Bite me

December 9, 2009

Once upon a time a good vampire novel was a rare gem amidst the fiction section. Nowadays the shelves of the bookstore seem to be teeming with them, most containing the same generic plotline: boy likes girl, boy wants to eat girl, and girl decides it’d be a good idea to fall in love with boy/vampire. Throw in horribly cliché journalistic writing, the over-played story of forbidden love and an incredibly angst-y female protagonist, and there you have it: Twilight.

But it doesn’t stop there! Oh no, the mania has spread from bookshelves and onto movie screens, t-shirts, backpacks, mugs, action figures, and even cars (yes, there is an actual Twilight automobile). Whether you blame the craze on Stephanie Meyer or the mass of preteens feeding off of the new trend, it is clear that the vampire obsession has reached an overload.

Vampires are hardly a new subject to the realm of fiction. They have been present as far back as Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Back then, however, vampires were portrayed as dark, brooding, bloodthirsty humanoids, not the pale, sparkly, pretty people we identify vampires as today due to the popular Twilight series.

Now, I admit, I was once a fan of Twilight— in the seventh grade.

Only back then, people ridiculed me for reading an “emo vampire book”. Now it’s super cool because heaps of 11-year-old girls think that the fictional Edward Cullen is hot.

In general, the Twilight series presents an abundance of unrealistic qualities. First of all, if the guy you liked told you he was a vampire, would you really be calm and believe him? No, you would call up your local mental asylum. Second, Meyer sends the wrong message to girls waiting for their “Edward” to come; no matter how hard you look you will not find a guy who will save you from speeding cars or sneak into your bedroom every night to stare at you while you sleep (which seems more characteristic of a serial-killer than a lover).

Lastly, why can’t Edward read Bella’s mind? Oh wait, I know why, it’s because she doesn’t have one! Seriously, Bella is a horrid heroin for girls to look up to: her name means “beautiful swan” (extremely creative), yet she’s plain and clumsy, lacks any admirable personality quality, and is exceedingly dependent on Edward, to the point where she almost kills herself when Edward leaves her.

I’m not going to lie, I appreciate Taylor Lautner’s godly six-pack as much as the next girl does (you really could melt butter on those abs), but it can get quite irksome when people get into quarrels over being “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob”, as if choosing a side bares any significance on the already-written storyline, or our lives (FYI: it doesn’t). Not to mention that the whole “vampires vs. werewolves” conflict was definitely bitten off of the 2003 movie Underworld.

If you want to read actual vampire literature, pick up a novel by Ann Rice. But until the trend is chewed up and spit out, these modern vampires will continue making Dracula roll in his coffin.

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