[This interview was done by Pablo Gosse of the MUSE (student newspaper of  Memorial University of Newfoundland) with JOHN CROSSEN, a doctoral student at  the University of Indiana and is reprinted here with permission.]
 

Q: Why do you think that society as a whole has become so fascinated with a subject which is so violent, and whose roots are grounded in something even more violent?

Personally, I think "society" has always been violent and fascinated by violence in all forms. As a scripture scholar (I have an M.Div. from Saint Thomas Theological Seminary), I am struck by the nasty imagery in such holy writ as Judges, Judith, Joshua, even Genesis. Before "splatter films", there was the very cinematic Barak driving the tent peg into the forehead of Jael, or blood-smeared Judith waving the severed head of Holofernes above the excited Hebrews. Even the Crucifixion has fascinated iconographers and artists since the Middle Ages. Some of those bloody crucifixes were really bloody at about the time Vlad was having a grand time in Wallachia. I documented this in my paper for DRACULA 97. Medieval society, like our own, was awash in gory imagery--it was cathartic and yet sublime... Calling us outside of ourselves, our petty concerns with its brutal slap to our sensibilities. If we will not swoon before the glories of Heaven, then we will shudder before the horrors of Hell.

Now, today, why do we gawk at auto accidents? Why must we see the slit throat of Nicole Simpson? The suffering of others has always transfixed us. If we seem more obsessed, I think it's really because technology can deliver those visceral grips to our imagination faster. They fly across every medium, and yes, the effect can seem dizzying. But it's mostly an innovation to feed an ancient need more efficiently. I honestly don't think we're any better or worse on this issue than medieval or older societies.

As for Dracula, he's so much like us, isn't he? He's just more honest about bloodletting and bloodsoaking. He's the shadow of ourselves, in cape or stake in hand, just behind us as we take a peek at that roadkill.
 

Q: Why do you feel that "Dracula" has maintained such a high level of popularity in the 100 years since its publication, and especially in the past two decades or so?

As an American, I've long thought he was us--the Ultimate Consumer, feeding, taking and dominating. He has it all. As David Skal joked at DRACULA 97, "What's not to like about him? He's the American dream: he's immortal, forever youthful, dresses in elegant clothes, and has a getaway castle in Europe." But the Dracula Americans love is not the novelistic one... It's Lugosi or more accurately, Frank Langella. Most modern folks would probably find the novel boring after a chapter or two. It's the idea of Dracula they enjoy. For that, Stoker's character will live on.

On the academic side, the interest in the novel has blossomed in the past 20 years, for sure! My mentor in the English Dept. at Arizona State U, Alan P. Johnson, a Dracula scholar, once told me he couldn't publish a thing on the novel in the late 60s, early 70s... He would have been laughed out of a job. Now, after twenty years of feminist, post-colonial, dialogic and deconstructive studies of every imaginable stripe, the novel's sort of become "born again", truly a textbook of every 20^th century obsession, from blood to sex to male-female relations, East vs West, etc. It's THE study of Degeneracy at every Western cultural level.
 

Q: To what extent do you feel folklore and superstitions influenced the figure which Bram Stoker created?
 

Oh, very greatly! He obviously knew many of the traits and features of the folkloric vampire. He was also steeped in symbol, ritual, and other arcana--possibly from his associations with Golden Dawn member, Hall Caine, the "Hommy-Beg" to whom he dedicates the novel. Hall, being a

devout Manx and Celt, loved to tell ghost stories and describe every custom of the country folk in detail... Stoker is clever in how he immerses us in a totally other world, a plastic one that swirls and twists about us as Harker heads up into the Carpathians fo his rendezvous with the King Vampire. He is deliberately summing up every myth and dark symbol in that opening section. He knew what he was doing.
 

Q: The vampires of folklore, Stoker's Count Dracula, and the vampires presented in modern day literature are vastly different in appearance. Why do you think the image of the vampire has changed so much from that presented in the folktales from which they developed? Which do you hold to be more representative of the idea of the vampire, and why?

Great question! Let me answer the last one first, OK? I'd say the folkloric one, the one that looks like a real animated corpse. It's more in line with the medieval mindset, of the cheat of death--of its hideousness, curse on every sector of society. What a curse to die and rot and yet still "live"! Whew. The flip side of the art of dying well that medieval folks in Europe seemed concerned with. This image of the vampire links us to the earliest origins of vampire mythology.

Why has the image changed? To make Dracula more palatable to a death-denying culture like ours. We need to keep death as clean-looking, elegant, and sanitized as we possibly can. If Dracula exudes an odor, it had better be Chazz for men!

Curious problem I've always wrestled with: In the novel, Harker describes the Count as real degenerate, a half-beast, with his protruding sharp teeth, hairy palms, pointed ears, and foul breath. How the heck did this guy walk about London good as you please, without a single Bobby pulling him aside for questioning? His physiognomy fits the classic criminal type for Victorian minds (how many cartoons in Pall Mall Gazette pictured Jack the Ripper as a total brute). My humble theory is that not only could Dracula affect and control the elements (wind, lightning, mists) but he could control our senses, especially as he grew stronger on rich Western blood.

By the way, got a letter recently from John Badham, the director of the Langella DRACULA (1979). He originally wanted Mina, Dracula's first victim, to be even more hideous than what we saw--flesh falling off her arms, bones exposed, etc. The idea being that Dracula maintains his

boyish looks by drawing all beauty off his victims, corrupting them so that he may remain incorrupt. A neat lil touch, a conscious effort by the filmakers to balance the folkloric vampire with the Byronic-Romantic one.
 

Q: What aspect of the novel do you feel that has drawn people to it? In opposition to this, what do you think draws people to the actual historical figure, Vlad Dracula, on which the fictional Dracula is based?

Like every good bedtime story, or fairy tale, there is something forbidden going on under the surface, or in the case of Dracula, under the sheets. People are titillated by that. I think Stoker was, with those heaving sighs, tingling necks, and sweet laughter.

As a kid, I was drawn to the battle between good and evil, where science is more like religion and religion is more like science. I've always imagined myself Van Helsing. But that's me. More accurately, though, I wanted to be Cushing's athletic Van Helsing to Lee's athletic Count.
 

As for Vlad Dracula--that "Dracula" was REAL in some form. Look at how we run to any piece of "evidence" of UFOs, or Bigfoot, or Men in Black! Deep down, we want to be reassured that what fascinates us is "real", that we're not wasting our time dreaming or chasing after fairy tales. A historical Dracula legitimates all our attention paid... Hey, he really existed! Let's watch another Hammer Film!
 

Q: Why do you feel that so many people feel drawn to the figure of the vampire, not only in "Dracula", but also in the novels of Anne Rice, and the myriad of vampire fiction which has surfaced in the latter half of this century?

Again, forbidden lifestyles are fascinating... The ability to transgress the laws of nature and get away with it, perhaps even thrive. What's forbidden holds our attention. It's always amused me that Satan gets more press from evangelical Christians who see him everywhere. Folks are drawnto what attracts (immortality and eternal youth) and repulses (drinking blood) at the same time. How else to explain President Clinton's popularity? Just kidding... Not!
 

Q: What effect do you feel that the popularity of the vampire has had in the development of the Goth subculture?

From Anne Rice, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, PN Elrod, and others, quite a bit! I don't know about Stoker. Ever notice you never really have a sense of what his characters are wearing--Dracula is dressed in black, head to foot... Thanks, Bram, real helpful for my tailor! The Goth folks revel intextures, of layers of lace, gaudy jewelry, and tasteful black. They're really quite aesthetic, an arresting presence to the eye. I'd want a Goth to design my funeral. This concern with "Look", with how they'll appear in your "Gaze" and hopefully dominate it, characterizes many Goths for me. If they're "vampires", they're trying to entice our eyes and draw energy from that. Could be worse, I guess.
 

Q: Do you have any experience with those involved in the Goth subculture, and, if yes, can you provide any insight as to their motives and purposes for carrying out such a lifestyle.

There is a small Goth sub-culture here in Bloomington. When I walk down our college street, Kirkwood, I see more baggy clothes and bare skin with garish tattoos, not that elegant crowd I had the pleasure of meeting at DRACULA 97. At the masquerade ball Saturday night, I had the chance to stroll about, chatting with several. All, with out an exception, were articulate, bright and quick with their answers, and VERY SERIOUS about their image. They moaned that the media at DRACULA 97 were purposely seeking out the "weirdos", the "crazies", those who catered to Americans' stereotypes of Goths and practicing vampires. One girl, disgusted withsome nut who kept cavorting for the video cameras, cigar in his mouth, flapping his cape and howling, said, "Look at that mess! See what I mean? That's what everyone thinks of us--as nuts. Well, we're not. We love to dress with dignity and style, and differently, but not because we'repsychos." Turned out she was a med student at UCLA!

Rules I picked up: some Goths are vampyres (their preferred spelling), but not all; some vampyres dress like Goths, but not all. They're a pretty diverse bunch.

Motives of Goths? From my interviews and observations, I think the main one is infusing life with dignity--conscious, willed decorum. When they dress, each element is deliberately placed so and so... for a certain effect. Goths are folks who love ritual but want it on their own terms, by their own design. They want to keep each motion, each look within a magic circle of their own self. They delight in projecting an "excess within control." It's a fantasy life based on having fun with stuffiness. It's the lace but no strait-lace! As one lady remarked to me, "I want to return to the past and bring it here to the present. I am both Victorian and Modern at once."
 

Q: What is your opinion of those who claim to be "practicing vampires"? Do you feel that their actions are substantiated, or that they could conceivably pose a threat to themselves and others?

Yes and yes. Any human behavior lends itself to irrationality, even criminality. And history certainly has its share of homicidal vampires, those excited by the sight of blood, who need to see it spilled, even taste it--from Erzebet Bathory, the "Blood Countess" (1560-1614), to PeterKurten, the "Dusseldorf Vampire" (executed 1930). I don't like the actions of many so-called "living vampires" (or Sangroids, as one guy in Denver I insisted I call them, including him)--in this day and age, we just have to resist random play with body fluids. Still, there is an undeniable connection between sex and blood, and with care, knowing, in a responsible, mature (and committed) relationship, it cannot be avoided. It's important lovers be comfortable with each other's bodies (occasional blood in sex, too), but not too comfortable! Too much of anything is never good. And if someone can't get excited sexually unless blood is shed (from a cut on an arm, what have you), then that is a fixation--and somehow he or she is locked, unable to grow as a fully mature sexual partner. Fixations of any sort in life are not healthy. It's the same rule for sexas with everything: moderation, and balance. Fixation is imbalance.
 

Q: Do you pay any credence to diseases such as Porphyria and Renfield's Syndrome with regard to those who claim to be practicing vampires?

I don't know about porphyria as an appeal or justification for those who claim to be "practicing vampires", but I imagine it justified a lot of fools' suspicions in the past--those who are light sensitive, have unnatural growths of hair, receding gums and thus pronounced teeth, and are pale, with red-rimmed eyes... Gotta be vampires! Like the Gerasene Demoniac in Mark and the other Gospels--a wild man, mentally ill, wandering about cemeteries--gotta be demon possessed, right? Our gaze (what Jesus lambasted as "Judging by appearances, as men do, not by the heart, as God does.") has done a lot of violence to others--what that gaze puts on others, how it fixes them in our fears and insecurities... and often has condemned them to exile, loneliness, and death. As Foucault noted, it's the sin of the modern, rational age--the Gaze that sees and names, and dehumanizes. From hospital to church, it's everywhere.

For me, the greatest evil is the Evil Eye. How folks who've suffered from porphyria can confirm that!