Week 2 Analysis

A topic that I find interesting is the fairly recent embracing of the supernatural by the public. Books, Television, and Movies all reflect this trend. Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies oh my! These characters have been the proverbial gold mine for Hollywood. I am not talking about fantasy like the Harry Potter movies. I am speaking strictly about the old fashioned monsters that most of us have grown up with. Zombie movies have been around for quite awhile going back to movies such as George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” which came out in the late sixty’s. Zombie movies have always had a cult following but have gone mainstream now with AMC’s “The Walking Dead” which premiered this fall on cable.

Vampires and Werewolves have also had a renaissance of late. The Twilight books and movies have been huge and on television the Vampire Diaries has been doing very well. On the Syfy channel a show called Being Human has been well received by critics. One thing that all of these movies, shows, and books have in common is that the protagonist has a very tortured soul. In Being Human the main characters are a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost that are living together trying to keep a grasp of their humanity. Twilight has a love triangle between a human, a werewolf, and a vampire. Popular culture seems to require that there are major complications in the relationships that they watch or read.

There is a show on the CW called Supernatural that deals with all manner of creatures including some straight out of mythology or religion. The show just ended its last season with the ultimate good versus evil battle. It pitted brother against brother, one was the vessel for God and the other was a vessel for the devil. It ended when the brother who was the vessel for the devil sacrificed himself to save the world. All of these stories deal with the same themes of self sacrifice, unrequited love, and making the impossible; possible. This is a subject that could be explored in greater depth then the space that I have to work with here. Why has there been such an explosion in the supernatural genre? What about the religious people who feel that anything painting the supernatural in good light is the work of the devil? I am very interested in seeing where this trend goes and what kind of conflicts it may create among the general populace.