With the gothic revival, Twilight. The Vampire Diaries, and all the rest of this hokum, it is easy to forget that vampires aren't exactly Euro-trash in white pancake.
My daughter is obsessed with Twilight, as are many tweens and young teens. Perhaps it's the Sturm und Drang of the love affair in question (I told Moriah that it was just Romeo and Juliet with vampires, and that the original was better because it had sword fights). Perhaps it's the allure of being tempted to bad in a good cause. The appeal, whatever it may be, is lost on me; perhaps I have no more romance in my soul, but the thought of running down deer rather than people just doesn't strike me as, I don't know, cool. Hasn't anyone told the kids who read this that part of the allure of vampires is turning other people in to vampires?
My daughter's obsession worried me enough this past summer I offered, as an alternative, Stephen King's delightfully scary, pulpy 'Salem's Lot as an alternative, and far more traditional, take on the vampire myth. In Barlow, we have the vampire as an incarnation of evil, even killing a child as a sacrifice to the Devil early on in the book. The most frightening moment in the book, for me, has always been the scenes of the young boy, lying in bed, seeing the vampire outside his bedroom window, scrabbling at the window and begging to be let in. It was weeks before I opened the curtains in my bedroom, the first time I read that.
More to the point, even Stoker's original had enough of a sheen of the gothic romance about it to rob the myth of its more frightening aspects. The contemporary take on it - Interview With A Vampire crap, Twilight, the vampire-rock of Atreyu and other neo-Goth metal bands - renders the whole myth less than frightening. Yet, at its heart, the vampire legends concern themselves with an abomination, the antithesis of the Christian proclamation of the resurrection of the dead. Rather than a life of glory before the throne of God, vampires are condemned to endless hunger, unquenchable thirst for the blood of the living. There is nothing romantic about it; it is a surrender to the most basic instinct human beings have - hunger - for an unfulfillable promise (everlasting life and youth).
Which is not to say I am going to bar Moriah from seeing New Moon when it comes out next month. Nor am I going prevent her from being a vampire for Halloween. I just wish we had better pop-culture guides to this story of evil incarnate than currently exist.
