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Salon's Laura Miller: Vampire Genre Must Die to Further Liberal Social Agenda

7/21/2014

36 Comments

 
Yes, I am aware that Syfy showed Aliens on the Moon last night, but if you think I’m turning over two hours of primetime to listening to Nick Pope and friends blather on about how blurry photographs might or might not show alien moon bases, you have another thing coming. I watched a few segments of it, enough to know that it has nothing that would pass for proof and was generally a sub-Ancient Aliens batch of insinuation.

On the other hand, I watched the second episode of The Strain, and I’m not sure that this was a better choice. The clichés are strong in this one. I don’t know what the book was like, but this episode seemed constructed out of spare parts and duct tape. How laughable was it that suddenly a 200-page set of documents related to the incident was leaked just hours after the plane landed? I mean, I write fast, but seriously… It’s not possible to have a plausible disinformation campaign with leaked documents (200 perfect bound pages!) and a CEO scandal the very next morning! Russia certainly tried with MH17, but it took them the whole weekend to manufacture a fake story about Ukrainian culpability. And let us not get started on the ridiculous view of federal bureaucracy on the show...
Since there really isn’t anything useful to talk about in The Strain’s collection of clichés and terminally dull subplots, I’d like to talk instead about someone else’s reaction to The Strain and other vampire fictions.

Last Wednesday Salon.com book critic Laura Miller argued that the vampire genre needs to die because popular culture is far too obsessed with the undead. According to Miller, vampire fiction in particular is ruining perfectly good stories of human misery and is no longer contributing anything useful to literature. Her view is terribly myopic, but by the time she reaches the end of her argument it quickly becomes clear that her issue isn’t with vampires per se but with what she sees as a moral failing in America reflected in ignorant audiences’ poor literary taste, and the authors who exploit it. That moral failing is for her intimately tied to a failure to embrace a liberal social agenda.

Miller erects her thesis on the back of her upset at discovering that Lauren Owen’s new novel The Quick (unread by me) is not in its entirety a sensitive portrayal of the moral compromises involved in carrying on a same-sex romance in Victorian England but rather a vampire novel, which degenerates quickly into a tiresome litany of the various powers and limitations of the vampire, along with their quasi-feudal social structure. Such discussions, Miller correctly observes, are stations of the cross for genre fiction and every bit as tiresome (if I may add) as the pseudo-Lovecraftian fictions that stop dead to list the various Mythos gods and their powers.
Call this the vampire yada yada, and it has become excruciatingly tedious. I’m all for imaginative world-building and even consider myself rather tolerant of the bizarre pedantry it can inspire in fans. […] But vampire mythology mostly comes down to taking a position on the same old points, like whether crucifixes will successfully repel the fiends — but only if the crucifix holder truly believes! — etc. (It’s a rare vampire story that troubles itself to pursue this curious relationship to traditional religious symbols, beyond superficial logistics, that is.) I finally bailed on “The Quick” when I realized that while I would happily read a fictional exploration of how well-born men engineered same-sex romances in Victorian England, I could not bear to read yet more yada yada on what kills or motivates a vampire.
If I read this correctly, Miller’s immediate problem isn’t the vampire itself but the limits of genre fiction, which insists on hitting the same notes over and over again—unlike, say, reviewers who allude to Seinfeld lines seventeen years after they ceased being fresh. That, or she is upset that The Quick does not cater specifically enough to her particular interest in issues of class, gender, and sexuality.

Miller dislikes The Quick for being a vampire novel, but she apparently also wants us to read all contemporary vampire hack work as representative of a degenerate literary trend that has fallen from the classic period, when (presumably) vampires had greater meaning and import. But when was that true? As someone who has read virtually every horror story published in the Victorian era (or so it seems—there’s always something new to find), I know firsthand that most of the novels and stories published then were trash. Utterly useless. Miserably crap. But it just isn’t right to argue against an entire genre because bad writers reduce it to stereotypes. In a different context: Would you throw out Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti because Brian Lumley writes crappy Mythos fiction?

Consider this: F. Marion Crawford—a great horror writer—included a scene just like the one Miller criticizes in his short story “For the Blood Is the Life” in 1911, fourteen years after Dracula and almost a century since John Polidori’s The Vampyre had already made it a cliché:
“I have seen an evil thing this night,” he said; “I have seen how the dead drink the blood of the living. And the blood is the life.”

“Tell me what you have seen,” said the priest in reply.

Antonio told him everything he had seen.

“You must bring your book and your holy water to-night,” he added. “I will be here before sunset to go down with you, and if it pleases your reverence to sup with me while we wait, I will make ready.”

“I will come,” the priest answered, “for I have read in old books of these strange beings which are neither quick nor dead, and which lie ever fresh in their graves, stealing out in the dusk to taste life and blood.”
Crawford then describes the ritual destruction of a vampire in great detail. Even in 1911, readers had heard this all before.

But for every knockoff of Dracula, there were also some frankly bizarre uses of the genre. Consider Le prisonnier de la planète Mars (1908) by Gustave La Rouge, in which vampires were revealed to be bat-people from Mars! Or La Jeune Vampire (1920) by J.-H. Rosny aîné, in which vampires were this time revealed to be humans possessed by souls from another dimension.

The point, of course, is that Miller’s problem isn’t with vampires but with bad genre writing on the one hand, and the fact that monsters (of any kind) have traditional powers and limitations that writes must discuss as surely as a Harlequin romance must explicate the broken backstory of its brooding romantic lead.

The stations of the cross for horror stories were so clichéd even in the nineteenth century that Walter Parke, writing an exposé on the penny dreadful (or penny awful) industry in 1875, complained how the stories had made use of the same few plot elements since the days of the Gothic novels. He quotes (or rather fabricates a quote) from a publisher of penny awfuls, whom he calls O’Riginal, that about sums up the problem:
“My dear sir, Milton couldn’t write ‘Penny Awfuls,’ nor did he live in an age when literature was a branch of commerce,” returned the O’Riginal. “There is a knack in ‘Awful’ writing as in everything else. It requires special capacities to do it with success. The faculty of skilful construction is essential; but original genius is rather in the way than otherwise.”
The full piece is published in my Hideous Bit of Morbidity, but the point is quite clear: Much of horror fiction, especially crappy fiction, is assembled from clichés and borrowings and standard parts, just like the way detective fiction moves from crime to criminal to solution and the way hard SF requires pedantic explanations of imaginary propulsion systems and wormholes. The question isn’t whether these genre elements should be included but how they are used. Miller doesn’t like bad writing or bad plotting, but seems to want to blame the monster rather than the author for the errant artistry.

I’m even willing to spot her the argument she makes about the futility of zombie fiction, which for the most part exists, as she says, “to express horror at faceless, herdlike mass societies; to force characters into isolated and dramatically interesting small groups; and to give gamers an excuse to massacre large numbers of people without even the shadow of a moral qualm.” Miller seems unaware that modern zombie fiction emerges out of a strain of vampire fiction—George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead used Richard Matheson’s vampire novel I Am Legend as model—and that the monster known now as the zombie long ago outgrew the Haitian corpse-slave in favor of an existence modeled o on the rotten European revenants whose cadaverous descriptions actually come from early modern vampire lore.

Miller, however, would like to undo the horror of Dracula alongside European folklore. She argues that vampires emerged from tales of “sexually predatory succubi” as well as the sexually magnetic Lord Byron; therefore, the sex-crazed “blood sluts” of Dracula can never be divorced from the vampire as a monster of horror. The sex is “baked in.” (This would apply only to literary vampires; nonfiction vampires remained gross zombie creatures.) The trouble with that is that this applies more to Carmilla than Dracula, and in any case, the vampires weren’t meant to be objects of lust but rather all the more horrific because they could steal women from the (presumably) male reader through unfair vampire power. They weren’t meant to be attractive to the reader, and indeed I can’t conceive of a reading of Dracula that would result in the reader falling for the vampire.

Miller doesn’t reveal her real problem with the vampire genre until the end of her piece, when she concludes that vampire fiction is useless because it fails at “challenging the social and economic inequality that intensifies around us every day.” She believes it instead assigns desirable traits to aristocratic leeches who (for her) represent the One Percent, though I would personally liken them more to modern versions of the heroes and lesser gods of myth. Sexy vampires and scary ones are equally to blame: “Blindly fetishizing the most brutal and arbitrary manifestations of power and dominance is every bit as remedial as the boy fans’ fixation on violence and gore…” The genre, she says, must die so that the public can rise up above the lust for their oppressors and the love of violence to seize a literature of empowerment, to overthrow the One Percent in the name of the proletariat.

If you’d like to talk about a cliché, Miller’s jeremiad falls into its own genre. Harry Quilter exemplified it in his hysterical essay on the “Gospel of Intensity,” which blasted the “Great God Pan” and all of Decadent fiction for its moral turpitude. But I’ve quoted Quilter too often in the past. Instead, let me close with Walter Parke’s warning about the dangers of horror fiction, if only because like Miller, Parke called for an end to a disliked genre with Parke’s vision of moral correctness. The difference, of course, is that as a good Victorian, Parke had a different vision of what moral rectitude would be. He considered penny awfuls to be “evil,” not because of their subtext (he didn’t have a problem with aristocracy in the least) but because of the violence and horror and crime contained in the actual text:
We cannot doubt that we have here an evil of considerable magnitude, for which a remedy is urgently needed. The law has evidently no power to stop it, or to decide precisely how far it is calculated to deprave the minds of readers. It is useless to cast the entire blame upon such persons as the O’Riginal, who write only to live, whose sole care is to suit their market, whether the moral results be good or bad, and who are equally ready to write sermons if that would serve their turn better. Nor can we even throw the entire onus upon the publishers or projectors of such trashy compositions, for, in an age when literature is dealt with so completely in a commercial spirit, when even religious publications are not above making friends with the “Mammon of unrighteousness,” it would be unreasonable to expect the lower classes of literary traders to be over-scrupulous. As long as a large and paying public can be obtained for them, “Penny Awfuls” will be produced. Nor should we censure the readers for their depraved taste, for which, indeed, considering that in most cases no other has ever been fostered in them, they rather deserve pity. The only effectual remedy lies in the spread of education, not only in its useful and intellectual, but in its purely imaginative branches. It would, indeed, be a national benefit if there were to arise some original genius, with a power of writing for the masses in such a manner as to sweep away the whole catalogue of horrors, crimes, and unwholesome excitements in which they at present delight, and substitute something which should combine the fascinations of the “Penny Awful” with adherence to truth and nature, and evince both a healthy imagination and a sound moral purpose.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Oh, wait: That’s another cliché.
36 Comments
just somebody
7/21/2014 05:40:09 am

[very next morning! Russia certainly tried with MH17, but it took them the whole weekend to manufacture a fake story about Ukrainian culpability[

gee,the russians manufactured a fake story...really.
and the americans didn't?
wow great empirical analysis on your part.
do you anything about the.situation in the ukraine?

Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
7/21/2014 06:18:04 am

Do you anything about the verbs?

Reply
EP
7/21/2014 08:19:13 am

OWNED!

JaredMithrandir link
7/21/2014 05:45:01 am

"Lauren Owen’s new novel The Quick (unread by me) is not in its entirety a sensitive portrayal of the moral compromises involved in carrying on a same-sex romance in Victorian England"

Why is a Gay love story has it be all about how it sucks to be Gay? I see this same criticism of the Yuri genre in Japan. Fiction is about Escapism first and foremost. So yes dealing with issues is good, but if I were Gay I'd also want fiction from a hypothetical world that pretends being Gay has no social draw backs and is seen as just as normal as anything else.

Reply
Matt Mc
7/21/2014 05:56:37 am

Being gay is not normal?

Reply
JaredMithrandir link
7/21/2014 09:54:28 am

I do consider it normal.

I mean depicting a fictional society where the issues of prejudiced they have to deal with don't exist. And so the challenges the couple faces are no different then we're used to seeing with a heterosexual couple.

Matt Mc
7/21/2014 10:05:14 am

Okay thanks for clarifiying. Maybe one day that will indeed be the case.

666
7/21/2014 03:39:40 pm

>>>Being gay is not normal?

Biological imbalance

An Over-Educated Grunt
7/21/2014 06:30:45 am

Except that that kind of misses the point - back to complex storytelling. Telling a story where everyone is happy all the time and no one stands to risk anything by their courses of action is boring. That's not to say you can't have a novel where homosexuality is portrayed as both normal and positive - it'd be hard to write a novel about the Theban Sacred Band, or the Spartiate, without either portraying it positively or glossing over it - but in those cases, the book isn't an exploration of what it's like to be a gay man in a situation where just being a gay man is taking a risk. From a storytelling standpoint, writing about an alternate world where homosexuality has no stigma JUST to write about an alternate world where homosexuality has no stigma is plain boring.

For an example of how this works well in practice, I strongly recommend Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War," where evolving social attitudes toward homosexuality, both male and female, leave the narrator behind, and serve as an illustration of his disconnect from society, but the sense is that he's the freak now, not the rest of the world.

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JaredMithrandir link
12/24/2014 02:26:23 am

Give them the same relationship drama Heteros have.

BillUSA
7/21/2014 09:03:59 am

Being gay never was, isn't now, nor ever will be normal. To suggest that a chosen form of sexual gratification has anything to do with the term "gay", as well as being a socially and biologically credible existence and an accepted opinion shared by all is preposterous.

The homosexuals I've encountered, by definition, are anything but gay. They are some of the most miserable, uptight, and neurotic people I have ever met. That the homosexual community hijacked the term "gay" for it's own meaning does not mean everyone buys into it. Just like the notion that gay is the (supposed) new normal. That may be the case in the Land of Illusion (Hollywood), but not in real America.

I'm not in favor of the persecution of homosexuals. I'm a "to each their own" kind of thinker. But as I come to this website to get away from all the sham in the world, I find your notion of "gay" being normal to be misleading.

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An Over-Educated Grunt
7/21/2014 09:19:34 am

I had a great deal to say here, but I will restrain myself to this.

The statements "I'm a 'to each their own' kind of thinker" and "To suggest that a chosen form of sexual gratification ... [is] a socially and biologically credible existence and an accepted opinion shared by all is preposterous" are contradictory. Either you accept it as none of your damn business where someone else gets their rocks off, or you condemn it as socially and biologically beyond the pale. It's not my job to tell you that you're no more a representative of "real America" than Tom Cruise, but you apparently come here to get away from all the sham in the world, so pointing out the flaws in your logic is the least I can do for you.

Matt Mc
7/21/2014 09:21:19 am

Well good for you Bill, I feel sorry for you.

I wont go into it any further than to say a person is a person no matter what the given race, religion, sexual preference ect.. and they are as "normal" as anyone else is who could be considered "normal".

terry the censor
7/21/2014 06:03:51 pm

@BillUSA
> a chosen form of sexual gratification

I'm intrigued. I never had a choice to be heterosexual, I was born that way. I don't complain, as I do find heterosexuality to be sexually gratifying.

But perhaps I am being close-minded. You imply you are attracted to both sexes but CHOOSE to practise heterosexuality. Please tell me about that decision process. I am quite intrigued!

Gunn
7/22/2014 03:44:31 am

I agree with BillUSA. Look into the rest of the animal world and one might find occasional homosexuality, but nothing abnormal being touted as normal. It seems only humans are capable of taking something normal and healthy and turning it into an abnormal expectation of reality. Right. Hollywood. Ophra. Take the Bible and twist it to be fashionable. Talk out of both sides of the mouth, to be popular. Can one say "be gay" and "be Christian" out of the same mouth? This is where folks are being led astray.

When I was in the US Army, gays were booted out as soon as they were identified. When I worked as a guard in a prison, make-up was contraband and homosexuality was discouraged. Why? Because in both these cases, being gay was seen as inappropriate behavior and not normal...rather, it was considered disruptive behavior.

I can understand that skeptics here on this blog are skeptical about many things besides fringe history and vampires. It almost becomes a duty for some here to be anti-God, which I guess includes God's viewpoints on homosexuality, even though God's Word clearly speaks out against homosexuality, yes, as being both abnormal and improper behavior.

Being gay is a game being played out in our American society, being pushed by un-Godly Hollywood and Christian-appearing TV personalities. On the local TV news, we see that gay "priests" up here in MN turned the Catholic Church into a den of iniquity, where child molesters had free reign for at least a half-century. It seems that the Catholic Church was for a time turned into a Gay Children's Club. We're still witnessing that fallout, Ophra.

What's wrong with this picture? Well, it could be out of balance...and abnormal. Being gay is not normal, and BillUSA has my backing. Is this a gay/skeptic blog? No. It's a public forum where promoting homosexuality is seen by some here as just plain wrong--as much as those who see it as okay.

Not believing in God in no reason to believe in the goodness of homosexuality. Skeptics can be "unbelievers" of God and still think being gay is bad for individuals and society. There is no abstract requirement for skeptics to welcome homosexuality to prove their disbelief in God. Even though our Creator has spoken out against being gay, one may choose to not believe in Him while also not accepting the Hollywood Gay Agenda.

In America, and on this blog, people may take a stand against what is perceived as being bad for society, for the military, prisons, and churches (not to mention the Boy Scouts). The truth of the matter is that a funky, smelly cloud now overhangs America, and it has everything to do with our nation becoming evermore sexually repugnant.

An Over-Educated Grunt
7/22/2014 04:50:57 am

So let me get this straight, Gunn - do you automatically turn off the radio when a Hendrix song comes on? Guy chaptered out of 101st because he claimed to be a chronically masturbating homosexual.

I find your constant blathering on the Kensington Rune Stone and how America was secretly settled by Swedes who left no middens, no foundations, no tools, nothing except triangular holes and possibly-fake monuments to be offensive and troublesome, but I don't call you out on it every time it's mentioned. I find constant references to God as if He is on your side, rather than you on His, as if you know the mind of something by definition unknowable, as if Christianity isn't founded on a basis of humility, but rather on a correct reading of a text that's gone through 2000 years of translations and revisions, to be offensive, but I don't call you out on it. Why, then, do you feel you, or anyone, have the right or privilege of getting up on your soap box about what someone else is doing behind closed doors that neither requires your participation, your consent, nor even your awareness of it?

And, before I'm accused of being One Of Them... I have a wife and four kids, spread out over a decade. If I'm gay, I apparently am doing it wrong.

EP
7/22/2014 05:14:00 am

BillUSA and Gunn are both terrible people and deserve nothing but contempt. Glad we got that cleared up.

terry the censor
7/22/2014 07:45:42 am

@Gunn
> It almost becomes a duty for some here to be anti-God

Oh, Gunn, you silly. We are simply against irrational intolerance.

For an instance of such:

> gay "priests" ...child molesters

It is not anti-God to point out a simple fact: pederasty and homosexuality are not the same. Your conflation of the two show your argument is based on a wild distortion that you have not thought out, but have heard somewhere and repeated because it suited your emotional disposition.

Erik G
7/21/2014 09:54:22 am

An excellent informative post, Jason. Thank you. However, I confess that I do enjoy Brian Lumley's Mythos fiction -- but then, I have a deep fondness for pulp. Often crappy, yes, but here and there a gem or two. Very much a guilty pleasure. I am under no illusions about their literary merit (or lack thereof) but I need my fix. And the fix is about simple enjoyment. And let's not forget that the 'Mythos' was popularized not so much by HPL as by his pulpish emulators, without whom he might have been totally forgotten today.

As a brief aside (and hijack of the thread) to Mithrandir -- how can I contact you through your website? Please give me a hint. We need to talk about Sheba...

And back to our regular programming...

Reply
MithrandirOlorin link
7/21/2014 11:45:43 am

If for whatever what reason they won't let you post a comment, try sending me an ask on Tumblr where I'm JaredMithrandir.

Reply
MithrandirOlorin link
7/21/2014 09:58:35 am

Just leave a comment on the post you wanna discus, I should receive Email notification of it, but either way I'll try not to forget to check it periodically.

I'd love to discus Sheba.

Reply
PaulN. link
7/21/2014 10:22:50 am

Vampires have to die, seriously? That sounds like an oxymoron.
Never having been a fan of Gothic horror literature, I have stayed with the visual. I have watched most varieties films; Noseferatu, the Universal series, the Hammer series, and others [Andy Warhol's was one of the worst]. I quit watching the vampire genre after Francis Ford Coppola's effort which I found boring and lifeless (yes, pun intended).
In recent years though I have found areas where this particular genre has gone into new areas, that are not only intriguing but show a certain level of originality.
The first is Japanese anime. The earliest examples stick with the old cliche forms. However, starting in the early 90's the started innovating and tweaking the genre to new levels. Three examples of this are Helsing, Rosario+Vampire, Moonphase, and Karin. Helsing follows the barest of bones as far as vampire tropes in that you have Dracula, But that's it. In this story Dracula is in service to van Helsing family and is used to eradicate other vampire wannabes. Rosario+Vampire is a story about a young man going to a new high school but he gets on the wrong bus and winds up at a high school for monsters (all types), and ends romantically entangled with a young vampire (yes, apparently vampires can have natural families). Next is Moonphase, a story about a youngish vampire (she is supposed to be between 12 & 14) and the Buddhist family that tries to save her from evil forces that are trying to control her. Karin is a bit more complicated in the background of vampires, but it boils down to fact that they are agnostic, have a very sensitive sense of smell, and have been living benignly among humans for centuries. Also, though they drink blood, it is in small quantities, and they feed off of the emotions of the "donors". Again, vampires are capable having families and raising their own children. The children due not become vampires until they reach age and point of development. Karin is an exception in that when she gets emotionally excited she bleeds copiously through her nose.

Reply
PaulN. link
7/21/2014 11:23:17 am

Continuing my post, the other area I was going to talk about is web-comics. These have shown some originality, due to the fact that they are self published so the only critical oversight comes from their readers.
First a tip-o'-the hat to Phil Foglio's Girl Genius. It does not have a lot to do with vampires as a steampunk scifi story goes, but it is well written, witty, and beautifully drawn and colored.
Next Sluggy Freelance, probably one of the longest running strips (it started in1997), here we have a reluctant vampire. the character Sam was ladies man of the leisure suit variety, until he married a woman who turned out to be vampire. She turned Sam into a vampire but in the story his friends ended up helping him to destroy the coven. Later on Sam manages to piss off a larger, stronger coven and has been on the run ever since.
Eetie Cuties has story basis similar to Rosario+Vampire, but only in that it is a high school for monsters (no normal guys here). The young female vampire has a werecat as a boyfriend. The storyline covers the various hijinks and problems that come in typical admixture different monsters in a modern American high school(?).
Then there is Vampire Cheerleaders. This story revolves around a small coven of female vampires who never got over high school. Every twenty years they wold return to their original high school and repeat the four years, from freshman to senior. The time in between would be spent at other high schools around the country. Their prey would be male students from the nearby university, but they never killed any of their so they would not blow their cover.
The beauty of the webcomic is that for unlimited degree of originality that is only compromised by degree to comic concept is accepted by the reading public. However some care should be taken as there are many areas where NSFW and rule 34 are only a suggestion or do not apply at all, and what you have seen can not be un-seen.

Reply
Only Me
7/21/2014 05:20:06 pm

Blood: The Last Vampire was a good anime.

Arthur
7/21/2014 11:20:49 am

Why doesn't she just go complain about how the phone book doesn't include an article in it about abortion rights or something? The point of this book isn't to make a grand social point- it's to tell a (to some people I assume) entertaining story about vampires. Not everything in this world has to serve some grander agenda.

Reply
PaulN. link
7/21/2014 11:30:48 am

A phone book? What is a phone book? Isn't that something they used back when telephones had rotary dials, and operators had real jobs making long distance calls. Okay I am now extracting my tongue from my cheek.

Reply
geoff link
7/21/2014 03:07:51 pm

FWIW, I watched the aliens on the moon thing. You were completely wrong about a few things. One is, its only 1.5 hours. Two, the photo's werent blurry, they are coloured in with nice colours so you can see all the Alien Installations, power plants, and mile long cannons which have been put in place to protect them while they plan to attack earth.
Three, many of the photos are computer generated models placed in the photos for clarity.
Four, it must be true because they have several moon landing Astronauts who think they might be real, although having been there they still cant confirm.
Five, they did provide one lady who apparently suggested from time to time that these things were probably natural. However, the snide look on her face and her tone suggested the money she was being paid was probably more than sufficient to quell any professional issues she had with what they said.

Reply
Only Me
7/21/2014 05:17:34 pm

Sounds like the show was an irresponsibly large amount of bullshit.

Reply
Matt Mc
7/22/2014 01:42:24 am

Actually the program was right around one hour and twenty five minutes running length. I know this without even seeing it because that is the standard length of a program with a slotted two hour time slot. The addition 35 minutes is allocated for commercials this is very standard. That said the program was allotted a two hour time slot for airing, so Jason's statement that the program was two hours in length was correct for a review format of television/cable programs. How often do you hear reviews say "the forty two minute (or one hour and twenty five minute) show was..." they never do the identify the allotted time slot as the running time of the show. Not sure why you are choosing to be so picky

Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
7/22/2014 01:53:41 am

Pretty sure his tongue was thoroughly in his cheek for part of that, so I assume it was for the rest, too.

Matt Mc
7/22/2014 02:14:12 am

I hope so the amount of things people are being critical these days is ridiculous.

Anyway I am going to give the SyFy doc a viewing sometime today since it appears there is going to be a lot of downtime at the job I am working on.

Matt Mc
7/22/2014 02:56:47 am

So fifteen minutes into this and I had to turn it off, horrible horrible doc. Blurry pictures and speculation that makes the AA pundits seem somewhat sane. And the overly serious tone that implies some impending doom is awfully executed. Seldom do I come across a doc or pseudo doc that I have to turn off out of shear disgust.

geoff link
7/22/2014 12:23:40 pm

Yep, my tongue was in cheek.
I take back my comment on the "expert" though. I'm now one hour into it and she has made some more comments which are better.
"Some people see a power plant or military base, but more likely it is geological structures due to asteroid/meteor bombardment and "fortunate" lighting at the time". She then goes on to point out several instances of where this has proven to be the case.

An Over-Educated Grunt
7/22/2014 04:43:15 am

Since I've commented on plenty of comments, figure I might as well comment on the main post. I'd read Lumley's "Necroscope" series, and thought that the first book was pretty good, the others increasingly less so. I very much prefer my vampires as monstrous predators to brooding sex symbols, and the idea that vampires were driven by a parasite - so that even the super-predator was preyed on by something - was a good one. The later books got increasingly repetetive and, strange as it sounds, needlessly descriptive, so I can understand the "Lord Bloodworth answers to High Elder de Sangue, who in turn bows to Prince von Blut" getting out of hand as a problem. The same kind of thing plagued White Wolf once upon a time, with their obsessive insistence on documenting every level of vampire culture both on the super-hierarchical Camarilla side AND on the supposedly highly anarchic Sabbat side. But then, obsessive attention to hierarchy is kind of built into gaming and gamers, so perhaps that example is less surprising.

Reply
Drew
7/22/2014 12:25:02 pm

If people are going to talk about modern vampire/zombie tropes, then they might need to bone up on the old EC Tales/Haunt/Vault comics and their imitators.

Reply
John Moore
7/22/2014 05:21:34 pm

I'm just surprised that she didn't connect vampire fiction to "rape culture" or "white male privilege" Salon's two main bug bears.

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        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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