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Obama's Election Means a Return of Vampire Flicks
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 something on idle that isn't a complete turd. I still say idle should be dropped.
Wow, actually that makes perfect sense. Democrats suck, Republicans are mindless, socialists are hairy lunatics, and the best way to get rid of a libertarian is to nuke the site from orbit...It's the only way to be sure.
//Thinks the vampire movies have been coming out for a while now, actually.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
We prefer Lunatarian, you insensitive clod!
I think I speak for everyone when I say: "...what?"
During the 90's, there was a lot of what I call "gnostic cinema" - films like The Matrix, Truman Show, Dark City, eXistenZ, and such were all about radical Cartesian doubt ("is the world all lies? Can I trust my senses? etc.") I really do connect them with the Clinton era, and also with the apparent unchallenged dominance of what was called the Washington doctrine. Although Clinton was a Democrat, the idea that unfettered markets worked best and that we were on the road to permanent prosperity was very much the consensus, far more than under Bush. After all, the Cold War was over. With that consensus came gnawing doubt - expressed in those films - that perhaps things underneath the gleaming, shiny surface weren't so good after all. When the dot.com crash came, and then 9/11, such Gnostic doubt was no longer necessary: that optimism disappeared.
As far as why Democrats are vampires and Republicans are zombies, remember that culture trumps economics in representation. The Democrats are still considered the party of the cultural elite. The Republicans are the populists, at least at the base (so much of the last election was a demonstration of the contradictions between the Republican base and the Republican elite.) Democrats may tax you more, but they also, ironically, believe in a heirarchy of cultural values: that a salad at Chez Panisse is superior to a cheeseburger at McDonalds. Republicans like uneven economics, but flat cultures (which make, after all, simpler and bigger mass markets, which creates economic elites like Sam Walton.)
I would say that the villain in each movie reflects the type of character most likely to be demonized by the administration. Vampires are ancient, aristocratic white people who suck the life from the young and vivacious- in other words, the dessicated plutocrats that liberals blame for worldly ills. Zombies are poorly dressed unintelligent masses that want to eat the brains of the small number of intelligent protagonists who had the 'good sense' not to become zombies- in other words, the masses of the urban poor who are leeching off of a small number of productive citizens. Zombies are, to a conservative, just brain welfare queens.
Look at the financial crisis: was it the fault of a few Wall Street fat cats getting greedy (Dem view), or financially unfit masses dragging down the economy by not paying their bills (Republican view)?
Socialists I would think would be associated with 1980's teen films and episodes of Scooby Doo. The real villain is always a real estate developer interested in making a public good (teen center) into private property.
Libertarians would be bondage torture movies like Saw or Hostel. The enemy wants to tie you down and dismember you, just like the state wants to restrict your freedom and steal your property.
And Bush presided over the resurgence of Torture Porn
I guess I'll go with the fuzzy fella.