A Modest Vampiress

Things have gotten unnecessarily complicated in the movies for the modern female vampire. It used to be pretty simple: Dracula sees a pretty girl, he bites her, she dies and comes back sexy, hungry, and obedient to her vampire master. If we're lucky she survives long enough to show us her fangs and maybe even her latent lesbian side too. Usually, some misguided do-gooder ends up inserting a sharp piece of wood in her heart and she dies a painful death. But of course, that was her comeuppance for not being a good Victorian girl and the extent of the morality lesson ended more-or-less about there.

It was a good and familiar story and except for the pretty vampire getting killed, I liked. it. But now there are shades and nuances to the female victim. She sometimes struggles against being a wonderfully evil and sexual creature. Occasionally, she even kills the vampire who made her into that lovely creature in the first place. It happened in Dracula 2000, and before that in 1995's Vampire in Brooklyn.

It seems to be a recent phenomenon. As late as 1985's Fright Night, the Good Girl Amy Peterson clearly permits herself to be seduced by the Vampire. She wakes up on command to kill her snooping boyfriend and although clearly tormented, she tries to do it not once, but twice! She whimpers pitifully after her first attempt and you can almost hear her thoughts: I've failed my master; I never thought it would be like this; I'm a goddam vampiress and I'm still in high school, I'm fucked! So she dutifully trods downstairs to the basement and this time she tries honey to catch her fly...

So now we're to a current vampire story like Blade: The Series. It's almost halfway through the first season and we've seen too much of Krista, the main protagonist, vacillating between being a good vampiress or a good girl. Self-loathing (like Amy from Fright Night) she's even helping her nominal master's arch-nemesis acquire the means to destroy all vampires, including herself.

This trend is an unfortunate but predictable one given the evolution of modern culture. It's a familiar tune: women are strong, women have choices, women are pulled in many directions at once. I guess female vampires just aren't supposed to obey their vampire masters anymore.

Here's my modest proposal: Ladies, if you're fortunate enough to become a vampire, don't fight it. Don't kill your vampire sire and whatever you do (especially if you're a hottie) don't wait until dawn and vaporize yourself with first dawn. You look beautiful in fangs.