Biting Critiques: Paranormal Romance and Moral Judgment in True Blood, Twilight, and The Vampire Diaries

Abstract

Paranormal romance is a popular genre in contemporary narrative that features romantic relationships between human beings and supernatural creatures. In recent manifestations of this genre in both television and cinema, the relationships developed between humans and vampires reveal a Deleuzian penchant towards providing insight into how organized control functions in contemporary society, specifically with regard to how mainstream culture views diversity and the power struggles between majority and minority cultures. These shows produce a philosophical model through representations of the interactions among various symbolic parts of the social system. Contemporary vampire romance narratives reveal how, in a world of disciplinary control, different social groups interact to form small, and sometimes brief, utopian communities or partnerships. In the vein of Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that “the sexual is thoroughly social,” the story lines of True Blood (2008–2012), Twilight (2008), and The Vampire Diaries (2009–2012) contain romantic relationships between human females and male vampires that represent a liberatory structure of interpersonal relationships for the small towns in which they are set (Bogue 2011, 47).¹