Bloody or not, here they come

MANILA, Philippines - The fangs.

It must be the fangs, or at least the promise of neck-sucking attached to those fangs. Once upon a time, vampires were undead tormentors popularized by Bram Stroker in the novel Dracula. Two centuries later, Hollywood has bit into Stroker’s mythos and transformed the vampires from bothersome bloodsuckers to swoon-worthy dreamboats of prom-.king proportions. From 1958’s classic scream fest Horror of Dracula to the lip-biting, sullen-eyed, I-am-so-tortured-please-hold-me soft porn of the Twilight books and movies, vampires have become the ultimate adolescent (and post-adolescent, apparently) fantasy.

And the floodgates have opened. Last June, the CW network launched the Dawson’s-Creek-gone-necking Vampire Diaries. HBO, faced with a Sopranos-less line-up, has found a new water cooler show in True Blood. And even the indier-than-thou film fest circuit has jumped on the bandwagon, salivating over Let The Right One In, a fangtastic spin on the classic Romeo & Juliet story.

And what about Twilight, the one that started it all? Months after legitimizing fledgling movie studio Summit Entertainment box-office-wise, Twilight hobo/hottie Robert Pattinson helped GQ become the only magazine to experience a 2009 sales growth with his moodily pouty March cover. Add to that the career-revitalizing effects of the vamp genre on the careers of Ian Somerhalder and Anna Paquin, and you’ve got an indisputable industry savior. It seems anything the vampires sink their fangs in gushes money.

Ironically, in a time of great economic uncertainty, the only certain thing are vampires — the very thing we’re supposed to be afraid of, the very thing we’re supposed to stay away from. The easy answer, of course, is lust — pure, hormonally-driven teenage lust.

This new brand of vampire is nothing like the bloodsuckers of your parents. They think. They feel. They cry. They sing. They look pretty good in a pair of Wranglers. In fact, they’re so humanized they drink rat’s blood to show their girlfriends they have souls (and that they have no commitment issues). This is the romanticized, emasculated, CW-approved vampire, one who waits until marriage to bone you in Edward Cullen’s case.

Immortal Dracula

In a Supreme exclusive, Wrangler gives us a taste of a brand relaunch that promises to be daringly different and break the standard notion of free-spirited clothing as we know it. The brand has always personified living on the fringe, an active and adventurous lifestyle embraced by the modern rebel, and on these olive-skinned bloodsuckers, those Wranglers have never been more at home. Break out of conformity and make a stand. It’s high time you got on the wild side and it doesn’t get wilder than bloodthirsty vampires.

But while the allure of pretty boys you shouldn’t love because they’re bad for you is just an updated version of the bad boy complex common in most teenage girls (daddy issues!), this new vampire trend has an extra bite to it. The vampire myth has been around for thousands of yearsm but as sociologists have found, they dip and peak in popularity depending on the economy and culture. In times of great economic stress or social upheaval, they peak in popularity.

During the rise of fascism, the original Dracula myth was born. Later, Anne Rice’s blood imagery provided comfort and meaning during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Today, in the face of economic, political, and especially environmental uncertainty, we’re turning to vampires again.

Maybe it’s lust. Maybe it’s escapism. Maybe it’s the maxim that love can win over anything, even radically different eating habits. But maybe it’s us coming to terms with our selves, our bodies, our mortality, and the general uncertainty of our existence.

Try as we might — from plastic surgery to the information highway to our micro-blogged existence — to control each and every inch of our lives, we are in the end, at the mercy of life, our fates, and our fears. Today’s vampire mania may be born out of lust for moody, olive-skinned dreamboats, but through their helpless, incorrigible longing for blood, their beautiful but ultimately meaningless existence, perhaps they’re teaching us that in the end, we’re at the mercy of our world.