Pardon the lousy screencap, but I'm still pretty excited.
Now that I'm done bragging, here's my next review:
"It's All Just Symbolism":
The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum
A few years ago, journalist Eric
Nuzum knew next to nothing about vampires, but he couldn’t help noticing that
they were everywhere—on cereal boxes, in common figures of speech, and, of
course, in countless movies, books, and TV shows. His book, The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires fromNosferatu to Count Chocula, is the culmination of his efforts to understand
this phenomenon. And while his answers are not too surprising, the lengths he
is willing to go to find them are so amusing that his conclusions are almost
beside the point.
Nuzum’s commitment to his quest is
admirable. He begins by trying to watch every vampire movie ever made, but only
makes it through a paltry 216 out of 605 titles. He also tries to drink his own
blood, and then promptly vomits. After that, he takes a tour of Romania, where
Butch Patrick (a.k.a. Eddie Munster) is literally paid to sleep in the back of
the bus. Finally, he tries to turn himself into a vampire through a vain ritual
involving eggshells, chicken livers, and vinegar.
Along the way, Nuzum disinters an
impressive amount of historical information. His biography of Bram Stoker is
insightful, but his account of the widow Florence Stoker’s fight to preserve
exclusive rights to Dracula hints
that the rise of the vampire movie—and thus the vampire’s place in popular
culture—was far from inevitable. Madam Stoker successfully sued the producers
of Nosferatu and had the the original
print destroyed. The film only survived via bootleg copies until it was
restored after her death. Tod Browning’s iconic version of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, only saw production after protracted
legal wrangling. Had Mrs. Stoker’s lawyers won the day, some other creature may
have just as easily become the quintessential thing that goes bump in the
night.
The vampire movie’s near miss with
obscurity raises the larger question that The
Dead Travel Fast tries to answer: why are vampires such a big part of our
culture? Nuzum comes to the mundane, yet no less believable conclusion that
vampires are “a channel for desires, fears, biases, anger, and longing that
would be taboo otherwise.” Over the years, the vampires change styles without
losing their fundamental qualities because “our Draculas [are] molded for our
times.”
It’s hard to dispute Nuzum’s thesis,
but it still raises another question: why don’t other monsters have the same
impact? Werewolves, witches, and ghosts occupy meaningful posts in our culture
as well, but they don’t have as much cachet as their cape-and-fanged cousins.
Zombies get a lot of media presence, too, especially within the past few years,
but the fact remains that Dracula has been more frequently portrayed in film,
TV, and literature than Sherlock Holmes.
Vampires do not hold exclusive
rights to channel our taboo fears and desires, either. Looking back, one has to
wonder why Anne Rice didn’t strike it big with “Interview with a Specter”, or
why there was never “Buffy the Werewolf Slayer.” Think about this for a second.
Sure, the alternatives seem odd, maybe even absurd. Sookie Stackhouse would
never enter a love triangle with Godzilla and Mothra. Maybe that wasn’t the
best example, but you get the point. Other monsters matter, but vampires are
the rulers of Spookytown.
While Nuzum can’t explain vampires
why vampires have more status than other monsters, he does hit on another
interesting point. Most vampire enthusiasts seem unable to articulate the cause of their
passion. When asked why, most people effectively reply “Oh, I just like them.”
The one person he doesn’t ask, however, is Jeanne Keyes Youngson, founder of
Vampire Empire, a fan club for vampire media and research. Despite describing
her as “ground zero for vampires”, Nuzum doesn’t draw much from her expertise. He
could have asked academic scholars of vampire literature as well, but he doesn’t.
Still, you’d think a lot of the people he did ask could supply some sort of
rationale, even if they hadn’t given it much thought until that moment. But
maybe the mystery is part of it.
Vampires are the most sophisticated of
our monsters. Zombies can’t throw a baroque dinner party. Werewolves change
form in a grotesque fashion and, once they’re changed, they’re basically
aggressive dogs. Ghosts are generally incorporeal and usually return to the
beyond once something’s resolved. Witches are the outlier, especially because
of their roots in American history. My guess is that, since witches are almost
exclusively women, several centuries of sexism have marginalized their power as
villains.
Vampires evade all of those
qualifiers. They look like us, can take practically any personality, and they
pretty much do what they want. They are simultaneously strange and relatable. The vampire’s
power—immortality, wisdom, strength, charm—are things we desire. But their animalistic nature is also something we acknowledge, and
fear, in ourselves. Vampires are enough like us that we can see ourselves, our
desires and fears, but different enough to separate ourselves from. Other monsters can’t
pull off this trick.
One place Nuzum visited in his quest
was a gathering of the Court of Lazarus, a group of avid vampire ‘lifestylers’
who get together at a New York burlesque club to dance, drink red cocktails,
and dress like vampires. Nefarious Wrath, the group’s leader, opened the festivities
with a ritual to call upon Satan, and the night closed with a dance routine
involving two lovers pantomiming with a knife. Nuzum was a little weirded out
by the whole affair. At the bar, he
asked a guy in white contact lenses and a trench coat if he thought the Satanic
references and violent theatrics were a little much. The guy just chuckled and
said, “It’s all just symbolism.” A good trick, indeed.
