When did Vampires become such pussies? - By Heather Harrison

Heather Harrison is a
contributor to "The Skewed
Review." This is her first
of hopefully many snarky
articles to be published
on our humble website.
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT -- OK, OK. The “Twilight” saga is almost (and finally) done with right? Well then, no time like the present to finally give my long overdue rant about these sparkly tween “monsters.”

No, I’m not talking about Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga. I’m talking about an obsession so absurd, so consuming, that we are all touched by it in some way. That’s right, ladies and gents, I’m talking about the sparkly wonder itself: “Twilight.”

Can we say, “enough is enough” to that one?  

For any of you who have lived under a rock, or, you know, in space for the past 3-4 years, “Twilight” is the Stephanie Meyer “vampire” book series-turned-movie craze that has all the little sparkle-ridden tweens running for the area of Forks, Wash.

I say “vampire” because I’d like to make one thing clear: Vampires don’t sparkle.

Vampires seduce and kill humans by ripping into whatever vein they choose and bleeding their human prey dry. Yeah. Human prey.

Sure, some vampires choose to eat animals, but not an entire brood! Brood is a great way to describe the throngs and throngs of Twi-hards that storm every movie theater and distributor at least twice for every new entrance into the saga.

I want to give you an idea of what we are dealing with here, so let’s compare these media atrocities to something a little more standard: Zombies.

When you compare the zombie hype to the “team Edward or team Jacob” nonsense, zombies are pale by comparison. To illustrate my point I’ve done some math for you (now if only I could put this much effort into some real math).

The “Twilight” saga has four movies released so far that I was able to find box office information on from 2008 up to this month. Among these 4 movies, the gross opening weekend total in the USA, according to IMDB.com and boxofficemojo.com, was $419,132,978. That is an average of $104,783,244.50 per movie.

The totals for zombie movies were a little bit harder to come by, however. I endured through the pages upon pages of zombie movies released from 2008 until now to bring to you the most accurate numbers I can find from movies actually released in theaters.

According to IMDB.com, USA zombie opening weekend totals ran about $136,226,264 between the seven major zombie movies I found listed in that time frame. Average that out and you come up with a total of about $19,460,895 per movie. For those who just don’t want to complete the math on your own, that is roughly an $85,322,349 difference. Like I said—these are just estimates.

“Heather, why do you have such a vendetta against ‘Twilight?’”

I grew up on the vicious vampire world of Lestat and Louis where, though still full of turmoil, they were strong and violent, as vampires have always been—not sparkly and able to maneuver in the daylight.

 That wasn’t too violent for me when I was a teenager, and it wasn’t too graphic. It was plain old scary fantasy to me. So my point in all of this, if I may hop up on my soapbox momentarily, is simple: Vampires just aren’t what they used to be because teens aren’t what they used to be.

I understand that times change and opinions change, and maybe I’m getting too far into the “back in my day” mindset for this topic, but, come on! Vampires are an age-old legend, and in my opinion the “Twilight” saga just kind of took that and ran it right off the proverbial track.

In all fairness, I will give credit where credit is due; Stephanie Meyer is brilliant for marketing toward today’s teens. But for derailing the very thing I grew up on, I give Stephanie Meyer 5 out of 5 sparkles and a rainy day in good ol’ Forks in Washington state!