Stupid and Wasteful

Shakespeare was spot-on when he put these words into the mouth of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

(I am only able to type that because Puck was not addressing his remarks to the deity some of you mortals credit as being your creator, but rather the fairy king, Oberon. I’ve met Oberon. A bit of a stiff, but not an altogether unpleasant sort.

I, on the other hand, am an altogether unpleasant sort.)

I have come to this conclusion after centuries of watching, sometimes with amusement, more often with disgust, your attempts to depict my kind in folklore, books, film, television and stage plays. We are shown either as genteel sensualists, angst-ridden existentialists or mindless savages. I must admit that, while there are varieties of my species who display one or more of these traits to some degree, overall we are much more complex, and at the same time much simpler beings. We just want your blood. How we go about getting it is a reflection of our personal style, and therein lie the variations on the theme that have you so confused. Not that it’s difficult to confuse you. You are a remarkably gullible race.

I propose in this space to explain to you fools just how far off your depictions of us in your media are. I only hope there are enough gigabytes in the universe to encompass the enormity of your misconceptions.

I wish to address my remarks on this occasion to a film I recently viewed, 30 Days of Night. Overall, I don't suppose it was a completely worthless cinematic exercise, but I am not here to discuss the various technical aspects of the filmmaker's craft. I am only interested in how my kind are portrayed, and on that subject I find several problems that incline me to wish all manner of painful accidents would befall the creators of this movie.

The basic concept is rather intriguing. A small town at the very northernmost part of Alaska, an area that experiences a month-long period without exposure to the sun during the deepest part of winter, is invaded by a band of, as near as I can tell, a dozen or so vampires. The population of Barrow, Alaska during the thirty days of night is roughly ten times the number of vampires, which isn't a totally ludicrous ratio of apex predator to prey, as long as they are careful to prevent any further vampires from being created. There is an attempt to do so at first, but enough victims escape the final death to complicate matters for the mortal survivors and increase the vampires' competition for a rapidly decreasing food supply. This is just sloppy work. I expected more from them, based on the relative soundness of their means of infiltration.

The vampires send in one of their mortal pets to complete the isolation of the town and remove the few protections it might have. Up to this point, I don't disapprove too strenuously. Their scheme is not completely idiotic, but their subsequent actions don't support the notion that they have sufficient brains to plan such an elaborate set-up. Frankly, once inside the town, they act like morons.

Allow me to reflect upon my statement above regarding the ratio of prey to predator. Among the lesser creatures of jungle and plain, a ten-to-one proportion is serviceable, as long as the numbers remain more-or-less consistent. This requires restraint on the part of the predator.

The vampires in 30 Days of Night display no such restraint. They descend upon the town at the moment the long night begins, and rampage through Barrow in a paroxysm of wasteful violence that reduces their food supply well below any semblance of a tolerable level. Within moments, no more than a handful of mortal survivors huddle in attics and crawlspaces. What do these imbecilic vampires expect to feed upon for the remaining twenty-nine days? Raw hamburger? Spam? Bran flakes?

Their table manners also leave a great deal to be desired. Apparently, the filmmakers were possessed of huge amounts of synthetic blood they were contractually obligated to spew indiscriminately. Each kill was accompanied by vast spurts of blood as the vampires sprang from victim to victim, rending open jugulars and carotids in a most slovenly manner. Most of the victims' blood, the source of unlife to these incompetent predators, wound up decorating the snow instead of flowing into the vampires' bodies. Each drop of blood is precious, and yet the vampires of 30 Days of Night allowed the bulk of their sustenance to spatter unconsumed. They gobbled when their purposes would have been better served by sipping.

And what is you mortals' fascination with our so-called language? There is no vampire tongue, common to all the undead. We speak whatever language we learned in life, and any we pick up through the centuries. I plan to address this issue more fully in my dissection of the abominable Blade films.

My last major objection is the whole notion of vampirism as a communicable disease. Three characters in this film turn without dying from vampiric exsanguinations, or any other of the recommended means of attaining post-life animation. There is no vampire germ, spread through the bite of blood of the undead. You have to die to come back as the living dead. I find it highly objectionable when your so-called creative minds reduce my condition to the same status as the common cold or influenza. The Blade films must also answer for this inaccuracy, upon the occasion of their own dissection.

Apart from the half-hearted and ultimately ineffectual attempt to restrict the creation of new vampires, I did find one aspect of the vampires' modus operandi laudable. The disposal of the pet who enabled them to establish themselves in Barrow was handled sensitively and accurately. I have had thousands of occasions to end my association with a mortal servant once his or, more usually, her usefulness was at an end. When the time came in the film for the unnamed stranger to meet his fate, I found the actions of the vampire leader admirable. Evil is not always unkind, and the actor demonstrated a most appropriate level of sympathy for his doomed pet. In these two respects alone, I approve of 30 Days of Night.

In all other respects, however, I am appalled. In symbolic protest, I plan to feed upon two of your fellow humans this evening, rather than one. Let that additional death be on the heads of every mortal involved in the production of this abomination.

Yours truly, Valdemar Soltiescu, Vampire