Famous Real Vampires

vampires, their history is long, and by long i mean myths about them have been around since 5000 BC, long before Jesus ever came into play. each culture, of course, has their own variations to the myth.

The first myth on vampires predates back to roughly 4000 B.C.E. from the ancient Sumer civilization. The Ekimmu, like many vampires of folklore, was believed to have been created when someone died a violent death or was not buried properly. although not describes as vampires( as the word vampire was not used until the mid 1700's) They were described as demonic in nature, severely rotting corpses, phantom-like entities that roamed the earth, unable to rest, in search of victims. 

Vlad The Impaler

 Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula as he is commonly known, didn’t come into play until the 1400’s. he is the most widely known of the “vampires” having killed between 40,000 and 100,000 people in his lifetime, using the most brutal of methods to do so. When he was killed, his body was never found, hence the myth that he is in fact a “vampire”. He has had many movies and books written about him. In some adaptations of Dracula, Bram Stokers book and his life story are put together as one.

Elizabeth Bathory

 Another widely known “vampire” is Elizabeth Bathory, who as the myth goes, would kill young women, virgins preferably, and would bathe in their blood because she thought that that would keep her young and from dying. She was eventually caught and tried for the killings of several hundred girls. Her legacy definitely followed her, as there have been several books, and movies made about her. She even has several hardcore metal bands named after her.

Selling Out To The Vampires

Selling out. It can happen to anything and everything just like overexposure can. Vampires have definitely been overexposed in the last couple of years, beginning with, unsurprisingly, Twilight. Before Twilight there was a lull of a couple of years where vampires were not really in the mainstream, they had more or less faded into the background once Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel went off the air. Twilight however, awakened something in teenage girl’s hearts and made them go absolutely crazy for any and everything vampire related. Pretty soon there was jewelry, clothing, posters, key chains, any sort of merchandise you can think of, being sold in big stores such as Wal-Mart, target, and even “Goth” store Hot Topic.

The Drink from True Blood

 After twilight came The Vampire Diaries, and all its merchandise, True Blood and all its merchandise( including TruBlood, which is a fake blood beverage that’s in the show and was now sold in places like Hot Topic) and even the parody Vampire Suck came out, although with very minimal merchandise.

Muse

Now, on the topic of selling out, it does not have much to do with vampires as much as it does with the music on the soundtrack for a certain Vampire series. The Twilight soundtrack has an impressive amount of good bands including Muse, Paramore, and Linkin Park. Muse seems to have had the most success following the release of the soundtrack, now having had accumulated multiple awards. They have however, been accused of selling out. Their hardcore fans are angry at the fact that so many “tweens” and teens now like their music after hearing it on the soundtrack.

Paramore

Muse is just trying to make money, and make it big here in the United States, which they have succeeded years after having started. Paramore, the other band that garnered success after twilight has the same problem. Me, being a fan since the beginning, felt like muses fans did, angry that all these people liked Paramore now thanks to twilight. I am, however, very happy that they are successful. That was their aim, and no matter how they achieved it, they did, even if it took a crappy sparkly vampire movie to get them there.

The FCC Won't Let Me Be

America in this day and age really reminds me of America back in the 1950s. What I mean is, instead of progressing forward with certain ideas, it seem like we are reverting back to what was once familiar. The FCC has gotten tougher with its laws over what can and cannot be shown or said on television. The parent’s councils that are so prominent are making a big deal of things that if it was another country would never have even been brought up. There is a big problem with nudity here, that nothing can really be shown, because oh no what will the children think! (Though parents, honestly your child knows way more than they let on). Do not even get me started on the idea of both sex and homosexuality. Both of which are a big no no around these parts.

Back not even 10 years ago, it seems like both movies and TV shows were a lot riskier than they are now, with everything that I stated above. There were more gay characters and yeah, more implied sex in TV shows. In Buffy, they even had one of the main characters, Willow, come out as a lesbian, and have multiple girlfriends and everything.

Twilight, like always was bound to come up. Twilight is doing nothing to advance our thinking on sex. Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight is Mormon. She does not believe in sex before marriage. Her books are all about waiting to have sex. She managed to make the one thing that has always been free, that is basically a symbol for sex, and turn him into something completely different. Girls now think it is completely okay for them to have a boyfriend who wants t wait for sex. That is not a bad thing. Edward, the main character, is manipulative, bossy, and is basically an abusive boyfriend in the making, and Bella just goes along with it, because she is in love with him. What kind of message is that telling to all the teens that read the book or watch the movie? That it is totally ok for your boyfriend to treat you like crap, because he “loves” you.

I have a big problem with that. I want the United States to be up to par with the European countries that do not make sex, nudity, and swearing on TV a big deal. We need to stop worrying so much about what’s being shows to our children and start thinking a little more about what is going on with the economy and the country in general. 

Popular Discrimination: Even The Vamps Do It

“Popular tastes tend to ignore traces of authorial signature and focuses rather on generic convention.” – John Fiske, Popular Discrimination

Generic conventions. Every genre ever created has them. Westerns always have the cowboy hats. Action movies always have the older leading man with a chip on his shoulder. Things like that. Vampire movies, while some tend to differ from the older generic conventions (fangs, cannot go out in sunlight, garlic) the main formula has mostly stayed the same.

Reason being, the movie and TV show companies feel that if they change the formula too much, then people will simply not like it, and that has proven to be quite true. It is the whole idea of popular discrimination as John Fiske puts it, where even the most well advertised, high budget, big movie star having movies and TV shows can fail if it is just too different from the norm, the norm being the things that people are used to seeing for that genre, like I stated above.

Like always, I am going to talk about twilight. Twilight is that movie about sparkly vampires. So yes, it does not follow the conventions of fangs, or that vampires die in the sunlight. But what it does do is the average romantic movie conventions- falling in love with someone you are not supposed to. Everyone wants to fall in love with the bad boy with a heart of gold or in Twilights case, the dead vampire boy with no heart at all.

Now in recent times, or well how it has always been, the human girl always falls in love with the male vampire. Lets see, in Buffy the Vampire slayer, Buffy falls for Angel first then after he is gone, she falls for Spike. In True Blood, Sookie the waitress from a small town, falls in love with Bill one of the vampire residents. Vampire Diaries, Elena falls in love with Stefan, the century old vampire. All of these have the exact same formula, and all of these have been very well received by audiences.

Blade: The series however, did not do so well. It could have been the timing, as it was aired in 2006. It could have been that it did not capture the intended audience’s interest (it being males 18-30, since it aired on Spike TV) but it probably has a lot to do with the fact that it did not follow the generic conventions. There was no clear good vs. bad, no love interest, nothing that really made it like all other vampire shows. So it failed.

It really goes to show that while we like to think of ourselves as people who like to watch different things and that we aren’t all the same, if we don’t see some familiarity in the advertising for shows/movies we aren’t going to make an effort to watch it. People need something familiar to cling to.

Anne Rice: Fanfiction Hater

When watching any movie or show, we do not really think about whose “property” it is or who owns the rights to what were watching, we just watch it and get sucked into it. Janet Wasko talks about copyright laws, and how in Disney, they have everything copyrighted, so if anyone, and I do mean anyone, were to use the likeness, or name of one of their characters, then they are probably going to get sued.

Now how do vampires factor into this whole copyrighted mess you ask? Vampires are very very popular creatures used in well everything. Right now you have the twilight sparkly vampires, the Vampire Diaries emo vampires and of course the True Blood sex crazed vampires. And when on said movie or TV show, the fans do not like the storyline, or the character pairing, or sometimes just because they feel like they can do a better job of writing the show/movie themselves, they turn to fan fiction.

Fan fiction is just what it sounds like, stories written by fans of any given show/movie/ or even real life people. If people have heard about it, somewhere on the internet, someone has written a story about it. Now it may seem like I am just talking randomly about some things, but I can relate fan fiction back to vampires and copyright laws.

Anne Rice. Writer of such books as: “Interview with a Vampire”, “The Vampire Lestat” and “Queen of the Damned”. Also a very well known hater of fan fiction. Anne Rice does not like it when people write stories based on her books or characters. She is so against it, that in 2000 she released a statement saying just that and prohibiting (yes prohibiting) the writing of such things. With the release of her statement, thousands of stories that had already been written were removed from the popular site, fanfiction.net.  Sure, she is not the only one who has done this since then, but she is probably one of the more influential writers to do so.

 Not on Fanfiction.net

Personal opinion time. I really do not get why she would prohibit people from writing stories based on characters she created. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. If I was an author and people wrote stories based on my characters, I would be happy and think, yes I am big enough to where people want to write about something I created. Not everyone is like that though, and for now and the foreseeable future, Lestat, Louis, Akasha and any other characters she’s created cannot be used in any story considered fan fiction.

Too Much Is Not Always A Good Thing

What do vampires, indie artists going mainstream, and hip-hop artist making it big have to do with each other?  They have all sold out, at least according to the people who claim to have liked them before they got big.  I know so many people that have complained about not liking a certain band anymore because, they “sold out” and because they sold out their music is no longer good, even though not 5 minutes ago they loved the band.

Same can be said for vampires.  I remember being in middle school, and seeing a weird girl walking around reading a book about vampires.  She would be teased endlessly simply because she refused to do what everyone else was doing and decided to do what she wanted.  This girl is now my best friend.  In high school, I hung out with all the so-called weird kids, who yeah read about vampires, and were into other “weird things” like anime.  Not even 2 years later, twilight comes out, and vampires suddenly turn into all the rage.  My best friend, who read the books when they first came out and were not popular, simply refused to watch the movie, because it was too “mainstream”.  All those people that would laugh at whoever would read “those stupid books about vampires” were now the ones being consumed by all things vampire.

Once things go mainstream, people stop liking it, and move on to the next thing.  I can say that I loved vampires before they were mainstream, during the time they were mainstream(although not as much because having to hear how Edward was “omg so hot” if I even mentioned vampires was not worth it) and I will continue to love them after they fade out because they have always fascinated me.

At this moment, I can honestly say that there is too much vampire related things going around.  Twilight?  Sure one movie about a sparkling vampire.  When it first came out, I did not think that that many people would get into it.  Vampire diaries?  Ok now a movie and a TV show about vampires, that is cool.  True blood, the third underworld movie, countless books being advertised at every store, all the merchandise.  That is when the media started being oversaturated with vampires.  Even me, who I can honestly say used to love the twilight series, started resenting it a bit because everywhere I turned, it was vampire this, or vampire that.

I hope that in the coming months, or at least by the time all the twilight movies are out, the vampire craze dies down a bit.  I do not want to completely hate my favorite supernatural being.

Vampires- Where's the gay?

There has always been a severe lack of gay people in the mass culture, even now in 2010 when more people are becoming ok with homosexuality. Them being ok with gay people does not mean they are comfortable with having them portrayed on TV, or as something that is completely normal, which it is.  The millions of overtly religious old people in this country cause a lack of any sort of diversity in movies and television, with books being one of the only things that really doesn’t get censored anymore, except for in schools.

With that being said, there is an even bigger lack of gay people in the vampire subculture.  The only example that I have been able to find for gay vampires is in true blood, the vampire series that is on Showtime.  There are slightly more vampires that are lesbian.  Carmilla, a novella written by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872 is the first literary example of lesbian vampires.  Lesbian vampire killers, a British comedy about killing lesbian vampires is the most recent example.  While their were probably other lesbian vampires throughout the years, they have probably only been put into the movies/TV shows to titillate men, since honestly, in most cases, that’s what lesbians in major TV shows or movies are used for.

There is a line that they straddle though.  They pretty up the male leads, making them look stereotypically androgynous or gay, and have them have a really close male best friend, but then pair them up with a hot girl.  This leads to subtext between both males, which is what gay people have had to make do with for forever.  In interview with a vampire, tom cruises character and brad Pitts character basically make a life together, at least for awhile.  The good thing about subtext is that you can find it in nearly everything.  In Underworld, between Selene the main character, and any female.  In Twilight, between Edward, and any male character.

This just really made me think that gay characters need to be more incorporated into the media.  I know it is hard enough to make a good female lead, without making her too whiny or dependent on a man, but if that can somewhat be accomplished, then so can a gay vampire!  Or a good lesbian vampire that is not used to lure men to watching whatever show or movie they are in. anything would be good, let’s bring two subcultures together, why not?  This way gay people who love vampires will not just have to depend on subtext.

Vampires For Everybody

In class a while ago, we talked about how most products in today’s market are targeted towards women while the men are the producers of these products.  Like Modleski said, production=male, and its active and rational while consumer=female, and are passive and emotive.  Basically, it is the gender roles that have been around forever that say that women are overly emotional.

Recently, the vampire books, such as the twilight series have definitely been aimed towards women, only difference being that a woman produced these books.  Actually, most of the series that have to do with vampires have been written by women as of late.  They could have done something to change the stereotype that women are super emotional and write books that don’t make the female characters weak and dependent on males, but they didn’t, instead deciding to keep doing what worked for all the male writers of the past vampire books.

Vampires in general are very much aimed towards women.  In general, or as of late, they are portrayed as sensitive, emotional, and misunderstood, giving into women’s desires for men like that in real life, the misunderstood bad boy who ends up being a supernatural being.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the only major shows with a female lead, Buffy Summers is shown as a strong, independent woman who kills vampires and other creatures with almost no help from others.  This show was very clearly aimed at females, and it was produced by a male, Joss Wheden.  While this show was good for making the woman a lead role, it still managed to give into women’s stereotypes and in the middle of the second season, made Buffy a mess when she fell in love with angel and he turned evil.

I have been talking about how women are always the consumers and men the producers, but that has changed somewhat as of late.  Blade, a movie about a guy who is half vampire half-human and kills vampires, is clearly aimed at men.  There is tons of action, and the lead is a strong male character who men aspire to be.  Underworld, while having a female lead, is still clearly aimed towards men, having hot girls in tight clothing and tons of strong male characters

Vampires Are Pop Culture

“Popular taste tends to ignore traces of authorial signature and focuses rather on generic convention…”

John Fiske, in our reading from Tuesday, states that the difference between aestheticism and popular taste is that popular taste is all about pleasures and what the mainstream wants to see while aestheticism is more based on the beauty of things and does not appeal to the mainstream, only to certain subcultures.

Vampires are and will always be popular taste. The movies and books have always been made to appeal to a wide audience, not just towards certain groups. There was a point in time when reading about vampires was considered uncool, but as a whole, it was still produced with the mass in mind.

In class, our professor gave us a list of words for both aestheticism and popular taste. Under aestheticism there was the word complexity, meaning that something requires knowing special knowledge beforehand to understand what’s going on. For vampires, complexity isn’t something that would be applied to them. The extent of the special knowledge that you would need to know, almost everyone knows beforehand. Everyone knows what a typical vampire is like- fangs, cant go in front of sunlight, garlic and holy water keeps them away. Even when the rules have been changes, like how Stephanie Meyer, who not only made her vampires have no fangs, but also made them sparkle in the sunlight instead of turning to dust. Even then, watching the first fifteen minutes of one of her movies, you would automatically realize what was going on.

Everyone loves vampires

That is due to the fact that, like I stated before, vampires are popular taste. They focus on the condition of consumption. That is why after twilight, and how big it was, other books, movies and TV shows to do with vampires came out with equal success. Basically if it hadn’t been for twilight being big, vampire diaries, true blood, and the thousands of books that came out afterwards wouldn’t have been popular like they are. As of now, we live in a vampire obsessed world, that I am a part of, and that with so much vampire related stuff coming out, millions of other people are a part of too.

Vampires- Only One Color Available

In class on Tuesday, we watched a documentary called “merchants of cool” which was mass culture and how subculture can come into the main culture.  While watching the documentary, one thing came to mind- why is pop culture so white washed in general?  About 80 percent of the film was just white people.  I mean, I am used to not being represented in pop culture (movies, TV shows, etc) because there has always been a severe lack of Hispanic characters.  Hell there is a severe lack of non-white characters.

This led me to think of vampires, and how there has always been a lack of color.  Sure, there is sometimes a black vampire, but when do you see the Mexican vampire?  The Indian vampire?  You would think that it being 2010, there would be some kind of inclusion.  There have been films with black vampires in them, but the amount of films with black vampires compared to white vampires is big.

Let’s see.  Blacula, made in 1972, was the first vampire movie with a black vampire as the lead, and pretty much an all black cast.  Fast forward to 1995, and there is Vampires in Brooklyn, starring Eddie Murphy.  3 years later, and the first Blade came out, which was a big success and had two sequels.  Queen of the Damned, starring the now deceased Aaliyah came out in 2002.  It took until 2008 for there to be another black vampire on film, in Twilight nonetheless, and as the bad guy who is killed in the next movie.  That is more or less the extent of films with black vampires, and it is a pretty shortlist.

Now I can honestly say that I have never seen a Mexican or even Latino vampire in all of the vampire movies, TV shows, books, etc that I have seen/read.  With the amount of Latino people in the United States, you would think that they would at least make one a supporting character or something, but nope.  Nada.  Asians have a lot more luck with vampires in movies, but the movies themselves are not mainstream.  They are part of a subculture.

Other cultures, they might as well not exist in the vampire subculture.  They just are not represented in any way, shape, or form.  I love vampire anything, but its 2010, something has got to change- because it is not probable that in these movies, not one is of color, especially in big movies like Underworld, or in the TV show The Vampire Diaries.  I hope to see more vampires of different races in the future.

Complete Crap = Twilight

This week in class we talked about good crap versus bad crap. Now since i've been sick for the last 2 weeks, that’s all I remember talking about, so I will write about that. The general consensus in our class is that Twilight is bad crap. Some of the reasons being given is that while it’s supposed to be about vampires, all the typical vampire traits are either dulled down or completely gone. For example, vampires are supposed to be these bad ass, sex loving, free beings. But in twilight, they act as a symbolic figure for abstinence. Throughout maybe the first 3 movies in the franchise, Bella, the main character in the movie, tries to have sex with Edward, her vampire boyfriend, with no luck. Edward is a 108 year old vampire virgin who refuses sex because he doesn’t want to hurt/kill Bella. What kind of message is this sending to the target audience, these 10 to 15 year old girls?

Angel And Buffy

In every other vampire movie, sex has never been an issue. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example, Buffy and Angel have sex, and while it does end up turning Angel into Angelus, the evil part of him, it still shows that it isn’t impossible for humans and vampires to have sex, like they make it seem in twilight. And even after that, Buffy has sex with another vampire, Spike and nothing goes wrong then.

Sookie and Bill from True Blood

True Blood is another example. That show is basically all about sex with maybe some plot thrown in. true Blood is quite possibly the complete opposite of what twilight is. They have different target audiences (one teenagers, the other adults). Also in True Blood, the Vampires just don’t sparkle, and they actually have fangs. In twilight, they try so hard to keep them being vampires a secret, but in True Blood it’s really no big deal. All of this probably has a lot to do with who the writers of the books/movies/TV shows actually are. The writer of Twilight, Stephanie Meyer, is a Mormon, which is more than likely the reason why she decided to do vampires as a symbol of abstinence thing. The writer of True Blood, the TV show, Alan Ball, is an openly gay man, whose previous shows include Six Feet Under.

Off the sex subject, Twilight is just bad. Yes, I did subject myself to reading the books (back in high school). I’m not saying that other vampire movies are great in comparison, like say Underworld, Blade, Queen Of The Damned, Interview With A Vampire, etc. but they certainly have what I would consider traditional vampires, and they also have better actors, dialogue and are just plain old better than the crap called Twilight. Well I guess what I am saying is that that they are all better than Twilight.

Will The Original Vampire Please Stand Up?

According to Walter Benjamin, who we read about in class this week, " In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. manmade artifacts could always be imitated by men. replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain."


at the present moment, we could say that the Twilight Saga is the beginning of the vampire craze in recent years. Following in its footsteps, trying to make money aka "..... third parties in the pursuit of gain." would be Vampire Diaries, True Blood and definitely the parody, Vampires Suck since it was made to make fun of Twilight, and profit out off of it.

Wannabe Dracula

but no, Twilight is not the beginning. it is not what is being reproduced, as there have been many shows, movies, books, comics, etc. made about vampires that came long before Twilight was even a thought in Stephanie Meyers' mind. Hell, vampire myths and legends go all the way back to 5000 BC, before Christ was even born. but the original bad ass vampire who everyone after tried to copy, was Dracula. Dracula was published a little more than a hundred years ago by Bram Stoker. it was the first book about a vampire that was popular. his book started the whole vampires being popular craze, back in the early 1930's, when the movie dracula was released and following that, even more movies and books were made, all using the name Dracula.

The beginning of all things vampire

After Bram Stoker, probably the most famous author of vampire novels, is Anne Rice. Almost everyone can say that they have either read one of her books or seen the movies based on them. Interview with a Vampire being one of the most famous, with the movie adaptation including both BRad Pitt and Tom Cruise or Queen of The Damned, starring the now deceased Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend.

So while many people would like to credit(or blame) Twilight for making people vampire freaks, that is simply not true, as Twilight is just a replica, a ripoff of Dracula and all the other current movies/ tv shows/ books about vampires are just bad imitations of the real OG, or should I say OV( Original Vampire).

Vampire's recent popularity

Mass culture- meaning culture that’s for everyone. Everyone being the common people. We learned about mass culture in class this week and it made me think about the recent influx of vampire related things.


Not even a couple years ago, back when Buffy the Vampire Slayer had just gone off air, and the spin-off series, Angel had too, movies and TV shows about vampires had relatively simmered down. Even books about vampires stopped being so popular. Then came Twilight. Twilight is about a girl who falls in love with a boy. But not just any boy. A sparkly, 108 year old vampire boy. Twilight immediately becomes a big hit, getting on bestseller lists and making Stephanie Meyer rich. But why is Twilight such a big hit? Is it because the books are so well written and are literary masterpieces? Certainly not, and I say this from experience having read the books.

Twilight is probably as big as it is today because it appeals to the masses. Who doesn't want to read a love story, especially one with mythical beings in it? In today’s culture of anything supernatural being immediately big with teenage girls, its no wonder Twilight is what it is today. The first movie made millions, as did the second and third ones. And ever since people in Hollywood realized just how into vampires people in today’s society are, they have been cranking out TV shows, movies and books by the minute.

True Blood is an example of a TV show that came after the Twilight saga did. While they were books before Stephanie Meyer ever released Twilight, they were never as big and kind of just flew under the radar. That is, until vampires became the next big thing. I personally don't watch the show, but according to my friends, its basically glorified porn, with vampires and somewhat of a plot. Back to what the professor was talking about where you have this big idea and the network executive’s just change it up until it will appeal to the masses. True blood is like that. While it was a book to begin with, they deviate from the plot and since it’s on HBO, they can get away with showing whatever they want, and boy do they do just that.

Vampire Diaries, another TV show, this time on CW, is another example of books that were out before Twilight and did not get big until after the success of Twilight the movie, and books. This show basically has the same plot as twilight- girl falls in love with a vampire, drama ensues. Just goes to show that there really is no originality left. It’s the same formula, different plot sometimes, and in this case vampires are added just to make it appeal to the teens more.

Vampires Everywhere

Vampires have been in what can be considered popular culture since the late 19th century, when Bram Stoker released his book, Dracula, which happened to be based on a real life historical figure, Vlad the Impaler. Since then other books like Queen Of The Damned, Interview With A Vampire, Vampire Diaries, etc. and movies/TV shows based on these books have been released.



I love vampires. Vampire movies, vampire books, vampire TV shows. If it has vampires I’ve probably seen/read it. I don’t love them because I secretly wish I were a blood-sucking creature or because I want to fall in love with one. What interests me about vampires is the whole history of vampires and how their image has changed since the release of Dracula, especially in the last 10 years or so. Vampires were almost always portrayed as these beautiful people, but also dangerous because they couldn’t control their bloodlust. Anne rice, one of the most famous authors of vampire books, is probably the beginning of this. Most of her books have been turned into movies with the lead vampire being very handsome men. Interview With A Vampire had Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise playing the lead roles. Most recently there’s Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight trilogy, where she changes all stereotypical characteristics of vampires, i.e. they don’t burn in the sun, they sparkle and the main character, Edward doesn’t drink human blood.


These books/movies/TV shows raise some questions. First dealing with pop culture, why are vampires so interesting? Why are there so many different kinds of vampire movies made? How have they changed from these scary figures, to sparkly pretty boys/girls? Other questions that can be brought up are: are vampires as popular in other parts of the world as they are in the U.S? Who can relate to vampires?


What interests me about vampires is what they represent. They represent the outsiders in the world. People who are never accepted and feel alone or left out, which may be the reason why vampires are so popular because so many people can relate to them in a sense. I can certainly say that I have identified with a vampire at one point in my life. Not the bloodsucking part of course, but the being ostracized by society for who they are part.


Over the course of this class I’ll keep exploring how vampires are relevant in popular culture and I’ll use the readings from the book to help me do this.