Discuss and explore the evolution of the vampire in the litearature,film,and popular culture - Research Paper Example

Through it all, the vampires in vampire lore, and Edward in Twilight reflect societal consciousness, while assisting society in accepting that sometimes that which might seem evil is not really. The vampire is emblematic of all of these feelings of desperation, torture and loss, as well as being a symbol of destructive power and abstract horror, that invades our imaginations and sensibilities. As a symbol of desperation, however, the vampire perhaps has more in common with the desperate French nobility during the time of the French Revolution, such as the Princesse de Monaco, a noblewoman of the house of Choiseul-Stainville who died at the guillotine in 1794 (Loomis, 333).

This is because the vampire is often the epitome of nobility, and “well-groomed horror,” and is often portrayed as wealthy (Abbott, 52). That said, the essence of the vampire is often desperation, even if the image is not of nobility. Part of their desperation comes from their status as being outsiders in society, an alien other. This causes the vampires to be stunted in their growth, as they cannot grow spiritually, in character or in relationships (Auerbach, 112). They have pathos because of their misrecognised identities, as they are innocent, but their innocence is hidden by their bodies, who are the very essence of evil.

The modern vampires of the twentieth century, states Beck (94), as the allure to modern audiences because of their sense of pathos about what they are and the fact that they are painfully aware of their outsider status. Yet they also are a mirror for the desperations that human beings feel as well. Therefore, their desperation is felt not only by themselves, but also performs the function if reflecting mankind's own desperation. For instance, Bradshaw (2), tells of a psychologist who, upon reflecting upon a human patient who destroyed the helpless for profit and created a hellish home for the aged remarked about a vampire was not her first predator that she had known, but, rather, was just more honest and direct about it.

In other words, the vampire is reflecting the desperation, or, in this case, the degradation of the human, and the vampire thus serves this purpose. The vampire also should not really be considered to be an outsider because he is so much like the human, only better, as he does not try to hide who he is, where a human might. Butler (1735) concurs. She states that the vampire is an embodiment of the monster within us, and serves the purpose in showing that human monsters are not so bad once you get to know them, while also allowing us to feel powerful as the monster himself.

For Butler, the vampire is the embodiment of evil, yet, with their trappings of wealth, they make the evil somewhat appealing and with positive aspects. The vampire also is portrayed as a tortured being, much like the prisoners were tortured in the Bastille during the French Revolution. The torture sometimes takes the form of actual physical torture, such as the scene in Return of the Vampire (1943), in which the vampire is dragged into the sunlight and staked, leaving behind a rotting corpse(Gordon and Hollinger, 58).

In Horror of Dracula in 1958, the death of Dracula by sunlight “is presented as a painful attack upon the victim's body.burning the vampire's skin to ash.” (Gordon and Hollinger, 101). The victims of the vampires are also tortured beings, such as the victims in George Romero's Martin. These victims have their wrists slit with razor blades, as the