Conformity through Transgression: An Examination of the Proliferation of Vampires within Online Cultures | Kirsten Stevens

Summary: Vampires, Vamps and Va Va Voom | Kirsten Stevens <a name="kirsten-stevens" id="kirsten-stevens"><strong>Conformity through transgression: An examination of the proliferation of vampires within online cultures</strong></a> From its long forgotten origins in the folklore of Eastern Europe, the Vampire has been held as something to be feared, something existing beyond the limits of the social system. A monster, hiding in the dark, it disturbs and transgresses the boundaries of social order, existing, as Veronica Hollinger suggests, as “the monster that used to be human… the undead that used to be alive; it is the monster that looks like us.”(1997: 201) Breaking the boundaries which so define western conceptions of the self and the body, notions of the human and of inevitable mortality; the vampire is a creature who in its very nature exits at the limit. In his book <em>Neo-Baroque</em>, Omar Calabrese investigates further those aspects which disturb and destroy the boundaries of a social system, in particular those resulting in eccentricity and excess. Associated with those values that Calabrese finds most de-stabilising, concepts of sex, violence and the monster, the Vampire is permanently located at and beyond the limit of the socially acceptable. In light of this, it is then interesting that the vampire has more recently been integrated into the very heart of social ritual and community. This phenomenon has most visibly taken place in the setting of online communities, and most recently in the case of the Facebook online network. This paper addresses how members of online communities utilise this transgressive creature to entrench themselves within a social network and the irony implicit in this. It will take as a case study the Facebook online community and its Vampire and Slayer applications, where members are encouraged to fulfil the common folkloric tale of the Vampire reeking havoc on their friends and in the neighbourhoods they inhabited in life. I will also investigate how the very nature of the online identity can be seen to reflect notions of the Vampire, in particular theories of shape-shifting, gender play and the performance of sexuality. Kirsten Stevens is a first year PhD student at Monash University, studying in the Department of Film and Television studies. She is currently researching the Public exhibition of Alternative cinema within the recent Australian context, following completing her Honours Thesis on Apocalyptic themes and imagery within contemporary culture.