Obama's Election Means a Return of Vampire Flicks 97
gyrogeerloose writes "In a column in Saturday's San Diego Union Tribune, Peter Rowe makes a connection between the popularity of horror movie genres and the political party in the White House. A Republican administration presides over a period of zombie movies while a Democrat in the Oval Office brings on a cycle of vampire movies. Why? Possibly because the two genres 'are really competing parables about class warfare.' Hmmmm, maybe. On the other hand, it might just be a coincidence." Socialists are best represented by lycanthropes, and the Libertarians are most closely tied to any sort of horror from space.
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Libertarians (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't libertarians tied to freedom lovers on the moon?
This makes more sense than I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Which maybe isn't saying much, but this makes more sense than expected. However I doubt that zombies will suddenly drop off the map (Evil Dead 4 where are you!?) just because Obama took over the reigns. Also the line about competing tales of class warfare is total nonsense. Vampires = scary liberal democrats while zombies = brain dead republicans? I think some writer was just trying to be funny while letting his political bias show.
Assuming this was right, why wouldn't democrats out of power want to portray republicans as vampires too? And ditto with republicans showing democrats as zombies. The door swings both ways on this, clearly the argument was made without thinking it through.
And now I have officially spent as much time on this post as the writer did on the column
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This makes more sense than I expected (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Vampire movies are about the danger of a centralised danger preying on the masses, and slowly bleeding them dry. That is, big government and overtaxation. You never have a sole hero in a Vampire movie - it's always a sole villain. It's about the people needing to keep an evil elite in check.
Zombie movies, however, are all about the individual struggling to overcome the masses. You always have fewer heroes than zombies in this type of picture, which strikes a chord with the Republican rhetoric of rugged individualism and self reliance. It's about an elite needing to keep the evil masses in check.
I love BSing.
Re:Finally (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop reading it then.
Re:Genius. (Score:2, Insightful)
Calling Bush or the Democrats socialists is pretty laughable from anywhere outside America.
Re:This makes more sense than I expected (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely not: the idea that the world of the senses was an illusion, and that the true lay behind a veil of lies is central to gnosticism. Gnosticism is more a religious version of neo-Platonism (after all, Cartesian doubt has its origins in Plato's cave.) There were Christian and non-Christian versions of Gnosticism as well: Gnosticism developed independently of Christianity in other parts of the Roman Empire and its vicinity, though it was soon blended with various Christian practices and beliefs.
I think the political situation in which Gnosticism flourished in some ways echoed that of Gnostic Cinema at the end of the 20th century: a hegemonic force looked like it was "the end of history," Rome was unrivaled in its power and an uneasy sense of totality dominated the cultural scene, as if the Empire seemed to envelop reality - like the Matrix.
I interpreted it quite the opposite... (Score:2, Insightful)