Posted by Sasha Volokh:
Vampires and the law:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_21-2007_10_27.shtml#1193141301
I've just started reading [1]Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to
Transylvania, One Man's Quest to Live in the World of the Undead, by
[2]Paul Bibeau. As the back cover explains:
At eight years old, Paul Bibeau had the footie pj's scared off of
him when his sister sprang out of a crawlspace in the dark wearing
plastic fangs. It was the start of a lifelong fascination with
vampires. Now a "grown-up" journalist, he has embarked on a quest
to discover how a second-rate Wallachian Prince named Vlad,
inserted into an odd little nineteenth-century book by some guy
named Stoker, became such a pervasive cultural icon.
I'm about fifty pages into the book now; the early chapters, mostly
about Romania, are very good and funny. But for now, let me share with
you one passage from the book (pp. 34-36), about why Romanians haven't
been so keen to capitalize on the international fame of their native
son Vlad Dracula.
As of 2000 almost half of Romania's population lived in poverty . .
. . But the country also had a potential fortune -- a character
whose legend had launched a multimillion dollar media empire.
Romania was like a homeless guy carting around one of those stolen
supermarket carts filled with bags of aluminum cans, a pile of
dirty laundry, a half-drunk bottle of Night Train, and a framed Van
Gogh original in mint condition. It just didn't make sense. Why
couldn't the country cash in? . . . .
Sighi�oara [a Transylvanian town that at one point was going to be
the site for a Dracula theme park] had already seen its share of
Goths . . . and locals wanted none of it. At a rock music festival
a few years ago, it was mobbed with up to 90,000 people. . . .
[T]he rock fans actually scrawled pentagrams on the gravestones at
the local church . . . .
[I]n late 2001 . . . a Miramax crew filmed a series of movies
called Dracula Resurrection there. Locals reported stumbling over
fake-blood-soaked mannequins in their town square. "My daughter was
terrified," said one townie.
It wasn't hard to see their point. To Romanians Vlad was a national
figure, not a vampire. Imagine foreigners coming to visit the
Lincoln Memorial by the thousands -- wearing stovepipe hats, false
beards . . . and plastic fangs. They love Lincoln. They love how he
can turn himself into a bat. How he freed the slaves and rises at
night to suck the blood of the living. Imagine you know you could
make major bucks off these freaks if you chiseled a pair of
wicked-looking teeth on Lincoln's statue.
You'd have to be desperate to even consider it.
As someone whose middle name begins with "Vlad," I may be blogging in
the future about my own interests in vampires and the law -- what
Buffy has to do with property law and the law and economics insights
of Angel.
References
1.
http://www.amazon.com/Sundays-Vlad-Pennsylvania-Transylvania-Undead/dp/0307352781
2. http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=73760
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