The early black and white silent film from the twenties entitled Nosferatu introduced the cultural folklore of vampires to Hollywood. To this day people still can envision the famous blood sucking fiend when he is mentioned. Notice any difference between him and the smash fantasy hit of the Twilight Saga? Yeah. That’s right. He’s pretty much as ugly as it gets. Long, stretching, pale fingers that make his hands look like white spiders and a huge curving nose like a bird’s claw were just a few of his memorable traits. How do we get from him to a man who is described as dazzlingly beautiful? All folklore, even modern tales (yes, we still have folklore), is not immune to the shifts in society. Monsters very typically reflect a combination of cultural vices to make them scary. The original French werewolf (the loup garou) was actually a man who did not attend church services regularly then missed an important session of mass. With the deep permeation of the Victorian area against all and any things sexual, our monsters began to embrace that negative traitâthink of the monster ravishing the beautiful maiden stories. Vampires then had to become sexual creatures as well, but who would ever be tempted by the sexual vices of a vampire if he looks like Nosferatu? Therefore, you can see the appearance of vampires begin to shift so that they become more attractiveâa legitimate threat of sexual temptation to the average person.
