Vampire popularity may have peaked, but it won’t go away (Book, TV and movie commentary)

In a Sedalia bookstore, they have a shelf full of vampire books. Not just a section labeled “vampires”; I mean a full standalone bookshelf with four or five shelves on it. I asked the proprietor about it and he shook his head in exasperation and told me how many vampire books they get each time a shipment comes in. I think he said dozens, or maybe it was hundreds. Then he predicted that the bottom would fall out any day like the Beanie Baby craze of a few years back.

Although I agree that vampires are currently a pop culture fad and that bookshelf will eventually thin out a bit, I don’t believe the bottom will ever fall out. The craze will wane, but there will still be a vampire section in bookstores. On the other hand, good luck finding the Beanie Baby section in the toy aisle.

It’s no surprise that we, as a society, invented and embraced vampire literature. It’s been said that even if we proved that God doesn’t exist, people would still create a fictional god to believe in. It’s also been said that a god requires a devil as its foil. A vampire is, in a broad sense, one of those devil characters. Furthermore, good literature of all genres often explores morality — our good and bad sides. Vampires (unless they have a soul, natch) represent the bad side.

What’s fascinating about the popularity of vampires — which were invented in the 1720s, according the Wikipedia post on vampire literature — is that the universal agreement (yes, I know there are a few exceptions) that they aren’t real doesn’t affect them negatively. In that sense, vampires don’t really fit the God/Devil belief paradigm, because many humans believe those entities to be real. Instead, vampires fit in with, for example, werewolves.

And yet, vampires are clearly more ubiquitous than werewolves at the moment.

The reason why vampires rule right now is, I think, accidental. Hollywood’s copycat cycle (“Imitation is the sincerest form of television”) has led us to a point where there is a lot of vampire fiction out there, so even if a lot of it is bad, the simple math points to a lot of it being good, too.

So this isn’t really a craze in the sense of crazy people gobbling up all the vampire books, TV shows and movies they can find. I don’t know anyone who fits that description, and you probably don’t either. Rather, it’s a case where vampires are so ubiquitous that their popularity can be sustained even in the absence of the theoretical die-hard vampire fan who buys everything with fangs on the cover.

Simply put, vampires can maintain their place in pop literature thanks to normal, everyday people who like good stories and characters.

For example, I interviewed the director and the lead of the upcoming community theater play, “Lady Dracula.” Neither claimed to be a vampire fan, and yet both were fans of specific vampire projects. The director likes “Interview with the Vampire” and the “Twilight” franchise. The star likes “Queen of the Damned” and “Underworld.” She was happy to be in “Lady Dracula” because the tone reminded her of “A Tell-Tale Heart,” which doesn’t have a vampire in it — and yet it’s probably a closer cousin to “Lady Dracula” than “Twilight” is.

I would not label myself a vampire fan. For one, I get squeamish at the sight of blood; for another, I don’t find vampires to be attractive simply because they are vampires. Of course, many vampires happen to be played by the best-looking women and men in Hollywood, so that confuses the issue.

And yet the last time I went to the comic shop, 100 percent of my purchases were vampire-themed. Three of the titles were “Buffy,” “Angel” and “Spike,” and the fourth was the “X-Files”/”30 Days of Night” crossover. I like these sagas, but not because they have vampires in it. In fact, my favorite “Buffy” character is Buffy, who slays vampires; so that almost makes me anti-vampire in a way.

I like “True Blood” well enough, but that’s mainly because I like Anna Paquin’s Sookie Stackhouse and some of the other characters. The fact that it has vampires in it is almost incidental. I’m a fan of “Harry Potter,” which includes vampires in its mythos — but only tangentially. And I’ve read about a vampire race in a galaxy far, far away — the Anzati, which possess proboscises for sucking victims’ souls out through their noses — but only because I love “Star Wars” stories, not because I seek out stories with Anzati in them.

My point is that I’m not a vampire fan, and yet I’ve absorbed a ton of vampire mythology simply because I’m a fan of good stories and characters. Vampires don’t exist in reality, but in the entertainment world, they always will, even between the fads and crazes.

Anyone want to share a theory on how this fictional creature became so widely popular since its invention nearly 300 years ago? Present your thoughts below.