Bloodsucking Freaks

It could atomic number 4 said that the 21st Hundred is the Century of the Vampire. Between True Blood, The Lamia Diaries and Twilight, there is many blood-suck fantasization expiration along in popular media honorable in real time than at any time since the embryonic 1980s. Bedbugs don't dream about suction this much blood. There are candy confections being sold right now in stores everywhere in packages resembling aesculapian stemma storage bags. Inside is a wet, colorful (and one presumes, sweet-scented) syrup. The stuff is called "Blood." Children eat this. Think about that for a 2nd.

Then again, the vampire's undead companions aren't exactly taking the century off. Some faring better than others, naturally. Wolfman successful a half-hearted attempt at a counter, which was largely forgotten (only, yes, it did happen) and the Mummy hasn't been seen Oregon detected from since Brendan Fraser's costar moved connected (and he didn't). But the true sensation of the also-undead-but-non-a-vampire Century 21 resurgence has been the zombie. From videogame to comic book to movie and television show, zombies, ilk vampires, are everywhere in the Ots.

What does IT all mean? Well, consulting the "What Your Terror Fantasy Way" spectrum, zombies are, alternately, symbols of our paranoia regarding incurable diseases (ebola, swine influenza) and manifestations of our terror of a large, analphabetic, yet strangely resilient enemy bent on eradicating our way of life of life (Islamic jihadists). Vampires, on the past helping hand, also get a foot in the "germ phobia" wading pool, but that has more to do with AIDS and that disease's transmission via bodily fluids. The little terror that the lamia more firmly taps into, however, is class war. Specifically the propensity of the aristocratic elite to literally sop up the respite of us dry-shod, i.e. "Wall Street vs. Main Street." By that token, Wall Street: Money Ne'er Sleeps English hawthorn be the best vampire movie ever made, and Gordon Gecko, the best lamia since Nosferatu.

You're non going to project a lot of Wolfman movies in the unreal future because that monster's idiom is as representative of the "shuddery" undersize common people, with their tendency to revert to violence in the night. This is why the Wolfman's bane is silver-tongued, projected from a mechanical device no less. Ingenuity and largess are the keys to beating back that heathen monstrosity, simply with the Mary Leontyne Pric of silver currently at about $30 per ounce, Wolfman war-ridden is releas to have to wait until the effects of the 2008 recession throw themselves receded.

So what close to the Mummy? What's his excuse? The recall of Mummies to the land of the absolute (and the resultant murder and mayhem) has always represented the Western populace's veneration and enchantment with the mysterious and unfathomable Mideast. Uncontrolled plunderers unearthing ancient powers beyond their inclusion, in other words. This fire was stoked in the 1930s and 40s when the famed British adventurers were, literally, unearthing tombs everywhere they stepped, recovering artifacts from a clock in front taped history. Information technology surely didn't hurt the Mammy legend that a number of these tombs contained ancient pathogens which, owing to the dim understanding of medication at that time, seemed to be a curse set upon those disturbing the Mummy's rest.

The recent Mummy films star the aforementioned Brendan Fraser rear therefore follow considered every bit much as admonitory against American imperialism atomic number 3 anything else. "Be careful mucking about in the Middle East," they appear to state. "For you never know what you might waken." Nowadays, that warning having gone unnoticed, we can hardly title to pronounce there's whatever mystery about information technology. We know full well what terror we could unleash in the Middle East – we've unleashed IT, and it dogs US to this day.

Yet none of this explains the strange nature of today's vampire cults. As touristed every bit vampires remain among amusement junkies of all ages, IT's the teens and tweens who are currently being seduced by the creatures of the night, and in numbers game that would terrify even Van Helsing. Arsenic oblivious as most young adults tend to be to matters of societal and financial terror, this can't personify lamia as representation of greed. So what is information technology? Is it, again, a rampant fear of AIDS and else catching diseases? I don't think thusly.

Although Acquired immune deficiency syndrome has yet to be whole cured, modern medicine has leastwise devised a stranglehold for the disease. The natural selection charge per unit for AIDS patients is mounting, and the rate of HIV infections underdeveloped into chock-full-blown AIDS is dwindling. Young hoi polloi in the Western world have therefore rejoiced consequently, stimulating a resurgence of "free love" polish. Sexual activity among teens (and tweens), while presently down from an each-clip high in the late 1990s, is even at a rate unheard of since the Sunset of the Old age of Aquarius. Accordant to the Guttmacher Institute, 70% of teenagers have had sex before they're no longer teenagers, and, perhaps even more shockingly, use of contraceptives is decreasing in-line with the increment in sexual activity. According to the CDC, roughly half of towering school age teenagers have had sex, with about 14% of those kids coverage having already had quartet "operating theatre more" sexual partners. Naturally, parents and community leaders are "shocked."

In light of current teen and tween "socialization trends," information technology's hard not to view the stand up of teen vampirism as some a solemnisation of and a protest against abandoned sexuality. That becoming a vampire equals losing one's innocence of youth (i.e. virginity) and that as intoxicating equally the idea may appear at first blush, information technology is a decision that moldiness make up weighed cautiously. Once pricked, put differently, you will never embody the same.

It's appointment, past, perhaps that sol well-nig to Valentine's Daylight, I am given cause to write of the nearly sexualized of all the monsters, the vampire, for this week's consequence of The Escapist, "Bloodsucking Freaks."

In the make out, Echo Bazaar author Chris Gardiner examines the cliché of the ordination killer; Adam Gauntlett delves into the causes for vampires' cultural longevity; Fintan Monaghan covers the rise of vampirism in Japan and Richard Dansky, the writer amidship to the "Tom Clancy" videogames, gives us the contrarian opinion: why zombies are better. Enjoy!

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https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bloodsucking-freaks-2/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/bloodsucking-freaks-2/

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