Sleeping with a Vampire

Abstract

The research explores the narrative frames of recent vampire TV and cinematic stories with a special focus on the construction of gender relations and female agency in order to determine whether these narratives conjure up any liberating or empowering potential for their audience. The most significant elements of vampire fiction are taken into account: the central position of the heroine, power relations, love triangles, and the objectification of male characters. The identified common patterns both reflect and generate a crucial shift in Western sexual politics; at the same time, they address the burning concerns this shift has aroused, invoking the anthropological concept of “reflexivity.” The analysis is further couched in the debate on female empowerment and post-feminist gender representations in popular culture, including the idea of sexual subjectivity and a diagnosis of post-feminism as “double entanglement.” The described changes within the contemporary vampire narratives should not be, however, simplified as new forms of sexist discourse.