Why Modern Vampires Suck

I hate vampires. You might say that’s a natural reaction to the undead. You’re supposed to hate them. But you don’t understand I really really hold a strong hate for the modern day milquetoast vampire.

How did we go from Nosferatu to Edward Cullen?

Give me the ol’ days when the undead preyed on us, saw themselves as enemies of humanity and God. Give me the old days when Van Helsing kept Count Dracula at bay with the Holy Eucharist or a crucifix.

I have no need of agnostic or atheistic vampires. I don’t want my bloodsuckers with existential angst. I want my vampires to acknowledge God and hate His holy guts.

What’s happened to the old time vampire? I think the plight of the vampire mirrors what’s happening in our culture.

LeStat was the brooding vampire of Anne Rice’s famous series who was unsure of his place in the world because he was unsure of the existence of God himself.

I mostly blame Joss Whedon. In the show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Whedon introduced us to the vampire with a soul, an unghastly invention. But it was a novel idea and there were still hundreds of vampires still running around trying to suck on necks at every turn so we didn’t see the damage that the character Angel had done to vampires. Eventually other vampires obtained souls and even demons on the show ended up as kindly sidekicks.

And then came Twilight with the James Dean look-alike Edward Cullen with all his 90210 sulkiness as a symptom of our apathetic and agnostic age. As a sidenote, he worries about the state of vampire’s souls. While LeStat was at least unsure and tortured about his soul, for Cullen it seems to be something to think about only as a parenthetical aside.

The HBO show “True Blood” essentially treats vampires as humans who are allergic to garlic and are unfortunately addicted to blood. They’re victims and those who seek their destruction are portrayed as right wing Christian fanatics.

But let’s face it. Crosses haven’t had any effect on vampires for years in mainstream vampire-dom simply because the cross doesn’t have any effect on so many of us. The demise of the vampire mirrors our own cultural demise.

Now we need to be inclusive about the Un-Dead just as we need to be inclusive about all evil. They even go further by saying that good and evil don’t exist. I want good and evil back. I want my old time vampires back.

It used to be our fear that we would be made into vampires but we’ve done far worse we’ve made vampires us. And to me, that’s even scarier.