Vampire Programme on RTE

monkeyfudge wrote:

Yes. But Stoker created the whole idea of the gothic romantic vampire. He added the sexual element to the whole thing. It's this type of vampire that these people are emulating.

I'm not so sure he was the first one to do it - in mych the same way as the maypoles and witches broomsticks were not particularly subtle hints at sexuality, I suspect that the whole blood-sucking aspect of vampirism was intented as a more subtle form of penetration, having certain characteristics in common with sex (particularly when biting the neck) without being too explicit.

Also, I'd point at Anne Rice in an accusing manner, rather than Stoker, if you want the real source of the poncy romantic vampire. Stoker's vampire was at least utterly dedicated to being evil and manipulative - Rice basically gave us a priviledged rich boy who finally had something nasty happen to him and basically has a massive angst trip about whether his pathetically naive black-and-white personal morality can endure once he's been turned into a monster who must prey on the living. Stoker was readable; Rice was like loads of different teen angst poems somehow melded into one and published in book form.

and yes, Irish vampires would have been great, especially if they'd found Diddly-Ireland ones "Oh arr, begorrah, I be a vampire culchie, so I do. Theres nothin I likes more than drinkin a bit o' blood on the oul weekend, like".

Edited to add : Regarding Bela Lugosi etc - Stoker actually published his book before then and the point about Count Dracula's image was that he was a Count - dressed in the finest clothes of the Victorian era, since he could afford to do so. I would assume that this is where the image comes from, although the psychology doesn't quite match since even the stalker perv dude who was quite evidently a predator in the program wasn't preparted to admit to as much, whereas the Count would have done so with glee.