How many times do I have to kill you?

From vampires to zombies to ghosts and ghouls, the undead keep on rising in pop culture

Ayame Ulrich

A pale-skinned boy kisses a girl on the lips, and then slowly digs his fangs into the succulent skin of her neck. She flings her head back and cringes with horror and lust.

Romantic, no?

Vampires and their undead friends – werewolves, zombies and spirits – have taken over popular culture. No medium has escaped the wrath of the undead, with books, movies, television series and video games all succumbing to their allure.

Even this month’s Playboy features vampires, with the catchy title “Bloodlust! Why the undead are hot again.”

So, why are the undead so popular?

Vampires and the undead have always proliferated in popular culture, but have experienced a recent renaissance, beginning with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles of the 1980s.

“I think the vampire enjoys popularity because, as Anne Rice says, it has an all-encompassing reach,” said Mary Findley, a vampire expert at Vermont Technical College.

“It speaks to the outsider and the predator in all of us. It also represents the American dream. We live in a culture that puts a great deal of importance on material possessions. The vampire of today is eternally youthful, sexy, hot, beats disease and death, is wealthy and gets the hot women or men.”

The vampire myth is all about sex. The literary establishment created the vampire as a seductive figure, linked to the fear of foreigners and disease.

Catherine Tosenberger, English professor, University of Winnipeg

Sex is definitely a driving force behind the vampire’s appeal.

“The vampire myth is all about sex,” said Catherine Tosenberger, an English professor at the University of Winnipeg. “The literary establishment created the vampire as a seductive figure, linked to the fear of foreigners and disease.”

Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and HBO’s True Blood utilize sex appeal to capture their audience. Their fan base is diverse – Twilight even has a terrifying fan group called “Twilight Moms.” 

Twilight plays on the innocence of young love, an example of what Tosenberger calls “abstinence porn.”

Twilight struck a chord (with) people raised with abstinence only education ... it appeals very much to young women and legitimizes the exploration of female desire,” said Tosenberger.

By contrast, True Blood is overtly sexual.

“It’s a no-holds-barred jump into the pool of hot, lustful, steamy sex of all kinds, between all characters in just about any place imaginable,” said Findley.

Aside from sex, the undead and vampires also appeal to common human emotion.

Suzanne Pringle plays Marcy in the locally produced TV series, Todd and the Book of Pure Evil.

The show, whose first episode had the highest ratings the Space Network has ever received, follows high school kids in their encounters with the dark and the undead through the book of pure evil.

“There’s something about feeling marginalized and outcast and having this wonderful escape,” Pringle said. “It removes you from the banality of everyday, where you’re just your average kid going to your average school and dealing with your problems.”

One thing is for sure, the undead aren’t going away anytime soon.

So, I’d suggest going to pick up a copy of The Vampire Seduction Handbook and hope you’re lucky enough to snag yourself a vampire.

Published in Volume 65, Number 9 of The Uniter (October 28, 2010)

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