No matter what kind of vampire you like (evil or sparkly) we have stuff for you!
From John Lamb at the Fargo Forum
Different takes on the vampire
“ ‘Twilight’ stuff is getting the press, but there are a lot of different types of vampire stuff going on,” says Jamieson Ridenhour, chairman of the Division of Humanities at the University of Mary in Bismarck, and scholar of gothic fiction.
Some of his favorites [more at the link]:
“30 Days of Night” – Forget romantic notions of vampires. The monsters in this movie descend on an Alaskan town during a month without sun for a feeding frenzy.
“Let the Right One In” – “The best vampire anything I’ve seen in the last 10 years is (this) Swedish film,” Ridenhour says of this story of two 12-year-olds. “It is a good example of a romance, but it is absolutely a horror film.”
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” – Ridenhour calls the seven-season TV series “the smartest” use of the vampire as a metaphor in contemporary storytelling
Vampires have heart, but are they losing their bite?
Karen Kohoutek misses the good old days.
As organizer of the Fargo Public Library’s annual October ghost stories for grown-ups program and author of the horror movie blog “Haunted Vinyl” on http://areavoices.com/, she knows her horror history and misses the traditional depictions of vampires as suave but scary blood suckers.
But with kids today more interested in gloomy mortal Bella locking lips with the moody and misunderstood vampire Edward in the “Twilight” books and movies, vampires are no longer slumbering in coffins. Today, they’re big business, starring in scores of new books, movies, TV shows and even inspiring fashions – all marketed toward adolescents. And the hottest trend is the forbidden, but always tempting, love between humans and the eternally desirable demons. Vamp-purists, however, feel this fictional new blood-thirsty brood is, well, a little anemic.
“It’s strange to see them come back in this new form,” says Kohoutek. “Now it’s all about teenage girls lusting after vampires.”
While she’s not a fan of the vampire oeuvre, she appreciates the fact that the “Twilight” books have “gotten a lot of reluctant people to pick up a book.”
From Raelynn Coombs at the Examiner: Vampirism-what is it really? (Part 1)
Do you believe in vampires, not just in the movies, but in the real world? Vampirism is the belief in the existence of vampires and/or the actions or practices of a vampire. But, do vampires truly exist? Through my recent adventures of becoming intrigued by the vampire craze in the media, I have stumbled upon many disturbing and fascinating details. Does being a vampire imply that you just dress a certain way, belong to a religious cult, or have a medical condition? According to numerous sites and articles, all of these could be the case, but real vampires do exist. At least in their eyes they do.
The Legend
According to legend, vampires were creatures who fed on the souls of living beings by drinking their blood. Most commonly referred to as the undead, there were times when people believed vampires were living humans and stories about these vampires have been around for thousands of years. Ancient Greeks and Romans told of demonic beings and blood thirsty spirits who appear to be the originator of the vampires we know today. But the entity we have all come to know as the vampire of present began in 18th-century Europe. From this time period, people first believed that vampires were spirits of wicked individuals who had returned from death. This belief became so widespread that public executions were performed on those who were thought to be vampires.
Read More here
via Kate Youde at the UK Independent: All these vampires on the box could suck the genre dry
When the US vampire drama True Blood hits terrestrial TV on Wednesday it will be the latest in a rash of books and films injecting new blood into the genre.
But while aficionados are enjoying the genre’s popularity, the first signs of a backlash are beginning: it is only a matter of time before we have had our fill.
But Dr Helen Wheatley, senior lecturer in film and television studies at the University of Warwick and author of Gothic Television, said interest in vampires “comes and goes”. She explained the first “glut” of TV programmes appeared in the 1970s, following the BBC’s choice of vampire story Late Night Horror in 1968 as its first drama in colour “precisely because of the profusion of blood and gore”. She added: “For me, it’s not a new thing and it won’t last forever and it’ll come again.”
Read More here
Honestly, 30 Days of Night scared the crap out of me, but that was the point. There are two very different kinds of vampire stories out there: the romantic Twilight/Vampire Diaries kind, and the terrifying, eating people kind. I truly love vampires, and have for years. I enjoy both types of stories, so I’m all for the proliferation of them. I majored in history in college, so I enjoy the myths that brought about the stories just as much as the stories themselves. As for the trend coming and going, that is true with everything. There are only so many things in the world, so they keep coming back, re-invented or re-made, with each new generation learning about them for the first time. And what’s so bad about that?
Which type of vampire do you like? What got you into vampire lit?
