I Like Vampires, But I Wouldn't Want to Date One
Filed under: Fandom
So Twilight kicked ass at the Teen Choice Awards this week, picking up 11 highly prestigious trophies for groundbreaking stuff like "Choice Movie Rumble" and "Choice Movie Liplock." And the news just made me sigh, and feel very old, and very tired.
Because vampires? Sorry, kids. I am so over vampires.
It's not that I begrudge today's teens, tweens and "Twilight moms" their love for vamps. It's just that I've got a couple of decades of vampire books, movies, and TV shows under my belt while for them, the honeymoon period with broody blood-suckers is still in full swing. If Robert Pattinson looks more to me like a pouty emo kid who should be serving up my triple sugar-free vanilla latte than a 104-year-old creature of the night, that says more about me than it says about Twilight fans. I've been reading about vampires, watching movies with vampires, and enjoying the occasional TV show about vampires longer than many of them have been alive -- and honestly, I've never understood why women find them so dreamy.
Of course, I never got the fascination with that particular breed of male hero at all, going all the way back to my early exposure to chick-lit and romance novels. I like my men funny, personable, and emotionally available. The vaguely dangerous bad boy with his gloomy demeanor, quick temper and withholding of affection, who only opens up when he finally finds True Love in the arms of the heroine ... that's not for me. I'd have kicked Heathcliff to the curb for being whiny and self-centered, and Mr. Darcy's rudeness would have placed him firmly on my uh-uh, not-in-a-million-years list. Vampires are merely a more cold-blooded take on the same hard-to-wrangle men that star in all those books with the ripped-shirt Fabios on the covers.
Now, I do enjoy horror. I'll happily place The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Nosferatu (both the Murnau and Herzog versions), From Dusk 'Til Dawn, and any number of other vamp flicks on my list of best-loved movies. I was a devoted watcher of TV's Angel, even after it devolved into nonsense. My weekly viewing of HBO's True Blood is a guilty pleasure, despite its soapy storylines and terrible acting. I truly love a good vampire story. But do I want to date a vampire? Do I harbor secret longings to have a 400-year-old monster clamp his ice-cold lips on mine and suckle at my carotid artery? Oh, hell no.
When I see the enormous popularity of the Twilight series and the rabid, fantasizing devotion it inspires in young girls, it makes me deeply uncomfortable. Not because of author Stephanie Meyer's silly abstinence-based romantic notions -- honestly, I'm old enough now that I think it's probably a good thing to encourage teens to put off sex for a few years -- but because of the ridiculous notion that a vampire is an ideal boyfriend. I've seen far too many adult women struggle with their singlehood because they believed the messages embedded in Harlequin romances and Hollywood rom-coms. When faced with creating healthy relationships with living, breathing men, their ideals are so out of whack with reality that they're crippled before they even start. Like boys learning about sex from watching porn, when girls learn about love from vampire stories and Regency romances, they enter the playing field with a duffel bag full of misinformation and unmeetable expectations.
Of course, success breeds countless imitations in the entertainment industry so, thanks to Twilight, we'll have a glut of vamp films and TV shows in the next year, until everyone's sick of them and we move on to the next thing. You may remember how everyone was so into pirates for awhile, and then zombies ... one thing you can count on is that no fad lasts forever.
Oh, and werewolves? Don't even get me started.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-10-2009 @ 5:34PM
David said...
First of all, no mention of Buffy?
Second of all, True Blood doesn't have terrible acting :(
Third of all, I agree with why do girls find vampires attractive? lol
Reply
8-10-2009 @ 5:35PM
Aaron said...
First, I know for a fact that you have the mad werewolf love... But we won't talk of that!
However, I totally agree with you on vampires. If there is one thing I've learned from White Wolf Games, it is this: Blood is the ONLY fluid left in a vampire's body.
Just blood.
Ahem.
Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.
So, unless the rainbow kiss if your thing, stick to the Lycanthropes. Sure they're a tad hairier, but you won't need Shout! afterward...
I gone too far, haven't I?
I've gone too far.
Reply
8-10-2009 @ 5:39PM
Jon said...
haha before i noticed who wrote this .. i was like oh god i hope its not a dude (Not like there is anything wrong with that) : )
Reply
8-10-2009 @ 7:00PM
joao barreto said...
ok, i am a dude, and i like my men emotionally available as well. and dating vampire = necrophilia, or at least it used to be, back on stoker's and murnau's (now, what does that say about the twilighters...?)
Reply
8-10-2009 @ 7:19PM
paul said...
if our nations divorce rate is any indication of anything i think pretty much everyone has their romantic expectations out of whack. it started a long time ago too. who hasn't seen It's a Wonderful Life and remember Donna Reed and James Stewart and their courting as displayed on screen. i can remember seeing Donna Reed as a boy and thinking, wow. it's unfortunate but it's a fantasy and it isn't anything but fantasy.
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8-11-2009 @ 9:53AM
Seth said...
Hm. I think you've hit upon an interesting question here, and it has been hinted at in some of the other comments: What is the dominant romantic image being peddled by entertainment media? Does the Vampire love interest serve as the archetype?
Let us see. A dangerous bad boy, frequently even a killer who is older but youthful in appearance, powerful, somewhat mysterious and emotionally crippled.
It sure sounds like a vampire, but it also sounds somewhat like virtually any other male lead, whether superpowered (Wolverine) or merely mundanely self-centered (Any Matthew McConaughy romcom character.)
In the cases of these sorts of male romantic interests, it seems that the draw is in the female character being the exception. She alone can break through to him, and be valued in return, which of course makes a statement about her desirability compared to her compatriots.
In a sense, the distant male is the focus of a sort of romantic heroes quest, wherein the heroine proves her worth through securing the prize.
I suppose that this image of male leads in romantic entertainment is in a way inevitable. The alternative of the male being a complete loser with all the inaccessibility of the Vamp but no mystery or powers may provide a similar source of drama. (The female causes the male to improve in order to become worthy, see Knocked Up.)
However, the chances of seeing a romcom about two happy, outgoing, communicative, intelligent and well adjusted people is slim at best. Where's the conflict? Where's the drama? (Actually, drama always seems to come from some mind-bogglingly unlikely misunderstanding to keep the characters apart until the 11th hour resolution. Just another reason to stay away.)
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9-11-2009 @ 3:33PM
Diana Laurence said...
Different people find vampires desirable in different ways, some of which have been touched on here. Sometimes it's their "bad boy" appeal, sometimes their vulnerability and isolation, sometimes simply their perfect sexiness. There's a lot of leeway in the modern vampire archetype, so a person can find just about whatever they're looking for. I'd say the one general principle in play is that vampires offer a chance to explore one's "darker" interests...those things you can't (and wouldn't even want to) experience in real life. There's a lot more on this subject in my book, if anyone is interested!
--Diana Laurence, author of "How to Catch and Keep a Vampire" (www.howtocatchandkeepavampire.com)
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