For those not familiar, Spike is one of my headmates. Which means that he's technically "not real," but don't let that bother you, because he's got something to say.
Now, by that I don't mean that I have something to say but I'm hiding behind Spike because I think that this opinion is silly or something to be ashamed of. Frankly, it takes a tremendous amount of courage (and a real willingness to risk looking like an asshole) to admit that you have a headmate with his own opinions in the first place, much less that he is a vampire.
Did I mention that he is that Spike? In fact, he is. Not literally; that's the mental form he takes.
And oh, yes, he has opinions.
Spike has loads of opinions, but the opinion that we're presenting now - and if you don't want to hear it, feel free to stop reading/unfollow/whatever - concerns modern media.
Spike's not a perfect guy, you know. It's not even on his list of ambitions, which run mainly toward "eat, do whatever the heck you want, repeat as necessary." So he's not big on the whole social justice thing.
However, he HATES vampire stories.
According to Spike, vampire stories are nearly always messed up in some way. Taking a cue from the concept of the "male gaze" as described by feminists, he attributes this to an effect he calls the "human gaze."
Basically, very few movies about vampires are written by anyone who actually gives a shit about vampires. They're written to entertain humans. So the vampires are made out of whatever mythos people think are neat or funny or catchy, they talk with funny accents and get into ridiculous relationships with humans *cough* (Spike begins communicating directly now) - no, see, the kind of humans that a vampire would break just as soon as look at, because our self-control isn't that good. Unless we're being human, which is another story entirely. But yeah, you've got this vampire character who sees this human for five minutes, decides he's in love, spends four books trying not to eat her and you just wish he'd put her out of his misery already.
Or else the vampire is some big, bad villain who's out to get some helpless maiden - Jason Patric counts in that - and it's up to the heroic human man to save her from certain death at the hands of Count Large Ham. Of course, he dies. It's usually a he. Though for some reason woman vampires are all preying on other women, as well. No respect for the fact that a real vampire woman could take out a 6'4 male bodybuilder if she put her mind to it, no, the victim has to be someone that a human woman could take on. It's bullshit.
If he's not the Big Bad Villain, there are only a few other roles: the Seductress (basically the same as the BBV but with tits and a lot of hair), the generic, probably-not-even-sentient mook type (seen in 30 Days of Night and there's a bit of that going on in The Lost Boys as well, not to mention Buffy; let me tell you, the creators of that show are slanted), and of course the "good" vampire; usually the same romantic lead I talked about earlier, he might eat people but he hates it, or he lives on animal blood (you know, to make his heroism more palatable to the audience), and just to prove that he's really not a bad guy he tends to embark on some quest to become human. If he can't, he just spends every possible minute reminding his audience that he really, really would be human if he could.
The other recourse is to do a story from the point of view of a human who as just gotten turned into a vampire, and has to learn to cope with OH MY GOD, BEING UNDEAD and basically it turns into one colossal excuse to fill the story with teen-age angst fits. You know, we do have those, but I'm not exactly happy with humans putting them on display for their own enjoyment. That's really sick.
Anyway, the point is, it's always really about the humans. Human wish fulfillment. Humans overcoming some big, shadowy demon in order to earn their place as a man. Or just proving how utterly fucking amazing they are by taking out one of Humanity's oldest fears. Humans using vampires as a cheap replacement for whatever kind of romance is taboo during their time. Dear Mrs. Rice and your thinly-veiled gay stand-ins: who's supposed to stand in for the gay vampires? No one, that's who. It doesn't work.
You never hear about the day-to-day lives of vampires. Stories are never told from our point of view unless we pass some ridiculous standard of heroism set by humans. More often than not, we die, because no one really knows what to do with a vampire who is unapologetically a vampire after the end of the story. You've got to change - learn to play by their rules - or you die. Hell, learn to play by the rules and you'll probably die anyway, because how else is a good heroic vampire supposed to redeem himself?
Oh, and don't even get me started about the few stories that do try to get it from our perspective. Vampire Diaries. Vampire Knight. That's not realistic. It's nothing but wish fulfillment, a glamorization of vampire lives; it has nothing to do with how we live and everything to do with humans looking for a socially-acceptable medium to express their vicarious hedonism. Sorry to be the one to break it to everybody, but real life was never so interesting. And it's pretty fucked up of you to think you can keep pretending otherwise just because you, personally, don't know any vampires.
Thank you for your time, you probably think this is complete bullshit and I don't have a leg to stand on because oh, gee whiz, I'm actually an imaginary person and I just inconveniently forgot about that in earshot of real human beings. It's okay. I'm ready for it.
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