Breaking Dawn, the latest chapter of the Twilight series comes out tonight at midnight. I’m sure there will be thousands of people on line waiting to get in. But as I have a Y chromosome I won’t be there. I don’t do vampires that sparkle.
But I’ve done a little reading and it seems to me that “Breaking Dawn” might be one of the most pro-life movies to come out of Hollywood in recent years. Yeah, sure there’s the whole brooding undead and werewolves with no shirts but in this movie, Bella, the heroine of the movies gets married and gets pregnant. (Yes, they waited until marriage to have sex.) And when she gets pregnant with some kind of half vampire/half human hybrid baby, the girl is told by a few people that she could die if she carries this baby to term.
But here’s the thing – Bella decided to keep the baby even knowing the risk. That’s pretty cool. And yeah, there’s probably lots of things wrong in the movie but that’s a pretty good message for young people. So before you roll your eyes at all things Twilight, know that all those girls lining up to see the film are going to see a very pro-life message come out of a mainstream movie.
November 21, 2011 at 10:16 am
The moroi (or strigoi vii) of Romania, and the dhampyr of Gypsy folklore, might have a different opinion RE: vampires procreating being something new.
The sexed up vampire, likewise, is actually the older form; leaving to one side the alp of German folklore and various lecherous Romanian vampires, Ruthven in Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819) and Carmilla von Karnstein in "Carmilla" (1872) are both highly eroticized. Dracula, for comparison, was published in 1897.
As for Twilight…no just no. With friends like those you don't need enemies. The relationships in those books are about as unhealthy as it is possible for a relationship to be. One questions exactly which LDS church Meyers is in, frankly; I don't know about you but Bella's relationship with Edward has "Warren Jeffs" written all over it.
November 21, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Where's Blade when ya need him?…
November 21, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Neither of those two stories have anything to do with procreation. Eroticism yes, procreation no.
November 22, 2011 at 1:23 am
@Baron Korf: No, but then, I didn't say they did. Read it again. Notice those are two different paragraphs? I cited The Vampyre and Carmilla as examples of the sexed-up vampire, not procreating ones.
The examples of procreating vampires that I cited are the moroi or strigoi vii of Romanian legend, and the dhampyr (or "half-vampire") of Gypsy legend. The former generally become witches, and can turn into cats (feline apparitions seen during sleep paralysis are a common feature of vampire legends); the latter become vampire-hunters, especially if they're male-female fraternal twins (a part of their technique involves, I have no idea why, a ritual where they wear their undergarments on the outside).
November 26, 2011 at 6:32 pm
Sir: what's cool about having a baby despite a very definite risk of both mother and unborn child losing their lifes? not quite seeing it.