By Suzanne Carré

Are vampires beautiful creations of our minds? Or are they ugly creatures haunting us in the dark? It is an interesting question with various answers according to the time period when we ask what our demons look like. Vampires have changed over the centuries, the greatest and most rapid change in the 20th century, and their image has likewise evolved.

The look of a demon depends mainly on the media in which we can represent them. Before motion film, the vampire “appeared” to us primarily through descriptions in our literature. A monster by nature required a description conjuring all the worse characteristics, because this gave dimension to the vampire where words provided the only pictures. Depictions in art followed the words with ghoulish images to confirm the evil of the vampire’s habits, especially that of drinking blood.

But not all artistic interpretations relied on graphic representations for the heinous attributes distinguishing denizens of the preternatural domain. Just as the Devil has various depictions ranging from the ugliest of horned beasts to the most beautiful of angels, so has the vampire enticed our imagination from absolute beauty to the most disgusting rotting corpse.

Possibly the best known example of beauty surviving the grave is the legend of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829 – 1862), wife and model of Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 – 1882). During her burial, her grieving husband hid a collection of his poems in her red hair, but seven years later he regretted this, so arranged to have her body exhumed and his work reclaimed. It was said Elizabeth’s delicate and alluring beauty defied the ravishes of time, and remarkably her hair continued growing so to overflow her coffin with coppery tresses. Her corpse looked like she merely slept, and this makes her akin to the vampires in their graves. Stories like this of the 19th century demonstrate not all the undead where ugly.

Sexual Potential

Our love affair with the vampire over the ages has been a complex relationship. From adoration to pure revulsion, we have experienced all extremes in feelings towards the vampire. Curiously enough, no matter how we justify the horror of the vampire, in terms of repulsive physical representations, we are drawn closer to this supernatural entity. We desire the vampire. Importantly our attraction is often erotic, demonstrating the level of intimacy we hold with the vampire. Whether we seek immortality or sexual access to the sexy beasts, our romance with the vampire is truly a love story.

The greatest level of transformation of the vampire, from incredibly ugly to fantastically beautiful, occurred in the 20th century. I believe the main influence was the establishment of the motion picture industry, to idealize the vampire as never before. The first vampire film, Nosferatu, depicted a monstrous vampire according to the descriptions of Bram Stoker’s novel. But this did not last, when Bela Lugosi liberated the vampire from a ghoul to a perfect bad boy, with the powers of seduction unmatched by any creature of the night. We have progressively modeled the vampire, as an object of pleasure, to satisfy our sexual appetite.

Fangs and Sex

Originally it was the vampire feeding ritual, stalking us in the night to deliver their bite and take our blood, which demanded the vampire look as revolting as their vile habit. The undead of the grave went from eternal sleepers to rotting corpses, their decay kept only in check with our sacrifice. The evil deed of the vampire haunted us in our sleep only to feed our imagination with blood lust. Regardless of our disgust, we craved the vampire lust for blood.

To make the vampire more commanding of our passions, the element of disgust first associated with the use of fangs in the extraction of blood has evolved to merely a painful experience with an erotic overtone. The confusion over the vampire bite is one of the factors making the function of vampire fangs so alluring. From dog canines, to rip open the victim’s throat, to instruments specifically designed for the extraction of blood, the fangs of the vampire have undergone as many modifications as their owners.

But the power conveyed by the vampire fangs, elongated cuspids representing the very essence of the vampire, have turned our attraction of vampires to one of amorous zeal. We no longer require the vampire to look reviled, when the curling back of lips or the characteristic hiss reveals those prized fangs. The fangs are potent symbols embodying all that the vampire is. Nothing extra is needed to define the intentions of the vampire. A sexy brute equipped with a pair of fangs has all the characteristics of evil without sacrificing his looks.

Vampires are now beautiful to justify our love for them. We need the vampire to stimulate our erotic dreams in the middle of the night, and we invite the vampire to embrace us in our sleep. My vampires are beautiful because that is their natural look, and we have finally returned to the idea of the alluring beast of the night. Given the vampire ability to seduce us physically, the vampire power to control our minds, and their capacity to take our lives, and destroy our souls with one bite, the vampire can but only be beautiful — why else would we invite them into our minds?

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