Monster movies are kind of stupid. Yes, I know, that sentence was kind of stupid. I did that so that this entry could be dismissed. I watch monster movies for the same reason you do, if you do, and it involves a lot of suspension of disbelief or the joy of mocking bad cinema. That’s not the kind of stupid I mean though.
I understand why the idea of a vampire can be disturbing. There’s a lot of things operating there, some of religious or philosophical significance. I had this buddy who had done two tours in Vietnam. He told me with all sincerity that the viet-cong did not place the same value on human life as we did, meaning their own and anyone elses, and somewhere in that rationale was a fundamental mish mash of philosophy. In armed conflict we do that though, we make monsters of the enemy.
To flesh out the idea of a vampire, to suspend the disbelief, you’d have to think that immortality gave the vampire a different perspective on the value of life. The novel by Bram Stoker hinted at that theme. Novels used to do that, have a point beyond the events of the plot. If they didn’t secondary Ed English teachers would have a hard time putting together a curriculum. Somewhere during the last surge of popularity in vampire movies they became sexy. Eternal youth and somehow bloodlust translated into plain old lust which somehow became romantic. Again, to flesh it out to suspend disbelief, the intimate act they are involved in is non-consensual, making it akin to rape. I know people have rape fantasies (I mean with them as a the vic, with them as the perp those people are teaching themselves to be sex offenders, probably). Rape isn’t a crime of passion or lust, wait, strike that, crime isn’t the point at all, rape isn’t an act of passion, lust, desire; it’s an act of violence, sort of like biting someone and sucking their blood out.
As far as scary goes that doesn’t do much for me, but it is the modern vampire in literature (if you can call it that) and cinema. And, for an immortal lot, the plot of a lot of modern vampire tales is how to kill the motherfucker, it’s like resurrecting superman and every comic is looking for kryptonite. Still, philosophically, the idea of a walking purgatory of insatiable hunger and an alien value on human life gives one pause, it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief, but if you can get there, there is meat on those bones.
The scary thing about Godzilla is we fucked the environment so bad by nuking Nippon that we created a giant pissed off lizard mutation. Big lizards are sillier than they are scary; us fucking up the natural order of evolution with nukes takes surprisingly little suspension of disbelief.
The one I don’t get, and it’s probably the monster that has been around the longest (if you don’t count that fallen arch angel) is the werewolf. The only thing about a werewolf that could possibly give me pause is the idea that a man could also be something else, something hidden. If, however, I was trying to think of the craftiest or most frightening deception of shape shifting, I would so not come up with a dog. I’ve met a lot of wolves and wolf mixes, granted most were pets, but I met two in the wild. I know it’s probably reckless and stupid of me, but I am just not afraid of dogs. The scariest thing about werewolfs, the most dangerous about them, is that most of the time they are human. Humans scare the shit out of me. Without going into a rant about cars or guns or other shit, the vast majority of foul play deaths to humans are caused by humans. I don’t know the exact stats, but I’m guessing the average amount of of human deaths by wolfs in the last century is less than one a year, and that one? He probably provoked the dog.
I try to rationalize the werewolf thing with racial memories of when wolfs were a real threat to people, and I can’t suspend that disbelief though I think I can understand it. Sunny once insisted to me that a brown recluse was in our bed, walked up her chest to eye level, stood on it’s hind legs and hissed at her. When I asked whether it was two or four hind legs she was mad at me for a week. There’s something primal about a werewolf, a man less removed from the beast han, say, other men. I can relate, not scared.
Again and entry for the sake of an entry. I need to write sometimes to remind myself that I had an idea, and, you know, it’s therapeutic. Sure, saving ideas is therapeutic, but that’s not how I mean it. It’s physical therapy for paw related issues, the physical act of typing.
Ok, going to do some paw licking.
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