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The idea for this thread, or something very much like it, has been percolating in my mond for awhile now. And two recent developments crystallized my thoughts. Thise developments were a visit to YouTube, and my reading Guillermo de Toro's "The Strain".
With respect to the former, I'm a big fan of SOme Random Guy's "Marvel/DC parody movies. He has a recent entry that pits Bill Compton of "True Blood" vs. Edward Cullen of "Twilight" against each other in a game show, to see which vampire's life sucks more. Because we all know it's hell on earth to be a vampire, right? *BZZZZZZZ!!!* WRONG, shouts the host. He points out that both of them are forever young and handsome, and both banging beautiful womenminto the bargain. To say nothing of their vampiric abiities, which seem like super powers to us. What, exactly, sucks so bad, he asks? By the end of the segment, he's pricking his own finger, hoping the blood will send one of them into a frenzy & bite him.
With respect to the latter, as the name implies, it treats vampirism like a disease. IN this case, it's sort of a parasitic worm spread thru a sting by an already infected vampire. There's still a sort of master communal intelligence that they haven't quite explained yet (it's a trilogy, and this is only the 1st volume). There is no supernatural element as such to vampires.
Make no mistake: I'm a big fan of True Blood, and The Strain is a well written book, and I'll almost certainly see the trilogy tru to its conclusion. But True Blood is compelling because it's cool and sexy more than it is scary (although, that having been said, it's got some pretty scary aspects to it; that British crazy vamp that was stalking Tara, or some of Eric Northman's antics being cases in point). But it's certainly scarier than Anne Rice's books (and I'll admit I liked them thru Queen of the Damned, too). And scary as the idea of a vampirism epidemic claiming all New York in a matter of days may be, its disservice to the myth, IMO, is to remove the supernatural element from the vampire legend.
See, as I interpret the old style vampire myth, even before Stoker wrote Dracula, it was supposed to be a thing horrible beyond imagining to become a vampire. It turned you into a hideous monster, not a chiseled, sexy hero. And while you lived forever, it was a savage, mindless, evil beast, hunted and shunned by mankind, feeding off them in a vicious, horrible fashion to live. You were a child & tool of Satan at that point, and it was possible to become one only thru living an exceptionally evil life, or the bite of one such. It was not desirable on any level.
Then along comes Bram Stoker, who gave birth almost single handedly to modern interpretation of the vampire. Or at least, its beginnings. Many have speculated that the eroticism of vampire tles of the period were thinly veiled attempts to titillate the Victorian audiences of the day. But even then, the horror of becoming a thing of evil horrified the morally staid characters and readers of the day at least as much as the unbridled sexuality did. Bad as the rest of the movie may have been, Coppola's reinterpretation got this part right in the scene where Lucy is destroyed. This formerly pure, lovely young woman is changed into a vile, evil, ugly THING, with no vestige of its former self remaining. So while the cracks in the myth's facade were begining to form, it still maintained some of its frightening mystique.
Fast forward to the Anne Rice vampires (with a brief stop in Hammer territory, and a visit with Frank Langella each upping the eroticism a notch), and we now have sexy vampires making their unabashed debut. I mean, really; did any of us really buy that Louis or Lestat wanted to die that badly? These vampires were beautiful, powerful, graceful beings. Who wouldn't want to be one of them, as evidenced by the fact that sooner or later, seemingly every initially human character in the series eventually was turned? I daresay that in our increasingly morally ambivalent society, the idea of a vampire's un-life being scary just because you have to kill to survive just doesn't cut it as scary any more.
As for the scientific explanations offered by works like The Strain, part of my deploring this trend is simple prejudice on my part, I'll grant. I simply dislike when an author tries to explain away a perfectly good supernatural myth with science (one reason I doubt I'll ever read anither Dean Koontz book; he's FAMOUS for doing this). BUt more to the point: the vampires are mindless eating machines more than anything else in this book. More like zombies than vampires. And while that's scary in its own right for its own reasons (giving up one's individuality and such), we already had zombie books and movies to fill that niche. It robs vampires of their individuality as a sub genre, IMO. Also, While I am far from religious, the removal of the Christian symbology robs the myth of some of its teeth (pardon the pun). Vampires no longer have a connection to the Devil, with all the terrifying implications that carries. They're just bloodsucking bags of worms, now. Albeit, ones with a communal hive mind of sorts.
So feel free to disagree, and post your thoughts here.
With respect to the former, I'm a big fan of SOme Random Guy's "Marvel/DC parody movies. He has a recent entry that pits Bill Compton of "True Blood" vs. Edward Cullen of "Twilight" against each other in a game show, to see which vampire's life sucks more. Because we all know it's hell on earth to be a vampire, right? *BZZZZZZZ!!!* WRONG, shouts the host. He points out that both of them are forever young and handsome, and both banging beautiful womenminto the bargain. To say nothing of their vampiric abiities, which seem like super powers to us. What, exactly, sucks so bad, he asks? By the end of the segment, he's pricking his own finger, hoping the blood will send one of them into a frenzy & bite him.
With respect to the latter, as the name implies, it treats vampirism like a disease. IN this case, it's sort of a parasitic worm spread thru a sting by an already infected vampire. There's still a sort of master communal intelligence that they haven't quite explained yet (it's a trilogy, and this is only the 1st volume). There is no supernatural element as such to vampires.
Make no mistake: I'm a big fan of True Blood, and The Strain is a well written book, and I'll almost certainly see the trilogy tru to its conclusion. But True Blood is compelling because it's cool and sexy more than it is scary (although, that having been said, it's got some pretty scary aspects to it; that British crazy vamp that was stalking Tara, or some of Eric Northman's antics being cases in point). But it's certainly scarier than Anne Rice's books (and I'll admit I liked them thru Queen of the Damned, too). And scary as the idea of a vampirism epidemic claiming all New York in a matter of days may be, its disservice to the myth, IMO, is to remove the supernatural element from the vampire legend.
See, as I interpret the old style vampire myth, even before Stoker wrote Dracula, it was supposed to be a thing horrible beyond imagining to become a vampire. It turned you into a hideous monster, not a chiseled, sexy hero. And while you lived forever, it was a savage, mindless, evil beast, hunted and shunned by mankind, feeding off them in a vicious, horrible fashion to live. You were a child & tool of Satan at that point, and it was possible to become one only thru living an exceptionally evil life, or the bite of one such. It was not desirable on any level.
Then along comes Bram Stoker, who gave birth almost single handedly to modern interpretation of the vampire. Or at least, its beginnings. Many have speculated that the eroticism of vampire tles of the period were thinly veiled attempts to titillate the Victorian audiences of the day. But even then, the horror of becoming a thing of evil horrified the morally staid characters and readers of the day at least as much as the unbridled sexuality did. Bad as the rest of the movie may have been, Coppola's reinterpretation got this part right in the scene where Lucy is destroyed. This formerly pure, lovely young woman is changed into a vile, evil, ugly THING, with no vestige of its former self remaining. So while the cracks in the myth's facade were begining to form, it still maintained some of its frightening mystique.
Fast forward to the Anne Rice vampires (with a brief stop in Hammer territory, and a visit with Frank Langella each upping the eroticism a notch), and we now have sexy vampires making their unabashed debut. I mean, really; did any of us really buy that Louis or Lestat wanted to die that badly? These vampires were beautiful, powerful, graceful beings. Who wouldn't want to be one of them, as evidenced by the fact that sooner or later, seemingly every initially human character in the series eventually was turned? I daresay that in our increasingly morally ambivalent society, the idea of a vampire's un-life being scary just because you have to kill to survive just doesn't cut it as scary any more.
As for the scientific explanations offered by works like The Strain, part of my deploring this trend is simple prejudice on my part, I'll grant. I simply dislike when an author tries to explain away a perfectly good supernatural myth with science (one reason I doubt I'll ever read anither Dean Koontz book; he's FAMOUS for doing this). BUt more to the point: the vampires are mindless eating machines more than anything else in this book. More like zombies than vampires. And while that's scary in its own right for its own reasons (giving up one's individuality and such), we already had zombie books and movies to fill that niche. It robs vampires of their individuality as a sub genre, IMO. Also, While I am far from religious, the removal of the Christian symbology robs the myth of some of its teeth (pardon the pun). Vampires no longer have a connection to the Devil, with all the terrifying implications that carries. They're just bloodsucking bags of worms, now. Albeit, ones with a communal hive mind of sorts.
So feel free to disagree, and post your thoughts here.
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