Yesterday at work we were discussing vampires. Specifically, the ‘hot sexy’ ones in modern literature. My daughter has fallen under the spell of the “Twilight” series of books, and before her, I was awash in the lushness of Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire” series
What is it about the modern vampire that makes we women and girls swoon?
Is it the mystery…he comes unbidden and focuses solely on us. He uses seduction as a technique to get us under his spell. And his spell promises love and secrets.
I can hear you all sighing right now!
If you look back, the original idea of a vampire looked way less than Tom Cruise even on his worst day.
Nosferatau surely didn’t have the ladies swooning when he invaded their bedrooms late at night. Yet even he had the power, charm…charisma?…to encapture them into willing submission.
Is it the idea of giving up control? Women are responsible for so much during the course of a day..is it fun to imagine relinquishing the duties of modern womanhood? It is tempting for sure to be in a place where we need do nothing but be. Perhaps that is the draw of the modern vampire.
My daughter is obsessed with the Twilight series, as I already mentioned. She has the books, the book covers are hung up with great reverance on her walls. She listens to podcasts and swoons over the images of the young male lead in the upcoming movie.
What happened to the evil vampire? The one that I was scared of as a kid….the one who snuck out of his dry moldy coffin and lurched into the bedrooms of unsuspecting females? You remember, he had red glowing eyes, pasty white skin, and threatened to take you right into his cold grave with him?
These days it’s emo-looking kids or even a well-manicured Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt…
I think that for the younger girls like my teenager, its a chance to explore their sexuality. Girls everywhere are going to bed at night, wondering “What if…” Edward from the Twilight series ends up iat my window, promising adventure, romance, and dark secrets?”
Is it much different than Peter Pan, when you get down to it?
The consummate boy who never grew up, who always wants Wendy (aka YOU) to tell him stories, mother him, and love him….compared to the consummate man who stays the same age, loves you in a tortured way because to love you is to leave you….the only way you can be together is if he kills you to make you like him….
With Peter you have to risk leaving everything and going to Neverland…With Edward and the other modern vampires you leave your life and family behind..
Both have magical powers.
Both never change… while you know in your heart that someday you will grow up…and out grow them….
Oh the melodrama of the pre-doomed relationship and the fun in trying to be the one to change it…break the mold….
Yeah, I can see why the young girls are all gaga over this year’s crop of new vampires, and I can kind of see why I and people of my age went nuts over the Anne Rice versions.
After all, we all want a little Peter Pan (or Edward Cullen, or Lestat, or Louie) in our lives once in a while…
I am reading a book called “The Lost Girls” by Laurie Fox and it basically chronicles the lives of Wendy Darling, her daughter Jane, Jane’s daughter Margaret, and Margaret’s daughter Wendy. (Yes those Darlings, of Peter Pan fame). The story is told by Wendy the younger. I am particularly impressed by something Wendy says, when talking about her boyfriend:
The theme in the book (so far, I am only just on page 82) revolves around men and boys, and growing up and letting go of childhood notions. It explores Wendy’s attempt to separate herself from her deep love of Peter Pan, her sense of abandonment when he does not return for her to do his Spring cleaning, and her travails as she grows up with the shadowy memories of Neverland in her dreams.
I am particularly impressed with a statement Wendy makes about her boyfriend: “I was a girl with a boyfriend who would love her till the cows came home, but who was not coming home with the cows himself”
The book seems to touch a lot on unrequited love. Not the kind of love where you crush on someone and it’s gone, but the deep kind of love that you know is real and true…..and that you sense in the other person but the other person cannot return that love to you.
True and real, unrequited love.
The tragedy and the heartbreak is tempered with the giddiness of the ‘what if’ and the total mixed messages received from the object of affection.
Is it possible to be in love with someone who does not or can not (or simply will not) love you in return? Or loves you in a different way than you love him or her?
Is it love if its one sided?
And if you pine, moon, cry or whatever dramatic way you deal with it….is it still love? Or is it a crush?
Is it really possible to love someone so much, that even when they don’t love you back, you still wish them happiness? Don’t you want to just jump on their back as they walk away from you, and grab onto them, and hold them until they admit the same feelings for you? (Or at least until you’ve humiliated yourself enough to let them go?)
Or do you let them go and find happiness in your tears of goodbye?
And on that note…
do you ever forget the person you’ve truly loved? Do you hold a fondness for them? A sadness? Or does it just wither up and blow away, dust in the wind and all that? Are your long-term feelings tempered by the feelings they had for you?
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