Vampire crap

[Trent Roman]

Fascination with vampires in popular culture has been growing steadily since at least the mid-1970s. People I know who are involved professionally with this stuff in terms of publishing, etc confess - at least the cleverer ones, IMAO, do - that they don't really know why. It's hard to guess whether the wave's crested or not.

It's possible to make some educated guesses as to why. Vampires spring from classical monster to pop culture phenomenon in the sixties, along with the sexual revolution and a more individual-focused society, both of which the vampire expresses nicely. Every decade deserves it's representative monsters, I think: the aggression and greed of the 80s saw the increase in popularity of werewolves, vampires returned to the fore with the self-involvement and identity exploration of the 90s, and the paranoia and siege-mentality of the noughties made it a fertile zombie decade. The thing with Twilight and it's knock-offs--I was discussing this with friends just recently--is that we can't figure out what, in the broader culture, it connects to. Being a self-mutilating emo douchebag doesn't seem to be any more sizeable a trend now than it has been since the nineties, the books/films' themes seem terribly retrograde... I don't know. Maybe it will become clearer in retrospect; it's often hard to identify movements while still in the middle of them.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Dream]

Can a True Blood fan please answer this question. Why the hell does a girl that can read minds work as a waitress? Why doesn't she play cards and make as much money as she can?

 

[Hyperspace05]

AFAIK... She does not enjoy reading minds. It takes great effort to avoid doing it. And she wants to be close to family.

 

[Trent Roman]

Also, she has a fairly strong set of morals. Using her gift to cheat at cards isn't something Sookie would do, unless it served a nobler purpose than just cashing in.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[melancholymecha]

True Blood is awesome! its got shapeshifters! You know, old school Manimal style shapeshifters.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

True Blood is as close to an X-Men t.v. series as we'll get.

(Mutant X does NOT count.)

 

[Hermiod]

AFAIK... She does not enjoy reading minds. It takes great effort to avoid doing it. And she wants to be close to family.

So she works in a bar full of people ?

(Disclaimer: I don't watch this show, I'm just curious.)

 

[Nowhere Man]

And the thread title brings up the question - Do vampires crap?

Yes and when they do they get Frankenberries on thier ass.

 

[Forbin]

I don't know why, but I'm amused by all the True Blood fans leaping to its defense.

 

[Myasishchev]

Well Daybreakers comes out Friday. And that's definitely not a vampire movie for anyone who hasn't reached puberty yet.

Daybreakers is the only thing with vampires I've considered watching since the Coppola film, pretty much entirely on the strength of the cast.

 

[Kegg]

Daybreakers is the only thing with vampires I've considered watching since the Coppola film,

Then you totally missed Let The Right One In.

 

[Broccoli]

Yeah, it was just coincidence that True Blood came out when the fad started (thanks, Meyer, thanks a lot).

Didn't Twilight come about because Meyer was a big fan of the Sookie Stackhouse books and wanted to write a story like that, but for a tween market?

 

[DevilEyes]

Daybreakers is the only thing with vampires I've considered watching since the Coppola film,

Then you totally missed Let The Right One In.

Great film.

Vampire fiction have been popular since... well, since I can remember, and far before that. If you guys want to blame someone for making it popular, blame Bram Stoker (he certainly was far from the first one to write vampire fiction, but he contributed a lot to its popularization by writing Dracula and introducing the character of Count Dracula to modern pop culture).

I'd say it started in the 1960's at least. The fifties were a lean decade, vampire-wise, but things have been expanding geometrically since the first Hammer DRACULA in 1958. Consider:

60's: DARK SHADOWS, Hammer Films.

70s: Anne Rice and her many imitators. BLACULA, COUNT YORGA, etc. Heck, there were at least four new versions of DRACULA back around '79 alone: the Langella version, the NOSFERATU remake, the Louis Jourdan version, LOVE AT FIRST BITE . . .

80s: Things maybe slow down a bit onscreen, but vamps are still taking over in book form. I used to go through LOCUS magazine highlighting all the new vampire books, only to find way too many to keep track of. Kid's books, romance books, horror books, fantasy novels . . . you name it.

90's: BUFFY, ANGEL, FOREVER KNIGHT, etc.

It's hard to find a decade where vampires weren't a major presence in pop culture.

There might have been a relative lull in the popularity of vampire films for a few years before Hammer Dracula, but surely vampire films must have been popular in the 1930s and 1940s at the time of and as a result of Universal's Dracula with Lugosi (who had previously played the same character for a few years in a very successful Broadway adaptation of Stoker's novel), with numerous sequels and crossovers (some of them with other actors, such as John Carradine, playing Dracula). There have also been Dracula or vampire films made in other countries, including a hilarious Turkish one made in 1953.

 

[Greg Cox]

^Oh definitely. Vampire movies were churned out regularly during the thirties and forties, and not just by Universal. And vampires were a staple of pulp magazines like Unknown and Weird Tales. The vampire novel was pretty much dead, though; it was like nobody was even trying to top Stoker.

The fifties were a lean decade, as Atomic Age mutants and alien invaders supplanted the old gothic monsters on the big screen. Things didn't start picking up again until the end of the decade. Not only did Hammer Films arise (although most of their films came out in the sixties and seventies), but you actually started getting some new takes on the vampire novel, most notably I AM LEGEND by Matheson and SOME OF YOUR BLOOD by Sturgeon. (Did I mention that my first book was a history of vampire literature?)

Vampires came back in a big way in the sixties.

 

[SeerSGB]

How about a vampire space opera?

See the film "Life Force." Sorta.

The Wraith in Stargate: Atlantis would probably fit the bill too.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

in the broader culture, it connects to. Being a self-mutilating emo douchebag doesn't seem to be any more sizeable a trend now than it has been since the nineties

I think it may be that being a self-mutilating emo douchebag has ALWAYS been a hot trend for teenage females, but the idea that it's socially acceptable for girls to read genre fiction is the relatively recent development. [And one that is probably due to Harry Potter and/or Anne Rice catching them all when they were elementary school age.]

So the reason the trend seems to be accelerating is because of social accretion. The huge potential female market for genre fiction was hidden behind a wall of social unacceptability - and when that wall came down just a little, it was like a dam with a leak in it that got larger and larger.

 

[Greg Cox]

^ Interesting theory. You may be onto something here.

I gotta admit, I appreciate the fact that I can now give my nieces zombie novels for Christmas and nobody looks askance . . . .

 

[Dream]

Yeah, it was just coincidence that True Blood came out when the fad started (thanks, Meyer, thanks a lot).

Didn't Twilight come about because Meyer was a big fan of the Sookie Stackhouse books and wanted to write a story like that, but for a tween market?

I don't think Meyer reads vampire fiction.

I heard Meyer only started writing the Twilight books because she had a dream about a teenage and a vampire so she wrote about that. The dream she had became a chapter in the book.

 

[Kegg]

^
Only, you know, that's exactly what happened with Dracula. The scene where the three women want Harker but they are pushed aside by the man - that was a dream Stoker had.

Interesting, that.

 

[DevilEyes]

^
Only, you know, that's exactly what happened with Dracula. The scene where the three women want Harker but they are pushed aside by the man - that was a dream Stoker had.

Interesting, that.

Why am I not surprised.