Meet the Modern Dracula

Popular literature, movies change bloodsucker’s image.

Written by Cory Chandler

LUBBOCK – Meet the modern Dracula: Tall, svelte, eternally young. Draped in a swirling black cape; flashing teeth that could puncture aluminum cans.

He’s handsome, he’s practically immortal – and he has the option of transforming into a bat instead of dozing through the red-eye flights.

Throw in a bit of bad-boy glamour, and no wonder vampires are so alluring.

Yet these hunky hulks of midnight menace – while staples of Anne Rice novels and Hollywood blockbusters – are a far cry from the vampires that originally cropped up in eastern European folklore … or most classic western literature, for that matter.

“They are completely different creatures,” says Dr. Jennifer Sunseri, who teaches a Slavic folklore class that, in part, charts the vampire’s rise from village pariah to silver screen phenom. 

The Village Pariah  

Vampires come in all shapes and sizes these days. They are arguably one of the most appealing of folkloric monsters.

That wasn’t always so, says Sunseri, an assistant professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages. In their earliest incarnations – especially in Slavic culture – the monsters were a scourge blamed for everything from dead livestock to epidemics.

“Essentially, if something went terribly wrong, people would start thinking about people who had died recently,” Sunseri says. This was especially true of tragic deaths, such as murders, accidents or suicides.

Suspicions often led to exhumations, and if a body had been slow to decompose – attributed these days to natural factors such as climate or soil composition – then villagers suspected a vampire.

“The thought was, ‘if he isn’t decomposing, he must be leeching life out of others,’” Sunseri says.

As with modern lore, there were definite measures for fending off vampires. Garlic, sunflower seeds, nets and holy water could keep the monsters at bay; killing them involved ritualistic staking or, in extreme cases, decapitating and burning the corpse. All of these methods were more involved than those employed by vampire slayers in many new stories.

Silver Screen Phenom

Which brings us to the modern vampire.

Most of the iconic vampire traits – the black capes, bats and even their neck-piercing teeth – are western embellishments on the eastern European folklore.

Yet the most marked twists in the vampire’s image, Sunseri says, have come within the past few decades as movies and modern American literature (think Anne Rice) have recast vampires as beautiful and glamorous.

These days, there are two basic types of vampire; the form you get depends on the story: In those starring vampire slayers, the creatures are typically evil and vile. In stories starring the vampires, however, they are typically more seductive.

Sunseri believes this shift is a reflection of America’s postmodern condition, where society’s values are increasingly questioned.

“Every generation creates the vampire it needs,” she says.

But ultimately, Sunseri hopes her students learn to view the shift in vampire lore as a lesson on the nature of evil itself. In western vampire lore, which reflects Christianity’s emphasis on free will, the souls of vampires are damned for eternity.

In Eastern Europe, however, vampires were merely the result of a soul being trapped in its body. Once the body was pierced, the soul could move on, Sunseri says. 

Popular Monsters

Anti-hero or villain, vampires are popular monsters. Sunseri’s course is an example.

The bloodsuckers are so enticing that multicultural departments across the country are using them to attract students into Slavic cultural courses. So, while her students learn about Dracula and his undead contemporaries, they also get lessons in Eastern European history and culture.

“This course is really, truly a multicultural course,” she says. “The students have a deep understanding of the Slavic psyche by the time they are finished.”