Tue 28 Oct 2008
Back to the Vampire
Posted by laup under Discussion, Meditations, Outbreak, Tell-a-vision
[3] Comments
My current manga and anime interests have brought me in touch with a show that stirred up the vampire issue for me again. I’m talking about Karin, also known as Chibi Vampire.
In the show, Karin is a half-vampire in a family of vampires who live in Japan. She has an older brother, a younger sister named Anju, and a set of parents who are all vampires themselves. Karin goes to school and has a part time job, just like any teenager.
In the Karin world, vampires drink from specific people who have certain traits. For example, Karin’s brother drinks from stressed out people, her father drinks from prideful people, and her mother from liars. When vampires drink from people, they perform a service to humanity by sucking out the “bad qualities” of people, therefore making them “better people”.
Things like crosses, running water, and garlic don’t affect vampires – that’s all just human legend. Sunlight is bad for “true vampires” – but they can go out as long as they use an umbrella or something. I haven’t figured out what the distinction is between Karin and her family exactly – she’s some kind of “mutant” and a source of “shame” for the family.
The big thing that makes Karin different is that she is a “blood producer” vampire. Instead of needing to suck blood, she makes blood. So when she bites a victim, she injects her blood into the person. Since she is drawn to “unhappy” people, she injects blood into them and makes them happy!
She meets a classmate, a normal boy, who causes her to make blood until she explodes in dramatic nosebleeds. He encourages her to try to make him happy so he won’t cause her to make so much blood and be unable to blend in with a normal life.
So, in a sense, we’ve come full circle in terms of vampire lore. From disgusting evil bloodsucker to natural function for the greater good creature who must remain unrecognized while doing good deeds. How’s that for a turnaround?
I like it.
Earlier I was ranting on about how vampires must not lose their edge, that to be meaningful they have to have some connection to their dark past. I still hold to that position. But I think a show like Karin (Chibi Vampire) shows us a new way to look at the vampire.
To understand the darkness we must take some of it within ourselves. Good can only remain good with the creation and fighting of evil. I’m trying to look at the larger picture and see evil as a natural function of a healthy, operating system of life. I like how the boy in Karin must come in contact with “evil” and remain grounded in the real world. And I also like how the protagonist is an “evil” character trying to be normal.
The show focuses on the female character and her quest to resolve her troubles. But I also like how the unspoken focus is on the guy in a certain sense. You can identify with him because he is a normal guy in a weird situation, and the action is not about you, but how you can make your own issues part of the greater picture to be resolved.
In other words, rather than the “girl” being the catalyst and the mystery to be solved, it’s the guy in the position. Karin is the protagonist, and what she does changes the stakes. You can get involved in the fantasy of her self-discovery or you can follow along the secondary, implied path of the guy’s development as Karin forces him to confront himself. I’m totally down with that, on both levels.
The show is fundamentally a comedy, played for the laughs of the embarrassment of characters in situation (every episode is titled “the embarrassment of…”). The shadow of any comedy is the reality of absurdity, and the fact is that Karin is a “dark” character going through rough times (aren’t we all). The light world of daylight illusion is a minefield to be negotiated.
The vampire is a version of ourselves. As we understand the vampire more, our own image of our light selves becomes a little more dark. And the dark vampire acquires a little more light. His/her details show up more under scrutiny and we can acquire if not understanding, than a stalemate where exchanges can be made. A treaty, if you like.
The manga Vampire Knight explores this a little. The idea of an interchange between light and dark. Jung talks about how the two sides of any conflict can only build a bridge between their differences by being themselves. The vampire must be what they are, just as people must be what they are. But what are they, either of them? In the light, in the darkness, what is revealed about either?
If the vampires are getting “gooder” or more understandable, what are people becoming?
what are people becoming. god what a good question. i put fragments of a letter from bukowski to packard (1992) that i think you might like, up over where i cicumambulate. there’s more, but i want you to have this here.
he says:
“Let’s not crap ourselves, we are different but we are one. We bring death to each other and death brings it to us. Did you ever see that flattened cat on the freeway as you drove by at 70 m.p.h.? That’s us, baby. And I scream to the skies that there should be no way, no word, no limit. Just a roll of the dice, the tilting of the dark white light and the ability to laugh, a few times, at what has trapped us like this.”
for what you have here, seeker, follower of blood out and in, i sing a chorus of
‘we bring death to each other and death brings it to us.’
hmmmmmmmm.
what does death bring to us?
meaning?
direction?
a pearl?
a taste of horror?
does horror humanize? terrorize? does it depend on something like intention?
your little vampiress from above. her nose gushing blood. a feeling of compassion comes over me for her. unexpected.
what do we do when we make it to the middle of the labyrinth and meet the monster? why is that so damn important?
i have no answer. but i can say what i’m doing, which is keeping a thin thread in my hand and walking in the dark. and waving to you from here.
xo
xtine
ps: fresh paint on the door at studio297 – an apparition. and a secret portal for those who’d like to sidle up, meantime, while i chop vegetables til january.
Keep on choppin, Xtine!
You only need a thread if you’re in a maze, which is designed to keep people in, to confuse them. A labyrinth always leads to the center, where the deity waits to receive you, and where because the way is winding but inevitable, they are always connected to the world.
The maze contains the monster, the labyrinth the deity. You might not find out which you were in until the end of the movie (story?, episode?, life?). You might enter the center prepared to slay a monster only to find out it is you whom you must slay (your own weakness?, inability to sacrifice to the inevitables of life?). And where you expect to find a monster, there may only be a God/dess who has been waiting to show you what time it is. The way out is in.
Your life might be a series of dead ends, cul-de-sacs, and blocked off passages (blocked off from what?). To slay the minotaur is to slay the beast created by unawareness and prove yourself worthy of the center. If you meet the buddha, kill the buddha. Or maybe you’ll heal the wounded beast and restore him/her to the throne of the kingly/queenly energy. Out of chaos comes the dance of balance. You won’t know until you have the experience, and of course by then, it’s too late!
Death is the time limit, the sands falling in the hourglass before you become a flattened cat someone else notices as they stagger through the twists and turns. It’s something inside each of us, like the kindly skeleton waving at us and reminding us that it’s there every Halloweenie. You can’t see your bones, but they are there, giving structure to your movement through time and space.
Fear is anticipation of the monster, terror the violation as it sinks it’s teeth into you, and horror is the stunned faces of the person watching it happen to you from the balcony, unable to see every detail because of the shadows, and wondering how close the track they’re on is to the monster. Or what if the monster can jump up and grab you?
What if the monster is you? Lookin in the mirror, do you see fangs? Life lives by consuming life. Plants eat sunlight. Bacteria eat decayed matter. The bread you eat is the annihilation of a billion tiny lives in an interstellar oven. The catharsis of the vampire is a way for us to experience the monstrosity of the horror we inflict on others. Karin the blood-producer shows us a different form – the demon as victim of humans, forced to find a way to give blood to people’s collective misery or be unable to live their life.
Was a maze built around you against your will (you are the victim so others may live), or did a labyrinth form about your life (you are the god/dess killer so you might have your own experience)? Depends on the sacrifice. But somebody’s got to meet the monster (to eat or be eaten, that is the question), or there’s no life at all.
King Minos couldn’t do it. The king in Dragonslayer couldn’t do it. They had to make a deal with a monster, or construct a maze out of a labyrinth so they didn’t have to face their inability to sacrifice something, anything. And man, when a king ain’t making the sacrifice and the hard choices and getting out of his infantile high chair, you have what we have today, a wasteland.
Chop, chop, chop!
…regarding the difference between a labyrinth and a maze, we might ask daidalos. the old tellings seem to make no distinction. what’s under the palace is called labyrinth, and theseus needed a thread, or special direction how to get out. so the two images are bound together. we make the distinction now because we have the word maze. the greeks did not have that word.
one telling says minos shut daidalos up in the labyrinth after theseus and ariadne got away – to punish him for giving ariadne the clue of how to go in and out. how gets daidalos out is wings. he and his son shut up in the labyrinth, he makes them wings and they fly out. poor icarus, too high. daidalos to sicily to the court of cocalus. some magic business with a shell: code word: swirling pattern. king minos chases after, gets to sicily, and gets killed by cocalus’ daughters while in the bath. one telling (apollodorus) says boiling water on him. another: boiling pitch!
o minos! too late!
what exactly is under the palace? what’s under the house?
rumi says: rip up the floorboards. you’ll see two glints in the dirt.
thank you for chop chop.
and for seeing and saying how kings sit in high chairs. beautiful.