Terminator 2 was an awesome film. It also contained no love interest whatsoever. Nowadays, Hollywood’d probably have Sarah Connor riding Arnie’s T-800 joystick before tech could manage to fumble the boom-chicka-wow porn music on as the door swings open and Sarah looks up guiltily, pants around her ankles.
Dog Soldiers is probably best described as a modest modern classic, boasting such lines as a soldier’s heartfelt cry of, “I hope I give you the shits!” as he gets his head bitten off messily, and the immortal, “Oh, it’s you – learned how to lick your own balls yet?” during the protagonist’s climactic showdown with his human antagonist in werewolf form at the end. The move toward a romantic angle with the home-owner was annoying but mercifully brief.
I’m not going to go into one about Twilight, because that dead horse has been flogged ten ways from Sunday in writing on vampires, and frankly, it isn’t worth the room – although some of the parodies are, admittedly, pretty funny n(at least the first 200 times). However, to bring it in line with other vampire writing, onscreen, onstage and on the page, the endless sexualisation of everything vampire-related is frustrating, speaking more to the slickness of consumer culture than the mythology it came from. The German spectre, the Vampyre, was hideously bloated and discoloured about the face and hands; Dracula himself was an ugly and frightening monster. They are pure predators, not brooding male model types. Modern vampire lore emphasises the potential for a human side, putting a new slant on the vampire’s essentially dark and violent nature. The older vampires retained no human side when they turned; the new ones have consciences and friendships and even human other halves. Buffy and Being Human have it both ways by showing both garden-variety evil vampires and good, human-likes ones, with plausible explanations for why these latter are different – and this final point is the crucial one. Many modern vampire stories do not account for certain vampires’ unusually non-predatory nature. This makes them suck, not like a vampire or a hooker, but like a sucking chest wound sapping you of the will to live.
This goes back to my original point about werewolves cohabiting with the darkness within, whilst simultaneously resisting it. The good vampire does just this: not by locking itself up, because its nature is permanent, but by continually denying its violent urges expression through harm to humans. When a satisfactory reason is provided for why the vampire does this, the good vampire attains one of the werewolf’s more interesting aspects. The trouble is, it’s really easy to fuck it up if the reason given for why this vampire’s different to the others is either non-existent, or doesn’t fly. Edward Cullen is definitely one of the biggest failures in this respect, but if it makes Team Edward feel any better, by no means the first. Yeah, Ann Rice, I’m looking at you.
The problem with vampires in modern versions of the myth is that they’re just a bit too beautiful and deep to truly identify with. Staring down the barrel of eternity is ultimately difficult for us to imagine, and that’s why we’re so fascinated with it: why we return to it again and again, in religion, ghost stories, supernatural legends, tales of the Greek gods, science fiction and more. David Tennant’s Doctor pulls off the burden of eternity without the usual stereotypical angst by being engaging in a completely non-sexual way, funny, interested in and appreciative of everything, clever, an idealist, a pacifist, a man of learning, and everything that’s beautiful about the humanity he can’t keep away from. He ‘s a nonviolent nerd and he’s brilliant. He carries his burden lightly and we are kicked in the balls with it only once or twice per series as a rule, by which time we have come to give a shit because of the other stuff, and possibly cry like babies.
The Angels, Mitchells, Spikes, Edwards, Louis, Gary Oldman as Dracula in a bastardized deformity Frances Ford Coppola had the front to name Bram Stoker’s Dracula – well, they give into the dark at the drop of a hat. Moreover, these characters, according to a quick poll of the female viewers I know, become instantly sexy.
http://goo.gl/Pe0fj Based on the best Google has to offer, you’re just gonna have to trust me on this.
Yes, that’s right – they find the bloodsucking creatures who’d eat your heart in a beat more attractive than their brooding, morose, do-gooder, ensouled selves. Actually, wait – that makes sense. Never mind.
http://arcticboy.arcticboy.com/view2...7/hippies1.jpg Good vampires. [fangs to be shopped on]
But my point is, werewolves are the opposite – there’s no inherent glamour attached to them, because they are not especially subject to the sexy factor in and of themselves. An American Werewolf in London epitomises the inherent dehumanisation of the werewolf’s transformation. David Kessler won’t develop killer cheekbones, a heroin-chic pallor and a beguiling air of mysterious power which will draw those vulnerable sexy bitches to him like a moth to a flame. He will get green glowing eyes and a snout and tear out the colons of those around him as a hideous beast trapped in an animal frenzy. When the afflicted transforms in a werewolf film, high production costs may or may not be involved, but the finished product is almost always grotesque and reached by way of agonising pain of the part of the transform-ee. There is rarely much that’s sexual about the fully-changed werewolf, which frequently resembles some unnatural bastard child of a baboon and a hyena.
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...dnyJ7uTVG834rx When you’re Stephanie Meyer, a radical departure from existing werewolf lore means bringing sexy back. That’s about it.
It’s no surprise that David Kessler loses his battle against the beast within – its presence has after all already transformed the people of the village where he first encountered it into hard, ruthless folk, as though tainted by the very existence of the creature that lives among them. In Being Human, when George describes the attack that made him a werewolf, he recalls, “Even at the time, I remember looking at it, and being... offended. That thing, in this world, it was so... wrong. And the smell of it. Like meat and sweat.” None of the seductive allure held by the bloodsucking creatures of the night: just an obscene slab of meat, carrying the promise of gritty carnage like a hairy extra nutsack. The struggle to deal, in one short human lifetime, with the empty horror of monsterhood.
Vampires, on the other hand, have had literally forever to get their shit straight, so it’s really no wonder that even the essentially “good” ones go through an evil stage at some point, much like teenagers with black metal – they’re bored, they’ve got all the time in the world, and they’re trying some shit out, goddamnit. Zombies and werewolves, however, are like that reliable ex you booty call whenever you’re drunk; they’re consistent in their habits, relatively safe to be around, and just inept enough to stumble enough for you to defend yourself when the night ends in an altercation.
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http://goo.gl/wq2Zv PICTURED: AN ALTERCATION]
Not like vampires with that graceful super speed that kicks in when they’re pissed off and whoosh up in your face to make a point.
PICTURE:
http://goo.gl/kkqr9 Intimidation tactics optional: fans estimate a 92.73 chance Buffy’ll fuck you either way.
Werewolves commonly attempt to manage their condition by locking themselves up on the night of the full moon. Vampires, on the other hand, are basically needy pussies: while the werewolf struggles manfully to control its affliction and protect others from the danger it poses, the vampire is most likely tomcatting around turning people so it won’t have to face eternity alone, choosing instead to impose its suffering on others as it searches for companionship by putting it about like a co-dependent crack whore leaving a trail of unfortunate spawn in its slutty wake. It whines about loneliness, goes around biting people, then when no one wants to hang out with it, it kills your human self and forces the curse of its own twisted being on you. ‘Cause then you’ll totally want to hang out with it.
So vampires are like organ thieves, only instead of stealing your kidney and leaving you to wake up in a bath full off ice, they steal your humanity and leave you to wake up alone, in a coffin, six feet underground. Buried alive. If you do not agree that this is a major dick move, there’s a statistically significant chance that you are a sociopath.
Face it, vampires are assholes. At least the organ thieves do it for money. It’s disturbing, but less creepy than being violated into eternity for no other reason than your attacker’s arrogant compulsion to spread their spawn for a bullshit reason like being a needy pussy. The only reason vampires dominate the supernatural landscape is because they breed with alarming ease, not unlike:
http://goo.gl/9Yfuz . Yeah, doesn’t sound so fucking sexy now, does it?