There is something inherently erotic about the vampire.
Bodies pressed up against one another, the victim’s neck and chest exposed to the night air, probably whimpering from fear, with the vampire lurching above, sharp incisors bared and ready to plunge deep into soft skin.
It’s hot.
Vampirism in fiction is nothing new. With their roots largely based in Eastern European folklore, the traditional blood-sucking vampire has graced our screens and pages more than we care to admit. Can the vampire be back if it never really left?
My most recent 5-star read was V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Marketed as Schwab’s “toxic lesbian vampire” book, as the merchandise tote bags coin it, I think Bury Our Bones is a herald of a trend that’s been creeping around the shadows for a good few years now, waiting to be invited inside with high collars and sharp teeth. I think it marks a distinct return to the classic vampiric literature that would have Carmilla and Dracula rolling in their graves. Or rather, coffins.
From the gothic genre’s inception, largely with Frankenstein in 1818, it becomes clear how rampant technological development generates stormy weather, ornate buildings, and body horror as a response. The second that fear can be smelt on the wind, gothic literature seems to come a-calling. Monster literature, in particular, tends to see a resurgence in periods of disillusionment and social tension. It can be a comfort: no matter how scary things societally get, there could always be creatures with huge teeth and big claws outside your door!
If you did HSC English, you’d remember that Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a response to societal tensions surrounding said technological advancements, particularly fears surrounding what it means to be alive, medically, and to warn against playing God. It is only natural, then, that as we see AI models appearing at every turn, seemingly growing more emotionally connected by the day (go have a look at Gemini AI sending itself into a terrifying spiral and then come back to me) that we return to this similar fear.
Kane (2006) argues that vampire media, up to his point of publication, can be separated into three main cycles: the Malignant Cycle (1931-1948), the Erotic Cycle (1957-1985), and the Sympathetic Cycle (1987-2006). However, I would argue that we’re too far out to still be grouped within the Sympathetic. Too much vampire media has been released since Kane’s text, and it adds too much to the conversation to ignore it. Twilight, What We Do in the Shadows, the new Interview With The Vampire series, Hungerstone, Baldur’s Gate 3, Sinners, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil—lately, vampires have been more humanised and given more redeemable (and sometimes more erotic) qualities than ever.
Welcome to Stage Four. (I couldn’t think of a fierce name for it. You’ll just have to trust me.)
Vampires have always been the symbol of the outsider. They’re creatures of the night, with their teeth sharp and their tongue sharper, charming and dangerous and everything you need to protect your sweet lovely submissive young women from. They’re the paramount symbol of debauchery, living in the intersection between fear and eroticism, and in the current social crucible it only makes sense that we’re gravitating towards them again.
In the face of rising conservatism, traditionalism, purity culture, and fascism, sex is framed as shameful in an attempt to gain control in a larger play of trading autonomy for obedience. Moreover, with their historical framing as sexual deviants, the vampire must be considered within its heavy queer subtext. In their fearmongered perception of being predatory and corrupting, with an ability to spread a social contagion, vampirism and queerness align themselves closely. On the backdrop of blood borne symbolic viruses like HIV/AIDS, the vampire is then the perfect vessel to project these homophobic and puritanical fears onto. In allowing the fear of the outsider to take form as something that can be warned against, the sex, blood, darkness, and hedonism the vampire represents can be warned against too. Hence, the current resurgence of vampire media is a refusal of shame, and a reminder to maintain individuality and autonomy no matter the circumstances.
Also, it has to be said: I know it feels like literally everything is, but vampires are a recession indicator. Sorry. Studies are literally showing that during rough economic times, vampire media seems to have a resurgence, and, in the same breath, zombie media seems to show itself in all its brain-y glory when the economy is doing well.
1987’s The Lost Boys came just before Black Monday, where a basically unexpected crash caused a loss of US$1.71 trillion. What happened in 1994, other than an Interview with the Vampire adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt? Oh, only the enormous financial crash known as the Great Bond Massacre. Then, the first Twilight movie and True Blood were ushered into the hearts of teenage girls (and literally everyone) everywhere in the shadow of the Global Financial Crisis, also known as the Panic of 2008. Correlation does not mean causation, I know. But isn’t it a little bit strange to see?
In a 2016 AOL essay, Bruce Watson discusses how “zombies reflect the tone of high-consumption boom times. The more melancholic vampires, on the other hand, suggest buyer's remorse.” I could wax poetic for hours about what it means to hunger, and how the vampire is the basal representation of it all, and no wonder there’s a pattern. I could talk about the festering depths of desire, and the primal necessity to sink your teeth into something, to own it, to claim it. What it means to want and what it means to see your wanting represented in the flesh, in all of its complexities and its filth. To look sex and shame and hunger dead in the face and have it look back at you, to invite it inside onto our screens and between our pages in some feeble attempt to remind ourselves that we are not dirty, or excessive, or scary, or a monster.
Or, I could say that vampires have a certain level of cuntiness about them that must just really work for audiences right now.
I suppose two things can be true at once.
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