Jacob, THE definitive emo vampire: Midnight Son
For those who thought the Twilight films were the pinnacle of the emo vampire sub-genre, Midnight Son is a brutal reality check. Behold the one true emo vampire, 24 year-old night watchman and awkward lover Jacob. Condemned to a life of solitude by a strange disease akin to vampirism, he spends his days painting sunsets in his sun-proof city apartment. His complete transformation is coming to a close when he meets night bird Mary, an equally lonesome young woman bearing a dark secret of her own, with whom he manages to forget his loneliness for a spell. The only problem is that Jacob cannot make love to her, on account of his disease manifesting itself in various ways whenever the pair is nearing the bed.
The first time around, a sudden nosebleed (due to Mary's earlier coke consumption) distracts Jacob from the task at hand, leaving him a queasy mess unable to fulfill the desires of the eager lover in his midst. Things get even dicier the second time around, when his eyes take a predatory greenish color while atop Mary, urging him to dash toward the refrigerator and quickly consume a handy pint of blood. The third time is when the girl starts getting really angry with him, right after they engage in some hot preliminaries which are cut short when Jacob freezes, arguing that he cannot "do it" for fear of hurting her.
While the vampire has always been established as somewhat of a sexual predator, rarely has the link between sexuality and vampirism been established so brazenly and so relevantly as in Midnight Son. Jacob's emphasized impotence results from his ill-assumed predatory instinct. In other words, one could say he is a closeted vampire, a direct byproduct of the now-predominant tradition of increasingly fragile male characters. While vampire fangs are a deadly giveaway toward Freudian psychoanalysis, their failure to penetrate the flesh of their female victim is a timely sign of the weakening masculine resolve, extinguished in a sea of female empowerment and shifting sexual models.
Seeing how the new James Bond is a consummate weakling, one finds the perfect example of the identity crisis plaguing the representation of masculinity at the dawn of the 21st century. Originally intended as a phallus, resourceful superman Bond has now found the ability to cry, and hurt, in a bid to create a more realistic, if not necessarily representative male figure for the series' reboot. This identity crisis finds further anchors in the childish looks of international heartthrob Justien Bieber and the mannerisms of bleak-looking Robert Pattinson, who shouldn't even be considered on par with muscular opposite Taylor Lautner. Considering his hypnotic charm and phallic assets, the vampire figure is the ideal vehicle to expose the cultural male's steady weakening, and never has it been done so eloquently as in Midnight Son.
Wishing her boyfriend was Jerry Dandrige, Mary tries
her best to cope with Jacob's impotence.
Unfortunately, the film doesn't score big points for originality or style, content as it is with boring, everyday sets (as urban California contributes its unmatched ugliness to the story) and mild genre novelties. That said, the idea of a sunset-nostalgic vampire is telling but obvious, as well as weirdly underplayed here (Jacob's paintings have narrative weight in themselves but their content nearly doesn't). As for the coffee mug full of blood, it makes for a rather lame marketing gimmick, especially when a simple pair of rubber fangs would've been much more relevant... and intriguing.
Yet, what really struck me here is the characterization of the black antagonist, which in my eye neared racism a little too much. The guy starts out as a street-smart orderly who surprises Jacob trying to steal blood from a bio-hazard container. Intrigued at first, raising surprised eyebrows and smirking wildly, he soon sees Jacob's addiction not as an alarming oddity, but as a way to make money off him. From then on, he seems to become increasingly evil, sequestrating a poor old man in a run-down house in order to harvest his blood, then turning into a vampire himself, and trying to enslave Jacob. While his character provides some much-needed counterbalance to weakling Jacob, he reeks of overdetermined blackness. Maybe I, myself, is being biased, but it seems that any drug-peddling, abusive, street-smart black with well-groomed facial hair owes more to white-perpetrated archetypes than to any honest attempt at characterization. Then again, it is racial discourse such as this which helps create a cleavage between blacks and whites. And so, I'd better keep my thoughts to myself...
In the end, despite the necessary drawbacks stemming from filming a romance with two no-namers and a video camera, Midnight Son contains enough weeny novelties to keep fans interested. But ultimately, it is through meta-discourse regarding the sexual nature of the vampire figure that the film achieves induction in the "higher sphere" of genre cinema, fiercely deconstructing a powerful mythological figure to create a lesser, but more timely monster, the common Western male.
2,5/5 One of those rare examples where self-reflexivity alone can elevate the level of a genre film above its technical and narrative limitations to create an essential historical document.
The first time around, a sudden nosebleed (due to Mary's earlier coke consumption) distracts Jacob from the task at hand, leaving him a queasy mess unable to fulfill the desires of the eager lover in his midst. Things get even dicier the second time around, when his eyes take a predatory greenish color while atop Mary, urging him to dash toward the refrigerator and quickly consume a handy pint of blood. The third time is when the girl starts getting really angry with him, right after they engage in some hot preliminaries which are cut short when Jacob freezes, arguing that he cannot "do it" for fear of hurting her.
While the vampire has always been established as somewhat of a sexual predator, rarely has the link between sexuality and vampirism been established so brazenly and so relevantly as in Midnight Son. Jacob's emphasized impotence results from his ill-assumed predatory instinct. In other words, one could say he is a closeted vampire, a direct byproduct of the now-predominant tradition of increasingly fragile male characters. While vampire fangs are a deadly giveaway toward Freudian psychoanalysis, their failure to penetrate the flesh of their female victim is a timely sign of the weakening masculine resolve, extinguished in a sea of female empowerment and shifting sexual models.
Seeing how the new James Bond is a consummate weakling, one finds the perfect example of the identity crisis plaguing the representation of masculinity at the dawn of the 21st century. Originally intended as a phallus, resourceful superman Bond has now found the ability to cry, and hurt, in a bid to create a more realistic, if not necessarily representative male figure for the series' reboot. This identity crisis finds further anchors in the childish looks of international heartthrob Justien Bieber and the mannerisms of bleak-looking Robert Pattinson, who shouldn't even be considered on par with muscular opposite Taylor Lautner. Considering his hypnotic charm and phallic assets, the vampire figure is the ideal vehicle to expose the cultural male's steady weakening, and never has it been done so eloquently as in Midnight Son.
Wishing her boyfriend was Jerry Dandrige, Mary tries
her best to cope with Jacob's impotence.
Yet, what really struck me here is the characterization of the black antagonist, which in my eye neared racism a little too much. The guy starts out as a street-smart orderly who surprises Jacob trying to steal blood from a bio-hazard container. Intrigued at first, raising surprised eyebrows and smirking wildly, he soon sees Jacob's addiction not as an alarming oddity, but as a way to make money off him. From then on, he seems to become increasingly evil, sequestrating a poor old man in a run-down house in order to harvest his blood, then turning into a vampire himself, and trying to enslave Jacob. While his character provides some much-needed counterbalance to weakling Jacob, he reeks of overdetermined blackness. Maybe I, myself, is being biased, but it seems that any drug-peddling, abusive, street-smart black with well-groomed facial hair owes more to white-perpetrated archetypes than to any honest attempt at characterization. Then again, it is racial discourse such as this which helps create a cleavage between blacks and whites. And so, I'd better keep my thoughts to myself...
In the end, despite the necessary drawbacks stemming from filming a romance with two no-namers and a video camera, Midnight Son contains enough weeny novelties to keep fans interested. But ultimately, it is through meta-discourse regarding the sexual nature of the vampire figure that the film achieves induction in the "higher sphere" of genre cinema, fiercely deconstructing a powerful mythological figure to create a lesser, but more timely monster, the common Western male.
2,5/5 One of those rare examples where self-reflexivity alone can elevate the level of a genre film above its technical and narrative limitations to create an essential historical document.
