True Blood's appeal ? Ghastly ghoul and familiar fiend

From the Daily Texan (UT Texas) Gooo Texas !

People find vampires and fantasy comforting during periods of turmoil

When hard times have the world by the throat, one UT distinguished teaching associate professor says people turn to an unlikely hero — the vampire.

Tom Garza, chair of the Slavic studies department — who has served as a vampire expert for projects ranging from a History Channel special to the 2007 horror film “30 Days of Night,” — points to the global recession as the driving force behind the rise of the “undead” in pop culture.

“Anytime we get into a period of strife — that can be economic recession, war, culture wars or any combination of those — we, as a human organism, tend to want to retreat into a safe world of fantasy or extreme fiction,” Garza said. “The vampire story comes out, the zombie story comes out — any kind of revenant story. The idea of coming back from the dead is a positive idea, the notion that we will survive this, we will get through this.”

He sited a rash of vampire stories over the last five years, from the “Twilight” and “True Blood” series to foreign films like 2008’s “Let The Right One In,” as a coping mechanism for the general public. The second season premiere of “True Blood,” which aired earlier this month, was the most-watched HBO original program since “The Sopranos” finale in 2007. When the “Twilight” movie hit theaters last November, it enjoyed the biggest opening weekend ever for a vampire film.

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