Vampires...BT (Before Twilight,...Or At Least In The Recent Past)

Long before Stephenie Meyer write the Twilight series, long before Robert Pattinson brooded his way across the screen, there were vampires. And I dare say, the vampires of my generation were cooler, had more character, and were much, much more interesting than those of today. Now, don't get me wrong. I've read the Twilight series and I enjoyed it. But compared to what's come before, even in the more recent past, it just didn't stack up.

As I considered writing this post, I realized I didn't want to write an extensive history of vampires in movies or fiction. I'm neither qualified nor inclined to do so. But what I can do is talk about what I've enjoyed more than Twilight, because the truth is, while the stories and themes explored in Meyer's work might be new to the tween set, they're not new to the genre....not even remotely.

And as I thought about what I really wanted to say here, I realized I just wanted to call attention to two vampire series that I think were just better - one televised and one printed. The first is the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" television series, which includes the spin-off, "Angel" (and while the "Buffy" movie was okay, the TV series far surpassed the movie, in many ways). Why am I a fan of this series? Because it captured so many things that "Twilight" attempts to capture, but...better. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" follows the life of a young girl who discovers she's a part of a legacy that's almost as old as time - into every generation, one girl is chosen to receive an unparalleled strength to battle evil. When she dies, another girl is automatically chosen and the legacy (and the fight against evil) lives on.

What I like about the "Buffy" series is that they attended to the deeper issues, like how lonely it would be to be the only person with that strength and that purpose, even if your friends and family fought by your side, impossible love, and that fuzzy, grey area in between good and evil, and yes, even the "my vampire boyfriend and I can't make love" problem that Meyer's addresses, but Whedon (the creator of "Buffy") did it while maintaining a clever, humorous dialogue (dialogue like, "I'm a rogue demon hunter now." "Oh. What's a rogue demon?" was commonplace, and that's not even the best line, but the one that's on the tip of my brain right now). And they did all of this long before "Twilight" was a twinkle in Stephanie Meyer's eye. 

The other vampire series that rocked and that I think bears mentioning is Anne Rice's now classic 10-book  "Vampire Chronicles" series. Starting with Interview With A Vampire and ending with "Blood Canticle" (though for me, the Vampire Chronicles really ended with Memnoch The Devil), the series follows the adventures of the Vampire Lestat through his life and death and even to Heaven and Hell.

Before I go any further...please, forget about Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and just read the books. The movie, as is often the case, just didn't do justice to the written work.

One thing Anne Rice did better than anyone was to explore the sensuality of the vampire - yet again something that we see in "Twilight," but something that was done better long before Meyer made her pass at the vampire world.

And that's the cruz of the issue for me. "Twilight" is appealing to the tween set. It's hugely popular and massively successful on a dollar scale. And I'm not saying that "Twilight" is bad (though frankly, the movies are a poor substitute for the books - the simplicity of how cleverly Meyer depicted Bella's loneliness and depression in New Moon was only marginally captured in the film version). All I'm saying is that it's all been done before...and better.