There is a chapter on Goths in a book edited by Jeffrey Kaplan entitled
Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization.
He suggests that in come cases, this interest in vampires can be part of age related rite of passage and an attempt to grapple with the realities of life and death.
If one grows up in nicey-nice suburbia amid American positive thinking, success driven middle class culture, one might indeed find the vampire goth subculture an effective and appealing way to act out and integrate emotions and ideas one cannot fully express.
(When I was a teenager, long, long ago, I remember when the big shows were
Night Gallery, Twilight Zone, The Addams Family, The Munsters , and
Dark Shadows Vincent Price was on the telly, and we compared notes on whether we dared to go see
The Exorcist and, if we saw it, whether we had slept with the lights on afterwards. )
But, making a long term religion out of vampires entails a commitment far beyond the kind of dallying we youngsters did.
This citation via Googlebooks will take you to page 148 in the chapter where some of this can be read.
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another citation
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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2010 10:52PM by corboy.