The Psuedo-Parasites Among Us

If you've been half-awake during the last fifteen years you may have noticed that among the younger consumers of popular culture there is, among the lovely youth, a fascination with, and love for, vampires.

Your faithful correspondent traces the start of this fad to Anne Rice's novel Interview With the Vampire and the motion picture made of the same novel starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt (or was it Val Kilmer?) and Kirsten Dunst (what kind of proper name is Kirsten, anyway? Is it a misspelling of Kristen? An atheist form of Christine? Is the male form of the name Kirstofer?). It was with the publication of the novel that the character of the vampire became a romantic figure instead of a parasite, a freak, or just plain damned.

Since that time Tom Cruise has become a Scientologist, Brad Pitt hooked up with a freaky bird (Val Kilmer has pretty much disappeared) and Kirsten Dunst became Spiderman's girlfriend. And a vampire ethos and culture emerged.

We here at Bloody Nib Manor are no strangers to the spooky. The name of the Manor, itself, sends shivers of fear among the urchins polluting the streets of the Eastside. But the fear inspired by Bloody Nob Manor has nothing to do with vampires. We just host various prosaic ghosts; Tudor ladies carrying their heads under their arms, mad monks searching for chaste maidens to despoil, a pearl-eyed phantom mastiff roaming about in the garden. But we have no vampires and will not host vampires despite our nieces' love for the Twilight series of novels,

We will have no truck with blood-suckers simply because vampires are nothing more than leeches, ticks, fleas in human form. There is nothing romantic about a damned being that wants nothing more than to take an involuntary transfusion from one whether that being look like Louis Jourdan or Barbara Steele.

But, of course, we at Bloody Nib Manor tend to be of a more Victorian sentiment and outlook than the average Goth/Neo-Vampire. The Victorians had their problems, but they had some sense. They realized that evil is evil no matter how pretty it looks.

Now, in the United States, we have people who want to be, or pretend to be, vampires. In this writer's opinion these people, if they were to see a real vampire (an impossibility since there is no such thing as a real human physical vampire; psychic and emotional vampires are another matter), would find themselves surprised to find that their vampire was more of a wolverine than Tom Cruise.

But people are stupid and they see what they want to see and pretend what they want to pretend. An example would be Renaissance Faire re-enacters who do not seem to realize that if they had lived during the Renaissance they would more likely be scrambling to provide bread on the table than being a knight, queen or lord.

At the end of this post is an article and television report about Neo-Vampires in Tampa Bay, Florida (of all places) who meet monthly to celebrate their vampireness. If one watches the video one will see a group of rather unattractive Goth girls and the men who want to take advantage of them. The women would be much better off, if they insist upon wearing fishnet stockings and corsets, to re-enact the Moulin Rouge during the fin-de-sicle in France. At least then they might get their portraits painted by a midget instead of giving their blood to a freak more interested in getting a shot of leg. And the guys with the black clothes and fake choppers will get a shot of leg from these silly girls.

V is for voracious: Vampire culture unveiled - St. Petersburg Times