Behind the fascination with vampires

Immortal, bloodthirsty creatures that feed on humans – they have sharp fangs and hate sunlight and garlic.

Vampires may not be your typical heroes to root for, but they’ve fascinated us for centuries.

The first short story about a monster written in English was John Polidori’s 1819 “The Vampyre.”

More films followed, with Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897 inspiring FW Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu 》(Nosferatu). Starring Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult.

But what drives our thirst for vampire stories?

For writer and actor Mark Gatiss, his fascination with vampires started early. The co-writer of BBC series Sherlock and Dracula has been a “horror fan” for as long as he can remember.

Gatiss, who grew up loving horror stories, went on to star as Dracula in an audio production, a documentary about the monster and a 2020 BBC series that followed the Count (Clas Bang) as he ventured to London story.

He said the opportunity to bring Stoker’s iconic vampire to life felt “too good to be true.”

“Like Sherlock Holmes, it’s an enduring myth, and actually if someone gives you the chance to try it, you have to do it,” he explains.

Rolin Jones is the executive producer and writer of Interview with the Vampire, a TV series based on the novels by Anne Rice.

The series, Available to watch on BBC iPlayerIt follows vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) as he shares his life with a reporter and his relationship with Lester de Leoncourt (Sam Reed). ) relationship story.

He explained how stories about vampires “come back over and over again” because they “get into your bones and haunt you” and many of them raise questions of immortality, death and love.

The modern popularity of these characters can be seen on social media, with #vampire having 2.7 million posts on TikTok.

Jones added that every day he sees more people getting the characters’ faces tattooed on their bodies, explaining that “it’s a rabid fan base.”

While the characteristics of fictional vampires have varied throughout history—some are burned to a crisp in the sun, others have famous glistening skin—they all have one thing in common: immortality.

Dr. Sam George, an associate professor at the University of Hertfordshire who teaches students about vampires in fiction, explains that the monsters exist partly because they “make us think about big questions about us, about The idea of ​​aging”. and “what happens beyond the grave.”

“Vampires have always been associated with disease, with contagion,” she added, adding that if we look back in history, our interest in such immortal monsters seems to have been sparked during times of large-scale disease outbreaks. of.

“When the first fictional vampire appeared in 1819, it was closely associated with tuberculosis,” she said.

She added that FW Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu, released shortly after the Spanish flu pandemic, featured a character famous for the plague rats he woke up with. center.

The scholar added, “This is very important to why vampires are so popular and prevalent now, and when you think about Nosferatu and its connection to plague, we are very interested in vampires as an infectious disease.”

Executive producer Jones added that a key point of interest for him was figuring out why vampires want to keep living. “You take death out of any drama, and that’s interesting,” he said.

Jones added that Ms. Rice wrote the novel herself after losing her daughter, and that this feeling of “sadness and mourning” was “expressed with extraordinary clarity” in the book.

While vampires may cause us to express our fear of death, Jones adds that there’s something else that draws us to the fanged characters.

“They are the sexiest, most sensual monsters,” he said. “They seduced you.”

Jones added that when he first picked up the novel “Interview with the Vampire,” “it seemed to me that what I was reading was a very depressing, very confusing love story.”

Dr. George agreed, explaining that “vampires have gotten younger and better looking over the years,” pointing to Edward Cullen (Robert Parsons) in “Nosferatu” and “The Twilight Saga.” Ding Sen).

The academic added that there had been a “shift” in the way people read vampire novels, explaining that people were interested in topics such as sex and vampires, such as the “queer family” presented in Ms. Rice’s novels.

Dr. George said the union of love and immortality was also seen in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” whose tagline was “Love Never Dies.”

For Dr. George, “vampires can solve many problems at once,” from death to love, which is why they remain with us today.