I like vampire movies. Vampire books. Vampire t.v. shows. I read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I loved Buffy. I freaked out over Let the Right One In. I’m not a fan of Twilight, but Twilight has as much to do with actual vampire storytelling as Miley Cyrus has to do with musical acumen.
Color me surprised, but apparently I only like vampire stories because I’m a chick. (Remind me to tell every man I know who’s ever watched or enjoyed a vampire story that he’s doing it wrong. Being a man, that is.) John DeVore of The Frisky (doesn’t he just ooze credibility?) knows why. And he was good enough to explain. As always, my comments are italicized. Let’s begin.
Why women love vampires and men don’t
I am obviously going to agree with everything John says, because sweeping generalizations get me almost as hot as men with pointy teeth and an aversion to UV rays.
By John DeVore, The Frisky
When I try to explain my ardor for HBO’s trashy-fabulous soap opera “True Blood” to my dude friends, they either shrug and change the topic, or question whether I’ve been writing for ladyblogs for too long and am suffering from a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
Let me get this straight. Ladyblogs are the equivalent of a captor and Johnny boy is their hapless captive. That analogy makes Patty Hearst cry.
Dudes just don’t dig bloodsuckers, since vampires pretty much look like girls. We prefer zombies, because we love chainsaws, flamethrowers, and samurai swords.
I’m sorry? Vampires look like girls? Guess somebody forgot to tell him:
And because, on some level, we know that besides being vehicles for sperm, our other important, if lesser, genetic imperative is to defend our loved ones from hordes of unthinking, flesh-eating metaphors for current social anxieties.
Hahahaha. Vehicles for sperm. I know that when the time comes to pick a new car, I’ll be sure to ask the Honda dealer if the Civic comes with an optional sperm-holder. Seriously, this guy likes men even less than he likes women. Sperm vehicles and horde fighter-offers. That’s it, gents. That’s all you’re good for.
To most guys, vampires are the monster movie equivalent of that sensitive man-sponge in college who plays acoustic guitar in order to seduce chicks. They’re what you get when you cross your average Renaissance Fair enthusiast with a mosquito.
Oh come on now, John. Don’t be coy. You were that man-sponge.
And what’s with their greatest weaknesses being most kinds of Italian food, Sunday school, and the sun, which helps flowers grow? Really? Why women find date-rapey parasites who wear capes compelling must have something to do with deeply primal fears.
Date-rapey? Way to turn an actual fear that many women have into a shitty visual in your crappy article.
A vampire is a monster, who looks, acts, and talks like a man. Who is passionate, romantic, and tortured. To surrender to this character is to play with fire. The vampire, in many ways, is the prototype of the bad boy.
Ding, ding, ding! 10 points if you called the bad boy cliche before you even started reading this. Look, I know it’s totes fun to talk about women’s secretest desires as though we’re an estrogen monolith as easy to read as the back of a cereal box. But I can name many women who think the stereotypical bad boy sounds like a lot of work and just as many women who crave a guy on a Harley who has a tattoo for every woman he’s ever divested of her virginity. Because. Wait for it, peeps, I’m about to drop a truth bomb. Women are as varied in their tastes as men. And yes, men have varied tastes. That’s two truth bombs for the price of one.
Women love bad boys – they’re exciting, and the chance to change him, to break him like a horse, must be an irresistible challenge. If self-destruction weren’t seductive on some superficial level, then no one would ever need rehab.
I would insert another feminist zinger right here, but all I can muster is, dude’s a douche. Gigantic douche.
But I am like most guys in that I am a fan of zombie flicks. “28 Days Later” may possibly be my favorite movie ever. I’m also a fan of alien and robot movies, but more often than not, it seems women are more adept at dispatching those.
I have seen and enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, The Abyss, Independence Day, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc. And no one has asked me to surrender my second X chromosome. Shocking. (I’m not a fan of most zombie movies, because I’m not a fan of scary movies period. Which has little to do with my gender and mostly to do with the fact that I’m kind of a weenie.)
Zombie movies indulge male power-fulfillment fantasies. We enjoy pretending to be dragon-slaying knights or bad-guy-perforating cowboys or Bruce Willis, saving our ex-wife from a skyscraper full of terrorists.
I have never, ever dreamed of being a heroine. Beating up bad guys. Oooh or being able to fly and saving a bus full of children. Oooh, ooh! Or how about the one where I’m able to single-handedly take down a gun-wielding robber who’s threatening to shoot the convenience store clerk. Nope, never had any of those fantasies. Cause I’m a chick.
Before any feminist blood vessels burst, let me explain that this fantasy goes hand-in-hand with a male-specific fear that speaks to ancient genetic programming. That for all our swagger, testosterone, and machismo, we cannot protect those we love.
Phew! Thanks guy. You saved me from an aneurysm. But I’m gonna have to correct you on one thing. Men do not feel fear. They are programmed not to. They also never cry, do not bond with babies, and can’t enjoy the films of Sandra Bullock. Damn programming.
The disaster call for women and children to evacuate first isn’t chivalry, inasmuch as it’s evolutionarily smarts. The women and children will continue the species; the men are disposable. We fear being useless, especially once we have issued forth our baby-making essence.
I am telling you. This man hates men. Disposable? Hates them.
In “True Blood,” the vampire Bill has decided to change himself, to fight his ferocious nature. He struggles to be a better, um, corpse. He rejects the cold, bloodthirsty vampirism of his peers, and tries to embrace those human virtues he once had: selflessness, mercy, kindness, and justice. In some ways, he’s less a vampire and more a superhero.
Except he doesn’t wear a cape. Or tights. Which was really a mistake on wardrobe’s part.
Then he falls in love with someone he is told he shouldn’t. And his love for Sookie, a human woman, is a choice he has made, regardless of the scorn heaped upon him by the undead and the living alike.
I love that John, who is making the argument that men don’t like vampires, is such an obvious fanboy of the show. I’d lay odds he’s tried his hand at some Bill/Eric fanfic. Not that I’d blame him. Ahem:
He protects her, despite his fears that he is completely impotent, powerless to defend her from a world that despises them both. And she returns the favor, despite her fears that underneath sweet words and passion is an animal waiting to pounce. A little bit for men and women.
I guess even though undead, vampire men are still from Mars.
I watch “True Blood” because chicks will dig it when I can talk about Eric and Maryann and Action Stackhouse; it’s how I “open” a pick-up artist-style “set.” My knowledge of “True Blood” will help me convince turbo-hotties to come back to my sweet fourth-floor walk-up in Queens, where I will love them forever, or until I have to call the unemployment office at 10 a.m., whichever comes first.
Sigh. I just. I can’t. Turbo-hotties? I don’t even know what that means. Has John been meeting women who have mufflers coming out their butts, because, again, his imagery is just lost on me.
Sigh. Oh forget it. I love this show, without condition. I love that Alan Ball followed up his twee meditation on mortality, “Six Feet Under,” with a show that’s just about hot sexing and gratuitous gore. It’s a soft-core comic book, nothing more, nothing less.
Hey, don’t sigh. That’s my thing. And the soft-core comic book analysis is actually pretty good. Point to you. And point revoked, since I just realized that you assume that women like it despite it’s comic book feel. Because women hate zombies. Don’t dream of heroics. Won’t read comics. Use sex to get what they want. Are gigantic gold diggers. Break men. I may be inferring a few of those from your trenchant critique.
I fully accept that there’s a part of me that will always be a pear-shaped teenage goth girl. I mean, I’m reading the “True Blood” books, for the love of Godric. Horror movies, books, and television shows reflect our collective fears, and “True Blood” is awesome because it sneaks male fears into a female-oriented program. Also: because all the women are hot and sometimes they show their chest.
“I just said I was part girl! But don’t worry. I’m totes not gay! I ended the article with a mention of boobies! Which means I’m totes straight! Unless the part of me that’s a girl is a lesbian. I’m so confused.”
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