Famous villain in Turkish history books, Vlad the Impaler inspires the Western culture but vampires have long passed their due date in Turkish culture
The last decade has seen vampires rise once again from their coffins. With the final movie in the epic teen vampire saga Twilight hitting theaters recently, along with cult-favorite TV shows like The Vampire Diaries and True Blood, there are plenty of examples around us. Vampires, in fact, have always been on the loose throughout the last century in Western culture, going back into their coffins occasionally only to wake up even hungrier.
With the vampire craze not losing any steam for decades, it’s quite surprising to see that the existence of original vampires in Turkish pop culture is next to none. Especially when you go back to the origins of vampires in Western fiction. The horror novel that opened the way to a plethora of fascinating blood-sucking characters in the decades to come was Irish writer Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The inspiration behind the 1897 Gothic novel was Vlad III, the prince of Wallachia in Eastern Europe in the 15th century. Known posthumously as Vlad the Impaler, the ruler was known for his brand of cruelty across Europe, which included impaling his enemies. Vlad’s ultimate enemy was the Ottomans, hence depictions of his endless cruelty made history books, securing his reputation as one of the biggest villains in Turkey’s collective consciousness.
One would expect a whole list of inspired vampire stories from Turkish writers, filmmakers and cartoonists. Bizarrely, there are less than a dozen with hardly any that could be called inspired. The most recent example is this week’s release Laz Vampir: Tirakula, taking history as its cue but foraying into cheap laughs with outdated clichés.
Click here for full article (Hürriyet Daily News)
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