Twilight is big. Yes, I realize that that was not exactly an original observation nor a particularly timely one. However, I just wanted to posit that quite aside from the merits of Twilight as such (have neither read nor seen it), the cultural prominence of Twilight/vampires in general really does speak to the conservative trope that America is a “center-right nation”.
Of all the various horror tropes, especially the Big Three (vampires, werewolves, and zombies), vampire stories are the most conservatively-tinged. If I were to briefly make a stab at what makes each fearful, I’d say that zombies represent the fear of the mob and werewolves represent the fear of man’s inner beast. Vampires, on the other hand, with their simultaneous fearsomeness and allure, represent the awe-ful fear of one’s superiors. The fact that they have been traditionally identified with the aristocracy, no less, only reinforces it. Vampires aren’t even conservative, they’re downright reactionary; there’s more than one connotation to all that special blood.
I’d also add that the traditional storylines are quite different. The traditional werewolf story focuses on the affliction as an affliction; the werewolf, as in Bela Lugosi’s “The Wolf-Man” is a reluctant villain. As for zombies, the story inevitably focuses on the group effort to survive a hostile world. Vampires, however, delight in their exercises of power. They are the Goldman Sachs of the horror world. One wonders whether there is a significant correlation between political trends (in a given area) and the relative popularity of vampires vs. zombies.* While I suspect enthusiasm for aliens is consistently high, I’d also guess their favored cultural depiction varies similarly (on a spectrum between ET and Independence Day).
*: Werewolves more or less being off the cultural radar right now. Besides, there is a sharp contrast between the authoritarian vampires and the egalitarian zombies; the ideological message of the werewolf is kind of orthogonal to the left-right spectrum.
Photo Credit: From Flickr Stream of Leanne Poon under CC license.
