Vampires are jokes now in the fictional world. What used to inspire fear and loathing in the minds of men have now become soft, pretty, love inducing (or vomit inducing) figures of "marble" that every fan girl from here to Timbuktu have their hearts set on. What has happened to these Nosferatu? Once one of the most feared monsters of our time, fictional or not (They are fiction, other people don't think so, I think those people are crazy but so goes the world) have become a laughing stock...or something to be lusted after.
I must say it started with Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. Casting Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt as whoever they were made vampires one step closer to Edward Cullen. (Although I don't think many people took the movie that seriously as I'm pretty sure it wasn't that popular? People back then had their brains still. Interview with a Vampire is very close to Twilight in the prettiness factor and people rejected it then which only means the generations have gotten dumber, but I digress.)
In the beginning, when Vampires were first put on celluloid, Dracula was bald, ugly, old, and hunchbacked. No woman in their right mind wanted to become on of those. Or get bitten by one of those. He looked like a bat, all pointy ears and teeth. Dracula the book is written like a horror story, not a romantic one. It's supposed to be gruesome. Dracula was based on a Count that used to, according to legend, impale his victims and stake them outside to the horror of his enemies. Edward Cullen is obviously not Dracula, being neither bloody nor insane and altogether too human, no matter how many times Stephenie Meyer tries to prove otherwise with her descriptions of his pale skin, amber eyes and marble-Adonis-perfectly sculpted body.
Unfortunately, vampires are back in style with a protagonist that is NOT a villain like he's supposed to be. True Blood, the Twilight series and countless of other Young Adult books about vampires (MY GOD, WILL IT STOP? Seriously, when I go to the bookstore it's like every other book is about Vampires? Can no one think of anything better to write about?) and seemingly NEW movies about vampires as well! Soon Dracula himself will have sparkly skin and an affinity for animal blood.
Contrary to what I've been writing, I'm not a huge fan of the Vampire genre, I just seem to know a lot about it. I've never read Anne Rice's books, nor Bram Stoker's Dracula, nor most of the Young Adult books. I've never seen the Old Dracula movie or Interview with a Vampire. But from the little I've gleaned off the internet, pictures, and clips, the history I know of Vlad the Impaler, the vampire is not something to be admired but something to be feared! I know the whole tragic hero is appealing but it's a MONSTER not a HUMAN. No matter how much you spin it, that person is not a person anymore, it's DEAD. It might as well be a zombie! But you don't see fangirls for Zombies do you? Rotting flesh and an appetite for brainzzz would put anyone off, but it's alright if the dead person has flesh like "cold marble" and appetite for blood? I don't get you human nature!
But on a hypocritical note, I think Johnny Depp would make a very good vampire.
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