How Symbols Evolve Through Time: The Vampire, 1
Introduction
“In 2004, Knight Rider Newspapers reported that a dead man in a tiny Romanian village was dug up, his heart ripped out, burned to ashes, then mixed with water and drunk by relatives who had fallen ill after the man’s death”, says Bonnie Henry.[1] Why would anyone do this? People take part in these strange rituals to ward off evil. In this case, they are fearful of the vampire, which is a symbol that often represents evil. It is difficult to believe that people still do these types of things today. It seems so primitive and ignorant compared to American society, but what has to be understood is that this is a real fear for them. The vampire is not a mythical creature that is seen in movies, but a truly terrifying creature to their culture. They believe that they are real and that they are a great danger. This, for many Americans, would be hard to believe. It would be looked upon as barbaric and ignorant, but today, people still have a very strong belief in these terrifying beings that they would go to such extremes to prevent themselves from the same fate. In many small villages throughout Romania, the legend of the vampire is still a critical part of life.
In American culture today, the vampire has evolved into an unrecognizable figure. It has morphed into a creature that is often desired today. Due to popular culture, by way of books, movies, television shows, etc, the vampire is seen differently. Throughout history the vampire has symbolized evil and death. It was something to be
How Symbols Evolve Through Time: The Vampire, 2
Feared, and in some parts of the world, it still is. But American culture sees it as a new ‘cool fad’.
Why does America have such a skewed vision of these creatures then? How did they evolve from truly terrifying to some girls boyfriend? Even though vampires aren’t as scary to us as they are to others, they still symbolize something. They symbolized evil and death in a physical form. Symbolism is key in society. It has shaped the American culture in its beliefs, customs, ideas, etc. “It is a fundamental part of human nature not only to survive and reproduce, but also to seek explanations for the mysteries of life. Because these mysteries are in fact beyond explanation, we use the language of symbolism to represent them”.[2] In saying this, symbols are a part of our very existence and a part of our everyday life. Without them, we would have nothing to base our beliefs upon. It would be very difficult to communicate with one another without using symbolism in some form. Symbols can be used as illustrations, and they can be based upon a person or thing. Throughout human history, symbols have been used to represent important aspects of life.
The mold of the vampire has been twisted so much, that in today’s American popular culture it is seen as a romanticized figure. This influence occurs through entertainment, literature, and decoration. In this paper, I plan to prove that the vampire has morphed into a different symbol through looking back on where it came from, the influences of it, and how and why it is romanticized.
How Symbols Evolve Through Time: The Vampire, 3
Literature Review
A lot of research has been done on symbolism and the vampire. Although not much has been done on both together, it is still a well researched area and has many different aspects and opinions. Throughout my research and concerning my hypothesis, I have a few topics to touch on. This will in turn help me as a researcher and readers to understand it more thoroughly.
Symbolism is a very important aspect of life and has been since human existence. It is something that every culture and society has come in contact with and holds much history in. Symbolism is used in many aspects of culture. Such as religious, mathematical, political, color, architectural, and advertizing symbols. They are used represent something and in many cases hold much meaning and they are evolving. For example, the swastika was originally a symbol out of ancient times. Jennifer Rosenberg informs us that, “Until the Nazis used this symbol, the swastika was used by many cultures throughout the past 3,000 years to represent life, sun, power, strength, and good luck.”[3] This side of the Swastika is often not referred to. The most popular meaning for it represents hatred, and death due to Hitler and his Nazi Regime. The misinterpretation of symbols is often times hazardous and insulting to some. `
The vampire has a long line of existence as well. It goes back thousands of years to the beginning of civilization or commonly known as Mesopotamia. It has always been seen as evil
How Symbols Evolve Through Time: The Vampire, 4
and death in a physical form. Each culture also has its own version of the vampire. To western society, the vampire has many characteristics that are still well known today. They wake from the dead, suck blood, cannot come out in sunlight, are repelled my garlic and holy water, cannot come into a house uninvited, often times can morph into a bat, can be killed by a stake through the heart, etc. The list goes on and on. Most of the influence comes from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was based on a real person who existed in Romania in the fifteenth century. His name was Vlad III, Vlad Tepes, or Vlad Dracula. He is well known for the war against the Ottoman Turks and the vicious way in which he fought. Another name he is known as is Vlad the Impaler, because impalement was his favorite form of punishment/death. There are stories that actually tell of him eating his dinner to a forest of his impaled victums. Maybe because of his bloody and violent ways he was a prominent candidate for the fictional bloodsucking character known today as the vampire.
Culture is a learned way of life. Culture is adopted through influence of a surrounding society through religion, rituals, customs, language, ideas, food, music, etc. Through looking at culture, we can begin to understand what popular culture is. Popular culture also includes all of the elements listed above, but is a compilation of popular trends. For example music, movies, books, fashions, etc.
How Symbols Evolve Through Time: The Vampire, 5
Romanticism is commonly known as a literary, and intellectual movement in the 19th century. It stressed the importance of feelings, creativity, and expression. “Romanticism invited people to dream again, to imagine, to give in to flights of fancy, to explore the border between conscious experience and unconscious dreams and desires.”[4] This movement allowed many authors and painters to express themselves without having to worry about conformity and accusation.
Methods
To help prove my point in that the vampire is interpreted differently today in American popular culture than in the past, I conducted research through survey analysis. Since I did qualitative research, I asked open ended questions interviewing 8 people ranging from ages 19 to 75. I basically have 2 age groups that I interviewed. The first age group ranges from 52-75 and the second age group ranges from 19-22. The questionnaire/survey only took roughly ten minutes to complete. These surveys were anonymous, only requiring age and gender. Most of my participants came from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and from Western Pennsylvania.
Questionnaire/Survey
Age:____ Gender:____
1.) What is a Vampire?
2.) What does a Vampire Symbolize to you?
3.) Do you think Vampires are popular today?
4.) By what means have you been influenced by Vampires?
5.) Why do you think the Vampire myth has survived through time?
6.) Where did the Vampire myth originate?
7.) What do Vampires look like?
Discussion
In order to conduct my research, I interviewed a few random people and asked them the survey above. Comparing the older people to the younger people that were interviewed, the answers I got were related but substantially different. One of my participants, a 71 year old woman, basically said that, vampires were animals that represented evil and they originated from the devil. “The myth has only survived because of crazy people (laughter). They look like monsters with pointed ears and a big nose, with funny faces. They are ugly.”
Another one of my participants, a 21 year old female has some different answers. She believes that vampires are former human beings that live off of drinking blood for survival and they represent darkness. Twilight has made them 100% popular today through the popular culture scene. She claims that vampires have influence her because of today’s popular culture. “I view vampires differently. I think people today are drawn to their forbiddingness, darkness of nature. They are kind of like the ultimate bad boy.” This participant also continues by saying that they have survived because it’s a good story and it keeps people entertained. “Today’s vampires are pale, beautiful, human, and sexy.”
The 56 year old male that I interviewed responded by saying that, “Vampires symbolize evil and are against the basic principles of life. They symbolize the demoralizing of the soul.” He also claims that they are normal people with fangs and they suck blood and are deflected by garlic. Vampires aren’t that popular today, but were more so in the 1940’s and 1950’s when the black and white vampire movies were very popular.
My 20 year old female participant said that “vampires are someone who sucks blood, sleeps during the day and wakes at night, can morph into bats, they sleep upside down, and are cold blooded.” This sounds a lot like the classic black and white movie version. The vampire here also had some sex appeal. She also states that she has a different vision of them as well due to twilight. She sees the attractive figure, like Edward Cullen. She also answered that they symbolize the bat and evil and that the myth has survived because it is a timeless classic, like Frankenstein.
Another participant, a 75 year old female says that vampires suck blood and are evil spirits. They represent Halloween and evil and they cause trouble.
Throughout this survey we can see a trend between both groups. They have very similar ideas of them, but are perceived in different ways. Group 1 (older group) looks at vampires in a more evil and unacceptable entity, but group 2 (younger group) looks at them in an evil but more accepted manner. This is greatly due to the vampire evolving through popular culture, especially media.
Lit Review Goal Statements
The purpose of this lit review – how will it help you? how will it help the reader? how will it differ from other sections of your overall project? The purpose of the lit review is to help the reader get a grasp on what you know about the subject. Your job is to show that you know enough about the topic to successfully write that paper and that you may be a valid source. It will differ because it is informing the reader of what has already been done and how it relates to your research. 2) Your goals for this paper – what do you hope to/will you accomplish by the end of this paper? By the end of this research paper, i hope to inform the reader on my topic and maybe in a way that they have never known about it before. Hopefully they will enjoy it and get something out of it and look at my research with interest and understanding. 3) Your target audience – who is this prepared for? Who do you hope will read this?How will you tailor your writing for this audience? This paper is prepared for those that have an interest in the subject, but is mostly designed for those of a college level and ones that often partake in popular culture. I hope that anyone who is interested will read this, but mostly people of my own age. I will tailor it to fit my audience because i am viewing the evolution of the vampire but am focusing a little more on todays shows and books because they are much more popular today.
1) The purpose of this lit review – how will it help you? how will it help the reader? how will it differ from other sections of your overall project? This lit review has helped me because now i know how informed i am on the topic. It will help the reader because i think it will give them more of a sense of what the paper is about. It will differ because i am talking about my methods and research, and for the rest of the paper, i will be sharing facts and drawing my conclusions. 2) Your goals for this paper – what do you hope to/will you accomplish by the end of this paper? I hope that i will interest some people in the topic and that i may also be more informed of my topic by the end.3) Your target audience – who is this prepared for? Who do you hope will read this?How will you tailor your writing for this audience? After writing my lit review, i still think that my audience will be more aimed at college students. Maybe by the time im done i will realize it is for a different audience, but as of write now i think that my writing level relates more to those of my age.
Intro Goal Statements
1) The purpose of this intro – how will it help you? How will it help the reader? How will it differ from other sections of your overall project; 2) your goals for this paper – what do you hope to/will you accomplish by the end of this paper? 3) Your target audience – who is this prepared for? Who do you hope will read this? How will you tailor your writing for this audience? The purpose of the intro is to set the layout for the paper. It also is used to give an idea to the reader as to what the paper is about. It helps the reader in deciding whether or not he/she wants to go on reading. This will differ from other sections because it has the main idea and takes a little from each paragraph. I hope to accomplish an understanding from how symbols represent so much and how they survive. I also hope to open people’s eyes to the subject, being vampires or whatever, and where they originate. I think it’s a good idea to know where many of your beliefs, customs, etc. come from. I hope that this reaches anyone who is interested. I probably would aim this more towards my age group because I think that I can write to their understanding more so than other levels of people. I think I will aim it more towards my age bracket because I am doing surveys on people close to my age.
After writing my introduction, I have learned that I have a lot of research to still do, and a lot of improvement that I need to make. I need to be a little more organized in my introduction so that my paper flows better. I think my introduction helps the reader because it gets them into the mindset. They also have an idea as to what the paper is about and the issues surrounding it. I think that I have gotten an idea of my goals into the minds of those who read it although I need a lot more improvement to reach them. As of right now my paper is aimed towards people of my age. My roommate read it and said that she could understand the basic idea, and that it sounds good, but I do need some improvement.
[1] Henry, Bonnie. “The Arizona Star, Tucson, Bonnie Henry Column: Vampires suck in UA students.” Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, AZ) 10/29/07, Print.
[2] Bruce-Mitford, Miranda. The Illustrated Book of Signs and Symbols. London: Barns & Noble Books, 1996. Print
[3] Rosenberg, Jennifer. “The History of the Swastika.” 2009.http://history1900s.about.com/cs/swastika/a/swastikahistory.htm (accessed 10/18/09).
[4] Smith, Nicole. “Overview of Romaniticism in Literature.” 2009..http://www.articlemyriad.com/212.htm (accessed 10/18/09).
