I’ve been talking a lot lately about the way different genres mix with the vampire genre for interesting new twists. Today, I’m busy working on my other finals, so instead of a long-winded post, I’ll offer one more little example of generic mixing with the vampire tradition. This example also happens to be one of the songs off my vampire mix.
(Beware: there was not an official video to be found for this particular song, but I did uncover this video of the song set to a compilation of “vampiric” images… it’s kind of nuts. Forgive me, there are limited options when you’re trying to do a blog without shelling out the $ for fancy uploads.)
Obviously, this is a hip-hop version of Dracula. While there are many types of music that incorporate vampires in one way or another, hip hop is unique in that it still has a strong and somewhat limited cultural identity. It’s amongst the most modern musical genres, only really appearing on the scene in the 1980′s, and it emerged in the U.S. The vampire genre, on the other hand, is old as the hills, and (arguably) comes first from a British literary tradition.
The nice thing about this song is how it imagines some of the conventions of hip hop into the classic Dracula story. Dracula’s a big bad vampire, so what’s he afraid of? Well, like any other guy, he’s afraid of commitment!! Of course, this fear of commitment is a fairly recent stereotype, as far as I can tell, which is why it works so well for hip hop. It’s a nice modernization of the vampire along the same lines as the Americanization of vampires I’ve discussed in relation to the Western or the hard-boiled detective story.
The other thing I like about is how it’s changed the Van Helsing character. In just about every adaptation of Dracula, the characters get re-arranged in totally bizarre ways. This is the only version I know of, though, where Van Helsing is a sexy songstress, and apparently has romantic interest in Dracula. It’s an original take on an old theme, and I think it’s pretty catchy, too. The song seems fairly self-conscious about this. I would have liked to see what Outkast would have done with a video version of the song, if they would have riffed on older movie conventions or done something satirical along the lines of Dracula: Dead and Loving It, or something with even more hip hop cache like Blackula or Vampire in Brooklyn.
Which reminds me of another vampire who got satirical treatment.
This is purely for your entertainment. In the following clip, Dave Chappelle discusses how Sesame Street is a pretty good reflection of life on “the street.”
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