The Problem with Vampires
I've been catching reruns of this show, The Mad, Mad House on
the reality channel. The premise of the show is that a bunch of
people with alternative life styles - the 'Alts' - take on a
group of normal people in a mansion and whichever normal person
stays the most normal at the end of the episode, that person
gets booted. See, they're testing their capacity for change and
growth. Or something. Anyways, the Alts are composed of a
naturist, a modern primitive, a voodoo priestess, a witch and
... a vampire.
Well, he's a guy who says he's a vampire, though I seriously
doubt that he's immortal and undead or any of that stuff. He
drinks blood, sure, and he sleeps in a coffin during the day,
and he has prosthetic fangs attached to his incissors, and he
has creepy contact lenses, and he's really pale, but as far as
being a 'real' vampire - if that term can be used for a
fictional creation from folk lore - Naah. He aint it. This
'vampire' is just one more weirdo looking for some attention.
Vampires strain my ability to suspend disbelief, especially
depending on who's vampire you're talking about. Like take the
'classic' vampire as described by Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dracula
has been 'living' for centuries in Transylvania and they know
about him in the area but for some reason nobody has taken the
trouble to dispose of him. That's okay. They mind their own
business in Transylvania. Well, according to the legend he can't
be seen in mirrors, is scared of crosses, is mostly afraid of
daylight, hates garlic, enjoys long walks in the country, fine
dining and genuine people. He can be killed with a stake through
the heart or fire ... and maybe silver. I'll have to check.
Every time that Dracula feeds on someone till they die- pay
attention, this is important - they also become a vampire. And
that is the problem. The mathematics of vampirism just doesn't
work out. Dracula would have created a geometric progression of
undead so that each vampire would inturn create multiples of
more vampires, and they would each one of them create even more
so that you would have a pyramid scheme of the undead. It would
not take long until the entire world is full of vampires and
who's going to be left to suck on?
This is hinted at in Steven King's excellent vampire novel,
Salem's Lot. It's a great book. I really love it. But at the
very end when the hero has gone off with his boy companion,
after the whole village of Salem's Lot has been turned into
vampires, I wonder ... what's stopping the vampires from going
to the next little village in Maine, or the next one, or the
next one and so on? Answer: Nothing. They'd just keep going
until the entire world is full of vampires and, you guessed it,
there's no one left to suck on.
Anne Rice takes care of this problem, sort of, in her vampire
novels - the most notable of which is Interview with the
Vampire. In her scheme, it's not enough to just be bitten by a
vampire; That won't turn you into one automatically. Instead,
the vampire has to select you and then there has to be a process
where you drink blood from the vampire and by doing that you
ingest the essence, which turns you into one of the immortal
undead. But there's a catch, of course. You have to be
beautiful. I guess it's comforting to know that there won't be
any eternally ugly ones, but still ... that's so not fair to all
the non-beauty queens out there. The benefit of this is that
they aren't promiscuously making more of their own kind. Sort of
undead birth control.
What really bothers me most about her books is that once you're
a vampire you can never have sex again. The act of draining
someone of their blood is supposed to be an orgasmic experience
that's even better than the real thing, but I don't care. It
just wouldn't do it for me. I'm used to the old fashioned way,
thank you. Her vampires are real sensuous and all that, and in
love with each other, and that's nice. But as much as they love
each other, they can never consumate that love in any meaningful
way.
And her vampires feed every single night - one human sucked dry
apiece. Here's where the math really gets tricky. In Interview
with the Vampire there are three vampires in the group and they
live together for about seventy five years. So let's do the
math: That's about twenty five thousand victims, times three,
which yields approximately seventy five thousand dead bodies
around this very, very small group. Do you honestly mean to tell
me that this would totally escape everybody's attention? Not
even the dumbest law enforcement would miss this coincidence.
Okay, Anne cheats a little and says that her vampires have a
special way of healing up the bite marks so that the
supernaturally dead people would be taken for normal dead. But
still, they have no blood and we're supposed to believe no one
would ever figure that out?
I don't think so.
The vampires I like the best are the ones in the TV show, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer. This is a great show and the greatest thing
about it is how tongue and cheek everything is. Things may seem
more than a little improbable now and then, but the characters
roll with it. Creator Joss Whedon's vampires are more fully
realized, and these guys have 'romantic' lives, if you know what
I mean? You do know what I mean. Right?
Yeah, they get it on. The story lines are much more satisfying
and the inherent Romeo and Juliet type conflict is heightened
when Buffy the Vampire Slayer is involved with not one, but two
seperate vampires ... and she's a vampire slayer! Boy, tell me
love isn't blind. Joss's vampire infested world does kind of
have the problem of too many vampires that make even more, but
he does have a slayer to take care of the overpopulation, like
Buffy is their predator. If I had to choose from which type of
vampire I could have faith in, his would definitely be the
closest.