Girlie Vampires Don't Suck - Part 1

So I'm writing this paper for a conference entitled “He Walks Again: The Digital Translation of the Man’s Vampire in Legacy of Kain”. (Side note: is it a rule somewhere that all papers need a subordinated title with a colon? I think there must be.)

The basic thrust of this paper is that video games that reproduce the vampire image are tending to create a certain kind of vampire. At the same time, TV, books, and movies (at least, culture-dominant ones) are producing a completely different kind of vampire. My argument is that these two vampires represent the two gendered audiences, and that the fact that they're being reproduced this way points to audience control over the chain of cultural production (contra certain Marxist theorists who insist on "producer" as the essential link in the chain), and that audiences are creating both content and meaning through their choices.

First the kinds of vampires.

The most powerful hegemonic vampire image at this moment is the Twilight vampire, also reproduced with some variations in The Vampire Diaries and True Blood inheriting a lot from such fang-less vampire tales as Angel. These are the most obvious examples, but a range of knockoff titles are propagating in the market and each producing essentially the Stephanie Meyer vampire. (Aside: I'll give True Blood a nod for breaking away from the crowd slightly with the comically oversexed characters, though I'd say that the Sookie Stackhouse vampires are enjoyed by audiences more for the ways in which they're like the Stephanie Meyer vampires than for how they're like the Anne Rice vampires). This vampire doesn't really like drinking blood, makes a big deal about having "a soul" and feelings, is usually conflicted about even being a vampire, and doesn't want to harm women: in fact, he's really only interested in being their bodyguard and having lots of emotionally fulfilling sex with them. This vampire is the prototypical Gothic Romance anti-hero; the Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights; the noble savage tamed by a woman's love (or sex, such as the case may be). Though Heathcliff may be a poor example now that I think about it... there's none of Heathcliff's rugged personage in the wan Edward Cullen.

Then there's the video game vampire, epitomized I'll say in Kain from Legacy of Kain, but also reproduced with variation in Castlevania, Vampire Savior, Bloodrayne, and in allegorical ways in Devil May Cry. Contrary to the Stephanie Meyer vampire, the video game vampire is practically sexless. Gone is the psychic and sexual mystique of the repulsing/alluring predator; replaced, it seems, by a somewhat stoic figure that boasts of no ties to anything... save, in some cases, revenge. In fact, the contrast of personalities between Kain and Edward Cullen or Angel is pretty stark: Kain loves being a vampire, loves drinking blood and killing people, loves doing violence to anyone and everyone, has a very clear sense of identity and where he's going in life, and is completely liberated from any kind of sexual tension, much less "affection", and very much less affection for a mortal.

The questions that arise from this comparison in my paper involve how the desires of each audience - the female audience determining the (re)presentation of the Twilight vampire, and the male audience determining the (re)presentation of the austere Legacy of Kain vampire - is reflected in the kind of vampire image they choose to consume. What does it say about the female audience that they want a reformed monster, defanged and practically groveling for sexual attention? (Related: what does it say that in these stories the woman rejects the perfectly acceptable non-monster to get to the sexually mysterious former-monster?) And what does it say about the male audience that their vampire is completely independent and perfectly happy as they are? Also, why the surprising lack of sexual energy from vampire images that males choose to consume?

Further, is it significant that in Legacy of Kain the vampire is you, but in Twilight the vampire is the other?