Seriously, Who WOULDN"T Want to Be a Vampire?

The other night, we were watching an old(ish) science-fiction show.  In this episode, the heroes found themselves on a planet populated by androids--if you're familiar with "Blade Runner," you would call them replicants (not that this show possessed anything near the quality of "Blade Runner").  The climactic scene involved the protagonists' needing to rescue one of their own from a group of replicants, who were preparing to "download" our hero's consciousness into a new-model android: an android that looked just like our hero.  Unsurprisingly, the hero was ultimately rescued, and the whole crew escaped from Planet of the 'Droids.

Now the question is this: Why did the guy need to be rescued?

The trope of the dehumanization of human beings is a staple of the science-fiction/horror genres: androids, sure, but also pod-people, zombies, vampires, etc.  But we should examine the knee-jerk antipathy towards this process: Not all dehumanization is the same.

Paris Hilton notwithstanding, there's never been a good-looking zombie.  But think about what was going to happen to our hero in the aforementioned TV show.  He was going to have his consciousness (i.e., his thoughts, feelings, memories--everything that really made him "him") downloaded into an android body that looked exactly like him but that would presumably never grow old, never get sick, never die, and have superior strength and endurance.

Rescue?  Please!  Where do we sign up?

Or vampires.  Sure, you have to give up afternoon strolls (although if current pop-fiction is any indication, even this restraint is optional).  But think about what you get in return: eternal life, the ability to turn into a bat, and apparently enough sex appeal to melt lead.  What about the whole, "having to kill innocent people to live" thing?  Well, if Twilight is reliable, you apparently don't even need to do that: small animals can slake one's bloodlust.  (We could be wrong about this; not being a thirteen-year-old girl, we haven't actually read the Twilight series.)

The mere thought of "dehumanization" is not, in and of itself, scary because dehumanization is a fact of modern life.  Science is moving us quickly toward the post-human.  Gene therapy, for example, holds the promise of vastly increased human life span and enhanced physical abilities.  While there is no shortage of dystopic visions of the world to come (see "Gattaca," for a powerful example), it is not enough for a story simply to posit one's "loss of humanity" as a source of horror.  Too many of us relish the thought of losing some of our humanity in exchange for something we expect will be better.

In the meantime, if you run into any vampires looking for converts, please send them the Solipsist's way.