I ruined the alliteration of the cliche referenced in the title for a reason. I’m speaking primarily of the immature female population in this post, the more immature the better, excluding prepubescents. I will speak in sweeping generalities and I want to stress I recognize they apply only over the population as a whole. Things ranted in this post are not meant to apply to every single female. On top of that, this is only my poorly thought out opinion, so please don’t get worked up about it, or anything. Additional disclaimer, quotation marks are used in this post to indicate sarcasm.
The impetus for this post is the release of the Twilight movie. I’ve never read the books, or even seen a trailer for the film, but I’m over immersed in it’s content anyway due to my female associates here in Anderson. The Twilight series heavily features vampires in relationships with humans. This, coupled with TV show True Blood, I believe, is a conspiracy to take vampires and make them lame.
This is a travesty, since I particularly like vampires. The older versions, anyway. The sophisticated deadly menace, the roving gangs of immortal hedonists, super powered bad ass martial artists, all great. What I fear Twilight and “entertainment” of it’s ilk are doing is twisting vampires into something else. They’re motivated to do so because the changing ideal male from the young female perspective.
A long, long time ago, like, when my mother’s mother was young, girls just wanted a good looking guy who would bring home money, make a decent father, and wouldn’t screw around, and was bigger than the next guy. Wild fantasies included tap dancing and baritones, maybe some slightly dangerous history. Then the 60’s happened and women took over and/or men capitulated. Sensitive men were the thing. Basically pushovers that looked good in what they were dressed in and learned quickly when to speak and what to say was what girls wanted.
Now there’s a new generation, and their demands are upgraded. Physically the guy needs to be cute. In the ideal case this means muscly, but not huge. Still, the guy needs to somehow be able to utterly destroy any threat. He should think he’s a rebel, a free thinker, a deep, troubled soul, but he shouldn’t actually be any of those things. He should be simple enough to manipulate that the girl always wins, but not so stupid that it’s never a challenge. And in the wild fantasies he should have magical powers, allowing him to occasionally provide surprising gifts to his lucky lady, like immortality, or whatever Harry Potter can do, or, ya know, diamond necklaces and such that vast sums of money can buy.
So, this is why they’re twisting the vampire. The vampire has always been a romantic figure. Originally, it figured well enough into the female ideal. When the total pushover male became ideal, the vampire was forfeited, because it couldn’t be used, to men, and they made it into a action star. Now that the ideal has changed, the vampire is under the influence of the heavy spenders again, the teenage girl. It just has to be tweaked a bit, into an angsty teenager with super powers.
It’s a sad day for vampires. Or rather, tomorrow will be a sad day for vampires.