The Vampire or the Victim

I made it. Just some nausea but I made it. Tired, but restless.

Back to the Southern Vampires.

We were talking about humanity. Bill's, Sookies, Jason's, the Vamp's in Monroe, the ones at Fangtasia, all the people in this insular little microcosm of life encapsulated in Bon Temps.

There is a real representation in this tale, white and black, rich and poor, old and young, gay and straight, living and undead. I know Charlaine Harris explores the Vampire culture in other parts of America in her other books, but since I haven't read them yet, I will stick to this little middle of the road place where extraordinary people meet under extraordinary circumstances.

As I sat there in the treatment room watching the drip and listening to You Know Who, I began to think of what the world would be like if some humanlike alien were to land smack in the middle of ordinary human life. I know it has been treated before in shows like Alien Nation, but what if we had to relearn everything we had been taught for centuries about a certain tribe or race of people.

It has happened among our own human race with the various groups that flowed into the larger world, especially in America. Where there were once the Native peoples of the Americas, free to roam and live and fight and celebrate and die on this continent, now there is a melting pot. We have people here for reasons of slavery, war, some just looking for something else, maybe a little better than they had at home, some looking for freedom, for identity, for a life different from their own.

I think it is fascinationg that Harris makes her Vampire Bill a Civil War Veteran when now, he wants to have civil rights that were denied the slaves that lived in his father's house. Now Bill is the one looked at with contempt and suspicion. That her story is set in the Deep South, the unfortunate hot bed of so much bigotry is not lost on me and now Bill suffers because of the fears and prejudices that exist there. He is white, supposedly of the privileged class, but as one of Arlene's children observed, "Mamma, he's so white," Arlene responds, "No baby, we're white, he's dead," And when you are the object of prejudice, aren't you dead to the world of justice and equality?

Bill and the other Vampires do not see themselves as human. Why? Is it more than just Vampire arrogance for their race? Or is it that after being characterized as monsters and beasts they have voluntarily given up on their humanity, considered it not important enough to fight for because no one will change?

And doesn't that happen when you give up on yourself? Nothing left to fight for so you look at other people as smaller than you, less substantial. Don't we feed on each other's fears, like a Vampire feeds on his human victim? We twist truths and generalizations and we promote the notion that the people we hate are less human, less capable of values and virtues, mindless and destructive?

Today, we paint pictures of people we hate. Take Muslims for example. Don't we bestialize the Muslim people, characterize all Muslims as mad, vicious animals, blood thirsty beasts, demons who turn away from the True Faith? I admit to that, hell, confession is good for the soul. But when we turn to face that local enemy, the quiet Muslim man who loves America and is as insulted as I about September 11, don't we in turn become the slavering beast of horror? Don't we become the beastial creature who desires the life blood. Aren't we as the Vampires of old and new?

Let's hope Bill and Sookie and all the others discover this truth.