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A warehouse of knowledge with a storefront full of pornogrophy - Vampire philosophy
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| | Tags: | vampires | | Subject: | Vampire philosophy | | Time: | 12:11 pm |
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| I unintentionally got myself into a debate over vampires last night. This never goes well, but was particularly bad, as this individual actually believed that vampires are in fact real and that "there are documented cases of vampirism - it is a genetic disorder."
Delightful.
Now. I do not hate the idea of the vampire as a fantasy creature, and I've even enjoyed some vampire-themed media. However, I do have a serious problem with literature and film that asks the viewer to sympathize with these creatures, or treats them as romantic.
First, I cannot fathom how such a creature can be construed as romantic. Vampires, regardless of the author, are always at least one, and usually many, of the following.
- Physically and emotionally cold (lol they are dead)
- Arrogant and aristocratic
- Sullen, mopey, unsmiling existential dullards.
- Murderers
- Or you've got the Twilight-style vampires who can only have sex with you if you are unconsious and won't remember it and it will cause you great physical harm, and the vampire baby will break your spine during birth.
Wow, yeah, that sure gets me wet.
But lets say you do find pompous date-raping Sartre-reading emos with cold, dry skin attractive. I still cannot fathom how one could sympathize with these creatures.
A vampire, by definition, must kill or otherwise enslave human beings in order to survive. As a species, we humans are, therefore, their prey. Do cattle sympathize with meat packers? A sheep only licks the hand of the rancher who is about to slit its throat because it does not understand what is about to happen. Vampires are a threat to every human life and thus should be eradicated like any plague.
Typical objections to this are:- Many vampires in fiction only kill as much as they must to survive.
- It's just the natural order - a food chain.
- Humans kill each other all the time. How is this different?
- But they have FEELIINGS!
To these, I respond:- So you'd be fine with a vampire eating, say, your best friend? Your mother? You?
- Tell that to a gazelle being devoured alive by a lion. You think that gazelle won't fight with all its strength to keep from being devoured?
- Humans who murder do so out of choice or insanity, and when we catch those, we imprison or execute them to protect ourselves. Vampires do not have a choice. All of them -must- kill us, or die of starvation. Ergo, all should be executed.
- You know what? So do I, and I value my feelings more than those of someone who wants to suck the blood from my body.
It does not matter how human and emo a vampire is. It is a creature that requires many human deaths to support its own existence. As a human, I could never accept this, and would gladly commit vampiric genocide if given the opportunity. The final objection is the only interesting one.
5. What about a vampire who refuses to kill and subsists on animal blood, willingly donated transfusion blood, or synthetic blood a-la True Blood?
Now you have a potential story. Such beings are fairly common in Vampire lore, but the consensus seems to be that these substitutes are unsatisfying, and the overwhelming majority of vampires have neither the will or the desire to resist fresh human blood. The strong-willed Vampire who never feeds from a human and betrays his own kind to help keep humans safe from vampires is the only fanged protagonist I care to accept. | comments: Leave a comment     |
| "Or you've got the Twilight-style vampires who can only have sex with you if you are unconsious and won't remember it and it will cause you great physical harm, and the vampire baby will break your spine during birth."
I am probably the only person on the North American continent who did not know this. May I also note that I could have gone YEARS without this image?
I'm also now thinking that if there was any justice, these vampire fetish people would be WELL below furries on the charisma ladder. | | (Reply) (Thread) |
| And guess what happens next? The female protagonist's human ex-boyfriend FALLS IN ROMANTIC LOVE WITH THE BABY.
Apparently, it's awwwwwwwww-right.
And you know what? I get furries. Leaving aside "babyfurs" and that very small minority who actually copulate with animals, they're just playing out fantasy - "What if we were anthropomorphic creatures, wouldn't that be fun?" - that does not necessarily require any sort of dehumanization (in the emotional sense). The vampire fetish, on the other hand, is very specific: "I sympathize with an undead emotional-zombie who must kill humans to survive and who would threaten my very life if I were to copulate with him/her."
Edited at 2009-06-11 06:57 pm (UTC) | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| I get furries, too.
I'm not one, but I do believe in the existence of people who aren't humans (H. sap. sap. in other words). | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | Vampires are little more than intelligent zombies with a lust for power. KILL THEM ALL!!! | | (Reply) (Thread) |
| I couldn't agree with you more.
It's these very reasons why I've refused thus far to watch Twilight. I detest the romanticization of vampires with a passion. I admit, it was a neat concept at first, but the whole "true love" vampire bullshit has just been way overdone that I'm sick of it. Plus, it doesn't make any freaking sense, as you pointed out. | | (Reply) (Thread) |
| I have to admit to being a fan of vampire stories in general... actually, I'm guilty of writing an almost complete vampire webcomic which I just have... neglected to draw.
What can I say besides, it's interesting to try to get into the head of a creature/concept so alien to us? There's plenty of fiction out there that asks people to sympathize with a protagonist who happens to be, for instance, a serial killer. That's potentially more creepy, as serial killers really exist. The fact that serial killers are creepy and wrong doesn't keep me from potentially loving a well-written book told from the point of view of one, and me enjoying such a book doesn't automatically mean I'm not terrified and disgusted with real life serial killers.
We're afraid of things we don't understand, and so we try to understand them and romanticize them as a way to quell that fear. We see a senseless murder, and it makes us feel better to try to find a reason or motive behind it, even if that doesn't make it less tragic or wrong. The vampire myth probably arose as a way to explain aberrant human behavior. A guy who likes to impale people on spikes or a lady who likes to bathe in human blood or anyone who eats human flesh must be a demonic creature, because humans would never be capable of such things!
As a writer (Okay, pretending I am a real writer) I also find the moral implications of of "Vampires are a threat to every human life and thus should be eradicated like any plague." fun to play around with. It's a pretty self-important stance to take. Tigers are a potential threat to human life, but we go out of our way to protect them. We are a threat to a whole lot of other life, so should we be eradicated? (or self-eradicate?) You only assume that a sheep doesn't know it's about to be slaughtered, but we don't actually have proof of that. In this scenario, the right-to-life argument is skewed to express that everything has a right to try to survive, even if their only means to do so is by killing other things. If you use the argument of "they must be killed because they are a threat to us", where do you draw the line at what's considered a threat? It easily slips from being a threat to your life to being a threat to your land or your religious beliefs or your comfortable lifestyle. True, if vampires were real I would probably not be against their eradication, since it's instinct to protect ourselves, but again as a topic in fiction I think it's fascinating to examine.
I guess I feel that if we only wrote things from the point of view of sane, respectable human beings, it would severely limit the scope of literature, ect.
I don't know about the spine-breaking birth thing, though. That's just fucked up. | | (Reply) (Thread) |
| | And cheesy as it may be, the idea of Twu Wuv and it being strong enough to override everything else, including basic survival instincts, is always gonna be popular among socially awkward teenage girls. "You're gonna starve to death for me? That's so sweet!" | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| And I haven't read Twilight yet, but my friend informs me that "at no point in any of the Twilight books, has a vampire had sex with an unconscious person."
"Haha, I'm just saying." | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| It's either in the last, or 2nd to last book that Mr. Vampire copulates with Mary Sue. It leaves her with broken bones and bruises, and she has no memory of it. Then, when giving birth to her hellchild, it breaks her spine.
AND IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| Hmmn, you'll have to take this up with my friend... I gots no idea.
I'm not standing up for Twilight, mind... just the genre. | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| she remembers the intercourse, she just doesn't remember how rough it was. lots of people (all?) have had sex that the next day they're aching and trying to figure out where that bruise came from.
i actually like the twilight series, apart from a few annoyances in the plot. *ooooh i love you so therefore i MUST break your heart* yeah, if someone tried to pull that crap on me i'd break his jaw. | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) agent57 | | Subject: | But really | | Link: | (Link) | | Time: | 2009-06-11 09:51 pm (UTC) |
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| I'm just in it for all of the potential bad-punning. I mean, really, you would not believe how many there are.
I apologise for theorizing all over your post. (And I just keep going!) I'm just kind of a geek. | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | Oh, I'm not suggesting that all protagonists have to be 100% good guys. I prefer flawed protagonists anyway. My problem is with the notion that vampires, in general, are somehow romantic, or deserving of sympathy. | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| | I guess I just prefer to judge characters on a case-by-case basis, rather than "in general." If the author decides to go with the vampire-who-refuses-to-eat-humans, (a scenario you suggested as acceptable, if dull... and luckily for you it makes up about 80% of vampire fiction, from what I can tell.) I'll probably find it more deserving of sympathy. If the author, on the other hand, writes a completely loathsome character and still gets me to like them through quality writing, then I'm going to be damned impressed. This applies to a wider range than just vampires. I usually find villains to be more interesting than heroes, though... | | (Reply) (Parent) (Thread) |
| I don't have a problem with -most- vampire stories. Partly because I make an emphasis on stories. But in general, overall, they're nifty stories. The basic, bare-bones concepts have been around for ages, it's sort of like telling ghost stories or zombie stories. They're fun.
I think anyone who thinks they're actually real needs a visit to a doctor. Preferably sooner rather than later, and with a hefty dose of something nice and calming.
I think anyone who reads Twilight and LIKES IT should die in a fire. That shit is utter bullshit. Again, if ONLY because it takes a perfectly reasonable genre, which has set rules and long-standing concepts behind it, and totally FUCKS IT UP THE ASS.
That is all. | | (Reply) (Thread) |
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A warehouse of knowledge with a storefront full of pornogrophy - Vampire philosophy
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