Be(ware) The Swallowing: Black Vampires In BLADE, DEF BY TEMPTATION And SUICIDE BY SUNLIGHT
Blade as an allegory of sorts for the now-decades of anxiety surrounding Barack Obama’s racial and national heritage. The comparison, while specific, is solid: Blade’s central conflicts all reflect the anxiety of purity logics rendered as a tool of oppression. A human-vampire hybrid known as the “Daywalker,” Blade (Wesley Snipes) supposedly moves with “the best of both worlds,” which is more to say that his vulnerabilities aren’t immediately legible. In this world, the vampires have their own hierarchy of “pure bloods” (those born vampire) who laud power over those merely t...
Source: fangoria.com