The Death Of A Vampire

Photographed By Ellinor Forje

“I am nothing, lifeless, soulless, hated and feared. I am dead to all the world. I am the monster that breathing men would to kill.” 

This self-reflective declaration, spoken by one of Victorian literature’s most infamous characters, Bram Stoker’s antagonist, foreshadows the vampire’s cultural fate centuries later. In his existentialist speech to his beloved Mina, he anticipates a world that would metaphorically drive a stake through his heart, leaving the archetypal vampire, once feared and revered, to bleed out under the knives of modern literary taste.

Outside the Coop bookstore, manager Nancie Scherier sits with her significant other, enjoying ice cream on a warm July day. She wears a black tailored dress paired with an oversized black bag, her hairstyle reminiscent of “Vogue’s” Anna Wintour. “She's a tremendous reader,” notes her companion Rick. Scherier counts Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries among her favorite works in the vampire genre. She also appreciates Stoker’s Dracula, stressing “Yes, ”as in “Yes I do,” when asked. She is, however, not a fan of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, despite its commercial success. While the Coop does not release sales figures, Scherier confirms that Stoker’s Dracula no longer commands the shelves as it once did.

Given the enduring public fascination with vampires, evidenced by the circulation of 1,100 new vampire titles in 2010, and acknowledging that Stoker’s work helped establish the modern vampire, one might justifiably ask: “When and how did the prototypal vampire in literature and film become obsolete?”

Vampires have captivated human imagination across cultures and epochs, appearing in ancient Assyrian, Indian, Greek, Babylonian, and African folklore. Anne Rice revived the narrative in her bestselling Vampire Chronicles, while 5.3 million viewers tune in every Sunday to HBO’s critically acclaimed series “True Blood,” drawn to the living-dead inhabitants, and the “fang bangers” of the fictional town of Bon Temps. The literary evolution of the vampire, from mythological creature to resident of a television township, was first paved by John Polidori’s The Vampyre: A Tale (1819).

Yet it was Stoker’s portrayal of a nocturnal, mortifying, enigmatic, aristocratic, narcissistic, heterosexual alpha-male that crystallized the vampire as a quintessential figure from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century. Dracula became synonymous with the word “vampire,” his image immortalized on screen, from F. W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu to 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Gary Oldman.

By the late twentieth century, however, the allure of Dracula had diminished. The 1992 film marked the last significant cinematic adaptation of Stoker’s novel. Contemporary audiences, captivated by the $300 million success of Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Amazon’s current “Bestsellers in Vampire Romances,” demonstrate a shift toward vampires reimagined as sensual, romantic, and often domesticated figures. Freudian psychology frames the vampire as an embodiment of two fundamental human impulses: Eros, or sexual desire, and the tension between the wish to die and the longing for eternal life. Yet modern society no longer finds these qualities fully encapsulated in a single archetypal character. Social paradigms demand diversity, a need presciently recognized by Anne Rice in the 1970s. Her Vampire Chronicles introduced a multi-dimensional cast of vampires varying in race, sexual orientation, and psychic complexity.

“We saw the remorseful vampire,” observes Dr. Sue Schopf, referring to Louis in Rice’s novels and his lament over the loss of humanity. Schopf, seated behind a Victorian-inspired desk reminiscent of the 1994 Interview with the Vampire set, is striking in her black curls, gold jewelry, black coat, and red chemise. Speaking with a southern accent, she emphasizes the final “t” in Lestat and the last four letters in Nosferatu with a Southern belle inflection. Schopf contextualizes Stoker’s Dracula within its historical moment, marked by female subordination, colonial rule, ecclesiastical influence, xenophobia, homophobia, and limited scientific understanding. Yet, she notes, evolving cultural landscapes demand new vampires—hence the flamboyant, homosexual alpha-male Russell in “True Blood,” who declares, "Mine is the true face of vampires!"

Post-September 11 uncertainty, the age of terrorism, and economic instability fostered a desire for a less threatening, more family-oriented vampire. In Harris’ and Meyer’s narratives, some vampires eschew human blood entirely. In The Southern Vampire Mysteries, for instance, vampires may subsist on the synthetic substitute “Tru Blood.” Despite transformation, the nocturnal creature remains vital. Many of its defining traits were catalogued, or invented, by Stoker in his 1897 novel.

Chapter 18 outlines Dracula’s perceived strengths and weaknesses, a framework both adhered to and adapted by subsequent vampire literature. A recurring motif, as seen in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, holds that a vampire’s power grows with age. Dracula is 113 years old this year. When he marked his centennial in 1997, writers including Stephen King and Naomi Wolf paid tribute at the “Dracula Centennial: Aesthetics of Fear Conference” in New York.

Nonetheless, considering the cultural spectacle surrounding an undead figure’s birthday, has Count Dracula truly fallen from grace?

“How has he fallen from grace, was he ever 'in grace?' asks Harvard Professor Davíd Carrasco. “You might say that every generation gets the Dracula it ‘deserves' meaning the one it creates. Therefore Dracula is a 'mirror' an aesthetic mirror of different subcultures that flock to his story and then project their own fears and desires onto his nocturnal powers. Like all these heroes of our unconscious made conscious: He will rise again,” Carrasco continues, emphasizing the word, “will.”