I know that sounds silly as hell now but there are plenty of classic films with rape jokes, back handing of women and of course blackface. Also keep in mind that smoking on TV and in movies has taken a huge hit.
So I don’t think a movement that points out the sexual glamorization of being ‘taken’ or taking is fetishizing rape…is terribly unlikely.
Let’s try and keep personal attacks out of this. Personally I think anything can be humorized, people who hit women in movies should receive their just desserts, and think blackface in movies would need it’s own thread. I also don’t care if people smoke in movies or on TV.
Come on, you have to admit that there’s a major sexual component in biting people in the neck - it’s often portrayed as a highly sensual act, especially when performed by a male. In fact, I’d say that it’s a very large element of the vamp’s popular appeal. And seeing as the biting is, more often than not, portrayed as being less than consensual, well…
I think that it is unlikely. My reasoning is that there is a major difference between the examples in the OP and vampires biting people: the former are real things that actually happen.
Yeah, but when was the last time that happened in a movie; suave, seductive vampire bites fresh-faced, heaving-bosomed heroine? All the vampires in films these days are brooding lost souls struggling against their dark desires and bearing the burden of immortality until they can be redeemed by a woman who sees the goodness within.
In that sense, the OP may be right. That old style of vampire films might go the way of blackface. Whether they’ll be seen with the same political incorrectness remains to be seen.
Even the glamorization of misogyny and a gang lifestyle in Hip-Hop is at least based on reality in some fashion. And the decrying of THAT still doesn’t have enough traction to make much of an impact.
There’s still a ton of those kind of films made…but they’re more low budget affairs that you see littering the horror sections of Hulu and Amazon.
I don’t think’that most recent “Origin of Dracula” film had much in the way of sexual glamorization.
In fact the film that made me think of this was “Dracula 2000”. Quite a while back. And it features both the Hammer vampiresses and the brooding vampire seeking forgiveness from God.
Oldman’s Dracula is so pathetic that he’s defeated by mortals with guns and swords.
I think you have to go all the way back to the Fright Night films (including the remake) to find an irredeemable vampire lead in a mainstream film.
While there’s undoubtedly a huge, sublimated sexual element to vampires, it’s not obvious that vampire attack = rape. The whole issue is complex, and I’d recommend a look at Leonard Wolf’s or Leslie Klinger’s Annotated Dracla, or the works of David J. Skal (especially Hollywood Gothic, V is for Vampire, and The Monster Show.
I guess I haven’t been checking the horror sections of Hulu and Amazon enough lately.
It’s worth pointing out, by the way, that in these sorts of movies the vampire is supposed to be a monster. Characters in blackface, rape jokes, slapping a woman, and smoking were considered (somewhat varying degrees of) normal at the time; doing them in a movie didn’t automatically brand you as a villain. But the vampire biting a woman was a Bad Guy. Despite the sensual nature of it, for the most part it wasn’t an act that the movie condoned.
In fact, I’ve always kinda wondered if that’s why vampire movies have changed so much. Stoker’s Dracula was published just a few years before Queen Victoria died. From then through the 1950s were (or so I hear) times when any overt sexuality was rather frowned upon. All Drac had to do was inflame a woman’s passion and he was, de facto, evil. But being seduced by a rich, immortal, sexy, European nobleman doesn’t strike fear into our hearts the way it once did. Filmmakers have either had to come up with other reasons to make vampires villainous, or just make them the heroes.
So fictional portrayal of anything is okay? A movie portraying the gang-rape of a female “cat beast” - utterly fantasy fictional creature - would be just fine? The murder of a kute widdle kid elf? (No such thing as elves, you know.)
The selling point of the vampire mythos, all the way back to Stoker, has been the evil-seduction-bordering-on-rape motif. And what makes it sicker is that the gals who don’t die come to like it. Nothing wrong with that; we all know women secretly lust for such treatment. Right?
Vampirism can be used as a metaphor for a lot of different things. I can certainly see how rape would be one of them. But it would be wrong to think that vampirism can only symbolize rape and no other concepts can apply.
Actually, as Skal argues (persuasively, to my mind), Dracula wasn’r sexual at all. He was the antithesis of sexy, and was seen as a Lombrosan lapse who was a Darwinian predator.
Of course, that’;s not how he was portrayed on stage and on the screen, where the sexual angle was played up significantly. But Stoker’s vampire was not a seducer, however much Frank Langella or Gary Oldman or whoever was the latest screen Dracula might be.
I wouldn’t question that the overall notion can be used to build out a number of story ideas - e.g., the Twilight series took it a lot of directions - but unless you’re going to abandon everything that the Dracula version brought to the table, vampirism == rape and was meant to right from Stoker’s pen.
It’s all about the ultimate violation of the body and soul, typically of a cherished, protected and chaste woman who is horribly abused until she either dies or joins her attacker. (Men tend to just get killed and eaten.) It couldn’t be any more about r-pe than if you pounded it in with a hammer. It was an early Victorian novel about the ultimate horror that could befall a high-born woman - but since making it rape was forbidden, it became a fantastical bite-rapist-predator instead. I doubt any reader of the era or since missed the point.
Only the Twilight crowd could argue otherwise, based on their prior reading of Harry Potter. :rolleyes:
It’s been too long since I read the book, I guess. But there are Dracula’s three brides who definitely get Jonathan Harker all hot and bothered, and who seem to have some relationship with, and attraction to, Dracula.
The vampire/victim relationship is usually presented more as a predatory seduction and resultant debauchery of the formerly chaste and pure victim, though rape might not be a bad metaphor.
Didn’t Andy Warhol’s Dracula need the blood of a virgin to sustain him? IIRC I think the point of the movie was that he was dying due to lack of available virgins.
Which is how Dracula bit it in Stoker’s original novel too. As for evil vampires, they still exist. 30 Days of Night was fairly recent and they’re so animalistic that they barely speak.
I’m aware of that. I still disagree that it implies rape. Seduction? Yes. Rape? No. Well, unless they’re those sparkly vampires. And even if there IS some kind of “rapey-vibe” there, I don’t see it going the way the OP implies.
I think you have your monsters wrong. Vampires are the current replacement for aristocrats; they are all about (ahem) glitter and finding the real value within. It’s werewolves who have replaced brutishly sexual men.
And zombies are the furriners we no longer allow ourselves to dehumanize.
And even if there IS some kind of “rapey-vibe” there, I don’t see it going the way the OP implies.