Escape to UF Mountain
I’ve heard loads of people talking about the recent upsurge in the popularity of urban fantasy, especially UF based on vampires. Obviously, series such as Twilight have had a huge impact on the perception that fantasy, especially urban fantasy, and especially urban fantasy with vampires, is on the rise.
From a quick search of the internet (and I mean very quick), I haven’t been able to find statistical proof for this assertion. However, at a cultural studies conference I just attended, the sheer number of panels on both Buffy and Twilight attests to the fact that the people who consider themselves experts on American culture assume that vampires are Big Business, not just in terms of best seller lists and box office numbers, but also in terms of cultural capital. Our culture, these multitudinous panels imply, is invested in images of the vampire and of the supernatural, in general.
I’ve also heard a lot of reasons for this upsurge in interest. One I hear quite often is that, in our difficult times, people want an escape and urban fantasy offers a trapdoor into Lalaland. On the one hand, this argument does acknowledge an urge towards cultural escapism that I think is relevant, considering the dire circumstances of our times. On the other hand, it doesn’t answer the question of why urban fantasy? Why the supernatural? Why vampires?
Neither does this argument address the nature of contemporary urban fantasy. Because one facet to the escapism argument is that, in fantasy, the good guys are the good guys and the bad guys are the bad guys. In our morally ambiguous world, fantasy offers you someone to root for. Good and evil are carefully delineated; there are Heroes! But think about that argument for a second. Most of contemporary UF upsets the historically simple dichotomies of good and evil. Gone is the supernatural creature of yore: shambling, disheveled, feasting on virgins and babies and glaring out at us with preternaturally glowing yellow eyes.
Instead we have hot vampires. Indeed, Meyer’s Edward is a big, shiny, prude. My own vampire, Ryu, is not shiny, nor is he a prude, but he’s a pretty decent guy. Jaye Well’s Sabina is an Assassin with a Heart of Gold. Stacia Kane’s demons are not only hot, but we really want the protagonist to go ahead and trust Greyson. He’s complicated, but we know he’s the right man for her! Mark Henry’s zombies are not (just) rotting brain-eaters, but hot chicks who drink Flirtinis and buy designer clothes.
So what’s going on? Why would we read UF if we want morally unambiguous fiction, when the good guys are actually the creatures of the night who should be the bad guy?
This paradox is, I think, most obviously illustrated by Mario Acevedo’s The Nymphos of Flat Rock, in which we see a soldier (a hero!) commit an atrocious act. As punishment, he becomes a vampire (evil!). Only, as a vampire, he’s still a good guy. In fact, we see him suffering, punishing himself for the sins he feels he has committed. This is a vision of good and evil; of duty and sacrifice; of honor and regret--but it’s all messed up. The vampire, it seems, is the hero, while the soldier is the unwitting pawn. But neither figure is purely good, and neither figure is purely evil. In fact, they’re the same man. One just pours blood on his enchiladas. (You totally ruined my porky, chile goodness with that one, Mario.)
What do you guys think? I may end up doing some work on this stuff, mostly to try to wrangle my fiction into my tenure portfolio, and I’m curious to hear your ideas. Why do you think we all love urban fantasy so much, and why now?
Comments
As for our world, it's getting harder and harder to pigeonhole people into either the wholly good or entirely evil camp. People are more informed, savvier, and it's harder to brainwash the masses into rising up against a monolithic baddie twirling his handlebar mustache. Fantasy gives us a non-threatening playground in which to explore those issues.
And by human, I mean morally ambiguous, apathetic, prone to making bad choices, moderately murderous. I could have been describing a vampire, no?
Wrap that around a fantastic world, and you've got something most readers can both identify with and be intrigued by.
Or am I just bitter this morning?
Why do we foist our problems off on innocent vampires?
I don't think that the struggle with good and evil is what necessary draws me to urban fantasy though. In the end it's interesting well written stories that do the trick. I can't explain the why now because it's not simply why now. The genre has been building for a few years.
I grew up reading Lovecraft, Lord Dunsany, William Hope Hodson, etc. For me there is a connection between urban fantasy and horror. So for me it's just another facet of the paranormal, of the things that go bump in the night.
I write paranormal stuff because it's a nice framework to mirror all the nasty crap that people do to each other without being (overly) preachy.
But ultimately, it's because of childhood experience, love of horror and a desire to pervert conventions.
By the way, have we all seen the new Witch Mountain trailer?
Why now? I don't think it's now-- I think this topic has been around forever. It's only the tag UF that's new.
We in the genre can all thank pioneers like Anne Rice, Ira Levin and LKH for giving UF a boost. Of course, we can't forget Joss Whedon, either.
J.
What about the gender issues involved? I think that is a HUGE part of UF's popularity as well. Women get to be ass-kicking, and not just "brave" or "competent." There's no need for the whole GI Jane, "But can a woman really do this job?" tension. It's just accepted that women can be bad ass as well as feminine AND sexual.
I used to read lots of SF, but a good kick-ass female lead was hard to find. The books I loved the most all had one. There’s more now, but UF is filled with them. I’m sure I’m not the only woman who likes UF because of the feisty females.
Combine that with a world that is not the one we live in, yet familiar. UF doesn’t require as much suspension of disbelief as traditional fantasy. We only need to think, well, maybe vampires do exist … or werewolves, demons, and so on. Our world with these beings is easier to imagine ourselves in than some faraway planet or future, or a fantasy world.
Give the creatures human traits, more good than evil, and suddenly they have the allure of the exotic instead of the terror of the bizarre. Toss in a little sex with bite, and you’ve got a hit.
Add that to the fact that somehow Dracula evolved from Crazy Foreign Threat To Mother England into That Really Sexy Vampire Guy, and you end up with movies and tv shows about the Hawtness Of Teh Vampir. Especially after Dark Shadows and Lestat starting influencing the popular conception of them.
Re: gender and "kick-ass heroines," I totally agree with what you're saying, Abby.
But what does that say about the contemporary gender politics that we have to look towards magical/supernatural powers fully to erase the gender binaries that still entrap us? I'm thinking here of Haraway's idea of the cybog and post-genderishness of the vampire.
Courtney: I agree; unicorns are the only species for prudishness.
Thom: Love the idea that Vamps are just "easier," and I think that can be applied to our psyches, as well. Everyone's talking about being "over" vampires, and you have all these "new" suprenatural creatures. Maybe vampires were first because they ARE easier (in that they look like us, except for poor old Noferatu) for us to "accept," and now that we made that leap we want more challenging imagery.
As for vampires being easier to accept, they are the creatures who look most like us. They also represent the darker sides of humanity. They also encompass rich symbolism about blood and religion. And don't forget, they also represent our universal wish to cheat death.
I loves me Buttercup the Vampire Unicorn.
Okay, now that even unicorns are no longer shiny and prudish, I am leaving. Leaving what? I don't know. But I'm leaving.
Or I'll just go teach my night class. Glaspell's The Verge, anyone? And then we're watching the first two acts of Brecht's Threepenny Opera. THAT is a good thing.
We all grew up on fairy tales and the idea that there was a whole other world of beings out there that could easily touch our lives in a suprnatural way. The mad witch in Hansel and Gretel, the anthropomorphic wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, the fairy godmother in Cinderella and the list goes on.
As adults, the idea of fairy tales becomes just something for kids, there is no real connection to the minutae of our day-to-day lives. The closest thing to those fairy tales, in most people's opinion, are the true fantasy books, like Tolkien, Feist, etc. Not everyone has the patience to read tomes containing characters with unpronouncable names, the bad guy is always the evil guy and locations that are beyond the imagination. As grown ups, in our reading material we want the grey area that prevails in the people we meet, the things we do, the adventures we experience.
I came to the UF genre from said true fantasy. I got tired of reading about swords and sorcerers with unpronouncable names and absolute evil being so absolute. While I could suspend my disbelief enough to accept that magic existed, the scientist in me couldn't conceive the mechanics of a planet where the gravitational pull of the three orbiting moons made no difference to how the said planet functioned.
Then I read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and I truly understood how UF was it's own genre; take the ordinary day-to-day, add a fantastic element, et viola, fairy tales for grown ups.
The nomenclature is relatively new, but the genre has existed for a lot longer than we give it credit for.
Yes! For me it's not the crazy magical things I'm asked to believe... it's the, oh, lack of plumbing. And the horses. When I read a book about people riding around on horses and living in huts with dirt floors and no plumbing, I get hung up on wondering about the facilities. Or having to care for the horses. I never even make it to thinking about the magic. The living conditions are too foreign to me. I think my love of urban fantasy really is as simple as the setting change from old-fashioned fantasy.
The sassy female protagonists are a plus, but I'd be open to more youngish male protagonists in UF too. I don't even like reading about vampires particularly. They're getting a bit old. They're just not as old as horses. ;)
I'm not much of a horror person -- I can't watch many horror films and I can't read Steven King or Dean Koontz. So it's a little dismaying to think that others perceive UF and horror intertwined.
I like the idea that UF is bringing the fairy tale and the mythopoeic forward into modern life. I like Neil Gaiman for this too.
Oh -- and vampires? I've been trying to figure out why they are so popular. There are a few vampires that I like (Anna Strong, Felix Gomez) because they are different. But generally speaking I'm ready to move past vampires/werewolves/zombies.
One good thing about UF -- it gives us someplace to take our imagination that isn't a derivitive of LOTR. I'm a HUGE fan of LOTR and it's eternal. But a lot of the medieval sword-and-sorcery stuff is a reaction to LOTR. And I'm looking for something different.
LD and Jaye: Love the link with fairy tales, cause it's true that they would have been totally contemporaneous in their original storytold form. So their warnings/morals/images would have been fresh, every time they were told. In the way UF is fresh for us, while tales of wandering in the woods is no longer so relative for us urban/suburban dwellers. Still scarey, but a different type of scarey as it's unfamiliar. It's lost the "heimlich" part of "unheimlich".
April: I worry about the horses too! And I always have thoughts like, "Wow, they must be really filthy by now." I'm so freaking bourgeois. I'm all, "Are they really going into battle without brushing their teeth??"
Gina: Well, hopefully you'll like my books. My vamps aren't really vamps, they're Baobhan Sith, and besides them there's Barghests, and Djinn, and Nahuals, and Ifrits, and Harpies . . . . the list goes on. ;-)
Caitlin Kittredge has a map for her Nocturne City series. Charlie Huston also has a map of the vampire territories in New York in his Joe Pitt books.
I'm just saying :)
I knew the minute I said that someone would tell me about a book with maps.
YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT.
Even if it's not true and doesn't really make sense.
And I'm kind of thinking of making map for my territories.
But they're NOT TOTALLY NEW MAPS. They're overlaid over our maps.
My other option was to say, "UF doesn't have glossaries," but I could think of like 8 recent that do.
Can I say our proper names have fewer apostrophes? Would that pass muster?
and glossaries of completely made up languages that are probably just Gaelic or Old English anyways
and pages listing who exactly each character is and the kingdom of origin or some such, because after the first thousand pages you forgot
:)
Thom: YEAH! That's it exactly. No lineages. And you can read ours in a sitting, oftentimes.
Less chain mail? because that shit chafes.
No lineages, few maps, very little for made up languages. And characters with actual libidos. Maybe that's why it sells so well. All that libido.
Wy SEMI-gratuitous? Gratuitous is good. My favorite movies are resplendent with gratuitous sex and violence. It's what I go for.
J.
http://reluctantadults.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-time-im-really-talking-about-sex.html
Because Nicole is awesome.
So we've got gratuitous sex (check), violence (check), and self-congratulations (check). AWESOME!