Vampire genres
Oct. 1st, 2007 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeur[Happy birthday to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
herooftheage!]
Just saw the first ad for the new vampire movie 30 Days of Night, based on the comic of the same name. As with the comic, the movie has no appeal at all to me, which occasions a little musing. On the one hand, I do consider myself a devotee of the vampire genre; OTOH, I really dislike most of its modern incarnations.
It occurs to me that this is because there isn't really any such thing as a "vampire genre", any more than there is really a "superhero genre". Both are really tropes that get other genres layered onto them. When I think of myself as a vampire fan, it's very much of the gothic-romance variety: I got hooked on the stuff originally through the various European incarnations, from the delightful silliness of the Hammer movies to the psychodelia of Jean Rollin. But I have absolutely no interest in blood-and-guts horror, which is what so much of the modern American vampire form is. (Looking at it another way: the vampire stories I love are very much tales of seduction and sex, at least metaphorically; the ones I *don't* like are fundamentally stories of violence and death.)
I wonder if there is any such thing as a "genre", really. That word is used for so many things that are really just blank boards to paint upon...
herooftheage!]Just saw the first ad for the new vampire movie 30 Days of Night, based on the comic of the same name. As with the comic, the movie has no appeal at all to me, which occasions a little musing. On the one hand, I do consider myself a devotee of the vampire genre; OTOH, I really dislike most of its modern incarnations.
It occurs to me that this is because there isn't really any such thing as a "vampire genre", any more than there is really a "superhero genre". Both are really tropes that get other genres layered onto them. When I think of myself as a vampire fan, it's very much of the gothic-romance variety: I got hooked on the stuff originally through the various European incarnations, from the delightful silliness of the Hammer movies to the psychodelia of Jean Rollin. But I have absolutely no interest in blood-and-guts horror, which is what so much of the modern American vampire form is. (Looking at it another way: the vampire stories I love are very much tales of seduction and sex, at least metaphorically; the ones I *don't* like are fundamentally stories of violence and death.)
I wonder if there is any such thing as a "genre", really. That word is used for so many things that are really just blank boards to paint upon...