Monster Scholar

If 2008 was the year of the zombie in the horror icon zodiac then 2009, looking toward 2010 is undoubtedly the year of the vampire. Films like 30 Days of Night paved the way for a new race of vampires in the form of HBO’s True Blood and the Twilight craze. But despite the hype, the question becomes inevitably why? Past trends in horror have drawn on the fears of the culture that produces them. The slasher flicks of the 80s spoke to the prevailing fear of AIDS as a consequence of drug use and premarital sex. Likewise, the science fiction horror films of the 20s featured aliens as a metaphor for fears of communism and the Red Scare. In an era of horror dominated by torture porn fare like Saw and the Americanization of foreign horror, (The Ring, The Grudge) what is it about the new millennia that summons the ghastly specter of the Nosferatu from its dusty coffin? The shadow of the millennial vampire cast its pall over the US at time when most of us where lying in the ruins of a virule...

I will admit that while flipping through channels, I briefly stopped to watch some of the prizes given out at the Teen Choice Awards. One of them was for Best Twit (a word with connotations far surpassing the purpose of the award) to Ellen Degeneres for her entertaining twitter updates. But, I also got a glimpse of the thousands of teens and tweens the CW will be targeting with its new show The Vampire Diaries . Based on the teen novels by L.J. Smith of the same name, the network seems primed to take advantage of the success of Twilight and the teenage vampire craze. At the center of the Vampire Diaries is Elena, a popular and beautiful 17 year old Mystic Falls high school student who struggles to deal with her grief after both her parents are killed in a car wreck. The rest of cast is like a carbon copy of Gossip Girl as Elena’s brother Jeremy turns to drugs to deal with his emotions and their circle of friends quibble over everyday adolescent concerns. But everything changes when ...