We Don’t Want To Know What’s Really Going On

I like Blade: The Series. I’m not ashamed to admit that. A lot of reviewers (and not just fanboys) gave the show a forcible textual colonic when it premiered. It has a lot going against it. It’s a television adaptation of a comic book movie that features none of the heavies from the movie. The emotional weight is carried by a rapper named “Sticky” and a chick that used to pimp for Mercury. It’s on Spike. Oh, and it’s about vampires. I don’t care. I liked it from the first scene (I hated the movie, by the way). I never could figure out why, until this week. And I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Jill Wagner’s oddly-tanned vampire booty.

It’s the subtext. The show’s creators have made, and I fear it was unintentional, a stylish commentary on fascism and totalitarian states. The vampiric aspects of the storyline reek of Will-To-Power, and the hierarchical nature of vampire society, plus the dehumanization of their prey, makes the vamps of Blade a great analogue to them crazy National Socialists from 70 years ago. The vampires care an awful lot about the purity of blood, of conquering the weak, and of controlling members of their own society through fear and violence. Sound familiar?

So, I watch. I pay $1.99 per episode on iTunes. It resonates with me.

It resonates with me because we’re entering a proto-fascist state in this country. We’ve allowed our fear to control us, and we’ve made some really bad decisions of late. We spy on each other, treat our enemies as less than human, turn to violence to solve our problems, and question the loyalty and judgment of those who would question our country’s course or attempt to change it.

The bloodsuckers do it because they’re evil, villainous caricatures. What’s our excuse? Is it fear?

The murders committed five years ago were planned to create fear, to spread that fear to every man woman and child in this country. For the most part, it worked. We were shown a brutal, violent, angry world that wanted to destroy us. And it scared a lot of us so badly that we stuck our heads in the sand. All we could see were the hateful fucks that had planned and supported the attacks, and all we could think about was how to punish and eliminate them. We didn’t see the bigger picture, how our actions, when lead by fear, would lead us into more pain.

Maybe in another five years we’ll see things differently.