REVAMPING THE VAMPIRE: FROM DRACULA TO BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Derived from the Greek word mythos (), which means "story", myth is generally defined as a
traditional or legendary story. Myths are explanatory and defining for any group ethos.
Myths as collection of explanatory stories are central to every culture: as they help convey the sense of
belonging, behavioral models, moral and practical lessons. Carl Jung viewed in myths expressions of the
archetypes, specific forms of collective representations that have been handed down through long
periods of time and ascertained that mythmaking drew upon the so-called collective unconscious.
However, nowadays the word myth has acquired several meanings which call for disambiguation when
using the term in different context. Myths are used not only to refer to well-known legends or stories but
also to popular people and even knowledge.
Contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and
comics has shown that mythmaking is not just an ancient or primitive practice and that myths can be
redefined or combined in different ways which bring about new significations.
Thus in Western culture postmodernism and deconstruction have brought forth a process of myth
debunking which challenged traditional interpretations of such collective representations and promoted
different readings according to the ideological agenda of the postmodern audience.
Barthes claimed that myth is on the right, expansive, all-encompassing and as such was often read as a
message of the oppressor, the coloniser, the heterosexual white male. However, recently Queer Theory
has sought to overturn the logocentric discourse of power looking for allegories of gender in different
cultural texts. 21st century literature and visual arts has followed this trend of rereading myths in
accordance with the ideological agenda of minority readers.
By contrast, Postmodern myths focusing on Queer Theory are on the left, as they put forth the message of
various minorities, especially LGBT and strive to dismantle the patriarchal basis of society, by favouring
discriminated groups and rewriting the discourse of power.
Possibly the best known example of myth remaking is that of the vampire, which has been
overrepresented in Western literature and cinema. If the vampire bloody lore has been handed down since
ancient times as an allegorical representation of demonic forces, modern and postmodern revisiting of the
myth have turned it into an artificial myth. Its revamping started with Bram Stokers Dracula, which
mixed elements of popular mythology with psychological features borrowed from the historical
personages Vlad the Impaler and the Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Bathory to create a seductive yet
blood-thirsty character. Since its inception, Dracula has been an artificial myth and has evolved into forms
that reflected the cultural interests of modern and postmodern times.
In The USA and Vampires are a perennial favorite around Halloween, but they can be found year-round in
movies and on television, in books and on blogs. The public's thirst for vampires seems as endless as
vampires' thirst for blood. Modern writers of vampire fiction, including Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice,
Stephen King and countless others, have a rich vein of vampire lore to draw from.

The most famous vampire is, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula, though those looking for a historical
"real" Dracula often cite Romanian prince Vlad Tepes (1431-1476), after whom Stoker is said to have
modelled some aspects of his Dracula character. The characterization of Tepes as a vampire, however, is a
distinctly Western one; in Romania, he is viewed not as a blood-drinking sadist but as a national hero who
defended his empire from the Ottoman Turks.
The vampires most people are familiar with (such as Dracula) are revenants human corpses that are
said to return from the grave to harm the living; these vampires have Slavic origins only a few hundred
years old. But other, older, versions of the vampire were not thought to be human at all but instead
supernatural, possibly demonic, entities that did not take human form.
Matthew Beresford, author of "From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth"
(Reaktion, 2008), notes, "There are clear foundations for the vampire in the ancient world, and it is
impossible to prove when the myth first arose. There are suggestions that the vampire was born out of
sorcery in ancient Egypt, a demon summoned into this world from some other." There are many
variations of vampires from around the world. There are Asian vampires, such as the Chinese jiangshi
(pronounced chong-shee), evil spirits that attack people and drain their life energy; the blood-drinking
Wrathful Deities that appear in the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," and many others.
Identifying vampires
While most people can name several elements of vampire lore, there are no firmly established
characteristics. Some vampires are said to be able to turn into bats or wolves; others can't. Some are said
not to cast a reflection, but others do. Holy water and sunlight are said to repel or kill some vampires, but
not others. The one universal characteristic is the draining of a vital bodily fluid, typically blood. One of
the reasons that vampires make such successful literary figures is that they have a rich and varied history
and folklore. Writers can play with the "rules" while adding, subtracting or changing them to fit whatever
story they have in mind.
Finding a vampire is not always easy: according to one Romanian legend you'll need a 7-year-old boy and
a white horse. The boy should be dressed in white, placed upon the horse, and the pair set loose in a
graveyard at midday. Watch the horse wander around, and whichever grave is nearest the horse when it
finally stops is a vampire's grave or it might just have something edible nearby; take your pick.
Interest and belief in revenants surged in the Middle Ages in Europe. Though in most modern stories the
classic way to become a vampire is to be bitten by one, that is a relatively new twist. In his book
"Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality" (Yale, 2008), folklorist Paul Barber noted that
centuries ago, "Often potential revenants can be identified at birth, usually by some abnormality, some
defect, as when a child is born with teeth. Similarly suspicious are children born with an extra nipple (in
Romania, for example); with a lack of cartilage in the nose, or a split lower lip (in Russia) When a
child is born with a red caul, or amniotic membrane, covering its head, this was regarded throughout
much of Europe as presumptive evidence that it is destined to return from the dead." Such minor
deformities were looked upon as evil omens at the time.
The belief in vampires stems from superstition and mistaken assumptions about postmortem decay. The
first recorded accounts of vampires follow a consistent pattern: Some unexplained misfortune would

befall a person, family or town. Before science could explain weather patterns and germ theory, any bad
event for which there was not an obvious cause might be blamed on a vampire. Vampires were one easy
answer to the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people.
Vampire defense and protection
The best way to deal with vampires, of course, is to prevent them from coming back in the first place. A
few centuries ago in Europe this was often accomplished by staking suspected vampires in their graves;
the idea was to physically pin the vampire to the earth, and the chest was chosen because it's the trunk of
the body. This tradition was later reflected in popular fiction depicting wooden stakes as dispatching
vampires. There was no particular significance to using wood; according to folklore, vampires like
djinn (genies) and many other magical creatures fear iron, so an iron bar would be even more effective
than a wooden stake.
Other traditional methods of killing vampires include decapitation and stuffing the severed head's mouth
with garlic or a brick. In fact, suspected vampire graves have been found with just such signs. In 2013,
archaeologists in Bulgaria found two skeletons with iron rods through their chests; the pair are believed to
have been accused vampires, according to an article in Archaeology magazine.
If your local villagers neglected to unearth and stake a suspected vampire and he or she has returned from
the grave, there are steps you can take to protect yourself. The exact method varies around the world, but
in some traditions the best way to stop a vampire is to carry a small bag of salt with you. If you are being
chased, you need only to spill the salt on the ground behind you, at which point the vampire is obligated
to stop and count each and every grain before continuing the pursuit. If you don't have salt handy, some
say that any small granules will do, including birdseed or sand. Salt was often placed above and around
doorways for the same reason.
Some traditions hold that vampires cannot enter a home unless formally invited in. This may have been an
early form of the modern "stranger danger" warnings to children, a scary reminder against inviting
unknown people into the house.
- See more at: http://www.livescience.com/24374-vampires-real-history.html#sthash.rTkqdua3.dpuf
It is worth remembering however that Dracula was an artificial myth which combined elements belonging
to different cultural spaces, popular beliefs and superstitions.
Bram Stokers gothic horror novel served as a source of inspiration for several films in the 20 th century,
The first film dealing with Dracula is a 1931 American Pre-Code vampire-horror film
directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. It is based on
the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in
turn is loosely based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula has influenced how many people picture
vampires.
More recently, Bram Stoker's Dracula (or simply Dracula) is a 1992 American romantic horror film
directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola. It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder
as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan
Harker. In Coppolas Dracula appears to be the revenant of the historical character Vlad Dracul (the
Impaler), but the director committed serious anachronisms.
The script is loosely based on Bram Stokers story as it introduces the character of Vlad Dracul instead of
Count Dracula and ends in Draculs redemption instead of damnation.

The opening scene is set in 1462, when Vlad Dracula, a member of the Order of the Dragon, returns from
a victory against the Turks to find his wife, Elisabeta, has committed suicide after receiving a false report
of his death. Enraged that his wife is now damned for committing suicide, Dracula desecrates his chapel
and renounces God, declaring that he will rise from the grave to avenge Elisabeta with all the powers of
darkness. In a fit of rage, he stabs the chapel's stone cross with his sword and drinks the blood which
pours out of it.

https://youtu.be/QMvD2Jlyy9U
In 1897, newly qualified solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from
his colleague R. M. Renfield, who has gone insane. Jonathan travels to Transylvania to arrange Dracula's
real estate acquisition in London, including Carfax Abbey. Jonathan meets Dracula, who discovers a
picture of Harker's fiance, Mina and believes that she is the reincarnation of Elisabeta. Dracula leaves
Jonathan to be raped and fed upon by his brides and sails to England with boxes of his native soil, taking
up residence at Carfax Abbey. His arrival is foretold by the ravings of Renfield, now an inmate in Dr Jack
Seward's neighboring insane asylum.
In London, Dracula emerges as a wolf-like creature amid a fierce thunderstorm and hypnotically seduces,
then rapes and bites Lucy Westenra, with whom Mina is staying while Jonathan is in Transylvania. Lucy's
deteriorating health and behavioral changes prompts Lucy's former suitors Quincey Morris and Dr
Seward, along with her fianc, Arthur Holmwood, to summon Dr Abraham Van Helsing, who recognizes
Lucy as the victim of a vampire. Dracula, appearing young and handsome during daylight, meets and
charms Mina. When Mina receives word from Jonathan, who has escaped the castle and recovered at a
convent, she travels to Romania to marry him. In his fury, Dracula transforms Lucy into a vampire. Van
Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Morris kill Lucy out of mercy the following night.
After Jonathan and Mina return to London, Jonathan and Van Helsing lead the others to Carfax Abbey,
where they destroy the Count's boxes of soil. Dracula enters the asylum, where he kills Renfield for
warning Mina of his presence. He visits Mina, who is staying in Seward's quarters while the others hunt
Dracula, and confesses that he murdered Lucy and has been terrorizing Mina's friends. A confused and
angry Mina admits that she still loves him and remembers her previous life as Elisabeta. At her insistence,
Dracula begins transforming her into a vampire. The hunters burst into the bedroom, and Dracula claims
Mina as his bride before escaping. As Mina changes, Van Helsing hypnotizes her and learns via her
connection with Dracula that he is sailing home in his last remaining box. The hunters depart for Varna to
intercept him, but Dracula reads Mina's mind and evades them. The hunters split up; Van Helsing and
Mina travel to the Borgo Pass and the castle, while the others try to stop the gypsies transporting
theCount.
At night, Van Helsing and Mina are approached by Dracula's brides. They frighten Mina at first, but she
gives in to their chanting and attempts to seduce Van Helsing. Before Mina can feed on his blood, Van
Helsing places a communion wafer upon her forehead, leaving a mark. He surrounds them with a ring of
fire to protect them from the brides, then infiltrates the castle and decapitates them the following morning.
As sunset approaches, Dracula's carriage arrives at the castle, pursued by the hunters. A fight between the
hunters and gypsies ensues. Morris is stabbed in the back during the fight and at sunset Dracula bursts
from his coffin. Harker slits his throat while a wounded Morris stabs him in the heart with a Bowie knife.
As Dracula staggers, Mina rushes to his defense. Holmwood tries to attack but Van Helsing and Harker
allow her to retreat with the Count. Morris dies, surrounded by his friends.
In the chapel where he renounced God, Dracula lies dying in an ancient demonic form. They share a kiss
as the candles adorning the chapel light up and the cross repairs itself. Dracula turns back to his younger
self and asks Mina to give him peace. Mina shoves the knife through his heart and as he finally dies, the
mark on her forehead disappears as Dracula's curse is lifted. Tearfully, she decapitates him and gazes up
at the fresco of Vlad and Elisabeta ascending to Heaven together, reunited at long last.

Dracula Untold is a 2014 American dark fantasy action horror film directed by Gary Shore and written
by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. Rather than focus on Irish novelist Bram Stoker's 1897 novel
Dracula, the film creates an origin story for its title character, Count Dracula, by re-imagining the story of
Vlad the Impaler.

In the Middle Ages, Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans) is the Prince of Wallachia and Transylvania. As a child, he
was a princely hostage of the Ottoman Empire and was trained to be a soldier in the Sultan's elite
Janissary corps, where he became their most feared warrior. He was called Vlad the Impaler after
slaughtering thousands by impaling them on spears. Eventually sickened by his acts, he put aside his past
and returned to rule his domains in peace. One day in the forest, Vlad and his soldiers discover a helmet
in a stream. Fearing that an Ottoman scouting party is preparing the way for invasion, they follow the
stream to a high mountain cave called Broken Tooth Mountain. Upon entering the cave, they discover the
ground of the cave is carpeted in crushed bone; and they are attacked in the dark by an unknown creature
(Charles Dance) with shining red eyes, as well as inhuman speed and strength. While his men are killed,
Vlad cuts the creature of the cave with his sword before being thrown to the ground. The blood on the
sword he used to cut the creature dissolves when exposed to sunlight, and the creature does not pursue
Vlad into the sunlight at the mouth of the cave. Returning to his castle, Vlad learns from a local monk that
the creature is a vampire, who was once a man who summoned a demon from the depths of hell and made
a pact with it for dark powers before being tricked by the demon and cursed to remain in the cave forever
until he is released by someone who drinks his blood, then drinks the blood of a human. The person is
welcome to share his power in exchange for the freedom to escape the cave.
Knowing his actions will lead to war, Vlad returns to the Broken Tooth Mountain cave to seek help from
the vampire. Once he is inside, the vampire asks Vlad why he returned. Vlad replies, saying he needs the
power of the vampire so that he can defeat the Ottoman army. The vampire tells him there are
consequences and offers him some of his blood, which will temporarily give Vlad the powers of a
vampire. If he resists the intense urge to drink human blood for three days, he will turn back into a
human. Otherwise, he will remain a vampire forever and will one day be called upon to help his maker.
Vlad accepts the offer and drinks the vampire's blood, going through a painful and deathlike experience as
he transforms.
Waking up in the forest afterwards, Vlad discovers he has been granted heightened senses, inhuman
strength and speed, and the ability to transform into a flock of bats; but his skin slowly burns in direct
sunlight. When he returns to Castle Dracula, the Ottoman army attacks, but Vlad single-handedly kills
them all. He then sends most of the castle's subjects to Cozia Monastery, which is situated on the edge of
a mountain, as a better base for safety. During the journey, Mirena learns of Vlad's curse as she sees Vlad
holding silver to keep himself weak when near his people to avoid revealing his condition to them or
attack them for blood. After Vlad promises he will resist human blood, she accepts that he will regain his
mortality once the Ottomans are defeated.

Over the past century, representations of the vampire proliferated both literary and visual arts and
generated new allegorical significations, the monster becoming an emblem of class and race struggles, of
xenophobia, of Cold War and of erotic relations.(James Keller).
James R. Keller writes that in particular,"Gay and lesbian readers have been quick to identify with the
representation of the vampire, suggesting its experiences parallel those of the sexual outsider."
Richard Dyer discusses the recurring homoerotic motifs of vampire fiction in his article "Children of the
Night", primarily "the necessity of secrecy, the persistence of a forbidden passion, and the fear of
discovery." With the vampire having been a recurring metaphor for same-sex desire from before Stokers
Dracula, Dyer observes that historically earlier representations of vampires tend to evoke horror and later
ones turn that horror into celebration.
Postmodern series featuring vampires, gave up the Dracula model and came up with different stories and
different types of vampire. They come up with vampires as metaphors of lost souls and instead of eternal
damnation they sought for redemption of the evil characters.
Anne Rices series of novels The Vampires Chronicles revolves around the fictional character Lestat de
Lioncourt, a French nobleman turned into a vampire in the 18th century.
Rice said in a 2008 interview that her vampires were a "metaphor for lost souls" and have always been
transcending gender. As such The Vampire Chronicles display obvious homoerotic overtones. The
homoerotic overtones of Anne Rice's celebrated The Vampire Chronicles series (1976-2014) are welldocumented, and its publication reinforced the "widely recognized parallel between the queer and the
vampire."
Some of her books have been already turned into films and garnered huge public recognition. The best
known is Interview with the Vampire (1976) starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian
Slater and Kirsten Dunst.
Another significant example of re-reading the vampire myth as a contemporary urban legend can be
found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, the vampire with a soul.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an American television series created by Joss Whedon. In the USA it ran
between 1997 and 2003.

The series narrative follows Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar), the latest in a line of
young women known as "Vampire Slayers", chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other
forces of darkness. Like previous Slayers, Buffy is aided by a Watcher, who guides, teaches, and trains

her. Unlike her predecessors, Buffy surrounds herself with a circle of loyal friends who become known as
the "Scooby Gang.
This mystical calling endows her with dramatically increased physical strength, endurance,
agility, accelerated healing, intuition, and a limited degree of clairvoyance, usually in the form of
prophetic dreams. Buffy receives guidance from her Watcher, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head).
Giles, rarely referred to by his first name (it is later revealed that in his misspent younger days he was
called "Ripper"), is a member of the Watchers' Council, whose job is to train and assist the Slayers. Giles
researches the supernatural creatures that Buffy must face, offering insights into their origins and advice
on how to defeat them.
Unlike other productions on vampires this series features a different type of main character; the
slayer being an expert specialised in neutralising evil forces. Since the slayer is a woman, Buffy has also
been related to feminism and female empowering movement.
Writer Joss Whedon says that "Rhonda the Immortal Waitress" was really the first incarnation of the Buffy
concept, "the idea of some woman who seems to be completely insignificant who turns out to be
extraordinary." This early, unproduced idea evolved into Buffy, which Whedon developed to invert the
Hollywood formula of "the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror
movie." Whedon wanted "to subvert that idea and create someone who was a hero" and wrote this scary
movie about an empowered woman. He explained, "The very first mission statement of the show was the
joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it."

Buffy Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is "the Slayer", one in a long line
of young women chosen by fate to battle evil forces..
The show is set in the fictional California town of Sunnydale, whose suburban Sunnydale High School
sits on top of a "Hellmouth," a gateway to demon realms. The Hellmouth, located beneath the school
library, is a source of mystical energies as well as a nexus for a wide variety of evil creatures and
supernatural phenomena.
Buffy is told in a serialized format, with each episode involving a self-contained story while contributing
to a larger storyline,[23] which is broken down into season-long narratives marked by the rise and defeat of
a powerful antagonist, commonly referred to as the "Big Bad". While the show is mainly a drama with
frequent comic relief, most episodes blend different genres, including horror, martial arts, romance,
melodrama, farce, science fiction, comedy, and even, in one episode, musical comedy.
The series' narrative revolves around Buffy and her friends, collectively dubbed the "Scooby Gang," who
struggle to balance the fight against supernatural evils with their complex social lives.The show mixes
complex, season-long storylines with a villain-of-the-week format; a typical episode contains one or more
villains, or supernatural phenomena, that are thwarted or defeated by the end of the episode. Though
elements and relationships are explored and ongoing subplots are included, the show focuses primarily on
Buffy and her role as an archetypal heroine.

In the first few seasons, the most prominent monsters in the Buffy bestiary are vampires, which are based
on traditional myths, lore, and literary conventions. As the series continues, Buffy and her companions
fight an increasing variety of demons, as well as ghosts, werewolves, zombies, and unscrupulous humans.
They frequently save the world from annihilation by a combination of physical combat, magic, and
detective-style investigation, and are guided by an extensive collection of ancient and mystical reference
books.
INSPIRATIONS AND METAPHORS
During the first year of the series, Whedon described the show as My So-Called Life meets The X-Files."[
My So-Called Life gave a sympathetic portrayal of teen anxieties; in contrast, The X-Files delivered a
supernatural "monster of the week" storyline.
The series was often a pastiche, borrowing elements from previous horror novels, movies, and short
stories and from such common literary stock as folklore and mythology.[
Nevitt and Smith describe Buffy's use of pastiche as "post modern Gothic." For example, the Adam
character parallels the Frankenstein monster, the episode "Bad Eggs" parallels Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" parallels The Invisible Man, and so on.
Buffy episodes often include a deeper meaning or metaphor as well. Whedon explained, "We think very
carefully about what we're trying to say emotionally, politically, and even philosophically while we're
writing it... it really is, apart from being a pop-culture phenomenon, something that is deeply layered
textually episode by episode." Academics Wilcox and Lavery provide examples of how a few episodes
deal with real life issues turned into supernatural metaphors:
In the world of Buffy the problems that teenagers face become literal monsters. A mother can take over
her daughter's life ("Witch"); a strict stepfather-to-be really is a heartless machine ("Ted"); a young
lesbian fears that her nature is demonic ("Goodbye Iowa" and "Family"); a girl who has sex with even the
nicest-seeming guy may discover that he afterwards becomes a monster ("Innocence"). [23]
The love affair between the vampire Ange and Buffy was fraught with metaphors. For example, their
night of passion cost the vampire his soul. Sarah Michelle Gellar said: "That's the ultimate metaphor. You
sleep with a guy and he turns bad on you.
The TV series featuring Buffy the vampire slayer has garnered wide critical and popular acclaim. Buffy's
success has led to hundreds of tie-in products, including novels, comics, and video games. The series has
received special attention in fandom (including fan films), parody, and even academia, where university
courses were drawn on the subject, exploring gender, philosophical and sociological issues as expressed
through the series.
The latest series dealing with the afore-mentioned myth is The Vampire Diaries which premiered on
September 2009 and has now reached its 8th season.
The Vampire Diaries is an American supernatural drama television series developed by Kevin
Williamson and Julie Plec, based on the popular book series of the same name written by L. J. Smith.

The series takes place in Mystic Falls, Virginia, a fictional small town haunted and surrounded by
supernatural beings such as vampires, werewolves and witches. The narrative of the series follows the
protagonist Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) as she falls in love with vampire Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley).
As the series progresses, Elena finds herself drawn to Stefan's brother Damon Salvatore (Ian
Somerhalder), resulting in a horrible series of events. As the narrative develops in the course of the series,
the focal point shifts on the mysterious past of the town involving Elena's malevolent doppelgnger
Katerina Petrova. Katerina was the love of both Damon and Stefan Salvatore many years ago. Her return,
along with the family of Original Vampires , have all led to many plots against Elena and Mystic Falls.
The series follows the life of Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a teenage girl who falls deeply in love with a
162-year-old vampire named Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley). Their relationship becomes increasingly
complicated as Stefan's vicious, malevolent and mysterious older brother Damon Salvatore (Ian
Somerhalder) returns with a plan to wreak havoc on the town, seeking revenge against his younger
brother for turning him into a vampire against his will. Because Elena resembles their past love Katherine
Pierce, Damon also begins to fall in love with Elena. It is revealed that Elena is a descendant of
Katherine, who eventually returns with plans against the trio. Elena undergoes many hardships and deaths
of close family members and loved ones throughout her high school experience.
The series is set in the fictional town of Mystic Falls, Virginia, a town charged with supernatural history
since its settlement of migrants from New England in the late 19th century. The town's politics are
orchestrated by descendants of the original founding families, all comprising a "Founders' Council." The
founding families of Mystic Falls includes the Salvatores, the Gilberts, the Fells, the Forbes, and the
Lockwoods. They guard the town mainly from vampires, although there are many more supernatural
threats such as werewolves, witches, originals, hybrids, travelers and ghosts.
The series which has initially received mixed reviews and has often been compared to Buffy the Vampire
Slayer. Thus Linda Stasi of the New York Post gave the premiere a perfect score, saying that she was
"hooked after one episode." Stasi praised the pacing of the episode and the "vicious, bloody vamp action,"
which "starts in the opening scene and continues throughout The Vampire Diaries with such ferocity and
speed that it's truly scary." Conversely, San Francisco Chronicles, Tim Goodman, gave the episode a
highly critical review, calling the series "awful." Goodman disliked the dialogue and hoped that the extras
on Buffy the Vampire Slayer would "return en masse to eat the cast of Vampire Diaries, plus any
remaining scripts."
CONCLUSION
As we could well see the myth of the vampire is long enduring and has received different interpretations
according to the social, cultural or psychological views of each age it has travelled. Its endurance resides
in its adaptability and peoples unfaltering interest for the supernatural phenomena.
Though we cannot yet foresee the next rereading it will receive and under what shape it will surface
again, one thing is sure: it is here to stay.