Not Buying Blade
Posted on June 27th, 2009 in Important Matters, immortality Blade, True Blood, Twilight, Vampire
I’ve been thinking of Blade recently. He doesn’t make sense. How can you be half a vampire? Doesn’t that make as much sense as having half-malaria? Being half-pregnant? Unless we’re talking about a remission or incubation period. Even then, you can pass on diseases even when they’re in remission – I know this from STD commercials. All diseases? I don’t know.
Let’s look into Blade’s origin story (from wikipedia):
“Tara Brooks, was a prostitute at Madame Vanity’s Brothel. When his mother experienced severe labor complications, a doctor was summoned who was in actuality Deacon Frost, a vampire who feasted on her during Blade’s birth and killed her. However, this inadvertently passed along certain enzymes in his own blood to the infant. This resulted in Blade’s quasi-vampiric abilities, including a greatly prolonged lifespan and the ability to sense supernatural creatures, as well as an immunity to complete vampirism. Brooks’ fellow prostitutes drove off Frost before he could kill the infant as well.”
This is interesting. “Passed along certain enzymes in his own blood to the infant.” Assuming this means the mother’s blood, through the umbilical cord, this seems to be holding on to the theory of every vampire bite is infectious. Either that or momma Blade bit the vampire back. This also would mean there was a brief period between the attack and the birth or a lengthy attack – after all, it takes some time for blood to travel around the body.
It could have been the blood intoxication that made the vampire so easy for mere humans to drive away, but I think this might just have been a weakling grunt to begin with. After all, vampires are known for their particular tastes (pun intended) and would probably dine on something higher class if they had any bearing of their own.
Long-term bee handlers develop a level of immunity to bee stings. Antidotes to snake venoms are made from the poison itself – and I believe the same principle holds to vaccines. Once you’ve already had chicken pox once, you’re safe.
So I can see being safe from vampirism once you’ve soft of been infected and sort of survived it already. Would that also translate to super powers? You don’t retain your spots from chicken pox when you have the immunity….
Further research found me an Amazon discussion on the Twilight series. While I’m unfamiliar with the novels/films (other than it was written by a Mormon and vampirism is a metaphor for sex), the discussion was interesting. Apparently in Twilight the long discussed possibility of (half) vampire children has been achieved – and this is how its rationalized: Vampires can’t bear or give birth to children because they’re bodies cannot change, they’re in a sort of suspended animation. However, since men’s bodies don’t change after puberty they can still impregnate living human women, who can then give birth, although invariably die in the process. In fact, one vampire goes around impregnating women because he believes the “hybrid” child is an improved race.
This has several problems. First – and this is a problem I have with True Blood as well – I have a strong disbelief that vampires can sustain an erection. One of the many causes of erectile dysfunction is blood pressure, which I should think is in the negative for the undead. This case might be argued for the period right after feeding, of course, so I’ll secede the point. Second, while ejaculation doesn’t presuppose erection, it’s almost impossible to imagine an undead being capable of creating life. The vampires of Twilight cannot even cry – how can he create semen? Rice’s vampires cry blood … yeah. No, I don’t see any impregnation happening here.
So, we’ve gone from chicken pox to erectile dysfunction (had to repeat it one more time – imagine the hits I’m going to get!) trying to get behind the mysteries of vampirism. At the end, I hate to say this but . . . Mr. Blade, I’m not buying your story!
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June 29th, 2009 at 11:56 am
agreed on all counts.
this sort of goes hand in hand with our “fountain of youth” discussion. what exactly determines immortality.
essentially, i’ve discounted all of twilight. firstly, because i found it boring and was completely unable to related to it. probably because i’m not in middle school. secondly, it seemed way too preachy to me, and this ‘vampires being able to impregnate normal humans’ just ends up coming across as a harsh abstinance warning, particularly here because it’s applied to teenagers.
i personally think that the vampire myth is entwined with sexuality because, for one, it’s WAY more entertaining that way, and two, because it was through the vulnerability created by sexuality that vampires were able to lure and feed on humans. they ‘technically’ use sex to procreate… just in another way.
this being said, a super-sexy vampire should probably be able to provide a good deal of pleasure to a mortal, but not feel any himself unless it’s actually drinking the mortals blood… in which case feeding becomes the metaphor for sex.
so from what i can see, humans find vampires sexy and alluring, and find pleasure in them, but probably in the same way one would find pleasure in a prostitute or a dildo… meaning that the prostitute or dildo doesn’t necessarily have the same satisfaction. but then they also can’t kill you (well, maybe the prostitute could).
since a vampire is technically dead, there should be absolutely no way that a person could give birth to the child of the vampire. therefore there’s no reason that blade should be considered a half vampire. in fact, it would be more resonable to even have used the hokey “unexplained mysterious immunity” story to make him “half vampire”, a la 28 Weeks Later. it would have been much more believable, and wouldn’t have disobeyed the more obvious laws of life and death.
oddly, i really like true blood. i think because it’s raunchy and for adults and it takes enough liberties that i don’t feel like i have to constantly question it’s adherence to the myth.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Yes, I totally agree – Blade should have gone the 28 Weeks Later / The Stand road and claimed immunity to vampirism. Sure, he wouldn’t have all the cool super powers, (unless his invulnerability made the vampirism mutate inside him…? I don’t know, that’s kinda reaching far) but it would have made more sense. After all, even the deadliest virus – or strongest disinfectant spray for that matter – is only 99.9% effective. Its just a matter of time until one person comes around who is immune.
I liked what Anne Rice did with vampire feeding. In her books, its the highest bliss, kind of like the best human orgasm times ten, almost a trance state with the beating heart is like the clear chiming of a far off bell. I don’t remember her vampires ever even wanting sex, because the allure of the touch, the skin, the allure of the flesh was in the blood, not the genitals. Blood is their sexual union.
In the same way, with their glamour, I believe the pleasure they give their capture is sexual, carnal, possessive, but not genital; if you get my meaning.
On the other hand, I enjoy the way True Blood works the vampire myth, including how their teeth come out, how one becomes a vampire, and how they die. This gets to the great thing about vampire stories – every new working of the myth can be a new one, a new system. Some, like True Blood, can be very good, while others, like Twilight, are just bad.
July 10th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
yeah, i think if blade had gone the 28 weeks later route and said it was a mysterious immunity, i would have gone, oh, come on! but then i would have thought to myself, well… there’s no reason he CAN’T be immune, right? better keep watching in case they explain it.
incidentally, i just resolved a few minutes ago to not watch any more of the twilight movies. it just isn’t worth my time. they can keep their morals.