Vampire: The Metaphor

[eumelia]

Vampires have taken over our lives. They suck out time via books, television and film like no other supernatural beast ever could.

Why?

Because they look like people, like you and me, they can walk among us unknown and seduce us with their glamour, mystique and plain ole' attractiveness.
Vampires are always beautiful, those that ugly, do not need to be. We are attracted to the fact that they are excluded from daylight, that they are reflected only in the eyes of human (their prey) and to the fact that they are immortal.

They do not die.

We pass away and they pass on.

Vampires have reached a kind of peak of pop-culture popularity. Ten years ago when I was fourteen and obsessed with Buffy, I read Dracula, Interview with a Vampire and thought Bella Lugosi was the shit.
Vampires were awesome.

Now... they're poster boys for Abstinence.
Where have we gone wrong.

Neil Gaiman was interviewed a couple of weeks ago about Vampires, because of his Vampire character Silas in the Graveyard book (which is excellent by the way) and throughout the interview spoke of the different metaphors available in Vampire telling, from sexual depravity (see Dracula), AIDS (the various vampire movies of the 80's like Lost Boys), religion and just down right non-conformity.
All is very interesting, astute and literary.
He also mentioned that he feels that Vampires have reached their saturation point, soon they'll be gone and come back in 20-25 years.

I'd like to think this is so, because I'm really sick of reading articles like this; What's Really Going on With All These Vampires? - Vampires as Gay Men by Stephen Marche.

Just. No.
Stop with this at once.
Beyond contextualising gay men's sexuality as this dangerous, predatory and monstrous thing, the article goes on to explain that young girl's desires, fixating on Vampires is just like the young girl who wants to have a boyfriend but not sleep with him.
Hence the "gay" boyfriend.
Gay men as accessories.
Again.

Women (young girls, adolescent women) are scared of sex and their own desires and so the object of their desire are monsters?
Gay men are monsters?
Women don't know their own desires?
I do believe that's what being said here.
It's nice to have our sexuality denigrated.
Again.

True Blood is a cracktastic show, but books it is based on are also filled with scenarios that make you strain your suspense of disbelief of muscle, however, it makes the freaky nature of humanity apparent and physical.
Everyone is "special" and thus no one is.
The Vampires, in True Blood are going through their Civil Rights Movement¹.

If this what the latest bout of Vampire fiction is bringing out and telling us about society, perhaps we all need a break from.
But no, we need them depraved blood suckers don't we? We like the freaks that walk among us in the dark
You never know who it's going to be.

Vampires have always been an outlet to lust and desire that was viewed as obscene or just plain "not normal". Framing gay men as objects and women's desires and sexuality as negligible kind of goes against the grain when it comes to Vampires as a story.

Just my thought on the matter.

Over at Salon there's a pretty good response to this article: Buffy the gay man Slayer by Tracy Clark-Flory.

Footnotes
(1) Never mind that black and gay character is constantly abused by both humans and vampires. A series about gay rights... Alan Ball, this is a shout out, Do It Better!
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Comments

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I do believe young teenage girls are ...cautious with their sexuality as a rule. Hence why all the boy bands are so andogynous, pretty and not so much with the obvious musculinity, it appeals to girls. Same with a lot of anime characters. The less musculine the guys are, the prettier, etc, the more likely you'll see a younger female demographic in that fandom.

And my experience in high school, and with my girlfriends, this was true. It might also tie into society indoctrinating us into being afraid, and being cautious because our virgnity is oh very special, etc, etc blah, blah.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I can see that, the cautiousness thing and girls being attracted to girls because they think of themselves as sexual... sorta.

Interesting, I need to think about it some more. But yeah the whole indoctrination thing is definitely a factor, I think.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

It's the whole nature versus nurture thing, which has the more power? It's hard to say without you know, doing some unethical experiment where we raise children in a gender-free allusion bubble away from the rest of society.... (and I did read a short story about that once).