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If you listen closely, you can hear Bram Stoker turning over in his grave.
Every time a teenage girl fawns over some emo vampire who sparkles like he has just been gang-raped by a band of rogue pixies, the “original ganstas” of vampire lore collectively shudder in their blood-soaked purgatories.
Thanks to Stephenie Meyer, vampires have devolved from creatures cursed to wander the night with an insatiable taste for blood to adolescent mouthpieces for abstinence and poor prose. Now bookstores across the country are stacked to the ceiling with every hack writer’s shitty attempt at cashing in on the “Twilight” pandemic, infecting the pop cultural consciousness like swine flu and Michael Bay movies.
But bloodsuckers don’t have to be virginal scenesters or B-movie aristocrats with fake accents. The best vampires are victims of circumstance who work around their disease while retaining a personality that is interesting in itself.
Vampires were way cooler before poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Lord Byron romanticized them in the early 19th century. During the Age of Enlightenment, when mass vampire hysteria ironically broke out across Europe, vampires were believed to be demons who hid in thick woods by day to raid the countryside feasting on human neck-candy by night. People were so scared of the beasts they dug up corpses they suspected of vampirism and drove stakes into their hearts.
Today, artistic reactions to genre fiction and “Elvira” specials have spawned a return to the classical vampire. HBO’s “True Blood” is a refreshing interpretation on the mythical monsters I had grown tired of seeing. The TV series about an ensemble coven of bloodsuckers in Louisiana is a riveting work of magical realism. If William Faulkner were transported to the 21st Century, then forced to write a vampire story while drugged up on aphrodisiacs, the end result would probably be similar to “True Blood.”
Beyond television, the classical vampire is used in video games such as “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” and, most notably, Garth Ennis’ awesomely blasphemous comic book series “Preacher.” Aiding in “Jesse Custer” in a pilgrimage to confront God for turning his back on humanity is “Cassidy,” an Irish vampire with a thirst for blood surpassed only by his love of whiskey. In Cassidy, Ennis has created a morally complex, no-nonsense character who would still be interesting if he was not a vampire.
Through various pop-culture mediums, creative people have shown that, in the face of Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer, vampires are still worth writing about. But with the premiere of “New Moon” on the horizon, Bram Stoker is going to be doing a lot of turning. Luckily, there are a few people out there who can keep him still.
Earl can be reached at
entertainmenteditor@theorion.com
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