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Popular Culture Review
“safety net” to those they befriend and love. Confirming Case’s theories
that we want to avoid the fear of death, Michael Kelly writes, “Terror
management theory posits that one of the primary functions of religious
belief is to alleviate the potentially overwhelming terror or anxiety that
results from awareness of death.” Essentially, “we have created cultural
institutions, philosophies and religions that protect us from this terror by
denying or at least distracting us from the finality of death...” (Case 2223). In the case of paranormal literature, directly contrasting the role that
Dracula played, the paranormal character has become the savior of
humankind, and terror is managed through the characters’ abilities to
‘save’ their family and friends, as well as innocent, oblivious humans.
Dracula, the first vampire popularized in fiction (though not the
first to be written about), offered this lure of immortality to Renfield, but
did not offer free will along with it. Renfield was compelled to act on
Dracula’s behalf to his own detriment, reduced to becoming a pitiful and
pitiable creature driven only to please his master. “Stoker conceived of
Dracula as a sworn opponent not of humanity, but of the very idea of
death itself. The vampire’s promise is to give life without end to chosen
beings” (Barrows 116). While Dracula’s creatures had no will of their
own, and acted on his behalf, modern-day vampires and paranormal
characters impart free will on the part of those they “convert.” This
conversion experience mirrors that of a religious conversion, thereby
mirroring the safety offered by Christian beliefs of an afterlife. The
difference is that the vampire’s conversion allows for the familiar life to
continue, unlike a heavenly afterlife, about which we can still only
theorize.
Not only is it necessary for characters to be “saved” from death,
but paranormal characters also provide parallels to other religious
experiences. For example, the process of creating a new vampire (those
not bom as vampires), often involves an exchange of blood for the
conversion to be complete, which mirrors closely the biblical conversion
experience where Christians are said to drink the metaphorical blood of
Christ in memory of Jesus Christ’s own sacrifice for humanity. The Holy
Bible states, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as
silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed
down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ,
a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). This idea that
Christ’s blood saves, has been co-opted by paranormal authors. In other
ways, a newly-converted Christian is said to be a “bom again” Christian
who has allowed his or her old worldly self to have died, in order for