Today we're going to be talking about vampires
because I chose the subject and Emma is here to suffer
What do you know about vampires?
What kind of vampires?
Any kind of vampires, vampires in general...
What do you know about vampires?
Stab 'em with stakes...
Take off their head, that works real good...
Um, you know, silver...?
You can poison them with dead man's blood apparently?
You are specifically thinking about murdering vampires
and all I asked was "what do you know about vampires"
and your first reach was...
...how to kill them.
Yeah, well...
"Eat it, Twilight!"
[Music: "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd]
Fair enough! Because today we're going to be talking about...
Oh, no that actually... huh...
...makes me sound more radical.
That's fine!
Today we're going to be talking about how all vampires are capitalists!
Getting into the "wine explaining" of vampires...
Is that "winesplaining"?
Winesplaining? Winesplaining.
The winesplaining of vampires!
Vampires as a concept grew out of
folk superstitions about the dead coming back to life in general
Because there was a lot of misunderstanding as to
why, post-death, corpses would appear to seem
"flushed," for example, as if they'd been sucking some blood
They would have longer hair, longer nails, that kind of thing.
So the original fear of vampires specifically came out of a fear of the undead
which is a little bit more ubiquitous, and more tied to...
fear of disease, for example, and fear of death in general
which is a little........
"Fast breaking developments in the coronavirus emergency in the US and around the world."
"Our window to flatten the curve of the epidemic is narrow."
It's 2020, the plague is back and
we are vibing.
Disease has a wasting effect on human beings
that looks like someone is actively trying to
draw life and blood out of you.
Um, and so that's where it kinda became
a conflation from fear of the undead
to fear that the undead are coming back and feeding on the living.
Yikes.
Yikes.
And this is where we get into
someone being like, "hey!"
"Cite your sources!"
And I'm gonna look at you and go
No.
When we're looking at the prototypical vampire
we're looking at figures like Dracula
[Music: creepy, tense score from the "Dracula" (1958) trailer.]
Narrator: "This is the story of DRACULA!"
You know, but you also have figures like...
Okay, the reason why I pause is because I'm either going to mention a
famous historical vampire
or a currently living
duchess of England.
"Carmilla" or "Camilla"?
[laughter]
One of them is a vampire!
Carmilla.
I think Carmilla is the vampire?
But also, given the angle of this chat...
Long story short, people have been having
thoughts about the aristocracy as bloodsuckers for a very long time
And that is where we get to capitalists!
I was going to say, where do we get to capitalism?
Well, here's where we come to capitalism!
Where we get to the intersection of vampires and
capitalism
is... is... guess who shows up
in the late 1800s with a hot take?
Foundational schools of knowledge?
I didn't take those classes.
Karl Marx shows up!
[Emma: Oh!]
[Laughter]
Karl Marx shows up
Karl Marx shows up and Karl Marx goes
"Hey..."
"Capitalists are vampires!"
Legit, he actually had like a whole, a whole - *bleeped*
Oh boy, that's not YouTube friendly.
He had a whole take about how
Capitalists... are vampires.
And vice versa, vampires are actually capitalists.
The reason why he said that capitalists are vampires is because
capitalists subsist off of the life force
of labourers.
So like...
Sounds legit.
And again we can delve into that theory but that's not what I'm here for...
The problem with capitalism is um...
is that capitalism is a never ending spiral
where you have to accumulate money
to make money
to accumulate more money
to what end, one might ask?
And this was the formula
that Marx put forward
Money for capital
for money plus.
But then in here, if you get into like
labour theory
this is where you get people, because
capital is money that you use to make more money
and there are a bunch of different aspects of
what you would count as property that you would use to make more money
but the only one that matters in a Marxist reading
is LABOUR
and the difference with labour... Em!
Why is labour different from having the means of production
financial capital, land...
Literally anything else, what's different about labour?
[Emma, off-screen: I didn't take that class!]
Labour is people! Exactly!
Just like soylent green!
And that is why capitalists are vampires!
No I am here for it but we don't have time for it.
The most important thing is
how has media reacted to this idea of
capitalists are vampires, vampires are capitalists slash vice versa
in terms of how do we portray the vampire in pop culture
and how does it reflect our view of
uh, capitalism is almost too narrow a view because
capitalism as it exists is slightly newer than the vampire as it exists.
But we have always sort of had in the back of our mind
this idea of a parasitic class
that draws life force from the average working Joe
and that's where we get back to Dracula because Dracula is a reflection
of late 1800's, early 1900's aristocracy
Mostly because aristocracy in Europe is...
...complicated...
So if you're a person in the 1800s you might think of the ruling class as being a
distant and mildly ancient crumbling power
who lives in these mansions that you have never seen and have no access to
um, like Dracula.
Dracula would have been a reflection of the upper class at that point.
So, if we can accept old-money capitalists as Dracula
and we can accept Marx being like
hey, if we're talking about pop culture, anytime we're talking about vampires
it is the members of the um
proletariat trying to express their angst
about the upper class through metaphor because that is the safest way to do so
if we can accept all these things and accept that
we can basically see capitalists, higher class folks who
subsist off of the life work of the labourers
as the mosquitoes of humanity.
If we can accept all this, then your next question
your next question is gonna be
What happened in the late 20th century
and early 21st century because vampires suddenly became sexy?
That's definitely what you were gonna ask.
Oh yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
You were thinking, when, when did the vampires become sexy? [Emma: Oh, right, yes.]
Yeah, yeah that was the...
...the first thing on my mind.
So, when did vampires become sexy?
I don't know if you can tell by the clothing but I was the one who went through a Twilight phase.
But, um, both of us went through a Moonlight phase
so what does that say about us?
[Narrator: Whatever you've heard about vampires, you don't know the whole story.]
What it says is... neoliberalism.
Yes. Because...
That's when I put the banner up that says
[Together:] NEOLIBERALISM!
[Laughing]
Because at some point in the uh
mid to late 20th century we get to a point where
wealth is no longer... and this is like, okay
Okay, no, we gotta go back, okay.
So, in terms of-
Wait, we're going back again?
Yeah, we're going back again.
Okay we were going forward but now we're going back?
No.
The point is we were talking about history and then we got to the 20th century and then we went back.
Well, we're going to, well actually no, 'cause uh...
Oh, 20th century? No, yeah you're right.
So.
So.
In the late 1800s
the appealing thing about capitalism for a lot of people
was that power was shifted from some sort of god-given aristocracy
over to who has... "earned it."
Which is why capitalism in general can have
a, um, appealing quality because
you get it in your head that anyone can earn enough capital to...
...matter as a human being
in the global discourse
which was sort of the thing at the time
um... and now.
Basically it's the old argument of old money vs new money.
So if that is the shift in the late 1800s, early 1900s
obviously that's going to cause a pop culture shift
that comes... a little bit after that
where we start to see the clash of
old money vampires vs. new money vampires.
And we see this in shows like
"Buffy" for example, where Angel is essentially
a trust fund kid who has run off from his
uh, rich but morally ambiguous family.
So he's trying to fight the good fight but also
can't stop hitting on blonde high school girls, so...
Even if we look at Twilight which is a fairly modern example
this is where you see the rise of the
"ethical vampire" or the "ethical capitalist" but also sort of the vampire as a
you know, capital bad boy.
If we're talking like, Wolf of Wall Street, Leonardo DiCaprio
like, god you hate him because he did so much embezzlement
but he's so fun and he's so rich, and like
you just wanna live that-
Vampire.
[Music: intense rap beat.]
Vampire.
In fact, in fact!
In fact?
In fact!
The most popular
bad boy capitalist of the 2010s
was literally based on a goddamn vampire.
And yes we are talking about Fifty Shades of Grey, unfortunately
because Christian Grey
is a wealthy young investment banker... I think
He does something business-wise but also no one cares
It's more about the wealth and what he has
and it was fan fiction of Edward Cullen.
If you look at the Cullens in Twilight
a lot of the appeal when you read the book
is that Bella goes to this house where they have everything.
They've got this beautiful glass open-concept mansion
with the like, giant piano, you know, and...
You would focus on the piano.
Look, I'm not saying that...
[Music: "I Want To Know What Love Is" by Foreigner]
So, modern day vampire capitalists...
...they be rich.
And also I think it is worthy to
move slightly out of my lane for a second
to talk about the um
fetishized paleness of vampires, too.
Where vampires are generally categorized as "glisteningly white."
Or "sparklingly white."
[Music: a fast rock beat with clapping.]
And this hearkens way, way, way back
to the original vampire myths and it would come from multiple places.
Even before whiteness as a, um
... "identity" ...
was codified in the late 19th century
as a contrast against people of colour
And don't get me wrong, European imperialism was already well in force
It's a whole thing, yikes.
But, even before then
pale skin was seen as a
marker of the aristocracy because that means you're not going out in the field and working.
So it would make sense that your aristocr......
Aristocrat?
Aristocratic vampires!
[Laughing]
Just remember The Aristocats!
Ah, no that will screw me up even more.
That will screw me up worse, I thought...
I thought they were called aristocats for a million years
and I forgot the R for a million years because...
But I never forgot my arpeggios!
[Both singing/humming "Scales and Arpeggios" from Disney's The Aristocats.]
We're talking about racism!
Okay, so!
We should comment on that though because
what you end up getting that I think is interesting in literature in the um
20th century and 21st century
is either you have people who fully acknowledge that
whiteness has an impact in terms of the
parasitic capitalist aristocracy as Marx would define it
or you wind up kind of telling on yourself in terms of
fetishizing like, yeah this rich guy
who's like... super white
like, so pale.
So great.
So pale, so... sparklingly white...
Maybe that's sort of a thing we can kind of look at and examine...?
So, capitalism.
So we enter a phase in the 21st century where
we get to the bad boy capitalists where like
man, you don't want to be into Christian Grey, but-
I stand nowhere.
Where I stand is that I am very gay so...
I don't, I don't have a stake in this argu-
I don't have a stake!
Oh, you don't have a stake?
No, I've got a point!
Late 1900s, early 21st century
we get to a point where we're like vampires are the capitalist trust fund baby bad boys
who have broken away... if they're the good vampires they're the ones who...
uh, usually-
Break with tradition?
- turn to private detection of all things.
Yeah.
[Music: intense, choral suspense.]
"Angel Investigations, we help the hopeless!"
"I want to help people, that's why I became a PI."
But here's where we get something interesting, is that
as we sort of die down in the vampire craze
and the craze of the like...
You know, the hot, leather-jacket vampire...
'Cause like, you see spin offs of vampires
who do not fall into the capitalist iconography.
But usually those are subversions of the vampire trope
as it exists on its own.
What do you do when you reach the pop culture moment of singularity where
because we have such a proliferation of media
we have said...
and I'm not saying this definitively but
to a marketing stand point everything that could
possibly be said about vampires...
Because Twilight hit a huge craze so we had
the riding the Twilight wave
we had vampire book upon vampire book upon
trying to deconstruct the vampire genre...
Vampire Academy, Vampire Diaries...
Yeah.
Where they're like, we're going to do something-
Um, True Blood.
True Blood was one of those and even then
there was a contrast between the um
aristocratic kind of vampires even though they were true Southerners...
And I think it is kind of interesting if you want to go on a deep dive on this topic
uh, a good paper you could write for your undergrad if you were looking for one
is comparing and contrasting in Twilight the Volturi against the North American
new money vampires who are the ethical vampires
and not the old money vampires who
have lived for 500 or 600 years and are part of the old aristocratic system
that perhaps the Americans might have rebelled against at some point and cut their ties with...?
It's almost like a metaphor...
But!
When you have gotten to the point where you have made a like
meet-cute web series about Carmilla...
"Who the hell are you?"
"Carmilla."
"But we know she's a vampire, we've known that since the blood in the milk container, right?
Vampire,
vampire,
vampire."
What do you do with vampires
so that you can still, after deconstructing them
comment about how vampires and capitalists
go hand in hand in terms of parasitic natures.
Where do you go?
I think you're gonna tell us.
I will!
Where you go
obviously science fiction because you gotta look to the future.
Yes!
And that's where you get into the vampires who will not say that they are vampires
but they are essentially vampires and that's where we get to...
Em...
This is for you...
Plot twist, Jupiter Ascending!
"Your planet was seeded by Abrasax Industries
roughly one hundred thousand years ago."
Jupiter Ascending! This is going to be spoilers if you've never seen the movie...
Even if you've never seen the movie and you watch the rest of this, please see the movie
because at the very least it is one of the most joyful two and a half hours-
How long is it?
I don't know.
I know it's longer than it should be
but also I love every moment of it so for me it's not long enough.
Two hours and seven minutes!
It's going to be the best two hours and seven minutes of your life.
There are bees!
And there is a queen of the bees.
Um yeah and the queen of the bees is not necessarily... a bee.
But neither is chief bee Sean... Bean.
[Laughing]
I can hear my D&D crew yelling at me right now.
We get to the sci-fi vampires where they don't say that they're vampires
but this is the upper class of the galaxy
and the reason they are able to live longer and better lives than anyone else
is because they actively farm the life force of people
on specific planets.
"Have you ever seen a harvest?"
"Never, but I've heard they feel no pain."
To a point where...
[garbled]
It's almost like the Wachowski siblings sat down and
read Karl Marx and had opinions about it in The Matrix
that no one picked up on so they were like "well we gotta get more obvious about it."
So at one point one of these um
aristocratic uh... characters
has like a very...
Especially if you have taken even like first year ethics...
First year anything in university...
First year whatever... he's like:
Well life is really a pyramid
where you have the people on top
who feed off the people on the bottom
and that's just how it is.
"Life...
...is an act of consumption."
"To live...
...is to consume."
"The human beings on your planet
are merely a resource
waiting to be converted into capital."
"This entire enterprise...
is designed for a single purpose...
...to create profit."
"Every human society is a pyramid
and some lives will always matter more than others."
And their whole thing is that they are able to live as long as they do because
they specifically farm and feed off of the...
the labours, the labours of the proletariat, almost.
Oooh?
So they are vampires!
The labours, you say?
The labours!
The labours, the labours!
When we look at vampires and how they feed off of blood
Um, when we were understanding vampor-
Vampors.
Vampors?
When we were understanding vampires as a-
Vampurrs.
Vampooors.
The vampuuurs!
Uh, the vampyrs.
Uh, when we were -
With a Y.
With a Y, yes!
See, now we've circled back to me being correct.
[Laughing]
When we understood them as capitalists
Uh, blood makes sense as a metaphor because
we would more easily see that as the
most direct expression of our life force on this earth.
But now that we are moving forward and
one, we have codified the vampire as having a certain aesthetic
that needs to be deconstructed for it to be fresh
We need to expand our view of what the "life force" counts as.
So, Jupiter Ascending, the life force is actually very on the nose in terms of
life force we, it -
It goes back to the Matrix where we literally turned people into batteries.
Which...
Robots, but vampires.
Then when you get to things like In Time and others
we are feeding off time.
Essentially whatever it is that we equate
as being fundamentally something that only humanity can provide
Any time that we view that as something that other people are
extracting from other human beings to their detriment
or hoarding without any kind of shared or collective system...
We got ourselves vampires.
And therefore...
I would posit...
vampires are capitalists,
capitalists are vampires,
and Miss Monopoly is a vampire queen.
This is not a new theory
if you want to see the broad observations obviously go check out Marx.
A whole bunch of people obviously have expanded on this topic probably better than I have
because the whole point of this is...
If you feel like you are sitting in a pub
and you happen to be overhearing the wild ravings
of the people in the booth next to yours...
Then we have done our job!
That is why we're here!
If you appreciated these ramblings, please let us know in the comments below...
Give us a like or thumb's up, Emma will link our social media...
...stuff...
...in the thing.
The thingy!
You can find us there!
Let us know if there's anything you want us to have an opinion about.
We do have more Wine Takes...
Yes, send us thoughts! Send us ideas.
We're here, and the pandemic is here, so...
We'll still be here as long as that's happening.
You're here, join us with wine.
So next time we will be talking about Emma's...
everlasting and undying love of...
CATS, the musical, specifically the 2019 Tom Hooper beautiful reimagining
And how it has
enlightened and changed Emma's life
and, um
also the lives of Craig and Bonnie who specifically requested that I
put my mildly tipsy slash drunken rambles about vampires being capitalists and vice versa
into a video. This is for you guys!
You CATS lovers!
You CATS... Andrew Lloyd Webber lovers.
If Bex makes me do a video about CATS...
You will not be hearing from Bex...
...ever again.
Next time! Bye!
It's my... guilty pleasure.
You know...
Technically...
You don't have to say it's a guilty pleasure, just enjoy the things you like!
There doesn't need to be any guilt about it, just if you enjoy it, great!
You can...
...have so many feelings all at once.
