When vampires ruled the earth

So, I decided to have a little fun skylarking around with idiosyncratic interpretations of the movie Blade. You're welcome.

Let's start with that odd character Blade. He has a dual nature, being human and vampiric. In this sense, he's like a mythical god-man, and is thus an ideal for what vampires should strive to be (and thus resembles Christ, the ideal man). But he's also a vigilante, named for a sword, and so reflects the idea of ultimate (or divine) justice being handed out: the vampires are never given a way out, but are rooted out as if irredeemable. All fairly standard mythical themes. 

So, I went down another line of analysis, that of power. The vampires represent the powerful and gifted members of society: they control all the institutions and are blessed with extraordinary strength and agility, although Blade is the only one who refrains from exploiting others with his powers. Is this, then, a film about power and whether it can ever truly be used for good? The tensions between the old guard and the new generation are similar to generational tensions, and also the kind of tensions we see in two party politics (e.g. traditional and progressive; limited power vs centralized power). We see the traditionalists, sitting in a formal conference room, saying they should remain in the shadows; we see the new, rock star politician, Frost, sweep all their prevarications off the table. If this is so, it's a condemnation of all those with political power. According to this reading, the victims are always susceptible to the attractions of power; they've been bitten. But, on its own, I think that last bit is becoming a little tenuous. 

To digress slightly, there's also a racial element: though the vampires are multi-racial (and, unusually for a vampire story, with a prominent Asian cohort, resembling the global elites of today) nearly all the vampires are white (the most notable exception being Blade's mother), while two of the main characters are black. Though this might be an artifact from the comics, I don't think it's accidental, and it's there to make a small point later on. 

The key aspect is perhaps the oddest thing in the film, exemplified by the throwaway line about crosses not doing anything against vampires. This is a world in which the supernatural plays no part (although faith and crosses do in other Marvel stories): vampires, no matter their abilities, can be destroyed by technology. We are clearly in de-sacralized, secular modernity here. But Blade is different from the other vampires because, instead of depending on the masses for sustenance, he turns to technology. This is why an otherwise inexplicable event, killing his mother (why didn't he secure her, then inject her with the cure?), makes sense: symbolically, she (a black woman) surrendered to the old gods and their evil, in exchange for power: only the new technology god offers salvation. Mythically, the vampires are associated with feminine chaos; that is why the mother of chaos must be killed. There are perhaps other racial elements, such as Whistler being an old white guy who creates the technology; a young black woman then takes up his role. In the modern world, the supernatural is replaced by the technological. 

But there is also a condition on the use of technology: Frost has read the old books, and through technology, cracked the old code that all the ancient empires used, one that has largely vanished from the West (since we have embraced democracy, which dilutes power). He has revived the old god and revealed how power should be wielded, the way the god-kings used it, crushing everyone beneath their sceptre. But this breaks the conditional use of technology: that it must never be used in service to the old gods of power. This makes sense of the final, puzzling scene. Why is Blade killing vampires in Russia? I realise this is setting up for the sequel, but vampire central, surely the destination of any vampire killer who goes to the old West, is not traditionally Russia (though there are plenty of vampire stories from the Slavs) - it's Hungary. At a stretch, I think this is hint as to what Frost was actually trying to do what communism did: rule, like the ancient emperors, but through the use of technology. Communist Russia, in effect, used the powers of modern industrial world to create a state (headed by one person) more tyrannical and blood-thirsty than any god-emperor of the past. This also fits with the weird vampiric ritual: Frost subsumes and incorporates the other members of the Politburo. 

The final problem to solve is the daylight. Only a daylight walker could invent technology; only those who walk in the light can see clearly. The logos, or ordering speech, is associated with technology, vision and the light of reason; it is the spiritual light by which we speak order into our world. Without this illumination, the blood god cannot see. The execution of the old vampire ruler by sunlight drives this point home: he is actually blind, and a king that cannot rule the day is not a true king. Likewise, communist Russia could never have advanced to where it did had it not built on the technological insights of the free West. In essence, this a contrast between the creatures of chaos, death and night, and those of order, logos and day. The hero bridges the gap between these two worlds; but so does a villain. The difference between a monster and a villain is that the former represents only chaos, but the second represents the evil in chaos attempting to steal the jewels of day. Blade is from the night, but, perhaps due to the peculiar circumstances of his birth, submits to the good of day and defends it against the thief, Frost.

The old vampiric voodoo magic: that is the old method of political management, one that destroys and corrupts the people.  Only when the powerful submit to technology can they refrain from harming those they rule. In 1998, optimism about technology was still rising to its peak in 2006, when the iphone was released. I think that optimism is subconsciously reflected in this film, and as a result, it reflects on how technological advances would affect our political order.