El vampirismo como metáfora de la adicción en el cine de los ochenta (1987-1995)

Abstract

The use of several substances, commonly known as drugs, increased considerably from the fifties
onwards. Use, habit and dependence were linked as cause and effect to economic, health-related and
political implications, which contributed to the emergence of the “drug problem” and addiction. The
media played an important part in the origin, in the decade of the seventies, of the stereotype of the drug
addict as an individual who injected heroine. This stereotype was also assumed by cinema, especially by
horror films in their postmodern tendencies in the eighties. Thus, the traditional vampire becomes a
creature who is addicted to blood and whose dependence, and mainly withdrawal symptoms, are recreated
with the same iconography and interpretations with which the most traditionalist society perceived
drug addicts. The development of the vampire metaphor not only reflects social fears of the threatening
temptation of addiction and the fear of transgressors who use forbidden substances, but it influences the
viewers in a thought-provoking way that reinforces social stereotypes.