The third season of The Vampire Diaries introduces the story of the “Originals”, a family who came to North America with Vikings in the eleventh century and became vampires as a way to protect themselves against ‘native werewolves’. The same shifts in theme and representation also reveal that humans are frequently cast as mundane and unappealing in contemporary vampire narratives. An examination of the broad thematic and representational shifts from other to mainstream vampire demonstrates how mainstream monsters are increasingly assimilating into mortal lifestyles with trappings that many viewers may find appealing. This provides a backdrop against which to examine the characteristics of the contemporary mainstreaming vampire ‘monster’. The chapter begins by considering the nature of the abject and otherness in relation to representations of classical vampires and how they have traditionally embodied the other. As this chapter argues, humans themselves, and the concept of the human body, now represent, in many instances, both abject and other. Within these narratives, representations of the other have shifted from the traditional idea of the monster, to alternative and surprising loci. The success of recent series such as The Twilight Saga (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), The Vampire Diaries (2009 - ) and True Blood (2008 - ) has popularised the idea of vampires who cling to remnants of their humanity (or memories of what it means to be human) and attempt to live as human, which builds upon similar – albeit embryonic – themes which emerged from the vampire sub-genre in the 1990s. Now, the vampire on our screen such as True Blood’s Bill Compton, or Twilight’s Edward Cullen, passes as human, chooses to make morally sound decisions, becomes an upstanding assimilated citizen, works in the community, and aspires to be a husband to mortal women. No longer is the vampire portrayed simply as a monster or representation of death. The representation of vampires in horror movies and television programmes has changed considerably over the last two decades.
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