Stephen King goes to war over the corrent nosferatu crop:
Here's what vampires shouldn't be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and only work at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes.
Preach it, master of Salem's Lot:
What should they be?
Killers, honey. Stone killers who never get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red white and blue, accent on the red. Those vamps got hijacked by a lot of soft-focus romance.
I like the way this echoes the Supernatural show, among a zillion other things.
Elsewhere, King continues:
when I say bloodthirsty, I mean thirsty for your blood. I don't mean necessarily a bottle of Tru Blood they get in a bar, or Edward and his family going out there and basically hunting caribou to suck their blood.
Yes, it's covering fire for King's new comic book. But don't forget King is not only a horror writer and fan. He also wrote a survey of the horror field, Danse Macabre (1981).
Two things make me uncomfortable about King's move. One is that I quoted Entertainment Weekly... but the other, important one, is the gendering of King's critique. It's isn't quite "vampires are manly and serious subjects, not womanish and frivolous ones", but it certainly comes close.
Previous Infocult on the lame vampire wars:
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