Respect Authority

Remember a few years ago when everyone was into pirates? Pop culture messiah Chuck Klosterman wrote on the subject in 2004, and made the kind of insightful points I wouldn’t have been able to think of my own, let alone write down. But Klosterman’s basic point was this: People love free music, music is made free by theft, and pirates are THE representation of thieving things that should be free. Essentially, pirate ships were the world’s first Napster.

Since the Pirate Renaissance of 2004, not much has changed: we’re still at war, the James Bond franchise continues to pump out movies, and there are no flying cars. But the obsession with pirates has slowly faded, perhaps as iTunes made it semi-logical to pay for music again (Would a pirate buy rum for 99 cents a jug? Methinks not). Instead, the once-popular pirate, epitomized by people like Johnny Depp and David Cross, has been replaced by longstanding villain and Halloween competitor The Vampire.

The Vampire Renaissance has been anything but subtle. Ever since Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were 89% gay in 2000’s Interview with the Vampire, people have been (no pun intended) on the hunt for their next fang fix. Anne Rice only drew more attention to her original Vampire Chronicles by going all Jesus-y last year, and HBO’s Trueblood has quickly become one of the most daring shows on television. Chris Brown’s “Wall to Wall” video was basically “Thriller” with vampires, and Fall Out Boy’s “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Our Song Names are Too Fucking Long” video was about vampire hunters. (According to Aaron, it was “retarded.”) Further, hipsters everywhere are ironing their skinny jeans to indie band Vampire Weekend. 

Amazon says you can purchase both Eriz Nuzum’s The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula, and Paul Bibeau’s Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead for a combined $29.84, and pretty soon Cedric Diggory will come back from the dead to play Edward Cullen in the movie-version of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. (In fact, nowhere has the VR become more pronounced than in the mind-blowing popularity of Meyer’s four-part Twilight series, which, yes, I have read, and yes, is incredible).

So if the pirate obsession signified a need to justify our file-sharing jones, what does it mean to be obsessed with the blood-sucking undead? Here’s what I think. Vampires are nothing if not three things: beautiful, immortal and filthy fucking rich. The first two by virtue of their vampire-ness, and the latter because you’d have to be a pretty dumb vampire to remain destitute for multiple centuries. These three characteristics are, more or less, the fundamental values of society today. We shove all manner of foreign objects into our bodies to appear beautiful, inject ourselves with needles to stop aging, and each of us is at least in some capacity hoping to stumble across a big ole pile o’ cash. To be a vampire, for Americans (humans?) today, would be to accomplish the few relatively amoral goals we’ve set for ourselves, all in one fell swoop.

Needless to say, I’m feeling some pirate nostalgia.