Classism in Vampire and Zombie Literature by Guest Blogger Damon Sutton

One thing to note about horror is that horror is almost always about one thing, anxiety. The Big Bad Wolf in grandma’s clothes? That’s the anxiety that the family members closest to you actually want to do you harm. The Headless Horseman who chases Ichabod Crane over every hill and valley? That’s the anxiety of time coming for you to take everything away from you and your utter powerlessness to stop it. This is why different cultures have such different flavors in their horror, because different cultures have different fundamental anxieties. Different cultures think about different things and as such they fear different things.

So, what anxieties are reflected in the classic horror mainstays of vampires and zombies?

For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll limit myself to the classic stories involving these scary elements. Once a classic story has taken root, other writers rewrite, reboot, deconstruct, and reconstruct creating countless cases of examples that prove the rule, so to keep things focused I’ll focus on the classic stories.

Which goes back to the mainstays discussed in this blog post, Vampires and Zombies. Vampires are not Zombies, but the two are actually very fascinating reflections of class anxiety.

The first thing to note about vampires is their aristocratic default. As much as later writers have tried to diffuse this, they have only been partially successful. The famous Dracula was an aristocrat and almost every other vampire story embraces this either literally, financially, or metaphorically. Vampires are defined by being in an elite, usually a financial elite, hidden among humans and feeding among them. Vampires are the fear the lower class of the upper class. Aristocratic, seductive, yet ultimately parasitic.They're in charge, people tell us it's because they're better than us... but that's so obviously untrue it's more likely to be dark forces and dark hungers... That "I'm losing my loved one to The vampires" that is endemic in vampire fiction is the anxiety of the lower classes that if they have children who are intelligent, and productive, that the upper class will 'seduce' them and they'll lose their children to it. It's working 3 jobs to send your daughter to Harvard... where she marries a rich boy and raises your grandkids in The Hamptons, having taken all your help but leaving you totally behind. One of my favorite elements is the horror of realization. The sexual nature of vampires underlies this, the rich always did desire the young and attractive members of the poor.

There is another layer here. Did the peasants under Dracula’s rule know he was a vampire? Of course they did, but they willfully pretended otherwise. This is a layer of this terror, that even putting words to it puts you in danger, an anxiety I think known all too well given current events among powerless actors and actresses and predatory Hollywood producers. 

Zombies are more subtle in their class consciousness, but equally as based in such anxiety. For starters, Zombies are almost never hidden, in fact they are defined in contrast by being everywhere and unable to avoid. Instead of intelligent and calculating, Zombies are crude and bestial. Zombies are the converse anxiety, the fear the upper class has of the lower. "They're everywhere, and they hunger!" is how the rich see the poor. Stupid, hungry, yet inexplicably everywhere 'why haven't they all died yet!?'. Even the bizarre 'how can our heroes end up so under threat by such basic beasts!?' suspension of disbelief is part of the genre. Zombies are without even the facade of legitimacy, little more than hungering animals, and yet contagious, reflecting how more often than many are comfortable with, upper class people get 'close' to the lower class and gain sympathy with them... oftentimes internalizing sympathy and more 'rough' cultural ideas, it's your daughter having a liking of rough men and falling into a poor and rough crowd, and now you can't invite her rough family over. Of course the rich talk endlessly about what to do with the poor, but despite gate guarded communities, armed guards, and private schools for some reason they can’t be avoided. I would argue this is an innate problem, for even the wealthiest financier of a Golf Club will need poor people to park the cars and he’ll be aware somewhere in the back of his head that his wealth would be scant protection if his valet simply decided to bean him with a golf club.

In both Vampires and Zombies is the anxiety that you will lose your identity to the other, and become a threat to those you love, so keep away, don't try to talk to them (they'll either beguile you or they'll just be too hungry to make any discussion fruitful) the only hope to save yourself is staying separate, stay out of biting distance. The anxieties monsterize the ‘other’, or simply convey that the difference in perspective just may make the other dangerous to talk to. Contagion is always a key marker in such anxieties. Vampires are contagious, as are Zombies. Werewolves are a similar anxiety, but instead of upper and lower class, Werewolves are the anxiety of the urban for the rural.

Keep these things in mind, in particularly as one watches modern and attempted explorations/deconstructions of the mythos. I’ve had fun with iZombie but have been struck as the more sophisticated it makes the Zombie genre, the more vampiric it becomes with factions, hiding in plain sight, and the seeking of power among the prey as a tool of self preservation. Conversely, the bestial and ubiquitous vampires of I am Legend are nothing more than fast moving zombies.

Modern interpretations are settling on what I would call the liberal supernatural horror hypothesis. Whether it’s The Walking Dead or True Blood, modern incarnations of this concept have an underlying theme that the real problem is people rather than the supernatural. You can now have good vampires (Twilight), good zombies (Warm Bodies), and the real threats are the human beings around which these things coalesce. Modern horror has a theme of “Undeads aren’t so bad once you get to know them, at least no better or worse than normal people and all you need to do is properly understand them.”. It’s there, it’s omnipresent, it makes for interesting TV… I also think it’s sadly and drastically incorrect.

Can't get enough zombies and vampires! Hungry for more? Start with this meaty reading list of zombie literature. If those selections don't wet your appetite, stay tuned for my vampire reading list. I'm sure there will be something you can sink your teeth into!

Tell us what you think. Do you agree with Damon's classism theory or do you have a theory of your own you'd like to share?