I'm somewhere in the middle ground as regards my vampire preferences. There needs to be a darkness to vampires, regardless of whether they're good or evil, there needs to be something in their attitudes that marks them as not quite human, something unsettling. You should be scared of vampires, yet irresistibly drawn to them at the same time. For me vampires are representatives of our hidden desires and wants, the taboo, the forbidden, the 'wrong' that feels so right. Lust, pleasure, hedonism and the absolute and complete freedom to indulge in them without any consequences. These are things that many of us desire to some extant, vampires embody these things to the fullest of their potential. And while none of the above-mentioned things/desires/values/whatever you wanna call them, are wrong by themselves, when you creatures that have all the freedom in the world to indulge their desires without having to worry about any potential consequences, without caring about anyone else or how their actions may affects others then it can be dangerous. Especially since there is no authority to stop them, no laws to restrain them, nothing but the pure, unadulterated freedom to do what they like. It all comes down to their own personal codes (if they have any to begin with), the only thing stopping a vampire from killing you is whether or not she/he considers the act to be immoral according to her/his own personal moral compass which wouldn't necessarily align with human morality. It's scary being at the mercy of someone like that. Especially when you add in their superhuman strength and speed and their immortality. Also I like my vampires to be in the grey areas of morality, rather than being completely good or irremediably evil - not that there's anything wrong with either extreme, I just find the grey more interesting in a story and far more intriguing. One of the problems with the modern vampire imo is that they act too human, in terms of their attitudes and their morals, and that's frustrating to me. I mean what's the point of vampires if we restrict them to the confines of human ethics and sensibility? Some of these modern vampires feel more like teenage emos with a blood fetish than vampires. THIS. This is one of the most infuriating parts of Twilight for me. My general opposition to abstinence aside, using vampires to promote abstinence is like holding an AA meeting at an Irish pub, I mean what the fuck?!
Yep, very true, and I agree with your review, I don't even have to see the movie to do so. It's almost tradition now, remake a classic that somehow spoils what was done before. I'm kinda through with the regurgitation, and even if they try to give "backstory" or some new element, it's still just trying to profit off of a dead horse. It's been ridden too much before they even started. I strongly believe there's two things driving the need to recreate old movies. One is because they want to try the same stuff with better technology, and some people regret having the originals done in a time where technology wasn't as developed. What they don't realize is that technology doesn't make it easier, it makes it harder, and sometimes less is more. They're blinded by the semi-realism they can bring, without realising it still doesn't look "real", and ends up making it cheesy (I can see the CG elements plain as day, and they needed to take a hint from the master of old and not show it so much, hide it in the shadows like they used to, it's still not real enough to have it displayed too much). The other reason they keep remaking stuff is because they've completely ran out of good material. Every once in a very long while they'll find a new-ish story to tell, but it's rare, and often not as well done as it could have been (still relying too much on CG usually). It's a shame though, no one in hollywood is willing to try new, risky things. It's actually a known fact. For example, Japan will try new and risky things, thus all their anime that gets produced which is solely trying to be original in most cases. Hollywood does not do that, they're dead, they've isolated any possibility of a new story that's done well. That's why vampires are sparkly, werewolves are declawed, and the xenomorph is now just a bloodlust that doesn't really have the feeling behind it. Don't get me started on our superheroes either...while some of those films I admittedly liked kinda, it's just sad. I want to remember the Hulk the way he was...not the way he is now.
I think it partly depends what you want people to get out of the novel - whether you want it to be a comment on society like a lot of zombie plots are, to create a fantasy of being special and misunderstood, to create something to horrify and to scare... I really liked reading Dracula, there is just so much imagery in it and fear of the unknown. But again, you have leeway of how much it is physical and how much psychological. I mean if you were turned into a vampire and really craved human meat and had to eat it to survive but still had your own mind can you imagine how messed up it would make you over time? And as for police forces having to fight vampires, what about vampires being prevalent enough that they are in charge? What are their relationships like? And on that note you should definitely watch Daybreakers if you haven't already!
Is this the one where they learn the trick of de-vamperizing vampires by extinguishing their "flame-out" right at the moment of immolation from sunshine?
Yes, but... Stoker does much the same type of moralizing in Dracula. It's just that the prose is so much better that we tend to let it be. Dracula indulges the reader in a pantomime of seduction, instead of the real thing. And it sure wasn't to promote a more progressive attitude towards womanhood.
Yeah... that's another issue I have with the portrayal of vampires. Making it a "medical issue". Talk about mixed epistemologies. Sadly, my little indulgence into Hemlock Grove is doing the same. Turns out you can "cure" упири through gene therapy. (epic audible eyeroll)
It's probably just to modernize the idea that vampyrs—although distinct & separate entities—can somehow "turn" humans Like one day you're average joe minding your own business when all of a sudden a random crazy person bit you and you're now a totally different biological species with weird abilities. I think it's the same reason modern vanpyrs don't turn into bats or smoke or have hypnotic powers—we're trying to ignore the supernatural or "magic" angle and ground it in modern gritty realism. Which is silly I think.
True but for one thing Dracula was published over a hundred years ago, one can hardly expect a progressive message from it. Actually one of my favorite things about the vampire genre is how it was appropriated over the years to convey the exact opposite message, vampires going from cautionary tales of human sexuality to embodiments of sexual liberation. Which brings me to twilight. The major differencrs between that and Dracula, aside from the latter being light years better in prose and overall quality, is the fact that Bram Stoker still presented vampires as symbols of sexuality, it was just they were portrayed negatively in that regard, whereas in Twilight vampires ARE NOT symboles of human sexuality at all. They're just moody teens with a serious case of Vitamin D deficiency and a mild blood fetish -they don't evem drink human blood for crying out loud ! Worse still in Twilight it's the vampire- namely Edward- who encourages abstinence. Bella practiacally wants to fuck his sparkly brain out from book 1 and he's the one who says he won't do it until after they get married. A vampire actively promotes and advocates for abstinence. That is what's so wrong with Twilight.
I mean...I guess I can see it in the way Edward has to constantly resist his urges. But it doesn't really come across well.
I lean towards classic vampires, but not entirely. My favorite old school vampire story is definitely Carmilla, because I felt a much stronger connection with the vampire character than I did in Dracula. Dracula was an obstacle and a villain, but Carmilla has a balance between alluring and monstrous, two highly desirable vampire character traits. I love when a character entices you, but at the same time, we're supposed to be warned against becoming one of them. Immortality must be a high stakes game. I enjoy reading vampire with a heart of gold stories for fun, but they are not what I want in a vampire character. The vampirism is more of a sidebar, just shorthand for a supernatural badboy, without really delving into what makes it an interesting subject.
