Dracula question

The vampire craze allows authors to write about sexist creepy guys without fearing retribution from feminist, because the undead aren't constrained by civilised trappings. The whole Alpha Male soul mate can exit within paranormal romance.

But it's not real literature and hopefully will go out of fashion.

Vampires will be popular for a long time. It's just a dream - a boy who looks like teenager, has strength and stamina of grown man, is experienced like elderly man.

There is always an element of fascination with the idea of immortality. I would argue that vamps have never really been 'out of style' at least not since the turn of the 20th century. Each generation discovers them in a different way.

Every generation of readers discover the vampire theme and often think they are the first to do so.

I miss old school vampires. You know, the scary kind. Still, vampires are a lot like ghosts. There's something about them that fascinates people. I'm hoping the next time they become popular, they'll suit my tastes a little better.

Just found this thread so I may be a bit late to the discussion. Let me first say that I am a 50 something person who has loved vampire stories since I was a young kid. My mother was saying recently as a year ago that she has never understood my fascination with vampires so I come with quite a bit of history of enjoying these stories.

This is not a "recent" phenomenon. Our love affair with vampires come and go over time. It will ride a new wave every so often. I grew up with the classic Dracula, loved Dark Shadows (even though my mother forbid me to watch it), fell in love with Frank Langella's portrayal, went through the Ann Rice craze and have enjoyed the latest vampire craze the last few years (with the exception of Stephanie Meyer). I simply cannot handle the sparkling--just my humble opinion though. In every wave, there is good and bad vampire literature out there.

This current wave will extinguish itself and then start up again with a new wave after a while. We seem fascinated with a vampire's existence--whether it be the tortured soul vampire or the horrific vampire.
Only my most humble opinion.

Some people only read and watch whats popular and therefore read Twilight and watch warm bodies but I think its not a bad thing to appreciate the ones that stand out.

Vampires aren't classy as they used to be. they are more beautiful, glittery, flowery who tend to fall in love now and then, they wear matching lipsticks in the process. Then again new age zombies can run faster than Bolt. Werewolves have six pack abs.

Problem is if you are creating something new then you'd keep the old essence intact. Dracula used to scare me; but when I look ahead and see these new age vampires; I see Dracula scared. Nomenclature is entitled to appropriate definition. If you go beyond the definition or bastardize the basic one then the old name's usage is disrespectful.

I watched Dark Shadows every day in the 60's and loved it. Lately I've read some very good vampire books and am always on the lookout for more which I've found on Goodreads and Barnes & Noble.

Not sure, but I avoid anything vampire related these days because of it.

As I understand it, Bram Stoker's friend Arminius Vambry suggested he forget Styria (east Austria) and focus on Romania, which certainly was epicenter of vampire folklore. In the course of doing so, Stoker stumbled on an historical account of Vlad III Basarab (1430 -1475) and decided to make his villain the revenant of this individual. He felt this person's patronymic- "Drakulya", in Medieval Romanian- "just dripped evil" (with which assessment, the historical figure would have been quite pleased). He was also intrigued with the duality of good and evil in a single person: Jeffrey Dahmer on a demographic scale to many people, yet a Christian saint and hero to his people even now. Hence van Helsing's famous dictum, "All great evil is a corruption of great good" (consistent with Stoker's Anglican theology). In fact, vampire hysteria in Romania appears to begin around the Second Black Death, mid 1600's. It had to do with ignorance of the biophysical difference between putrifaction (in the grave) and decomposition (of a corpse exposed to the elements). Although one often hears that the word "nosferatu" doesn't exist, I have been told it is a contraction of a part of the Lord's Prayer ("protect us from what cannot be endured"), in the Romanian vernacular, used to ward off these imaginary evils. The Romanian vampire is the most repulsive and despicable entity conceivable. Their overthrow of Communism began with crowds before Cocescu's palace, shouting "Jos cu strogoi" ("Down with the Vampire")as the ultimate expression of rejection and contempt. The notion of vampires as glamorous or romantic is, I feel it safe to say, a Hollywood invention.

I have read Drácula and love it! My vampire has to be scary, mean, and no sparkling zones in him.

I have only watched about 30 mins of Twilight and it was such non-sense that completly threw me off of reading the books.

why the vampire-craze? Hum various reasons i believe.

1- the younger generation wanted a vamp wih a twist, like them: young, going to high school, being an oustcast is an extra. The teen segment is always a good segment to explore.
2 - In my days it was Anne Rice and from then until now there have been others, but not quite like Twilight´s fame, that prompted other writters to follow the fashion and writte all of the current books about it - someone earlier noted that 1 out of 5 titles in GR are vamp-related - a coincidence? I think not!
3 - Vampires are the ultimate bad boys/girls: they are badass, fearless, sure fo themselves, own their sexuality and they became cool. And there is also the element of eternity and that no harm can come to them that is very appealing.

I enjoy anything that is scary,supernatural,sexy and entertaining.Vamps can be all of the above. In fact zombies are really boring for me.I don't think there has to be a deep rooted reason for liking vampire stories.

imho the popularity of vampires may have a lot to do with our anxiety over motality & fascination with transgressive desires :)

I think about the only vampire books from today that have cut it are The Sookie Stackhouse & The Morganville Vampires. They have a bit of everything minus the teeny dribble. Even though Morganville is technically YA, it scares it up a bit. Also, who can resist a bipolar vampire? Scary & hilarious in one serve. Nothing compares to Anne Rice though for the modern vampire. I have often thought to myself how scary Dracula must have been in its day. Such a different era with religious morals, it must have horrified just as many as it secretly delighted. Long live Dracula, but not the the bad modern copies, hey?!

I think people flock to the story, whether old or new, because Bram Stoker created a classic (based on the myths/stories circulating in his time). And people can't seem to get enough of classic stories - which is a good thing, I think.

Popular culture comes in waves. When one recedes, another rolls in. I think the whole Twilight thing is great, not because the books or movies are in any good (in my limited sampling of them, they're not), but because they're exposing a whole new slew of people to genre fiction, people that wouldn't read it ordinarily but now have a hankering for blood, sex and fantasy (yes, I said hankering).

Also, it's ushered in a new wave of backlash vampire fiction, trying to restore the bad name of vampires, some of which has been quite good.

I love vampires, although I have a different take on them. In my epic fantasy "The Song of Doom" (read the first volume here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B95VE4Q
) I've managed to insert a whole new kind of vampire into a medieval fantasy story. No sparkling at all, strangely, and they're quite evil, too.

I think its because vampires have all of a sudden become sexy, true blood and twilight etc..., when I was a teenager, am now 55, the only vampire we saw on the movies or telly was Christopher lee lol, nothing remotely sexy about Christopher lee , twilight is definitely the worse , its like pride and prejudice with fangs

I don't believe I will ever tire of vampires. The lore surrounding them is beautiful, across cultures. I may not like every new variation presented, but that doesn't take away from my interest in them. And, even though I may not be one of those 'dribbling' over them, I can still stand back and be impressed by some of the work devoted to them.

To me it's simple, if the 'vampire-love' bores or annoys you, why even pay it any attention? I'm sure there is other subject matter in books that you (speaking in general & not directly to the first poster) may run out to purchase at every turn and so what? We all like what we like and that's the wonderful thing about there being so many delicious books to choose from :).

First of all,before we examine this issue we should distinguish two major types of vampires.There are Bram Stoker's vampires which come along with aspects of the folklore vampire myth and then we have the more recent vampires aka ''good vampires''.If someone claims that loves or admires vampires then he/she should ask themlseves, why?
If the reasons vary towards fascination for immortality,great powers of the vampire and a general admiration of the ''monster''then the word monster comes inappropriate.This is not Bram Stoker stuff it is ''Stefanie Mayers,Anne Rice and friends''stuff.We could easily point out the ''hero factor''in this aspect of the vampire.I believe that a ''confusion'' between (super)heroes and vampires takes place in the latest formations of the myth.Seeing vampires like victims, with the ability to realize with common sense their condition,is(maybe) the beginning of this confusion.Initially a vampire was a devilish creature,not a human,that resurrected to feed with human blood and haunt people.Bram Stoker following the traditional view creates Dracula and vampires as satanic creatures honest to their nature.
Thinking of vampires like this makes it hard to empathize with them.
But in our times of ''freedom'' authors saw the opportunity to fit the old tradition to the new era.
And in this era heroes are not of the stereotype kind.A hero can destroy,a hero can be cruel,a hero can be cunning and finally a hero can be evil,so why not a vampire too?I am not saying that every novel's hero,nowadays,is evil all i am saying is that she or he could easily be if the author wanted it.Is it good?Is it bad?The choice is yours though this is not the real point.The point is that authors and filmmakers catching the opportunity created the ultimate hero-vampire.But how can a creature,that its very creation is a product of evil forces,become a good hero?I never found out the answer,i just get used accepting it as it is.Maybe there is no specific reason maybe becoming a vampire is a nature coincidence and not something paranormal.But if i think opppositely i can easily find one or two reasons as for why?
As i stated before somebody can't empathize with the pure devilish.But what if we could get rid of the devilish somehow or just leave it,but only as a decorative/collateral element.Then many people shall start liking the vampire not as a dark and interesting creature but as a powerfull though cursed real human being.Yes,this provides the story something tragik and mysterious yet charming and alluring.So mission accomplished.That's the beginning of it.Thousands of books and comics published and hundrends of movies created out of this whole new aspect of the legendary vampires.Now somebody can desire being a vampire!!!
Thit is how the legend was extended yet destroyed.
Don't ask me why just read Bram Stoker's Dracula.

P.S.Initially(until 1970) very few would call vampires ''bad guys''because that way there was a ''confusion'' between people and monsters.Lately this ''confusion'' has become an undeniable fact and the source of million dollars.

I think people are losing track of the good old pure vampire genre and a lot of twists have been taken, completely distorting what they are in their core. Don't get me wrong, I love the new, refreshing tastes on them and I love a lot of vampire books that aren't traditional. Yet I can't help but feel like we're losing the true roots of vampiric behaviour. Just a thought :)

Vampires have always been around in popular culture.

But I wouldn't necessarily call Dracula 'good'. There wasn't enough suspense in it, everything that happened was hinted at ten pages before it happened.

Vampires are the ultimate bad boys. Lestat is fabulous. Barnabas Collins was fun. And Arthur Tudor is wicked.

http://riverdaleavebooks.com/books/20...

I think there is one good thing to come out of the whole vampire craze - a lot of people can now firmly say it is the 'classic' vampire that they like (aka Bram Stokers Dracula) and not sexy creatures that can deny thier natures and, in some cases, sparkle.

In terms of the mania itself I think with the influx of novels a few years ago (Hamilton and Harris books in particular) US networks realised that they would be on to a good thing - hence True Blood starting up, you then had a lot of authors/aspiriing authors realising that hey - vampires sell. It has been known for years that sex also sells and you have the combination of the two which makes the 'modern' vampire.

I thought the vampire mania was well over. Even the post-vampire zombie mania is getting a bit stale.

I've always enjoyed the Vampire genre. I don't really think that it's fair to say that all of sudden people care about vampires and never did before... As other pointed out there are a lot of great books about vampires and there are also a lot of great comics as well. There has been for as long as I can remember a pop-romanticized version as well... I think maybe you could thank Buffy & Angel for that. Twilight was simply the book that became a popular movie, nothing more nothing less.

It's also worth pointing out the a lot of the books that are being focused on now were written a long time ago and slowly built a cult following before they became tv shows etc.

Lori - Love those recommendations! I will be looking in to them :-)

There is indeed an overkill on the vampire subject, I have even lost my interest on a show like True Blood. And as for sparkeling vampires, sweet Mozes!

In the circles I inhabit, this apparent Vampire obsession is just a heightening of what we've been experiencing all along. And consciously for me that's about 30 years or more. They were never not there. People liked them or they didn't, so to speak. It's just that now, with all the Twee-light madness, the Vampire is sitting up front rather than in the backseat. This may or may not continue. Doesn't matter to anyone who is genuinely interested. I personally love a good Vampire tale and find the deeper mythology fascinating too. So what's up with the Vampire mania? You'd have to ask the maniacs.

Something about forbidden sexuality I suppose.

Tainted as she is with that vampire baptism.

Check out my webcomic, updates every Thursday: http://reddkaiman.blogspot.com/

This isn't a "lately" thing, honestly. It's just reared it's head up to a more mainstream audience. Or perhaps it simply owes more to media today - everything is mainstream.

When I was a teenager, it was Anne Rice, then Buffy, then came Twilight with about a million other series dotting that timeline and many preceding it.

I have loved vampire lore for most of my life (which I daresay is much longer than some of you have been around!), but I'm always looking for a new twist and good storytelling around Vampires. Nora Roberts has an amazing Vampire in her The Circle trilogy (Circle trilogy #1-3) series. Also, the way vampires were woven into Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was fun and unique.

One favorite story about vampires is actually a strange mishmash movie that is futuristic, dystopian, and has vampires: Perfect Creature with Dougray Scott.

I obviously prefer traditional vampires with fangs, aversion to sunlight, and who are terrible and scary.

I don't understand it either--Dracula is a great book, but the modern vampire craze has taken it to extreme...

Vampires intrigue us. We long for immortality, but only experience mortality. We can scarce imagine life without end and without suffering. Christian mythology has the concept of drinking divine blood in the guise of wine, to gain a spiritual grace or benefit. A supernatural power or strength. The vampire myth inverts that in the sense that the immortal being feeds on the blood of the mortal, to perpetuate a state of undeath. The vampire existence is bleak. Who would trade never merely dying for a state of perpetual suffering? We do not know what consciousness is. Therefore we do not know what happens to our consciousness at death. Many religions and myths have given us ideas. We get one chance to experience it.

I grew up watching Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows and reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, and it's strange but I can convince myself that vampires are BOTH "horrific and evil" (Classic) and "emotionally injured and in need of love and understanding" (Barnabas). It seems that most current vampire series are leaning more to vampires as sexy and in need of love, but possibly we'll see more "evil" vampires as villains in the future. Literary tastes and styles tend to repeat themselves, especially if they're bringing in money. I write both types of vampires--but I have to confess that Barnabas Collins influences me more than the classic vampire of Dracula when I'm writing erotic-romance for eXtasy Books. Readers enjoy vampire lovers!

Vampire fiction comes and goes, as do the rest of the literary archetypes. The Dracula character has represented one of those waves of vampire fiction on a couple of occasions.

It seems to me that the pattern goes vampire to ghost/demon to alien/robot to psycho killer then back to vampire. It's not set in stone, but it does seem to repeat more or less like that. There are a few other sub-genres that get thrown into the mix pretty much at random (like witch and werewolves) and there's a kind of gray area in between where the "next big thing" to get repeated hasn't hit yet.

But eventually everything old is new again.

Short Answer: Money

Longer... I think Trueblood's attraction is twofold. For the vast teen/twenties girl market it's Sookie's ability to read minds, her independent spirit, her ownership of her own sexuality without being portrayed as a slut, or metaphorically 'punished' by being raped or abused for it. To teen and twenties men, they don't read the books, but watch the show because there's lots of hot women who get naked frequently and lots of evil laugh out loud omfg gore in it.

As for Stephanie Meyer (I'm sorry but I hate her prose style, like fingernails on a chalkboard, it literally puts my teeth on edge) but her appeal seems to be 1. inventing a way for vampires to go to highschool 2. Removing the overt dangerous sexuality, and replacing with traditional bad boy/troubled soul outsider status, and where being bitten is symbolic of losing your virginity. For guys.. there seems little except that being unaquainted with it is a dating death sentence (see: Dirty Dancing et al)

What do you mean, "recently?"

Vampires never seem to completely fade from popularity. Even at their ebb, several vampire-themed titles are dribbled out each year in books, movies, games (from pen-and-paper RPGs like Vampire: The Masquerade to hard-core PC games like The Elder Scrolls, where I'm currently trying to cure my poor Dunmer assassin of it at the moment), etc.

The real difference is that this time, some moron thought it would be great idea to create a faerie version and call it a "vampire," then market it to kids.

Personally, I'm Team Crow (from Vampire$) all the way: Stake 'em and burn 'em, then collect the paycheck in alcohol and hookers.

I associate vampire fiction very fondly with my angsty teen years. Craving real excitement, way too cool to be "in" to your everyday vanilla Mills & Boons plonk, my life to mundane for me to be in relationship with an actual hottie (brooding and dark...*sigh*) - so yeah I guess I was the Anne Rice version of the rather annoying Twi fans we have now.

But the similarity ends there, Anne's vampire chronicles schooled me. It peaked an interest in architecture,classical music,the renaissance,history and a love for a New Orleans I have never been to.

Somehow I doubt the same can be said for the fodder offered today.

"Dracula" was a well written book and was the full of historical symbolism. Dracula was symbolic to the old aristocracy that was soon to fade into a more modernized world. Books like "Twilight" lack sophistication and depth and have no underlying themes. While reading Dracula, I was taken to another place. A place of death and decay. Stoker is such a descriptive writer. I was there in that coach in the dark of night as it headed up the winding road leading up to Castle Dracula. "Twilight" was so juvenile I wanted to cry--and sparking or sparkling skin. Forget it! I'll take '"Dracula" any day.

I believe it is more sinister than everything that has been mentioned. The rebirth of vampire interest has been generated by the CIA & NSA because some GM experiment has gone awry and very soon we're likely to face an oncoming apocalypse and the government is going to need all the help it can get and can't have everyone running to the grocery store then shutting themselves away; it's all about acclimatization.
W.A. Grüppe

They have lost their souls.

Feliks wrote: "Are people losing their powers of reason? WHAT the heck is up with this dribbling and insipid nationwide 'vampire fetish'? Its an obsession. Hey 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker is a GOOD--hell, what am I ..."