VAMPIRES
This week, I went a little
overboard. For starters, I read and watched Interview with the vampire. As a queer
individual, it’s huge in the community as THE gay vampire movie. The movie and the book are very similar, but also very
different in crucial ways. In the movie, their relationship is more romantic in
the conventional sense. In the book, however, it’s abusively romantic. The set
up is the same as many first young gay relationships unfold. The young man has
a conventional setup, but is immensely unhappy. Something is missing from his
life, something fundamental like a meaning. A man who knows that look sees him,
identifies that they’re the same and corners him, offering to intimately change
his life in a way another man did for himself before. He agrees, and his life
changes forever. He sees things in a way he didn’t before, and he can’t go back
to how he was. Soon, he can no longer relate to other people and their way of
life. The only person he has is the man that changed him, and he can’t leave
him even if he is abusive, because he’s the only other man like him he knows.
He revolts against whom he is for a while, but has no choice but to eventually
accept who he is to survive. That’s the story of both Louie of Interview with
the Vampire and most gay men discovering themselves via their first male
partners. Obviously there’s also the fact that the vampire genre is very sexual
in nature, so that also adds to it.
I’ve also read twilight for
this week. Was it good? Eh. It was just a self insert wet-dream fantasy written
for young girls. The main character was just bland enough to be anyone, but
they where special in nature to attract a tall/dark/handsome vampire with a
heart. In this story, feeding almost feels like sex. He want’s to do it with
her so badly, and she kinda wants it to, but he doesn’t want to ruin her.
There’s probably more to the story then that, but not enough for me to care
honestly.
The movies I’ve also
watched were Lost Boys, Blade, and Let the Right One In. In Lost Boys, the
vampires are a cult of biker boys that entrap the older brother Mike in the
movie when he tries to get with a girl named Star he meets at the fairgrounds.
She’s mixed up with the vampires begrudgingly and tries to help Mike stay away,
but to no avail. It was actually my first time watching this movie, and it’s
VERY 80’S. So 80’s that if I was asked “what were the 80’s like?” I would show
them this movie. It even had a beefcake oiled up singing rock with torches at
the beach at night. The version of vampires in this movie are just crazy
thrill-seeking out of control biker bros and while that’s not my favorite, it
was an interesting and mostly enjoyable movie.
Blade. Oh my god. I love
comic books; I’ve read a lot of them. I’m more or less familiar with the Blade
comics, and the movie is something else. I like that vampires and just kind of
like mutants in this universe. Not much to say about it from me honestly. I
think it’s an interesting take on the genre just like with Lost Boys, Blade has
a feeling much like Underworld.
Finally, Let the Right One
In. One of my favorites, it has such a great mood and it really feels like what
a Vampire movie should be. A could-be horror thriller, with the tones of melancholy
and longing, the child monster that only wants a friend and to be free from the
dark reality it’s stuck in. It’s a coming of age story with a theme of
violence, and how bullying, instead of being sad, leads kids to the desire to
commit violent acts. The ideas of good and evil are played with, being that the
“good kid” is the human who wants to kill but doesn’t, and the “evil kid” is
the vampire who needs to kill but doesn’t want to. It’s a brilliant and clear movie
that tells an amazing story even if all the words were taken away.
