Why Vampires?

Monsters are fascinating in general

• They are super-natural. As such they pose an intellectual problem of trying to understand their nature.
• See Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (Routledge, 1995).
• Evil is itself sometimes fascinating, as we try to understand it. (Think of why audiences sometimes cheered for Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.)

Vampires are particularly fascinating monsters

• Vampires are often handsome or beautiful, while most other monsters are grotesque and ugly (think of the Mummy, the Frankenstein monster, the Blob, the Alien, Freddie, etc.).
• There are large and arcane bodies of knowledge about them:
  • How they are made
  • How they move
  • Their various powers
  • How they can be destroyed

Vampires are subversive; they challenge all of the following:

• Religion
• Death and other Natural Laws
• Science
• The new economic order
• The law
• Sexual restrictions (monogamy, heterosexuality)
• Patriarchy and its narrow roles for women

Vampires are Exotically Sexy

• Foreign, "Other", old-world, well-travelled
• Wise (old)
• Aristocratic and Wealthy
• Lots of romantic props (capes, castles, candles)
• Courtly and charming
• Magnetic and alluring

Vampires have what we all want

• Immortality
• Eternal Youth
• Sexual Attractiveness
• Money and Power

Vampires are brooding and unhappy (so: they really need us)

• For obvious reasons, they need us for nourishment.
• They live so long that their immortality becomes a challenge and a bore.
• They are lonely and need friends.
• Some of them are preoccupied with deep moral reflections on killing and drinking blood.
• Some of them even envy humans in a way that shows that our own lives are special. (See the 1988 film, Dance of the Damned.)