Vampires:
Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

Thursday 22nd May - Saturday 24th May 2003
Budapest, Hungary

Session 10: Vampire Subcultures
Meg Barker - Vampire Subcultures
University of Worcester, United Kingdom

Vampires have seldom been as popular as they have been in the last decade with the popularity of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and its spin off series ‘Angel’, the novels of Anne Rice and films like ‘Blade’ and ‘Dracula 2001’. The representations of vampires in the classic literary texts and these more recent fictions have inspired the growing subculture of vampire enthusiasts which has emerged over recent years. This paper addresses the ways in which the various different vampire-related communities have used vampire themes, exploring links with Goth subculture, sexual identity and fan status.
There are many different elements within vampire subculture, the distinctions between the groups are sometimes blurred, people may be part of more than one group, and many resist simple categorisation. However, the following rough classification may be useful for someone unfamiliar with this area:

• ‘Vampire fans’ are people who are attracted to the myth of the vampire. They may focus their interest on particular fictional representations (e.g. Anne Rice, Dracula, Buffy), or more broadly on all vampire-related material. Some fans engage with existing fictions by drawing on them to create their own material, for example the web authors of ‘slash’ fiction based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ‘Bite Me’ magazine caters for those who are general vampire fans and enthusiasts
(www.bitememagazine.co.uk)
• ‘Vampire role-players’ are those who take part in role-playing games based on vampire mythology, such as ‘Vampire: the masquerade’. There are numerous web sites devoted to vampire role-play including discussion and chat sites where people take part in character and sites where games can actually take place (see vampireroleplay.homestead.com/Vampire_RP.html).
Alternatively, vampire role-players may take part in table-top games or ‘live-action’ role-play where they wear costumes and physically act out the part of their character.
• ‘Blood fetishists’ practice blood drinking and/or bloodletting individually or at organised events. There are web sites and magazines dealing with how to do this consensually
(e.g. Bloodstone magazine – www.v-evolution.co.uk and www.sanguinarius.org/~akrieytaz/blood/inside.html)
• ‘Real vampires’ are those who feel that they actually are vampires. These can be divided into ‘blood feeders’ who crave blood and ‘psychic feeders’ or ‘psi-vampires’ who feed on the life force or psychic energy of other people. Some are both blood and psychic feeders, and some are so-called ‘elder’ vampires, who claim to have an extraordinarily long life span or to be immortal. Being a real vampire may also involve having pale skin and/or an aversion to sunlight) There are also those who are not vampires themselves, but believe in the existence of modern day vampires and write about this
(see www.geocities.com/athens/Forum/7935/vampires.html
www.angelfire.com/biz4/vampyreresearch/faq.html
or www.vampiresamongus.com)

This paper is an exploration of these communities, focusing on the ways in which they depict themselves on the web and their own explanations for their fascination with vampires or their ‘real vampire’ status.

Sarah Bowman - "We Only Come out at Night": an Overview of Vampire Roleplaying
Dept. of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at Austin, USA

“By becoming a monster, one learns what it is to be human.” – subtitle to Vampire: the Masquerade.
The World of Darkness role playing system has found great popularity and influence among adolescents and young adults in nineties America. The most popular game in the genre, Vampire: the Masquerade, has spawned a plethora of consumer tie-ins, from action-figures to collectable card games, from computer adventures to a television miniseries. This popularity surge brings up a number of questions about the nature of such games, the thematic tensions associated with them, and the influence they have on America’s youth.
Large-scale role playing erupted in the seventies with the introduction of Dungeons and Dragons, and The World of Darkness is arguably the most popular role playing game since the advent of D&D, despite a market littered with generic RPG spin offs, like Star Wars and Shadowrun (based on William Gibson’s Neuromancer). How can we explain the thematic shift from the relatively “innocent” superficial fantasy world of D&D to the dark, hyper-real, “gothic-punk” world of Vampire? Who are playing these games, what is involved in the role playing process, and to what end? Is this obsession with Darkness part of a more general mal al’aise or cynicism resulting from the confusions of postmodernity?
This paper will include a detailed description of the role playing process and the macabre themes in Vampire: the Masquerade, both from the perspective of the game designers and a small sample of role players in Austin, Texas, and San Deigo, California, which include personal observations. The notion of role play as release from the pressure of “real-life” role strain and as a method to cope with deep social tensions and frustrations will be emphasized. I will suggest that vampire role playing provides a mirror for the darker aspects of human behaviour, such as obsession, greed, power, manipulation, and codependence (Freud). How does exploring on a regular basis one’s darker impulses and struggles affect aspects of an individual’s personality, including confidence, interpersonal communication, and attitudes toward authority?

Stacey Abbot- Urban Vampires in American Films of the 80s and 90s
Film and Television Studies, School of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of Surrey Roehampton, London, United Kingdom

Since Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, vampires have been attracted to modern cities in which they are free to hunt amongst the crowds. In the cinema, vampires have similarly been presented as part of the urban landscape. Tod Browning’s adaptation of Dracula features a noble vampire drawn to London, in Blacula the African vampire awakens in Los Angeles, and in Love at First Bite Count Dracula relocates to modern New York when forced out of his ancestral home in Romania. In each of these cases, however the vampire remains a foreign monster invading the modern environment.
In this paper I will examine how vampires in the American films of the 1980s and 1990s are no longer simply interlopers within a modern setting but born and bred from the urban milieu. I will focus upon two particular urban environments and vampires, New York and Los Angeles and how the legacy of representation distinct to each city has influenced the types of vampires they spawn and how the vampires are represented. New York vampires are generally lone, independent women who literally “take back the night” and LA vampires are often urban gangs whose strength lies in numbers and whose vampirism acts as an identity badge. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that the style of New York and Los Angeles vampire films is similarly influenced by the filmmaking traditions inherent to each city. While LA vampire films are built around the illusionism and generic trappings of Hollywood cinema, the New York vampire film draws upon a tradition of independent and European-style art-cinema. Looking at films as diverse as Fright Night, The Lost Boys, Blade, Habit, Nadja and The Addiction, I will demonstrate that the modern vampire is no longer an old-world monster but rather a new world citizen.

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