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Sarah E. Ray
UWRT 1101-088
October, 2014
Horror Turned Romantic:
The Strategic Move of Adding Glitter to Vampires
Introduction
Imagine meeting Prince Charming face-to-face. I personally would lose the ability to
speak. Now imagine meeting Prince Charming, but he has the burning desire of drinking all your
blood. Vampires and Prince Charmings are at very different ends of the Hot Guy spectrum, but a
vampire is supposed to be the worlds greatest predator there is. What is more inviting than an
attractive guy who has a bit of charm? If youd ask me, that is a recipe for disaster. This has
become a recurring trend in the vampire world today. But why are vampires all of a sudden super
attractive to women? Why has their image been altered all together?
People have been obsessed with vampirism since 1816 when The Vampyre was published
as the first book about vampires in the English language. Even before that different cultures have
folklore on vampirism. However, pop culture today has shifted vampirism into a romantic
fantasy rather than the horror it was intended to cause. Today, on TV, vampires struggle between
their natural blood thirst that tends to rule their lives, and their humanity they still try to hold on
to. We also cannot forget pretty much the grandfather of Vampire movies, Bram Stokers
Dracula.
I entered the Vampire culture when I was about 13. It was 7th grade and we were
assigned accelerated reading points in middle school. I absolutely hated reading and dreaded
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Review of Literature
Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries, Edward Cullen from Twilight, and Bill
Compton from Tru Blood are clear examples of the new version of Vampires. Adler (2010)
would agree that the correlation between vampires and romance has been very prevalent
throughout the past few decades. However, today when one might mention the word vampire
someone else may thing of the a sexy being struggling with having morals and wanting to drink
My sources take note of the obvious culture shift in vampires and how their
characteristics have been altered, but none go into depth as to why this shift has occurred. In
many folklore of earlier cultures, vampires were spoken of as evil beings, made in a human
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So What?
So now that the obvious shift from the original vampire to the new and shiny vampire
has been pointed out, it is easy to see how this radical shift in culture has been an extremely
successful marketing strategy. The market that this product was placed into, was at its prime
and the consumers took to this new model of the vampire. It was accepted and repeated in
different shows, books, and movies by different networks and writers.
In business, marketing is how you present your product to the public. There are many
different strategies companies take to get their products out there. Adding a mysterious and sex
appeal to vampires has made the public only want more of them from networks, producers, and
writers. At first it was the fact that vampires were scary, but that has been over used time and
time again, not to mention their are tons of other things out there that are scarier. Now that
vampires have been made in an image of something a woman could fall in love with, it has
switched lanes, radically. Vampires were once projected to the horror movie market, now they
have converged to more of a romantic fantasy genre.
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References
Accomando, B. (n.d.). Sexting Up the PG-13 Vampire.But Not Too Much. Retrieved
November 18, 2009.
Adler, M. (n.d.). For the Love of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List. Retrieved
February 18, 2010.
Blair, E. (n.d.). Dark Shadows: The Birth of the Modern TV Vampire. Retrieved May 10,
2013
Buckwalter, I. (n.d.). Blood Will Tell: In Byzantium, A Gothic Vampire Diary. June 27,
2013.
Holmes, L. (n.d.). Twilight: Edward The Vampire Sulker And His Beloved: Does This
Story Work? March 24, 2010.
Johnson, J. (2010). Women and Vampires: Nightmare or Utopia?. Vol. 15, No. 1. JSTOR.
Ray, S. (2014) The Vampire Diaries. Assignment One.
Schaub, M. (n.d.). Hide Me: Not Your Typical Teen Vampire Tale. March 22, 2012.
Annotated Bibliography:
Blair, E. (n.d.). Dark Shadows: The Birth of the Modern TV Vampire. Retrieved May 10, 2013
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Adler, M. (n.d.). For the Love of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List. Retrieved February
18, 2010.
In the 80s there was a very similar wave of interest in vampires. Today there is a new wave but
with very different vampires because the new generation has a correlation because sexy and love
with vampires all because of Bill Compton in HBOs True Blood, Stefan Salvator in the CWs
television series The Vampire Diaries, and most of all Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyers
Twilight books. Vampires have been in folklore around the world and from various cultures but
our modern notion of the vampire came from a particular cultural moment in 1816. Mary
Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polodori all attended a literary exercise in Switzerland, and what
came out of the exercise is Frankenstein and Vampyre, which is the first vampire story in the
English language.
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Buckwalter, I. (n.d.). Blood Will Tell: In Byzantium, A Gothic Vampire Diary. June 27, 2013.
Neil Jordan is very aware that audiences may be having mixed emotions about vampires. He
decided to take the genre as a whole and throw it back to its less sparkly days. In this
particular example the vampire is just nothing more than a label that the main characters try to
find familiarity and normalcy. However they have the characteristics of a typical vampire like
the immortality, and the drinking of human blood, but like The Vampire Diaries or Twilight
these vampires are able to walk in daylight as well.
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Alder, M. (n.d.). Vampire Stories: Two New Twist On An Old Nemesis: June 7, 2010.
Margot Adler has read 100 vampire books this year and she says it is safe to say the vampire
arent going anywhere anytime soon. The Passage, which is not really a traditional vampire
novel, but it is categorized as the blood and horror genre and is even compared the Stephen
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Schaub, M. (n.d.). Hide Me: Not Your Typical Teen Vampire Tale. March 22, 2012.
Schaub states that these days, young peoples impressions of vampires are colored more by the
Twilight series of books and movies depicting the creatures as pretty emo kids whose primary
habits are moping and loitering in trees. In Schaubs opinion Hide Me Among the Graves is for
people who still believe in great literature, basically dissing the Twilight series and The Vampire
Diaries where the vampires struggle between what they really are and their own humanity.
Schaub clearly does not agree with the way Pop Culture has shifted Vampirism.
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Holmes, L. (n.d.). Twilight: Edward The Vampire Sulker And His Beloved: Does This Story
Work? March 24, 2010.
According to Linda the equal balance of power and powerlessness in Twilight very classic for
instance making Bellas needy and vulnerable having to be saved from a van that was going to
crush her, but on the contrary he tells her that he can ready everyones mind but hers making this
very strong creature suddenly powerless. Linda also says that this kind of attraction is just
initially and as the relationship grows it becomes more boring, but because this idea of a vampire
was radical at the time pop culture absorbed it and owned it. There is just something about being
possibly the most clumsy girl in the world and having one of the most strongest creatures to be
there to save you when you are falling.
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Johnson, J. (2010). Women and Vampires: Nightmare or Utopia?. Vol. 15, No. 1. JSTOR.
Johnson basically ask what does society dream about when women write about vampires? Does
the eternal woman feel as she is viewing vampire movies or ready vampire books? She says its
the lyrical and contemplative new vampire view that has women viewing vampirism as
compassionate, erotic, and above all a fair exchange rather than a predatory act.
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Ray, S. (2014) The Vampire Diaries. Assignment One.
Assignment one of my research contains actors, artifacts, communities of practice, a domain,
practices of a community, literacy practices, background information on the figured world, and
the initial observations of Episode 1 of Season 1 of The Vampire Diaries. In the observations,
there is an almost minute by minute detailed account of what is happening in the episode.
Assignment one introduces the main characters and plants the seed for the plot of the show.