I realize that this post is a blatant contradiction to one of the ground rules I set in my very first blog post: NO vampires. Oh well. Lent is for rule-breaking, yes?
An excerpt from Margot Adler's NPR article (referring to America's on-again, on-again relationship with vampires):
"Maybe it gets back to that very American notion that we have laws and constitutions to keep our baser instincts in check. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote recently: "We are beasts with self-consciousness, predators with ethics, mortal creatures who yearn for immortality."
Exactly. Maybe that's why vampires aren't really a fad. Because — except for that all-but-immortal thing — they really are us."
I think this makes perfect sense. For some reason, I've been thinking a lot about human instincts vis-à-vis appetite recently: appetite for food (mainly in relation to carnivorism) and appetite for pleasure (mainly in relation to sex). I think that we human beings, at least in more technologically developed countries, have become such cerebral creatures that we rarely remember that humans were once subject to a vastly different, much more physical, lifestyle, and it is only when we find ourselves giving into or being held captive by our baser ("base" in the sense of being "a basic or underlying element"), more carnal, instincts, that we harken back to our beastly, predatory history...and fall in love with vampires?
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