Alas Poor Bloodsucker

The vampirism-as-minority trope sees a lot of use, a particularly egregious example of what those keeners over at TVTropes like to call "Fantastic racism". The problem with treating the vampire as a minority, of course, is that they pose a legitimate threat to the society in which they exist, unlike actual persecuted minorities. I reject the notion that a story can be told on the basis that it's from the point of view of the bigots and yet disproves their bigotry by embracing the very logic of said bigotry. If homosexuals actually did prolong their lives by hunting down our citizens and draining their very life force, we would be completely justified in hating them and denying them rights. Johnny Nexus pretty much nailed it in this old article (caution: copious filth surrounding salient point) in which he talks about the difference between race and species. Hating blacks because you believe they're violent and unreliable is absurd; Hating orcs because they're genetically proven to be violent and unreliable, not so much. And vampires are all the moreso: Not merely another species (which would be enough of a wrench away from our normal understanding of thought) but another order of existence entirely, something which in our understanding of the world simply should not exist. An undead creature isn't even in our taxonomic classifications - A frigging archaea is closer to us than a vampire. This, to my mind, fundamentally undermines the relatability of the bloodsucker and its role as a stand-in for the persecuted minority.

It's easy to argue that this is setting the standard too high, that having elves or vampires behave more or less like humans in costumes is the inevitable result of the limits of our cognition. They all act more or less like us because, outside of perhaps a few sci-fi authors with more degrees than devoted fans, nobody has any idea of how not to act like a human. Vampires in particular may no longer be human, but they're trying to act human, trying to regain their lost humanity. This is actually a key element of vampire horror (and zombie horror, and indeed the horror of any of the monsters that lead the hapless victim's friends shouting "That's not Rodney any more!") but the crux is the irreversibility of the condition. The vampire may look like us, appeal to us, but it is not and can never be us. As far as ways to depict another human group (or indeed, even one's own) go, that's pretty fucked up.

VINOs

I admit that I'm a man who takes my monsters seriously. I'm not so far gone as to decry, say, fast zombies, but there are certain set elements which I feel are integral to the inhabitants of horror's menagerie. And the inviolate rule of vampirism is that they're creatures of the fucking night. Given the sheer number of rules, limitations and powers ascribed to bloodsuckers in various incarnations, you invariably have to break a few - I love the internet argument that their inability to cross running water would render them comically useless the moment someone invented indoor plumbing. But darkness is the point on which I will not budge. If it can go out in daylight without going up like a roman candle, it's not a fucking vampire. And this applies double if sunlight only serves to make it prettier. I don't know what you have there, but it's definitely not a vampire.

And Meyer's heroic vampires don't just fail this simple rubric. They fall at virtually every hurdle which makes vampirism interesting, which makes a vampire story worth telling. Their bloodlust is manageable and directed at non-humans. Their unlives are happy and well-adjusted, certainly in comparison to their miserable pasts and the merely human lives that surround them. If they are an affront to God, they've been cursed with strength, speed, beauty and immortality - We should all be so cruelly afflicted. The vampire's appealing characteristics should be a shell, a charming facade and aristocratic air which conceals a soul dead and rotting. They're the nobles who charm the peasantry as they devour them, feudalism or capitalism or Maoist communism* embodied and evil. The Cullens, in comparison, are what it says on the tin. They are exactly as wonderful as they seem.

This isn't just dull, it's baffling. The vampire is a timeworn trope, actually any number of tropes: The Thing Which Should Not Be, the apex predator, the friendly rapist, the dead thing that mourns its own lost humanity**. Ignoring all of these, or playing them down, and still calling the result a vampire is just dirty pool. Nor am I particularly enamored of Meyer's excuse that she didn't do any research on vampires before she wrote the book: In-depth research is not required to get an idea of the cultural circumference of the bloodsucker. The most damnable part, though, is that any number of writers and creators have avoided the 'vampire' label when their vampires are much closer to the traditional monstrous model than Meyer's. The British TV series Ultraviolet refers to them as "Code Fives"*** or "leeches", while the Swedish tabletop RPG Kult uses other culture's terms for vampiric monsters to avoid the connotations that mainstream readers have for "vampires" and to impart a more refined idea of what kind of monster is being discussed (The Nosferatu and Lorelei being quite different beasts). Meyer's use of vampire thus irks me, probably far more than it should.

Next: Why vampires are not a persecuted minority

* Has there been a vampire book set during the Great Leap Forward? Deceit, terror, despair and an unthinkable body count: It seems a natural fit. Of course, the Chinese vampire is almost universally depicted as completely silly, but as I've said mythology is a flexible thing.
** Must... not... make... White Wolf... joke...
*** 5 = V, geddit?

What We're Trying To Do Here

"I cannot believe these kids today."  says J.D. " 'Hawaii Five-O' is not political? We're talking about the same show? The show that ran from '65 to '73? That had helicopter imagery in every episode? Helicopters full of wooden-faced, purposeful white guys in the kind of business suits capitalism's all about? White guys flying around in helicopters restoring order to this oriental island that can't seem to govern itself, that's overrun with violent and bad and indigenous Orientals? The cop show where all the head guys are white and all their lieutenants are good Orientals in suits, and they all cooperate and co-prosper shooting the bad Orientals out of helicopters? With this constant reference all the time to a 'Mainland' that seems close to the island and in peril from the island's disorder and in need of what's the word immunization, but which calls Jack Lord's every shot, and justifies all the shooting of natives out of helicopters?"
"Are you trying to draw a Vietnam parallel?" Mark asks.

- David Foster Wallace, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way"
in Girl with Curious Hair