Unlike the mindless consumerism of zombies, vampires are mindful consumers; they are conscious that they are depleting, killing, energy supplies through their consumption and extraction, and they do it anyway. The vampire, then, might be a suitable allegory for the Anthropocene, or rather the Vamprocene, in which humans, fully aware of the damage they are doing to the planet, continue to consume and continue to drain, the earth of its natural resources and fossil energy.
Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s theorization of cruel optimism, this presentation explores how “crude optimism,” our continued reliance on and attachment to fossil fuels is explored in 21st century vampire fiction. I consider how HBO’s (2008-2014) True Blood and the 2009 film Daybreakers reflect our growing petro-subjectivity and increasingly cruel optimistic attachment to oil. After a discussion of the ways in which these texts draw connection between vampiric and human resource extraction, through the inclusion of visual traces of petroculture and the allegorization peak oil, I will turn my attention toward how the development of a substitute for human blood, read as an alternative energy sources is positioned in both texts. True Blood’s focus on personal responsibility, I argue, instead of structural change, rearticulates the neoliberal discourse of greenwashing, which places the burden of environmentalism on the individual consumer rather than imagining corporate or systemic transformation. The show’s representation of synthetic blood also reiterates techo-utopic fantasies that we can maintain our standards of living without fully breaking our attachment to oil extraction, and capitalist consumption. In contrast, Daybreakers’ conclusion suggests that a new system is necessary, a revamping, or rather devamping, of society to avoid the environmental catastrophe of the Vamprocene, a need to put a stake in undead ways of thinking to conceptualize new forms of living.
About the presenterJessica Hautsch
Jessica Hautsch recently earned a PhD from Stony Brook University. She received her Master’s in English Literature from Fordham University and her Master’s in Teaching English from Stony Brook University. She is an adjunct lecturer with the Educational Opportunity Program at Stony Brook University, where she teaches composition, literature, and media studies. Her areas of research include cognitive humanities, digital rhetoric, performance studies, fan studies, television studies, and film studies.