I must admit, blushing slightly, that I am rather fond of the vampire genre. In fact, let me come right out with it and state that I love the classic works and classic interpretations of them: Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, of course; Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”; Tod Browning’s 1931 film-version, with the wonderfully orotund Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula; and F.W. Murnau’s Expressionistic masterpiece of the silent cinema, “Nosferatu” (1922). The appeal of the genre was best summed up by the great Danish director, Carl Theodor Dreyer (whose “Vampyr” of 1932 is another extraordinary, hallucinatory work): “Horror is not a part of the things around us, but of our own subconscious mind”. Vampires appeal to humanity’s “thanatos”. As defined by Freudians, “thanatos” is much more than a ‘death wish’. It is a self-destructive attraction to disorder, disintegration, and the primal ooze. So, in “Dracula”, Jonathan Harker feels both an intense “longing” for, and a “deadly fear” of, the female vampires’ “brilliant white teeth” and “the ruby of their voluptuous lips”.



The bloody antics of these monsters of the id are also a hideous travesty of the mass. Christians believe that Christ’s “most precious blood” offers redemption; Dracula and his kind drain blood to consign their victims to eternal living-death, not joyous immortality.

So, to me, the creation of a supposedly rational heroine who openly longs for vampirehood --“I belong there” – is a ridiculous betrayal of a disquieting genre. The immense success of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” saga is, on the face of it, very peculiar. Barbara Cartland and Stephen King (and Meyer’s vampires-in-a-rural-American-community narrative certainly owes a great deal to King’s “Salem’s Lot”) are grotesque bedfellows.

In essence, Meyer is a Mills and Boonish pornographer. What used to be called ‘heavy petting’ dominates the “Twilight” saga. So, in the latest work, David Slade’s “Eclipse”, against picture-postcard backdrops of flower-clad fields or snow-iced mountains, and in extreme, caressing close-ups, teenagers kiss, grope, and murmur platitudes (Edward is big on murmuring in both the novels and the films), but nothing disturbingly erotic occurs. After all, Edward and his relatives are noble. They are “vegan vampires” (one of Meyer’s more idiotic inventions): they prey on unfortunate bambis and bears, rather than on us.

Meyer’s novels and the films they have spawned are not really vampire works at all. They could best be described as Gothic romances, and all post-nineteenth-century Gothic romances are spritzers composed of the potent ingredients present in “Jane Eyre”. If you remove the feminist elements and the bildungsroman structure of “Jane Eyre” – in short, everything that makes it a great novel -- then you are left with a Cinderella-ish story of an unconventional, intellectual girl who tames a mysterious, equally unconventional anti-hero. It is no accident that Meyer’s vampire hero shares Mr Rochester’s Christian name.

Perhaps most titillating to teenage fans of this Cartland-King recipe is the teasing question: whom will Bella choose? As presented in “Eclipse”, this is the Scarlett O’Hara dilemma: do you go for the dashing rogue, Rhett Butler, with his rippling muscles, “bold black eyes”, and tom-cat grin, or do you continue to carry a torch for silver-blonde Ashley Wilkes, with his patrician airs and courtly desires? In “GoneWith The Wind”, of course, the two men are much more nuanced: Rhett is a rebellious Charleston gentleman turned self-interested privateer, and Ashley is an introspective idealist, obsessively committed to the feudal order of the ante-bellum South. The “Eclipse” version of Scarlett’s dilemma is a lot simpler, as it must be when one is dealing with characters of whom it would be over-kind to use the adjective, “cardboard”. Will Bella lose her virginity to a heavily painted wimp with Clara Bow lips or to a perpetually bare-chested jock with a twitching jaw? Ask somebody who cares.

Does “Eclipse” have any redeeming features? Well, the opening, a film-noirish sequence in which vampires attack a victim in a rain-swept city street, arouses a slight frisson, and the climactic battle-- vegan vampires and virtuous werewolves unite against an army of new bloodsuckers -- has its moments, although one soon tires of the high-speed pouncing and thunderously intensified, mechanistic whoosh sounds. When they are in lupine form, the werewolves are quite spectacular, and there is one vampire, Alice (Ashley Greene), who is very charming indeed. With her wry smile and Louise Brooks bob, she deserves to be in a production of “Private Lives’’, not this schlock.

The dialogue, culled from Meyer’s texts, I assume, ranges from ponderous self-pity (“I stumbled literally through my life”) to smart-alecky gibes (“I am hotter than you”). In short, the lines are exactly what smackable, precocious kids would mistake for profundity or wit. Robert Pattinson (Edward) and Taylor Lautner (Jake) cannot act for toffee, but, then, the former, is encumbered by all that lipstick, and the latter has to keep thrusting his nipples at the camera. As Bella, Kristen Stewart, doe-eyed and tremulous, has the right bluestocking-with-allure quality. Little more need be said.

Does reading or viewing this saga harm kids? I shouldn’t think so. After all, as a child, I read all of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five tales and I don’t think I ever believed that an intrepid dog would save me from smugglers. Children are, I think, more attuned to what constitutes reality than nervous parents believe. There is no need to worry, until your adolescent daughter starts dreamily examining her boyfriend’s flesh for crystals or wishes your Alsatian luck for the pending, apocalyptic battle. As it is, teenagers will inevitably ‘move on’. Harry Potter fanatics progress to Tolkien and then, we hope, to John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”, and Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. The aging process has its advantages. The destruction of the appeal of Meyer’s works and of their spin-offs must be regarded as one such advantage.