Lindsay Dearinger: Playing Vampire Games: Rules and Play in Varney the Vampire and Dracula

Journal of Dracula Studies 14 (2012)

[Lindsay Dearinger received her M.A. in English in 2011 and is currently an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Central Oklahoma. Her research interests include Anglo-Jewish authors of the nineteenth century, as well as representations of vampires and animals in literature. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in English.]

  “Great Scott! Is this a game?”

“It is.”[1]

In most vampire narratives, vampires must engage in play to distract, divert, or mislead humans for the purposes of self-preservation. Vampire stories also incorporate play as it relates to games and rules. Vampires and humans alike must play by sets of rules, and the rules depend upon the game being played. To analyze the use of play in vampire narratives, I look to the earliest English language vampire-as-genre stories: Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood, the prototype for vampire stories since its appearance in the 1840s, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, perhaps the most famous vampire narrative.[2] Relying on Derrida’s conceptualization of play, this essay examines play as it relates to the structure of the texts and the characters’ relationships to the rules of the vampire game in order to determine subversion of the “serious vampire” archetype.

Derrida’s Concept of Play and Decentralization

My analysis of play in Dracula and Varney requires an explication of Derrida’s notion of play and the decentralization of conceptuality. In “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” Derrida relates the history of the concept of structure; he considers structure in terms of before and after a rupture, or the interruption of classical thought with the onset of structuralism. Derrida explains that, before the rupture, structure has been “neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or of referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin” (278). The center, which “grounds” the structure, limits play.

Francis Marion Crawford: For the Blood is the Life

A classic vampire story HERE

to sleep with a vampire (Director. Adam Friedman)

Starring
Scott Valentine
Charlie Spradling
Richard Zobel

Scott Valentine is a vampire who is torn between his need to feed and his desire to learn about the world of humans. But when he kidnaps Nina, a beautiful but troubled stripper, his world is turned upside down. For after she discovers that he cannot be hurt physically, Nina tries a new tactic of seduction.

Boleslas Biegas: The First Metamorphosis Vampire

Katherine Ramsland: Vampire Crime

Journal of Dracula Stufies 2 (2000)

[Dr. Katherine Ramsland has published fifteen books, including a biography of Anne Rice, The Vampire Companion, and Piercing the Darkness (a journalistic expose of the vampire subculture).]

While most of the vampire subculture these days is a benign form of role-playing, there have been cases of people who were inspired by the predatory image to kill. To their minds, the vampire mythos provides a framework that inspires and even licenses certain types of violent behaviors.  Although this bloodthirsty impulse reaches back centuries and crosses cultures, I want to examine the mythology’s influence on three cases in recent American culture: Roderick Ferrell, James Riva, and Richard Trenton Chase. I will take one case at a time and then discuss how they attach to the vampire frame.

     

A Brief History of the Vampire and Crime

     

Since primitive time, humans have been known to drink blood, often in religious rituals. However, some sanguinary acts had nothing to do with ceremony. In 300 B. C. a Buddhist monk drank the blood of swine to cure an illness said to be incurable -- and it worked. Warriors of many cultures drank the blood of their enemies to affirm their conquest and enhance their power.  Some even did it as a communion of friendship with their victim. In contrast, the compulsion to drink blood is generally part of a sexual perversion called hematomania. For example, Peter Kurten, “the Vampire of Dusseldorf,” felt the buildup of erotic tension before he attacked a victim and achieved release only after violence. It seems that blood is a complex symbol that inspires both healing and destruction.

                        A quick list of some who drank blood in a pathological manner includes Gilles de Rais, Sergeant François Bertrand, Fritz Haarmann, and the aforementioned Peter Kurten. There are many lesser known “vampires” as well, both male and female.^[1] Some merely kidnap or drug someone to get a taste of blood, others murder.

The planet of the vampires (director: Mafio Bava)

Starring
Barry Sullivan
Norma Bengell

After landing on a mysterious planet, a team of astronauts begin to turn on each other, swayed by the uncertain influence of the planet and its strange inhabitants.

Boleslas Biegas: The glorious Vampire