Horror turned Romantic, p. !

1
Sarah E. Ray
UWRT 1101-088
October, 2014
Horror Turned Romantic:
The Strategic Move of Adding Glitter to Vampires
Introduction
Imagine meeting Prince Charming face-to-face. I personally would lose the ability to
speak. Now imagine meeting Prince Charming, but he has the burning desire of drinking all your
blood. Vampires and Prince Charmings are at very different ends of the Hot Guy spectrum, but a
vampire is supposed to be the worlds greatest predator there is. What is more inviting than an
attractive guy who has a bit of charm? If youd ask me, that is a recipe for disaster. This has
become a recurring trend in the vampire world today. But why are vampires all of a sudden super
attractive to women? Why has their image been altered all together?
People have been obsessed with vampirism since 1816 when The Vampyre was published
as the first book about vampires in the English language. Even before that different cultures have
folklore on vampirism. However, pop culture today has shifted vampirism into a romantic
fantasy rather than the horror it was intended to cause. Today, on TV, vampires struggle between
their natural blood thirst that tends to rule their lives, and their humanity they still try to hold on
to. We also cannot forget pretty much the grandfather of Vampire movies, Bram Stokers
Dracula.
I entered the Vampire culture when I was about 13. It was 7th grade and we were
assigned accelerated reading points in middle school. I absolutely hated reading and dreaded

Horror turned Romantic, p. !2

getting those points. That is until I heard of a book called Twilight by Stephanie Myer. Twilight is
what introduced me to all things Vampire. I obsessed over those books and around the same time
I started reading those books a show called The Vampire Diaries began on the Network The
CW. I was immediately enticed after watching the first episode. My mother, however would
make fun of me how I idolized glittery vampires. She would tell me about how vampires are
supposed to be scary and people fear them, not fall in love with them. The different views of
vampires from generation to generation really grabbed my attention and made me want to
research more on how and why the culture made a sudden 360 turn from what it is supposed to
be. My initial thought was that people got bored with just the typical scary old vampire. That is
such old news with everything else that has been put out into the media these days to scare us.
However, when I started to realize how much money I have spent on merchandise for Twilight,
and The Vampire Diaries it hit me like a ton of bricks. The purpose of this paper is to not only
point out the obvious shift from the old vampire to the new one but to explain why this
happened. Vampirism took a 360 turn, not because people got bored, but to create more revenue
because sex appeal makes everything sell.

!
Review of Literature
Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries, Edward Cullen from Twilight, and Bill
Compton from Tru Blood are clear examples of the new version of Vampires. Adler (2010)
would agree that the correlation between vampires and romance has been very prevalent
throughout the past few decades. However, today when one might mention the word vampire
someone else may thing of the a sexy being struggling with having morals and wanting to drink

Horror turned Romantic, p. !3

human blood, but vampires have made appearances on the small screen as many different
characters (Blair, 2013). Though vampires are portrayed usually in the perspective of horror,
they make appearances on Sesame Street in the character of The Count, which can easily be
considered pretty much the opposite of horror. Because of the folklore that vampires have been
in from many different cultures they have had a scary nature about them. They are considered
dangerous beings, sent from the devil himself, to roam the Earth and wreck havoc to mankind.
Typically, an audience of the vampire culture would be considered emo or gothic but
because of the sudden culture shift the audience has been shifted also. It has attracted more of
pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults. More women have come to find themselves obsessing
over these new types of vampires. The new vampire actually has morals, or an inner struggle
between morals and their animalistic nature (Schaub, 2012). With Stefan Salvatore, for instance,
he knows what he is and he knows the harm he can bring to Elena, the human girl he has fallen
in love with, but he cannot bring himself to stay away from her or drink her blood. He tries very
hard to keep her out of harms way. In retrospect The Vampire Diaries keeps some of the
typical vampire traits but adds little twists to them. For example, Stefan cannot walk out into the
sun unless he has his sunlight ring that was created by a witch to allow him to walk among others
as a normal human being (Buckwalter, 2013).

Entering the conversation

My sources take note of the obvious culture shift in vampires and how their
characteristics have been altered, but none go into depth as to why this shift has occurred. In
many folklore of earlier cultures, vampires were spoken of as evil beings, made in a human

Horror turned Romantic, p. !4

image. These stories warned people native to these cultures to beware of these beings who were
sent from the devil that will drain your blood. So people have been taught to fear these creatures
for a very long time. Even in the 1930s when the first version of Dracula came to the big
screen, vampires were viewed in a horror aspect. In my own opinion, the writers who created
characters like Stefan Salvatore in the CWs television series The Vampire Diaries, and
Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyers Twilight books wanted to break away from the stereotypical
vampire. Edward Cullen and Stefan Salvatore have a strong correlation between them but they
still have differences. For example, Edward Cullen can freely walk in and out side and the only
consequence for him is that he may sparkle a little bit, but with Stefan Salvatore if he stands out
in the sun he starts to feel a burning sensation that is very painful for him unless he is wearing his
daylight ring, a ring that has been bewitched by a powerful Salem witch, that allows him to walk
outside. By giving these features to these characters, a new type of vampire was born and writers
and producers created a huge market for a radical twist of vampires. From a business aspect, and
thinking as a business student, the market of the audience for the vampire themed culture needed
something radical to happen in order to create new revenue. The market needed to be jumpstarted and this new appealing version of the vampire accomplished that.
There are countless books that have been written about and around vampirism. In the
most recent years, however there has been a new recurring theme among the main characters or
vampires in these plots. Vampires are starting to be shown to have an inner struggle between
what nature tells them they are, which are predators who prey on human blood in order to
survive, and their humanity of keeping their morals and having emotions. In the CWs television
series The Vampire Diaries Stefan Salvatore has been living for over a hundred years in

Horror turned Romantic, p. !5

secrecy living among humans. He has immortality, super strength, speed of a cheetah, mind
capabilities that humans do not possess, and not to mention extremely good looks. With all of
these attributes he has become the worlds greatest predator. It would seem like a creature with
all these capabilities would never fall in love with a human, which in comparison, is so fragile
and delicate almost like a flower. This is where his humanity comes in. Stefan starts to gain
feelings such as love and compassion and these conflict with what nature intends him to be. This
is a power struggle that Stefan Salvatore shares with Edward Cullen in Twilight. Edward Cullen,
a vampire, falls in love with the new girl in his high school, Bella Swan. The Twilight saga
explains Bella and Edwards struggle to blend the two worlds that they are from.
The traditional audience that Vampire movies have been directed towards have been
labeled as emo or gothic, dark and twisty. With the newer view of vampires, however, a
broader and different type and age group have been attracted to the culture. In my view, I feel as
if this was a marketing strategy in order for the box office to make more money and draw more
and different types of viewers. Because the new audience, which has been attracted by the new
vampires, is much broader and bigger, it is much easier to build on top of the idea of the new
vampire. For example with The Vampire Diaries t-shirt sales have risen because young
preteens are attracted to styles that have their favorite actor or actresss face on it. I know for me
personally, I bought a cardboard cut out of Edward Cullen to place in my room because of how
much I was in love with him. Once Twilight hit the big screen in 2008, producers and
screenwriters saw how well that concept of a dark and twisty vampire conflicted by his natural
urges and his humanity captured the attention of a younger audience, and many others started to
follow in Stephenie Meyers foot steps. Twilight brought the box office $192,769,854. I would

Horror turned Romantic, p. !6

say that a number like that would make other people in the screenwriting profession open their
eyes a little bit and use Twilight as somewhat of a template. In 2009 The Vampire Diaries
season one broke the CWs record for the highest rankings with 4.91 million viewers. I would
say that the market in 2009 was a perfect stage for this show at this specific time. The show
entered that market at the perfect time where young girls yearned for more than just an hour and
a half long movie where Mr. Dark-and-Twisty-Morals-Compromised Edward Cullen intrigues
them. They now have Stefan Salvatore who they can continue to watch his struggle every week.
Although this new version of the vampire has created an awesome market and made
millions of dollars for the movie and television industries, true vampire fans that idolize the
classics are not impressed with the shiny, new and, some might say, improved vampire. Count
Dracula is the true stereotypical vampire. The fact that he sleeps in a coffin, does not venture out
of his castle until night, and a wooden stake to the heart will indeed kill him makes him along the
lines of a classic vampire. Though The Vampire Diaries tries to stay some what true to the
guidelines of what constitutes a vampire, they still tend to stray away and add twists such as
daylight rings being able to let Stefan and Damon out in the sunlight. Some might say its better
to stick to the classics, but the classics are not fitting to the new generation that are clearly ready
and accepting of something different. The timing of this new innovative vampire was close to
perfect. It targeted an audience of not only tweens, and preteen with the innocent characteristics
give to this vampire but also targets teenagers, young adults and even people in their 40s and 50s
by adding a dash of sexuality to the vampires appearance and attitude.
The timing and presentation of the new vampire could not have made its appearance at a
better time. With movies and TV shows becoming more scandalous, why not throw in a sexy

Horror turned Romantic, p. !7

vampire who is dark and enticing. The fact of the matter is that the creators of these new
vampires are banking on the emotions of young women and how they perceive Mr. Dark-andDangerous. This market is based off womens attraction to these characters and because women
cannot seem to resist a very attractive man who has a few personal issues the box office and
television networks have accumulated millions, if not billions of dollars from these women. So,
from a business standpoint, vampires are great investments.

!
So What?
So now that the obvious shift from the original vampire to the new and shiny vampire
has been pointed out, it is easy to see how this radical shift in culture has been an extremely
successful marketing strategy. The market that this product was placed into, was at its prime
and the consumers took to this new model of the vampire. It was accepted and repeated in
different shows, books, and movies by different networks and writers.
In business, marketing is how you present your product to the public. There are many
different strategies companies take to get their products out there. Adding a mysterious and sex
appeal to vampires has made the public only want more of them from networks, producers, and
writers. At first it was the fact that vampires were scary, but that has been over used time and
time again, not to mention their are tons of other things out there that are scarier. Now that
vampires have been made in an image of something a woman could fall in love with, it has
switched lanes, radically. Vampires were once projected to the horror movie market, now they
have converged to more of a romantic fantasy genre.

Horror turned Romantic, p. !8

In retrospect, people tend to hear the word vampire and laugh at the idea of them. They
may be fictional characters but the fact of the matter is that sexy twisted mysterious vampires
sell. Women of most ages are attracted to them, and because of that they spend their money on
books, movies and the merchandise that you can buy from those books and movies which in turn
creates a market and makes the movie industry, Television Networks, and the stores that sell the
merchandise millions of dollars. So, I am proposing a question to industries that need something
new to make more revenue. Maybe if something as simple as a vampire can reinvent itself and
boost its popularity and worth, what else can do this? On top of this question, will the vampire
continue to change? Or will one day when Im old and my grandchildren become interested in
vampires will they have reverted back into its original form as a horror object? This culture shift
is interesting to watch because there is no telling what the next step for vampires is.

!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!

Horror turned Romantic, p. !9

!
!
!
!
!
References
Accomando, B. (n.d.). Sexting Up the PG-13 Vampire.But Not Too Much. Retrieved
November 18, 2009.
Adler, M. (n.d.). For the Love of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List. Retrieved
February 18, 2010.
Blair, E. (n.d.). Dark Shadows: The Birth of the Modern TV Vampire. Retrieved May 10,
2013
Buckwalter, I. (n.d.). Blood Will Tell: In Byzantium, A Gothic Vampire Diary. June 27,
2013.
Holmes, L. (n.d.). Twilight: Edward The Vampire Sulker And His Beloved: Does This
Story Work? March 24, 2010.
Johnson, J. (2010). Women and Vampires: Nightmare or Utopia?. Vol. 15, No. 1. JSTOR.
Ray, S. (2014) The Vampire Diaries. Assignment One.
Schaub, M. (n.d.). Hide Me: Not Your Typical Teen Vampire Tale. March 22, 2012.

Annotated Bibliography:

Blair, E. (n.d.). Dark Shadows: The Birth of the Modern TV Vampire. Retrieved May 10, 2013

Horror turned Romantic, p. !10

Vampires have had a steady appearance on the small screen for many decades. Mark
Dawidziak, an author and professor at Kent State University on their appearances in film and TV,
says because vampires have been able to evolve with the times is why they have been able to
stay so popular throughout the decades. Through the decades there have been different types of
vampire shows like The Munsters, appearances on Sesame Street, and in dramas like True Blood.
The ultimate grandfather of all of these shows that featured vampires is a little known show
talked Dark Shadows. The gothic themed soap opera initially didnt have vampires you could see
but as the ratings dropped the producers need to do something radical to turn things around.

!
Adler, M. (n.d.). For the Love of Do-Good Vampires: A Bloody Book List. Retrieved February
18, 2010.
In the 80s there was a very similar wave of interest in vampires. Today there is a new wave but
with very different vampires because the new generation has a correlation because sexy and love
with vampires all because of Bill Compton in HBOs True Blood, Stefan Salvator in the CWs
television series The Vampire Diaries, and most of all Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyers
Twilight books. Vampires have been in folklore around the world and from various cultures but
our modern notion of the vampire came from a particular cultural moment in 1816. Mary
Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polodori all attended a literary exercise in Switzerland, and what
came out of the exercise is Frankenstein and Vampyre, which is the first vampire story in the
English language.

Horror turned Romantic, p. !11

Accomando, B. (n.d.). Sexting Up the PG-13 Vampire.But Not Too Much. Retrieved
November 18, 2009.
Some fans of the Twilight Saga would say with its sexy-but-chaste leads this teen series may be
sending its target audience of teen and tween girls a mixed message. In the 70s and 80s
Hollywood preached a clear message to teens through horror movies: have sex and die ; stay a
virgin and live. Some might say that twilight promotes conflicting values because Edward comes
into Bellas room and watches her sleep in her underwear. However, part of the appeal for female
fans is that Edward makes caring for Bella more important than getting into her pants.

!
!
Buckwalter, I. (n.d.). Blood Will Tell: In Byzantium, A Gothic Vampire Diary. June 27, 2013.
Neil Jordan is very aware that audiences may be having mixed emotions about vampires. He
decided to take the genre as a whole and throw it back to its less sparkly days. In this
particular example the vampire is just nothing more than a label that the main characters try to
find familiarity and normalcy. However they have the characteristics of a typical vampire like
the immortality, and the drinking of human blood, but like The Vampire Diaries or Twilight
these vampires are able to walk in daylight as well.

!
Alder, M. (n.d.). Vampire Stories: Two New Twist On An Old Nemesis: June 7, 2010.
Margot Adler has read 100 vampire books this year and she says it is safe to say the vampire
arent going anywhere anytime soon. The Passage, which is not really a traditional vampire
novel, but it is categorized as the blood and horror genre and is even compared the Stephen

Horror turned Romantic, p. !12

Kings The Stand. In this book vampirism are betrayed as terrible Disease that quickly ravage's
the Earth and its population. Much different from the hot, steamy, and pretty boys that are
twisted inside because they want to be moral.

!
Schaub, M. (n.d.). Hide Me: Not Your Typical Teen Vampire Tale. March 22, 2012.
Schaub states that these days, young peoples impressions of vampires are colored more by the
Twilight series of books and movies depicting the creatures as pretty emo kids whose primary
habits are moping and loitering in trees. In Schaubs opinion Hide Me Among the Graves is for
people who still believe in great literature, basically dissing the Twilight series and The Vampire
Diaries where the vampires struggle between what they really are and their own humanity.
Schaub clearly does not agree with the way Pop Culture has shifted Vampirism.

!
Holmes, L. (n.d.). Twilight: Edward The Vampire Sulker And His Beloved: Does This Story
Work? March 24, 2010.
According to Linda the equal balance of power and powerlessness in Twilight very classic for
instance making Bellas needy and vulnerable having to be saved from a van that was going to
crush her, but on the contrary he tells her that he can ready everyones mind but hers making this
very strong creature suddenly powerless. Linda also says that this kind of attraction is just
initially and as the relationship grows it becomes more boring, but because this idea of a vampire
was radical at the time pop culture absorbed it and owned it. There is just something about being
possibly the most clumsy girl in the world and having one of the most strongest creatures to be
there to save you when you are falling.

Horror turned Romantic, p. !13

!
!
Johnson, J. (2010). Women and Vampires: Nightmare or Utopia?. Vol. 15, No. 1. JSTOR.
Johnson basically ask what does society dream about when women write about vampires? Does
the eternal woman feel as she is viewing vampire movies or ready vampire books? She says its
the lyrical and contemplative new vampire view that has women viewing vampirism as
compassionate, erotic, and above all a fair exchange rather than a predatory act.

!
Ray, S. (2014) The Vampire Diaries. Assignment One.
Assignment one of my research contains actors, artifacts, communities of practice, a domain,
practices of a community, literacy practices, background information on the figured world, and
the initial observations of Episode 1 of Season 1 of The Vampire Diaries. In the observations,
there is an almost minute by minute detailed account of what is happening in the episode.
Assignment one introduces the main characters and plants the seed for the plot of the show.