What can we learn from vampires?

I had the good fortune to attend a second talk from Profs and Pints Richmond. This one was titled "The Life of the Vampire" and took place less than a week before Halloween. It's almost like they planned that...

Spoiler, they did plan it like that.

This lecture was given by Stanley Joseph Stepanic, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literature at UVA. By the way, I honestly never thought that I would find myself paying fifteen dollars to attend an academic lecture on a Tuesday night. Adulthood is so weird.

As someone who was most familiar with Dracula, The Count, and Count Chocula, I did not realize that vampires had changed so much throughout history. If you are a fan of the "Twilight" movies or True Blood then you likely would not recognize the original vampires. You see, they were more akin to what we know as zombies: the undead rising from the grave to feast on the living. The very existence of vampires in folklore stemmed from people misinterpreting signs of disease and decomposition in corpses. This was all due to a lack of basic medical knowledge and resulted in the tradition of the vampire burial--bodies were hacked apart and rearranged to prevent the suspected vampire from emerging from the grave.

So how did we get from zombies to sexy vampires? Surprisingly, it only took a few pivotal stories to get us here. Early mass market booklets known as Penny Dreadfuls (cost only a penny and were dreadful to read) were the first to feature a vampire with sharpened fangs (Varney the Vampire). A peer of Lord Byron created a vampire based on some of his worst attributes (a wealthy, womanizing, elitist) and these characteristics stuck. And, if you close your eyes and picture a modern Dracula-style vampire you are likely to imagine something similar to the character created by Bela Lugosi--a widow's peak hairline, thick accent, and slow, methodical delivery. These characteristics all proved popular and have been carried on into modern tellings of vampire tales.

One interesting fact: the Hays Code (prohibiting indecent topics in film between 1934 and 1968) did not apply to vampires because they are not human. This loophole meant that vampire movies were some of the most sensational of this time and contributed to their popularity.

So what could I possibly take away from this lecture that I can apply to my creative process or professional advancement? Honestly, not much beyond the fact that hot pizza and cold beer make attending college lectures so much better. Happy Halloween y'all!