Photo: Simone Broders (Meersburg, Altes Schloss)


Vampire Fiction, Gothic Fiction, and the Fantastic
"Bitten is the New Black": Vampire Chick Lit
"No Sex Please, We're Vegetarians": Marketing the Vampire and Sexual Curiosity
"The Heartbeat of Outsiders": Vampiric Otherness as Female Empowerment

"Bitten is the New Black" [1]: Vampire Chick Lit


Published in: The Centennial Reader.
Full text PDF-Version with kind permission of  Centennial Reader

Abstract. Women in a cultural context appear to be trapped between different life-concepts and thus diverging roles in society; even though feminists have struggled for equal education and career opportunities, these careers still have to be built during the mid-twenties to early thirties, which is also the average time for marriage and first children.

Simultaneously, advertising and the media confront women with images of youth and beauty they are supposed to attain by using a certain product or undergoing a certain beauty regime. Integrating all cultural and social expectations into one life plan seems to require superhuman strength – ironically, being a vampire fulfills all requirements. A vampire is extraordinarily beautiful without any efforts, surgeries or beauty products – similar to the glossy magazine covers of digitally enhanced celebrities; she is faster and stronger than the average human; she has offspring not by a nine-month pregnancy, but by simply biting a mortal. Her mental abilities give her a considerable amount of power, often mind-reading or manipulating the human brain. Above all, she does not age and will thus never run out of time to attain all of her life plans;

In Charlaine Harris's bestselling Sookie Stackhouse series, 1100-year-old Sophie-Anne is the powerful vampire queen of Louisiana, but visually she remains a 15-year-old schoolgirl. The fascination of female audiences with the vampire theme may thus be regarded as a product of the time of crisis that traps women between the conservative and the contemporary.

Full text PDF-Version with kind permission of  Centennial Reader

 "No Sex Please, We're Vegetarians": Marketing the Vampire and Sexual Curiosity in Twilight, True Blood, and the Sookie Stackhouse Novels

Published in: Gothic Transgressions. Extension and Commercialisation of a Cultural Mode. Eds. Ellen Redling and Christian Schneider. Kultur: Forschung und Wissenschaft Bd. 19. Münster: LIT, 2015.
Details

Abstract. The sexual initiation of the heroine by the vampire has always been both a traditional plot device bridging the gap between Gothic and romance, and a successful marketing strategy. However, in Stephenie Meyer's best-selling Twilight saga (2005), the "vegetarian" vampire-turned-superhero does not only abstain from human blood, but also from sexual relations. Advertised with the Christian symbol of temptation, the apple, on the cover, (sexual) curiosity is associated with original sin.
Despite the series' commercial success, Meyer's 'celibate' vampires have been under attack for promoting thinly disguised evangelical morals and obsolete gender stereotypes. Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels (2001) and the TV adaptation by Alan Ball, True Blood (2008), set themselves apart from Meyer's desexualized vampires: Harris' vampires are highly sensual. Despite its setting in the conservative 'bible belt' state of Louisiana, the series' marketing strategy depends on the link between vampirism and the heroine's sexual awakening. The novels address questions of sexual liberty and otherness. After falling in love with the vampire Bill, waitress Sookie is at first labelled as a "necrophile" and a "pervert". It is through Sookie's curiosity to 'see the other side' in her relationship with Bill that she transcends the narrow-minded small town mainstream and begins to convince her friends that her love for Bill is not 'unnatural'. Like the early gay movement, 'Undead Americans' demand an end to discrimination. In Harris' America, the changing image of vampirism becomes a powerful metaphor, representing all life-styles. At the same time, her novels maintain the Gothic tradition of the vampire as projection screen of unfulfilled sexual desires and the aesthetics of danger.

"The Heartbeat of Outsiders": Vampiric Otherness as Female Empowerment in P.C. and Kristin Cast's House of Night

Published in:

"'The Heartbeat of Outsiders' - Vampiric Otherness as Female Empowerment in P.C. and Kristin Cast's House of Night". Beyond the Night - Creatures of Life, Death, and the in-Between. Ed. Nadine Farghaly (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015); 65-94.
 Details, Table of Contents, sample chapter

Abstract. The House of Night novels focus on a heroine who is part of three marginalized groups at once: Native American, female, and pagan, Zoey Redbird is Marked as a vampyre fledgling and joins the House of Night school, where she is trained to become an adult vampyre [2] – the ultimate Other to her patriarchal, evangelical stepfather.
By returning to the older spelling 'vampyre' instead of 'vampire', the House of Night series rejects patriarchal interpretations of the myth in a similar way as neo-pagan religious movements [3] defy the Christian patriarchal subjugation of women and aim to return to a pre-Christian, balanced relation between the sexes. Consequently, the novels' mythology centres around two deities, the vampire goddess Nyx and her male consort Erebus. Zoey's favourite novel Dracula serves as a foil, a cliché of chauvinism overcome by modern vampyres – a powerful metaphor for the search of young women for their place in a male-dominated society. While the Cain's mark on her forehead branded Mina as 'tainted' by vampirism, Zoey receives intricate tattoos that identify her as a vampyre, a mark she wears with pride. Instead of the archetypal wise old man, Zoey's Native American grandmother and her female vampyre tutor serve as mentors, completing the pagan triple goddess of Maiden, Mother and Crone. Male characters play a minor part, either as sexually possessive vampire mates from whom Zoey emancipates herself, or as human consorts in distress, passively waiting to be rescued. Otherness, sexual, ethnical and religious, becomes a source of power and transformation. This essay compares the depiction of female empowerment in the House of Night series to the image of women in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series as well as to the vampire Menolly in Yasmine Galenorn's Otherworld/Sisters of the Moon series.
"'The Heartbeat of Outsiders' - Vampiric Otherness as Female Empowerment in P.C. and Kristin Cast's House of Night". Beyond the Night: Creatures of Life, Death, and the in-Between. Ed. Nadine Farghaly. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015; 65-94. Link zum Buch

Cover reproduced by kind permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Simone Broders' Publications on the Gothic and the Fantastic


"'No Sex Please, We're Vegetarians' - Marketing the Vampire and Sexual Curiosity in Twilight, True Blood and the Sookie Stackhouse Novels". Gothic Transgressions. Extension and Commercialisation of a Cultural Mode. Eds. Ellen Redling and Christian Schneider. Kultur: Forschung und Wissenschaft Bd. 19. Münster: LIT, 2015.
Link zum Buch


"Satanisches Wissen? Neugier als Grenzüberschreitung in Science Fiction und Horror". Feststellungen. Dokumentation des 25. Film- und fernsehwissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums. Hgg. Thomas Nachreiner, Peter Podrez. Marburg: Schüren, 2014. 343-52. Link zum Buch


"'Bitten Is the New Black' – Images of Women in Canadian and US American Vampire Chick Lit". The Centennial Reader. Current Readings - Reading Currents. Ed. William Bunn. Mount Royal University, Canada. 2011 Summer Issue.
Full text PDF-Version with kind permission of  Centennial Reader


Footnotes


[1] "Bitten is the new black" is the tagline of Canadian author Michelle Rowen's fourth Immortality Bites novel: Michelle Rowen, Stakes & Stilettos (New York and Boston: Warner, 2009).
[2] P.C. and Kristin Cast distinguish the spelling 'vampyre' - the term children of the night use in their series to talk about themselves - from 'vampire', the undead created by folklore and previous literature.
[3] House of Night draws heavily on Wicca, a pantheistic neo-pagan religion popularised by Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, in which Goddess and God are regarded as complementary polarities.


Contemporary Vampire Fiction

Michelle Rowen, The Immortality Bites Series and The Immortality Bites Mystery Series

http://www.michellerowen.com/books/

P.C. and Kristin Cast, The House of Night Series
http://www.houseofnightseries.com/

Yasmine Galenorn, The Sisters of the Moon Series / The Otherworld Series
http://www.galenorn.com/Otherworld/

Charlaine Harris, The Sookie Stackhouse Series / The Southern Vampire Mysteries
http://charlaineharris.com/