I got this in my email from Borders a little while ago:
A new novel by Stephanie Meyer, which will finally satisfy all those inquiring minds asking “What now?” For those unfamiliar with Bree Tanner, she is a very, very minor character from Eclipse, the third installment of the Twilight series. Blink and you miss her. And now she has her very own novel. She has also provided a neat solution of the problem of where the Twilight saga could go. Because the series only has four books, there has been suggestion that this whole “romantic vampire” thing is only a passing trend, and it will go away as quickly as any other saga. Now that Bree has her own book, any of the minor characters could end up with a novel, or even a saga of their own. Maybe Ms. Meyer will reconsider her novel from Edward’s perspective (a shelved project after it leaked online). Personally, I’m hoping for a novel from the perspective of Leah, the sole female werewolf in the story, or maybe a tale of the Amazon vampires.
As for the idea that this is all just a trend, I should also point out that unlike Twilight, many of the series do not have a termination date, and have been going strong continuously since well before Twilight debuted on the scene. I’m thinking of the series for older readers and viewers, like Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood, or Anita Blake. So even if the initial excitement of Twilight passes after the movies finish their run in theaters, there will still likely be a large fanbase for all things romantic and vampiric.
Even if my prediction fails to come true, and everybody stops reading and watching these vampire texts, the fact remains that these texts have changed the cultural conception of vampires irrevocably. Arguably, before this point, vampires have been classified as a subgenre of the larger horror tradition. Practically every time I tell someone about my vampire thesis, they (often smugly) ask me “Remember when vampires were scary?” I generally don’t bother to dignify these queries with a response, because I have gotten so sick of that particular sentiment, which seems to be shared by multitudes of people in the online community as well as critics and writers. Whether or not vampires were ever scary is a topic for another post, but the fact remains that within this sentiment is the confirmation that vampires have changed. One of this year’s superbowl ads underscores my point rather… well, mysogynistically:
You might notice that listed amongst the “chores” men are so cruelly put upon to accomplish (oh the drudgery of carrying lip balm!) is watching vampire TV shows. Not chick flicks, not soap operas, not even Hallmark made-for-TV movies, Nicholas Sparks’ adaptations, Jane Austen adaptations, or CW serials. Vampire TV shows, which have evidently, in the opinion of the most phallo-centric advertising in the know universe, now become the gold standard for feminine entertainment. Vampires are now girly.
Granted, there are still vampires out there with more masculine airs. There’s Blade, of course, and 30 Days of Night, The Strain, Vampire Hunter D, Daybreakers, etc. These texts, however, do not have the cultural presence or power that the romantic vampires have enjoyed, and they also bring up an important question about defining the vampire genre. In the case of Blade, the vampires are just generic monsters that serve as a vehicle for Wesley Snipes to kick ass and show off his rippling muscles. 30 Days of Night and The Strain have very little specificity to their vampirism rules, and might as well just be any old monsters. Vampire Hunter D has incorporated some of the aspects of the romantic vampire, but along with Daybreakers, falls under the sci-fi mantle moreso than classic horror. These are all sweeping judgments, and I mean them to be. The vampires in these texts serve as background, as means to an ends. The vampires as vampires don’t really have a central role in the story. The romantic vampire texts, on the other hand, have given vampires definition as they have never had before. The texts themselves have a unique pattern, and the vampires within drive the narrative with their individual characteristics. Though it might be too grand a claim, it seems that the romantic vampire cycle has given vampires a distinct genre of their own. In the following posts, I’ll set out some of the qualities of the romantic vampire cycle, so that you can decide for yourself if this is the case, or if these vampires, like others before them, will be gone with the sunrise.
p.s. If you were less than amused by the superbowl ad above, try this one on for size:
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great post, Nell. I think every time there’s a new vampire series, the critics spend more time analyzing how long this will go on than they do analyzing the cultural significance of the work. When Anne Rice’s books were as eagerly awaited as Meyers’ are now, there were weekly news articles about the gay following Rice had attracted– with the same weird implicit assumptions. That once you connected a readership to some marginalized or underappreciated group, then the whole enterprise can be written off as “chick lit”
or– in Rice’s case– “queer lit.”