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The Battalion
Page 3 • Tuesday, October 28. 2003
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^VAIPIEES ^
By Jimmy Hissong
THE BATTALION
It's pretty much the general consensus among college students
that tests are hard, professors are tough and textbooks are boring.
At least students aren’t damned to walk the earth with an eternal
hunger for human blood, assuming the previously enrolled vam
pires have already graduated.
The vampire legend invented more than a century ago has
grown to common trick-or-treater knowledge today. Speculation
on the size of vampire hype would place it slightly below were
wolves, but significantly ahead of the creature from the black
lagoon. Frankenstein and vampires tie. Dracula would likely win
a fight, though.
Hungarian myths dating back to the 12th century form the
backbone for many of the character traits of the modern vampire.
The fear of ghouls such as the Incubus and Succubus, who rose
from the grave and sucked the blood of the living, predate
Dracula.
Imaginative authors have developed and evolved the vampire
creature into an immortal being with the ability to climb walls and
transfonn into a bat.
“For the most part, everything we think of as a legend or myth
is created by a literary writer,” said Dr. Dennis Berthold, a pro
fessor of gothic literature.
Berthold said nearly all of the stories surrounding fang-bear
ing, garlic-hating vampires can be traced to a single source: Bram
Stoker’s “Dracula,” published in 1897. The imagination and inno
vation of Stoker’s work have encouraged a number of artists to
explore the undying topic for more than a century.
Silent filmmakers of the 1920s furthered the vampire legend
by bringing the impossible abilities of vampires to a screen before
an audience’s very eyes. Writers such as Anne Rice have modern
ized various vampire tales, renewing their popularity for modern
readers.
“Roughly speaking, the vampire is pretty much a creation of
modern literature,” Berthold said.
Berthold said perhaps the reason the myth and legend sur
rounding a race of undying bloodsuckers has grown to the extent
they have over the years is that most vampire works incorporate a
sense of realism. Stoker and other authors use pseudo history.
There really was a count living in Transylvania centuries ago,
and while he wasn’t the nicest guy, he likely hasn’t roamed the
earth for the past five centuries.
The count’s queer habit of impaling his enemies on roadside
pikes earned him the nicknaxpe of Vlad the Impaler, but history
and storytelling have renamed the count Dracula.
rt A vampire changingIffib a bat strictly comes but of Stoker’s
novel, and of course it makes sense because there really are such
things as vampire bats. But about the worst thing they’ve ever
done is bite some cattle,” Berthold said.
Rice also frequently incorporates a sense of reality into her
works of fiction. Her novel “Interview with a Vampire,” later
turned into a film, centers around a seemingly non-
fictional interview with a man who claims to be a
vampire.
“If we get scared by things that are really
weird, we aren’t really scared because we know it can’t
happen,” Berthold said. “It’s not as scary as a more real
istic kind of literature. You could be scared for a moment,
then get over it and dismiss it as a fairy tale.”
While vampire tales might make it difficult for a chosen
few to walk unescorted at night, there is a general limit
to their acceptance by the masses as a source of
real terror.
“They are probably one of the
scariest monsters, but then again
they kind of remind me of
mosquitoes,” said Keri
Bell, a sophomore
English major
Regardless of
some believability
issues, vampire
tales have sur
vived, while
stories, such
as space
alien clowns
tend to enter
tain minimal
success.
Vampire leg
ends tend to deal
with two basic human infatuations:
Death and sex.
“It speaks to some kind of human
need to be able to deal with mortality and the possibility that the
body will decay or change in some sort of way, and it becomes a
way of confronting your own death. You aren’t just the same as
your body,” Berthold said.
Tones of sensuality are just as evident.
“The stories are always about a female in
distress,” Berthold said. “It’s late at
night. Somebody’s chasing her
and wants to get her alone.
They may not rehlly want to
suck her blood; it’s just a
metaphor. Sex is definitely
right on the surface in many stories.”
Although vampire stories and vampire
superstitions tend to be commonly
known, the acceptance of the existence
of vampires is still confronted by skep
ticism.
“If vampires were real and they
were really immortal, we’d have them
running around everywhere,”
Berthold said.
Based on
that idea,
Texas A&M
has a lot of
work to do to
meet its diversity
vision for the year
2020 (which by the
way is exactly 558
years since the sup
posed emergence of the
vampire, Dracula.)
The vampire presence
in and around A&M is still
extremely minimal.
Ryan McCabe, a senior
Finance major, believes stu
dents who sleep a lot during the
day and are on the prowl at
night are likely candidates for
modern-day vampires.
“I don’t know about vampires,
know I am not a vampire, but I
am more active at night. I guess
that’s because cell phone minutes
are free after nine. Plus I sleep all
day,” McCabe said.
Vampires or not, the
American Red Cross Brazos
Valley Blood Bank said it is
more than ready to serve
the area’s needs. Non
vampires are likely to
eceive preferential
treatment, however.
Seth Freeman • THE BATTALION
2 MILLION INVESTORS.
80 YEARS’ EXPERIENCE.
1 WEIRD NAME
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