Introduction: Cultural Teratology

Summary

Metamorphoses of the Vampire — a title stolen from a poem by Charles Baudelaire — examines a figure of humble origin that achieved sudden prominence in the period preceding the Age of Revolution, had a flourishing career during this tumultuous epoch, and finally achieved seemingly universal notoriety before it was over: the vampire. Despite the celebrity this monster has enjoyed, however, it possesses no distinct profile over time. For example, the aristocratic dress and debonair ways commonly associated with the vampire today are but two of many possible attributes, and they are relatively recent developments. Representations of vampires in literature, film, and the visual arts are many and contradictory. Sometimes these creatures are suave and urbane. Sometimes they are rustic and crude. There are male vampires and female vampires. Not all vampires inhabit Gothic castles, and they do not uniformly display the powers of sexual seduction that many enthusiasts consider their distinguishing feature.

Yet all vampires share one trait: the power to move between and undo borders otherwise holding identities in place. At this monster's core lies an affinity for rupture, change, and mutation. Because of its inimical relationship to stability, tradition, and order, the vampire embodies the transformative march of history. For this reason, the vampire has not ceased to generate new representations of itself in modern societies' transition from what Marshall McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy to the star-studded world of the silver screen. Indeed, global culture's recent move into deepest cyberspace has only energized the vampire further.