Political Monsters: Vampires, Aristocracy, and Big Business!

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It has sometimes been said that the classic vampire story (by which I mean in literature rather than mythology) reflects something of the traditional class divides. It boils down to the aristocratic vampire feeding off the working class man and woman, a parasite upon society, contributing nothing to it – and certainly not doing anything to earn their money or station. I don't know how much truth there is to this but, like many literary theories, it is at least a fun idea worth playing with.

But where does that leave the modern vampire? What, by this token, does he (or she) have to say about the society we live in? Well, in most of the modern literature vampires are romantic heroes/anti-heroes with a tragic history and/or nature, and only occasionally are they purely villains. When they are baddies, they seem to be simple agents of evil or the now anachronistic parasite. Today of course, it is not so much the aristocracy that is perceived to be the chief parasite on society but big business and the criminal cartel – which is what lead me to adopt my own themes. I'm not really trying to present any political case, I am, after all, just writing ePulp and wouldn't want anyone to read too much into that. However, this presents me with a fun variation to play with. The vampire can still be a monster but it is reduced somewhat to a consumer, while others, not simply exploited, are reduced to commodities. The Blood Cartel is a business and it's goals are primarily about profit and if you are not part of it, then you are either a source of profit, an obstacle, or irrelevant.

Of course, the thing about the modern vampire is that it is seldom really a monster anymore. Look back at the old myths and early films and and stories and in most of them, they are soulless human shaped things that feed on us. Now, in so far as they are monsters, they are very human ones. In so far as they are alien in their evil, it is in the manner of the sociopath – sociopathy being a very human condition. So, I figured, why not go all the way and make the bad vampires sociopaths? Then I can focus much of the actual evil with the ordinary humans acting from sociopathic tendencies or plain immorality. (I think it worth drawing a distinction, as the sociopath seems incapable of valuing people in a moral way)