Vampire: The Metaphor

[eumelia]

Vampires have taken over our lives. They suck out time via books, television and film like no other supernatural beast ever could.

Why?

Because they look like people, like you and me, they can walk among us unknown and seduce us with their glamour, mystique and plain ole' attractiveness.
Vampires are always beautiful, those that ugly, do not need to be. We are attracted to the fact that they are excluded from daylight, that they are reflected only in the eyes of human (their prey) and to the fact that they are immortal.

They do not die.

We pass away and they pass on.

Vampires have reached a kind of peak of pop-culture popularity. Ten years ago when I was fourteen and obsessed with Buffy, I read Dracula, Interview with a Vampire and thought Bella Lugosi was the shit.
Vampires were awesome.

Now... they're poster boys for Abstinence.
Where have we gone wrong.

Neil Gaiman was interviewed a couple of weeks ago about Vampires, because of his Vampire character Silas in the Graveyard book (which is excellent by the way) and throughout the interview spoke of the different metaphors available in Vampire telling, from sexual depravity (see Dracula), AIDS (the various vampire movies of the 80's like Lost Boys), religion and just down right non-conformity.
All is very interesting, astute and literary.
He also mentioned that he feels that Vampires have reached their saturation point, soon they'll be gone and come back in 20-25 years.

I'd like to think this is so, because I'm really sick of reading articles like this; What's Really Going on With All These Vampires? - Vampires as Gay Men by Stephen Marche.

Just. No.
Stop with this at once.
Beyond contextualising gay men's sexuality as this dangerous, predatory and monstrous thing, the article goes on to explain that young girl's desires, fixating on Vampires is just like the young girl who wants to have a boyfriend but not sleep with him.
Hence the "gay" boyfriend.
Gay men as accessories.
Again.

Women (young girls, adolescent women) are scared of sex and their own desires and so the object of their desire are monsters?
Gay men are monsters?
Women don't know their own desires?
I do believe that's what being said here.
It's nice to have our sexuality denigrated.
Again.

True Blood is a cracktastic show, but books it is based on are also filled with scenarios that make you strain your suspense of disbelief of muscle, however, it makes the freaky nature of humanity apparent and physical.
Everyone is "special" and thus no one is.
The Vampires, in True Blood are going through their Civil Rights Movement¹.

If this what the latest bout of Vampire fiction is bringing out and telling us about society, perhaps we all need a break from.
But no, we need them depraved blood suckers don't we? We like the freaks that walk among us in the dark
You never know who it's going to be.

Vampires have always been an outlet to lust and desire that was viewed as obscene or just plain "not normal". Framing gay men as objects and women's desires and sexuality as negligible kind of goes against the grain when it comes to Vampires as a story.

Just my thought on the matter.

Over at Salon there's a pretty good response to this article: Buffy the gay man Slayer by Tracy Clark-Flory.

Footnotes
(1) Never mind that black and gay character is constantly abused by both humans and vampires. A series about gay rights... Alan Ball, this is a shout out, Do It Better!
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Comments

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Aha! That's what this comic (http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive/2393) was about.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

LOLZ! That's hilarious.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked--I think this guy is great.

[antikythera.livejournal.com]

Women (young girls, adolescent women) are scared of sex and their own desires and so the object of their desire are monsters?

Is that the same as the argument against women reading/writing slash or gay romance in general -- that they're afraid of or disgusted by their own bodies so they have to read stories with only men in them?

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

One of the theories of Slash (beyond it being good clean porn/relationship drama fun written by women - usually - for women - usually), is that because of the lack in well defined and three dimensional women characters women will replace their subjectivity for that of a man's in a Slash story, but then the story is not so much about men, but about... something that is a blend in a way.

Think of MPREG; it's a way to write subjectively about pregnancy via a well defined character that already exists. The fact that this character is a man can be negligible.

I personally don't prescribe to that theorising of Slash, but it's another perspective and certainly better than the drivel in the article I linked.

[esizzle.livejournal.com]

I read the article and it's mostly silly, especially what he is saying about twilight. when he gets to True Blood, i think they do play on a lot of concepts about homophobia and queer rights.

but ya i hate how nowadays they are trying to turn vampires into "good" in a human sense. i don't understand why they do that.. because they don't want to be challenging, is it just intellectual laziness? the other thing i don't get is interview with a vampire.. why were the characters suggestively queer.. for a hollywood film it had no heteronormative assumptions and i wonder why (or did it?) !

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons that I really love True Blood is that they play on the concept of homophobia and they just make it so ludicrous when you compare it to real life, that some take it "literally" and then consider actual queers monsters... someone needs to better differentiate between what's on teevee and what isn't.

I was just telling a friend that I miss the days in which I was "odd" for liking Vampires. *sigh* The good ole' days.

Is it heteronormative if you consider the relationship between Louie and Claudia... hmmm probably not, huh?

[esizzle.livejournal.com]

maybe. but claudia too wants to have another woman. anyway maybe i should have phrased it better... i meant to say, for a hollywood movie, it has less heteronormative assumptions

well in True Blood, the vampires aren't monsters, the human population perceives them as monsters. then again... we can criticise District 9 for representing black south africans as scavenging insect creatures in their metaphor.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see D9 and am looking forward to it.
I've heard so many split reviews ("It was great"/"It sucked") that I really have no idea what to expect.

[yagdash.livejournal.com]

they have very cool robots and tech gizmos in it

[sabotabby]

I'd actually never heard vampires-as-gay-men before, other than in stories with gay vampires. I've heard werewolves-as-gay-men, but vampires always seemed to be about forbidden sexual desire in general, not of any one particular orientation.

Had an interesting talk about Twilight tonight with a co-worker who didn't like it (other than finding Edward hot) but hadn't been skeeved out the way I had. When I explained it to her, she was like, "holy shit. Yeah, I think vampires should stick to being monsters not love interests."

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I really like True Blood is that there seems to be no differentiation between humans and vampires as monsters, villains and heroes.

It's all very refreshing. And funny!

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I do believe young teenage girls are ...cautious with their sexuality as a rule. Hence why all the boy bands are so andogynous, pretty and not so much with the obvious musculinity, it appeals to girls. Same with a lot of anime characters. The less musculine the guys are, the prettier, etc, the more likely you'll see a younger female demographic in that fandom.

And my experience in high school, and with my girlfriends, this was true. It might also tie into society indoctrinating us into being afraid, and being cautious because our virgnity is oh very special, etc, etc blah, blah.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I can see that, the cautiousness thing and girls being attracted to girls because they think of themselves as sexual... sorta.

Interesting, I need to think about it some more. But yeah the whole indoctrination thing is definitely a factor, I think.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

It's the whole nature versus nurture thing, which has the more power? It's hard to say without you know, doing some unethical experiment where we raise children in a gender-free allusion bubble away from the rest of society.... (and I did read a short story about that once).