The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer...

book: The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Milly Williamson

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The Lure of the Va...

	The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Milly Williamson Wallflower Press, 2005 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer explores the curiosity and fascination surrounding the enduring myth of Dracula and vampires. Over one hundred years after Bram Stoker's influential novel was published, an interest in vampires is still prevalent in popular culture. This is suggested by the recent popularity of such television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it's spin-off, Angel. Milly Williamson examines this phenomena and looks at the issues of gender pertaining to both vampires and their followers, the modern portrayal of vampires, the nature of identity and identification, and the fans themselves.

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A great analysis of vampire fandom (as long as you're a scholar)

The Lure of the Vampire is, as the title suggests, a book about vampires. However, it's not about vampires per se, but rather an analysis of people who admire vampires and everything they stand for, people who have meticulously read every single book by Anne Rice about Louis and Lestat and her other characters, and who live their daily lives closely identifying and relating to the vampire worldview. In other words; hard-core vampire fans. True, some of them have more of a casual interest, while others more or less base their entire worldview, existence, and philosophy on the mythology about those pale, immortal beings who only live at night and drink blood whenever the thirst becomes too strong. But all fans - whether they are completely satisfied with watching the latest vampire-flick or if they choose to spend all their free time online with other devotees - have one thing in common: They're all suckers for vampires.

And this is what Milly Williamson devotes most of the pages in her book to explore and analyze. When she doesn't discuss fans and fandom she explores the origin and evolution of the vampire novel along with extremely popular vampire shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, as I said before, most pages are devoted to fans, not vampires.

(Or at least not "real" ones; quite a few of the fans wouldn't mind turn immortal if Louis or Lestat showed up on their doorstep and offered a quick bite and instant immortality).

Williamson is especially interested in female fans, and argues that the ones more or less devoting their lives to the vampire has done so because they "found in the vampire a figure that expresses painful outsiderdom and love in a way that echoes their own experiences in the world" (pg. 189).

Countless of people all over the world are interested in, and fascinated by, vampires, but The Lure of the Vampire is still not a book for everyone. It's a book written by a scholar, and it soon becomes apparent that its intended audience is other scholars or university students, not the everyday reader. Which obviously doesn't mean it's a bad book in any sense. Quite the opposite actually; as long as you have the necessary patience and training required to deal with it you'll find that Williamson has written a book that's both very informative and interesting, but if you don't and just want a book about vampires in general, then you're probably better off buying a different book.

In the section preceding chapter five, "Vampire Fandom: Rebels Without a Cause? Theorising Fandom in the Field of Cultural Production", Williamson informs the reader that she's about to offer a model to "understanding fandom in contemporary culture" (pg. 96), but in fact the entire book, not just chapter five, is an attempt to do just that.

Now, a thorough analysis is never a bad thing, but why does Williamson - along with many other scholars of contemporary culture - have such a hard time simply admitting that some people appreciates vampires and vampire movies without really considering why? Is it really necessary to analyse every single aspect in meticulous detail? I mean, I'm a vampire fan too, but I'm not sure I could tell you exactly why. I just like them.

Another strange thing, perhaps less important though, is the absence of discussions about films like Underworld, Van Helsing, and the Blade trilogy. On the back of the book these movies are mentioned, giving the impression that they will be discussed in the book, but as it turns out, only Blade is mentioned, and only in a sentence or two. Not that this feels like false marketing, well, in a sense I guess it does but it doesn't really matter that much, but it's still weird.

So now, then, is The Lure of the Vampire a good buy? Yes, as long as you belong to the right group of people who are able to fully appreciate her analysis. But no, not if your interest in vampires is more emotional than it's scholarly. Make sure to figure out what group you belong to before you buy it.

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