What is the appeal of vampire stories and why are they popular in various forms of media?
Last Updated: 21.06.2025 06:50
The other thing that is intertwined is that vampires defy everything, from social mores to laws to death itself. They do as they please with no consequences, not even death. That will always appeal to the young, and the young at heart, to be free of the restrictive conformity an intolerant society presses on you almost from cradle to grave. Vampires are free to do as they like, dress as they like, eat who they like, befriend who they like. There's no penalty to them expressing themselves in their true form, to defy them or deny them is to risk your own death. In a society that is rapidly swinging to narrow minded and repressive and intolerant of any differentiation from the heterosexual norm, vampires are an alluring escape.
Vampires are a metaphor and a desire to cheat death, which major or minor, rich or poor, we all fear to some extent. Vampires reflect the 1%, the ultra wealthy who literally suck our lives up by extracting our time daily to build their wealth, and further when you get paid and they extract that much more allowing you to exist another day. They are parasites, they offer nothing but employment and misery. Their wealth affords them unbelievable power, they are above and beyond the laws that govern us.
They can afford to alter their faces and bodies as they please, seeming to defy time and death with surgeries and diets that would bankrupt ordinary people, appearing for awhile to be immortal. That power creates a sexual attraction for some, look at how many people drool over Musk and Bezos, and the weirdly homoerotic and wildy inaccurate AI renderings of Trump that MAGA eagerly share among themselves. Even withered old prunes like Rupert Murdoch have zero trouble attracting beautiful women because of the power wealth has.
I think vampire literature is going to explode into a worldwide craze again much as zombies did, as those with no outlet to express themselves safely will seek comfort in a fantasy world where they can defy society with their strength, beauty and immortality.
Instead of a bit of their blood to create familiars, they use their money to create them among politicians, buying their favor and protecting themselves from the wrath of the peasantry by putting their pets in the way. They have the very best of everything, the best clothes, cars, et cetera up to multiple homes that may dwarf Dracula's castle in size and certainly splendor.