4. Daybreakers

                Daybreakers is another movie that deals with altering humans physically. The main reason is in this universe posthumanism for 95% of the world’s population is vampirism. These vampires have most the normal “rules” for vampires, just with twists. They can’t be exposed to light. A stake through the heart is death. Most importantly, they need blood. The problem is supply and demand. When things start its estimated that only 5% of the population is still human. If vampires go too long without blood they degenerate from their human-like state to a savage man-bat creature called a “subsider.” This has led the vampires to experiement with ideas such as human farming and creating a blood substitute. None of these things are working though. The main character, Ed, is the head hematologist at one of the world’s major blood suppliers. He’s in charge of many of these experiments.

                Eventually Ed (who despite being a vampire is a human sympathizer) ends up in league with a colony of humans. One of these humans is Elvis, who used to be a vampire. He’s discovered that just the right amount of sunlight will actually reverse the vampire process turning a vampire into a human. It’s also discovered that if a vampire feeds on someone who has been cured they will become cured as well. Unfortunately by the time this is discovered Ed’s employers finish a recipe for synthetic blood. If these other cures get out then there’s no profit in synthetic blood so a war between the vampires and humans is sparked.

                I found this movie interesting from a posthuman point of view because it not only shows humans becoming something more than humans, but it also shows that humans do not maintain the top spot on the food chain once that happens. In most things the humans are considered the main part of society while those who are different are outcast. In this case those who are different are so much more that it’s actually humans in this case that are considered the separate lesser society. We also see the main character, even though he is part of the new normal society, sympathizes with the outcasts. He’s already post human, but he leads a revolution to reverse that posthuman process and create another new society which was a new once again human led society.

 I think it’s also interest to look at that until this point everything I’ve looked at that modified humans was done through a technological process. This time humans are altered due to a simple virus. It’s not humans that are purposefully altering humans. It’s a virus that happened to get into society that changed humans into vampires. Humans had no control over this. It shows just how little we as humans have control over. We’ve seen viruses have devastating effects throughout history. One devastating virus and humanity could be put in a very bad postion.

Works Cited

Spierig, Michael, and Peter Spierig, dir. Daybreakers. CD-ROM.