Relatively Revenant: Vampire vs. Zombie

An essay... Happy Halloween! Once, there were no vampires or zombies… there were only revenants.

            What many people may not know is that the word “vampire” is a relatively modern term for a creature that has haunted the nightmares of cultures around the world since time immemorial. So too is the word “zombie” a newer term for an ancient idea. Before these terms, ancient cultures had their own expressions for the stalkers of the living. Europe’s word was “revenant” and the word was terrifying.

            A revenant comes back from the dead to haunt, and sometimes prey on, the living. They were sometimes described as ghosts… but other times they were actual corpses, come back from the grave. Reanimated and looking to do some sort of harm to the living.

            Sounds like….a vampire.

            Or maybe….a zombie.

            Actually, it sounds like both because, first and foremost, vampires and zombies are both reanimated corpses. They are the living dead. The undead. The walking dead. Whatever term we use now, they are what were known as revenants. They are basically the same thing.

            Right?

            Wrong.

            Though they have the same beginning, they are not the same creature anymore. This is probably why we don’t call them revenants now and have the terms “vampire” and “zombie” instead. And now, it seems, the horror fandom is becoming split between these two revenant classes. Some leaning toward the one dead but walking corpse and some rooting for the other dead but walking corpse.

            What’s the difference then, you ask? If you are going to go all “fanboy/fangirl” over a corpse, does it matter which one?

            Well…let’s take a look at our two classes of revenants and see if we can work this out.

Vampires-

            Arguably, vampires have long been at the top of the monster heap.  Yes, werewolves are terrifying and the fear of werewolves caused irreparable damage to European wolf population back in the day. Ghosts, of course, have a long history of scaring the pants off of people and in modern times many people continue to believe in them. And there are various types of ghouls and ghastly things that go bump in the night in the legends of the world that make it hard for some of us to sleep without a nightlight. But the vampire holds a special place in folklore and modern stories that makes him (or her) the ultimate monster.

            Why is that?

            Well, simple answer: Dracula.

            Less simple answer: We and I mean “we” as in “we living people” decided at some point that not all revenants were created equal. We began writing stories about a revenant with particular, um, habits, when it came to preying on the living.  We decided that this type of revenant, while still essentially a corpse, didn’t necessarily have to be a rotting, gross, bad smelling corpse. He (or she) could interact in ways that your normal, run of the mill revenant didn’t. You see, we began talking about the “vampyre” and by the time the Victorian era came around, we started writing some rather interesting stories about these “vampyres” and their particular habits.

            Yeh, they were about sex.

            All that penetration and “spurting” of fluid… what did you think it was about?

            This was Victorian times remember. You couldn’t just write about sex as …well sex. It had to be something else. And so when Bram Stoker wrote about a particular one of these vampires, he wasn’t just writing a horror story.

            Oh yeah. Dracula made the vampire sexy.

            But that wasn’t enough because it really wasn’t until we decided to put these vampires of ours on screen that the vampire became hot. Not all of them, of course. If any of you have seen “Nosferatu” then you know what I’m talking about. But that is beside the point because along came Bela Lugosi.

            Sure, all of you want to make fun of Bela and his tux and cape but when you dress your rug rats up as Dracula on Halloween, whose look do you cop?  And more than that, that book and the movies that came after were the beginnings of the vampire going from nasty, rotting, killer corpse to seductive, hot, killer corpse.  Sure, there are a few stories- few- in the old folklore where there is a seductive vampire or vampire-like creature. But by and large you are looking at stories of corpses coming back to drink blood and no one is really jazzed about seeing them because they are gross.

            Kind of like… well, that other revenant that we will get to.

            So Stoker came along and made the vampire seductive and charming and… Evil.

            Yes, Evil.

            I know, “Hey, aren’t the vampires in the old stories evil? Aren’t they out for blood and using demonic-evil- forces to do it?”

            Yep, they are evil. But I mean Evil, capital “E”.

            See, Dracula was Evil. He decided to get on a ship and sail it to England and take over the country. That is Evil on a level that no other vampiric creature ever was. This put Dracula in the realm of a monster that thinks. The vampire we know today does not work purely on instinct. He has an agenda. He has a brain and uses it, which is always sexy. And so Dracula became attractive in the mindset of the viewer/reader. His cinematic progeny have pretty much followed in his footsteps so that now we even have vampire romance. I guarantee you our ancient ancestors would be appalled by the very idea that we would want to have sex with a revenant. So maybe that’s another reason the word “vampire” exists.

            The vampires then have become Romanizes. Even when they are Evil, we want them to come after us. We want them to catch us and make us vampires so that we can be hot and sexy and live forever.

            But… wait… we are talking about a reanimated corpse… right?

            Well, yeh. But it’s not like we are talking about a zombie…

Zombies-

            The zombie is undead, like the vampire, and yet we see nothing hot about zombies. We see hungry corpses out, not to bite our necks and give us immortal life, but out to bite and bite and BITE, devouring us completely or making us one of the ravening, mindless horde. There is nothing sexy about being a mindless vector for disease and it is the mindlessness and disease aspects that may be the scariest part of the zombie- we all fear losing the ability to think and we fear infection.

            Oddly though, the zombie did not start out its distinctive split from the realm of mere revenant as a plague carrier, or even a brain eater. As most people know, the term zombie in folklore refers to a corpse reanimated by means of voodoo. They are not evil beings and the sole purpose for their reanimation is so that they can be put to work. They are pitiful creatures who do no harm and are themselves the victims of cruel, living, people who exploit them. In some movies, they are depicted this way, only horrible because they show us what living  people are capable of.

            But we have a new type of zombie in film and print. This zombie cannot be pitied and is horrible because it is HORRIBLE. This zombie is reanimated by virus, bacteria, nuclear waste, or parasite. This zombie wants to eat our brains, and whatever else it can get its teeth into. This zombie is a walking, rotting, corpse and it wants to spread it’s infection to us.

            NOT SEXY.

            Not in the least bit sexy and …they aren’t Evil. They are mindless and scary. Unstoppable because they usually travel in a horde and they want to eat us.... But they aren’t Evil or even evil.

            And so, with all the similarities and all the differences, could this be the ultimate in defining qualities between these two revenants: Evil vs. mindless?  Is this the key to determining once and for all WHO the ultimate monster is?

           

            Well, which would you want to be?

 

(Note to the Reader: The author is OBVIOUSLY pro-vampire and not in the least bit neutral on the subject of which monster is better. However, it should be noted that she also has a lot of love for the mindless undead as well, so no pro-zombie hate mail please! What she is ultimately trying to say with this piece is, of course, Happy Halloween! Much love to all undead things, Evil, evil, and mindless alike. Without those who go bump in the night, our lives would be less in danger, but duller all the same.)

 

Author's Note

It is what it is...I hope you enjoy it. And, of course, Happy Halloween.