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boston university
culture
If I Hear One More Thing About Teenage Vampires ...
The elite prep students at the prestigious Boston Latin school are evidently concerned that vampires are roaming their halls.
The gossip has seeped so much, in fact, that the academy's headmaster had to send a note to everyone Thursday to quash the "rumors involving 'vampires.' "
This moral panic, the Boston Globe reported, was started when a group of girls teased a "Goth" student for being a "would-be vampire," spreading the rumor that she had sucked someone's neck blood. More childish students freaked out when the police arrived at the school for a completely unrelated incident.
Apparently, teens have been sickly obsessed with vampires since the confusingly popular book/movie "Twilight" began romanticizing the night crawlers months ago. Girls across the country had Twilight sleepovers to celebrate the movie and Robert Pattinson's budding facial hair.
Why now? Vampire literature has stacked libraries for centuries, stemming from Heinrich August Ossenfelder's 1748 erotic poem "The Vampire" and thriving in the latter half of the 20th Century with Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles. Clearly there's a market out there for readers interested in secretive bat-like characters sinking their teeth into the virgin flesh of sleeping women.
(I'm more of a classic movie buff myself, preferring the likes of Teen Wolf to silly unrealistic fantasies. But I digress.)
Just as we thought the fake-literature fad spurred by Harry Potter was finally ebbing, here comes another book about magic, or the undead, or something. Suddenly, thousands of teenage (and college) girls who hadn't had anything to read since the Deathly Hallows were racing to Borders to buy, of all things, a vampire romance story pretending to be a book.
And for some of them, it's gone too far. Vampires at school? Really? What, exactly, are the questions on the entrance exam for Boston Legal, and how do they not weed out the overly imaginative?
Here's a comment on the Globe story from what appears to be one of the girls who poked fun at the "would-be vampire:"
WE OBVIOUSLY DONT BELIEVE IN VAMPIRES
THE MEDIA IS MAKING US LOOK DUMB
THEY WERENT RUMORS, THEY WERE MAKING FUN OF THE KIDS
IM DISAPPOINTED IN THE GLOBE
Perhaps. And perhaps I'm not doing a great job of curbing this discussion, despite the headmaster's plea in his letter to "not sensationalize or discuss these rumors."
But another commenter on the story claims that the vampire hysteria at Boston Legal was in fact started by three freshmen who "call themselves vampires, who bite each other's necks and put band-aids over the hickies/bites." Further, they deny that Twilight inspired them because they say the movie "misrepresents vampires."
Imagine that. A fictional story misrepresenting a fictional being. Kind of makes you want to stab something with a silver cross.
The gossip has seeped so much, in fact, that the academy's headmaster had to send a note to everyone Thursday to quash the "rumors involving 'vampires.' "
This moral panic, the Boston Globe reported, was started when a group of girls teased a "Goth" student for being a "would-be vampire," spreading the rumor that she had sucked someone's neck blood. More childish students freaked out when the police arrived at the school for a completely unrelated incident.Apparently, teens have been sickly obsessed with vampires since the confusingly popular book/movie "Twilight" began romanticizing the night crawlers months ago. Girls across the country had Twilight sleepovers to celebrate the movie and Robert Pattinson's budding facial hair.
Why now? Vampire literature has stacked libraries for centuries, stemming from Heinrich August Ossenfelder's 1748 erotic poem "The Vampire" and thriving in the latter half of the 20th Century with Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles. Clearly there's a market out there for readers interested in secretive bat-like characters sinking their teeth into the virgin flesh of sleeping women.
(I'm more of a classic movie buff myself, preferring the likes of Teen Wolf to silly unrealistic fantasies. But I digress.)
Just as we thought the fake-literature fad spurred by Harry Potter was finally ebbing, here comes another book about magic, or the undead, or something. Suddenly, thousands of teenage (and college) girls who hadn't had anything to read since the Deathly Hallows were racing to Borders to buy, of all things, a vampire romance story pretending to be a book.
And for some of them, it's gone too far. Vampires at school? Really? What, exactly, are the questions on the entrance exam for Boston Legal, and how do they not weed out the overly imaginative?
Here's a comment on the Globe story from what appears to be one of the girls who poked fun at the "would-be vampire:"
WE OBVIOUSLY DONT BELIEVE IN VAMPIRES
THE MEDIA IS MAKING US LOOK DUMB
THEY WERENT RUMORS, THEY WERE MAKING FUN OF THE KIDS
IM DISAPPOINTED IN THE GLOBE
Perhaps. And perhaps I'm not doing a great job of curbing this discussion, despite the headmaster's plea in his letter to "not sensationalize or discuss these rumors."
But another commenter on the story claims that the vampire hysteria at Boston Legal was in fact started by three freshmen who "call themselves vampires, who bite each other's necks and put band-aids over the hickies/bites." Further, they deny that Twilight inspired them because they say the movie "misrepresents vampires."
Imagine that. A fictional story misrepresenting a fictional being. Kind of makes you want to stab something with a silver cross.
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john samos is the vamp
2:41AM 2:41AM Mar 27th 2009
We roam the streets at night.... we are.....yes vampires. If the vampire community knew I was doing this I would be instantly staked. Perhaps I shall fly up their Matt and show you my wings. I love blood. Its red and taste like pure heaven. Goodbye huh don't tell anyone about that dudes dick ya sucked.
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Willet
9:28AM 9:28AM Mar 27th 2009
..."not sensationalize or discuss these rumors."
Young grasshopper should have taken headmaster's good advice.
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Angiebaby
11:57AM 11:57AM Mar 27th 2009
Ahh. I support Grasshopper 100%. Already enough real leeches and bloodsuckers in Congress to cause worry!
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fllnangl99027
12:51PM 12:51PM Mar 27th 2009
While I do believe that this whole thing with teenagers believing there are vampires running around their school is, to say the least, ridiculous what I do not agree with is the comment about prefering classics like teen wolf to unrealistic fantasies. It's still a movie about a werewolf, which is completely ridiculous in the real world because they don't exist and it is far from a classic. I enjoyed the movie but that was about it. There are far better movies out there than than, including Twilight. Sorry I am a fan of Stephanie Meyer and the Twilight series. Maybe people just want to escape reality. Maybe if you had actually read the book you would understand why everyone enjoys it so much. And Harry Potter was great for both children and adults because both these generes let someone use their imagination. God forbid anyone should use their imagination anymore. Then we would have the type of movies we have now, recycled.
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Addie
2:48AM 2:48AM Mar 28th 2009
I do not agree with is the comment about prefering classics like teen wolf to unrealistic fantasies
Was I the only one who read the Teen Wolf bit as the joke it was MEANT to be?
While while we're on the subject of 'unrealistic fantasies', lycanthropic traits are actually possible signs of hypertrichosis and that's a MEDICAL condition.
And why are you apologizing for being a fan? Of all the things that readers are required to endure, having to apologize for what we like to read is the LAST of your worries, apologizing for enjoying literature (of any genre) is like apologizing for being bipedal.
We have the kinds of films we have now because as a species, humans have grown complacent. We refuse to be willing to challenge ourselves with new concepts and have preferred to have the same thing presented eighty MILLION different ways then ONE new IDEA be put on the plate for us to mull over.
If imagination were enough, we would all have read the greatest works of literature and some of the dreks on the opposite side of the spectrum and would actually be engaging human beings . . . that's the 'unrealistic fantasy'.
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tana green
2:05PM 2:05PM Mar 27th 2009
It used to be grownups who were scared of vampires, but modern science has taken all the fun out of that, explaining away the wild assumptions by actually examining a real corpse. So who's left? Credulous teenagers. And boy are there a lot of these teenage vampire romances out there. There's a finishing school for vampires series set in Tulsa that is so bad, but wildly popular. Another in the expensive prepschools of Manhattan. And on and on. Eventually people grow up and realize we don't need vampires, there is enough evil in the world to go around too many times.
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Jane
2:09PM 2:09PM Mar 27th 2009
I'd rather read a delightful romance about teen vampires than read about the bloodsuckers running Washington these days.
By the way, my daughter attended your school. What a supreme waste of money that was.
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tana green
2:17PM 2:17PM Mar 27th 2009
Grown ups don't need vampires anymore. Science has taken the superstition and explained it away. But the myth is persistent. Now credulous teenagers read silly books about it and goths pretend it's gonna happen to them, like that's a good thing. Well, sooner or later it will just be teeny children's scare stories with the real bite taken out. Ha, ha , ha.
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suzanne
4:21PM 4:21PM Mar 27th 2009
STUPID RICH KIDS WITH NOTHING BETTER TO DO. They need to get a job.
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nic
1:11AM 1:11AM Mar 29th 2009
technically isn't the vampire in Twilight a pedophile? he's 100+ and she's 16?
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Kat
4:05PM 4:05PM Mar 28th 2009
I have nothing against vampire lit as a genre (vampires are wonderful metaphors for both human sexuality and alienation, depending on the take you give them). What squidges ME out about the Twilight series (and Buffy, for that matter) is the idea of a guy that old being into a girl that young. Sure, after the first few decades, age really does stop mattering but, at the same time, any guy over 20 who lusts after any girl under 17 is a perverted FREAK...
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jillofthewood
2:44AM 2:44AM Mar 29th 2009
The way you feel about vampires is the same way I feel about: baseball,football,basketball,and all of those @#!!& sports
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