Vampires are back in style! Or vamping their way to the forefront of American culture. True Blood & Twilight both feature pale tortured male vamps in love with beautiful, vulnerable young women. The thing with vamp stories is that it is almost ALWAYS about a male vamp and a human woman. The traits of a vampire- the strength, the predatory ways, the penetration of the fangs- make it a traditionally masculine role. The human woman is frailer and is the prey. The interesting thing about male vampires is that they are the most tortured, melancholy, romantic of males. For some reason, their undead state and superhuman strength (not to mention godly beauty) allows them to be in touch with their emotions, wahoo!
Both series are also based on books, which says something both about the long literary history of vampires and also their place in pulp/romantic fiction- or women's fiction. Debate about the literary merit of this genre continues and it might not help that they are so ripe for film adaptation. Lots of imagery, action and making out. The True Blood books are definitely aimed at women. Twilight is aimed at young people in general but makes its audience mostly out of females from 14-24 (the money market).
And they both feature prominent female leads, the same as Buffy. (for a very fun time, check out the mashed up sequence where fans have edited Buffy into Twilight so that she kills Edward). And so I watch them. And I wonder where the female vampires are. Why are there no female vamps? Of course, they are given side stories in all of these texts but that is not a focusing relationship. Hard to picture a rock hard, physically strong woman in a romantic relationship with a comparitively weaker, normal and non supernatural man? Because then it's not sexy if she scares him, if she bites him, if she dominates? Hmmm
And once again Jezebel proves how awesome it is by commenting on the this exact topic:
http://jezebel.com/5301189/the-allure-of-books-with-bite
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