Who Defanged The Vampires?
I read a lot of books during the course of a year (2009 saw me work my way through over 30 of them) and not all of them are great. I do not pretend to be an academic when it comes to the analysis of novels – although I loved English at school, that was always the part of the class I dreaded. And I don’t think you SHOULD analyse books, they exist to create a different world, offer new perspectives and to invoke feeling and emotion within the reader.
But, having said that, my job is to do just that!! But be warned, anyone expecting high brow, intellectual breakdowns of the subtext of the latest Lionel Shriver offering should probably go elsewhere. My opinions are more of the “that bitch couldn’t write her way out of a paper bag”. And if anyone notices any traces of bitterness creeping in, that’s because there is. I am a would-be novelist trying to fit writing around a career and running my home.
Anyway, onto the subject at hand…
I remember when vampires were scary and the mere utterance of the word “Dracula” could have you checking over your shoulder to make sure someone wasn’t trying to drain you via your throat. Where readers made sure their windows were firmly closed before going to bed, lest a vampire in bat form flies in and catches you sleeping. Images of the immortal who could only be slain by a stake through the heart or decapitation used to plague my nightmares for weeks after reading.
In short, vampires were bad-ass. The amazing thing was that they didn’t have a conscience, so weren’t held back by the morals and social norms of the day – they were free to feast and raise hell without thought for consequences or those around them. The vampire lifestyle was truly a pursuit of hedonism. And a person with no limitations and a lust for human blood is truly a terrifying concept, especially when they have supernatural powers and incredible physicality.
And they were sexy. Partly because of the aforementioned bad-assery, but mainly because they were written that way. Vampires use their good looks, pale skin and often hypnotic eyes to attract unsuspecting victims to get close enough to take a bite out of. And the sexuality of vampires is tied into the lack of concern for societal conformity or moral code. Bisexuality, multiple partners and other sordid sex acts are alluded to or graphically detailed in vampire books. And it’s not just a modern concept, the sex of vampires goes back centuries.
In 1872, a book called “Carmilla” written by Sheridan Le Fanu depicted a woman targeted by a lesbian vampire who adopts a new persona and stays with the victim’s family, transforming at night and feasting on her while she sleeps. This book served as a prototype for future lesbian vampire offerings, although it wasn’t hugely overt in it’s sexualising of the situation.
But surely the quintessential vampire novel has to be Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which has served as inspiration for nearly every vampire novel that followed it, the good, the bad and the ugly.
Written by Irish author Bram Stoker at the end of the 1800s, Dracula is a book that has been broken down and reassessed for as long as it has existed. And for good reason. It is has the elements nearly everyone would associate with a vampire story.
It is sexy: Johnathan Harker is targeted in the night by three buxom and sexually available women, and the hypnotic charms of Dracula hint that there is a supernatural draw to these creatures.
It is scary: People being attacked in the night by unknown assailants, Dracula stalks his prey, watching them when they think they are alone. He is pretty much like a shadow.
It is balanced: Dracula is not an emotional being. It is not part of his make up. He is an animal, who doesn’t show feeling for his prey. No, the emotion of the story comes from the humans, who mourn, get angry and seek revenge. And that is how it should be.
But now we have a different breed of vampires, who brood, who don’t eat human flesh, who love human women and who seem to have had their fangs removed at the same time as their balls.
And do you know who I blame for this? Not Stephenie Meyer, who while she has made this situation worse by creating a book so sweet and puppy dog-ish that millions of teens were bound to fall under it’s spell, didn’t set the trend. Not Joss Whedon, who, while I adore him and everything he has done, created a good looking vampire sullied by a soul who did the “dark and broody” thing to death. Not the myriad writers who have tried the old formula of love between two people with different backgrounds (a post-mortem Romeo and Juliet, if you will).
Nope, to look for the culprit, I have to go back to the 1970s to Anne Rice. Yep, the one and only. The woman responsible for Interview with the Vampire and the rest of the Vampire Chronicles. She created characters who stop to think about what they are doing, the effects the actions have and bemoan the life they have. She tries and affixes her own morals to a tale that really shouldn’t have any (except for the whole if you are bad, bad things will happen to you which comes when good invariably triumphs over evil).
Lestat, while on the surface is a man who enjoys being undead and all that that entails, is actually lonely and often questions the right and wrong of his existence. He tries to defend himself to people who question his actions or motives.
And in Memnoch the Devil it gets downright ludicrous when Lestat helps ensure no bloodshed during a battle between rival factions.
Let me repeat that: A VAMPIRE MAKES SURE THERE ARE NO DEATHS IN A FIGHT.
This is unfathomable. Dracula would have ensured that all people on both sides were slain and he had enough time to drain them all before making his escape. That is the way it should be.
Stephenie Meyer doesn’t even give the readers anything that resembles a traditional vampire. In interviews, the author (and I do use that term loosely, because although the idea was reasonable, the execution was miserable) freely admits she did no research on vampires while writing. That’s how we end up with vampires who don’t have sex, don’t drink human blood and SPARKLE IN THE BLOODY SUNLIGHT!
Everyone knows that vamps dust, not sparkle, Stephenie.
And instead of at least giving him a thirst for sex, the writer decides to make him chaste and unwilling to have sex before marriage.
(I must interject here in the interests of full disclosure: I have read the Twilight saga a few times. I have the first two films on Blu Ray. This is not because of the vampire aspect, in as much as I want to sex Rob Pattinson and my inner teen is a fat chick who wishes she could get the hot guy. But these books almost use the vampire angle as an incidental, it is a love story more than anything else. For vamps, I have much better reading material.)
And alas, the commercial success of the Twilight saga, which has broken previous records for number of books sold on opening night, means that inevitably carbon copies will flood our bookshelves, just like what happened post-Da Vinci Code.
Anne Rice has a lot to answer for, and I don’t just mean for turning Lestat into a literary vessel for her to spout her own crap about life and being famous and such. She has led the way for a slew of watered down, under-nourished and wimpy vampires who I as a mere human wouldn’t be scared to take on.
What we need is a renaissance of the traditional vampire: The sexy, scary beast that turns into a bat, sneaks into your room, puts you under a hypnotic charm and sucks the life out of you. What we don’t need is any more limp wristed, human loving, guilt feeling pussies who would rather cuddle than bite a girl’s neck!
–Katy Gordon
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