2nd
Vampires will ruin us!
I’ve been ruminating over the vampire trend for a while now, and in typical fashion, the NY Times printed an article today about the trend that is both uninspired and a bit late. The article’s point is that vampires are about releasing our “inner monsters,” (notably, the article barely touched on the sexual aspect). Well, maybe, but Jezebel got a bit closer to the point when they wrote,
“Okay, sure, vampires are about unleashing your inner monster, sex and desire. But most famous vampire stories involve bloodsucking males preying on females. In this chart illustrating the “basics” of being a vampire, there’s Bill from True Blood; Edward from Twilight and Angel from Buffy. Bloodsucking is a boy’s world.”
Our society’s obsession with vampires, though, is a lot more unsettling. It’s not a secret that America shuns direct and honest discourse about sex. After Foucault, you can’t really say that we are repressed when it comes to sex, but you can say that we are not comfortable with it. It is both everywhere and nowhere, a tricky balance represented by the overwhelming prominence of abstinence-only education—we talk about not having sex so much that children grow up with “sex” on the mind, without fulling understand what exactly sex is. They just know it’s bad.
Reading books like Twilight, then, is a culturally accepted outlet for kids who are just discovering their sexuality. Under the guise of vampires, kids can explore their sexual desires. In addition to the obvious problem of using a thinly veiled metaphor to deal with sex instead of facing it head on, there is another much more serious aspect of the vampire trend. Vampires aren’t just sex, they are violence. By providing kids with vampire mythology as a way to explore sexuality, our culture creates another psychological link between sex and violence. Kids that go through puberty reading about Edward Cullen, I predict, will be more likely to think that sex has to be not only rough, but brutal and violent. To give one example from Twilight (spoiler alert), Bella wakes up from her first time having sex with Edward to find her body covered in bruises. What’s upsetting about this plot point is the fact that she loves the experience; this correlation between being badly beaten, essentially, and experiencing sexual pleasure has some disturbing consequences for the young reader. Will s/he equate violence with sex? In my opinion, yes. Definitely.
In a culture where we already have problems with sex and violence, the vampire trend is more destructive then it would be in a healthier society. If kids grew up with proper education about sex (health issues, gender issues, power issues etc.), then they would be able to process the idea of a vampire properly. Without the necessary information, though, kids are more likely to come away with the wrong lesson. It’s great that Obama is now funding non-abstinence only eduation, but this is only the beginning. We are not quite ready for vampires yet.
