I hear that this new vampire flick is bringing in money by the coffin load.
I hear also that most of the audience in these theaters are female.
What’s with that?
Fr. Z’s Podcasts RSS Feed
About this blog…
“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
YOUR RECENT COMMENTS
- on New book SHUTS DOWN the old chestnut objections to the Traditional Latin Mass. Get ready to respond to objections and to deepen your understanding.: “samwise: Valid objection Not really, no. Now, it’s my turn to ask: Have you read it yet?”
- on Letter of Bp. Jude Noble to the Faithful of the Diocese of Black Duck concerning 8 December 2024: “How about Anyone around before 1962 can do whatever we want. We are Pre-conciliar. OTHERWISE KNOWN AS BEFORE THE MADNESS!”
- on ASK FATHER: 8 December 2024 is Immaculate Conception but also the 2nd Sunday of Advent – What to do?: “So let me get this straight…. For the N.O., Ascension Thursday is so important that it is moved to a…”
- on ASK FATHER: 8 December 2024 is Immaculate Conception but also the 2nd Sunday of Advent – What to do?: “FSSP Phoenix is transferring to the 9th, probably to be “in union” with the local bishop. Will be interesting to…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1178: Maiestatis ac ditioni vim tuetur et fidem conciliat: “I’m still disappointed the Jacinta and Francisco were beatified under this pontificate (Fatima). Personally I don’t see the miracle associated…”
- on I had a funny thought about a possible US Ambassador to the Holy See – UPDATED: “Besides the general restrictions from the Church against priests holding public office… Would the secular side really be comfortable with…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1179: One two, buckle my shoe…: “Mate in… 6? White to move. [NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be…”
- on New book SHUTS DOWN the old chestnut objections to the Traditional Latin Mass. Get ready to respond to objections and to deepen your understanding.: “Valid objection: Is a PhD in philosophy qualified to pontificate on matters best suited for an STL/STD in Liturgical Studies…”
- on New book SHUTS DOWN the old chestnut objections to the Traditional Latin Mass. Get ready to respond to objections and to deepen your understanding.: “samwise: Your questions are amusing. Think about what the book is entitled. Then think about what you asked.”
- on New book SHUTS DOWN the old chestnut objections to the Traditional Latin Mass. Get ready to respond to objections and to deepen your understanding.: “Isn’t Dr K a philosopher by training? isn’t this a bit outside his scope? i.e. I consult Dr Robert Sokolowski…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1178: Maiestatis ac ditioni vim tuetur et fidem conciliat: “1. R-g6 If . . . . . . , B×g6+ 2. N×g6# If . . . . . .…”
- on 10th birthday of the fantastic TLM book “Treasure and Tradition”!: “An interesting story in the Detroit Free Press about the Traditional community at St Joseph Shrine.”
- on New book SHUTS DOWN the old chestnut objections to the Traditional Latin Mass. Get ready to respond to objections and to deepen your understanding.: “I love, love, love Dr K’s books! Received this one a few weeks ago, Fr Z. Currently finishing They Have…”
- on Daily Rome Shot 1178: Maiestatis ac ditioni vim tuetur et fidem conciliat: “Thank you for the St. Edmund details! It is disappointing that Dr. Parker has not posted anything at her blog,…”
ABORTION PILL RESCUE NETWORK
Everyone, work to get this into your parish bulletins and diocesan papers.
Federated Computer… your safe and private alternative to big biz corporations that hate us while taking our money and mining our data. Have an online presence large or small? Catholic DIOCESE? Cottage industry? See what Federated has to offer. Save money and gain peace of mind.
I am an affiliate. Click and join or at least explore! If you join, I’ll get credit.
Polls
Loading ...Nice people. Great chess stuff!
Donate using VENMO
GREAT BEER from Traditional Benedictine Monks in Italy
CLICK and say your daily offerings!
A Daily Prayer for Priests
NEW OPPORTUNITY – 10% off with code: FATHERZ10
Fr. Z’s VOICEMAIL
Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.
WDTPRS
020 8133 4535
651-447-6265
This REALLY helps! And it’s great coffee (and tea)
I use this when I travel both in these USA and abroad. Very useful. Fast enough for Zoom. I connect my DMR (ham radio) through it. If you use my link, they give me more data. A GREAT back up.
This blog has to earn its keep!
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful. Zelle and Wise are better, but PayPal is convenient.
A monthly subscription donation means I have steady income I can plan on. I put you my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I often say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
To donate monthly I prefer Zelle because it doesn't extract fees. Use
frz AT wdtprs DOT comBe a “Zed-Head”!
PLEASE RESPOND. Pretty pleeeease?
Loading ...WDTPRS POLL
Loading ...Fr. Z’s stuff is everywhere
Help support Fr. Z’s Gospel of Life work at no cost to you. Do you need a Real Estate Agent? Calling these people is the FIRST thing you should do!
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
GREAT causes to support
Help Monks in Wyoming (coffee – UPDATED LINK) and Norcia (beer) and the wonderful "Soap Sisters" of Summit, NJ!
Please follow me on Twitter!
Loading ...
I haven’t read any of the Twilight things, but I would bet a lot of money it’s the same reason women like characters like Captain Jack Sparrow, Mr. Darcy, the Beast, the Phantom of the Opera, Mr. Rochester, Prof. Snape (especially as played by Alan Rickman): the male character whom you can’t tell if he’s good or bad is more “interesting” than one whose goodness shines out. Is he good? Bad? A double agent? A good man with a troubling past he can’t get over? Will you, a woman, “save” him by your beauty and example? This is a big, big theme in terms of books and movies that women like. I liked these for a long time until I realized it wasn’t really a good thing–at least not in the ‘dark’ form like in Phantom of the Opera. In Pride and Prejudice it works out in a more acceptable way, I guess.
Father, if we could understand women… we wouldn’t be men.
The only good thing about this series is the lack of pre-marital sex. Aside form that, Father Barron has a very interesting piece on Vampires and modern culture. I would not fully agree with it on a psychological-phenomenological standpoint, but from a sacred/theological standpoint, it is very clear reasoning.
Fr. Barron has a good bit on it over at wordonfire.org
http://www.wordonfire.org/Written-Word/articles-commentaries/November-2009/Why-Is-Everyone-Crazy-About-Vampires.aspx
Why are the girls attracted? Buff guys with six pack abs, mysterious and full of angst, possessing “immortality” and they sparkle! No more is the vampire lost and pitiful, eternally seeking to slake his thirst for Eucharist with mortal blood. Now it is cool, invincible, and terrific fun on a date! Mindless modern drivel. Where is Van Helsing when you need him?
What is it lately with guys and Zombie flicks?
I think it is because in these movies the vampires are portrayed as heroically fighting against their inner natures and treating the female lead romantically and defending her. I think in today’s culture women feel particularly vulnerable, they feel that men do not care and are more interested in what they can get than what they can give to the woman in whom they are interested, and women feel in the back of their minds that the predators out there are not generally brought to justice. The result is an insecurity that comes out in their interest in heroes who DO defend the woman, even against their own lesser nature.
I’d not compare Jane Austen heroes with these vampire heroes. Most of the point of Austen’s books were that women needed to be very careful to know the true character of the men who were courting them! Most of the time bad character simply got worse after marriage in her stories, and never in her stories does a bad character turn good. Mr Darcy was a good character who was misunderstood and his great flaw was a lack of humility. Elizabeth’s rejection of him lead to him doing some serious soul searching (because he was of GOOD character) and he fought against his pride to improve further. But it was a case of a good man whose tendency toward reserve left him open to being misunderstood and his pride kept him from attempting to improve his own image. Austen’s characters that are bad do not improve. A woman of good character’s influence in Austen only makes improvement in an already good character. It works the other way too and a woman of poor character or bad character never improves any man’s character and can even damage the character of a good man.
Modern vampire tales tend to have a character with a truly EVIL bent attempting heroically to be good. The underlying character remains steeped in the evil, but the self-will of the vampire who is trying to be virtuous is portrayed as powerful enough to keep the evil in check. A Catholic ought to recognize the lie in that! Since when is our self will strong enough to overcome sin without the help of God?
I find these movies and books a disturbing barometer on our modern culture’s underlying beliefs.
I teach in middle school. Don’t fool yourselves. It may be the romance for some, but for most? Nah. It’s like people who believe the guys who say they just “read the articles” in THOSE kind of magazines.
Many of the girls I teach are simply lusting after the hotties in the movie. It’s pure carnal desire. They don’t love the romance… Even those who read the books. They want to be the girl who CORRUPTS the vampire. Say what? Yup. They want him to bite them, to change them, to “go all the way”. They want to be immortal and “free”. Our young teen girls are FULLY “liberated”.
Sadly, they confuse freedom and license.
My take: Twilight is popular with teen girls (and many women) for the same reason “romance” novels have long been popular with them: it’s pornography for women — emotional as well as carnal pornography.
Father, one of the most comforting things I learned from Archbishop Sheen (+1979) is that a woman’s mind is cleaner than a man’s – but that is because she changes it so much.
To answer your question in a serious manner, I think that Jordanes is on the right track:
Agnes of Prague and Catholicity also identify the aspect of ‘mystique’ that comes with a dark character. We have to be careful in approaching this question because woman are of course not some uniform block all inexplicably captivated with late teenage boys portraying demons.
With that said, the vampire media finds its audience predominantly in girls and women. I’ve been been neutral on the Twilight series though with time I have come to believe that it is more than just morally neutral. Understanding why people, who again are overwhelmingly girls and women, is necessary for proper pastoral care.
Let me put it this way…
A few weeks back my wife was in bed with H1N1. I was looking after her but while she was sleeping I needed some R&R. I thought to myself: “Hey! Why not rent out Twilight since you have never seen it and the new film is coming out soon?”
Well, I rented Twighlight, viewed it alone, and nearly lost all my man points in doing so…
Never again.
One of the reasons I have little interest in comtemporary movies is that so many of them are geared to teenage girls. The male leads, e.g., Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, often have a 20 year old look to them.
@wchoag: You did loose man-points. You really should have seen that one coming! But, then again, I am so cynical I see everything coming (whether it arrives or not).
Agnes of Prague and Catholicity have hit the nail on the head, but I would add the fact that this vampire thing has been gaining more and more steam with or without the “chick-flick” dimension. That only explains the popularity of the movies.
Mich_wa mentions Fr. Barron’s commentary, but I find it to be a little bit of a wash if you want some real insight. I would like to add a citation from Creative Minority Report The Moral Story of a Vampire. In that article there is an interesting comparison made between the earlier concept of a vampire and the contemporary portrayal; traditionally undead, drinking human blood as a poor substitute for the Blood of Christ, and even further as an anti-Christ.
Now they are immortal, not undead.
Now they are conflicted, not compulsive.
Now they are attractive, not just seductive.
Now they are moral and intelligent, not base.
Now they are secular, not evil.
Also, it seems like vampire is something you contract as a blood-pathogen from your lover, not a curse on the soul. A victim of circumstance instead of a consequence of actions.
I think Jordanes hit the nail on the head. Emotional pornography – great insight! Perhaps new homily material, Father?
Romance novels are the female equivalent of porn mainly in the sense that they play to an unrealistic and in some ways exploitive concept of the opposite sex that has the potential, if taken too seriously, to damage real life relationships.
Men who read or look at porn get the idea that the ideal woman is a perpetually hot to trot sex kitten who never gets old, fat or pregnant, never has a bad hair day or gets stressed out, and never objects to anything her partner wants to do no matter how degrading. Needless to say, most women are not like that.
Meanwhile, women who read romance novels or watch a steady diet of “chick flicks” tend to get the idea that the ideal man is handsome, wealthy and/or physically strong, yet “sensitive,” would never choose watching football, hunting, tinkering with an old car, etc. over, say, a candlelight dinner with her, and always puts her needs first, in the bedroom or anywhere else. Needless to say, most guys, even good ones, are not like that!
My wife (in her 20’s) likes them because they have got about as much cheese as a truck load of Kraft Dinner.
KAS hits the nail on the head, though I like Thomas Hibbs’ assessment of the Twilight vampire appeal being a kind of James Dean outsider.
The attraction begins with the modern morphing of the vampire noted by Choirmaster. By the time you reach Stephenie Meyer’s ouvre, you’re dealing with a dangerous superhero, not a demon lurking in the body of a man. At least Buffy kept that part of the mythos, for all its faults. But if a vampire, and for that matter a werewolf, is not a dangerous monster but simply a dangerous man, the attraction is rather explainable, in light of the last 40 years of feminism.
The romance novel does play up the carnal, true enough. (I will note though that the Christian and Regency varieties, while tension filled, rarely have more than a kiss). But the appeal neither begins nor ends there. The vast bulk of heros in these novels are the antithesis of both the “sensitive 90s kinda guy” and the modern barbarian. They are decisive, protective (sometimes to a fault, a la Edward Cullen), and intelligent without being professorish. It is the antithesis of Woody Allen and of the thirty year old who still dresses like he’s 15.
Strip away the purple prose, the torrid love scenes, and the “hurts so good” star crossed lovers plot, and what you’re seeing is the longing of the modern liberated woman for a man that will stop acting like a wuss, make some decisions, and allow her to feel treasured and protected. All the physical appeal is appealing because it speaks to a primitive recognition that physical prowess is likely to indicate a protective mate, in the same way that rich says good provider, beautiful say healthy and likely to produce healthy children, and intelligent says likely to make good decisions.
In addition, the vampire has the appeal of being cultured because he has lived long enough to come from an age that still valued gentlemen, traveled far enough to not be parochially attached to one place, and had more than enough time to seek education. Strip the demon out of the vampire, and what you have left is a superman with world enough and time to become a girl’s ideal catch. Which is what Stephenie Meyer’s did, along with cribbing plots from Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Merchant of Venice.
Doesn’t change the fact that its an essentially postmodern work. Most modern vampire novels are merely secular. With no sense of Catholic culture, the vast bulk of the “paranormal” romance genre is simply a new breed of dangerous outsider, giving us dreck like TrueBlood. There is no sense of tormented soul left, which even Forever Knight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer retained. Add in weird Mormon theology and what you get is the current Twilight phenonmenon; the vampire as a kind of superhero in the X-men mold who attracts the outsider girl, who feels just as detached from normal society and later discovers she has superpowers too.
@Ringmistress: Great comment!
I would just like to run the highlight reel of your best and brightest:
But if a vampire, and for that matter a werewolf, is not a dangerous monster but simply a dangerous man, the attraction is rather explainable…
Is there a parallel here between this and Harry Potter’s whimsical portrayal of occult fantasy and satanic practice?
…a demon lurking in the body of a man. At least Buffy kept that part of the mythos…
Yes. You can track the progression from Bram Stoker to Paperback Novel Cover. I guess it’s been awhile since the Buffy movie. How would the audience react if Buffy burst onto the screen and violently slew Edward?
Strip the demon out of the vampire, and what you have left is a superman with world enough and time to become a girl’s ideal catch.
Hmm… I see a parallel between this chronic immortality as a personality enhancement and the immortal Elves of Tolkien fame. Tolkien’s elves were attractive and fascinating for the same reason.
You are right. The demonic has been excised and replaced by the (super)human; now the girls are attracted because he’s strong, smart and sensitive (although he looks kinda sissy to me) and the boys want to imitate and identify.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
I know they buffed up the female roles a bit, but in some ways, the Lord of the Rings movies are truly an excellent man’s man cinema. It really is about being a virtuous man in the face of evil.
I couldn’t figure out why all my sisters were so eager to see it, though, until I finally figured it out: Orlando Bloom.
@Random Friar: Did you notice that most of the lines given to Orlando Bloom (Legolas) in the movie were originally Aragorn’s in the book?
Also, Orlando Bloom portrayed Legolas as a sissy much like Edward seems like a sissy.
Well, Peter Jackson is no fool. Women’s money is just as green as ours.
Touché.
Robert Pattinson
I never got into Twilight, but I did read Anne Rice as a teenager. I figure vampires are so attractive because when they say they’ll love you forever, they really do have forever (or close to it) in which to love.
Father, we could go on and on and on about Twilight. But what bothers me is that this obession with vampirism in general. If you walk into Barnes and Noble and go to the teen section, the majority of the books on display are either teenage vampires or witches. The covers also seem like some cheesy soft-core stuff.
I think it has to do with power. Being/becoming Immortal and Irresistable. Riches, power, and sex. Twilight stayed in the realm of the near occasion of sin, intentionally, but several of these other vampire romances don’t. I think Fr. Barron hits it on the head when he talks about wanting immortallity and the supernatural without a cost. Since many people have a vague, if any, conception of the after life, they see physical immortality as the best thing. I think it all started with the Anne Rice novels, though she at least kept some of the original view.
I like the classic view of vampires. Undead corpses that must feed on the living to sustain themselves and surround themselves with all matter of opulence to hide their own hideousness. They are unable to look in the mirror, they can’t face themselves and what they have become. So much more interesting than a brooding, perpetual teenager.
Don’t get me started on werewolves.
I can’t understand this ‘phenomenon’ myself, and I’m a woman!
I like what you said earlier, RandomFriar: ‘If we could understand women, we wouldn’t be men’….
Ha! Touche!
I understand the current movie features both a vampire and a werewolf, both of them powerful, gorgeous, and passionate, both madly in love with the high-school heroine. So it’s pretty similar to any other chick flick. :)
The trend of romanticizing the vampyre is disturbing. Bram Stoker’s Dracula clearly depicts the “creatures” as evil and various religious items (ie. Rosary, Holy Eucharist, crucifix) are used to great effect against them. Today’s society is successfully shaping the vampyre as something to be admired and loved and, in a fantastical way, to wish to become. Very disturbing.
The greatest temptation for women, I think, is not just giving away one’s body (lust is the side effect), but primarily giving away one’s heart and soul. The desire to be cherished eternally is what’s being sought. Accepting the fact that she is eternally cherished by God is the immunization and cure for that type of longing.
All I know is that it seems to be so heavily marketed and many females dig it. I see it marketed on the Nordstrom Website, fast food joints, Volvo commercials. It’s everywhere.
I am a bit confused as why the vampire of folklore, which was very much like the zombies of today’s films, has been sexualized. Did it have to do with Bela Lugosi and Frank Langella’s portrayals in the movies? Or was it more the effect of the Hammer Films? (Craig Ferguson does a great impression of the heroines of the films.)
The Chinese Jiang Shi is a funny vampire-like creature. Although the Jiang Shi went around trying to suck the Qi out of a person. They were supposed to hop after people as they were stuck in rigor mortis.
I read the books. They are well-written, interesting stories. They are about good and evil and the necessity to make and act on choices. The hero is a vampire who chooses to get blood from animals not people. The heroine is human, and the hero has an almost-overwhelming attraction to her blood, which he fights against, because he has also fallen overwhelmingly in love with her. She is also completely in love with him, and wants to be made a vampire so that she won’t age (he is immortally 17 yrs old). He refuses to change her unless she marries him, because he is old-fashioned that way.
Anglican Vicar, Robert Hart’s take on the matter:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-06-022-v
Basicly the women are attracted to the male characters is what I have been able to deduce from listening to various women talking about it.
The people who made this movie know how elicit enjoyable emotions in women through their film it seems.
Perhaps this recent trend started with Anne Rice’s book, “Interview with a Vampire”. She created vampire characters which the reader felt sympathy for. I’m not even slightly interested in the current vampire stories, but what Ms. Rice did with her vampires added a great deal of depth and human interest into what used to be a two-dimensional good vs. evil subject.
As to what about these movies attracts women? It might be as simple as the attraction toward a very strong male persona, whether or not he happens to be a “vampire”. Other than that theory, I dunno.
Jay,
What is wrong with “two-dimensional good vs. evil subjects”? When society loses all of its metaphors for satan, it begins to believe that he does not exist. That, in my opinion, is a very dangerous thing.
I had a friend who was bitten by a wannabe vampire outside a Goth club. Actually bitten. Needless to say, she was horrified and terrified.
I agree that girls flock to movies in general to see their favourite lust (or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, crush) objects. And I think girls do swoon at the idea of the bad boy who reigns himself in from being so bad because he loves his girlfriend so much. This bad boy shows up in Georgette Heyer romance novels, too, usually in Duke form.
The films might provide adult women with “teachable moments” to discuss with younger women (students, daughters) about some women’s near-suicidal willingness to sacrifice themselves and everyone else (including their parents or children) for their “true loves” and about the emotional vampirism of bad men. Some men hold out the promise of reformation to snag women. In fact, I am sure it is a key weapon in the Pick Up Artist’s arsenal.
These sorts of novels, sometimes under the subgenres of “Urban Fantasy” or “Paranormal Romance” have been around for a while; they’re just now getting mainstream coverage which means they’ve pretty much jumped the shark. I’ve been reading a couple of series for a few years now; they happened on the Romance/Fantasy scene about 10 years ago or so.
I enjoy the stories as an extension of the Fantasy/Romance genre – the creation of parallel worlds where these sorts of creatures make up the general population. At least within the scope of the parallel world setup there’s more room for play. It’s interesting that in some of the darker storylines there is a clear separation between humans and the “monsters”. In most cases the vampires are depicted as parasitic creatures whose main goal is the preservation of their power structure to the exclusion of humans. There is no emotion such as love involved; at least not the human, self-sacrificing, self-giving kind. Weres and shapeshifters are just another part of the rest of the paranormal landscape. I haven’t read any of the “Twilight” series and probably won’t. The sugar-coating that’s clearly part of this endeavor doesn’t interest me.
@Choirmaster – as a gal with a romantic streak a mile wide, I’m firmly in the Aragorn camp.
@Choirmaster: I thought Robert Pattison’s Edward looks less sissy than he looks 17 (which is somewhat remarkable in a 20-something), which is appropriate both to the character and to the target audience. If he is trapped at the age when he becomes a vampire, he is rather permanently stuck in late adolescence physically. His actions rarely seem sissy in the first movie. I would hardly know about his actions in New Moon, since I don’t intend to spend money on it.
I’ll respectfully disagree on Harry Potter. Faerie stories are not universally against magic (think good fairies, and Glinda’s question to Dorothy “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”) and the Biblical objection to magic has always specified magic as either witch-doctoring (poisoners and abortionists) or invocational magic which calls upon demonic powers. In the HP world, magic is a natural talent, not sought, and accessed by incantation, making it more of a science than an art. Any child who read HP would realize from the very fact that they 1) didn’t receive their letter from Hogwarts, and 2) can’t get any effect from the dog Latin spells, that they are not gifted with magic powers. I would be far more concerned with Harry Potter breeding a form of Gnosticism in which the truth is only available to a certain elect than I would ever be concerned with the occult. (This, I will note, separates it miles apart from the majority of Neo-Pagan propaganda available in the YA section of Barnes and Noble.)
And on the Buffy note, I think some wags have spliced movie shorts together with that in mind. The question is somewhat off though, given that Buffy herself in the TV series falls for a vampire seeking redemption. She is disinclined to stake the ones fighting against their nature. Perhaps because unlike the traditional mythos, in most modern vampire tales there is some hope of redemption for the vampire (assuming a question of loss of soul exists to begin with), a point that would be recognized as impossible in a previous age.
I just remembered that there are only three evil females in Tolkien’s fiction. Two are giant spiders. The third is a vampire.
Sex and death have been the subject of novels since reading entertainment began- a la the Gothic novel of the late 18thc and early 19th c. The move to the cinema is, sadly, a progression of this sick preoccupation of young ladies with death and sex. I am glad the Vatican blasted this new movie. Please, parents, do not let you kids see this stuff.
@ Ringmistress
Your last comment pertaining to Harry Potter and actual occultism was wonderful. The fears over Harry Potter (even in our Church) reminded me of the silly fears of one Jack Chick (of whom I am an avid reader for the sheer hilarity of his kooky theories) over the game Dungeons and Dragons (cf. the tract Dark Dungeons). In this tract a girl is invited into a real Satanic coven and learn real spells to make her father buy her stuff. Her friend kills herself over the death of her beloved character (which I think if it is a problem, is the real issue we should tackle with these type of popular phenomenons). Eventually she is lead into Chick’s record burning, Catholic hating, one time Christianity and invites the reader to as well (on a side note, early editions of the tract also cited CS Lewis and Tolkien as noted occultists).
“the vampire has the appeal of being cultured because he has lived long enough to come from an age that still valued gentlemen”
Which I believe also explains the attraction of the literary genre known as “steampunk,” based on the concept of a world in which Victorian dress, culture, and manners still prevail, the internal combustion engine was never invented, and all mechanical/technological innovations still depend on steam power (hence the name). The futuristic novels of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are good examples of this, along with the 60s TV series “The Wild Wild West,” and movies like “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.”
Steampunk aficionados devote many hours to recreating “period” clothing, machines, and even things like computer monitors with wood and brass exteriors. It’s just as popular among women as men — I think because it speaks to a longing for beauty, refinement, and manners that have been almost completely lost in today’s world. The steampunk and vampire genres do overlap at times, but in general, I think steampunk could be seen as sort of an alternative to the vampire genre if “culture” is what you’re looking for.
To add something more to this conversation: the vampire is the inverse of Christ. Instead of shedding His Blood for the salvation of others, he takes their blood in order to live. A kind of perverse reversal of the Holy Eucharist.
Somehow, this perverse reversal is appealing to the “romantic” epic of one who is destined to live forever yet alone, forsaken, at the whim of his own ‘nature’.
E. Michael Jones even uses the vampire as the “paradigm” of the homosexual; one who drains the life-force out of another in order to live. Now that is pretty controversial, but worth considering…
Bookworm,
I have a friend who’s very into steampunk, so I’ve seen some of the books and movie’s it’s inspired. I’ve also found the sites devoted to steampunk costuming useful for finding items that see to have disappeared in the modern world, like hats. To be honest though, neither the vampire nor steampunk genre appeals to me, personally. If I want romance, beauty, and gentility, I just read books written a couple hundred years ago. It’s my literary critic instincts that go into action when I try to figure out the appear of various genres of pulp fiction, which is where I class Twilight. Writing: workmanlke, give it a C. Moral value: ambiguous, C as well. Why read it when there’s good stuff out there and little enough time?
That being said, I’ve read the whole of the Twilight series since I dislike drawing conclusions about fiction books without reading them. If anyone cares, I can pull out my full assessment, including why I think it’s danger has far less to do with obsessive young love (in which case we should ban Romeo & Juliet as well) or inverting the vampire mythos but rather that it suffers, like most fantastic literature, from a Gnostic viewpoint which isn’t surprising given some of the quirkier elements of LDS theology.
@Choirmaster – as a gal with a romantic streak a mile wide, I’m firmly in the Aragorn camp.
The movie Aragorn, plagued by self-doubt; or the book Aragorn, manly and self-assured?
Funny, I didn’t see the movie Aragorn as being plagued with self-doubt…but then perhaps I was staring at his face too much! LOL Clearly the manly and self-assured part. Oh, and he’s handy with a sword.
Amusing story: A couple of years ago I was at a romance book conference and had a neat conversation with one of the attending authors. She was quite active in her parish in NJ – CCD, activities in the school, etc., and was hesitant to submit her latest manuscript as the plot turned on a rather disturbing event. She was truly concerned at the prospect of causing scandal among her parishioners so she had her pastor and the resident elderly nuns read the manuscript and if they approved she would submit it. Yes, it was a disturbing event that pushed the hero and heroine together, but given the time period, probably pretty realistic. I quite enjoyed it.
Goodness gracious, I can’t believe Twilight is being discussed on this board!
Personally, I think Twilight is about a very unhealthy, obsessive relationship. Edward watches Bella in her sleep and exhibits many instances of controlling behavior, such as removing a part from her car to keep her from leaving.
Bella herself seems to have no personality apart from her infatuation with Edward and thoughts of stereotypical teenage self-pity.
Also, the story removes all the weaknesses traditionally associated with vampires, such as difficulty with sunlight and holy objects. Instead, Edward “sparkles” in the sunlight.
I am fond of stating that the only time a vampire should sparkle is in the moment before bursting into flame.
I read some Anne Rice when I was younger, and while there were a few objectionable things, most of the vampire characters approached their condition with dismay and a desire for redemption. Those books actually tackle the hard questions, like the hell which living forever would be.
I also love the story of Angel in Buffy. He was cursed to have his soul returned to his vampire body, which means he feels regret for all he did during his unlife.