Vampires - The good guys?

With the likes of Twilight, True Blood, and the famous Vampire Diaries, vampires have gone through a major image transformation from being the bad guy to every teenage girl’s fantasy. The transformation depicts the power of the social media by demonstrating how mythical creatures, always associated with dead, evil, and misfortune are now the ones saving the day. I won’t be surprise if people start sympathizing with the devil in the future.

I still remember reading Dracula (the original version of course) and shivers running down my spine. Vampires were never meant to be idolized or loved; instead they were an inherent force of evil, which the society had to fight for survival. The newer generation has almost shunned this image of vampires and has adopted a more liberal view towards them. Media had started changing the image of vampirism as early as 1970s with the release of Love at First Bite - one of the most horrible movies I have ever seen. The concept at that time did not proof to be popular and took nearly 2 decades to be accepted by the public.

If you were a teenage in late 1990s, you would be aware of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; yes it did all start from there, when our beloved vampire slayer fell in love with a vampire. The spinoff series Angel further established a soft corner for vampires amongst the masses. The image was further consolidated by the Blade Trilogy, which demonstrated that vampires can be good.

Apart from character transformation, vampires have also gained new powers, such as walking in the day light, glowing in the sun (hope no Twilight fans here) and even flying at will; with all these powers and ‘chick magnet’ properties, who would not like to be a vampire?

Vampires are not the only mythical creatures undergone a major transformation, we also have werewolf and witches in the same category. Witches were accepted by the media as good guys long before the others. Sometimes I wonder how the Europeans, alive during the Salem witch trials, would feel about series like Charmed or Bewitched.

The new image of vampires is here to stay, since it proved to be more popular with masses and does not restrict the writers to focus only on how to kill vampires (like all old movies and series early followed the same storyline with the death of the vampire antagonist in the end). The vampire fever is set to rise in temperature with the arrival of new shows (like The Originals) and movies in the near future.