Читать книгу Dracula Is a Racist: - Matt Melvin - Страница 9

Vampirism wouldn’t be as prevalent a topic as it is today if it weren’t for the popularization of a few specific vampires. These individuals have become the celebrities of the vampire world. Rather than tabloid articles and sex tapes though, stories and songs have been written, movies have been filmed, and crappy Halloween costumes have been mass-produced in Taiwan.

To gain a better understanding of the world of vampires, we must look at their entire history. Before we dive into the historical account of the vampire, though, let’s take a look at those specific vampires who helped shape the image we commonly associate with them today. And what better vampire to start with than the most famous vampire of them all, Dracula.

Dracula

Without a doubt, Dracula is the most well-known vampire in history. First publicly mentioned by name in the biography written by Bram Stoker, Dracula, many believe him to be the first vampire to ever exist. While this may or may not be true, Dracula does seem to be the oldest known vampire still alive today, even if his perfect skin says otherwise. I wonder what kind of moisturizer he uses.

Dracula (real name Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad III) was born in 1431 in Wallachia, where his father, Vlad II, would later rule as Prince. That same year, before two nearly consecutive terms, Vlad II was given the title Dracul, meaning “dragon,” and inducted into the Order of the Dragon, an elite Chivalric order of Europe. This esteemed honor was bestowed upon him for leading the Wallachian army and valiantly defending the land from the God-King Xerxes and his one million soldiers.

Dracula, the name that Vlad III adopted for himself, means “son of Dracul.” In addition to continuing the name, Vlad III followed closely in his father’s footsteps and ruled Wallachia himself in the late 1400s. During his rule, he was given the incredibly powerful moniker “Vlad the Impaler,” for his unique way of dealing with his enemies: by impaling them on large stakes in the ground.

This method of dealing with his opponents wasn’t limited to just his enemies, either. He was known to impale anyone who opposed him: traitors, repeat criminals, even his kids when they talked back to him (figure 2).

The “Impaler” name would later become ironic, given one of the popular means of dispatching vampires.

At the age of forty-six, after spending several years in prison, Vlad III was sentenced to death by beheading.

Figure 2. “This’ll hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”

Little Known Fact

A human head remains conscious for approximately fifteen to twenty seconds after being severed.

Also Little Known Fact

The sexual term “giving head” comes from the act of the executioner giving the severed head to the person in charge of overseeing the execution, who would then proceed to skullfuck it.

Soon after his death, Vlad III returned from the grave with a nasty taste in his mouth as the Dracula we all know today.

Once he became a vampire, Dracula also developed a strong racial hatred (as the title of this book might suggest). In fact, he was a prominent proponent of the spread of racism, single-handedly bringing about the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. Although he wasn’t a founding member or anything, the practices this group is now widely known for were all inspired by Dracula.

After witnessing Dracula destroying crucifixes, Klan members began doing the same by lighting huge crosses on fire. When they found out Dracula was an “undead spirit” they all took white sheets and started dressing up like ghosts. After Dracula slept with their cousins, so did they.

Nowadays, Dracula is still very much a racist, but acts as one in much subtler ways. Being animated and ostentatious is exactly what they do.

Nosferatu

Nosferatu! That name alone can chill the blood!

—Johann Cavallius, Bremen historian

Nosferatu, the title commonly given to the vampire known as Count Orlok, is actually just a synonym for “vampire” that’s attributed to him rather than an actual name. The term is believed to have likely been derived from the Greek nosophoros, meaning “plague-carrier” or “sex symbol” (figure 3).

Figure 3. Count Orlok displaying some of that vampire supersexuality.

As a child, Orlok was never part of the popular crowd, mostly due to his stunningly unattractive features. From the day he was regretfully discarded from his mother’s womb, Orlok suffered from a peculiar form of male-pattern baldness that affects infants and continues into adulthood. Growing up bald is hard enough, but Orlok also suffered from maximus leprechauriclytis, also known as “big-ass elf ears.” Normally, sufferers of the disease grow their hair long and let it drape over their ears. Or they just pretend to be really into The Lord of the Rings. Orlok, however, couldn’t grow hair and Lord of the Rings didn’t even exist at the time.

Orlok was also incredibly tall as a kid. He hit puberty at a very young age, and his bones grew so quickly that it caused issues with his posture. It also caused him to develop some weird, gangly fingers that totally creep me the hell out. With all of this combined, Orlok grew up as a pretty ugly kid. A childhood picture of him was even used by tabloid magazines, which dubbed him the “Bat Boy.” Suffice it to say, Orlok’s appearance caused him to have a difficult time with the ladies when he was growing up.

That nervous stutter probably didn’t help, either.

Being ostracized by women his entire life, Orlok grew up to be quite the misogynist. When coupled with his vampiric blood-lust, that misogyny turned into a deadly resentment of women. He became a psychological killer who targeted countless numbers of women and enacted his revenge upon them.

As Sigmund Freud would say, “Dude probably boned his mom, too.”

Orlok detested the women he attacked so much that he never let any of his victims become vampires like him, instead choosing to kill them all before they turned (figure 4). Luckily for him, law enforcement during this period of time was nothing like the CSI crime wizards we have today, able to pinpoint their suspect based on the single semen sample that every dumb killer somehow always leaves at the crime scene. Orlok’s victims were instead written off as casualties of the various plagues ravaging the area, leaving no suspicion of possible attacks. Because of this, Orlok was able to feed without any worry of being found.

Figure 4. Count Orlok totally mackin’ on some breezy.

Everything changed when Orlok became infatuated with a woman named Ellen Hutter. For some reason, Orlok saw something in Ellen that made him view her differently, admiring her from afar for quite some time. Could it be that Orlok, a man hell-bent on homicidal, blood-fueled misogyny, was capable of…love?

At first, Ellen thought Orlok was just a harmless rapist but eventually realized he was a vampire. She took it upon herself to rid the land of this monster, luring him into her bedroom just before daybreak in hopes of tricking him into staying in the sunlight. This act cost Ellen her life, but it worked. Orlok was so pussy whipped he didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Trapped in Ellen’s room with nowhere to hide, he was consumed by sunlight and burst into a pillar of smoke.

Count Chocula

Unlike most vampires, Count Chocula was friendly and nonviolent. His vampirism was the result of being attacked and turned against his will. He despised being a vampire and loathed being associated with blood-sucking murderers. As a vampire, he vowed he would never bring the same pain upon any human being.

This proved difficult, however, as the lust for blood is impossible to overcome by pure force of will. Like a fat dude with cake, Chocula felt powerless over his cravings. He began dealing with this by feeding on rats, stray cats and dogs, the homeless, and other animals nobody would care about if they were killed. Still, Chocula was unsatisfied with the life he had been forced into. He had to do something to change it.

Before becoming a vampire, Chocula was a brilliant research chemist and scientist. He had no experience with vampires or bloodwork in the past, but his relative lack of knowledge in the field wasn’t going to stop him from spending every waking moment trying to find a cure to somehow reverse the effects of his newfound vampirism.

While testing for a possibility to negate the cravings altogether, he had his first major breakthrough. Due to an accident during one of his experiments, he was somehow able to convert his lust for blood into a craving for chocolate breakfast cereals. This was a huge milestone but caused a slight problem: no cereal was ever good enough.

Cocoa Pebbles was all right, Cookie Crisp was just a joke, and, sure, Cocoa Puffs turned his milk brown with chocolaty goodness, but it was still missing something. Unsatisfied with the available options, Chocula took it upon himself to create the best chocolate breakfast cereal in existence.

This audacious endeavor had piqued the interest of Lieutenant Mills, a breakfast cereal connoisseur and businessman who would later rise to the rank of General. Mills recruited Chocula for a position in cereal research and development. With Mills’s backing, the count spent years testing and experimenting with new combinations of cereal until he eventually found the missing piece of the puzzle he’d been searching for: marshmallows.

A popular Irish cereal at the time was filled to the brim with marshmallows—rainbows, blue moons, and a multitude of various other colors and shapes. Chocula noticed this and experimented with a combination of chocolate-flavored marshmallows and frosted cereal, eventually creating the best cereal ever to be produced (figure 5).

Figure 5. Cereal + Chocolate + Marshmallows = YAAAAY.

Mills was so pleased with the results that not only did he name the cereal after the count, but he made him the mascot for it as well. Chocula never intended on becoming a mascot when he first set out, but he fit the bill amazingly well. He soon became one of the most popular mascots of all time, way better than an enthusiastic furry in a tiger costume.²

Chocula never let this newfound success go to his head. He remained humble and kept close relations with his longtime friends. He even used his connections to get some of them, such as Franken Berry and Yummy Mummy, their very own cereals.

Bluebeard

As we will later learn, particularly violent or cruel sinners were apt to return from the grave as vampires. Bluebeard was definitely no exception.

This dude was fucked up. Real name Gilles de Rais, Blue-beard was the alias given to him after he was convicted of infanticide—the torture, rape, and murder of children.

With a name like Bluebeard, one would assume him to be a pirate, but in fact he was nothing more than a European nobleman. Born in France in 1404, Gilles lost his father when he was only nine years old. After his mother died two years later, he and his brother were sent to live with his grandfather, a grouchy old man and total dick. His grandfather, in an effort to rid himself of the nuisance of taking care of “these ungrateful little shits,” tried to pawn Gilles off by arranging for him to marry a prominent girl. His first attempt was the heiress Jeanne de Paynol, but she was mysteriously killed before the wedding. The second was Béatrice de Rohan, who was also mysteriously killed. The third time, with Catherine de Thouars, was a success, but only because Gilles’s grandfather kidnapped her before anything could happen to her.³

Years later after his grandfather passed away, Gilles’s sick perversion began.

A boy would be lured into his castle under false pretenses. Once inside, the boy would be tied up and hung upside down from the ceiling by rope or chains. Just before losing consciousness, the boy would be taken down and reassured that no harm would come to him. Gilles would then rape him (see figure 6, next page).

It only got worse from there. The ensuing actions Gilles took part in have been deemed too foul to be re iterated in these pages. Suffice it to say, the actions perpetrated by this man make those of the most heinous serial killers and pedophiles look like mere child’s play. In addition to this, he was also known to smoke drugs and litter!

Figure 6. “Tricked you!”

Gilles’s obsession with the forbidden led him to become interested in black magic. An evil magician suggested he sell his soul to the devil to further his “journey.” But Gilles was a devout Catholic and his morals wouldn’t allow him to do such a thing. Instead, he raped and murdered some more little boys.

Gilles’s actions were soon discovered when the bodies of dozens of these boys were uncovered. With incriminating testimony from his servants, he was convicted and condemned to death. Because his actions were so heinous, the court sentenced him to be strangled and stabbed to death by the families of the children he had killed. Brutal.

Don’t forget, all of this happened before he ever became a vampire. These were the actions of a normal human being. Well, not mentally normal, but physiologically normal.

Amusingly enough, when he actually did become a vampire, he completely stopped pursuing his old, sadistic ways.

As a human, he was obsessed with the sinful aspect, the wickedness, of what he was doing. As a vampire, however, that sadism really paled in comparison to what all vampires did on a frequent basis. Sure, he was a little more violent than most when he eventually sought his revenge on the servants who had testified against him and the families who had condemned him to death, but mutilation and rape just seemed so passé.

The worst part of it all, though? His beard wasn’t even blue. What a fraud.

Lestat de Lioncourt

Lestat, the vampire famously portrayed by Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire and Stuart Townsend in Queen of the Damned, is known to be extremely vain, bold, arrogant, and reluctant to follow orders. Inside the vampire realm, he was chastised for this by his elders, often referring to him as “the Brat Prince,” a title he is quite fond of. However, outside of the vampire world, he’s much better known for his interest and aspirations in U.S. politics, which he pursued under his other name, Richard Nixon.

After serving in the navy during WWII, he was elected to Congress to be California’s twelfth district representative and later its senator. After unsuccessful political runs in 1960 and 1962, Lestat was elected to the presidency in 1968, becoming the thirty-seventh president of the United States.

“Tricky Lestat,” as he was sometimes referred to, had a strong first term and was reelected for a second. Things went south soon after, the turning point being the Watergate scandal. Five burglars were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972, bringing to light several instances of phone tapping of journalists and administration officials, an assassination request of newspaper columnist Jack Anderson, and the cover-up of an investigation of the president’s possible vampirism (figure 7).

Figure 7. “I am not a crook. Or a vampire.”

Two reporters from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, began to pursue the truth behind the scandal. “Deep Throat,” the pseudonym given to Deputy Director of the FBI Linda Lovelace (who moonlighted as an adult film actress), acted as a secret informant for Woodward and Bernstein, supplying them with inside information regarding the scandal, internal Watergate documents, and copious amounts of oral sex.

With impeachment looming, Nixon resigned from office, never to return to politics again. He now performs in the rock band The Vampire Lestat.

Things Richard Nixon Is Also Not Besides a Crook

  A serial killer

  A tax evasionist

  A petty thief

  An arsonist

  An Old West bank robber

  A cat burglar

  A drug dealer

  A timely subject matter

Count von Count

Count von Count—or the Count, as he’s more commonly referred to—currently lives on Sesame Street. With a name like Count von Count, it’s no coincidence that he really enjoys counting. To say he just enjoys it, though, is a significant understatement. Simply counting to three causes him to erupt in maniacal, boisterous laughter.

This seemingly innocent fondness of counting is actually a side effect of a severe case of obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD usually causes sufferers to perform various actions a specific number of times to prevent some alleged event or situation from occurring, but the Count suffers from a very specific type of OCD known as arithmomania. Sufferers of arithmomania feel compelled to obsessively and meticulously count their actions or objects in their surroundings. The castle the count lives in, for example, is home to a large number of bats that the count often feels subconsciously obligated to count.

Aside from just being weird, this disorder also causes the Count an immense amount of trouble when it comes to hunting for fresh blood. He often finds himself distracted by his surroundings, causing him to stop the pursuit of his would be victims to count various objects. For instance, during his pursuit of the Cookie Monster, the count stumbled upon the Cookie Monster’s vast supply of cookies. And when sneaking up on Oscar the Grouch, the count was bombarded with the immense amount of fleas crawling around on his furry body.

The Count’s arithmomania is so severe that if he hasn’t counted anything after a certain amount of time, he’ll feel the need to do so even if there is nothing around to count. “When I’m alone, I count myself. One count!” You sad, sad man. Luckily for the count, he has quite a way with women, so loneliness isn’t much of a problem.

The Count used to share his castle with his former girlfriend, Countess von Backwards. They shared a common “interest” in counting. Von Backwards had a sort of reverse arithmomania, in that she felt the need to count just as the Count did but done backwards. In order to do this, though, she would have to know the total of what she was counting beforehand. So she already knew the number but still felt compelled to count—a sign of an even more severe case of arithmomania than the Count’s.

Von Backwards and the Count’s relationship began to sour over the years, the turning point coming from the introduction of Countess Dahling von Dahling. Von Dahling looked remarkably similar to von Backwards: same general hairstyle, physique, and cute little puppet mouth. The Count was immediately intrigued.

Being the only count on all of Sesame Street, it wasn’t hard to attract both countesses. Convincing both to participate in a threesome proved to be much more difficult.⁴ The threesome eventually happened, but it solidified von Backwards’s worries that the relationship was over, resulting in her leaving the Count soon after. The Count is currently dating von Dahling, who has since moved into his castle with him.

Vampires > Zombies: The Fabulous Life

There are so many famous vampires! They’re like the rock stars of the monster world. Without even reading this book, I bet you could ask anybody and that person would be able to tell you at least one of their names. Are there any famous zombies, though? Nope. Losers.

Grandpa and Lily Munster

Lily Munster and her father, aptly named Grandpa, are part of the classic American sitcom family, The Munsters, which includes Lily’s husband, Herman; son, Eddie; and niece, Marilyn. Although the family considered themselves to be a typical middle-class family, they definitely stood out in their community. A creepy castlelike mansion and Gothic-styled car in a suburban neighborhood really stand out. Not to mention their fire breathing T-rex they kept as a pet under the staircase. Marilyn, the only normal one in the family, was the only one who found it easy to fit in. It was difficult for everyone else, though, since they were all monsters of some sort.

This brings up an interesting point: Lily, a vampire, and Herman, a Frankenstein monster, had a son, Eddie, who was a werewolf. How does that work? Is this the first subtle reference of adultery (possibly even bestiality) to make its way onto broadcast television?

The family, who immigrated to the United States in search of a better life, has warmed our hearts with their goofy antics and charming attempts to integrate into society. Regardless of two of them being blood-sucking vampires, I think we can all agree they were much nicer than those snobby jerks in The Addams Family.

Count Duckula

First appearing to a wide audience in the British animated TV show DangerMouse, Count Duckula is the first and only vampire duck in existence and one of DangerMouse’s many sworn enemies.

DangerMouse, who is indeed a mouse, is the greatest secret agent in the world. He is best known for his fashionable eyepatch, which he actually has no need to wear. He simply enjoys experiencing bad depth perception. DangerMouse is aided by his sidekick, Ernest Penfold, a cowardly and timid hamster who wears glasses and a blue business suit.

Like all of DangerMouse’s enemies, Count Duckula held a severe resentment for the rodent superspy. Duckula’s hatred was unique, though. For as long as he could remember, Duckula was absolutely obsessed with show business. He was desperate to have his own show. Being a supporting character on DangerMouse’s show made him incredibly envious.

Much to his surprise, seven years after DangerMouse premiered, Count Duckula was given his very own show in the form of a spin-off series. The series featured a slew of characters, almost all of which were anthropomorphized birds. Like any good vampire, Duckula had his own Van Helsing antagonist character, Dr. Von Goosewing. Duckula was also accompanied by his butler, Igor, and his aptly named nanny, Nanny.

The show also featured a unique view into the nature of life and death. Duckula was killed several times but was constantly reincarnated through a blood ritual by his servants. Just the kind of wholesome content parents want in a kid’s show.

During the ritual for the current incarnation of Duckula, his servants accidentally used ketchup instead of blood, which resulted in the count being a vegetarian. Besides Count Chocula, this makes him the only other vampire to not drink blood. It also gives him a much better chance at hooking up with that cute vegan chick who works at the coffee shop.

The Fresh Count of Bel-Air

Sir William the Fresh, a young vampire from West Philadelphia, born and raised, spent most of his days on the playground. William enjoyed spending most of his time with his friends, or as they liked to say, “chillin’ out,” “maxin’,” or “relaxin’ all cool.”

Aside from drinking human blood, William played a lot of basketball outside of his school. One day while “chillin’ out” with his compatriots, William was accosted by a group of local vampire hunters. He was able to escape unharmed, but the news of this altercation quickly reached William’s mother. Frightened, she immediately arranged for William to be sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Bel-Air.

William hailed for a cab and was quickly greeted by a peculiar sight. The taxi that awaited him was adorned with a custom license plate that said “FRESH” and had a pair of dice hanging from the rearview mirror. It was quite the rare sight. Upon entering the vehicle, William was met with quite a pungent odor. The odor wasn’t garlic, but the stale stench of the taxi driver. It was so strong, however, that it might as well have been garlic. William very much wished to “smell [him] later.”

The ride was unbearable, but the taxi eventually arrived at his destination. William exited the vehicle, excused his driver, and set his eyes upon his new kingdom. The drastic change of scenery had effectively “flipped-turned” William’s life upside down. He gazed upon this new land: a pure, untapped source of new victims. From that day forth, William reigned atop a throne of human skulls as the Fresh Count of Bel-Air.