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Post by michaelpaciocco on Dec 31, 2009 6:30:15 GMT -8
Completely out of nowhere thing - was talking with some family and friends regarding the surge of vampire-related stuff in media (Twilight, True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, etc etc). I've hit upon a theory, if anyone cares to discuss it further.
I'm beginning to wonder if the whole Vampire symbolism has been co-opted by Western media as a subconscious reflection of Western society's biggest fears and self-loathing: that we've become these horrific, monstrous creatures that need to feed off of others (i.e. the developing world) to sustain ourselves, but offer little in return but violence and death. Oh, we say we want to be better - to be cured or to swear off the violence and bloodlust, but keep falling off the wagon.
Just a thought.
Michael
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Post by jessebaker on Dec 31, 2009 10:01:25 GMT -8
Somewhat; I know Vampire the Masquerade/Kindred the Embrace and Angel touched upon that but I still think America still equates vampire=sex as far as being a metaphor for dangerous sex and lipstick lesbianism since sex sells and that there are plenty of guys who get off on lesbian vampire subtext and girls who think having an abusive, controlling boyfriend is desirable if the abuser is a vampire.
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Post by K-Box on Dec 31, 2009 16:39:34 GMT -8
Michael's angle is interesting and intelligent, but I suspect Jesse's is more accurate, albeit also more depressing, because when you consider how utterly whitebread and non-threatening the modern vampire has become - like South Park's portrayal of the Jonas Brothers, Twilight appeals to sheltered teenage girls through the paradox of being ABSTINENCE porn - it makes me wonder if, culturally speaking, we're all turning into milquetoasts who only hump in one position under the covers with the lights off, if our deepest, darkest sexual fantasies revolve around NOT gettin' any.
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Post by jessebaker on Dec 31, 2009 19:41:30 GMT -8
Anyone here who's a fan of Vampire the Masquerade/Kindred The Embrace might be able to expand upon on Michael's notion about modern vampires, seeing as one of the main sects of vampires in VTM/KTE are big business-themed as far as corporate executives and other big time "Masters of the Universe" types.
As for Kirk's comment about Twilight, I think in the end Twilight is an exception to the rule. Yes it's popular, but at the same time it's widely reviled on a level that I haven't seen in some time as far as critical backlash. Also, it's brought nothing, NOTHING new to the vampire mythos save for sparkly vampirism, a notion that has been widely rejected by most fans of the genre.
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Post by paulpogue on Jan 1, 2010 0:08:00 GMT -8
I actually have to agree with Jesse here -- the concept of vampirism-as-abstinence got at least as much play in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" with all the Angelus business. Although in that case it worked a whole lot better on a metaphorical level than anything "Twilight" ever tried.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 1, 2010 8:49:20 GMT -8
I'm not disagreeing - and I would point out that the Vampire-Abstienence connection predates even Buffy in my experience (Forever Knight, anyone?). I'm just trying to figure out what is making it so big RIGHT NOW in this time period, and it's either a Stealth Christian message (which seems to be consensus of everyone else) or some kind of twisted Western Self-Loathing.
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Post by Anders on Jan 1, 2010 9:07:18 GMT -8
I think most of the characteristics of Twilight vampirism are due to the attempt to sell a thoroughly sexual metaphor to pre-teens - you need to clean it up a lot to make it acceptable to the readers' parents.
I would like to think that Michael's angle was the right one, but sadly I don't think most of us know and care enough for it to be that way.
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Post by K-Box on Jan 1, 2010 15:45:03 GMT -8
I think most of the characteristics of Twilight vampirism are due to the attempt to sell a thoroughly sexual metaphor to pre-teens - you need to clean it up a lot to make it acceptable to the readers' parents. You're forgetting that the author, Stephenie Meyer, is a devout Mormon who has all but admitted that Edward is based on her OWN sexual fantasies. This is not about pleasing the PARENTS. This is about the fact that this is what TEENAGE GIRLS THEMSELVES now most want. Twilight would not be selling as much as it is if it was simply parents buying it for their girls. In the 21st century, the greatest sexual fantasy of teenage girls (and many, many adult women who also buy the books) is to be sex-deprived and utterly subservient to emotionally abusive and dysfunctional men. It's like the female gender is being written by Dave Sim IRL.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 1, 2010 19:15:15 GMT -8
And yet, I still can't look at the trailer for "Daybreakers" and not think it's a Peak Oil metaphor.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 6, 2010 15:14:35 GMT -8
sorry, it's "Day Walkers" not "Daybreakers"
Also, man, watching the wheels fall off "Heroes" is an amazing feat - I mean, it takes effort to fall apart so badly that Smallville looks like Shakespeare by comparison, but here we are - half the cast is gone, other cast members disappear for nearly half the season and you can't care or remember where they went, and pretty much every other actor is looking bored.
I don't care if they have a greenlight for another season; at the rate they're going they aren't gonna make it.
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Post by paulpogue on Jan 6, 2010 19:44:31 GMT -8
I never thought I'd see a series knock "Twin Peaks" off its perch as holder of the Biggest Sharpest Quality Drop Ever trophy, but "Heroes" not only did it in a serious hurry, it did it faster and more decisively than Twin Peaks could possibly have matched. For all the flaws of season 2, "Twin Peaks" still had great grand moments ahead of it, including the classic David Lynch episodes that wrapped up the Laura Palmer plot and finished off the series. Heroes? That damn show went from 90 to zero in less than a WEEK.
For 20-odd episodes it was fantastic TV, awesomely engrossing and so fast-moving that you didn't notice how badly stagnant the writing could get. (They went through tremendous convolutions all throughout the series to keep Hiro and his plot-unbalancing powers away from the center of the action, but the first season did it so well that only later did you scratch your head and say "Hey, didn't Hiro and Ando stay in Las Vegas an awful long time?") It did pathos well ("Company Man"), ripped off "Days of Future Past" at least in some very well-executed ways ("Five Years Gone"), and exhibited a nerdglee factor that made Smallville's casting look low-key. Sulu! The Master! The Doctor! Malcolm McDowell! The Greatest American Hero! ALL JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD.
And then it all goes to hell, not just between seasons, but between CLIFFHANGERS, as season 1 collapsed under its own weight and wrapped up with an unbelievably lame conclusion after some tremendous buildup. Hard to believe that for a while, this was being seriously discussed as the best thing to happen to nerd TV since Joss Whedon.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 6, 2010 20:58:32 GMT -8
Yeah, I can (mostly) overlook the way there isn't a truly original idea in Heroes that hasn't been ripped from 80s comics, but the main beefs I have are unforgivable:
1) OK, it's clear throughout that the Company has some kind of power-dampening tech in Season 1 to keep Sylar in his cell - who built it, where is it and why is it never used? 2) A lot of the characters are kept intentionally stupid - and not just stupid, but "needs an instruction manual on how to breathe". Matt, Hiro, Sylar and ESPECIALLY Peter all suffer from this problem 3) Mohinder Surresh is the dumbest scientist in the universe. 4) Poor Micah. Seriously, the Saunders/Hawkins Family massacre severely undercuts anything "heroic" 5) Power levels: Nevermind Hiro (or Matt Parkman) - when it comes to god-mode Power, it's hard to top Sylar and (pre-"Villains") Peter, who have a powerlevel normally associated with high-end Silver-Age characters such as the Martian Manhunter, Superman (silver Age) and the Silver Surfer. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except that due to budget constraints, a lack of imagination, and the decision to keep the conflicts restricted to a very limited group of characters, it got stale, fast. This is also one of the reasons the S1 finale didn't click - the entire Sylar/Peter conflict, after such a huge build up, came down to what? Two goddamn punches? At least in season 2 we got Hiro/Adam sword-fighting. 6) Sylar - they can't kill him because Zachary Quinto is one of the shows main draws, and he's probably the closest they have to a complex character, and he's the most powerful of them all (now that Peter's been dialed down). This makes the heroes look fucking impotent - it doesn't matter if the villain is more powerful - if you can't beat the bad guy, then what's the point? 7) Peter - and easily my biggest gripe is Peter. From his whiney Emoboy attitude (complete with haircut) to his brother/mentor issues, to the fact that he had the power of a freaking god but couldn't get his shit together for long enough to make it useful to anyone. Now, his power level, while still not insignificant, means that his confrontations with Sylar are going to depend on luck in order for him to survive, nevermind win. But if Peter ever returns to his previous levels, you have the problem that he's far more powerful than Sylar, and he has to be saddled with "I can't control it!" - thus, again, useless.
Ok, enough with that. Sorry.
Michael
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Post by jessebaker on Jan 6, 2010 21:47:56 GMT -8
I think the biggest failure of the show was that they refused to go all out as far as turning Sylar good/Peter evil in season two or even season three.
Peter's an annoying fucktard and really, I could see him going evil if only to sort of give an in-story justification for why Nathan (who's infinitely more interesting than Peter) wants to keep his powers a secret/forcibly register all known super-powered beings, if only because with his brother turning evil-evil, he knows first hand how dangerous super-powers are and how at the drop of the hat can turn a sane normal person into a sociopath with a God complex.
Compare this with Sylar turning good and going on a redemption arc that doesn't get screwed up (plus them altering his powers so that he is more like Rogue than Mr Serial Killing Brain Eater), you could get a compelling arc, especially if they could have found a way to link him up to Hiro as far as Hiro trying to redeem Sylar (which could in turn make the Hiro/Anders fall-out be meatier as far as Anders refusing to believe that Sylar could reform and having it create tension between the two).
Also, the show REALLY REALLY should have embraced the lulziness of the comic book genre with stuff like mirror universes and alien time travelers that could have come off of the set of the revived Doctor Who. Stuff like having Rena Sofer play a spandex-clad Ms Marvel-esque evil version of herself from a parallel earth where she was the only one with super-powers or bringing in Mary Tamm to do a short arc as a time traveler who schools Hiro in how to use his powers so as to not be so utterly God-like in his ability to go back and forth in time. Or bring in stuff like Elle forming her own Brotherhood of Evil Mutants team ala Mystique and having her out to kill Nathan because of the DOFP rip-off timeline that her pre-cog lover (played by Francis Capra) warns her about?
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 7, 2010 5:22:04 GMT -8
OK, in short:
The Sylar Redemption thing? They've tried it - it doesn't work because 1) Gabriel as a good guy is even more pathetic than Peter, and 2) It is highly questionable to turn a serial killer who has commited at least a dozen homocides ON SCREEN into a hero
As for the other thing - that shit was never going to happen because
1) BUDGET 2) These are people who are convinced that the only way superheroes can be "taken seriously" is to strip them of all that "crazy retarded kiddie crap" and bring it "down to earth". The one good thing about the failure of Heroes is that it will hopefully put a nail in that coffin. The flipside however, is that it will also put a nail in any new superhero-based TV series.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 7, 2010 5:26:58 GMT -8
New Things:
1) Prediction - "Kick-Ass" will be Mark Millar as "The Spirit" is to Frank Miller
2) Observation - Brubaker's Cap run is now longer than any run on the book other than Mark Gruenwald.
3) Observation/Speculation - You know what would be funny? With Steve Rogers' return and Tony Stark's reboot - wouldn't it be funny if during Siege or afterwards, went to Spider-Man and said "So, how's the wife?"
4) Speculation - Joe Quesada must know that he's living on borrowed time - literally every day he's in the office he's one more day into a historic EIC run - an unprecedented one. Personally, I give him three years tops - but if my thinking is right, and that "Blackest Night" kicks the high holy hell out "Siege", establishing that Didio has finally, FINALLY put a definitive win over Marvel, then it could be a lot sooner.
Michael
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