With the issuing of the third movie in the Twilight series I have to speak out about our culture's twisted fascination with vampires. I don't hesitate to tell people that I am totally disgusted with the new fad sweeping over our youth culture these days. It is not just kids that are taken up with the wiles of the dark world either: many moms of teens are swooning for them too. I think that these seductive creatures are simply the spawn of the Harry Potter culture that has for over a decade now been indoctrinating kids to think that the occult world is normal and that all this evil messaging is harmless when dressed up as entertainment. That's vampire logic - and just what the devil wants us to think.
Gone are the days of Bella Lugosi's Dracula (1931) where good was good and evil was evil. A crucifix would drive Dracula away and then he had to go into his infernal coffin when the first streaks of dawn appeared. He was in every way presented as a creature of evil, dark of heart and dread to encounter. He drank human blood too, a feature that was supposed to strike terror in every person who valued his life's essence. The image of a blood-sucking creature who lives in slime and darkness and will pounce on you to drain out your very essence should terrorize every decent person. This is because vampires used to be images of demons. That's what demons are all about: the vanquishing of all human decency and life. They represent the spiritual vortexes of the demon world that drag down to the depths of hell all who fall prey to their wiles.
But, my, how vampires have come up in the world these days.
Nowadays vampires are divided into good and bad - no longer intrinsically evil. The good ones rescuevulnerable women instead of biting them and, allegedly, drink only animal blood (well, we haven't seen the last Twilight movie yet...). And crucifixes? Don't think you'll see any of those driving away bad guys in these movies. The heroes are the "good" vampires, not the Church or religious faith in Christ.
These super-star vampires also walk around in sunlight and, as a matter of fact, their skin just happens to glisten like diamonds when exposed to direct sunlight. Isn't that wonderful? The glam vamps are gentlemen, chaste and well-intentioned, yet they are always hovering around the edge of "falling" and in seductive situations which cause young people to think that they are capable, like their hero vampire, Edward Cullen, of going just so far and pulling back, out of self-control. That's teaching them to play with fire, not a real chastity message for kids.
The worst part of this fascination with vampires from a faith point of view, however, is its blasphemy of the Eucharist. "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you," said our Blessed Lord in Chapter 6 of John's Gospel. He is the One who offers His flesh and blood for the life of the world. The vampires eat (bite) the flesh and drink the blood of victims rather than give their own to redeem others. Their bites corrupt and transform their victims into vampires like themselves. They have no life in them. They are the "living dead" by their own estimate.
How sad that this generation has been so taken in by those who represent the very antithesis of the core reality of our Faith - the Eucharist. Vampire logic is anti-Eucharistic logic, and it's very dangerous for our kids. In their obsessive fascination with such darkness, kids (and adults) turn their backs on the One who actually died for them.
To those who say, "Oh, Father, it's only harmless entertainment," I say simply: You've been warned.
Sincerely,
Fr. Tom Signature
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The transition of vampires from strictly & overtly evil to being mixed good and evil, can actually represent the expansion of understanding of the core dilemma between religion and faith going back to the original story of the fall in Genesis 3. If you will recall, there were two trees in the Garden: one that imparted eternal life and the other that resulted in death. The one resulting in death was not simply called "The Tree of Evil" or "The tree of knowledge of evil" but rather, "The tree of the knowledge of GOOD AND EVIL."
ReplyDeleteYou see, for a very long time religion has been tied into the "social redemption myth" popular in Western culture as a whole but American culture in particular. We confuse salvation with "good behavior" or being "socially acceptable" and the experience of repentance with "turning over a new leaf in society". We equate new life in Christ with human good -- is it any wonder so many are confused?
The new strain of vampires is just one way in which it is revealed that it is not merely what we consider humanly "evil" that lies outside the realm of Life (found only in Christ) BUT ALSO WHAT WE CONSIDER "GOOD" -- namely, religion, good works, good behavior, etc. All these things we falsely revere in human society are, in reality, just as much fruit from the tree that brings death as anything overtly and obviously "evil". They are the equivalent of Cain's fruit basket -- an offering of our own works which we delude ourselves into thinking will "make us right with God". But such offerings are useless; they can never bring us the reconciling union with our Maker that we need.
I would say instead of lamenting the loss of overt evil as the default association with vampires and other similar images of lore, we embrace the potent imagery offered by the new strain, these mixed critters of good AND evil, as a golden opportunity to present an even clearer and more refined, honed, distinct and powerful gospel of salvation entirely by grace through faith, of Life being original, inherent, underived and unborrowed only in Christ, and set all in contrast to the DUAL natured tree that brings death, which contains BOTH what we judge good in the flesh as well as what we judge evil.
This is an unprecedented opportunity to make the real meat of the matter clear and distinct from pious-sounding legalism and performance-focused religion (what I term the spirit of Moloch, that which masquerades as godly with its false "light"). The latter has confused unbelievers for centuries, way too long, and kept them unbelievers as a result. They hunger and thirst for Life and are led to the toxic, stagnant swamps of religion instead -- to the plethora of vampires BOTH "good" AND "evil" that suck out their soul's lifeblood whether through obvious dark imagery OR through the counterfeit labyrinthine corridors of religiosity.
Grace and peace to you.
Teenagers and their moms have a tendency to watch watered down crap generally - not just vampire films - personally I'm a lot more scared of the Sex and the City movies - shopping demons perhaps. The reason why the makers of these types of films churn out this type of material is because of the primary profit motive of their corporations and the popularity of the romantic 'anti-hero' in all kinds of fiction since the post-war period and even in spells before that in some cultures - and there are some good reasons for the creation of anti-heroes sometimes - you might say the historical Jesus was an atypical hero of sorts, being totally against the heroic culture of the Romans.
ReplyDeleteTwilight is basically pulp fiction titilation for people, mainly women, who like romantic stories of frustrated love etc. much the same as the trashy romantic novels you get down at the local supermarket - the ones my Gran reads then can't remember the next day. The moral element is introduced by the writer, a Mormon Christian herself, to justify the plot to herself - give it a moral value. The horror element is there to add danger, since the audience is younger generally so they can't include more dangerous 'adult' topics, instead delving into fantasy - the blood stuff has something to do with sex.
One area where I will agree with you is that I miss some of the old stories and movies which investigate the true nature of evil, rather than using it as a prop to hang a wet love story around. Although there is the occasional modern U.S. movie which does this e.g. 'Rampage'. There are many European films which explore this in some way e.g. 'Let The Right One In' (a vampire film also).
The bizarre thing is, there is one American vampire movie which did this really well recently ('30 Days of Night') - it could have almost been written by you actually Sir, since it directly mentioned God, belief & self-sacrifice vs. egoist LeVeyan type beliefs and showed vacuous amoral vampires in conflict with realistic towns-people, like an ethically minded but confused cop trying to protect the public - AND it was by the same director as Twilight 3, David Slade.
It's pretty clear that the misappropriation of old symbols of evil is not driven by some perverse hidden media agenda, as extremist groups often claim, but rather by the intellectual laziness and self-indulgence of the general public - and this is partly the result of the type of culture we live in, as pointed out by Andraste (above) - the type of culture where people spend all their time declaring how they have been saved by this and that from some unexplainable evil (like 'terrorism'), and buy my book so I can tell you how to be saved as well, rather than following Nazarene teachings and saving ourselves by living moral lives and helping one another create a fairer society like the one shown in the book of Acts.
I've never read a single Harry Potter book or seen a single movie, other than the odd clip, not because it offends me as someone of belief, but because I can tell from the descriptions and reviews that it's a pile of crap and a waste of time. As one of my old teachers said, 'Bubble-gum for the brain'.
I don't believe there is anything wrong with using old symbols of man's relationship to nature while explaining a moral story e.g. werewolves, because the bible itself uses symbols that would now be considered 'pagan' by many evangelical preachers - e.g. Jesus drives demons into pigs so he can drown them, he raises a dead man, he uses animal symbols in his parables such as lambs, he walks over Leviathan's waters, he creates rituals which invoke thoughts of his blood (unclean in his culture), he makes reference to one of the Jewish concepts of God (Elohim) as the God present in nature ...and so on. The Old Testiment is filled with symbols from nature.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is not the use of symbols, as Dark Age and Medievil Christians often did (e.g. Book of Kells), but the lack of thought behind their use (one of the worst examples is Mel Gibson's 'Passion of the Christ') - i.e. they are used in a fetishistic way, much like in the rituals of some of your old pals in San Francisco, as they try to convince themselves that there is some deeper philosophical meaning to the fact that they like women's breasts or hate that guy who shafted them for a promotion thereby giving them an impulse to stick daggers in his effigy and curse him (...but it's OK cos we don't really believe in any of this anyway...we're just using symbols).
I've seen the adversarial approach enough times to know that it will not change the popularity of nonsense fiction unfortunately. Sadly, you remind me a little of alcoholics anonymous - you once believed demons were in you, so everyone else that's wrong must have them to, everyone's an addict. Except, as I understand it, 1st century palestine was full of crooks and con-men and Jesus was the only unaffiliated teacher that had any lasting following because he was not indulging people's delusional beliefs about demons, rather he was making them take responsibilty for themselves, driving them out of so called 'lunatics' and 'dumb' men - the beginning of a more personal responsibility for belief and practise of belief. So it's the belief in the demon, which is the demon - hence why that Christian woman was able to pray them out of you in 5 minutes. That's why demonic curses and so on are considered a sin - because they lead people away from the truth, that they have no real power over those who see clearly, hence: Remove the beam from your eye, before the splinter from your brother.
I believe the only way to combat our derivative, beliefless mass culture is to come up with something, like a film or entertainment, that commits to some sincere beliefs while still exciting people in some way. Parables basically.
One of the best examples is Roman Polanski's 'The Ninth Gate', which ruthlessly mocks the hypocricy and banality of satanist beliefs, such as those of the cult which killed Polanski's wife and messed up his life, inadvertantly leading to his own downfall and crimes. At the same time, that film is not sermonising or propogandising.
Well Rosko (and by the way I'm not Jeff or trying to defend the post in disguise or something, in fact I need to go to bed!), just have to say myself that according to the literal read of the Old and New Testament, either the Jewish version or the JudeoChristian, demons or "evil spirits" are not the product of any kind of thought but specific creation- entities all to themselves, with a life and will of their own. Besides this record, there are countless examples either in History or present of strange spirits and people's testimony of them. Not to mention this man's (Jeff) testimony.. By the way i don't mean to by anonymous just don't know how to avoid the electronic label. I if were you, I would take Jeff's advice a bit more seriously, because he seems to be a professional around occult specifications. You, seem to be an excellent theorist, but where is your practical experience?
ReplyDeletewhat do vampires say? your blood, your flesh, your sex, your life, is fodder for my appetite.. You Are Nothing..
ReplyDeletewhat does Abba say? your blood, your flesh, your sex, your life.. I Love.. You
Some of the junk that's been in my head needs more than a pat on the back.. 'it's all ok'it NEEDS to know God's will