Why TV vampires have our undying attention – The Boston Globe

As a species, were not big fans of death and aging. We certainly do spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to dodge our fates, to stay alive and look young for as long as we can. Our fear of getting old and dying has led us to create religions that promise life after life, just in case the cryonics dont work. And the reaper, he is grim, not great or generous. Alas, our souls are, as Yeats puts it in Sailing to Byzantium, his poem about immortality, fastened to a dying animal the human body.

So one of my theories on why vampire stories are popular is rooted in our strong longing to live forever, to relieve our fear of death. The undead are manifestations of our undying desire for immortality. Across the centuries, there has been a steady flow of vampires in folklore, books, and art, and, more recently, in movies and on TV, each one having managed to dodge the final rest that awaits the rest of us. Just when youd think wed had quite enough of these fanged creatures, say, after the Twilight books and movies and the Sookie Stackhouse books and TV series (True Blood), the trend nevertheless continues, most recently with the premieres of AMCs Interview with the Vampire, Showtimes Let the Right One In, and Syfys Reginald the Vampire. We can quit them; we just dont want to.

But theres a twist. These tales of bloodsuckers are not straight-ahead fantasies by any means. Weve created them in our collective imagination but then weve made them miserable. They arent enlightened Buddha figures who, from existing across centuries, have found an empowered perspective on life or anything close to that. They brood, they grieve their familial loved ones, they fall for unavailable humans. They hate themselves for their need to feed off of the living, and they hate living forever in the dark. Lights out is a term for dying, but for the living dead its literal, too; they can no longer enjoy the warmth of the sun.

Dark Shadows, the late-1960s gothic soap opera, was a critical developmental moment in the portrayal of the vampire. Barnabas Collins, played perfectly by Jonathan Frid, is the model for todays sad, romantically-inclined Draculas. He desperately wanted a consort, but his efforts to create one from among the female population of Collinsport, Maine, were repeatedly foiled. One woman did love him, the loyal Dr. Julia Hoffman, but he did not return her feelings. He was a lonely, tortured creature and the model for the likes of Edward Cullen of the Twilight series.

Louis in Interview with the Vampire is also a Barnabas baby, as, like Edward, he is wont to drink animal blood so he wont harm any people. Technically, he and his kind are no longer human and yet they continue to live according to their consciences and feel shame when they dont. Bill Compton on True Blood, Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the Salvatore brothers from The Vampire Diaries theyre all more or less wretched beings. The vampires who arent unhappy are, like Lestat in Interview With the Vampire, usually just villains who, with their violent ways, are also far from enviable.

The vampires we like to watch dont even get a pass when it comes to society. They generally exist as outsiders, lurking in the shadows, excluded from the communities theyre in because of their differences. Weve made them into a metaphor for disenfranchised people and those on the fringes, those who dont feel welcome. Weve also made them into a metaphor for passing viruses through blood and other kinds of illnesses, as they either kill victims or infect them. Not a pretty image.

Indeed, vampires are living in eternity, but they remain base animals. They are predators, driven to feed on the lifeblood of those below them on the food chain. They are serial killers.

So our fantasy of cheating death is complicated, and, ultimately, I think it helps us affirm our lives, our limited time, and our inevitable ends. Even these beings that have been granted immortality suffer greatly. They havent prevailed over time, that thing that dogs humans; existing forever is not a lot of fun either. Just ask Claudia from Interview with the Vampire, who will remain in a childs body, even as she grows up on the inside. Youth, in her tragic case, is wasted on the ancient.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.

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Why TV vampires have our undying attention - The Boston Globe