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HappySqurriel on 27 December 2010
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Jumpin said:
HappySqurriel said:

This seems like a very unusual opinion because most of the women I know who are actually avid readers and interested in reading literature have absolutely hated the Twilight series. Their core complaint seems to be that it is a harlequin romance novel that targets the immature romantic fantasies of teenage girls (and teenage girls at heart) that is wrapped in a facade of the vampire genre; while the author complete ignores all vampire lore, and hundreds of years of literary tradition about vampires.

I often wonder why only Twilight seems to get criticized for not being true to the old Vampire "literature" when none of the other popular Vampire TV shows, movies, and books are either.

I also wouldn't call the Vampire genre hundreds of years old when it was Bram Stoker's Dracula which really began it around the turn of the 20th century. While Coleridge's Christabel and Byron's Vampyre have some similar traits, the figures in these books are not Vampires, they do not drink blood, get killed by sunlight, crosses, or anything like that. Carmilla is probably where Bram Stoker drew his ideas from, Carmilla was written in the 1870's.

The Vampire genre as we know it today began in 1960's and 70's with Marilyn Ross and Anne Rice. It doesn't really have as much of a tradition as many would like to think; particularly considering that most vampire fans don't look further back than stuff from the 1990's; Interview with the Vampire, From Dusk til Dawn, John Carpenter's Vampires, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc...

First off, vampire myths and legends are believed to have existed throughout most of human history, and the first highly successful vampire novella is (almost) 200 years old, so there is a very long history and tradition surrounding vampires.

Beyond that, you're correct that every author has taken liberties with vampires (as authors do with all subjects) but (from my very limited understanding) Stephenie Meyer has changed so much about "vampires" that they are no longer recognizable; or (at least) that is what I have heard argued (I haven't read the books or watched the movies, and all I know about it is from what others have said).

 

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the "real crime" Stephenie Meyer committed was simply not integrating her "vampires" with vampire legends in a purposeful way. If/when an author breaks with tradition and their audience understands the point of their changes (possibly to make something more modern or realistic) they tend not to mind those changes; but when these changes are unexplained (or poorly explained) and serve little/no purpose within the story people get very upset.