What were the vampire weaknesses in the movie and also in the TV show Ultraviolet? It was a disease in the movie too, right?

The TV show and movie were unrelated. In the TV show, the weaknesses were your usual suspects: sunlight, garlic, silver and wood (if I recall). They used garlic bullets.

The TV show and movie were unrelated

I never meant to imply they were. It was just shorter to use one sentence.

Is wood a weakness or is a wooden stake to the heart a weakness?

How popular is silver as a weakness? Blade uses it too, right?

Vampirism as or being a werewolf (or even zombie) as a disease are not new, and not really more scientific than just seeing it as magic. But the role it plays is especially interesting (to me anyway) when it comes to zombies. Vamires and werewolves have (at least since the 19th century) taken much of their power from their attractiveness. Most people can see the seductiveness and sexiness of being a vampire. Dracula and Carmilla were canonically seducers and I think most people can see the attractions, and a large minority really really see the attaction. Similarly with werewolves, we can see the benefits of being wild and free and untamed and fierce and mad. We fear being attacked by them some dark part of our selves wants to be them. (Not everyone maybe but a lot of people.)

OK, but if you want to be a zombie you have very rare tastes indeed. We not only fear zombies, the idea of being one is terrifying, and without any dark attraction behind the fear. What was terrifying about the "zombie as cheap labor" trope is that there is really no limit to the demand. If it were possible to make zombies and especially if it did not require much skill or magical power, the same people who make meth or sell crack would dig up graveyards and sell zombies to a virtually unlimited demand. I mean no big corp would turn down zombie labor if it cut a dime an hour off their labor costs. And a lot of small businesses would feel rightous and justified that they finally had found workers with the right attitude. But like any troope it wears out, so you end up with the EC comics model where they usually are working for an evil magician out to take over the world or something. And it is not as frightening because it does not appeal to the fundamental fear behind the zombie myth: at one level the fear that zombification could become common enough that we could become one, and at the deeper level that given the mindlessness of a much or our lives that we already our.

And Romero's genius was that he found a way to make that fear bigger than ever. Instead of having a clear cause behind zombification, he posited waking up one day to find out that every corpse on earth was rising on attacking you. So now everyone becomes a zombie when they die, and given the balance of forces that day is not as far off as you might wish. And the refinements (its an engineered virus gone wrong! No a comet!) get there power from changing from the "you might end up a zombie" to "you are almost certainly going to end up zombie. you are fighting mainly to delay it."

And that is powerful stuff when it comes to tapping our fears.

Vampirism as or being a werewolf (or even zombie) as a disease are not new

The traditional view of vampirism in mythology has been something transmissible, sure, but it's also often walked hand in hand with magic and other weird beasties. Hemophages? That seems a more recent angle.

Zombies, if my facts are stable, have their roots in voudoun, which is all mystical/religion. It's something that's done to you. Zombies transmitting their zombification to you, and being started from some mysterious other source came after that as far as I can tell.

Honestly? They did for me, too, mostly because Angel and Spike were clearly the exceptions, not the rule. Whereas "Twilight" baffles me, it's so far afield.

And it's so far afield because Meyer had no concept of the mythology because she had no interest in it prior to writing her little dream that could. She chose vampires because of what little she knew via popular culture, it was a convenient method by which to convey the forbidden love aspect of the story she wanted to tell. Beyond that, by her own admission, not only did she not know nothing, she had and continues to have no interest in knowing anything about the mythology.

Which, I suppose can be both good and bad. Good, in that she has no preconceived notions, but bad, in that what little she has managed to take in, in the last few years, has resulted in responses ranging from "yuck" to "creepy" and no, I'm not making that up. [link]

In 2007, as Twilight propelled her from a surprise YA best-seller to a multigenerational superstar, she admitted to EW that she had never read Bram Stoker's Dracula. Reading other people's vampire stories made her too ''neurotic,'' she explained. As a Mormon, Meyer doesn't watch R-rated movies, so that eliminated a whole other swatch of the canon. (She has seen bits of Interview With the Vampire and The Lost Boys on late-night TV. Her respective reviews: ''Yuck!'' and ''Creepy!'')

Therefore, to me, at least, she comes across as incredibly dismissive of everything within the genre that's not hers.

My impression is that silver is a fairly common weakness, although that weakness takes different forms. In True Blood, one can pin a vampire to the ground simply by draping silver chains across limbs. The fact that silver burns is pretty widespread trope (Angel, True Blood, Being Human?)

Hmm. Now I want to go home and reread my giant Vampire encyclopedia thingy.

Therefore, to me, at least, she comes across as incredibly dismissive of everything within the genre that's not hers.

Well, a lot of people fond of the genre are incredibly dismissive of her works, so I guess that balances out.

The fact that silver burns is pretty widespread trope (Angel, True Blood, Being Human?)

I don't think it's the silver itself that burns in the Jossverse, does it? Or Spike's wearing a lot of non-silver rings.

Barbara Hambly's vampires are vulnerable to the silver itself. There are interesting scenes where the heroes are figuring out the best way to drape as much silver on themselves as they can without looking too weird in public.

I don't think we've seen any indication in the Jossverse that silver burns--I only recall burns from crosses specifically.

Angel's claddagh ring would be fake silver too, in that case.

a lot of people fond of the genre are incredibly dismissive of her works, so I guess that balances out.

Balances out, cause and effect, six of one, half a dozen of the other...

I think silver was only mentioned in the Jossverse in terms of werewolves, not vampires. Doesn't Buffy stab Oz with a letter opener at one point before she knows it is Oz and then wonders if it is real silver.