vampires and capitalism

11/11/2013

the past couple days, i've had a scene from the movie interview with the vampire, the movie adaptation of anne rice's vampire series (yes, before stephanie meyers, a different author provided her version of sexy vampires).  it's the scene after lestat rescues the young girl from the plague to be a companion to Louis.  upon her transformation from pauper to immortal, she sits up, looking straight into the camera, and says, "i want some more." the role catapulted kirsten dunst into the limelight at such a young age! admittedly, this is not the first time a random scene from a movie/song/commercial/book has popped into my head, but it's funny how, out of context, the phrase can be taken.  it isn't the "please sir, may i have another?" plea from a starving british child, it's the statement of a child who, for the first time perhaps, knows what it means to have a thirst quenched, and feels alive and alert in a way she has never had access to before living in poverty.

okay, so i'm trying to get to the vampire thing as a metaphor for what capitalism does to us.  if, in the time of its first introduction to english literature, bram stoker's dracula was a response to the social context in which stoker lived, then we can make all sorts of connections between how the vampire has been rewritten to reflect the nuances of a different time in history.

a vampire is dependent upon blood to maintain its "youth."  a deprived vampire gets all gross and feeble, and granted it has to be terrible to, say, be locked in a coffin for centuries when you are immortal, but let's disregard the whole immortality thing, since vampires can, in fact, be destroyed.  immortal sort of implies impervious to a loss of life, don't you think?  and yes, there's also a discussion surrounding the definition of life.  but i want to focus on the appetite of the vampire because i think it correlates well to the effects of what i am going to call the pressure of capitalism.

the commodification of life's necessities combined with the rate of population growth over the last century has forced competition between people in order to survive, and to depend on material wealth more than most other skills associated with survival: building, repairing, cooking, cleaning, hunting, gathering, farming, and so on. the illusion that we can keep taking, acquiring, exploiting, conquering, conforming is like that of the vampire who does not learn how to coexist with humans--forced to use them, discard them, and persist using their lifeforce as fuel, it must remain in the shadows.  it must not overindulge its appetite, because there have to be plenty of people around to feed on, and there has to be a food source for other vampires, and it behooves vampires to keep a low profile because otherwise people hunt them down, angry mob style (no one wants to have to constantly relocate).  

now, within societies of vampires, there are individuals who live differently than their brethren (just like people, right, those people who fall under the abnormal psychological profiles).  and there are always these vampire laws that if broken can result in the termination of a vampire's life. of course, we've seen this written many ways. 

02/07/26

in stephanie meyers's twilight series, there is a council of very old, bougie vampires located in europe who monitor the vampire populations worldwide. the community of vampires really isn't that big, and there are politics and hierarchies involved, just as with capitalism. of course the main distinction between the good vampires and bad vampires in twilight is that the good vampires wish to coexist with other humanoids on the planet, while the vampire supremacists think that they have the right to rule the world, and that all other creatures are inferior.

in the series adaptation of rice's vampire chronicles, the vampires are able to live the way that they do because of their wise investments in the local economies. they are part of the elite, and of course the elite mingle with them. but the moment the vampires upset the existing hierarchy, when too many people in power recognize them for what they are, then the vampires are forced to flee. so they have access to wealth that is unique because of their long lives and ability to manipulate and hypnotize humans, but they are still forced to operate according to certain rules, because ultimately they are still outnumbered, and have to rely on humans for sustenance, lest they wither and starve for decades in a state of enfeebled immortality. not fun.

in some variations of the vampire mythologies, vampires have special powers. they can shapeshift. they can hypnotize. in meyers's universe, the vampires have all sorts of psychic abilities, and it seems like no two vampires powers are exactly alike. 

it's interesting as well that there are vampires who opt to live as peacefully as they can with humans, subsisting on animal blood rather than human, or making deals with local hospitals to obtain bags of blood that would otherwise be used for people. 

i think in this way, vampires also represent what happens when people reach the upper echelons of socio-economic status: they are forced to either feed off of the people directly to continue living, or rely on the resources intended for people to keep themselves alive, thus taking valuable materials away from the general population, and creating higher demand for the lower classes. 

vampires are able to blend in because they do not arouse suspicion, and people are willing to accept the eccentricities of the elite, where as the poor are not permitted these transgressions, and are expected to abide more strictly to social codes.

when people learn of vampires, there is disgust. outrage. fear. but the power that comes with being a vampire makes them less susceptible to normal punishments. and of course there is a level of denial within society that the vampires even exist. this makes me think of the people on the epstein list. depraved, disgusting, abusive, distorted human beings who participate in god knows what kinds of rituals to hold onto their power, live a bit longer, enjoy more at the expense of others, with no real regard for people's lives, other than in the ways they they support their tastes and power. but the truth of the vampires is hidden from most of society, because the vampires know they would ultimately be rejected, hunted down, and eliminated. or there would be war. and while the vampires may secretly manage the structure of society, there are more people. and without the efforts to keep vampires hidden from the mainstream, they would not be able to persist. 

i'm not sure where i was going with this when i started writing it thirteen years ago, but i can see the parallels i was attempting to make. if vampires weren't so overplayed, i might have considered expanding this into a longer essay. as it stands, the lesson remains that exploitation of people or life in general will always only benefit a limited demographic within the larger population. any system that relies on hierarchy to determine which people's needs are met, and which people suffer more greatly will fail. and here we must define failure as a society that cannot support all its members equitably and according to a variation of need.