Vampires Endurance in Hollywood

So we’ve talked about the stories that have a chokehold on both Hollywood and society but the most enduring subject of media is vampires. Inspiring both television and film vampires insight into possibly the most amount of projects ever produced. It's also one of the few subjects that spans demographics; ordinarily associated with teenage girls (thanks to things like Twilight and Vampire Diaries), grown men also find entertainment in vampire stories (Dracula and Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Nosferatu, Dracula, and Interview with a Vampire

These are what I refer to as film buff vampire movies, they are rich in lore, those that are adaptations are relatively true to the source material and any creative liberties that they took only helped the story. Now all of these specific ones are older, Nosferatu being the oldest obviously. But they are all shot like independent horror films, lending to the overall feeling of a vampire film. This is a very specific sub-genre of vampire film and you can tell a lot about a person if they cite these types of films as their favorite kind of vampire films. These are for the vampire purists, they like the history, lore and mythology that goes along with a creature like vampires. If someone has never seen a vampire movie these may not be the best to start with, based on their personality. If you are already a vampire fan and haven’t seen these I highly recommend exploring them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Vampire Diaries, Twilight

Now these projects are for the masses, these are the kind of series that suck in people that like all different kinds of genres. The Vampire Diaries is a terrible adaptation of its source material and only exists because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact the show is all but plagiarized, storylines, themes and character arcs pretty much ripped straight from Buffy, therefore it draws a lot of the same crowd and passes the love of vampire love triangles down to the next generation. Twilight, also not a great adaptation of it's source material, but definitely the project that had such mass success that it branded the entire vampire genre for teenage girls. This of course is an unfair assessment as people like my father, a peace officer who wouldn’t dare watch anything that could possibly brand him as feminine in any way thoroughly enjoyed both reading and watching Twilight with me. Somewhere along the line vampires got equated with frivolous, teenage, girly interests. Perhaps that came from love triangles being front and center, perhaps it came from them taking over as a majority of the audience, either way the genre lost credibility because of its association with teenage girls, even though Buffy is one of the greatest pieces of media of all time.

Vlad the Impaler, The Invitation, The Lost Boys

Now, this last section I call the bro vampire films. They are manly, they are scarier, they are rooted more in showing off the power of vampires and the influence that they have over people. They are also well done films, often taking a different angle on the lore or the Dracula story itself. I consider The Lost Boys one of the greatest pieces of vampire media of all time.

Overall I think people clump vampire media all into one genre but there are many subgenres that these stories can be broken into. And I think that breaking them up into their appropriate subgenres allows us to better analyze why these stories seem to have such a chokehold on Hollywood and society. My personal theory is that we have all thought about immortality, what would it be like to live forever? What would it be like to have the money and the power to go and do whatever you want? In today’s society it's obvious to see why something like that would be appealing. You would have security, you could protect yourself, you would never have to worry about anything. Then there's the idea of being so irresistible to the person you love that they can’t live without you, it's also easy to see why that would be appealing. I love vampire stories and exploring them is one of my favorite parts of breaking down media.