Why Vampires Suck (and Why we Need Them) - part 2/3
Bloodsuckers, Inc.: From Parasites to Power Brokers
Hey, Slick!
In my previous letter, we looked into the mirror, and met the vampire lurking within - the shadowy reflection of our repressed fears, desires, and instincts.
But vampires don’t stay confined to our minds. When those shadows grow beyond us, they slip out into the world, and their shadows stretch beyond the castle walls into the systems that shape our lives. Modern vampires drain more than just blood.
From Tick to Count
The OG folklore vampire was little more than a tick - a mindless, blood-sucking parasite that crept off its grave to feed off the living, spreading disease and misfortune. These early vampires reflected simple fears of disease, death, and decay, draining life force like a pest spreading pestilence.
But the Victorian vampire was given a castle. With it came a new role - and a new kind of fear. Since the 19th century, the vampire is no longer just a mindless bloodsucker; it became a symbol of power, domination, and systemic exploitation. The aristocratic vampire of the Victorian era, best embodied by Count Dracula, was wealthy, cunning, and relentless. He didn’t just want to drink blood; he wanted to extend his dominion.
Count Dracula: The Wealth and Power of the Aristocratic Vampire
Count Dracula is a Carpathian oligarch. Beyond the castle where he resides, he owns property in London, and has plans to expand his control, draining the vitality of entire societies. He embodies the exploitative elite, a predator cloaking his domination in charm and sophistication.
“I am noble; I am boyar; the common people know me, I am master.”
-Bram Stoker, Dracula
Dracula’s power lies not just in his thirst for blood and supernatural strength but in his resources, influence, and ability to manipulate. He represents the fear that those who have amassed generational wealth and privilege will continue to exploit and dominate, untouchable and immortal.
From Aristocrats to Ideologues: The Vampire Behind the System
In the modern world, power expanded beyond wealth and castles. More than physical assets, it resides in ideas, ideologies, propaganda, and systems.
So the vampire evolved again. It slipped out of its castle and into the hidden forces that shape society—the systems that drain us without us even realizing it.
Victor Pelevin’s vampires in Empire V are a hidden elite, who feed on human suffering and control society through media and consumer culture—a.k.a., through Glamour and Discourse:
“Glamour and discourse are the two vampiric mechanisms of control. Glamour creates the illusion, the desirability of the unattainable. Discourse shapes what people believe to be true. Together, they keep humans trapped, feeding their energy to the system.”
-Victor Pelevin, Empire V
Glamour: The Attention Vampire
Glamour is the seductive, illusory appeal that vampires (or systems of power) create. Glamour makes people desire what they can’t have, keeping them in a state of perpetual longing, consumption, and distraction. In the modern world, glamour operates through the mechanisms of media, advertising, and social platforms.
Without explicitly mentioning vampires, Byung-Chul Han in The Burnout Society describes how, living in a society where “attention is currency”, we get sucked dry:
“Attention is the new currency. We are no longer exploited by others, but we exploit ourselves, until we are drained and burned out.”
-Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society
Glamour works through advertising and consumer culture: the allure of products, experiences, and status symbols keeps us chasing desires that are always just out of reach, ensuring we stay trapped in a cycle of buying, wanting, and striving.
Today’s vampires are thriving. There’s a vampire in your pocket. Social media is Glamour: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube create endless streams of curated lifestyles and aspirational content. We long for the lives we see on our screens, driving us to consume more, compare more, and perform more, and draining our mental energy.
But the vampire isn’t just in your phone. It’s also in your head.
Discourse: Ideology With Teeth
Glamour is about creating desire; Discourse is about shaping beliefs. By controlling discourse, vampires (or the elite) define what is seen as normal, acceptable, or true. This reflects how propaganda, media narratives, and ideology shape public perception and maintain systems of control.
For Slavoj Žižek, ideology functions like a vampire. It charms us into complicity, making us believe we are free while we remain trapped in systems that exploit us.
“Ideology is not simply imposed on ourselves. We enjoy our ideology. It is the very thing that drains us, yet we cling to it.”
-Slavoj Žižek
For Žižek, neoliberal capitalism as an ideology promotes the illusion of personal freedom and endless opportunity, while maintaining us in cycles of labor, consumption, and debt.
An idea captured in a quote often attributed to John Steinbeck: Americans don’t see themselves as exploited workers but as ’temporarily embarrassed millionaires’, a belief that prevents them from critiquing an exploitative system they imagine they’ll soon benefit from. This is ideological vampirism at its finest: draining people while they believe they’re on the path to success.
Much like a vampire’s victim who submits to the bite, we often accept and even enjoy the systems that drain us. We embrace the narratives that keep us docile, distracted, and compliant.
Glamour seduces us with desire; discourse controls us with belief. Together, they form a vampiric framework that keeps us willingly trapped in systems of exploitation and control.
Are we doomed, Slick?
Maybe not. There is hope; vampirism can be fought. But before we talk about resistance, let’s look at the vampires fighting vampirism from the inside.
Shades of Vampires: From the Shadows to the Big Screen
Modern vampires have evolved again; they’re not just a shadowy elite or blood-sucking villains lurking in the night, but complex, morally ambivalent figures who wrestle with their own nature. An evolution that reflects our growing recognition that shadows aren’t purely evil - they’re part of ourselves that can be understood, integrated, and even redeemed.
Modern vampire depictions reflect a wide range of human struggles, from internal moral conflict to resistance against systemic evil and the experience of victimization; vampires serve as rich metaphors for different aspects of the human condition.
Vampires Dilemma: To Bite or Not to Bite
Not all vampires embrace their curse; some, tormented by their own instincts, attempt to remain human and ethical while grappling with their predatory urges.
In Interview with the Vampire, Louis struggles with guilt, existential dread, and moral conflict - the guilt of taking lives to survive - and constantly questions his morality, in sharp contrast with Lestat, who fully embraces his vampiric nature and lets loose his hedonism and predatory instincts.
The Cullens, in the Twilight saga, strive for ethical restraint and coexistence, abstaining from human blood. Mitchell, in the UK series Being Human, similarly struggles to control his bloodlust while trying to live a normal life.
They try to live morally despite their vampiric nature, suggesting even vampires can choose restraint and ethics over exploitation and predation.
The struggle goes even further. Some vampires are engaged in a fight against evil, and sometimes against their very own kind.
Vampires Bite Back: Fighting Evil
These vampires, or those who fight alongside or against them, use their powers to combat darkness and protect others. They symbolize the potential to resist evil and fight for justice even when darkness is part of their nature.
Despite her name, Buffy The Vampire Slayer can count on two vampire friends (and lovers) by her side, Angel and Spike, who sacrifice themselves to fight systemic evil - vampires and other supernatural forces. They’re not central characters, though, unlike Blade and Alucard (Castlevania), who fight to break the curse.
Blade is half-vampire, but he resists his own predatory urges, and even harnesses his own darkness to hunt vampires and protect humanity. In Castlevania, Alucard, Dracula’s son, fights against his father’s tyranny, attempting to break generational trauma and cycles of exploitation.
Vampires can be good. Sometimes, they’re even just victims - of circumstance, curses, or systemic forces, a projection of suffering, loss of autonomy, and exploitation.
Cursed and Confused: Vampires as Victims
Elena Gilbert, in The Vampire Diaries, is turned into a vampire against her will, and struggles with the loss of her humanity. Her coerced transformation captures our fears related to loss of choice, autonomy, agency.
But it’s even worse for a child. Vampires don’t die, and they don’t even age; Claudia, in Interview with the Vampire, is trapped by fate into an unchanging (vampire) child’s body for eternity - a representation of the horror of being imprisoned by circumstances, unable to change or grow.
All these vampires want is to be normal. Human. Regine, The Little Vampire, longs to break the curse of vampirism and live a normal human life. Eli, another child vampire in Let the Right One In, is trapped in an existence of eternal loneliness, while a caretaker procures blood for her - a reflection on childhood trauma, exploitation, and perpetual victimhood. The vampires in True Blood strive for equality with humans.
Modern vampire stories suggest that vampirism can be resisted, negotiated, or redeemed. This moral ambiguity reflects our desire to reconcile with our shadows, to find ways of integrating dark impulses rather than succumbing to them. But…
Can we break the curse?
Vampirism isn’t just a curse of the individual; it’s a social disease. There’s always a predator and a prey, a taker and a taken-from. These parasitic dynamics thrive in the spaces between us — in power imbalances, betrayals, and unspoken agreements. But vampirism doesn’t stop at personal relationships. It scales up to infect entire social systems, shaping networks of exploitation, greed, and control.
We’ve seen vampires hiding in our minds and lurking in our systems. But the important question remains: Can we resist them? Can we break the curse?
Well, Slick… I hope the wait until the next letter won’t be too draining. Until then,
Stay Slick