The world is a vampire

For a revamped fascination with vampires to drip into the cultural consciousness at such a time is certainly not coincidental.

Whether Bella Swan would traipse into some vampire frat party, offering herself as a free-flowing virginal vat of body shots, or get her anemic cherry popped mid-air by Edward Cullen’s undead sausage, I didn’t care to find out. Sixty pages was as much as I could suck out of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight before it had drawn most of the blood that was supposed to flow to my brain. I can only imagine sixth-grade girls using what should be called the Night Light series as the sacred text upon which they invest their budding hormones, pondering the must-have traits of their future boy-friends right before they sleep.

But it wasn’t just tweens — those who’d just slipped their first black training bras on — that were bleeding love for bloodsuckers. Though I could no longer let Meyer drag me through such vital lines as “He looked like he’d just finished shooting a commercial for hair gel” (Dep could cash in on Ed Cullen’s calculated coiffure) or “I found myself reveling in the aloneness instead of being lonely” (l’il goth chick gold, I say), I realized that vampires had sunken their teeth into the zeitgeist once more — albeit a little deeper now.

Fangs got fans

Since Twilight cast its ashen hue upon theaters on Wednesday, you might have witnessed a slew of status message movie dedications, devotions of undying love to the waifish Robert Pattinson (who plays the love story’s Romeo with bite), and maybe a couple of truly affected metros grabbing white foundation at the cosmetics counter. When Häagen-Dazs wants you to “taste the flavors inspired by Twilight” (I don’t really dig the mix of choco chips, mango, and passion fruit in scoops of Clair de Lune, though), you just know the geeky wizard’s been bumped off the merch market by a gawky chick and her manorexic, century-old boyfriend. And while Meyers’ New York Times bestseller claims the top spot in the Fully Booked children’s section with contemporary Ellen Schreiber and her series of tween tantalizers (Kissing Coffins, Vampire Kisses, Dance with a Vampire, etc.) trailing not too far behind, the stiletto set is getting their fill of blood and lust as well.

Anne Rice’s immortal Lotharios must be clawing at their coffins right now, what with all those bloody bimbo titles landing the Recommended Book stacks. Beside paranormal romance novelist Katie Macalister’s Sex and the Single Vampire, you can probably spot Mary Janice Davidson’s Undead and Loving It — the sort of chick lit that indulges both female frills and fang-tasy. Of course, from Count Orlok to the more Playgirl-appropriate Lestat (Cruise or Townsend), the vampire has always been portrayed as carnal and pheromone-fanning creature. Perhaps what kept a stake-driving bitch like Buffy from pulverizing Angel had a lot to do with the bloodsucking boy toy’s immaculately styled hair and puppy dog sensitivity. And when that trio of man-eating broads jumped Keanu Reeves in Dracula, it looked like he was having a hell of a hard time trying not to succumb to a threesome.   

Even when the vampire became action hero between the late ‘90s and early 2000s (Blade, Underworld, anytime Buffy decided to kick ass), a non-functioning circulatory system didn’t mean blood didn’t pump to their reproductive areas — or to their hearts. 

Reality bites

More than the sex and sucky-sucky that your regular vampire pursues and proffers, things get a little tricky when a little human love comes along. For the damned, life is eternal yet love bears the eventuality of rotting as they remain beasts and the objects of their affection are too sacred to take up such selfish and sullied immortality. Too bad there’s always a pure chick like Mina Harker, Bella Swan, or Sookie Stackhouse — from HBO’s new series True Blood — that just wants to get her fang-baring freak on and be cradled by death.

It’s the false prospect of being free from human pain and weakness that vampires represent. In True Blood, a vampire’s blood (“V”) is the top-tier illegal drug that is “pure, undiluted 24-karat life,” packing its user with sexual heat and vigor while removing one’s blinders and revealing the truths that surround him. The show’s premise is that vampires had been shunned by society until the Japanese invented True Blood, the synthetic O-negative beverage that quenches real-blood thirst in order to scratch humans from the menu. Vamps have since then emerged from the shadows, even in a primitively conservative small Louisiana town where mind-reading waitress Sookie gets smitten with Clint Eastwood-like immortal Bill Compton. He’s the first vampire she’s taken an order of True Blood from and who’s offered her solace, through his brain wave-less noggin, from all the grimy thoughts that go through the heads of her bar’s hick customers. 

Amid marquees that read “God Hates Fangs” (an obvious allusion to “God Hates Fags”) and small-minded townsfolk who consider vampires both criminal pariahs and temptations (sex with a vampire is one thing “you’ve got to do before you die,” says one “fang-banger”), the tension between Sookie and Bill is almost tragic. This, as characters such as black and gay cook/resident drug dealer Lafayette and his sharp-talking cousin Tara get their share of discrimination — actual or assumed — as well. What Bill Compton is, then, to the seedy town of Bon Temps, is the absolute minority that is loathed out of fear and fascination; an outlet of perceived sin or means to be free that the town’s residents are more wont to conceal or desperate to devour.

For a revamped fascination with vampires to drip into the cultural consciousness at such a time is certainly not coincidental. Taboos have supposedly been turned inside out, care of the colored man who now represents America; gay rights rioting continues while “fauxmosexuality” prospers in entertainment; and countries are sucking hard on their economic wounds. It’s no wonder everyone needs some sort of escape from the pale reflection of a dead man walking just so we can revel in all the hedonism, slick ferocity, and forbidden romance his story grants. It’s enough for a movie that depicts the sexual tension between a pretty girl and her prettier vampire to make a guy squeal like he had a tampon jammed up his anus.

So okay, I may have dug my teeth deep into the mush of Twilight the movie. These dour days, it takes a bite of the living dead to feel the warmth of being alive again. Damn it, now that line, Stephenie Meyer could have probably written.