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Why do vampires attract so many readers and viewers?
Here is a WaPo piece which suggests it has to do with the transition from adolescence. I recall another piece suggesting it had to do with the female fascination with gay men (is there one?).
Vampires are hardly "my thing," but I do like early Anne Rice, The Night Stalker, Herzog's Nosferatu, and I thought Coppola's Dracula movie was better than its reviews. On the other hand, I couldn't get five pages into Twilight. (Should I try True Blood?)
I believe vampire books and movies offer a few attractions:
1. You know from the beginning that the plot twists will have to be extreme. Few movie makers offer up vampires who think pensively, talk inordinately, and live out ambiguous endings, sitting around in coffee shops. A real vampire story is going to deal with death.
2. We are fascinated with the idea that people may be something other than what they appear to be. You will notice that discovery and detection of vampires often plays a key role in the plot lines, sometimes commanding an inordinate amount of attention.
3. Vampire stories offer a platform for exploring the theme of pure, limitless, and eternal desire, yet without encountering the absurdities that might result from planting that theme in a realistic, real world setting, such as a man who loves cheese studded with raisins above all else.
4. Vampires play "hard to get" with women and they (for a while) embody Old World ideals of chivalry, in a plausible [sic] fashion. Yet since they are fundamentally different beings, we can enjoy watching their strategies while simultaneously distancing ourselves from them.
5. Men may like vampire movies for date movies, for uh...priming reasons. The movies prompt dramatic, emotional reactions in their companions. Women may feel that such movies "test" how their men respond to highly fraught stories, with a potential for demonstrating protectiveness. Or vice versa.
6. Vampires do not seem to mind social disapproval, and in this sense many teens look to them as role models.
7. Some of the popularity is arbitrary with respect to the vampire theme itself. There is a clustering of production in any successful cultural meme, once that meme gets underway. You might as well ask why there is so much heavy metal music today.
8. Viewers and readers, who know vampire lore and thus vampire vulnerabilities, feel better informed than the high-status people who, in the drama, are fighting the vampires.
9. There are few successful songs or paintings about vampires, so the story-based aspects of the topic appear to be important in setting their popularity.
Here is an unorthodox answer to the question.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 13, 2009 at 07:30 AM in Books, Film, Television | Permalink
Comments
I do not recommend True Blood. I watched 3 episodes and felt no need to go further.
Posted by: Eli at Nov 13, 2009 8:17:22 AM
10. Most vampires are totally hot. Ask Buffy fans about David Boreanaz and/or James Marsters, or Twilight fans about Robert Pattinson. Mmm, eye candy.
Posted by: Andromeda at Nov 13, 2009 8:17:47 AM
Artsy fartsy snob type people will hate true blood. Not saying you are one Tyler (I know you are artsy fartsy but not sure if your a snob about it).
Posted by: Ted at Nov 13, 2009 8:21:01 AM
How many songs is few? I thought of 4 off the top of my head. That isn't bad for such a narrow theme.
Posted by: Chris at Nov 13, 2009 8:21:08 AM
Danger (sexual one that is) turns on a whole lot of people. Vampires are the ultimate sexual and dangerous dream. You could call it a female variant of pornography (except that it also attracts men since it has the violence).
Posted by: Mikko at Nov 13, 2009 8:21:19 AM
#0: Vampirism is a 'royal' bloodline (indeed, often presented explicitly as such), and those born into it are amoral and above mere humanity. Evidently, for many, the thought of being nihilistic royalty free to use others for one's pleasure and appetites is highly appealing and romantic. It's essentially a twisted, indulgent continuation of the childhood fascination with Disney-style 'princess' themes/movies.
Posted by: Sonic Charmer at Nov 13, 2009 8:24:04 AM
The bigger question for me is what's the deal with zombies?
Posted by: Ted Craig at Nov 13, 2009 8:26:25 AM
The best vampire book ever is "Bloodsucking Fiends" by Christopher Moore. Very funny. Aspiring writer Tommy Flood moves from Incontinence, Indiana to San Francisco and falls in with a very weird crowd.
The sequel "You Suck" is not as good, but still worthwhile if you like the first one.
Posted by: peterg at Nov 13, 2009 8:36:47 AM
I'm amused by the number of comments here and on the linked site that seem to assume vampires have to be male.
Besides the whole sex and danger thing, it seems to me the other big interesting question of vampire fiction is, what would you give up for eternal youth, beauty, and vitality? Your soul? Your ability to walk about in daylight? Would you become a horrible monster that preys on others? (Or is the last part of the appeal?)
Posted by: Sol at Nov 13, 2009 8:39:00 AM
Everyone knows that girls go for Bad Boys, and vampires (as portrayed in the last couple of decades) are about the top of the line in that category. Vampires are powerful, mesmerizing, dangerous, aristocratic, usually wealthy, and (since they've all been through Casting, Costuming, Makeup, and Post Production) handsome, sexy and well dressed. They're a personnification of Lust--they're all about the one-night stand; they never settle down, get married, help raise the kids, or drive a ten year old sedan to a steady job.
You might enjoy Saberhagen's _The Dracula Tape_ and _An Old Friend of the Family_.
Posted by: Laserlight at Nov 13, 2009 8:44:41 AM
Sol,
I'm in turn amused that vampires are assumed by so many to have "eternal youth, beauty, and vitality". This is a fairly recent addition to the vampire myth. Naively, one wouldn't expect people who live in the dark, prey on people, and subsist on their blood to be in any way beautiful or vital. For some twisted reason, though, this is indeed the modern assumption.
Posted by: Sonic Charmer at Nov 13, 2009 8:51:14 AM
The flood of vampire books is a recent phenomenon, so we might look for recent causes. Also, the books of the recent boom seem to be primarily by and for women.
Often it's a single author who breathes new life into a fading genre and I think Anne Rice may have done much. Rice's first vampire book came out in the seventies but I never heard of her until the mid eighties, so maybe that's when she hit the big time and influenced a generation of writers.
Goth subculture, highly creative while remaining well within vampire-like boundaries, supplied vampires with an outstanding new wardrobe. Goth subculture started in the eighties.
The last couple of generations were introduced to vampires as small children in non-threatening ways - Sesame Street's The Count. Sesame Street started in 1969, give it a couple of generations and we're at today.
Posted by: Constant at Nov 13, 2009 8:55:34 AM
True Blood the tv show is just a really bad Murder She Wrote episode with lots of supernatural sex and violence. My wife enjoyed the books though.
Posted by: bob at Nov 13, 2009 9:01:31 AM
vampires prey on gender roles. i mean, what is more obvious that the male fear of (and taboo around) being penetrated?
p.s. halloween was last week! you're late to the party!
Posted by: farmer at Nov 13, 2009 9:36:00 AM
Men and women are interested in different types of vampires. Women's vampires are super-powerful and have few restrictions placed on them. They are-- as Laslerlight wrote -- the ultimate Bad Boy.
Men don't want to date vampires, they view them as evil competition. Men want to prove that they are superior to them by killing them. Joss Whedon's vampires were-- with few exceptions-- totally evil. As were Bram Stoker's vampires. Both were much more killable than Meyer's or Rice's vampires.
For a extremely trashy vampire book that truly brings out the masculine view of vampires, get a copy of John Steakley's Vampires. It was the one that John Carpenter made a movie out of.
Posted by: Andrew Berman at Nov 13, 2009 10:04:28 AM
Watch "Let The Right One IN".
Posted by: stephen at Nov 13, 2009 10:09:12 AM
I believe the unorthodox answer is more mainstream than that. A rather obvious reading of Twilight's theme is the virtue in having the lustful male vampire remain chaste and overcome his desire to penetrate his female interest.
But you're right the novel is terrible. Puerile, romantic novel trash, that beats its message of chastity and purity every other page. I only made it 50 pages.
Posted by: Andy at Nov 13, 2009 10:13:49 AM
Vampires are a total absurdity, annoyance, and waste of time. Proof that our cultures have too much prosperity that people can waste their time and thoughts with such drivel.
Posted by: Don at Nov 13, 2009 10:16:29 AM
Don't listen to the people. True Blood is one of the best shows on television today. I've never read the books and have no intention of doing so.
Posted by: Robert S. Porter at Nov 13, 2009 10:19:59 AM
I'd pay good money to see the movie about the man obsessed with cheese studded with raisins.
Posted by: Scoop at Nov 13, 2009 10:23:18 AM
There is indeed an article that compares vampires to gay men.
Posted by: Gopi at Nov 13, 2009 10:25:33 AM
Oh, and (related to your #3)...
Vampires lie, fundamentally, outside of social conventions. They can't participate in such basic social rituals as meals or worship or circadian rhythms (and all that implies about, well, quotidian activity). This means, one, that they allow people to tell interesting stories that may be hard to tell with humans; two, they let people test the boundaries of those conventions within the safe space of art, instead of reality; and three, they appeal to the parts of us that want to break those conventions, to live outside them without being subject to the typical punishments for breaking them.
Posted by: Andromeda at Nov 13, 2009 10:31:07 AM
I think the unorthodox answer is the simplest and most convincing one. Also the idea of dangerous or forbidden sex. It's popular for the same reason that a lot of women fantasize about being raped.
Posted by: Will at Nov 13, 2009 10:51:55 AM
seconding stephen's comment. watch LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - however make sure to see it in a theater or that your dvd includes the THEATRICAL english subtitles (unless you are fluent in swedish) as the original dvd release had very poorly written subtitles.
Posted by: ron at Nov 13, 2009 10:59:13 AM
Or alternatively, the problem with all romantic stories is that the heroine and hero must be kept apart until the end. Vampirism provides a motive for this separation, allowing the author to exploit Unresolved Sexual Tension for an audience which lives in the world where many of the traditional romantic comedy reasons are inapplicable (eg modern-day parents in the West don't generally try to marry their daughters off to the villains, nor are they likely to forbid their daughters from marrying someone from the wrong class, nor do we have family feuds as per Romeo and Juliet or Campbells versus McGregors, nor is the hero likely to be kept away from the heroine by a false rumour that she once was found alone with a man). And on top of that, people can try to kill the vampire, for understandable motives, and the vampire is unable to call on the police, offering violence and fear and opportunities for dramatic last minute rescues.
Which is not to say that there are no great successful romantic stories without vampires, just that there are fewer plotting options to achieve the same effects than there were in the past.
Posted by: Tracy W at Nov 13, 2009 11:05:53 AM
