The Problem With Vampires Today: An Editorial

Writer's Note: I'm feeling really lazy today so I'm looking back at my old stuff and found this lying around. This was for a class project on a creative work, so I chose Twilight despite not having anything to do with it. It was more for a bet than anything else. I mean it was second semester senior year. So here you go.

I miss the days when being a vampire meant something. Dracula was a Halloween favorite and the idea of bloodsucking beings spooked the hell out of us. They had menacing fangs, and silly weaknesses like garlic. Now look at what the vampire has been degraded to. In True Blood, they are not the same solitary monster that they are in Dracula, but a “targeted” society with a new blood source. The Vampire Diaries do hold true to the drinking blood part, but now the vampires are played by brooding teenagers not bloodsucking fiends. But no franchise has ruined the vampire more than the Twilight Saga. Dracula by Bram Stoker was about a vampire who created the hollowed rules of vampires. They can not live in the sunlight, avoid garlic, and can be killed with a stake through the heart. He was feared by many and he lived in Transylvania. He had a presence that could be felt by all those around him. He was the ultimate in horror. The vampires in Twilight have completely redefined the idea of vampire. The vampires of lore would kill humans and drink their blood, while the main character Bella is saved by a vampire (Edward). They did get one thing right, vampires are supposed to be pale, mysterious creatures. Too bad Edward, and a lot of other vampires nowadays, was pale and mysterious in the seductive way. Women fell for Dracula, but these women were already part of the undead. They suffered his same weaknesses because Dracula had the common decency to do his business with other vampires. Edward has the hots for Bella, and it is obvious. Women fall of Edward too but that’s because he’s dreamy and saved Bella’s life. He is cross-breeding creating some human-vampire hybrid, completely violating the laws of the supernatural. Dracula’s biggest enemy is humans, primarily Van Helsing and his army of humans. Yes humans. Not other vampires, or werewolves. Humans. Get it right, Stephanie Meyer. Vampire’s biggest enemies are humans. Not other vampires like the Volturi. Not werewolves like Jacob. Vampires should go against humans. The closest place where this actually happened was the baseball game. When the most action between humans and vampires is debated between making out and a baseball game, there is no way that this can be considered a vampire book/film/anything. The last thing that is the problem with vampires, primarily the Twilight vampires, is that they are not scary. Sure they may have some “shocking moments”, but you won’t see Twilight or any of the books going down as one of the most frightening books of our generation. That is a title reserved to books like Frankenstein, The Shining (or most books written by Stephen King), or Dracula. Even the Harry Potter series packed more fear into their books. These books instilled fear in the reader, not happy thoughts of some dream vampire waiting to swoop you off your feet. I’m not saying that Twilight does not belong to our society. It carries a huge following and gives everyone something to look forward too. It is our generation’s thing that we either love with a dying passion or hate with an undying fervor. But when it comes to vampires, Twilight and other “vampires” of our times have it all wrong.