Is “Twilight” turning teens into wannabe vampires?

According to one father, “Twilight” inspires kids to dabble in sex, the occult, and home-style vampirism.

Just in time for the final Twilight movie to hit the theaters, we have a worried dad (and pastor) attempting to connect the films with a subculture that, frankly, has been around a lot longer than Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. He somehow stumbled across the various “vampire” communities on the Internet, began (as many parents do) casting his 15-year-old daughter in that scene, and got scared.

He writes:

There, girls the same age of my 15-year-old daughter are talking about “awakening,” which is their word for converting to paganism (like the Christian word “born again”). In a perverted twist on Communion, their sacraments include the giving of your own blood by becoming a “donor.” This is entirely pagan. These storylines offer eternality without God and salvation; in the place of Jesus’ shed blood, girls and boys shed their own blood to be awakened to their own salvation of a new spiritual way of life filled with sex and occult behavior.

We heard a lot of similar chatter around the Harry Potter books and films: that they would turn young children into occult-obsessed heathens, that their souls would be lost. Even the Vatican changed its mind about that theory once it became clear that millions of kids hadn’t taken up the wizarding life.

Here’s the thing about teens, paganism, sex, and “vampires.” When I grew up, teens were reading Anne Rice’s books and playing Vampire: The Masquerade. They played at being vampires, dressing in dark clothing and wearing faux fangs. Few, almost none, drank anyone’s blood. It was a game, a role play like any other. A chance to try on a different identity, one that’s more mysterious and powerful than, let’s face it, just about any drab-feeling 15-year-old.

What I’m saying is this: teens (and adults) have been playing with this trope for a while now; it didn’t start with Twilight. The fact that Twilight took off suggests that there’s something in the cultural zeitgeist right now that makes it a good fit. What we need to do is analyze what that is — actually talk to kids about why they love the books and why they may be imagining themselves in some of the roles — and go from there. It isn’t about the Devil or the Internet/Mormon authors luring them to their doom. It’s about something that’s part and parcel of adolescence — coupled with the way the world is right now, and has been for the past 30 or so years since Lestat emerged from Rice’s imagination and hit the pages of a book — that’s driving people’s interest.

Fortunately, the author of this piece more or less does the right thing with his own daughter:

I do not shelter my children from these sorts of things. Pop culture is too pervasive to hide from (on a recent trip to a Barnes & Noble with my daughter we noticed an entire section of books dedicated to “Teenage Vampire Romance”). My wife and I talk to my daughter about these things so that she can be discerning, informed, and safe.

I don’t agree with him that media is “a potential threat to her well-being,” and would encourage him to let his daughter use her own discernment to seek out what she needs, and keep the lines of communication open so they can talk when she’s pursuing something that gives him pause.

I don’t think he’s wrong to worry. That’s what parents do. They want their kids to grow up safe, healthy, and happy. And, because he’s a pastor, he enters that role with a pretty specific worldview, and maybe even an obligation to keep his kids on the straight and narrow. But it isn’t Twilight tempting them — or anyone’s kids — to role-play as vampires.

So what is it, then?

Why not ask them, instead of judging them?

Religious leaders see monsters — in teens

Does vampire fiction make teens more likely to commit evil crimes? Some seem to think so. Photo by Flickr user drurydrama (Len Radin).

Halloween is coming soon, and people are already seeking spooks.

Specifically, adults in religious communities around the world think they’re seeing monsters — in teenagers.

In South Africa, a foster teen’s parents discovered some of her poetry and sketchbooks and are now convinced that the 14-year-old has a secret double life with a Satanic cult. Because that’s the first thing that leaps to mind, right? In one sketch, the girl drew Jesus on the cross and then wrote, “He lied/He cried/He died.” On another page, a poem reads:

Lucifer was here and now he is gone.
Maybe we should try and just carry on.
The devil is cool, he is fly.
The beast is the apple of his eye.
Satan is our king and he wears the crown.
And he ain’t letting us walk with a frown…”

(I had to check and make sure these aren’t song lyrics. As far as I can tell, they aren’t.)

When the girl’s foster mother found the diaries — apparently while the girl was away — her assumption was that the girl is part of a Satanic cult. Her response? She took them to the local newspaper, which then turned the poor girl’s diaries over to a minister for examination. It starts out well enough:

“She feels very rejected and it’s normal for young people to try and find their identity,” [Father Mike Williams] says, paging through the books.

Oh, but then he had to go on…

“Even though one can see she’s already delved deep into this whole thing, this doesn’t mean that she’s possessed.

“We must see if she has given her soul to the devil or took part in a black mass.”

… What??

It is, as Williams points out, totally natural for teens to begin questioning Christianity, if it’s the religion they were raised with. Some come back; some don’t. Since many teens are vulnerable to black-and-white thinking, they sometimes combine that questioning with an exploration of the polar opposite — in this case, Satanism. Sometimes it’s an honest exploration of faith. Sometimes it’s a way to draw concern from parents who might not be paying attention in the way a teen craves.

Foster children are especially vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder, abandonment issues, and depression. According to one study, 60 percent of former foster kids suffered signs of depression. To me, the drawings and poems from this South African girl sound like the product of loneliness and perhaps depression — but not “Satanic cult” activity. Her mother should consider finding her some counseling, not an exorcist.

Such suspicions are not restricted to South Africa, however. In a recent article published in several Christian newspapers, Thomas Horn (author of books such as The Gods Who Walk Among Us and Invisible Invasion) goes on at length about teen vampire and werewolf fiction. The article, penned by Eryn Sun, draws links between such fiction and a handful of crimes in which young people pretended to be vampires.

Before we get into that, let’s look at some of the bizarre things Horn has to say:

“Psychologists have long understood how women in general desire strength in men, but few could have imagined how this natural and overriding need by young ladies would be used in modern times to seduce them of their innocence using mysteriously strong yet everlastingly damned creatures depicted in popular books and films like Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse.”

I can barely get past the sexism in this quote, but I’ll try: he’s saying that women’s need for strong men somehow makes them crave vampire fiction in which the men in question are powerful vampires. At least, I think that’s what he’s saying.

But then Sun uses these examples to illustrate Horn’s point:

Just a few months ago, a 19-year-old in Texas, claiming to have been a 500-year-old vampire needing to be fed, broke into a woman’s home, threw her against the wall, and tried to suck her blood.

Another instance in Florida involved a teenage girl who was charged along with four others for beating a 16-year-old to death. They were part of a purported vampire cult, with one teenage girl calling herself a vampire/werewolf hybrid.

Where are the girls craving powerful, vampiric men in these examples?

Oh, Horn does go on, arguing that modern horror fiction is different from that of the past, because the new monsters are “impervious to Christ’s power.” In turn, that means young readers and viewers “have exchanged yesterday’s pigtails and pop-guns for pentagrams and blood covenants aligned with forces far stronger than former generations could have imagined.” I’m not sure how many Twilight and True Blood viewers have actually made blood covenants with any “forces,” but I’d bet it’s not many (and, it’s a legitimate spiritual pursuit if they want to — after all, we are guaranteed freedom of religion by the First Amendment).

It’s true that, once in a while, a young person commits violence. Occasionally, that violence is inspired by horror tales. But that’s because violent people occasionally enjoy horror tales — not because the horror tales somehow inspire the violence.

These are, unfortunately, the kinds of messages that can make some deeply religious people question or even fear teenagers — their own, or other people’s. Such questioning and fear leads these teens, who often already feel isolated and different (and therefore unaccepted, or unacceptable), to feel far worse about themselves. That can’t lead anywhere good. Parents and pastors who truly want to help these kids need to love them, listen to them, understand them, and meet them halfway, not put the Biblical smackdown on them when they’re already vulnerable.

Do you think horror fiction is unhealthy for teen audiences? Does it inspire criminal activity, or put their souls at risk? Does the South African girl really belong to a Satanic cult?

Are RPGs still the enemy?

A trio of Belegarth players pause between battles. Photo by Flickr user Glenn Loos-Austin.

Twenty-five years ago, you couldn’t toss a 20-sided die without hitting someone who thought role-playing games were a gateway to Satanism and suicide. Today, those suspicions have moved on to Harry Potter and Twilight. But role-playing games, both tabletop and live-action, are still alive and well. Hopefully, as a new generation is introduced to them, those Reagan-era fears won’t resurface.

Recently, gamer and author Ethan Gilsdorf penned a piece for Salon.com called “How Dungeons & Dragons changed my life.” It’s a worthy read, full of insight regarding how this nerdy game-based culture has now worked itself into modern life as the gamer geeks of the 1980s move into positions of corporate power and influence.

[Author] Myke Cole, 37 — the first in his military-fantasy “Shadow Ops” book series is forthcoming — echoed Brett’s thought but added one more wrinkle: “We are socially enfranchised and successful because of our D&D days.” A nine-year veteran of military operations and federal law enforcement, he’s been to war three times. “I wasn’t raised to the sword. My parents were committed aesthetes who eschewed violence and the institutions that wield it, and worked hard to instill those values in their children,” he wrote me in an e-mail after Boskone. “It was D&D that permitted the pasty, scrawny weakling child that I was to imagine myself as a broadsword-wielding knight of the realm.” He played a lot of fighters and paladins before he became one in real life. “That game gave me a gift I will never forget: It stretched my mind around the possibilities that hover around us, unnoticed, all the time. D&D taught me to imagine, and that was the first step to bending the world to my will.”

In another recent look at RPGs, Anna Van Straten wrote Planet LARP for City On A Hill Press, a student-run newspaper in Santa Cruz. Straten examines, among other things, a Belegarth group that re-enacts medieval battles in Santa Cruz. Like their tabletop counterparts, LARPers are in it for more than just a good time.

Some LARPers see the game as not only a hobby but as a form of escapism. Rick McCoy, for example, said that as a child he read books constantly.

“You know, that was my escape,” McCoy said. “Then I found role-playing games when I was 10, and it was the ultimate escapism, the ultimate way of getting out of reality.”

Instead of escape, the game can also be seen as a form of control, of building a character up from the ground in whichever way the player desires.

“I think it’s a way of controlling your own person, controlling your own destiny despite what life has thrown at you,” Andrew “Sieglatan” Hodnet said.

It’s a shame that something so psychologically rich would frighten parents. Then again, these kinds of riches — which kids so desperately crave and need — have always frightened adults, who would much rather have their kids remain in the shallow, “harmless”, risk-free worlds of Disney, Barney, and so on.

The moral panic around RPGs and LARPing has died down, giving us the opportunity to look at folks who played these games and ask: were the fears justified? Did these games have any lasting harmful effect on players? If not, then are we right to yank video-game controllers out of kids’ hands when they want to play Red Dead Redemption or Bulletstorm?

Reporters consumed by “vampire” case

Evan Francis Brown, a 20-year-old from Gadsden, Alabama, is accused of branding a 17-year-old with a “V.” For “vampire.”

Newspaper readers (and journalists) are perennially intrigued by the extremes of human behavior. That’s one way to explain how Evan Francis Brown caught the eye of several Alabama-area reporters. Last October, Brown allegedly tied up a 17-year-old boy and burned a “V” into his forehead with a heated kitchen utensil. Police arrested Brown, who apparently told them that he is a vampire, goes by the name “Vamp,” and considers himself a Satanist. Brown’s case heads to an Alabama Grand Jury in March.

In almost any other instance, a second-degree assault case would not make the local papers, let alone the national news. But American audiences seem to like a little “oddball story,” something that makes them raise their eyebrows or shake their heads. All Brown had to do was say the magic words: “vampire” and “Satanism.” That got him the headlines.

Of course, nobody seriously believes Brown is a vampire. However, to judge by some comments, people do think his actions are the fault of popular vampire fiction, particularly Twilight. (Kudos to the one person who pointed out the millions of other Twilight fans who do not assault people.) Typically it takes more than gazing upon the twinkly form of Edward Cullen to make someone burn a “V” into another person’s skin. What it takes is a history of mental imbalance — a prospect curiously overlooked by much of the reporting, so far.

More distressingly, reporters are playing up the Satanist angle. Maybe they aren’t aware that violence against others goes against the Church of Satan’s ideals:

What is truly dangerous, what allows people to murder innocents, what some people have labeled “evil” is actually an extreme self-righteousness. Not self-interest or self-gratification, as Satanism advocates. Those who give themselves permission to hurt others have to be able to feel they’re justified, anointed in their feelings of “I deserve this,” “I’ve been deprived,” or “I’ve been hurt.” A deep lack of empathy, a short-sightedness and an intense self-righteousness—that’s where those empty eyes come from. Our society cannot afford avenues for that kind of mass self-delusion anymore. It’s against the very basics of Satanism to allow yourself to feel that kind of self-righteous indignation.

This is another case in which Satanists are painted with a criminal brush, just because one criminal claims he is a Satanist. Remember, this is someone who also says he is a vampire. Arguably, he doesn’t know what he is. Journalists should consider being more thoughtful about which of his statements should be reported as facts in their articles. Brown, more likely, is someone who is struggling with mental-health issues. Parading him around as the freak of the week is not likely to help him in any way, nor anyone else struggling with violent urges.

Culturally, I find it interesting that so many people who decry the popularity of vampire fiction would take the time to read — let alone comment on — a newspaper article that essentially is a form of vampire fiction. Clearly these stories have a hold on us. That’s fine, but they need to be reported in a more responsible way, if they’re going to be reported at all.

Have you ever known anyone who claimed to be a vampire or other fantasy figure? Did you take them seriously? Share your stories in the comments.