In the summer of 2007, two pop-subculture genres came to somewhat of a major close. It was the last installment of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, as well as the release of the final Harry Potter book. And even though Talk Like a Pirate Day is still around, and we’re still having fun with the concept of plundering the seven seas, the love of all things pirate has all but vanished, except for the Halloween aisle at Walmart.
Now, while the school of witchcraft and wizardry that is Hogwarts would remain alive in upcoming film releases, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows put a end stamp on the Potter subculture. What will we do on hot summer nights instead of sit on the porch debating what’s going to happen in the next book? Will Wizard Rock die off? And the most important question readers found themselves asking. What do I read now?
Well, the answer to Harry Potter withdrawal came approximately a month after the release of the final novel, this time in the form of a vampire, and it was called Twilight.
See, there’s something that needs to be understood here. Twilight’s popularity did exist during the time of Harry Potter, but I feel that it didn’t get a true cult following until the Potter saga was finished. And with the release of the third Twilight novel only a month after Potter, fans who finished the series started to notice the press release, and began to pick up the series.
A year later, with the announcement of the fourth and final book in the Twilight saga, rumblings of a new pop-subculture hero started to appear. The Lost Boys sequel, HBO’s announcement of Tru Blood, and of course the Twilight films announcement all pointed that the vampire was the next subculture turned pop culture hit.
March 2008 I wrote a blog here calling out that 2008 would be “the year of the vampire”, and it looks as if the rest of 2009 will be no different. With the release of the second Twilight film hitting us this fall, as well as CW’s TV series based off of The Vampire Diaries rolling on fall schedules. And as sensible as it seems that this all flows like marketing clockwork, the underbelly is rarely talked about when it comes to the development and blowout of these subculture stereotype heroes.
As I wrote in the old post, the “pirates vs. ninjas vs. vikings” formula holds true, but is flawed now in what the formula is. We’ve moved on, now we’re looking at “vampires vs. zombies vs…..” well, versus what? I’m going to take a jump here, and fill in the third slot with nothing other than the werewolf.
But why? Well, opposite of the vampire in Twilight is the werewolf, and in the upcoming second film, they begin to play a major plot point. But they’re showing up elsewhere as well, in the same underground formula that vampires and pirates did before it. But we’ll get to that next time.
