January 02, 2011
Julie Venn-Hall is a self-confessed "Twi-mum", who is obssessed with Twilight vampire Edward Cullen, played by actor Robert Pattinson.
WHAT fuels a middle-aged mum's passion for a pasty-faced teen with fangs? Behind the "Twi-mum" phenomenon.
THE other night over a plate of Gouger St's finest e-shand chicken, a friend said the most terrifying thing: "About six months ago, I seriously considered divorcing my husband because he's not Edward Cullen."
Excuse me? Isn't Edward Cullen a fictitious, teenage vampire from that kids' book Twilight?
She didn't stop there:
"It took me a month to read the entire Twilight series and for that whole time I actually wanted to divorce him ... In a heated argument one night over him leaving his towels on the bathroom floor I screamed: 'Edward Cullen would never do that!'.
"He yelled back: 'Are you insane? Edward Cullen is not real!' And I replied: 'Oh yes he is!' and stormed out the room."
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She has since palmed off the books to her sister, never wants them returned and is back to wedded bliss, but I began wondering how many other perfectly sane, well-adjusted, intelligent women were utterly obsessed with vampires - those blood-sucking, garlic-fearing, light-affected, fanged creatures. To my surprise, Twilight-fuelled
fans popped out from everywhere.
Another friend didn't want to discuss her passion for Stephenie Meyer's literary phenomenon:
"I have much to share as to why I love, love, love Twilight, but for me to reveal my thoughts to you would simply open up a wound that would take forever to close up again".
Sorry? This is fiction ... how can there possibly be a wound too sore to open?
Another friend admitted to having two profiles on Facebook - one where she is herself, and another where she is a vampire, has a "vampire" name and only befriends other "vampires".
They are everywhere: millions of Twi-hards, Twi-mums and Twi-lighters. Women - mostly - fuelling an intense resurgence in the vampire legend. Our pop culture can't get enough.
UniSA lecturer and Buffy the Vampire Slayer expert Jennifer Stokes says vampires have been a source of enthralment for more than a century because they represent an eternal choice.
"It's about our fascination with mortality - if you could live forever and have immortality, but it meant you had to live by taking the lives of others, would you make that choice?" she says.
Vampires first entered our vernacular with the release of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, partly inspired by the drizzly life of Romanian prince Vlad the Impaler, who had a fancy for impaling his enemies, in the mid 1400s.
Vlad was not the only sadistic force to come from history. Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who lived from 1560 until 1614 and whose family ruled what is now Slovakia, is also an oft-referred-to vampire-inspirer. History remembers Elizabeth as the "Blood Countess," and attributes her to killing more than 600 virgins so she could bathe in their blood to retain her youth.
Ever since the original Count Dracula, we have morphed the blood-suckers into myriad characters - good and bad - from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Angel to Twilight's sullen Edward Cullen to Queen of the Damned's evil Akasha.
Even comicbook superheroes like Batman and the Phantom have vampire-esque undertones.
Whatever their guise, we're interested, because we haven't found the secret to immortality.
"Until we can definitively understand what occurs when we die, then this fascination exists and people will write these stories," Ms Stokes says.
What keeps vampires popular through the ages is that there isn't a sterotypical fan.
"There are people who are interested in (vampire legends) for that romantic story, then you have people who might perhaps be more interested in the gothic culture around the looks and imagery and the melancholy," Ms Stokes says.
"I think a lot of different people can identify with vampires for lots of different reasons."
Whoever the person, the vampire realm is where "people can experiment with good and evil and personal morals," Ms Stokes explains.
DR Jackie Cook, a senior communications lecturer at UniSA says vampires have always struck a chord - particularly with youth and so it is no surprise to see a teenage-led vampire trend in the form of hysteria around Twilight, The Vampire Diaries and True Blood.
"The horror writer Stephen King, using established anthropological theory, says there are only three kinds of monsters: monsters from outside, monsters from inside and there are unseen monsters you can't control," Dr Cook says.
"A monster from inside is a werewolf ... which appeals to adolescents because they're undergoing morphological and social changes; the body is shifting, hair is growing in strange places, they are wracked by hormonal change ... it's the perfect image for the teenager.
"The vampire is interesting, because it's a transgressive monster: it is an external monster because of the blood sucking, but a very intimate, very internal monster and, of course, it is highly sexualised, highly eroticised as well."
So, Dr Cook says, the legend's sexual undertones appealed when sex was vetoed and since then has been re-worked to suit popular culture.
Today, mainstream media and commerce have found an intensely workable phenomenon.
"Commerce doesn't want to take too many risks," she says. "So if it can see a successful vein being mined, it will mine it and mine it and mine it until it finds something else and then it will move on."
Therefore, we have cross-marketing: books sold with "Blood" (bottled blood orange juice), movie tickets sold with miniature vamp dolls, T-shirts bought with vampire emblazoned paraphernalia.
It's hard to escape.
Dr Cook says the current vampire trend might also be because writers and producers want to bridge the gap for the Harry Potter generation - those former Potter fanatics growing up and looking for fantasy with an edge.
But what is fascinating about Twilight in particular, is that it isn't just appealing to teenagers, a phenomenon of Twi-mums, women in their 30s obsessed with the vampire trend, has emerged.
Dr Cook says this can be explained by our modern-day society's changing demographics.
"With all our demographics we are shifting up by 10 or 20 years ... so middle age that used to be firmly underway by 40, is now considered to be 60, and we've divided old age into deep age and shallow age," she says.
"And with our economic structure ... people are staying at home well into their 30s. Now that means for 15 to 20 years those young people have independent income but no outgoings and they are major consumers of popular culture.
"Therefore audiences are older. It's almost like teenagehood is extending."
MS Stokes says Meyer's retelling of the vampire myth, with the heroine Bella having to choose between Edward and her best friend, the shirtless Jacob, also a werewolf,
has resonated across the globe, with fans picking "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob" and believing Edward to be the "perfect man".
My obsessed friend - now in her 30s - explains it like this: "Remember that feeling when you were 15 or 16 and had a major crush on someone to the point where your heart would stop? And if he touched you casually you might accidentally combust? Every turn of the page recaptures and evokes these feelings again. Twilight creates such intoxicating pangs of first love that you haven't felt for so long - it is addictive."
But no matter why people are picking up the books or watching the movies, one thing is certain - the Twilight franchise along its contemporaries will eventually lose favour and vampires will drop out of mainstream popular culture.
But they will not disappear. Instead, Dracula along with Edward Cullen and heroines like Sookie Stackhouse, will disappear back underground, where they will rumble away ... waiting for another inevitable mainstream rebirth.
And our thirst for blood will reign again.
TOP FIVE VAMPIRE ICONS
1. Angel
The Edward Cullen before there was Edward Cullen - Angel is a character created by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Played by actor David Boreanaz, Angel is cursed with a soul, a punishment for his past crimes committed as Angelus.
2. Queen Akasha
The mother of all vampires - according to author Anne Rice in her Vampire Chronicles series. Known as the Queen of the Damned, she begins as a pre-Egyptian queen who is secretly cursed with a blood-thirsty spirit by two witches.
A special mention to the "Brat Prince" Lestat de Lioncourt, also an Anne Rice character, most famously played by Tom Cruise in 1994's Interview with the Vampire.
3. Eric Northman
Created by Charlaine Harris in her series The Southern Vampire Mysteries, Eric is also portrayed in the television series True Blood. Before becoming a vampire, he was a viking and in the book series, he is the most powerful vampire in Area Five in Northern Louisiana, where he owns a vampire bar called Fangtasia (cute).
4. Blade
Blade is a half-vampire, half-mortal man who becomes a protector of the mortal race in the 1998 movie of the same name. He is born a vampire, because his mother was bitten by a vamp while pregnant. He has all the good vampire attributes in combination with the best human skills.
5. Count von Count ("The Count")
Count von Count, often known simply as The Count, is one of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street, whose main purpose is to educate children on simple mathematical concepts, most notably counting. He lives in an old, cobweb-infested castle that he shares with bats ... which he often counts.
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