Topic: Vampire fad

[chekovsulu]

He's partially the reason I enjoy the film so much

I thought this was relevant:

What's Really Going on With All These Vampires?
From Twilight to True Blood and now The Vampire Diaries, is it vampires that so many American women love... or just gay men?


Forget everything you've read about vampires so far. The current bloodsucking trend, achieving maximum ferocity in November with the release of the sequel to Twilight, isn't about outsiders or immigrants or religion or even AIDS, as critics and bloggers have argued ad nauseam these past few months. There's a much better, simpler, more obvious explanation: Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men. Not all young straight women, of course, but many, if not most, of them. Neil Gaiman, sci-fi novelist and geek grandmaster, found out just how many during the shitstorm of pique that covered him from head to toe this past summer after he suggested in an interview that the vampire craze had run its course and should disappear for another twenty to twenty-five years. (Twilight fans took to Twitter in protest.) A foolish hope. The craving for vampire fiction is not a matter of taste but of urges; one does not read or watch it so much as inject it through the eyes, and like any epidemic, it's symptomatic of something much larger: a quiet but profound sexual revolution and a new acceptance of freakiness in mainstream American life.

Vampires have always stalked the cultural landscape at moments of carnal crisis. The seminal short story "The Vampyre," written in 1819 by John Polidori, was based on his fascination with Lord Byron, the icon of Romantic sexual liberation and danger. The frisson of deviance was there right from the start: Nobody really knows what happened between Byron and Polidori, but both of their memoirs were destroyed for the sake of propriety. (Byron, a few whispered, had even slept with his sister.) Bram Stoker's masterpiece, Dracula, appeared right in the middle of what historians call the Great Binge, a period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when cocaine and heroin use ran rampant, and the poster for the novel's first-ever movie adaptation promised "the strangest passion the world has ever known!" More recently, a small boom in vampire movies (The Hunger, The Lost Boys) coincided exactly with the rise of AIDS, their vampires intelligent and glamorous and doomed.

All these earlier iterations of the theme are not at all like vampire fiction today. Our vampires are normal. They're not Goth, they're not scary, they're not even that weird. This fall's big vampire show is on the CW, the Gossip Girl network, and its producer also brought the world Dawson's Creek.

In the best-selling Undead series of MaryJanice Davidson, the Queen of the Vampires is a suburbanite named Betsy Taylor. Edward, the romantic hero of the Twilight series, is a sweet, screwed-up high school kid, and at the beginning of his relationship with Bella, she is attracted to him because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her. This exact scenario happened several times in my high school between straight girls and gay guys who either hadn't figured out they were gay or were still in the closet. Twilight's fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that's the clincher. Vampire fiction for young women is the equivalent of lesbian porn for men: Both create an atmosphere of sexual abandon that is nonthreatening. That's what everybody wants, isn't it? Sex that's dangerous and safe at the same time, risky but comfortable, gooey and violent but also traditional and loving. In the bedroom, we want to have one foot in the twenty-first century and another in the nineteenth.


True Blood also casts its shadow on the romance between a young woman and a vampire, but unlike Twilight, which is all subtext and love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, HBO's cult series connects vampirism to homosexuality explicitly. In the opening credits — best opening credits ever? — a passing road sign reads GOD HATES FANGS. The vampires call the humans "breathers" instead of "breeders," and the series opens with a talk-show interview about vampires "mainstreaming," or "coming out of the coffin." True Blood contrasts its vampires' desires for normalcy with humans who are extreme drug users, shape-shifters, and orgiastic maenads, and it's a perfect encapsulation of the American bedroom at this moment: Everyone is a freak, even the people who claim to rail against freakiness.

The first question that comes to mind when you see a family-values orator today is, "I wonder if he's into meth-fueled orgies with male hookers?" And the segment of the religious Right that is not hypocritical has more or less joined the party: An evangelical preacher whose mission in life is to make Christians freakier is telling his flock to try anal play. For most Americans, there is no longer any such thing as a shameful sexual act between consenting adults. Having a bland sex life? Now, that's shameful. No one would dare admit to that.

And so vampires have appeared to help America process its newfound acceptance of what so many once thought strange or abnormal. Adam and Steve who live on your corner with their adorable little son and run a bakery? The transgendered man who gave birth to a healthy baby? The teenage girl who wishes that all boys could be vampires? All part of the luscious and terrifying magic of today's sexual revolution. The political consequences are sweeping — Iowa's Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage is further proof of an old wise man's dictum that the United States invariably does the right thing, after first exhausting all the other alternatives — and the cultural impact is just beginning to be felt. Stephenie Meyer's fourth book in her vampire series, Breaking Dawn, will — one rumor has it — be broken into as many as three different films, which means that husbands, fathers, and boyfriends could find themselves dragged to Twilight movies over the next decade. Neil Gaiman should take some comfort, though: Vampires will eventually go away. They always do. But only when they've sucked our fear and our longing dry.

[Diabolico]

I wish Blade would rip nancy boy a new one.

The only thing i've liked Vampire related was a film called 30 Days Of Night.

Long winded, could of been executed better imho, thou not shabby.

The movies were crap, and the books should have ended with Queen of The damned.

Quote for the truth.

It was shot,, I have the movie memorized.

Yeah it was shot by the makeshift nurse?

http://movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=1988

Don't view if you don't like the sight of blood or want to see pictures from throughout the film, which could spoil it.

The movie itself made cinimatic history.

Its one of a few films I have on UMD, cause I liked it so much.

[8ullfrog]

There is a short film online, where they expose what a creepy stalky pedo edward cullen is.

Unfortunately, his target du jour turns out to be Buffy Summers.

I'm having a little trouble tracking it down.

[Robin-Graves]

Those flicks have a very high Wesley Snipes factor in addition to the vampire stuff that keeps me away. And doesn't the first one have Stephen Dorff in it, too? He sucks in everything but The Gate (one of you guys has got to remember that movie ).

I remember The Gate,, I saw it when it was released in theaters back in the 80s.

As for the vampires, I liked the concept of them being truly what they were,, better than you ( it showed the arogance of imortal beings over us mere mortal cattle).
The society and culture they had was pretty impresive to me,, them being like a secret society and the rulers being very wealthy.
 As for the Wesley Snipes thing,, he didnt play Blade like he was in the comic books. I watched all the comentaries that he did on the dvds,, and he had WAYYYYYY too much free reign on what he was going to do.
They WOULD have been better if the character was played more like what he was in the comics.

[Robin-Graves]

Yeah it was shot by the makeshift nurse?

It never showed who shot it for sure,, it cut away and then you heard the shot.

[Diabolico]

Kinda looking forward to Bakjwi (2009).

It never showed who shot it for sure,, it cut away and then you heard the shot.

>_< the baby had creepy green eyes?

Didn't like the remake of Day of the Dead, Bud was a soldier, who for some reason wasn't like the other zombies.

Yes the first Blade had Dorff in it (was pretty good imho), he played a tragic villain. Blade II was closer to the comics? Only read the Max series.

[Geemonster]

30 Days of Night had balls,it had atmosphere,was well acted.
  These shows show everyone looking pristine with make up,they certainly wouldn't scare me if i met one in a dark alley.
  Now 30 Days of Night,i'd either be paralysed with fear,or run like i've never ran before.

[Diabolico]

Bakjwi (2009), is directed by, Chan-wook Park. The same person who directed: Oldboy (2003).

30 Days of Night had balls,it had atmosphere,was well acted.

Kinda agree, it had atmosphere. Thou some of the characters were cannon fodder. The scene with, Carter Davies, which starts off with: soon there will be five, was predictable. How many films have similar scenes? My biggest problem with 30DON, is the passing of days.

  These shows show everyone looking pristine with make up,they certainly wouldn't scare me if i met one in a dark alley.

Depends on what level >_>. If you would happen to meet Edward in an alley, would you be able to smell him, before you saw him?

[Robin-Graves]

Im really hoping they make the sequel of 30 days... It was a bit more frantic and took place in America after the vampire case in ALaska was exposed.
It seemed bloodier than the first. And the vamps more feral.

[Skadi]

Kinda looking forward to Bakjwi (2009).

Me too. I've seen a clip of it. And I think it one an award at Cannes.. but I can't remeber which. Oldboy was one of the only movies I've ever seen that I didn't guess at all what was up... so, I already like the director. And Bakjwi sounds nice and quirky.

[Robin-Graves]

Talking about odd and quirky,,watch Deadgirl.
Ask Cheapie about it.

[Geemonster]

Well in 30 DON there was a neighbouring town,so that's obviously the next target.
  I just hope it does the 1st justice.

[Robin-Graves]

The sequel to the original comic was set in Los Angeles I believe.
 The cops wife went public and wrote a book and went public.
The vamps were after her for doing this.

[Geemonster]

The sequel to the original comic was set in Los Angeles I believe.
 The cops wife went public and wrote a book and went public.
The vamps were after her for doing this.

I never knew that!

[ohcheap1]

Talking about odd and quirky,,watch Deadgirl.
Ask Cheapie about it.

I think you can still read the banter in the movies section concerning this film. It was a precident setter in the horror genre thats for sure.