by Guillermo del Toro

Some skeletons of thought on creative destruction, vampires, gender, eros, thanatos.

“Monsters, like angels, are invoked by our individual and collective needs… Herein lies an important clue: in contrast to timeless creatures like the dragon, the vampire does not seek to obliterate us, but instead offers a peculiar brand of blood alchemy. For as his contagion bestows its nocturnal gift, the vampire transforms our vile, mortal selves into the gold of eternal youth, and instills in us something that every social construct seeks to quash: primal lust. If youth is desire married with unending possibility, then vampire lust creates within us a delicious void, one we long to fulfill.

In other words, whereas other monsters emphasize what is mortal in us, the vampire emphasizes the eternal in us. Through the panacea of its blood it turns the lead of our toxic flesh into golden matter. “

Caitlin Flanagan dealt with the subject of teens girl’s sexual awakenings in the vampire series, Twilight, admirably:

The erotic relationship between Bella and Edward is what makes this book—and the series—so riveting to its female readers. There is no question about the exact nature of the physical act that looms over them. Either they will do it or they won’t, and afterward everything will change for Bella, although not for Edward. Nor is the act one that might result in an equal giving and receiving of pleasure. If Edward fails—even once—in his great exercise in restraint, he will do what the boys in the old pregnancy-scare books did to their girlfriends: he will ruin her.

To rephrase del Toro’s closing line (“In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying”): in vampire stories we find a tale of creative destruction where we can fantasize about the fulfillment of delicious urges or create victims of ourselves.