Before it fades into the background of popular culture, let’s get one last dig at the Twilight “Saga” before the last film comes out and ends this bizarre fascination.
Yeah, I’m not a Twilight fan.
Shocker, I know.
But I understand it, aside from “Coldly Calculated to appeal to your Shrieking Demographic” at least. Mostly because I know I like some things that other people don’t. I like some of the worst movies ever made, and acknowledge that.
It’d be nice if the fans knew what they were getting into, which is part of the problem.
Before people knew what it was simply by hearing people complain about it, Twilight had some of its fans ballyhoo it as an ‘epic’ battle between vampires and werewolves.
This didn’t stop Underworld or Van Helsing from having its many problems, but the idea is cool enough that idea that it can draw people in.
They should have been more honest, and told those people what it really was: “Chaste Mormon Pornography.” That’s really the only way I’ve been able to analyze these films. Yes, the films. I couldn’t make it through them without Rifftrax, mind you, but I watched as much of them as my brain could tolerate (or allow before something shiny caught my eye).
I tried to read the books, but each time I picked one up, it burst into flames. Same thing happens with Bibles, now that I think on it. . .
A lot of talk has gone around about how the whole thing is a metaphor for the Mormon church and entrance into and so on. It’s all been gone over at length by many an author, blogger and I don’t have the background to go into that.
But no one looks into Vamprism as a whole—what does that mean in this universe.
From what I’ve seen, vampires as a whole don’t represent much. It’s really more the groups they are associated with. In the majority of cases, though, Vampirism is more closely associated with perfection. The flowery descriptions Edward gets and his passing resemblance to the Mormon founder Joseph Smith ties it into the Mormon concept of Angels.
Short version: They’re sparklingly white.
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This is apparently happens to all vampires in the “Saga”, regardless of race (though some melanin retention does occur, it generally turns you into a marble statue). All descriptions of Mormon angels emphasize this point above all others—that and their glowing nesss.
And now the sparkling makes sense.
But there’s a larger, cultural symbolism going on that I think needs addressing first. I’m about to defend Stephanie Meyers. She can be blamed for a lot of course, but she didn’t destroy vampires.
Vampires have been on a downward spiral since they first hit the printed media with Varney the Vampire (1847). At the start of their un-life Vampires were simply Plague and a monster spawned from it. They were animate corpses or spirits who rose from the grave to feed on the living, sucking their vitality and essence from their breath and blood.
Then Varney, Dracula and Carmilla came along and mixed that death symbol with sexuality.
Today, Dracula would be considered a trashy romance novel. Its plot can be summed up in such terms to: “A wealthy Romanian lothario goes to England and starts hitting on all the women. The guys there don’t like it so put an end to it.”
Suddenly loses its mystique, doesn’t it.
As time went on, the trend went on. From Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins to Anne Rice, Vampires became more sympathetic, less about disease and death and more and more about sex.
Which brings us to Twilight: it is not an aberration, but a natural result of the evolution the monster has gone through since its earliest appearances in print.
If Stephanie Meyers did any research into vampirism, it’d be a fascinating study.
But she didn’t. And she made Golem-Angel-Fairies, borrowed a single barely relevant aspect from Anne Rice and called the assemblage ‘vampires.’
Biology
As near as I can figure it, Vampires are silicone based life forms, like the Horta from the original Star Trek.
Though they feed on blood, as they age, the need to do so becomes less. How they maintain energy is never explained other than being a further sign of them being ‘Perfect’.
That young vampires are stronger than older ones is a quirk that fits the silicone based life form. Being of crystalline structure (easily evidenced in the films where one young vampire shatters the head of another—as well as their sparkly surfaces being reminiscent off such formations being a dead giveaway), it is likely that they are simply growing brittle with age.
This is apparently further supported by their lack of proper regenerative processes. Cuts and the like hurt them and leave marks that don’t quite heal. However, they get to re-attach limbs that are torn off, so that’s just contradictory. Perhaps there is a repair process similar to crystal growth going on, but the healing has no cosmetic effect and simply stitches them together.
Their stone construction also explains why many Twilight Fans claim near absolute invulnerability for these creatures as they are effectively ‘made of granite’
Granite laced with Napalm, actually.
Their blood and bodily fluids have been replaced with “Venom”—an ill described substance that fills in for biological substances and seems to be powered directly by the needs of the plot in many instances. A sad aspect, indeed. It also makes me wonder about their digestive processes even more. Maybe Everybody Poops except vampires. It would certainly fit with the perfection metaphor.
Anyway, this substance is also extremely flammable, being their only real weakness: fire and dismemberment to access this super flammable liquid that is also corrosive and can turn people into vampires and stuff. We’re told this because at the end of the first book, Edward has to suck the venom from Bella to stop her from turning.
Yes. Have the vampire, whose mouth is full of the poison in question, suck the poison from her veins—a technique that is antiquated by almost half a decade by this point.
But then again, these are barely vampires—they’re more like Super Heroes. They have superhuman strength in the low ton-range, superhuman speed in the range of about a hundred miles an hour and I’ve already gone over their durability. They scale about as well as most or Marvel’s vampires, but are more brittle than squishy.
And that’s part of the reason they are so disliked (that and being overplayed), they fit more in line with a Super Hero story than your average vampire story. That the Twilight vampires all get a random super-power (usually something psychic or manipulative of others) in addition to the standard vampire package just exacerbates it all. Though, technically Anne Rice can be blamed for that addition.
There’s no genetic reason for that, so it would largely fall to the mystical. There is some genetic component, as the monstrous creature the main character’s spawn has a combination of their abilities, but given the way vampires create more of their kind normally, this would otherwise not be apparent.
Possibly the only ‘good’ thing to come out of that character’s existence.
