"Forever Young": The Immortal Threat

A Comparative Study of the Vampire and the Counterculture to Society


Research Paper (postgraduate), 2010

12 Pages, Grade: A (83%)


Excerpt


“Forever Young”: The Immortal Threat

of the Vampire & The Counterculture To Society

In 1726 in the village of Medveja, southern Serbia, the corpse of Arnold Paole was exhumed from its grave. Oddly, the body looked remarkably unchanged with little signs of decomposition, not only that, but fresh blood flowed from his mouth, and adorned his newly grown fingernails. Even more surprisingly the corpse also had an erection. Following the advice of an authoritative figure in the village, a stake was plunged into the heart of the corpse, causing it to groan and spurt blood.

Paole had died a month previously, but in spite of this it was rumoured that he had visited many of the villagers in the night and attempted to strangle them. Within a week of his death there were seventeen corpses in the village, causing mass hysteria, and shortly after also the decline of the village as its inhabitants fled in terror.[1] For it was thought that Arnold Paole was a vampire: a night walking, blood sucking, un-dead corpse.

The vampire has been an ever present figure in our folklore since the 1100’s, serving to reflect and almost embody the anxieties of contemporary society. Throughout history, tales of this fictitious character have become most prominent during times of social upheaval that pose a threat to mainstream society. The use of the character of the vampire in this way serves as a means to displace our societal fears, and symbolises the Other in society, mirroring our “ugliest fears and prejudices of the time.”[2] To clarify, the use of the term Other in this essay indicates someone or something that is outside the ideologies of the mainstream, a stranger moving into our midst.

In this essay I will be exploring how the threat of the vampire as a fictional Other can help us to better understand the threat of the Other in reality, which in this case will be the counterculture.

Although the term did not enter the lexicon of scholars until the 1960’s, the fundamental nature of the counterculture followed in the shadow of the nineteenth-century Bohemians, among others. A counterculture is usually indicative of a group of people with separate values and ideals, typically posing an “oppositional stance”, and an alternative to the mainstream.[3] Countercultures are social manifestations of the idea of zeitgeist, capturing the spirit of the time.[4] The collective force of the counterculture is used to highlight issues or disparity in contemporary society and capture the essence of zeitgeist through their brief life cycle: “they become visible, are identified and labelled (either by themselves or by others): they command the stage of public attention for a time: then they fade, disappear or are so widely diffused that they lose their distinctiveness.”[5]

It is through this idea of the zeitgeist that we can begin to distinguish a link between the two ideas, with the counterculture capturing the essence of the time, and the story of the vampire serving as an accompaniment to this, embodying the associated anxieties. Although each movement of the counterculture and versions of the vampire are brief, and representative of a particular point in history, we must recognise the immortality of both constructs as a whole. Indeed, it is because of their adaptability and manifestation of zeitgeist that they are able to prolong their existence, constantly changing and acclimatising to the age.

[...]


[1] Wilson, Jacqui (dir.), Vampires: Why They Bite, (BBC Three, 2010) [Broadcast on Wednesday 24th February 2010]

[2] Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire, (London & New York: Routledge, 1994) p. xi

[3] Tim Hodgdon, Manhood in the Age of Aquarius: Masculinity in Two Countercultural Communities, 1965-83, (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2007) p. 54

[4]Zeitgeist’ – from the German Zeit ‘time’ and Geist ‘spirit’.
(From the Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/zeitgeist?view=uk) [Accessed 7.04.10]

[5] John Clarke, ‘Subcultures, Cultures and Class’, in The Subcultures Reader, Ken Gelder (ed.), (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 94

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Details

Title
"Forever Young": The Immortal Threat
Subtitle
A Comparative Study of the Vampire and the Counterculture to Society
College
Queen Mary University of London
Course
Drama
Grade
A (83%)
Author
Year
2010
Pages
12
Catalog Number
V169157
ISBN (eBook)
9783640872626
ISBN (Book)
9783640872244
File size
449 KB
Language
English
Keywords
forever, young, immortal, threat, comparative, study, vampire, counterculture
Quote paper
Maia Gibbs (Author), 2010, "Forever Young": The Immortal Threat, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/169157

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