Freckles & Doubt

That's an extremely interesting parallel. It's also one of the things the vampire symbol is good at expressing which is quite separate (mostly) from the erotic - the other. Stoker's language in Dracula is rife with late Victorian fears of the "barbaric" races of Eastern Europe, and part of the horror of Dracula's threat is that he effectively colonises and penetrates the more civilised West. (And, of course, he traditionally has tribes of gypsies to serve him). But of course otherness is always attractive as well as terrifying, or perhaps attractive because it's terrifying - that push-pull tension between fear and desire is at the heart of the vampire appeal. Buffy is particularly good at ruthlessly pillorying the kind of idiots who go overboard on the "oooh different primitive wow" sort of thing - they tend to end up dead.

I also enjoy True Blood rather a lot, mostly because of the extreme self-consciousness with which it plays with the vampire myth.