Vampires Don't Suck at Soundtracks

     

     With all movies like Vampires Suck, there are interesting challenges not faced but these stopping points are not only overcome, but smartly hurdled over. Such challenges as recreating something that has already been represented, attacking a story and characters allthewhile needing the audience to be attatched enough to want to finish the movie, and creating something similar but unique is nothing new to the Spoof Movie genre, but Vampires Such takes all of these challenges and expertly uses all the qualities of a Parody Film- humor, self-awareness, and similarity- to turn a bad movie into a humorous simulacrum. 

     While creating a better movie than Twilight is not a hard task, the soundtrack for Twilight was just short of perfection, in regards to appropriacy for scenes and audience reach. So, to take on the task of making a better soundtrack with more popular artist was far beyond the scope of this 20 million dollar movie. What Vampires Suck did to reinvent their soundtrack, comes down to adding songs that made fun of the genre given, overly inappropriate songs, and songs that could have been in Twilight. The first song played is a diegetic song coming from the “Teen Angst Mix” playlist on Becca’s Ipod. My Panties byMagicwandos, works to not only show us the ethos of Becca (the Bella character) and the film, but also takes a stab at the point of view of the original Twilight marketing audience of teenagers.  It establishes this ethos through an “honesty, respect for an audience and its values, and plain old likability” (LunsFord, et al, 46). The song rings true to the sound and style of the Twilight soundtrack, both appealing to its believability that this movie will be like Twilight, and also throwing a bit of logos in as the audience watching Vampires Suck will associate the style to young people, thus making it plausible that Becca may really be listening to this song. Next, to up audience respect and likability for this movie, the lyrics of the song work to poke fun at the machinations of youth, provide identifiable references to the audience’s youth, and being more farcical than serious creates a little bit of humor. As the mellow and dark tones of the song begins the audience hears a low and admittedly whiney voice sing out;

     ♭♭I feel so lonely/Nobody gets me /I am so unhappy/ Why can’t I find a/Cool alternative boyfriend/ Who understands me♭♭

These feelings of not being understood and wanting to overcome loneliness with a significant other, not only liken back to the iconography of angsty girls and guys, but does so in a way that is more of a joke to older audiences. While T-light may have been market to younger audiences, Vampires Suck was angled at making fun of those crazy kids with older generations. The blatancy and overdramatized lyrics mixed with the fact that an adult male is singing has the effect of making fun of all the “teen angst” of Twilight. The humor indeed “puts listeners at ease and helps them identify with the speaker,” which is needed to establish ethos and credibility, but it also works towards the pathos of the audience(Lunsford, et al, 46). The style of humor expressed in the first part of the film ranges from violence and overt sexualization, to dumb puns and over-emphasizing. The use of this song works to reach those who favor humor of over-emphasis, as well as a subtler, although not necessarily a higher caliber, wit. It also brings the audience back to their own experiences with angst as many of them were youths in the “alternative” sounds of the 90’s. This song also “serves as a kind of overture to suggest the mood” and “spirit of the film as a whole” by setting up the tormented teen movie with a filter of humor, the audience knows what and who will be the butt of every joke, and also how those jokes will be made (Giannetti, 214).  

     While Vampires Suck is a no better film nor anywhere close to the Grammy nominated soundtrack of Twilight this opening song was genius in style, lyrics, and placement in setting up the film and approaching its audience. The rest of the soundtrack also plays for this effect but overall falls short in aspects of really enjoying the songs.