Vampire legends in contemporary American culture: what becomes a legend most

Abstract

While vampire stories have been part of popular culture since the beginning of the 19th century, it has been in the last decades of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century that they have become a central part of American culture. This volume examines how vampire stories - from Bram Stoker's to Blacula, from Bela Lugosi to Love at First Bite - have become part of our ongoing debate about what it means to be human. This text looks at how writers and filmmakers as diverse as Anne Rice and Andy Warhol present the vampire as an archetype of human identity, as well as how many post-modern vampire stories reflect our fear and attraction to stories of addiction and violence. He argues that contemporary stories use the character of Dracula to explore modern values, and that stories of vampire slayers, such as the televison series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, integrate both current feminist ideas and the image of the Vietnam veteran into a new heroic version of the vampire story.