Daybreakers Analysis

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“The majority of the population will be content with a blood substitute, yes… but there will always be those who are willing to pay top dollar for the ‘real thing’.” – Charles Bromley The line above summarises the essence of Daybreakers (Spierig and Spierig, 2009). In the dystopian world of Daybreakers, the vampire race is the norm. Human population has dwindled to a mere five percent, causing blood supply shortage around the globe. The Bromley/Marks Pharmaceuticals, owned by Charles Bromley, is famous for farming human blood and hunting humans to fill their increasingly empty blood extraction machines. The company employs a team of scientists in attempt to invent substitute blood in the dawn of blood depletion. This team is led by human-sympathizer …show more content…

Subsiders are blood-deprived vampires who eventually turn into bat-like creatures, driven only by thirst for blood. These subsiders are ostracized and treated as less than humans, even slaughtered by exposure to sunlight at one point in the movie. Such treatments resulted from their differences to healthy vampires, which came about from their blood deprivation. In the movie, vampires have jobs to purchase necessities such as blood. Vampires who turn into subsiders are those who are not able to purchase blood due to steep prices. In a capitalist society, wages create a fixation on commodities and the ability to purchase them (Morrissette, 2013). As a result, members of society incapable of maintaining a certain (middle class) lifestyle become outcasts and treated unequally. This can be seen from the hatred towards subsiders shown in the movie. Healthy vampires often refer to subsiders as ‘filthy rats’ and ‘animals’ . Vampires who can still afford blood also support the decision to annihilate the captured subsiders, saying, ‘We cannot afford to feed them as well.’ Daybreakers hence shows how inability to purchase goods will cause severe discrimination from the rest of society. From the elaboration above, the added complexity to the dichotomy of bourgeoisie and the proletariat class is observable. There appears to be a continuum instead of a clear line between the two classes. At the top end is the wealthy vampires who take the role of bourgeoisie and on the other end is the subsiders who embody the marginalized, poor proletariat. In between them, there is a middle class consisting of working class