Function and focus of material elements in vampire narrative

Abstract

This chapter unpacks a qualitative research agenda that explores how a group of 22 young adults, aged 18–30 years of age understand the representational aspects of the materiality often associated with vampire narratives. Through a series of semi-structured interviews and the use of co-operative schematic drawing, this cohort revealed that materiality could only be understood as one component of a web of elements that framed the vampire’s representation and narrative metaphor. However, given the explicit starting point they explained materiality as it relates to the vampire character in terms of a hollowness and an exterior façade that conceals the vampire’s identity crisis, inner fears, and a conduit that reveals the two foci of the vampire’s aggression towards humanity. In essence they understood the vampire figure to represent an overall cathected presence that sought to understand the human condition.