The Two Faces of the Vampire: a Radical Behaviorist Perspective.
The vampire evokes two deep and contradictory responses; fear and attraction. One explanation might be that these responses have seperate and opposing sources. One being the controlling influence of society (control) and other the rebellious reaction of the public, asserting their individual freedom (counter control).
The fearful response seems to be earlier and more fundamental. The vampire is a source of pain and death. That vampire is a stimulus signaling the imminence of these primary punishers, and thus becomes as conditioned stimulus for the behavior of avoidance and the emotional response of fear. Any stimulus paired with the vampire would also acquire these features through a process of higher order conditioning.
Given that vampires do not exist, this learning is done vicariously through tales that were represented as being factual. These tales are produced by our culture in order to safe guard individuals from harm. The vampire is paired with nighttime, wild animals, strangers and other genuine sources of danger. The tales control people and cause them to avoid these things. The avoidance prevents them from discovering counter-evidence and discovering that vampires are fictional. The occasional disobedience may result in encounters with very real wild animals and highwaymen, thus reinforcing the overall message.
Many creatures, real or mythical, are used as ‘monsters’ in this way, to aid in the control of people, particularly children, who might endanger themselves through impulsive actions. However when control through fear and punishment is revealed, this often causes resentment and rebellion.
As time passed, people became more educated and exposed to evidence far beyond their own personal experience. It became clear that the vampire was a controlling fiction, a limit on free will and self-determination.
I that suggest this was the origin of the new, seductive or heroic vampire. This reversal or subversion of the monster was a form of counter-control, rejecting the form, and purpose of the old horrific vampire. The heroic or seductive vampire was a groundswell movement in zines and fan bases, well before it was reflected in publication.
The fully modern vampire like Jack Fleming or Saint-Germaine has cast aside the need to hurt or kill, and has seductiveness or heroism as its primary quality. Thus the modern vampires dependence on blood is a weakness that puts them at the mercy or human. This is a fully reversal of the previous victim/monster relationship. This reversal expresses the counter control of a new and more educated public.
Dracula can be seen as a mid point in the process, a vampire that wears both faces. Harker belongs to the ‘village’ of England. He goes out into the dark, and backwards in time to a less advanced country full of strange behavior and wild creatures. He consorts with ‘strangers’ in this case foreigners. He is punished with the attentions of Dracula, an ugly and unsettling old man and in many ways a very traditional monster.
However, in the English environment, Dracula takes on a new face, he appears as a young attractive man. He wins Mina and Lucy as much through seduction as coercion, and they seem to find some aspects of the change liberating and positive. Only when pressed do the old ‘monster’ faces show through, with coarse features and red glowing eyes.
The two faced vampire appears in various stages. It can be seen most explicitly in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ where the vampire characters have two distinct faces, human and monster. They also exist in two distinct types, angel who is a hero (with a soul), and the others who are monsters (without a soul).
Charna’s vampire in the ‘Vampire Tapestry’ wakes with amnesia from along sleep, a very traditional monster. However during the novel he encounters people, and develops empathy with human and a desire not to harm them. He avoids converting to a more heroic figure only by retreating back to sleep to wipe the experience from his memory, a last ditch attempt to maintain the vampire monstrous nature under the onslaught of knowledge.
Conversely, many of the modern vampires explicitly fight the resurgence of their monstrous side. P N Elrod’s ‘Jack Fleming’ for example, experiences the urge to kill when hypnotizing attractive women, and he worries about become callous about killing as a result of his connection to the crime underworld. Yet he triumphs as a hero by not killing in either of these situations, often by a narrow margin.
Our out and out monsters now, are more appropriate to the dangers of our world; serial killers, government agents, aliens and natural disasters. Monsters that are more difficult to falsify, harder to dismiss.
The straightforward monstrous vampire is passe; gradually the heroic, seductive characters are beginning to out number the monsters. I for one hope that this transition is never completed. What makes today’s vampire interesting is their conflicting faces. The old monster and the new hero embodied in a single character, and the solutions we are finding to allow them to live together.
Our culture continues to control us through other methods, and we to exert counter-control upon it. The answer is to find some balance between being protected and controlled, and being free but vulnerable. We need to accept the role of the monster without giving it total dominion, and to embody the heroic without endorsing self-destructiveness or vigilantism, and the modern vampire may be one path for seeking this compromise.