Love of the Dead?

At times, I worry about this society of ours when show after show for over a decade exalts the living dead.

Yes, I’m talking about all the shows about vampires.

One of the earlier vampire flicks I saw growing up was Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.  The bloodsucking, human murdering dead leeches were portrayed as beautiful and sexy and immortal.

Anne Rice, the author of the story, portrayed them in her books as romantic figures eternally beautiful and absolutely powerful over the human meat around them, instead of portraying them for what they are– skulking dead things that are animated by fallen incoporal creatures who loathes the sight of a human and who feeds on them like dumb cattle.

Even if you take out all the beautiful people and the slick, cool production quality of the films and television shows with vampires, the central overriding fact of what makes a vampire a vampire should repel everyone.

Like a beast– no, worse than a beast– these creatures feed off of human blood.  Can you imagine looking at another human being and look at him in the same manner you would look at succulent, mouth-watering steak?

Everything surrounding a vampire reeks of decay and death and revulsion.  Their form is a facsimile of a human, a pale perverted inversion of mankind.  They offer death and smother life.

The cult of vampires is almost necrophilic by my estimation.  Necrophilia is defined as an erotic attraction to corpses, and it is undeniable that an element of sexuality pervades all such movies and shows about vampires, the latest of which, Twilight, follows in the same vein as Anne Rice’s vampiric tales only now the receipe called for teenage soap opera romance between a human and a vampire.

You might well wonder why I am writing with such vehemence on something fictitious.  Besides, it’s not real.  Right?

The experiences in my life suggests to me that these creature actually exist, and they are not at all the romanticized version you see on tv.  The closest portrayal of these… things on television would be the latest version of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot.

But even if a person doesn’t believe in the existence of vampires, don’t you think it strange that millions of men and women are drawn to the very concept of it?  Don’t you think it strange that our society romanticizes nightmarish creatures that feed off the blood of humans?

Addendum:

I wrote the comments above not as one talking down from a ficitious Moral Olympus but as one who shared in this vampire phenomenon.  When I was younger, I read copious amounts of Anne Rice vampire books… and it wasn’t out of revulsion of them.  I was drawn to the entire idea of god-like power and immortality.

Before my conversion to Christianity, I was a dark brooding sort of person.  And in some ways, a slice of it is still with me.  Not yet amputated in my walk with and toward Jesus.  So, speaking as one who has traveled the road of the vampire fascinated/obsessed, the road is much brighter and more beautiful this side of Jesus.  The other road only leads to vacuity and death and untold misery.

Into the Looking Glass

Okay, so here at Troubling Trifles I’ve decided to begin a new Category called, “The Looking Glass.”

One may ask, Why the Looking Glass? The answer is simple. Because it seems we’re tumbling down the rabbit hole and suddenly reality isn’t what it used to be.

It seems that on a daily basis we’re being bathed in excerpts of new grotesqueries and outrages of the strange and usual kind. Some of these reports should belong in a science fiction/fantasy novel rather than in reality.

Here is just one example:

Researchers believe boosting the amount of a naturally forming enzyme in the body could prevent cells dying and so lead to extended, healthier, lifespans..

The protein telomerase helps maintain the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes which act like the ends of shoelaces and stop them unravelling.

As we age, and our cells divide, these caps become frayed and shorter and eventually are so damaged that the cell dies. Scientists believe boosting our natural levels of telomerase could rejuvenate them.

A team at the Spanish National Cancer Centre in Madrid tested the theory on mice and found that those genetically engineered to produce 10 times the normal levels of telomerase lived 50 per cent longer than normal.

Maria Blasco, who led the research, told the New Scientist said that the enzyme was capable of turning “a normal, mortal cell into an immortal cell”.

This article was published just last month in the UK’s Telegraph.

It reminds me of a scripture that said that in the last days men will be searching for death and can’t find it. How horrible…