The Ascent of the Vampire

Today's post is by Laurence A. Rickels, professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include The Devil Notebooks, The Vampire Lectures and the forthcoming I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick (Minnesota 2010). He talks with us about the ascent of the vampire in popular culture; the popularity of Twilight; and "psycho violence" in horror cinema.

Q: I enjoyed your Artforum article on HBO's True Blood series. Why do you think so many films, TV series and mass-market books about vampires (True Blood, Twilight, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, and Vampire Diaries, to name a few) have been popping up lately? Perhaps in uncertain times like these, there's likely to be a heightened interest in the posthuman human and/or the undead?

A: There are (at least) two developments supporting the return of the vampire. The first is that the vampire’s return displaces (from the screen) the dominance of zombie films we watched throughout the Bush years. The recent Zombieland is the diminishing return as farce of the tragedy that “Eight Years Later” we now must recognize: we thrilled to our survival through killing ambulatory corpses. It’s possible to argue that there was a generalized PTSD afflicting Americans during those years, with the actual cases back from Afghanistan and Iraq at the front of this line. The turn to vampires demonstrates a renewed capacity for affirmation of life as undeath rather than as zombie murder. It also means that identification with the dead or undead has again become possible (that one doesn’t identify with your average zombie is the point). This relationship to mourning or unmourning in vampirism was the main theme of my 1999 book The Vampire Lectures.

What remains in the background of the ascent of the vampire is the psycho killer, who returned to the screen during the zombie years. The psycho is the problem that current identifications with vampirism can't get around. The vampire isn't about killing but about extending life or unlife. Psycho killers are most closely related to the Devil's clients; both might dismiss the investment in vampirism as immortality neurosis. What we have now, in a show like True Blood, is a portrait of human society deregulated by total integration, to which the vampire as minority gains admission. The included vampire is a positive portrait of humanity in which the bond between self and other is affirmed. Lurking in the shadows, however, are still the psychos who delight in killing the living, the undead, and the dead. The psycho killer like the client of the Devil does not mourn (or unmourn).

(KEEP READING as Rickels talks about Twilight, the Saw movie franchise, and the idea of the "psycho" in our midst.)