While working on my final project, I did an analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and decided to write my final blog comparing the modern day vampires’ versus the ones that were created earlier. What I've found is that the vampires whose characters were created over ten years ago are considerably more frightening and scary than those that have come into existence lately.
For example, the seductive vampire character has appeared in both older works and modern works. Anne Rice’s novels, such as Interview With a Vampire and her series The Vampire Chronicles feature sympathetic and seductive vampires, however they are still portrayed as monsters. They still inspire fear. No fear is inspired by Edward Cullen in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. The emphasis has become more on star crossed love stories and less on the horror of the vampire. Twilight is more Romeo and Juliet than it is Dracula.
Similar to Twilight, in Buffy when there are seductive vampires, such as that of Spike and Angel that become love interests to Buffy it is more of an exception than the rule. The Cullens’ in Twilight are supposedly rare forms of vampires that don’t kill humans and the vampires Buffy falls in love with are the rare vampires that have souls. Clearly these modern interpretations of the vampire are attempting to reconcile lore that does not fit with the traditional lore of vampires. In doing this, the creatures that once inspired fear are now merely making for good teenage angst stories and the use of the vampire character is being degraded. Personally, I am not having nightmares about vampires that sparkle in the sun, but instead vampires such as those of Dracula that have nefarious intentions such as wanting to kill and destroy the world.
4 comments:
I agree. Modern vampires suck (no pun intended) because they are basically just a kind of cool version of emo kids, crossed with superheroes. Spike and Angel are interesting because for them, being a vampire isn't totally fun. (Maybe it is for Spike). Vampires are dangerous in Buffy--Angel loses his soul twice, and Spike, even after he kind of reforms, tries to rape Buffy, and a few episodes before that, tries to sell dangerous demon eggs. The Cullens are boring they are basically just superman, and don't have any serious problems. The only conflict in that story comes from Bella's whining, and the problem (Eward's bloodlust) never even turns out to be that big a deal. I also think that vampires are a little overexposed--they're everywhere. True Blood, for example, might be an amazing show, but I have little interest in watching it because I'm sick of vampires.
Dan, I agree. Sadly, I got sucked (pun intended) into True Blood. Sigh...
I love True Blood! It falls into the same trend of Twilight and all that in that it sacrifices the threat of the vampire in order to have likable characters--but I disagree that this is a necessarily bad thing. I really think that Twilight lost its edge when Edward stops being scary--when you stop believing that he will lose control and just go ahead and such Bella dry. The same thing tends to happen in True Blood to a certain extent, but I think that True Blood uses vampires to comment on race in a new way. There might be a lot of gratuitous sex and blood in that show, but I think that it's also doing some intelligent things.
I really like the analogy of Twilight and Romeo and Juliet. It is like an emo version of an already emo story. Edward Cullen does not inspire any type of fear, and the rest of the vampires aren't all that scary either.
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