On vampirey un-goodness
Get it? Ungood... undead? Forget it. You have no humor.
In any case, vampires are really everywhere, in the media that is. So lets see how many we're up to at this point. We have Twilight. We have True Blood. We have Vampire Diaries. We have that one series on CBS that I think got canned last season. Something about moon or midnight. Anyways, you've got all of that and the plethora of books that are currently on the market. The number one thing about vampire novels? It's normally written for women.
Let's be honest here. The brooding loner type holding back his desire to feed as he respects the individuality and innocence of the woman he wishes to slake his thirst with? Totally an allegory for the view of men that women are socialized to believe in. I'm not saying that's the way women actually think of men. It's just a paradigm that is subliminaly sold in our society. Men are beasts, whether portrayed as vamps or werewolves.
As vampires they are the cultured, experianced, and worldly visions of male beauty. They know all the right words. Know so much about the world and its dangers than the female protaginast. Yet underneath it all is a beast that he holds in tight check as he lures the woman into his grasp at which point he fulfills his own desires while leaving the woman drained (and somehow satisfied?) How women get pulled into all of that would make more sense if he drank from anywhere else than her neck... maybe that's why the neck is an errogenous zone for women, socilaization.
I vant to suck your... uhm.. ja...
Then there is the werewolf. I know this post was supposed to be just about vamps, but since their hairy co-stars always eventually show up in a series I figured I'd include them too. Werewolves always pop up as the juxtaposition of the vampire, and more often than not the competition for attention (whether platonicly or romanticly). The werewolf is the pure primal man. The redneck, the bad boy, the biker. He's brash, brutal, in little control of himself. Barely above animal instinct and in even less control of himself. Yet he is always trying to keep away from the female protaganist for fear that at the moment he loses control he'll hurt her.
I included this pic cus damn, wasn't this the coolest video ever? Plus the beginning had something vaguely to do with werewolves.
Seriously? I mean honestly. Seriously? Women spend millions of dollars each year and lifetimes worth of their days absorbing this into their conciousness? Some how the p.c. movement has missed this, yet I'm the sexist for trying to reform my character to reflect more of the thug mentality that seems to pull more women in South Florida?
Let me explain where I'm coming from. Even in really good series vampires follow the trap. Look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A really great piece of work (the series, the movie was pure camp) that dealt with maturity, the rigors of balancing work, family, and calling. It was a socio-philosophical cornicopia of subject matter to talk about. Yet towards the beginning they introduced Angel. The vampire cursed with a soul. He likes Buffy and wants to help Buffy kill other vampires (kind of like a human from Resident Evil who works for the zombies). Buffy, who's entire purpose in life is to KILL vampires falls in love with said vampire. Yet he can't be in a relationship with her... ahem, he can't have sex with her because that would make him experiance true happiness which would make him lose his soul and go evil (and apparently evil Angel was one of the most bad ass vamps that ever lived, so much so humans had to curse him with a soul so they wouldn't go extinct). I find this insulting.
First of all, sex... as great as it is, does not give you true happiness. Seriously. If it were that simple churches would be replaced by whorehouses and/or there would be way more fertility cults around today. Second, as great as Buffy, and it's spin off Angel, would eventually become they became great because they focused on the humanity of the characters as they dealt with the evil that just always kept coming. By the end of Angel it was about, "damn, we couldn't stop evil, but at least we died trying". Buffy did it's best to get away from this veiled sexist ideaology that made women weak and naive, totally overcome by brooding emotionally unavailable men. Even when Spike developed feelings for Buffy, he had to MAKE himself everything that Angel wasn't. He had to break the stereotypes or else it was a no go. She was strong minded enough to say, "hell, I'm not going down that route again". Willow broke up with the werewolf (played by Seth Green) and realized that as much as she wanted to help OZ, her sexuality just didn't swing that way. Empowered Slayer chicks were more her bag.
Now notice how men write vamps. I am Legend. Bram Stoker's Dracula. Lost Boys. Vampires are the bad guys. They are a plague that needs to be cleansed from the earth. They play with powers beyond man in order to prey upon man. They need to die. Unless of course discussed in a world where they rule the world from the shadows and fight their only competition, werewolves ala Underworld.
Actually Underworld is a better example of a look at vamps and werewolves. The vampires are decadent, weak, too involved in their addiction to blood to be any use, like opium addicts. The elders? Too out of touch with modern society to really be involved in things. They just make sure their underlings are sober enough to keep the whole masquerade from falling down on all their heads. Werewolves want to take down the power structure but are too enraged and filled with blood lust to really care about knockin boots.
Hopefully Sam and Dean Winchester will be able to clean up all of this mess. Supernatural... now that's a show. Hot demon chick sidkick and weekly bevy of beauties. What's not to like?
I really hope they bring back Ruby... I'd even settle for the old blonde version