Vampires in the 21st Century

Vampires are all the craze now. The general public has bitten into them like a vampire bites into a young hot blooded human, with pure abandon. What started this craze? Some may say that Twilight kicked off the this sudden interest in vampires. If you mention vampires, especially to a female teen, the first thought will likely be Twilight. Twilight was released in November 2008. Now, if you are up to speed on the latest shows on the air right now you will know that there is a cable TV series called Tru Blood, which follows the southern belle named Sookie and her vampire lover Bill. Tru Blood started airing as part of the new Fall 2009 lineup, about two months before Twilight was released.

So Twilight theoretically did not start the vampire craze that has infected much of the general population now. Though, admittedly this new found interest in vampires did get a good push from Twilight.

Vampires have become the new cash cow in movies and television. In fact Twilight has grossed (according to BoxOfficeMojo) about $380 million to date. Tru Blood has started its second season and the CW network has released its own teen vampire series called Vampire Diaries.

Vampires are popular now, but the answer to 'why' has not been answered yet. Let us backtrack a little. Back in 1997 Buffy the Vampire Slayer was released. Immensely popular, Buffy staked vampires for seven seasons, with the series ending in 2003. In the Buffy series, a brooding bad-turned-good vampire named Angel was so popular that he received his own spinoff series named Angel, in 2000. Angel fought evil for five seasons, ending in 2004.

Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first vampire TV show that I remember, and remember being popular, I will use Buffy as the baseline for modern vampires. So from the beginning of the series in 1997, vampire shows have been around for over a decade. But with the ending of Angel in 2004 there was a bit of a gap between vampires then and vampires now. If you slide over in to the movie realm to see what the big studios did with the popular vampires back then you will come across Underworld, led by the stunning Kate Beckinsale. Underworld was released in 2003, with a sequel (2006), and prequel (2009) in subsequent years. We can safely say that after the original Underworld and definitely the sequel that the vampires sort of limped along for a couple years.

Glide ahead a couple years and we land in the middle of today's vampire craze with Twilight and the upcoming New Moon release dominating the female teen age group and True Blood dominating the male 18-35 age group. An interesting fact is that Twilight and True Blood are based off of books. I would guess that the popularity of the Twilight book series got the attention of some movie producers who then bought the rights to turn it into a movie.

On the topic of books, I will say that I am immensely amused by this whole vampire craze. The general population have jumped onto the vampire bandwagon like it was something new. From a literary perspective they are sorely mistaken. I will borrow a term that is often used in vampire books; new bloods. New bloods are vampires who have just recently been turned into vampires, vampires that were once human. Everyone who suddenly became interested in vampires with the release of Twilight and Tru Blood are new bloods. New bloods are people who have not read any books are decided to read the books after seeing the movie or series. The real fans are the ones (like myself) who have read notable vampire authors such as Laurell K. Hamilton, J.R. Ward, Kim Harrison, and Anne Rice.

I am curious on how long this vampire craze will last. I hope it ends before all of the Twilight series are turned into movies.