To me, New Moon means I shaved my butt before a party.

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That about sums it up -- he is the symbol for sex that is unrestrained and uncontrolled, and such wanton behaviour leads one to look -- nasty. I mean, think of what the whores who've been at it a while look like. They are often addicts, true, but after so much sex with so many different partners they look . . . well, disgusting is the only word. Very likely diseased, which contributes to looking less than Covergirl fresh. Dracula and his brood are monsters who, in their quest to find satisfaction for their lusts, make themselves into disgusting parodies of that which is truly beautiful.

One essayist in the copy of Dracula I used to have made the cogent point that Dracula is a parody of Christ -- a mirror image of sorts. Christ came back from the dead to save people. Dracula came back to damn people. Christ gave his blood to help people. Dracula helps himself to peoples' blood. Or, if he does share his blood with them in a disgusting perversion of the Communion ritual (see the earlier mention of when he forced Mina to feed from his chest), it is not to draw them together and lift them up, but to separate them from humanity and debase them, bringing them under his power and forcing them to submit rather than freeing them from hell, as Christ is purported to do. There are other examples* but I'll leave it at that.

Certainly Stoker knew what he was doing when he invoked Christian imagery -- it was no accident. But vampires did not grow out of Judeo-Christian tradition -- it is my understanding that the first monster story that can be termed vampiric came out of India long before the birth of Christ, though I cannot remember where I read that.

*one more -- Dracula might have big canines, but his bite leaves 2 little holes -- rather like a serpent . . . wish I had a copy handy so's I could cite some stuff!

 

That was a stereotypically based, extremely biased statement.

 

Apologies, I've met several "working girls" and the ones who've been at it a while look rather . . . washed out is the nicest way to put it.

 

I think he was going for the stereotype... he obviously can't include every single type of prostitute in his statement - Dracula is meant to represent the sexual perversion in all of us, and the most applicable analogy would be a prostitute who has worked too long in unsavory conditions.

 

I don't see "sexy" as necessarily meaning handsome or beautiful.

When I watch Sophie's Choice I can't help noticing how incredibly beautiful Meryl Streep is in this movie but I certainly don't see her as being sexy. I don't want to get into the "working girl" argument so I'd suggest strippers instead. A stripper can be incredibly sexy without being beautiful.

Oozing sex and being the embodiment of an aesthetic ideal are different things.

 

Yes, oozing is usually more appealing sensually. Trickling, dripping, succulent, moist...

Just think of sinking your teeth and sucking on the juices of life...like your life and your pleasure would depend upon it...

I'm talking about peaches here.

Heh, blood and moon cycles and untold sensuous pleasures in the grip of the most desirable thing you've encountered. Small wonder that girls hitting puberty are swooning over this drivel and lap it up (woof, howl, whine and beg like a good lycanthrope would).

It is also an affliction of the times. Science is found to be less appealing than it might have been...Romanticism shines over and we'd need a De Sade or somesuch to whip it out and show the ugly truth. Countless days of depravity with the pretense of romantic ideals usually wears the beauty out pretty thin like a crack-whore. Might've been something in there, but beauty's long gone by the end of the day and if there is no wisdom to be had, nothing to learn but to repeat the past in more and more rapid succession, the once beautiful becomes only a rotting corpse from which the ooze flows free. The problem is that these people are not even dead yet...Creatures of the night, slaves to their addictions...

 

I wish someone from the Belmont family would hunt down the Cullens.