Vampires!
By Angela Roberts
Two events, one might say, occurred this past week in vampire television: the premiere of The Vampire Diaries and the season 2 finale of HBO's True Blood. As an avid watcher of True Blood, I was curious enough to check out Vampire Diaries (especially after the incessant ads on CTV) and after a few tries, I managed to catch a late-night presentation. Yay for west coast CW. Both of these shows are quite different, no surprise, but they are similar in that they partake of a similar trend in supernatural romance these days - the benevolent vampire.
The "benevolent vampire" isn't that young, of course. Anne Rice's Louis broods and bemoans his fate, and sympathizes with the victims of vampires. If you've never checked out Rice's website, do so; it's full of really interesting information on everything she's written. And probably one of the most famous of all benevolent vamps is my personal fave, Joss Whedon's vampire-with-a-soul Angel. When it comes down to it, all these objects of adolescent adoration that have popped up in the last few years can't hold a candle to Angel. Of course, that could just be me showing my age, Angel being my generation's Edward Cullen. (Sort of.)
Speaking of Edward Cullen, Twilight seems to be the agreed-upon start of the current vampire craze. I haven't read the books, nor did I see the movie, so I don't have much to comment about it. It does seem to have generated a new term for discussing vampire literature and film/TV; the "sparkly vampire" (which refers to this series' particular vamps' tendency of sparkling in the sunlight). Whatever the arguments over this trait of Meyer's vampires (I'm totally not getting into it), the term has lately been extended to all vampires of the benevolent variety (particularly those appearing in YA fiction like Twilight and the Vampire Diaries). At the excellent vampire panel I attended at Fan Expo (Yay Rue Morgue magazine), the definition of the sparkly vampire was taken as far as to describe a style of character creation that had used the vampire mythology so loosely that a careful reader would question why the character even was a vampire. Essentially, why not just a really emo guy?
Now, I don't know how fair those questions are, but I can see some of the merit of asking it of The Vampire Diaries. OK, it wasn't bad. I'll watch the next episode; I was intrigued. But so far, I'm not sure why Stefan is a vampire. Other than the occasional exercise of willpower around paper cuts, he doesn't really do anything vampire-like. He goes out during the day, etc. And even his brother's attacks are so vaguely portrayed that there doesn't seem to be anything specifically vampire about them. They could easily be any kind of mythological or supernatural creature, and the story would work. Maybe I'm ahead of myself. But that was my initial reaction. And I'll still watch to see if they'll prove me wrong. Otherwise, the plotting and characterization were OK, although I found Elena somewhat boring and Stefan kind of vague, but that could be because there just wasn't much attention paid to anything in that first episode. It sort of floated, skimmed the surface. There are just too many commercials, and too little show time.
One thing you don't have to worry about on HBO is commercials, and shows can concentrate on packing in more storytelling for your time. True Blood definitely makes the most of it, and I'm sure I'm not the only person that was disappointed that it was already time for the season finale (but seasons are only twelve episodes so that's how it is). This season, like the last, did not disappoint at all in plot or characterization (although I was a little annoyed that after all of that buildup with Jason and Andy, they got to do practically zilch, but that's Jason and Andy for you). True Blood has its share of benevolent vampires (and benevolent with ulterior motive). Bill is the prime example, of course, although Godric this season was a big one too. I haven't read Charlaine Harris' books. I bought them all on impulse a while back, and I keep swearing to read them, but I can't get through more than a few pages because Sookie-as-narrator is too annoying. And it's distracting how closely the show follows the plot of the books. But it's mostly the narrator. It's unfortunate and rare when an adaptation is better than the original, but this is one of those cases. The point was, anyway, that Harris came up with a plausible way to make her vampires benevolent without taking away their essential vampireness; the synthetic blood drink, very modern and original. Bill's a good guy, a vampire struggling with his vampireness, but he's still a vampire. And the series is embedded in the vampire mythology; sun burns, stakes kill, silver hurts, vampires can glamour you. No one's going to seriously ask why Bill is a vampire and not just a really emo guy (in literary terms, the Byronic hero).
One thing I'm not in love with about the benevolent vampire trend in recent lit and media is the making of him into being too benevolent. Part of the appeal of the Byronic hero (which the benevolent vampire usually is) is certainly the danger, the 'bad boy'. I like my vamps with a little edge. I like Angel, but I have to admit I liked him better in Buffy than I did in his own show. Watched both religiously, but there was still a hint of mystery and danger to him in the beginning that his character lost later on. And if there's any kind of Bill vs. Eric fangirl debate going on, you can guess where I lean. There's certainly something sexier about Eric than Bill, and it's probably that sense of danger that he brings to every encounter with Sookie. They're both quite hot physically, but Bill, this season, actually started to come off as nurturing. Nurturing. A Vampire. Does that make any sense? Should you ever feel completely safe with a vampire lover? I don't know. I can only hope that Sookie doesn't tame Eric the way she did Bill. (I don't know, haven't read the books.)
Now, feeling the urge to hunt down "Once more, with feeling"...
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