Bloodsuckers with feelings - the new vampire

Bloodsuckers with feelings - the new vampire

Good-looking, sexy, even romantic – the modern vampire depicted in The Twilight Saga book and movie series has evolved a long way from its evil predecessor, says vampire researcher Dr Andrew Cardow.

An academic paper he has written describing how vampires have become socially acceptable in popular culture explains some of the hype surrounding the release this week of Twilight Eclipse, the third feature film based on Stephenie Meyer's best-selling trilogy in which vampire hero and college student Edward vies with Werewolf Jacob for the love of mortal Bella.

"The modern vampire can be seen as everyman with fangs," Dr Cardow says. "They are not seen as untouchable. The vampire of today has feelings, it has a sense of humanity. Vampires in the Twilight Saga trilogy can walk around in the daytime. You have to really look to see they are different. The modern vampire is no longer killed by light."

Dr Cardow moonlights as a vampire researcher after his day job as a senior lecturer in the School of Management at Albany. He says the popularity of vampires has been cyclic through history. The 21st century version has been "rehabilitated" from the purely monstrous bloodsucking, flesh-feasting tendencies for which it was famously feared. These days, girls swoon at the sight of handsome, though pale, Edward, played in the film by teen heart throb Robert Pattinson.

In his paper, recently updated for publication in a special issue of a journal called Vampires and Zombies: Transnational Transformations, Dr Cardow traces the depiction of the vampire as "a soulless, evil killing machine" in the Middle Ages to an apparently ordinary being, albeit one with fangs, a taste for blood, and is immortal. "The vampire, an enduring demon from the European Middle Ages, has through the course of the 20th century undergone a journey of transformation," the paper says.

From the Gothic horror of Count Dracula, the metamorphosis of the vampire has been hastened through representations in television, theatre and cinema throughout the past century. Vampire makeovers in the mass media have led to a growing acceptance "that the vampire was nothing more than a wronged, misunderstood unfortunate".

While vampire websites, chat rooms and dating sites proliferate on the internet, Dr Cardow says the appeal of a so-called "vampire lifestyle" is pure fantasy. The core appeal of vampires is still "sex, violence, forbidden love, attraction to death and power", he says. "That's what being a vampire is all about."

ENDS

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