A Little Blood Never Hurt Anyone



This week’s lecture made me reminisce back to the first encounter I had with monsters. When “Interview with a Vampire” came out I was extremely young and my older sisters rented it one night and watched it in our basement. I still remember watching the first bite Tom Cruise took on a human and my giant scream that consequently woke my parents up thinking that something horrible had occurred. For years after Vampires had been my biggest fear, until Buffy came along. Buffy the Vampire Slayer quickly became my favourite show and I couldn’t miss an episode. I don’t know what it was that drew me in, but it was a damn good show. What was interesting was how I lost any fear I had for vampires, monsters and any other demonic creature. I quickly found myself falling for the character of Spike versus Angel. This seems to be a pattern for me in vampire shows as I would take Damon over Stefan in The Vampire Diaries and Eric over Bill in True Blood. Girls have fallen for the bad boy for generations so putting the heroine female lead with a vampire; the ultimate demon seemed to fit perfectly.

What I agreed with completely this week was when Prof Harris discussed how these demons struggle between goodness versus evil which is something all of us do every day.  Vampires never chose to be this way and what’s interesting is how they once were and in some cases still are God fearing, Christian individuals. In most vampire shows, the good vampires hate themselves because they know that they are evil creatures who will never see the light of heaven. The fact that they carry this guilt around makes them vulnerable and appealing to viewers everywhere. It forces people to look at their own faults, mistakes and “sins” and reflect on their own fate. What is funny about the good vampire versus the bad vampire in each show or movie is that it is usually “the bad vampire” who was actually the better and kinder human and they become these monsters once they turn into vampires because they are so angry at what they are and can’t think back to a time when they were good because it hurts too much.  

If you think about it, we all have monster type of instincts in us. If you bring it back to last week’s lecture about violence, how are these human beings who are killing others any better than the vampires drinking people’s blood and zombies eating people’s brains? Difference is that we are human beings who aren’t programmed to do those things, but they had no choice but to be made into these evil beings.

We need to look at our actions and choices a little more carefully because in essence we all started out as innocent beings.


So where is the line between good and evil? Who are the real monsters? Us or them.

Xo,

Y