3 ms·

A lot of vampire fiction includes themes about technology vs the supernatural, Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world. The foc

by wisty 3y ago

A lot of vampire fiction includes themes about technology vs the supernatural, Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world. The focus (not so much in Ann Rice books) can be more on more action oriented technology (trains and gadgets) rather than the modern weapons of a detective though. Weird steam-punk gun gadgets (even in a modern setting like Dusk to Dawn) are a common and lazy example of these. I think a wacky invention is a shorthand to the audience for "technology". A modern Dracula with detective themes could use a "hacker" to put together the kind of digital trail that a modern police officer would follow, so we understand that checking a person's Facebook page is modern and high tech.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
it's been a few years since I've read through Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles but I don't recall them getting overwhelmed by the "new world". What I recall is that vampires who don't occasionally "go to sleep" never make it long enough to become truly strong. In essence, they burn out. Almost as if the world becomes so boring that they must sleep for centuries so they can wake up and find the new world _invigorating_ rather than overwhelming. In her books, both the original vampires did this, as did Lestat.
networked 3y ago
> Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world. I think the point Rice makes in the books I have read is that the vampires are not equally overwhelmed. The Vampire Lestat is about capital-P Progress even more explicitly than Dracula. The protagonist, Lestat, is influenced by the Age of Reason he is born into. He witnesses the end of the old ways in the French Revolution. All of it prepares him for the future. This is in contrast to the younger Louis and the older Armand, who hang on to the past. The introduction to that book is memorable for being an over-the-top paean to its time. Lestat is not overwhelmed; he loves the 1980s. Quote: > As I roamed the streets of New Orleans in 1984 this is what I beheld: > The dark dreary industrial world that I'd gone to sleep on had burnt itself out finally, and the old bourgeois prudery and conformity had lost their hold on the American mind. > People were adventurous and erotic again the way they'd been in the old days, before the great middle-class revolutions of the late 1700s. They even looked the way they had in those times. The men didn't wear the Sam Spade uniform of shirt, tie, gray suit, and gray hat any longer. Once again, they costumed themselves in velvet and silk and brilliant colors if they felt like it. They did not have to clip their hair like Roman soldiers anymore; they wore it any length they desired. And the women-ah, the women were glorious, naked in the spring warmth as they'd been under the Egyptian pharaohs, in skimpy short skirts and tunic like dresses, or wearing men's pants and shirts skintight over their curvaceous bodies if they pleased. They painted, and decked themselves out in gold and silver, even to walk to the grocery store. Or they went fresh scrubbed and without ornament-it didn't matter. They curled their hair like Marie Antoinette or cut it off or let it blow free. > For the first time in history, perhaps, they were as strong and as interesting as men. > And these were the common people of America. Not just the rich who've always achieved a certain androgyny, a certain joie de vivre that the middle-class revolutionaries called decadence in the past. > The old aristocratic sensuality now belonged to everybody. It was wed to the promises of the middle-class revolution, and all people had a right to love and to luxury and to graceful things.
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  The World’s Fair was probably the highlight of New Orleans’ recent history. It’s kind of been all downhill since then.
gwern 3y ago
Yes, that's the opposite of _Dracula_, though. Dracula isn't overwhelmed by the modern world, he's defeated by it. That's not the same thing. He's no Lestat in _Interview_, driven to catatonia by change.* Dracula loves the modern world (particularly with its lack of Catholicism & peasant superstitions about how to fight vampires). He is, in fact, an enthusiast for modernity and England, an anglophile otaku, you might say, with a library stuffed full of English books & periodicals he reads obsessively: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_2 Further, he is a dark counterpart to Van Helsing in that throughout the novel, he is 'waking up', and scientifically experimenting in learning how to use his vampiric powers effectively in the modern context, and Van Helsing tells us that Dracula was only days away from becoming invincible, after discovering that he is allowed to transport his own coffin-soil and hide them away in places that only Dracula's fog or animal forms could ever reach: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_23 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_23 (Rather than depending on humans, who keep receipts and addresses, and happily reveal the locations of all of the coffins to the protagonists.) It is only by the skin of their teeth that they are able to destroy his backups before he has figured out how to move & hide them, and reduce him to a single backup and force him to flee to Transylvania before he finishes his 'hard takeoff vampire Singularity', if you will. * yes, I know Rice retconned this for her narrative convenience so she could churn out sequel after sequel. Nevertheless.
FerretFred 3y ago
A modern Dracula has already been documented in that Hammer Classic "Dracula AD 1972" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068505/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068505/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk - plenty of ham and cheese in the acting, but good fun!

by wisty 3y ago

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

it's been a few years since I've read through Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles but I don't recall them getting overwhelmed by the "new world". What I recall is that vampires who don't occasionally "go to sleep" never make it long enough to become truly strong. In essence, they burn out. Almost as if the world becomes so boring that they must sleep for centuries so they can wake up and find the new world _invigorating_ rather than overwhelming. In her books, both the original vampires did this, as did Lestat.

networked 3y ago

> Anne Rice especially has the vampires being overwhelmed by the new world. I think the point Rice makes in the books I have read is that the vampires are not equally overwhelmed. The Vampire Lestat is about capital-P Progress even more explicitly than Dracula. The protagonist, Lestat, is influenced by the Age of Reason he is born into. He witnesses the end of the old ways in the French Revolution. All of it prepares him for the future. This is in contrast to the younger Louis and the older Armand, who hang on to the past. The introduction to that book is memorable for being an over-the-top paean to its time. Lestat is not overwhelmed; he loves the 1980s. Quote: > As I roamed the streets of New Orleans in 1984 this is what I beheld: > The dark dreary industrial world that I'd gone to sleep on had burnt itself out finally, and the old bourgeois prudery and conformity had lost their hold on the American mind. > People were adventurous and erotic again the way they'd been in the old days, before the great middle-class revolutions of the late 1700s. They even looked the way they had in those times. The men didn't wear the Sam Spade uniform of shirt, tie, gray suit, and gray hat any longer. Once again, they costumed themselves in velvet and silk and brilliant colors if they felt like it. They did not have to clip their hair like Roman soldiers anymore; they wore it any length they desired. And the women-ah, the women were glorious, naked in the spring warmth as they'd been under the Egyptian pharaohs, in skimpy short skirts and tunic like dresses, or wearing men's pants and shirts skintight over their curvaceous bodies if they pleased. They painted, and decked themselves out in gold and silver, even to walk to the grocery store. Or they went fresh scrubbed and without ornament-it didn't matter. They curled their hair like Marie Antoinette or cut it off or let it blow free. > For the first time in history, perhaps, they were as strong and as interesting as men. > And these were the common people of America. Not just the rich who've always achieved a certain androgyny, a certain joie de vivre that the middle-class revolutionaries called decadence in the past. > The old aristocratic sensuality now belonged to everybody. It was wed to the promises of the middle-class revolution, and all people had a right to love and to luxury and to graceful things.

selimthegrim 3y ago
The World’s Fair was probably the highlight of New Orleans’ recent history. It’s kind of been all downhill since then.

gwern 3y ago

Yes, that's the opposite of _Dracula_, though. Dracula isn't overwhelmed by the modern world, he's defeated by it. That's not the same thing. He's no Lestat in _Interview_, driven to catatonia by change.* Dracula loves the modern world (particularly with its lack of Catholicism & peasant superstitions about how to fight vampires). He is, in fact, an enthusiast for modernity and England, an anglophile otaku, you might say, with a library stuffed full of English books & periodicals he reads obsessively: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_2 Further, he is a dark counterpart to Van Helsing in that throughout the novel, he is 'waking up', and scientifically experimenting in learning how to use his vampiric powers effectively in the modern context, and Van Helsing tells us that Dracula was only days away from becoming invincible, after discovering that he is allowed to transport his own coffin-soil and hide them away in places that only Dracula's fog or animal forms could ever reach: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_23 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dracula/Chapter_23 (Rather than depending on humans, who keep receipts and addresses, and happily reveal the locations of all of the coffins to the protagonists.) It is only by the skin of their teeth that they are able to destroy his backups before he has figured out how to move & hide them, and reduce him to a single backup and force him to flee to Transylvania before he finishes his 'hard takeoff vampire Singularity', if you will. * yes, I know Rice retconned this for her narrative convenience so she could churn out sequel after sequel. Nevertheless.

FerretFred 3y ago

A modern Dracula has already been documented in that Hammer Classic "Dracula AD 1972" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068505/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068505/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk - plenty of ham and cheese in the acting, but good fun!