thenation | There are many, many different versions
of the vampire’s tale, but in its most timeworn Eurocentric telling,
vampires are evil’s upper crust: beautiful, blue-blooded aristocrats
draped in velvet, exuding idle menace. Dracula and his cursed kin are
the undead 1 percent and act accordingly: terrorizing villages,
murdering peasants, siphoning off others’ lifeblood, and turning up
their aquiline noses at the slightest hint of dissent.
An entire cottage industry operates around their stories, and vampire
lore does not always confine itself to the page. In the 17th century,
the very real and very sadistic Countess Bathory—she of Hungarian legend
and historical infamy—is said to have broken the bodies of more than
650 village girls and bathed in serf blood to retain her youth. For
that, history remembers her with a strange sort of fondness: as an
unfathomably wealthy, castle-dwelling noblewoman always depicted as lavishly dressed and dripping in jewels. She was monstrous in an elegant sort of way, the kind that inspires gothic novels and Swedish black metal records. Vituperative inhumanity, but made fashionable.
Vampires’ modern-day counterparts, on the other hand, leave much
to be desired from an aesthetic standpoint. Unlike the ancient Romanian moroi, Irish dearg-due, or Ghanaian sasabonsam,
today’s vampires are parasitic new money. Vulgar, ugly, and smug, their
wrists are cluttered with hideous statement watches, their torsos clad
in power suits or, worse, upmarket hipster threads. Some call them
vulture capitalists, after the great birds who feast on carrion. While
catchy, this term doesn’t quite fit; these monsters do not focus on the
dead—they go after the living. They run hedge funds, trade stocks, and
manage private equity firms, flush with generational wealth but always
hungry for more. Instead of hot blood, these fancy fiends hunt for cold
cash—and much like their spiritual predecessors, care little for how
others must suffer in their pursuit thereof.
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