Effect of Vampires on Society

When you hear the word vampire you probably regain of todays modern charters, from Twilight or sure Blood. According to the article Blood Ties, The vampire L everywhere By Helen T. Bailie, Todays vampires make up hold up 53% of todays book sells. vampires in todays image lease run cr finishures of lust, the dream man of teenage girls all over the world. Before go forth husbandry took over vampires in stories, were whales of horror. Pre-dating todays shovel in culture fad, vampires were utilize to rationalise amours that plurality didnt understand, aroundthing scary and un make don. So what has caused all theses c feedes in vampire stories over while?Changing them from fe atomic number 18d unknown demons to every teens heartthrob. To find show up where the change came from well look at what the original vampires were concept to be and the legends associated with them/ Then Ill review the primal stories of vampires followed by the examination of stories from todays pop culture. Finalizing where the transfigure came from. Following up with the impact that the impact that these stories could be having on society today. * * Vampires date h nonagenarian up to practically the dawn of date. But the vampires that originated were position to be a type of blood- sucking corpse.The first vampire sightings were by the Slavic community bear appear during the pump ages according to an article titled Was the vampire of the 18th century a unique type of dead corpse written by G. David Keyworth an article nigh the early legends of vampires. Vampires were originally archetype to be created by all kinds of divergent ports, corresponding women that didnt demand to be housewives, or that hopeed to do other things rather than cooking, cleaning and tending to the children were often thought to be under the spell of a powerful vampire.The Slavic mint believed that vampires were made from improper burials, universe born out of wedlock, or just being born on a certain day. art object the Romanian deal caught onto the vampire trend quickly after the Slavic, Romanians thought vampires were made from women that didnt eat salt during the pregnancy, and stock-still being the 7th child in the family of the same gender. The ways that vampires were made may await odd to you and I but they were things that in the early days of the middle ages were considered wrong or contrastive from the norms.Todays science helps explains nearly of the things that were thought to be considered the marking of a vampire to be invalid. For example believed that swelling or discoloration of the body after deaths were signs that the deceased was going to come back as a vampire. We now know that the rigor mortis sets in and causes most(prenominal) things post mortem that were thought to be signs of vampirism in the middle ages. * The people of these communities did their best to forbear new vampires from rising out of the ground.They tried to advanc e animals from crossing over the graves, ensuring a proper burial and placing a ton of boulders and rocks on the graves to fete the corpse firmly in the ground. There has even been pre-staking the person through the heart and then staking them into the ground. search as they may their preventive measures didnt always work and there was distinct evidence for a vampire being around. Most of these early communities had the same clues that a vampire was running amuck.When livestock disappe ard or vacateed up dead, blood on the mouth of the body, the body being swelled up holes in the ground, and similarly vampires didnt eat the garlic given out during church ceremonies. Killing vampires in the early days was middling straightforward, drive a steak through its heart, shoot it through the coffin or shove garlic into its mouth. From this of course emerged men that could be hired to track down and protrude the vampires through out the town, everything from church priest to an actual vampire hunter, what we would now relate to as some wholeness that was like wagon train Helsing.How easily vampires were killed in the stories of the middle ages arent in uprightness explained but considering the need for vampire hunters, I think it would be unhazardous to say it wasnt easy. Though Romania was were the original vampire stories begun, vampires apparently thrived in England during the middle ages. (Keyworth 243). Most deaths did occur because of being around old corpses but generally because of the diseases that they carried. An anonymous monk at Byland Abbey wrote majority of the stories of vampires.The monks and high relgious leaders of these towns came up with these legends because they believed in vampires, but they likewise used them to control the people of their town. By doing the right thing during life you could prevent yourself from becoming a vampire in the afterlife. So basically the religious leaders played on the fears of the towns people to keep th em in church and keep them in line. One of the more famous stories of this cadence was of two brothers that fell down dead one day and were buried only to be seen later that night walking through the own. (Keyworth 245). These stories spread and at last the whole world was on vampire alert. These stories continued well on into the 1900s ultimately end off slowly as the scientist learned more about humans, the body and how it worked. The first gaffe in these stories was from the taradiddles of monks to an actual novel written by Bram Stocker. genus Dracula, a tommyrot still talked abut today, Dracula was really the introductory novel to bring vampires into fiction works.The story of a man that travels to buy property in Transylvania from Count Dracula, realizing shortly after getting to the castle that he is a prisoner and the Count has superhuman powers. Slowly the jonathans fiances, friend is converted into a vampire, she is sleeping walking and frequently has strange marks on her neck, Van Helsing is called into help but inevitably fails, the friend and Jonathans wife are both eventually converted. (Spark notes/ count Dracula).Dracula was a big step he really brought in the fear of the unknown and represents the simple regression on youth. Draculas first film in the United States dates back to 1931 where the foreign brass was centralized on, really making him seem like an outsider, from there the next change in Dracula came about in the 1970s where we were introduced to the genre of vampire stories told by the vampire, allowing the audience to regain his alienation, to almost feel sorry for him and even though he was evil to feel an almost compassion for him.The final shift in the Dracula movies came in 1992, where Dracula was cast as a love struck freak making him even more human, more relatable but on the downside easier to defeat, making him a typical Hollywood character instead of the monster that he began in the late 1800s After the 1970s i nterpreting of Dracula there was another book that came out that really kept the trend going of the relatable vampires.Anne sieves Interview with a Vampire, along with having the turned on(p) vampires that were alienated from society, these vampires were proficienty capable of feelings, something that before the 70s really wasnt thought of, her vampires feel guilty, they keep fears, hopes dreams and of course infinite sadness. During this time is also when gender roles really started to be challenged, vampires could now be women. Sometimes the most powerful vampires were in fact women.Women not playing victim but being the same as their male counter area took a big shift in most of the vampire novels and stories. The seventies were really a time of change for the vampire stories. The Vampires that were introduced in Interview with a Vampire brought the first real sense of sexuality, it had been in stories before but it wasnt main(prenominal)stream, but erotic sexuality betwe en the vampires and their victims that of course were usually women became a huge exposit of these stories and the ones that would come after.But it also introduced homoeroticism, something that was completely taboo, and put a new hot go up into the vampire scene. Sexuality continued to be played up in following books and stories from the subtle cues in Interview with a Vampire to the monsterized aggressive distaff sexuality to the lesbian vampires f of Great Britains Hammer studio (Weinstock 4) from this to the BDSM and polygamy of the Anita Blake series. Sex both same and different sex became a huge part of the vampires identity in todays pop culture all starting here.If the monks that wrote the horror stories of what they thought were real vampires during the middle ages heard the stories of today, they would probably start flinging holy water while laughing at what society had come to think of the monsters that had plagued their cites. Vampires, which started out as a way to control the city, keep people in line, and to explain the unexplainable. Now you look at Vampires like Edward Cullen, Bill Compton or Stefan and Damon Salvatore, even Selene, which are all vampires and major heart throbs of today.Everywhere you turn there seems to be another vampire coming out and a huge teenage fan base to follow. The vampires in all of these stories bring a different light to the traditional vampire story, the most famous and noticeable being the vampires of Twilight that sparkle in the sunlight instead of bursting into flames. The characters in these stories are all part of what is described as the emotional vampire, An emotional vampire is defined is a vampire that has turned from his monster tendencies and has started trying to follow human moral philosophy and are fighting the struggle. Unknown par 36). This new generation of vampires was created by women for women, according to the article gallant Vampire Kissers about the vampires in todays most popular bo oks and shows, by Bernard Beck. Beck goes on to explain that vampire movies have more or less becomes chick flicks. In the article Vampires, Vampires Everywhere Jeffery Andrew Weinstock explains the main principles of todays vampire stories, the first being that they are always about sex, vampires represent a tabooed sexuality, simply vampires are naughty.Another part of vampire stories is that vampires themselves are more interesting than the humans that surround them, some how even though they are the undead vampires are more alive than the humans that are around them. Vampires are imperial, selfish, domineering and intensely physical, lurking beneath the human facade is pure animalistic sinew (Weinstock 4). Its this energy that usually draws the reader to the vampire of the story.The third main part of any vampire story is that the vampire comes back, go its because the vampire dies by stake through the heart or the vampire leaving on his own accord for the safety of the humans around them, they always come back, they return because the humans balk to let them die, refusing to let go. Some stories use voodoo to get them back from the dead, or in crepuscle Bella simply jumps off a cliff to get her vampires to come back, I wouldnt always reference for the attempted suicide path, it may not be as effective and have some spoiled consequences.One of the last pieces of the vampire puzzle is that the vampires are always considered outsiders, or other. Different articles have different theories on what vampires may represent as outsiders weather its coming out of the coffin being like coming out of the closet, so the vampires represent the fear of homosexuality in our society or weather it represents race or even weather its a representation of how we just cant seem to escape the gender roles that have been in place for thousands of years.The simple fact is that the vampire is an outsider in the community that it is in. Maybe this to is part of the allure tha t draws the females of this generation into these stories, that they are outsiders and the maternal instinct to take dread of all things make the female in the stories feel such sympathy in the book, or story that they are in. But how did we get from point A the terrifying animated corpses to point B of the sparkling lover vampire? The answer is really pretty simple Vampires are a malleable monster that have become what society has made them.As a society we no longer fear what the people of the middle ages feared, because we have cleared things up through science and technological advances, and our higher reasoning that vampires hold outt actually exist, so we have turned them more or less into fairy tale creatures. Making them as cute and cuddly as a teddy bear in most cases. These stories focus on love that is worth dying for because today most people have a deep inner fear of never finding that kind of love. Paired with this is the fear of getting old or at least looking like you are getting old, the vampires stories in pop culture coddle those fears.The article Meme of the Year Loving the Undead states that Vampires are the most relatable among the sci-fi, fiction and fantasy characters. Also most vampires in pop culture are wealthy and devastatingly handsome which plays off two things that have become very important in todays society, money and good looks will get you pretty much anywhere, pick up and news magazine and this will be confirmed. The worlds in Twilight and True Blood are centered around mystery and deception, love and sex, (Unknown2, par 2) The reason that the vampire stories have shifted so much over the course of history is because humans themselves have changed.Vampires have evolved into what humans want them to be, because they can easily look human and attempt to mesh into our world it brings us to these characters that are full of mysterious and speak to the side in most women that want a bad boy thats good to them. The books of Twil ight, True Blood and Vampire Diaries are flying off the shelves at bookstores and keeping an psychotic amount of viewers for their movies, or shows.Adults and teenagers both flocking to these new emotional vampires, now a large part of this is no doubt because of the looks of the men and women cast in these stories. But the shift in vampire stories has go forth a genre that doesnt have women in their typical role in the kitchen or doing female dominated jobs. But the Females in these stories are falling for the male leads in almost an unhealthy way becoming pretty much dependent on the men in their lives to keep them emotionally stable.It makes you esteem how this could be psychologically affecting the minds of tweens and teens that are obsessed with these stories. The main offender of this is the book and movie phenomenon Twilight, and the ideal boyfriend Edward Cullen. Though there arent enough studies to show the exact effect that literature and movies have on the brain, scien tist do know that they have and effect on the mind according to the journal A Boy Friend to Die For by Debra Merskin about Edward Cullen being a compensated psychopath.The point of her article is to prove that Edward Cullen is a compensated psychopath (CP). A compensated psychopath is someone that in innately psychopathic and on the higher end of it but has learned to function in society. In the book Bella becomes completely dependent on Edward ordain to almost kill herself to just hear a hallucination, and is willing to give up humanity just to be with him.Edward is controlling and manipulating of Bella, doing what he thinks is best for her to stay safe but usually just hurting her more in the process. Edward tells her who she can be friends with and when she can hang out with them. He tries to keep her from her best friend because he doesnt approve. Edward also twist the truth when he speaks to Bella telling her only what she needs to know and leaving the rest out, often not even bothering to tell her whats going on at all and Bella just keeps following him.Edward has so many of the traits in a classic case of compensated psychopath, he doesnt have a real since of morality, psychopaths also dont have the ability to feel real love, though Edward says he loves Bella the only thing pouring through the novel is the sexual tension, Edward realizes that the instant gratification of drinking Bellas blood would kill her and there would be nothing left for him to gain, this is stereotypical for CP, finding that you have to wait for your prey. (Merskin 155)All in all, Edward could be a great man for Bella but he has so many of the traits the psychiatrist would relate to having CP that its a little hard to imagine. The Vampire is the bad boy of the paranormal world (Merskin 152) but having teenagers who are still growing and finding themselves subjected to creature that is supposed to be perfect yet exhibits these behaviors is emotionally electronegative because thes e girls project and in turn want to find someone like their fiction character crush. In conclusion vampires are the monsters we make them.Society changes the image of the vampire due to what they need, they want and what their true fears are. Vampires started out with ill-considered legends and those that were sworn to see them all dead. Vampires in Slavic times were just control elements and explanations of what at the time could not be explained, monsters that stalked the innocent women. Bram Stokers Dracula and Anne Rices Interview with a Vampire were the next big jumps during the 70s changing them to the beginning of the emotional vampire and introducing the pure roguishness and sexual aspect, also making them relatable to the public by giving them emotions, hopes and desires.Finally come to todays pop culture, written by women for women, the irresistible bad boys of todays fiction world, a complete turn around, from ugly disgusting still live corpses to the sparkly vampires t hat teens and adults around the world have come to know and love. Is this love safe? No most likely not, but well just have to see what shift the vampire world makes next, hopefully back in the direction of monster.