Here's a bit of creative cultural commentary. If you're familiar with the Twilight series of books and movies you know about the self restrained, blood sucking vampires who choose to suck the blood of animals instead of humans. Emily Colette Wilkinson offers up some commentary on how this modern innovation of the vampire myth says something about contemporary culture, and the rise of socially conscious eating.

Contemporary vampire fiction mirrors our collective anxiety about our need for self-discipline and a return to a more humane approach to our fellow beings: Now, the vampire, the most appetitive and unrepentantly murderous of our culture’s mythic archetypes, restrains himself in our popular fiction. He has become a “vegetarian” of sorts, the vampire version of a Whole Foods shopper, who prefers humanely raised meat, free range eggs, sustainably farmed produce. From the shimmering pâleur of the vampire radiates something new and hardly otherworldly: an aura of white liberal guilt.

Hmmmm. Come to think of it, if you put some fangs on Michael Pollan he would be a very believable vampire.

h/t Andrew Sullivan.

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