The Year in: Vampires

Part III

About the time I started listening to the Vampire Weekend album I noticed a red and white mug in my office kitchen. It featured a picture of Vlad Tepes, the fifteenth century Romanian prince who sometimes called himself "Dracula." Next to the picture were the words "Dra-Cula" in a red-and-white design meant to imitate the Coca-Cola logo. On the bottom of the mug was a circular stamp with the words "Marca Inregistrata in Transylvania" encircling a bat. While this mug didn't make any specific reference to vampires, it perfectly illustrated the frequent conflation of Vlad Tepes with the fictional character of Dracula which I had run into again and again in the research for my article on vampires and tourism. Vlad Tepes (whose name means "Vlad the Impaler" but who had nothing to do with vampires) was born in the Transylvania region of Romania. Bram Stoker used his nickname - "Dracula" - for the name of the Transylvanian vampire count in his Victorian novel. Ever since then, westerners have mixed up the historical Vlad Tepes with the fictional Count Dracula. And over the past few decades Romanians have figured it out and started to capitalize on it. Selling red and white Vlad Tepes mugs is just one example.

The Year in: Vampires

Part II

The appearance of Vampire Weekend was strange, even disturbing, but simultaneously exciting, because I had just started working on an article about Dracula, tourism, and a trip to a small town in Transylvania. Over the following months, vampires seemed to lurk in every corner. First came the bus-stop ads for a sports drink called "Tru Blood," which turned out to be a subversive marketing campaign for the HBO series "True Blood," about attractive young vampires and telepathics in a fictional Louisiana town.
Then a friend happened to attend a lecture on "Historical Amnesia in Contemporary Russia," in which professor Dina Khapaeva discussed the fantasy novel Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozo), which centers on a war between armies of "light" and "dark" vampires. The book came out in 1998 and was hugely popular. A movie adaptation of Night Watch was made in 2004 and went on to become Russia's highest-grossing film ever. It looks and feels like The Matrix, but with pale, grim-mouthed Russian vampires instead of pale, grim-mouthed American "Agents."

Then these somewhat alarming ads for Remy Martin champagne started popping up amidst the shadows of the subway. It was hard to tell what the intended message was, but there was one I could not rule out: in adequate quantities, champagne induces vampirism.

[to be continued]

The Year in: Vampires

Part I

It all started in January (years are like that). It was a cold morning and the office was nearly dead. The only other people there when I arrived were a couple marketing types who seem to relish getting in when everyone else is still asleep. Music was coming from one of their desks; something fresh and young-sounding, with a hint of the exotic. "What is it?" I asked.

"The new Vampire Weekend," he said. I had never heard of the band, but chalked that up to the fact that I am not a marketing type.


He lent me the cd. The album hadn't been released yet, so it was just a promo copy - no pictures, no lyrics sheet, no liner notes. Nothing to give me an idea of the band's aesthetic. There was a brief piece of publicity from Rolling Stone on the back cover: “Guaranteed to make you at least forty percent happier than when you put it on”—an ominous promise of renewed life, of resurrection.

I have to admit that without any knowledge of the band, I was briefly seduced by the music. There was something rejuvenating about it - I attributed it to the lively West African guitar riffs and Caribbean rhythms the (very American-sounding) band members drew on. It all seemed innocent enough at first.

[to be continued]