Fangs, blood and... death?

a critical comment to the new vampire film

In these ages of polarization and demonization of the "other", surprisingly, after thousands of years of evolution society still disputes and suggests penalization e.g. of cultural expressions of religious nature. We live in a time of racism and irrational anger, also of fanaticism, such, as to reduce the value of a man's life under a kilogram of explosives. I am not sure that we can speak of a new film genre yet, but there is a tendency that 'sucks' from sources like literature and television; both mediums which have thematically advanced film in the last years. The TV series "True Blood" and the novel saga "Twilight", now on film, have suggested the idea of the reconciliation between species. Today like yesterday, fiction is a good trial ground for new forms of social coexistence but also a metaphor for denouncing what is wrong with the world.

In the will to integrate in the human society, vampires have came out of their red-velveted-coffins two years ago. This scenario is presented in "True blood". The series, set in the not-so-tolerant deep southern state of Louisiana presents radical christians against vampire-loving individuals on the living side of the new society. On the dead side, old-time human blood sucking vamps versus night creatures who refuse to abuse their fellow living and suck on synthetic blood made in Japan. Both reconciling classes in-between are bound to provoke both radicals. With an own government, laws, social structures and appetites the vampires stand in the shadows of the night and draw their human companions to live a double life both in the light and dark.


"Twilight" proposes the utopia of light-bearing shiny vamps who integrate in the teenage world, living the nightmare scenario of going year after year of etenity to high school. Washington State is a territory which stays shadowed by rains and clouds most of the year, the perfect enviroment for these animal-feeding vamps that glow under the sun, fact that could give their nature away. Trouble arrives at paradise the moment blond vampire lays eyes on brunette teenager; and history repeating: Vampire-loving humans and vice versa end up pissing a lot of people and werewolves off.

The secret formula used both in "True Blood" and "Twilight", is as old as the boy meets girl plot, but the innovation that both stories offer, lays on the variation of fronts, the white man does not hunt the indian, black, vampire or whatever. New forms of alliances are made and at the end the only possible solution comes not in form of war or killing, but of tolerance and peaceful coexistence. Strangely enough there is no lack of battlefield and killing in both stories... So don't mind my hypothesis, novel, film or tv fiction, was and remains a carnavalesque version of ourselves.