In Praise of Sparkly Vampires, Friendly Werewolves, and the Zombie Couple Next Door

Here and there I've heard people be disappointed by the trend in fantasy to make popular monsters less monster-ish.  Zombies looking for a nice apartment to rent instead of brains to eat. Middle-aged vampires awkwardly raising human kids.  Vampire romance, shifter romance, zombie romance, etc.   "Oh," folks say, "how I pine for the olden days when monsters were monsters and monster-hunters killed them.  When horror was horrifying."

While I can understand that this sort of thing is not everyone's cup of tea, I think the new, less monstrous monsters are a wonderful sign culturally. My vague lit-crit impression is that there's a lot of conversation in analytical circles about how old horror / monster fiction played on a metaphorical level with cultural fears - something about Dracula and early vampire lit saying a lot about the time period's discomfort with women's sexuality, etc.  The monster as Other, with writers and readers projecting all sorts of uncomfortable feelings onto the monster. If there's anything to that theory, then I think we ought to be delighted that so many of the monsters in fiction have gotten so cozy. I think that it says something really promising about our shifting cultural attitudes towards not just "the Other," but lots and lots of groups that have been "othered."