As a lifelong fan of vampire stories, and author of two vamp novels (DANCE WITH THE DRAGON and ONE BLOOD), I’m intrigued by the way pop culture keeps revisiting the legends every decade or so, always with a new twist. Lately, the trend has been towards romantic bloodsuckers, whether G- or X-rated.
This is really nothing new. The first well-known literary vampire, Lord Ruthven of John Polidori’s THE VAMPYRE, was more obviously a seducer of women than a drinker of blood. Dracula, in the original novel, was not depicted by Bram Stoker as a romantic figure, but he evolved into one through the Hamilton Deane stage play and later books and movies. TV’s Barnabas Collins and Anne Rice’s Lestat and Louis all had romantic and/or sexual appeal for their victims.
Side-by-side with these rather sympathetic characters, we also see a tradition of the vampire as a demon, the personification of evil. This is clearly how Stoker viewed Dracula and Stephen King his Kurt Barlow in ‘SALEM’S LOT. (For some reason, male authors don’t seem as fond of sauve, mysterious guys who sneak into women’s bedrooms by night and hypnotize them into betraying their human husbands or boyfriends… Wonder why?) The ’80s and ’90s often saw armies of vampires violently battling humans and each other in horror novels and the movies.
In the latest series TWILIGHT, TRUE BLOOD and THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, vamps are much more integrated into society and indulge in frequent and passionate relationships with humans. Each of these sagas also has its villains, which are more or less nasty depending on the target audience…and sometimes still considered very sexy.
More than the Edward-vs.-Jacob or Bill-vs.-Eric controversies, I’d like to hear whether you prefer your vampires sensuous or scary. Do you feel the new sweetened interpretations take all the shivers out of the legend? Do you prefer your bloodsuckers more humanized and sympathetic?
Or do you like characters and stories that blend both elements?
What a wonderful topic! I love vampyres, and yes, I took my spelling from Polidori’s The Vampyre in all my stories. I liked his version, but I like Bram Stoker’s version too. Guess I’d have to say a mixture of both. I think the mixture of good and evil is what keeps readers coming back for more. Each time we want to see which wins out–the good or the bad!
E.F., your books are definetly on my Must Read list!
Neither, actually. The vampire character is so rich in possibilities that I look for something different–like humor. The Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse characters (not vampires but the books centered on vampires) had a decent amount of chuckles before the later books turned dark. And why should all vampires be human based? I had a story in a L&L Dreamspell vampire anthology where the protagonist was a dog. Alien vampires? Sheep vampires? Bring em on!
I root for the sensual bloodsucker with a conscience, but know you also need the dark, dangerous type too, and in the right set of circumstances, they can be delicious to observe. Whichever type they must have some redeeming quailty and not JUST be monsters. I’m sorry, I have no empathy for the Freddy Krugers of the fanged set.
My daughter, herself an author too, has just been contracted at Muse Publishing, Inc, for a vampire story that is the first in a set and there are vamps that I adored in her stoty, and others that I wanted to stake to a comet headed for the sun.
I’ve also never been crazy about vampire characters that leap out at people and drain them dry in the first attack (as a matter of “feeding,” not necessarily to kill an enemy quickly). To me, that’s what werewolves are for! I felt the creepiest part of the original DRACULA was Lucy wasting away, not aware of what was happening to her and not being able to stop it. She was losing control of both her body and her mind to a stronger will. That’s an angle that really isn’t explored much in modern vampire stories, but it’s something I love to get into in my books–the mentality of the victim who’s made to do something she knows is going to destroy her.
My favorite vampires are George Hamilton in Love at First Bite and Lauren Hutton, Once Bitten, so I guess I had have to say I like my vampires sexy, suave, and funny with a just a hint of violence.
I’ve been doing a lot of catch-up reading over the past month to see how modern female authors have been handling vampire material–read the first 8-10 of the Anita Blake novels, slogged through the first Twilight novel.
It’s interesting that Hamilton’s view of vampires, including their powers, personalities and supernatural attributes, is so varied. To say that vampires in her books are “seducers” would actually be quite unfair; the vampires of one lineage are natural seducers, and have a flair for the erotic, but vampires of other lineage chains are quite different. She even used a vampire once who was a Homo erectus, not a human at all.
That said, I will say that vampires as a metaphor for sexuality/sexual appetite or even forbidden sexuality (extra-marital, homosexual, BDSM, etc) never has done much for me. It can be done well, and will continue to be done well, but I prefer to regard vampires as entropic creatures–Death Come a Walkin’.
My feeling, Arinn, is that the vampire-as-forbidden-sex-object is okay but has been terribly overdone. From what little I’ve seen of TRUE BLOOD, for instance, it’s all about the sex–humans seek out vamps for the sexual thrills, vamp blood is supposed to be aphrodisiac, etc., etc. (The books by Charlaine Harris aren’t quite so obsessed.) I think there are so many other aspects of the legend to explore that it’s boring to overdo one that, let’s face it, humans can be good at, too! The walking-dead idea, the immortality thing, the ability to control others completely, the various psychic powers…There’s a ton of good material there! And most are a lot scarier than vampire-as-a-great-lay.