Vampires used to be classy (Image: Derrick Tyson)
Vampires: too sparkly, too emo and now too American in the eyes of “vampire experts” (what a job title!) who congregated at a conference called Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture last month to take the vampires back from Twihards.
Academics gathered at the University of Herfordshire, located north of London, to discuss the state of vampires in modern culture. “I wanted to prove you can study popular literature in a serious way,” says conference creator Sam George. “I have set up this conference driven by the desire to put the British vampire back on the map.”
Attendees dined on “deliciously blood-red soup, sucked from the veins of tortured tomatoes” and “vegetables, freshly dug from the grave of a murder, brought to life with a sensual crimson dressing of tomato and basil” (we prefer our salad dressings to be erotic, but whatever).
Disgusting menu aside, academics say that because of such American authors as Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer, the modern vampire is no longer threatening and has become a fashionable, beautiful and “decaffeinated version” of the grotesque Dracula created by Irish writer Bram Stoker. Hollywood ruins everything, folks, get used to it. It’s also no mystery that people would rather be bitten by Brad Pitt than Nosferatu. Vampires are so over, anyway. We’re totally on Team Frank.
• Have the undead become Americanized? [Wall Street Journal]
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