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Dec. 7, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
50:21
1227 Vampires and Fathers - the FDR Movie Review: 'Twilight'

What 'Twilight' - and vampires in general - are all about...

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Oh wait, sorry, no, we're talking about vampires today.
Christina dragged me to go and see Twilight, and it's actually a good thing that I went with my wife, so it doesn't look like I'm trolling for tweens at the Cineplex.
But, um... Oh, sorry.
Looks like we're getting some interference for a cell phone.
It was actually Steph who wanted to go and see Twilight.
Oh, did I say? We are one.
So, I'm always fascinated by phenomenon, right?
Phenomena. This idea that stuff which strikes a chord with people as a whole, or particularly young people, Why?
Why does it strike a chord with them?
Why does it? Because this apparently has become quite the obsession, right?
I mean, according to the people I've talked to, everyone's reading it, it's quite the obsession among particularly girls, at least according to the reviews and so on.
And it was mostly girl or date audience when we went on Friday.
I mean, the film's not very good, fundamentally.
But that's not important.
It's not very important whether the film is good or not.
What is important is why it's a phenomenon.
And so...
I mean, the stuff that's not good, the acting's a little cheesy, it's kind of cliched, it's pretty hammy and over at the top, and in fact, the audience laughed, and even the young sort of enraptured audience laughed in certain sections where things just seemed to be kind of absurd and gothic, right, in this sort of hysterical Bronte sisters kind of fashion.
But all of that's unimportant because the movie, and I haven't read the books and I said no plan to, it's so rich in metaphor that the quality of the movie as a whole is unimportant because the richness of the metaphors, which I'm not for a moment going to say are conscious or I don't know, right?
But the richness of the metaphors are well worth examining and I was watching the film While at the same time, my mind was racing in 12 million different directions as rich metaphor after rich metaphor just rolled off the screen with like cannon fire, just firing straight at the audience.
And again, I'm not saying it hit anyone consciously or anything like that, but it certainly was there.
Without further ado, the movie is about...
I'm sorry, there will be spoilers, so if you care about the plot, don't listen to this until you've seen the movie or read the book or whatever.
But the story is a girl from a broken family.
I guess she's 17 or so.
She goes to live with her father, who is completely emotionally unavailable, just emotionally dead.
He's a cop. And she goes to this high school where this Dreamboat guy who looks like a pretty gay version of James Dean instantly becomes fascinated by her.
And she does nothing, just walks into a room, right?
And he instantly becomes fascinated by her.
And then he saves her life from a car crash.
The car is about to crash into her van.
It's about to crash into her. And he reaches out with his superhuman strength and speed and saves her life and so on.
And... Then through a variety of means she realizes that he's a vampire and she loves him and they romp around in the woods together and it turns out he was originally going to die of the influenza in 1920 I think it was after the First World War and was saved by a vampire who suckered his blood and then did not kill him but instead turned him into a vampire and then Hijinks ensue when a bunch of nasty vampires come about.
When the, sort of quote, good guy vampires, who are vegetarians, right?
They only eat animals.
They don't eat people.
So they're kind of like restrained their appetite and so on.
And then the bad guy vampires come along and start chasing, one of them starts chasing the The girl and the big fights and so on and she almost dies and the gay James Dean guy helps her, saves her, fights off the bad guy and so on.
And they kill the bad guy and blah blah blah.
So that's the basic outlines of the plot.
It's not a particularly great story and the sexual tension is I don't know.
I just, I can't find cannibalism that sexy.
I just, I just can't.
But, obviously, some people can, so I think it's worth exploring that because, as I said, it's quite a phenomenon and therefore is worthy of our time and attention.
So, vampires continue to be a source of fascination, often erotic fascination, particularly for women.
The idea of the sexy vampire, right, is...
I guess from Nesferatu to Franklangella onwards, and even Malacula.
It's something that is a cliché.
It's a very common thing.
The goth thing and so on.
So the first thing we should ask is, what do vampires represent?
Why are they so fascinating?
And we'll say, maybe to guys, but since this is a female phenomenon, we'll look at that, right?
Well, they sleep in coffins during the day.
They roam around at night. They can change shape into predatory animals, most commonly a bat.
And into normal or black fog.
They are burned by sunlight. They cast no reflection in a mirror.
They are allergic to garlic.
They live on blood. Are immortal unless caught out in the sun or staked through the heart with a wooden stake.
They have long canine teeth.
Are evil and mesmerizing.
And to me, this is a pretty clear metaphor for a sociopath, right?
Or at the very least, an antisocial personality disorder.
But more importantly, since of course the vampire legend came into being when these terms were not disseminated, right?
It's a medieval. If I remember rightly, I believe it's a medieval.
You could say the blood drinkers go back even earlier in mythology.
But it's a metaphor that It has something to do with this kind of sociopathy.
So what could this mean, though?
If we sort of break it down into more layman's terms, what could it mean?
Well, I guess the first thing that we have to understand about vampires is that they...
They feed off human beings, right?
So it's a zero-sum game, right?
So the vampire gets sustenance and the human being who he's feeding off loses sustenance, right?
It's not like trade, right?
So, you know, if you trade Wheat for whiskey.
Both people get what they want.
It's a net plus and so on, assuming voluntary trade.
But in the vampire metaphor, it is truly a zero-sum game, right?
So the vampire gains sustenance and the human being usually loses her life while having apparently a very exquisite orgasm.
So this zero-sum game is a function of power.
It's not a function of trade or voluntarism.
So the vampire is a metaphor for a number of things, but in many ways, most fundamentally, it's a metaphor for the kind of transaction that occurs through violence and exploitation because it is a zero-sum game the vampire gains and the victim loses his life and so on so this is a kind of human predator who preys on human beings and so on That's the most important thing to understand,
right? And there are two kinds of human predators.
Those who directly feed off, right, so slave owners, right, as a human predator who keeps human beings as livestock, and of course when the vampire metaphor came into being and propagated, slavery was the constant in human relations, right? And so That's one kind of human predator.
Another kind of human predator, of course, is the soldier or the taxman or whatever who preys on people through propaganda and violence and so on.
So that's another kind.
But that's not quite the case with a vampire because a vampire is seductive.
So obviously there's some kind of erotic element, but of course it's not sex.
The metaphor is very clear that although there are sexual characteristics to a vampiric attack, it's not sex.
No matter how loosely you play with the term eating, it's still not sexual in nature.
Although the orgasmic nature of being attacked by a vampire is pretty clear.
It's not sexual, and it's not the same as violence, right?
Because one of the things that seems to be pretty common in vampire myths is that they can't enter your home unless you invite them in, right?
And so it's not the same as violence, right?
So war happens whether you invite people in or not.
You don't have to invite the tax man in to get taxed.
So it's not the same as what is occurring in these other realms of human predation.
It's a more subtle and personal or interpersonal and quote, voluntaristic kind of predation.
So what is it that they're talking about when they talk about vampires?
Well, I would submit that they're talking about Envy exploitation or the exploitation of provoking envy in empty people and exploiting them.
And so the second type of human predation is where you gain value through the admiration or the excitement of others, right?
And I think that's very important and I think that's what vampires really symbolize or at least I think that's the case and I'll make the case and see if it makes any sense of course.
So, we all have a basic problem.
Well, most of us do anyway.
Which is, why would anyone be interested in us, right?
I don't just mean in terms of sexuality, right?
But why? Why would anyone be interested in us?
And it's a big problem, right?
I mean, you know, we face all of this in school, right?
So why would someone choose to go, say, to the prom with me as opposed to The guy next to me, right?
What is it that is going to set me apart?
What is going to make me exciting or interesting or valuable to someone?
This could be friendship, but we'll talk mostly about the sexual aspect because that's, I think, most at play in these kinds of movies.
Why am I interesting?
That's a huge, huge problem.
And a huge amount of what goes on in society is designed to answer this question Why me?
And not the next guy. And this is that old Seinfeld routine.
I've mentioned it before, but I think it's appropriate.
Where he says, you know, guys are interchangeable in their tuxes, right?
So if the groom doesn't show up to a wedding, all the guys just take a step over, right?
And that's why they say, do you take this guy, right?
Not his name, but just this guy, to be your awful wedded husband and so on, right?
So it's a joke, but there's some interesting...
psychology there, for me at least, which is that we are so often interchangeable.
And then the question is, why us?
Why should someone be interested in me in a sexual or other kind of way?
Why would I be interested? And so a lot of what goes on is all around trying to answer this question for people.
And this is not to downplay The genuine enjoyment that people get out of things like sports and so on.
But a lot of what goes on in society, and in schools in particular, around the teenage years, is designed to solve this problem, or answer this question, I suppose you could say, of why me and not someone else?
And so the first thing to notice, other than...
The girl's name, which is Isabella, which is shortened to Bella, which is similar to Bella Donna, which is a kind of nightshade associated with the undead, if I remember rightly, is that she's completely uninteresting.
And the story would not work if she were interesting, right?
If she didn't have an unfulfilled narcissistic need for attention, which we'll talk about in terms of her family structure a little later.
But the first thing to notice about the film is that she is very clearly Presented as completely inept and uninteresting.
Other than that she's pretty, right?
Which is not exactly a metaphorical choice.
You just kind of have a lead who's not, right?
I mean, if the vampire was a teacher who looked like Dom DeLuise, the picture no worky, right?
So that's not really a metaphorical choice.
It's just a basic aesthetics of cinema choice.
But she's established.
She's a terrible conversationalist.
She's incredibly self-conscious.
She's shy. She stumbles over her words.
She is non-athletic, right?
She has a little bit of a wry sense of humor.
When someone says, oh, you're from Arizona, and she's supposed to be tanned, and she says, well, maybe that's why they kicked me out or something like that.
Which, again, is underscoring the theme of Acceptance and rejection, and for what?
She said, oh man, she's playing volleyball, and she hits a guy in the head.
She's like, oh, I told them not to let me play.
I'm terrible at sports. She doesn't read books.
She doesn't like to study.
She doesn't have any hobbies.
She doesn't seem to have any inner life whatsoever.
So the first thing is that she's really, really dull, not interesting, not present, not Engaging, not virtuous, not curious, not mature, not wise, not learned, not athletic.
Nothing. There's nothing there.
That's clear.
And of course, that is necessary for the story.
Because if she had an inner life, if she had a commitment to virtue or to curiosity or whatever, then she would not be so magically drawn to this obvious lunatic fellow.
Over dinner. And she has no judgement, right?
She has no boundaries and no judgement.
And that's, I think, very clear in the movie, right?
Because at one point he says to her, I could read everyone's mind, which, I mean, in any kind of sensible script, that would be met with a check, right?
This guy thinks he can read everyone's minds, except mine, right?
And she doesn't ask for any proof.
She doesn't offer up any skepticism.
She doesn't say, what a bizarre and outlandish claim.
I mean, she just says, oh, that's interesting.
Or she says something else, which I can't remember.
And then he says, oh, so basically I just told you that I can read minds and your only problem is this other inconsequential thing, right?
So she doesn't have any judgment, right?
And that is a tragedy, of course, right?
No boundaries, no judgment indicates...
Poor parenting, right?
And, of course, this is the case, right?
So her family has broken up, and her father is a chronically depressed cop, and her mother is roaming around with some baseball player who's in the minors or something like that, but some baseball player who's off doing training, and she has decided not to hang out With her mom and this dude on the road, but instead she has decided to go and live with her father, right?
And of course the tragedy there is that her father is emotionally completely catatonic.
He does not, other than one wry comment about pepper spray, he shows no emotion whatsoever throughout the entire course of the movie, right?
He's simply not...
There. He's a creature of unbelievably boring habit and repetition.
He goes to eat at the same place, ordering the same thing all the time.
So her family is dysfunctional in the extreme.
There's no abuse that's mentioned, but obviously a highly chaotic and unstable environment.
And an emotionally completely absent father, which we'll sort of get into why that is necessary.
What's necessary is what, if you changed it, the story wouldn't work, right?
So if she came from a really happy and functional and fulfilled family, then she wouldn't have this hunger.
And she wouldn't have this complete lack of boundaries and just stare in googly-eyed adoration at a guy who claims that he can read minds and is immortal.
She'd just recognize him as a very mentally unhealthy fellow and wouldn't even fall into his orbit.
We're just like, oh my god, are you crazy?
So, none of that would work if her family were stable and happy, right?
So, when something is that necessary for a story, what that means is that it's actually about her family, in my...
Like, I can make the case, and you see if it makes any sense or not.
But when something is that necessary to the story, right, if her dysfunctional family is completely necessary for the story to function, then the story is really about her family, right?
Right, so into Goa. The Stevens ethical examinations of the family is completely necessary for the story, and that's how we know the book is about the ethical examination of families.
Sorry to give you Lit 101, you're probably all aware of this, but I just thought I'd mention it.
So let's start having a look at some of the juicy metaphors that go on.
And these to me are pretty clear, and if you see the film you will be aware of them, I think.
So, the first is the parallels between this vampire and her father, right?
The parallels between the vampire family and her family, right?
And these start off very quickly, in my opinion, right?
So, the father is emotionally dead, right?
So, he's a kind of walking corpse already, right?
And that, you know, the idea that he's kind of dead is really portrayed, I think, continually throughout the film and that he just doesn't react to anything, he has no emotions about anything.
So he's a walking corpse to begin with.
So the fact that you have a vampire movie with a father who is a walking corpse indicates that the vampires are really discussions of the family, right?
And I don't know anything about the woman.
Writer, but I would be shocked if she came from any kind of normal, at least, normal even by current standards kind of family.
One of the first things that happens is that, well, the first thing in the movie is that a vampire is shown, very briefly, bringing down a deer, right, a four-legged animal, and we can assume then eating it,
right? Throughout the movie, it is repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly emphasized that this man, this fellow, her father, is a meat eater, right? He eats cow, which is, of course, a four-legged animal.
So here we have two dead people who are...
Meat eaters, right?
The vampire and the father, right?
So that's a pretty clear indication that there's a link between the two.
In the movie, the father and the daughter wrestle over ketchup, right?
And that, again, is not the most subtle metaphor on the planet, right?
Because ketchup is one of the most obvious metaphors for blood.
And so when you see the daughter and the father wrestling over the ketchup to put on the meat, that's pretty clear.
And the further blurring of the metaphor, which I think is again to do with lack of boundaries and all that kind of good stuff, is that the vampire is called a vegetarian, and it is emphasized in the movie that the daughter is a true vegetarian, right?
So the vampires are called vegetarians because they don't eat people.
And the daughter is a true vegetarian, right?
So again, there's that density or complexity of metaphorical overlap.
In the movie, there's a rather grungy fellow who introduces himself to the daughter when she arrives back in town.
And he apparently was, or he says he was, and it's confirmed in the movie, he was a Santa Claus He was a fellow who was the Santa Claus of the town.
And so her father brought her to the Santa Claus when she was four, I think it was in the movie.
In other words, her father introduced her to this metaphorical creature, this mythological creature called Santa Claus.
Her father introduced her to a mythological creature called Santa Claus.
And that's in the movie.
And I would say, of course, in this way, her father introduced her to this fascination with vampires by himself being an emotionally dead person who eats animals, which then translates into the metaphor that is discussed repeatedly in the movie about these vegetarian vampires, right? So that's sort of one thing. The other parallels to me are pretty clear.
In one of the sequences in the movie that's, I think, actually quite well done, is the sequence where the vampires play baseball.
And it's very clearly pointed out in the movie that this girl, Bella's stepfather, what does he do?
He's a baseball player, right?
So you see how this metaphor works.
This is really talking about her family, right?
In the movie, The family is an artificial family, right?
The vampires are not related, right?
Because they're not a human family, but just a bunch of vegetarian, quote, vegetarian human predators.
So in the movie, the vampire family is not a real family, but pretends to be a family, right?
And, of course, in Bella's, quote, real life, And I would imagine the writer's real life as well.
Her family is not a real family, right?
Step-parents and not married and trips around and she goes to live here and then she goes to live there and so on, right?
So, again, this is the baseball metaphor, the pseudo-family metaphor.
All of this is a tightly packed expose on the realities of her actual family, right?
It's not a real family. It only pretends to be.
There's baseball involved and so on.
I would also say that when, and again, I know I'm stretching on some of this stuff, right?
Not all of these have the same weight, but, you know, indulge me if you don't mind.
I think it'll be interesting and worthwhile.
She talks about, this girl, Bella, it's mentioned that she's introduced to these mythological creatures when she's about four years old.
And these mythological creatures are not present during the day, they're more active at night, and so on.
And in my sort of way of looking at it, to a four-year-old child, what do the parents seem like?
Well, the parents seem like they're superhuman in terms of strength, right?
They can lift up Entire bassinettes.
They can, you know, drive these magical cars.
They can... I mean, there's superhuman strength and speed, right?
You know, when you're teaching a child of that age, even to throw a ball, right?
You appear to have superhuman feats of strength when this is around, right?
And so, to me, when...
This girl is talking about a savior with superhuman strength and speed that is a metaphorical translation of her father, right?
I mean, because that's how her father would have appeared to her at that age, right?
This mythological creature.
Which is why I think the metaphor works with the fellow who was Santa Claus, right?
Another mythological creature that she is, sort of, quote, introduced to at that age.
So I think that's an important element Within the story.
Now, what does it mean that her father is a cop?
Right? This is a very important aspect to the story.
Would the story work as well if her father were an accountant?
No. So, the, quote, father of the vampire family is a doctor, right, so is a healer, and in many ways, of course, that is considered to be the opposite of a cop to a child, right? Because the child, again, if at the age of four or five, maybe a little older, but not much older, the daughter would have asked, well, you know, what does daddy do, right?
He drives a car with a siren, he He wears a gun, right?
So this hunting thing for the kid is going to be very strong, right?
Because this idea that Dad is some kind of dangerous guy, a predator, a hunter, is going to be very strong for the daughter, right?
Because she sees him going off to work, right?
So Dad has a gun, and what does he do?
Well, he catches bad guys, right?
That's what... It's often said to children about cops, right?
They protect you and they catch bad guys, right?
So obviously they're hunters, right?
And there is a kind of predatory aspect to police work, right?
A kind of violence. But the idea is that the violence is necessary Through no fault of their own.
We have cops because there are bad people, the violence is necessary, and so on.
In the same way, a vampire does not choose to become a vampire.
As is pointed out by the Gay James Dean fellow, I didn't choose this life.
This guy bit me when I was dying.
I didn't have a choice. So circumstances bring this all about.
And in the same way, a cop is a necessary protector, because this guy was protected from death by vampirism, the lead vampire.
So the idea that human predators struggle, through no fault of their own, to control their violence And that the girl's father is a cop.
I don't know if the writer, an actual writer's father is a cop, but it doesn't matter.
I would not be shocked at all if he was or some kind of law enforcement or someone in the family close.
Pretend to be psychic here.
Right, so he catches bad guys.
Well, he's a predator, right?
And he uses violence, but he controls his violence and tries to do good with it, right?
So that aspect, I think that explains why the cop metaphor works so well.
A human predator who tries to control violence to do good and it's not like he wanted to be this way.
It's just the way that things are.
There are bad people and we need cops and so on.
Now, the anger, again, this is a bit more of a stretch, but, you know, again, I'm not going to hinge the whole case on this.
The problem with emotionally unavailable parents, right, is that we feel angry towards them, right?
And I know this, having myself had a completely unavailable father emotionally, right?
I go and visit with him and we barely speak a word a week, right?
Stuck out there in Africa.
We know what to talk to, right?
So, I sort of understand this, that we feel both very dependent and very angry about these kinds of people, right?
That they want us in their lives and then they don't really seem to want to interact with us at all.
There are good vampires, right?
Which is a metaphor for the perceived virtuous violence of the cop, right?
And then... Oh, sorry, and also, right, a big...
To a four-year-old, the father...
To a four-year-old girl, her father seems a lot younger, right?
And, of course, he is a lot younger, right?
So this guy looks to be in his late 30s, so...
She's 17, right?
She was four every 13 years back.
He would have been in his early 20s.
Maybe even late teens, right?
So, the fact that the guy is 17, the sexy vampire, is not that shocking when we look at this historical memory of the daughter.
So the challenge of this dual use of violence, right, that it's used to protect against involuntary dangers, right, like the van slamming into her and so on, but the emotional unavailability, right, Danny is violent because he's virtuous, right? Well, shouldn't virtue, so a kid is going to think, shouldn't virtue also involve your love and caring for your children, right?
This is a great paradox.
People who are supposed to be virtuous, right?
And my father still sends me, still to this day, sends me programs from the university lectures that he gives in Ireland and in Africa on geology, right?
I suppose it's to try and impress me or to try and You don't say, as he's very fond of saying, you come from good stock.
You come by your intellectual gifts and honestly and from good stock and so on.
And of course that's all nonsense and it's actually kind of offensive nonsense.
If a man who left you and moved to the other side of the world And I saw him once every couple of years, and then he wouldn't talk to me.
So this guy who does that, if he says, I'm really great, I'm really great, I'm really effective, I'm really good, and I'm respected, and intellectually I achieve, and so on, and I left you.
Somebody who says, I'm really good and important and virtuous and all that, and I matter, and I left you.
It's kind of offensive, right?
Because, well, I don't even have to tell you.
I am sure of that.
So, where does the anger come out?
Well, the anger comes out in a number of ways.
Bella's anger towards her father for being so emotionally unavailable.
The first thing is that since there, to me at least, is a clear metaphorical unity between Bella's father and the Santa Claus fellow, Well, the angry vampires, which represent Bella's angry side, right, the side that is unacceptable to her family for having the family split up, for having her mother chase around after this baseball player and so on.
The angry side, right?
So the angry side kills a stand-in for her father, right, which is his best friend or his friend of thirty years and so on, who is killed by the bad vampires.
The bad vampires represent Bella's anger at how she has been mistreated and so on.
So the bad vampires kill him and that to me is a stand-in, right?
This is an acceptable expression of anger and violence towards her father because it's done by, quote, bad vampires too.
What is this a stand-in for her father?
So what is going on here?
Well, Fundamentally, as I said at the beginning, the great problem of particularly sexual awakening is the problem of being interesting.
So this girl, Bella, is a metaphor, in my opinion, for a virgin.
She's 17, she's attractive, she is appealing, and she...
Makes no mention of prior boyfriends, right?
There's no, oh, this guy you dated, right?
And when the vampire comes over to take her out, the father is, you know, a predictable caricature of the close guarding father and so on.
So, she appears to be virginal.
She has that same kind of shyness and stuttering and so on, and sexual impulses towards the vampire, which, I don't know, I think according to myth, it can't be consummated, right?
I don't think vampires can actually have sex.
So, there's a kind of virginal aspect to this whole interaction, right?
Which is why it appeals more, I think, to the tweens, right?
To the girls who are facing this problem, right?
Which is, why me, right?
What is special about me?
Now, we all have this fantasy, and I've had it, you've had it, everybody's had it, and we all continue to struggle with it, I'm sure.
I know I do. And that fantasy or that struggle is this, what makes me interesting, right?
And we all have this...
oh you know this yearning right particularly when we're younger it gets better when you get older but it's still there which is boy you know if I were better looking I would be worth paying attention to if I were Different in some enigmatic, fascinating way, right?
I would be worth paying attention to.
I shouldn't have to earn it, right?
I shouldn't have to earn being interesting, right?
That's the kind of resentment, right?
And the resentment fundamentally goes back to parents, right?
Parents who don't find their children interesting just for who they are and give them that self-esteem that they are valuable, valid, and worthwhile just because they are who they are, right?
And that's... That requires a parent with a high degree of self-esteem and curiosity about the child and high degree of self-confidence and so on, right?
So why am I interesting, right?
So if we look at the girl, she's not interesting, right?
Doesn't read, doesn't think, doesn't have any ideas, doesn't have any maturity, doesn't do sports, it's all a negative, right?
And... Sorry, I was just mulling over.
I just wanted to add, again, this is tenuous, but if the vampire is a stand-in for her father, the vampire saves her life, right?
Which is, in a childish way, another way of saying created life, right?
Anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that with a Louisville slugger.
Let's not go too far, or too Freudian, but I just sort of wanted to mention that.
But, so, why is she interesting?
The question, right, this is a question that is always asked in movies, right?
Always, always, always. And it's almost always answered the same absolutely sickeningly unhealthy way, right?
So the question is, why am I interesting?
And the answer is always, always, always.
Because... You are the chosen one.
You are different, and you didn't have to do anything to earn it, right?
Fate is revealed. Gandalf gives you the ring.
It turns out you're the son of God.
It turns out you are Neo, who is the one who can break everyone out of the Matrix.
It's always the same thing over and over and over again, right?
From Fight Club to any movie you can think of.
It's always the same thing.
That people will drop into your life And become fascinated by you as a result of nothing that you have done at all, right?
Just because, right?
And then maybe you have to work at things, right?
For sure, but the creation of the myth and power within your own life does not come from you.
It is coming from someone else, right?
And I said there are these two types of predators, and the second type of predator...
It's the person who relies on others for self-actualization.
Sorry, that's a completely bad way of putting it.
Sorry. Sorry, reboot.
Let me try that again.
The second type of predator is the person who defines his own value through the excitation of desire or envy in others.
Right? That's the second...
Type of predator. And it is, I would say, a universal type of predator, right?
So, I mean, didn't we all have this fantasy when we were teenagers, you know?
Oh, I'm going to work out, I'm going to get buff, I'm going to get me a cool car, I'm going to get a great haircut, I'm going to get contacts, I'm going to reinvent myself.
And then, when I come back to school in the fall, I will be appealing, interesting, worthwhile.
Because I will be able to excite desire and envy in others, right?
And this is really the root of so much of what goes on in the world, right?
You will be appealing by tweaking status symbols, by tweaking the exterior, right?
You will become interesting.
This is the whole thing with Goths, right?
Why are they interesting? Because they distort their appearance, right?
Advertise their dysfunction. So, Why am I interesting?
Well, this girl is not interesting, and her father is not interesting, and her mother is scattered and not present and whim-based and so on, right?
So why would anyone take an interest in her?
Does she have to earn it? Well, no, because the moment she says she has to earn it, she starts to put the responsibility for her life back in her own hands, right?
That she has to create who she is because it wasn't provided to her through empathetic and sympathetic parenting or a stable environment or anything.
So that can't happen, right?
What has to happen is other people have to create the drama and story within her life, right?
And the way it works is the vampire who has all of the All of these attributes, right?
In terms of the excitation of desire and of envy, right?
Because the vampire didn't earn being a vampire, he just is, right?
And as he says in the woods when he's talking to her and revealing that, you know, he is a vampire and so on, he says, everything about me is designed to be appealing, to be seductive to all of that.
Yeah, my face, my hair, my voice, and so on, right?
And he's a good-looking fella, right?
And, you know, great head of hair and sculpted cheekbones and so on, right?
A head the size of a ripe watermelon, but, you know, if you're into heads, I'm sure that's not a bad thing.
And so he has it all, right?
His father, quote, father, is a doctor.
He himself, the vampire, is incredibly good-looking.
He is seductive.
He is mysterious. He is aloof.
He is wise beyond his years.
He speaks as if he came from another time.
And he has a, I think it's a Mercedes or some really cool car.
His family has a really cool house.
And, you know, it's the old thing.
I have friends because my parents have a swimming pool, right?
I mean, that's, you know, what is it that gives me value, right?
Well, I am the first guy with the Xbox and therefore everyone wants to come over and play with my Xbox and therefore I have value and social cachet or, you know, I'm pretty or handsome and therefore I'm athletic and so on, right?
And therefore I have value, social cachet, attractiveness, and so on, right?
I play an instrument, whatever.
And this can be all in terms of subcultures as well, right?
Certain subcultures, like the goth subculture, have particular markers which give status, right?
An aversion to sunlight and all that kind of stuff.
So he is...
An envy machine, right?
He creates envy, and through his looks, and that's of course what the bubiferous girl says early on, you know, oh, he's a dreamboat, he's obviously so gorgeous, but he's completely unattainable, right?
So he's exciting envy and desire in others, and refusing to satisfy it, which is of course the fundamental mark of the sociopathic personality.
So he's an envy-creating machine, right?
So in other words, he gains value not out of any objective commitment to truth and virtue and consideration and strength and fighting the good fight and all that kind of stuff.
But he gains value because he has all of these markers.
I mean, he himself, he himself is not interesting, right?
He's got nothing interesting to say.
The guys lived for... You know, a hundred years or whatever, and he's 17.
He's got nothing useful to say, nothing interesting to say about life or existence.
So he himself is not interesting.
You'd think that somebody who lived for a hundred years would know a little bit more and have a little bit more perspective on things, but he doesn't, right?
He's got nothing to say about anything other than being mysterious and charming and pretty and with a nice car and a really cool house and an interesting family and superhuman strength and all these things.
They've got nothing to do with the personality, right?
They're just... Sad, accidental attributes, right?
He didn't earn any of them, it's just what he's got, right?
And so when she walks into the biology room, the science room, the classroom where they're taking biology classes, her emptiness is revealed right away, right?
Both their emptiness, because he is fascinated by her and startled by her and this and that and the other.
And we find out why, which is that he can read everyone's mind except hers, right?
Which is a clear metaphor for having no inner life, which she doesn't appear to have, right?
She's just run by a whim and avoidance and insecurity and so on.
But no real inner life.
So he can read everyone's thoughts except hers.
In other words, everybody has thoughts or everybody has a mind except her.
She's opaque, right? And he's fascinated by her emptiness, right?
And of course, A sociopath will always prey upon the emptiest person around, because the emptiest person has all of these unfulfilled needs, a lack of identity, and so on, which the sociopath can exploit.
Again, another reason that this is an idealization of an emotionally dead father is that normally in vampire stories, or the vampires, when they are exposed to sunlight, they die.
They burn, right? That's because sunlight is visibility.
It's not under the murk of night.
And so sunlight reveals a sociopath to not be pretty.
But rather to be ugly and vile and dying and so on, right?
So when you actually get to know a sociopath, they don't look so charming anymore, right?
They're just vile and vicious, right?
And so that much is seen, right?
The temper of a sociopath is clearly revealed in the vampiric myth, which says that they can go from charming human to beast of prey in a moment's notice, right?
And that, of course, is very true.
A sociopath is all about the charm until you...
Begin to see him for who he really is, and then he turns into a beast of prey, right?
But that, of course, is another defining characteristic, that it's charm spread thin over rage and hatred, right?
So that's another example of sociopath.
A sociopath or anyone who, and this is not to say all the people who do this are sociopaths, but anyone who defines his own identity through the excitation of envy and desire in others is what Rand used to call A social metaphysician has no clear identity, only exists as a whole of mirrors manipulation of other people to gain, quote, value through the excitation of desire and envy.
So the fact that a vampire has no reflection in a mirror is a clear example of that, right?
So there's no one around, right?
When you're looking in a mirror, it's just you and a mirror, right?
So in the absence of other people, there is no reflection, there is no identity.
This is the price you pay for trying to define yourself through The excitation of envy or desire in others, which is that you have no identity.
You just exist as manipulation.
The fact that a vampire experiences extreme anxiety in the absence of feeding off others, well, that, of course, is the pathological anxiety that's at the root of sociopathy, which is that You manipulate and try and squeeze envious value out of others because you have a deep and abiding anxiety over your own non-existence, right? Your own predatory and parasitical existence as a sociopath.
So that's another example of how that all works.
The fact that the vampires can turn into a fog is a metaphor well known to freedom and radio listeners, right?
Which is that Fog is evasiveness.
When confronted, they simply become evasive.
So the idea that a vampire ends up being the ability to shapeshift into a fog creature and a predator is around dissociation and around narcissistic rage.
We could go on and on, but I think you get the general idea.
To me, I can completely understand why it's a phenomenon, right?
Because I think it speaks to problems with families and with parenting and with the problem of, I'm not valuable because daddy was unavailable and never loved me.
And therefore, how am I going to become valuable?
Well, I'm going to have to attach to a narcissist, right?
I'm going to have to attach to a sociopath.
And, of course, the rage and violence and destructiveness that erupts in the second part of the film, or the last third of the film, really, the last quarter of the film, is what happens, right, when you take that route towards solving the problem of identity and self-actualization in the absence of attachment and healthy parental love.
So, because you were never able to earn You shouldn't have to earn your parents' love, obviously, when you're a baby, right?
You've got to do a soft shoe number to get their admiration.
And so the hunger for parental love and affection is manipulated by a sociopath, which then results in an abusive relationship, which is very clear.
And there is the excitement of desire and a complete lack of consummation in a narcissistic relationship, right?
And so the narcissist or the sociopath will excite your desire and will never satisfy anything fundamentally because it's all manipulation.
And that metaphor is, you know, he excites for love and desire, but he cannot consummate the relationship because he's a vampire, right?
So he can't have sex. And one last thing that I wanted to mention was that to a four-year-old, the myth of the vampire is that it sleeps in a coffin during the day and then it's awake and alert at night.
And to a very young child, that is exactly what his parents seem to be doing.
They vanish during the day, just like a vampire vanishes during the day, father in particular, because he's at work.
And then they're active at night when the child goes to bed at seven or eight or whatever, and then the parents are active at night.
So that's another reason that we know that there's a kind of similarity here.
And, of course, if the father works in a cubicle, it's like a coffin.
So all of those kinds of things, I think, are working their way through the movie, and I do think it's a really fascinating view.
There's a million more things that can be said about it, but I don't want to tire your patience out too much.
So I hope that this has been useful and helpful.
I look forward to your donations.
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