Vampires + Teenagers
Words: Sam Easterbrook (Sub-Editor)
Once vampires were hidden away in a remote corner of Romania, in myths, legends and folk tales. Now they are in the (cold dead) heart of popular culture.
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to True Blood on television to the book serials House of Night and the ubiquitous Twilight, it seems vampires hold an allure over writers and young consumers alike. But why?
From Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the first real encounter that a western audience had with these bloodsuckers, the portrayal of vampires was distinctly adult in nature. These vivacious, lustful beasts were hell-bent on bacchanalian thrills, wild with desire, craving the instant hit with little thought given to the consequences. On second thought it does sound a bit Skins.
Vampires and teenagers share common traits, which appeals to a writer as much as they can chime, consciously or not, with a young audience. These fiends are by their very nature isolated from the community, what with being undead, while some teenagers look pretty undead too. Joshing aside, our formative years can be a time when we can feel isolated from family, friends, even ourselves.
Our bodies physically change during this period. These transformations are not always comfortable or indeed always wanted. The metamorphism from child to adult is mirrored by the often painful transformation from human to vampire (Zoey Redbird in Marked, Lucy Westenra in Dracula) as are the sudden wanton changes brought about by hormones fizzing around the body and the smell of blood, in teenagers and bloodsuckers respectively. These feelings of losing control or the fear of losing control was often a recurring theme in Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the romance between Buffy and Angel and the conflict that rages within Edward Cullen in Twilight.
The rise of conscientious vampires (Angel and Co stealing the vital fluid from hospitals, The Cullens' drinking of animal blood, True Blood’s lot quaffing synthetic stuff) , and the forbidden love between them and humans appears to be the template for modern young adult vampire fiction. These awkward occurrences allow authors to tackle issues of early romance and communicate their morals and beliefs without appearing to be lecturing and hectoring. It would be amiss of me not to mention at this juncture the promotion of chastity and abstinence running through Twilight and the author Stephenie Meyer’s Mormonism.
Of course this is nothing new, from Aesop’s Fables to the collections of fairytales by the Brothers Grimm, our literature and especially that for younger readerships, is suffused with identifiable characters, situations and lessons. But that’s not to say the lessons taught in these books are always virtuous. The female protagonists often tend to be weak and objectified. The spunk of Buffy, the resoluteness of Mina Harker in Dracula is erased and replaced by a return of the helpless, vulnerable, damsel in distress. Their male counterparts are strong occasionally brooding and angst-riddled protectors, lovers or predators. Are such gender stereotypes an outcome of the conservative social values of the mostly American authors working in the young adult vampire genre?
Where Twilight and books of similar ilk succeed and resound with an older audience than that for fairytales, is in the use of protagonists that are aged slightly above that of its core audience and ones that are easy for the audience to identify with. The spate of vampire novels for teenagers provides a sort of wish fulfilment, a taster of experiences to come. Time can move slowly for those denied things.
Young people often revolt at being called children, the term being synonymous with immaturity and naivety while older people appear to abhor this rejection of innocence, but they must have forgotten their thoughts and feelings at that age. Just Seventeen was never read by seventeen-year-olds after all.
I propose these books actually attempt to quench the thirst for accelerated development and protect young people from growing up too fast rather than encourage it, possibly another indicator of the backgrounds of the authors.
I suspect that many readers moved from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter saga to these books. For the most part the Harry Potter books are distinctly sexless and unsexy. Vampires on the other hand are. This may not be the appropriate context in which to discuss the symbolism of the painful piercing bite of the vampire, but it must be noted that these books provide a more adult thrill than Harry Potter does, despite what the hordes of kidults clutching Rowling’s work might say.
But how come there are so many books for teenagers about vampires around at this moment in time? The simple answer is money. Twilight was an unexpected commercial smash; it was directly rejected by nine publishing houses while five others didn’t respond to the manuscripts at all. This illustrates a tremendous lack of foresight and goes some way to explain the subsequent scramble for anything similar and this has lead to the deluge.
The rise of Goths and Gothic mores should also be logged. Where once it was unusual if not shocking to see Goths walking down the street it, like any other subculture, has been gobbled up by the mainstream and is now one of several default options for teenagers searching for an image. This gradual transition has aided and abetted the wide acceptance of vampire fiction.
Also worth noting is the desire to birth franchises. Similar to what is happening in Hollywood (see Transformers, Night at the Museum, etc.), publishers and therefore authors are increasingly attempting to create series of several books to provide a guaranteed sustained revenue stream. Selling four, five, six books instead of one standalone tome, plus the merchandising opportunities and lucrative film and television adaptations can make or break publishing houses in this tough economic climate.
Thankfully for the printers it seems vampires and their late-teen human counterparts have enough chemistry to warrant long over-arching narratives that can spread across several books. As they say relationships often take time to develop.
So where next for vampires in fiction? The screen adaptations are already underway, the next Twilight film, New Moon is due to be released in the UK in November, True Blood is on to series two and ITV2 has recently picked up The Vampire Diaries from Warner Bros. and will be screening them early next year. This is where I’m (wooden) staking my money, The Vampire Diaries has been adapted for TV, from LB Smith’s series of novels published in the early 90s, by Kevin Williamson who was the writer behind Dawson’s Creek (and the Scream films). I think we’ll start seeing a rash of long-running identikit vampire flecked teen shows on our TV screens in the vein of One Tree Hill, The O.C., Smallville, etc. Although I have a small feeling this may come back and bite me.
It could of course shoot off in an entirely different unexpected direction, such as how the preponderance of Westerns in the 40s and 50s lead to the Western in space that was Star Wars. So what the heck, Space Vampires anyone? Where’s my pen, right, “A Long Time Ago, In A Coffin Far, Far Away…”
IMAGE: little blue hen
6 Comments – Postiwch sylw
betsy313
Rhoddwyd sylw 33 mis yn ôl - 18th August 2009 - 19:30pm
i love twilight and i can't wait for new moon to come out!!! it's really got me into vampire films! :)
Sambow
Rhoddwyd sylw 33 mis yn ôl - 20th August 2009 - 18:59pm
No matter what you say I have taken a liking to vampires, my first taste of them surely enough came from the great Twilight books and also the equally great House of Night novels. Vampire genre in genral is great And I find their compelling and seductive stories hard to resist. I love anything to do with vampire since my craving for them began and I hope more and more of this new Vampire blood inspires more authors to write about these amazing creatures just like Stephenie Meyer or P.C Cast and Kristen Cast.
Sambow
Rhoddwyd sylw 33 mis yn ôl - 21st August 2009 - 18:36pm
If the a editor has posted this, I wrote a review on Vampires as well, it's quite a bit diffrent but I was wondering if it was going to get posted what with this recent vampire post up. ;)
Thanks x
CLICdan
Rhoddwyd sylw 33 mis yn ôl - 22nd August 2009 - 02:03am
Sambow,
just finished editing your vampire article now. Refresh the main page and you should see it. :)
Oh, and I command you to read Interview With The Vampire and Let The Right One In. If you got this excited about Twilight, these books will make your head explode!
- Dan
Sambow
Rhoddwyd sylw 33 mis yn ôl - 31st August 2009 - 18:45pm
Hehe, Thanks!!!
But let's get this straight, I'm a obsessive vampire fan, not a crazy over obsessive and scary twilight fan ;D Just for the record x
- Oh and thanks for the interviews, will check them out!
Sambow
Rhoddwyd sylw 33 mis yn ôl - 31st August 2009 - 18:47pm
Oh, wait!!!
LOL!! I thought Interview with the vampire was an interview, but its a book! Thats even better!! I'm soooo going to obsess over theese now, I can feel it in my vampire fan veins!!!
Sambow x