The ranting neo-Marxist in me protests.
The imdb boards are a scary, scary place. But reading the Daybreakers boards today, started me on a different reading of the film's "vampire resource-crisis apocalypse" premise than the one that had occupied me since I first heard about the movie (directed by Australia brothers, Michael and Peter Spierig and starring Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Claudia Karvan and Willem Dafoe).
The synopsis:
"Edward Dalton is a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world's population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race (Daybreakers)."
So, the parallel to natural resources is pretty up-front and obvious, but in the middle of writing a response to a poster who complained that vampires had become too "scientific", I realised this: humanity are represented by the vampires in the movie because they are the majority (who we would be), but they are also the humans; humans are parasite and victim both. Which side of the line they came up on, is mostly a matter of chance. How you choose to deal with the cycle of feeding/victimisation, that's your own matter. (And no, saying it's natural selection and we all have to live is no excuse, judging by what I saw of the trailer. The main character, note, is a scientist looking for a way to break the cycle.) The film could be a metaphor for any system of exploitation where one group of a population was dependent upon another for its existence. Here's my comment:
I think there is a strong scientific vein in the vampire mythos that hasn't even started to be properly mined in film: organ theft/transplants, parasitic lifeforms, people who can live forever due to the advantage of money and medical science, but at the cost of the lives of others (the weak, poor, disadvantaged). THAT is the crux of the mythos: a creature that cheats death by feeding off the life of another. Just read one of those articles that complain how there aren't enough transplant kidneys to go around for people "needing" them to live, and the women and men in the Third World who will sell their organs to feed their children.
I think what's so bold about "Daybreakers" is that it seems to be making vampires the majority and humans the Other. It says that WE are the vampires; we have become leeches feeding off ourselves. Never mind that shit about "raping the planet". It's other human beings we're killing.
If you haven't yet, go and see the trailer for Daybreakers. It's effing beautiful.
The synopsis:
"Edward Dalton is a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world's population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race (Daybreakers)."
So, the parallel to natural resources is pretty up-front and obvious, but in the middle of writing a response to a poster who complained that vampires had become too "scientific", I realised this: humanity are represented by the vampires in the movie because they are the majority (who we would be), but they are also the humans; humans are parasite and victim both. Which side of the line they came up on, is mostly a matter of chance. How you choose to deal with the cycle of feeding/victimisation, that's your own matter. (And no, saying it's natural selection and we all have to live is no excuse, judging by what I saw of the trailer. The main character, note, is a scientist looking for a way to break the cycle.) The film could be a metaphor for any system of exploitation where one group of a population was dependent upon another for its existence. Here's my comment:
I think there is a strong scientific vein in the vampire mythos that hasn't even started to be properly mined in film: organ theft/transplants, parasitic lifeforms, people who can live forever due to the advantage of money and medical science, but at the cost of the lives of others (the weak, poor, disadvantaged). THAT is the crux of the mythos: a creature that cheats death by feeding off the life of another. Just read one of those articles that complain how there aren't enough transplant kidneys to go around for people "needing" them to live, and the women and men in the Third World who will sell their organs to feed their children.
I think what's so bold about "Daybreakers" is that it seems to be making vampires the majority and humans the Other. It says that WE are the vampires; we have become leeches feeding off ourselves. Never mind that shit about "raping the planet". It's other human beings we're killing.
If you haven't yet, go and see the trailer for Daybreakers. It's effing beautiful.