The recent rise in popularity of supernatural beings such as vampires and werewolves can be largely attributed to fantasy novel series such as Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. In fact, the incredible commercial success of the novel and the resulting movies has prompted a plethora of copycat novels, television shows and films. On the surface, the CW's new show The Vampire Diaries seems to be in this category of Twilight derivatives. But the program is actually based on a book series of the same title, written by New York Times bestselling author L.J. Smith in the early 1990s, thus preceding Twilight by a good 10 years. In fact, there are those who speculate that Meyer's work and other's may even have been influenced by the enormously popular The Vampire Diaries series.
The Vampire Diaries follows a familiar plotline. A beautiful, popular girl named Elena notices Stefan, a hot new guy in school. Surprise, surprise - he turns out to be a centuries-old vampire. To sweeten the pot, Stephen has an equally attractive brother named Damon. Both brothers fall in love with Elena, leading to fratricidal impulses and strange scenes of suppressed desire. Elena likes both of them and just can't decide. Then comes a series of unusual high school hijinks involving a psychic friend, a crazy school dance and some creepy experiences in a graveyard.
What amused me most about the books was the setting: a small town in Virginia called Fell's Church ostensibly based on the town of Falls Church in Northern Virginia. I'm sincerely hoping that L.J. Smith has never visited the real Falls Church. In the fictionalized version, "memories and ghosts of the Civil War still lived there, as real as the supermarkets and fast food joints;" everyone lives in centuries-old Victorian houses that line Main Street; and the characters freak out when a Japanese family moves to town because of lingering, white-supremacist impulses. It doesn't help that the members of the family are possessed by Japanese demons, prompting the author to travel along tangents that tell a caricatured account of Japanese folklore. Did I mention that the grandfather in this family is a shrine builder?
Despite these factors, the books were a huge hit back in the 1990s, and the television show is currently the CW's most successful nighttime series with about 4 million viewers. So what's with all the vampires, anyway? There are those that theorize that the hard economic conditions parallel a resurgence of interest in the supernatural. Others contend that vampires are simply the newest outlet for teenage sexuality. Perhaps both are true. But for many, there is not much to dislike about a sexy, dangerous guy who is willing to offer the kiss of immortality.
I read The Vampire Diaries on HarperTeen's new "Browse Inside" online feature, which offers the entirety of certain novels online for reading pleasure, making these books perfectly free ways to capture the last vestiges of Halloween cheer. After all, fantasy series like Twilight and The Vampire Diaries offer a glimpse into a world controlled by desire and lust, where no boundary is off-limits. They are guilty pleasures in socially acceptable packages; they are escapist adventures to a world offering the perfect balance between nightmare and dream.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
