disenchantedbunny.

The belief in demons of certain sorts is a cross-cultural phenomenon. While their attributes may differ from place to place, people to people, a majority of these beliefs can be attributed to the personification of natural phenomenon, an explanatory and predictive theory. Cultures devoid of some type of renaissance typically have their theories intertwined which such entities. Ancient myths are filled with blood sucking, flesh eating monstrosities that generally play some important functional role, if only to scare little kiddies into belief. Creatures and entities are often clearly invoked to explain phenomenon.

What of metaphor? These supernatural creatures that inspire fear should surely be left out of the atheistic, naturalistic vocabulary. Folk tales are generally considered useless, fiction as irrelevant to fact. But culture can often give us an insight into important human problems. The modern Vampire is one of those insights.

Our modern vampire is largely influenced by Bram Stoker’s Dracula: the fangs, the blood, and most importantly, the immortality. Feeding from the blood of humans (particularly, children, women and the innocent) in a delirious quest for ever-lasting life – once this impulse to escape death is embraced, one is truly a vampire.

I was introduced to the novel Dracula when I was in 5th grade. I still vividly remember how exciting the book was to read back then. The literary style was different to anything I had read before, and the struggle between the protagonists and the antagonist Count Dracula seemed epic in proportion to the shit that primary school kids are given.

Most vampires don’t suck blood. Modern vampires prey on people’s gullibility, sucking their money, their emotional welfare and their ability to cope with the modern world. A vampire, upon sucking the blood from their victims, will often give a little of their own blood to the victim, a little taste of immortality, and convert them, feeding on their desires for power and everlasting life. An emotion-vampire will break down their victim so as they feel they cannot live without their master, giving them tiny rewards and reinforcing the desires that keep them as slaves.

What better metaphor for religious communities? Priests and Rabbis, shaman and sages: charismatic leaders, promising their followers eternal life, sucking their emotional stability and bank accounts dry, keeping them in their place until death comes home to open arms. Opiate of the people, as Marx once said.

I want to run through this metaphor a bit more thoroughly than I usually do, because the vampire theme in popular culture is kinda enormous. The ways in which religious themes dominate vampire stories is pretty damn complex… hopefully giving it a few posts will make the relationship a bit more coherent in my mind.

By the way, how funky and cool is my new blog theme? w00t!

 Unfortunately, and rather obscurely, this movie has no men on fire (I don’t recall any, but I was rather drunk when we watched this). But like any movie in the action genre you have hyper-masculine, masochistic, wounded protagonists spinning off cheesy one-liners as they kill everyone and everything in their way – in an often convoluted manner.

Even more unfortunately, the plot for this movie was stolen directly from Rambo II. John Creasy, ex-CIA (Rambo, ex-army), depressed at the failings of his previous occupation, takes a new job in hope of redemption, fails new job, goes on redemptive killing spree. But whereas Rambo was inspired by post-Vietnam America, Man on Fire is inspired by Bush-administration family values.

With this in mind, one shouldn’t be surprised at all the random cross-and-crucifixion shots dished out. The problem is that appealing to family values and Jesus is more difficult when you’re trying to make a gory, sadistic action film.

Firstly, the ‘bad guys’ are in an organised religion. Institutionalised enemies are good bad-guys, because even if their motivation is the same as the good-guys, their deeds can be rationalised within a hierarchy. The bad guys are pointed out always saying “we’re professionals – we’re just doing our jobs”, implying some Nazi–bureaucracy where no single person thinks that they are to be held responsible. In this film, it is the individual that is responsible – for his own salvation, for the family (that he represents) and for justice itself. Welcome, protestant audience.

There are obvious verbal pushes to indicate how personal justice (ie. Vengeance) is more efficient than organised justice. The police point out that Creary is doing more to remove corruption in the force than they could hope to achieve in years of organised work.

The problem, as it normally is in these types of movies, is where does the justification for this overkill arise? This is especially problematic when there is also a Christian theme. The injustice of the seedy Mexican underworld is made out to be the construction of a chain of corruption: man-made evil. The free-will defence is being applied here. There is no injustice in the natural scheme of things, but the actions of free men imposed it regardless. So technically, it’s up to men to fix it, right?

Here is the scary crux of the free-will argument. The divine punisher, the imposer of God’s will, is no longer God. Men must take up God’s will, whatever religious creed they have been indoctrinated into. The bible says to forgive, and only God can pass judgement. So says an old man to Creary. But, Creary says, they have an appointment up there – and he’s just pushing them to the front of the line.

And this line of reasoning is what made this movie so fucking scary to me. The way that these action films are meant to work is that we, the audience, are supposed to empathise with the protagonist and his struggle, and cheer his overkill, revel in his Dionysian bloodlust. But this is the deus-ex-machina of religious fanaticism. This is the hundreds of martyrs and saints killing the heathens in hope of apocalypse.

This is a reminder of the dangers of religious justification and its implication to everyone in a free society.