So after watching a good amount of Buffy and seeing that post about Eclipse I began to wonder why vampires have changed from scary to sexy. In Buffy, it is her duty to kill all demons and protect the world, YET she falls in love with a vampire. He has fangs and a messed up forehead and drinks blood for a living. And the Twilight series is even worse. Who cares if their skin has bunches of little crystals or whatever they are. They are super old and have killed at least like 50 people in their lifetime. But aside from all that, I think a couple things add to where vampires get their appeal. They are very mysterious, usually lurking in the shadows and shying away from human contact unless they are killing someone. This obviously attracts both Buffy and Bella to their relative vampire hubbies. I also think that vampires are extra sexualized in that they are tall and handsome and it seems that they will usually seduce a woman in order to drink her blood. In the old Vampire movies Im pretty sure Dracula could hypnotize people to do his bidding so maybe in order to get away from hypnotism, writers have decided to control woman with buff and sexy vampires instead of mind control. same thing though. The last thing I can think of that makes vampires so appealing to women is that they are dangerous. They are the mythical bad boy that all girls want to turn good. Women see a dark, handsome, brooding, tortured soul and they want to help him. Only, in the case of Bella and Buffy, they are lucky that they dont get eaten.
By the way, Edward is brooding so hard in his picture. I just dont get it
I love that you found those two pictures-- Angel and Edward look so much alike. It seems like the aesthetics of the ideal vampire lover haven't changed very much over the last decade. Besides what you pointed out about the appealing characteristics of vampires, a crucial factor in their attractiveness is their lack of humanity. In class, we talked about how humans are essentially vulnerable, whereas vampires have no soul and cannot comprehend human emotion. Therein lies the potential for vulnerability, which is used a lot in Twilight and True Blood. When soulless vampires have rare displays of vulnerability, like Edward when he first falls in love with Bella, and Eric (in True Blood) when he cries tears of blood, it makes them that much more intense.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, vampires perfectly embody the "bad boy" stereotype that drive women crazy. They're bad and do terrible things but they usually are portrayed to be just good enough for a girl to think that she can "fix" him. I think it comes from a kind of a strange mixture between being afraid of a vampire's power and hunger for blood and at the same time being very attracted to it, since these qualities represent strength and male lust, both signs of masculine virility. Combine that with the fact that Edward and Angel are tortured souls trying their hardest to be good, which probably appeals to women's maternal instincts to take care of them, its easy to see why women are so attracted to these vampire characters.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen or read Twilight and I do not plan on doing so please excuse if what I am saying is not factually accurate. When I was a kid I read some Anne Rice novels and from what I remember it seems as if vampires are creatures who ooze sex appeal. This sex appeal affects both men and women alike and I find it interesting that this is not played up in shows like Buffy and movies like Twilight. The vampire in my mind is supposed to be this creature of the night that exerts this unholy sexy influence on you regardless of gender in order to suck your blood.
ReplyDeleteNote: I also think the world "vamp" refers to a bisexual orientation
I definitely see the "bad boy" appeal and how the mysteriousness of vampire makes them much more sexually appealing. I don't think vampires have necessarily gone from scary to sexy, they've been "sexy" the whole time. However, Buffy is a much more serious attempt at social commentary while the Twilight series plays upon girls' romantic fantasies.
ReplyDelete