Realistic vampires...
I watched Eclipse. I don’t know why I did it; the movies aren’t even a guilty pleasure of mine. I suppose I keep up with the films to keep track of this ridiculous phenomena that has somehow permeated popular culture so thoroughly that people dare to compare it to Harry Potter lol
But yes, I watched it. It was boring. Not half as boring as New Moon but still very boring. While I watched it though, I figured out why I’ve always had this nagging little problem with the way vamps are portrayed in media. I mean all media from books to TV to folklore.
This one is a little long....
The problem is what I know and understand about people. Human beings.
Let me highlight some principles of the human mind: we like patterns, we fear/resist change, we are a product of our genetics/environment, and culture affects our personalities greatly.
So what this generally means is as human beings we are not prone to changing easily. Even when we think we’ve changed for the better or worse, we’ve actually done very little changing and rarely maintain it for long periods of time (though chemical disruptions like drug use can do an excellent job of permanently fucking things up lol). It also means that generations have differing opinions for a reason and its really REALLY hard to convince a generation to change their mode of thinking.
Now that doesn’t mean we are completely incapable of changing. We have some really minute changing ability. It is required of us to be flexible because we are part of an ever changing society (which changes according to a shitload of stuff like: economy, war, new technology, disease, new population characteristics, changes in our very landscape etc). Most of the time however, we examine life through our biased lens: we view the world in a way that meshes with our perspective. Without using too much of the technical psychological terminology, I’ll say this: we interpret events and people in a way that confirms our beliefs and ignore or disregard information to the contrary. This maintains our worldview, makes us feel safe, and makes us adapt to changes without changing ourselves much in the process.
All good? Lol
What about vamps? Well if you think about it, vamps are supposed to be in limbo. They are pulled from their era, from their lives, from the people who had moulded them as humans and from the influences of change. Because they don’t change and they can never be part of society long enough to have it make any lasting impact. Their lives should be disjointed and messy. They should also be damaged because they are fighting the biggest change of their lives: the loss of humanity. The mind is not meant to handle such a thing. Everything changes around them, people born and dead, and they are separate.
This is a paradox: they never change yet they are so drastically changed in one moment that they must be fucked up in the head lol
Lets use Edward Cullen as an example. If we made Edward a realistic vampire then he should maintain much of the beliefs and values of his era (the 1900s right?): he should be sexist, racist, homophobic, classist, puritan, he should scorn the new technology of today, wailing for the better yesteryears and denouncing Bella as a slut (she wanted sex before marriage right? Lol).
Somehow these aspects of history are always ignored when one creates vampires. It is assumed that because vamps are no longer directly a part of society all influences of society are rendered void. You have female vamps that are cocky and in your face instead of submissive and simpering as their era demanded it. You have males that are quite happy with a dominate woman and are even aroused by it. Ummm no.
Vamps should technically hold onto the culture of their era. They are realistic vampires. Problem is they’re less sexy, less relatable, and more difficult to understand. Because really, we shouldn’t assume that just because you can live forever that you’d change much at all (unless of course your vampire is one whose lost his soul or some weird magical aspect of vampirism means you’re more open minded). It goes against human nature to embrace change - and the vampires we imagine are more human than creature.
But yeah it would kill the fun if all your vamps should run rampant with racism and sexism and etc. I’m a
Debbie Downer lol