Love Bites: What Sexy Vampires Tell Us About Our Culture

By Sarah Seltzer , RH Reality Check. Posted November 28, 2008.

Anne Rice's beloved vampire hero Lestat (in books from the 70s onward) is a rule-breaking iconoclast (even a rock star) whose lack of gender preference when it comes to victims and vampire companions give bisexuality that familiar terror-and-titillation combination. In the 1994 film adaptation of Interview With the Vampire, more than a few reviewers noted the AIDS metaphors now found in a story conceived before the disease was known. 

In the 1990s we had Buffy, a kick-ass vampire-slayer struggling both to save the world and grow up -- all while wearing hip, form-fitting outfits. She's the embodiment of the third wave feminist ideal, and the field of feminist criticism of Buffy is an intensely crowded one.  Her very human struggles to "do it all," rid the world of demons, take care of her friends and family, and maybe meet a nice soulful vampire, interrogated the limitations of the "girl power" mantra and gave the world a truly multi-dimensional heroine. Buffy's protracted love affairs with two male vampires-Angel and Spike-range from sublime to abusive to egalitarian, reflecting the complex dynamics of sex and power in the modern world. 

Today we have the HBO series True Blood, whose lusty vampires have started drinking fake blood, and are struggling for social and political equality. Comparisons to both racial and sexual civil rights battles are unavoidable, but the fact that some members of this oppressed minority don't want their rights -- they just want to eat humans -- complicates the metaphor. 

And then there's "Twilight". If Buffy was the teen vamp tale of the Clinton years, "Twilight" is definitively its equivalent for the Bush era. Rather than kicking ass, "Twilight's Bella stumbles into danger, excusing her vampire-love-interest Edward's creepy protectiveness. Sigh. 

It's unfortunate that the story, like the past decade has been, is so old-school. But before we feminists concern-troll "Twilight's" besotted teenage fans, let's remember this: the part of the formula that appeals so widely is not the story's morality, but rather its adolescent hunger. It's the sexual budding, the fraught glances across the cafeteria, the craving to be singled out, and in Dana Stevens' words "the grandiosity that can make self-destructive decisions feel somehow divinely fated." It's teenagedom. Edward gives younger girls a chance to express their nascent desires en masse, loudly.  

Just as Dracula's reactionary plotlines failed to bring back Victorian mores, "Twilight's" unfortunate gender roles will join abstinence-only on the trash heap of history. Some of its screaming young fans will grow up to be sexually empowered, some won't, and some won't end up fancying men (dead or undead) at all. But they'll all share the fact that "Twilight's" dangerous liaison turned them on. And that's what Vampires, even sparkly ones, are for.

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Sarah Seltzer is an RH Reality Check staff writer and resident pop culture expert. Sarah is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has been published in Bitch, Venus Zine, Womens eNews, and Publishers Weekly among other places. She formerly taught English in a Bronx public school.

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