Anne Rice Not So Fond Of ‘New-Age’ Vampires

While promoting her new novel Of Love and Evil, Anne Rice voiced her opinion about the ‘new-age’ vampire persona, particularly those in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga.

Concerning the Twilight Saga the infamous Interview With A Vampire author had this to say: Twilight’s based on a really silly premise: that immortals would go to high school. It’s a failure of imagination, but at the same time, that silly premise has provided Stephenie Meyer with huge success,” Anne said. “The idea that if you are immortal you would go to high school instead of Katmandu or Paris or Venice, it’s the vampire dumbed down for kids. But it’s worked. It’s successful. It makes kids really happy.”

With Interview With A Vampire, Rice basically opened the door to the vampire genre – which she portrayed as a sophisticated cultural metaphor. Since then, Twilight and other new-aged vampire series has turned the genre into a hot supernatural property that is now widely accepted openly.

Anne went on to give us an insight of what a vampire is classified as in her mind, stating: “I always thought of the vampire as being a metaphor for the outsider in each of us, the criminal, the predator. I was writing about a mythical being that represented our own dark sides. Part of the mystery of being a human being is that mixture of the spiritual and the animalian. We have the capacity to murder, but also the capacity to love and respond and be tender to those in need.”

From The Twilight Saga to True Blood and The Vampire Diaries – fans all have Rice to thank for opening the door for these hits. “They’re fantasy characters, and we have to keep reminding ourselves of this. They don’t exist,” she said. And even though the author may not appreciate how the new generation of vampires have transformed, she does admit to watching “True Blood”!

So which was the better vampire fans? Old school or new school?