Vampire: The collectivist enshrined

“At the dawn of their lives,” Ayn Rand wrote, “men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.”

Today, more and more, young people get vampires instead. What this will do to the ethos of our culture, and the young people, and what the long term effects are, is worthy of our attention. Those of us who like Ayn Rand’s writings, and Romantic art in general, and who understand how art influences people’s lives, should stay aware of these new artistic trends, so we can take action to counteract them where necessary.

Today’s vampire works include Twilight (books, movies), True Blood (books, TV series), The Vampire Diaries (books, TV series), Being Human (TV series), Vampire Academy (book series and movie project in development), the various books by Ellen Schreiber, and many more. We also have vampire-themed product advertisements and the vampire lifestyle subculture.

To understand what all these works mean, we must look at what the vampire represents in fantasy art, keeping in mind that art presents the artist’s recreation of reality according to their view of life, and that it can present a role model to follow. Ultimately art can present something good (Romantic art), evil (horror), or some mixture of both.

If an artist wanted to fictionalize the essential nature of a collectivist, in the fantasy genre they would have to create a being who does typical collectivist things, including, most conspicuously, seeking to survive off of others — but also things like soliciting voluntary consent from victims, using force, and presenting himself as a figure of strength.

Looking at this list of attributes, it is easy to see how the real world collectivist translates into the fantasy genre vampire. The vampire is therefore a fantasy genre artistic form of the collectivist: A collectivist’s art fantasy-genre evil-side superhero.

I won’t go into all the other connections — you will see profound ones if you think about collectivists and the classical vampire attributes — except for mentioning one of the most pertinent: Turning decent people into lousy ones, as we know happens in communist countries. We see the same thing in vampire lore.

What is especially concerning today is that a vampire is no longer presented as a villain, and is not received by the audience that way, either. Rather, it is being presented and viewed as what is cool, sexy, desirable.

When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in the life-positive ethos of the industrial 1800s, the vampire-collectivist was presented as the evil arch-villain, as it ought to be. Twilight’s story of a young American girl having sex with a vampire, and becoming one herself, would have been inconceivable then. Today, however, works of this kind are being explicitly encouraged and consequently flourish in the many Twilight knock-off books and TV shows.

This is the vampire-collectivist industry, in ethics and art. And when it becomes the colossal mega-craze we see around us today, it affects our culture and can have a political impact as well. It’s not a deliberate conspiracy, but the insidious effects on our culture and on people are the same as if it were.

These works present the vampire-collectivist as homey, as acceptable, as a neighbor or a potential love interest, or as an acceptable alternative lifestyle to join, promoting the idea of “tolerance” in general — including tolerance of evil — even in one’s own life.

Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931)

Art has an immense power to convey ideas and influence people to be either good or evil — or to make people confused about the distinction between those two. In Twilight the protagonist is a vampire, and the main character — a young, good ol’ fashioned American girl — chooses to become one too (?!), marries him (?!!), and has his child (which blows all ethical and aesthetic fuses).

The message given is: “Live off others, it’s cool! Being bad works!” Or more bluntly: “Do bad things” — which is an actual tagline for the True Blood TV show.

And that is the sort of evil which we, the Ayn Rand admirers, should watch out for and take action against. It’s being enshrined, all around us. The general ethos of these works could not be clearer: “Be a capitulator, and a victim, or be bad and join up with the bad guys — not a hero — and above all, do not be an individualist. And as for adamantly thinking for yourself, being productive, or living — forget about it!”

In other words: Do nothing, or be a collectivist.

Someone who absorbs the premises of these vampire-collectivist works will not eagerly work to become a John Galt or Dagny Taggart, or even an Eddie Willers. Rather, they are more likely to become apathetic, evasive, noncommittal, and — eventually, in the political realm — a collectivist on some level. To paraphrase Ellsworth Toohey, “Enshrine vampires — and the shrines to the heroes are razed.”

All the kids I know who are Twilight fans have, as they grew up, become more sarcastic, effort evasive, and vacuous. I’m sure Twilight was only part of the reason, but it is an important part.

We, as admirers of Ayn Rand’s novels and ideas, are in a better position than most to understand what is taking place here. And there are important steps we can take as well. First among them is to recommend Anthem, The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged to the young people you meet.

These novels are the antidotes to this cultural poison, the anti-missile missiles in our heavy artillery. Tell everybody why being alive, living, thinking, doing purposeful work, and achieving wealth, passion, and happiness is so important — and that these books tell you how to do so very well.

Authors like Stephenie Meyer should not poach Ayn Rand’s place as the teacher for young people in choosing the ideas that will guide their lives. A “nobler vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential” has been spelled out and people deserve a better vision for that than bloodsucking vampires.

Activists today in the Tea Party are having an influence in our national dialogue. But will the young people who get contaminated by all this vampire-collectivist worship have the same backbone? They will not.

The Tea Partiers, in their essential ideas, come from the same school as hero worship and Romanticism. Their ranks include many fellow Ayn Rand fans, and it falls to us to fight in both the art-cultural battle — and with the Tea Partiers in the political battle — for the same fundamental motive: to defend the importance of life, individualism, and all that is good.

Daniel Blau is an aspiring industrialist in New York City. He worked for four years in finance, and recently left his job to start his own businesses. He is an avid writer, Tea Partier, and Objectivist activist. He believes in dreaming very, very big and then working hard to make it happen.