundering in both literature and cinema. Or is the past tense inappropriate here?

But we should only be grateful to Stoker for the impetus towards the “commercialization” of vampirism – this is how it happened in the 20th century. But it was Stoker who saw the literary potential of the bloodsucker, felt the depth of character possible in someone who lived hundreds of years (if this can be called life), and was probably one of the first to endow the paranormal with power. human quality: moral grayness, the ability to combine both good and evil in different proportions. The vampire as a mythological character has always been nothing more than a galaxy of otherworldly images that make it possible to confront the reader – or, if we are talking about the oral tradition of legends and campfire tales – the listener with transcendent reality. – that which cannot be understood. And all images related to death and the afterlife are a priori. After all, this is death itself. It is incomprehensible, but a collision with it is inevitable.

But the greedy (for its part) 20th century suddenly saw in the vampire tradition a good potential for mass circulation, as if it were just another can of tomato soup (correction – with thickened blood). It all actually started with the banal film adaptations of Stoker’s “Dracula” – not so scary and dynamic for a moment, a classic example of an epistolary novel, that is, a novel written in letters – and resulted in “Pulp fiction” or pulp fiction The abundance of seductive vampires and monsters, as they are called, is an important phenomenon of American literature; They are very cheap and, to put it mildly, not very complex novels with often sexualized images of the heroes. heroes on the covers. These stories were sold in large quantities. In other words, the vampires attacked on two fronts: Some lacked depth, entertaining the reader; Others, countless reinterpretations of Dracula, forced the viewer to think and return to the original source. And soon depth gave way to mass.

Later, the vampire became a meme.

But it is a meme in a more subtle sense. Not just a funny picture, but a stylized image that requires a huge chain of associations once you see it. It seems to contain much more meaning than it seems at first glance. If you want, The vampire became an integral archetype of popular culture, and that’s when all the fun began. From Twilight and Interview with the Vampire to numerous horror movies and a nostalgic feature-length cartoon set in the Scooby-Doo universe, featuring a Kiss-inspired rock band, bloodsuckers and mysteries (Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire).

Partially excluded, such vampires attract young viewers not only with their hypertrophied sexuality (as, for example, the other half of the audience is attracted by the same hypertrophied witches who suddenly turn from creepy old women into insidious seductresses), but also their otherness. A wave of stories about the chosen ones has already swept the literary and cinematic worlds; then an antidote was needed – an image that could be both an “exile” not of this world and a central character. Surprisingly, the pop-cultural conflict of all the stories about vampires of the late 90s and early 2000s is like a drop of water, resembling the typical conflict of the romantic era – the hero versus society; A hero who searches for answers in the otherworldly, incomprehensible, transcendent and at the same time is himself a part of this most incomprehensible. Double exile is worse for a stranger in his own country than a stranger in his own country.

But that was the last century, so the beginning of this. So how are things going now? The vampires, whose paths to our everyday life were unwittingly opened by Stoker, retreated into the shadows and only peeked out from the shadows when they were finally ready to surprise the reader and viewer with something unexpected, a fashionable outfit.

A new approach is a rethinking of the established image.

Louis XIV could suddenly become a vampire, and behind him – the entire nobility of Europe (“Dark Court” by Victor Dixen); vampires may find themselves in a Soviet pioneer camp (“Food Block” by Alexei Ivanov); can occur in a techno setting and deal not only with gore but also with memory (Tanya Swan’s “Taste of Memory”); they can be young adventurers, as if trying to repeat the success of Ostap Bender (Rita Hoffman’s “Miracle Catcher”); they even turn out to be the secret rulers of humanity, who have been sucking “babos” for thousands of years (“Empire V” by Victor Pelevin). This new approach almost always works through some form of syncretism, a collage method. The authors somehow combine a recognizable image (the same “meme”) with an era that is not specific to it. Often, young and old bloodsuckers grow into modernity and return to their original essence; They become metaphors for the darker sides of ourselves. Or, if you look deeper, they become archetypes, but not of pop culture, but of modern life: it is worth taking at least the series “Vampires of the Central Zone” (archetypes of the national character) or “What Are We Doing in the World”. Shadows” (types of our contemporaries, colleagues and neighbors). A familiar and recognizable image, as it should, absorbs new meanings and therefore becomes even more attractive. There is no longer a need to steal women’s hearts or wink warmly from the pages of books or television screens.

The circle closed and the countless bloodsuckers became Stoker’s sad Dracula; We are reflected in a distorted mirror that is dusty and gloomy.

The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.