To me, New Moon means I shaved my butt before a party.

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So it's ok if I just criticize the books then!

 

No, I actually liked the books better. Teen Snook just finished the last book in the series so I'm even more protective because of that.

 

Vampires are mythical monsters. Pay special attention to that last word: MONSTERS!!. They feed on the blood of the living! Living people!.

Now, I understand the desire to portray them as tortured souls like Interview with a Vampire did, and that can go well, as long as you don't blur any edges. A tortured soul has reason to be tortured, and bad side-effects from the torture. I can also understand the desire to portray vampires as an eldrich society. I think Underworld did a decent job of that. The modern, teen-angst portrayal of vampires, though, which started with Buffy, is simply inexcusable. It's an unholy twist of "Tall, dark, and mysterious", "Dangerous", "wounded", "forbidden love", and "emo". Unfortunately, the only tortured souls in these stories are the people reading/seeing them.

 

My brother was forced to watch this and he said "Myeh, it was ok if you just watch it that one time". I believe my real brother was taken to an island and this copy sent back. No one knows.

BTW, This is the best name for a thread. Ever.

 

The original Buffy movie was hilarious -- Pee Wee Herman ... best ... vampire ... ever.

"Kill him ... a lot." What a great line.

 

The Buffy movie had a fantastic cast!

@Trellheim: I wonder if it can be worse than Practical Magic.

@The Great Snook: fair enough, I'll limit myself to derived products then.

 

Twilight is like throwing up on a pile of trash who has spent a couple of days baking in a burning summer sun... pointless, and good grief, the smell...

 

Oh man, when I saw (on the main page) that DotW had commented on this, I got more excited than a child on X-mas morning!

And he didn't disappoint .

 

What I want to know is what the next big craze is going to be after vampires. Zombies? Mummies? Ghosts? But zombies are already fairly popular with the geek/nerd crowd, while mummies seems to be fundamentally unromantic (ghosts have potential though). So seriously, what's next? Headcrabs? Slimes? Undead penguins?

Also, what is it with werewolves and vampires? My gf reads a lot of vampire novels (though she isn't a mad fan or anything), and it always seems to me that whenever there's vampires, there's werewolves. Generally they pop up in book 2 as the girly protagonist's new boyfriend or whatever (see also: Anita Blake). Even Underworld utilized this werewolf/vampire rivalry. What is it with them that they just have to be paired together? Is it the folklore value? Are they somehow romantic? Do hairy beasts serve as the perfect foil to the refined gentlemanly bloodsuckers? Why?

Question three: why is Twilight so popular? By all accounts it's not particularly well written. Is it mass marketing? Is it mass psychosis? The mad craze reminds me vaguely of the Harry Potter craze, of which I took part of. But surely HP was much better written and generally deserved the mass hype?

And, apparently (this is from a teen girly magazine...don't ask) - Twilight fans have invented their own vocabulary, words like Twibrary (the Twilight library), Twidreams (dreams of Twilight), and ]Twilingual (being able to speak this language). It's Twitarded.

 

Actually I thought there are more products with vamps then with werewolves. I'd give a lot for a good werewolf movie. Note the "good." Then again, I'd give a lot for a good vampire movie too. The last vampire anything I enjoyed was Hellsing, and I mean the anime series.

It's just that ever since Interview with a Vampire, which seemed like a pretty decent movie, vampire movies/books have become increasingly popular, and increasingly diluted. Vamps might have had a seductive element in them since at least Stoker's Dracula, but nowadays it's atrocious. The terrors of the night have become glamorous, metrosexual misunderstood heroes with a mild dietary problem. Good freaking grief.

Then again, as a friend commented, what do you expect when you aim such movies at teen girls? You get one of mythology's iconic monsters turned into a soppy romantic eye candy and object of adulation by emotionally challenged teens. Werewolves are the same. I think you are on to something, deathmage, they are just there as a contrast to vampires - probably to appeal to a crowd with slightly different tastes... Eye candy archetype number two. I had a female colleague who went to see the movie, and according to her there was a collective "wow" or growls when one of the wolfies took off his T-shirt. So... yeah. Fanservice ahoy*!

By the way, while I'm not a big fan of crossovers, this is one I wouldn't mind seeing:

Spoiler

*: (partial?) bestiality or necrophilia -pick your poison.

 

I'm wondering what's with the Vampires walking around in daylight now, too? I mean, do they even get mild exema from it any more?

 

Daylight killing vampires is a modern aspect of the lore. Dracula walks around in the day in the novel -- he is just stronger at night.

 

Vampires and werewolves represent the hidden fears that humans have, revolving around such sensitive topics as death, sexuality, disease, and the human propensity for violence. Many of these topics are somewhat taboo in most cultures, at least for casual conversation. Symbolizing and crystallizing those fears in the form of monsters makes an entertaining way to explore and confront those fears.

As societies progress, the fears we have also change, and so do the monsters. Stoker used vampires as a powerful symbol for the dark, nasty side of sexual expression, and since then people have grabbed onto the sex aspect and made vampires symbolic of the repressed urges that exist in us all. They became romantic (Dracula was a lot of things, but he wasn't romantic in the novel) and sexy. I see this a a symbol of western anxiety about sex -- we have no clear cut moral standard anymore to look to (even though in times past society failed to practice what it preached) and we are seriously conflicted about what is proper and not proper in terms of sex.

Vampires are also about death, and the age old idea that death is necessary -- if you bypass death, you become evil, unnatural, and generally just a vicious bastard. Of course, death and "little death" (ie sex) link up, so you can just see the connective tissue growing. They are the "un-dead", and they are dangerous and unnatural -- demons from beyond the grave.

Werewolves are, IMHO, a different kettle of fish. They are a symbol, moreso than vampires, of transformation. I heard the star of Ginger Snaps express the opinion that werewolves can be seen as a symbol of puberty. I can get that, but I also see it as a symbol of the animalistic urges toward sex and violence that we all have. The werewolf sheds its veneer of civilization and feeds its dark inner id. They are not undead (American Werewolf in London notwithstanding) but they rather represent a blurring of the line between man and beast.

Together, they represent a huge number of the fears and anxieties that pervade our culture. The contagious nature of both beasts is a symbolic way of saying what Yoda told Luke "Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny." Or, as was said in Mean Streets, "You don't <eff> around with the infinite."

/end pseudo-intellectual rant.

Edit: for now . . .

 

I don't think there were any doubts that vampires were sexy in Dracula. Remember those female vamps in Drac's castle? What about Dracula's seduction of Lucy?

Interestingly, there were some genuinely interesting vampire lore that seemed to have been lost from the original Bram Stoker novel. For example, Dracula could command wolves, and could create loyal followers (that axe-crazy bug-eating guy, Renfield?). nowadays the wolves aspect seems to be lost, even though it would be ridiculously badass, and the followers seems to be less awesomely crazy and more zombie/ghoulish. Older folklore also had the tidbit about them being forced to count things that are thrown at them (hence the Count on Sesame Street).

Dracula is also a really good novel, and the generated atmosphere is brilliant (the ship arriving in a storm with everyone aboard dead; the initial experience with the castle and the village; the hunt for Dracula's coffins...). It's a real shame that nowadays they're reduced to sissies for the consumption of tweens.

 

They weren't sexy though, they were desirable. They were described as grotesque and unnerving, which is why the human beings were so revolted with themselves when they felt desire to be penetrated by them.

 

Another very good point from T2Bruno.

That's a very good analysis. There is definitely something with blood and milk in the novel. It's Victorian literature and milk was used as a reference to semen. Think about Mina drinking blood from Dracula's chest and being compared to a kitten lapping milk.

I also like the way the perversion gets to the female characters who are thus "sexually" corrupted and become unpure. Think about Lucy who is sucking the blood from infants when a woman's role is normally to suckle babies.

Biting is a form of penetration so we could say that in the case of Harker getting seduced by the three vampires in the castle there is a reversal as the male is clearly dominated and has no control whatsoever.

I wouldn't go as far as saying that they are not sexy. They definitely are. There is something deeply erotic about all the exchange of bodily fluids. Coppola's movie (although it operates a clear shift on many points) really plays on the sexual dimension of the vampires without making them beautiful. They are sexy and sexually attractive (tantalizingly so), they are fascinating but their true nature is revolting, abnormal and frightening. Think about the way the vampires are described in the book (e.g. Dracula crawling down the wall of his castle) or in the movie (the female vampires crawling back like puppets when Dracula storms in to confront them and throw the bundle with the baby at their feet).

 

Or, well...ehh...don't no about sexual, but blood's actually quite delish once you've acquired the taste for it.

Salty.

edit: Of course I'm not talking about human blood...Hehhehhehhehhehhh-aahhhahhhaaahhahha! Mwaahhaahhahh! *Cough-cough!*

 

Certainly in the book Dracula had a great deal of sexuality about him, but he was not ever described as handsome, IIRC. His allure was one of dark power, the nasty, dark side of sex. For movies they invariably used handsome men for the Count, but that was a mistake, IMHO.

No one went willingly to his grasp -- at least at first. His seduction of Lucy and the conversion of her into a vampire was a long term thing -- it didn't happen after one bite. She succumbed to his evil after a long time.

He even started in on Mina, and it was her struggle against his dark influence (like a struggle against a disease) that lead to the angst ridden "I'm a cursed vampire and don't wanna be this way" wangsty crap that we see today. AFAI am concerned, people who want to write about vampires should have to pass a test on Dracula and the entire mythos before they are permitted to futz around with the idea.

 

"His face was a strong - a very strong - aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extreme pallor."

... "As the Count leaned over me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal."

Doesn't seem sexy to me But I am not debating his sexuality, he is a very sexual creature, he just isn't sexy. The exchange of fluids is quite sexual, but even when Lucy is trying to bite her husband, she is described as voluptuous, but mean/evil looking. There is always another side to the vampires' sexuality; a brutal, gross one.

 

Not Max Schreck in Nosferatu. He was just plain horrible.