The Gay & Lesbian Review

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LaBruce, whose films have explored all genres of sexual ex-
pression, however extreme, including the presence of vampires
and zombies. He described his recent feature film, Otto; or Up
With Dead People (2008), as a “gay, zombie love story.”
A more accepting attitude is also evident in recent works
about vampire culture. Author Ulysses G. Dietz writes a series
of books about Desmond Beckwith, a successful financial ge-
nius with many friends and an active gay sex life who just hap-
pens to be a vampire as well. He also plays out a gay fantasy by
limiting his killing to “fag-bashers,” whom he sees as deserving
of death. Like many, he lives a relatively normal life, spending
a good deal of time searching for real love. Much more repre-
sentative of gays in American culture are the vampires in the
television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and
Angel (1999-2004). Buffy’s best friend is a lesbian; and while
Buffy does kill vampires, they are portrayed as just a part of
normal life in Southern California. There are “good” vampires
such as Angel and Spike. There’s even a bisexual vampire who
plays a major role in the “young adult” series of vampire books
The Last Vampire, which came out in the late 1990s.
The HBO series True Blood (2008) is an almost perfect
metaphor for gays and lesbians in current American culture. It
was created by an openly gay man (as was Buffy), which gives
the series a mostly “pro-gay” stance. In the show, vampires have
“come out of the coffin” and live openly in American society.
There are “vampire-rights groups” similar to gay rights organ-
izations. Their representatives go on television discussion shows
to make their case for equal rights. A subculture known as
“fang-bangers” cruise vampire bars for sex. Vampire-human
marriage has recently been legalized, provoking a backlash sim-
ilar to the one against gay marriage. A politician on the series
“vampire-bashes” to further his career, much as was done to
gays in the 2004 election. The similarities are endless, and de-
liberate. Those who oppose “vampire rights” are painted as
hopelessly backward, ignorant, and “vampirephobic.” A sign
outside a church reads: “God Hates Fangs.” The main charac-
ter, Sookie, who is smart, pretty, and a mind reader, sums up
how most people feel when she says, “I don’t think Jesus would
mind if someone was a vampire.”
Vampires have become omnipresent in American popular
culture. They’re on television, movies, and stage, in books, and
even on cereal boxes. They are the stars of documentaries on
the History Channel. The vampire movie Twilight (2008), based
on a hugely popular novel written by a Mormon, was recently
the American box office champion. This constant metamor-
phosis reminds us that monsters are a product of the culture in
which they arise, that difference or otherness is part of what
makes them scary, and that there is always a mixture of fear and
desire surrounding monsters. All three of these properties can be
applied to GLBT people as conceived in the popular imagina-
tion, including even the third, as much of the most virulent ho-
mophobia appears linked to repressed same-sex desires.
The great change that has occurred in societal attitudes to-
wards vampires and gays is especially evident in literature.
Bram Stoker describes a freshly sated Dracula in the late 19th
century in the language of disgust: “It seemed as if the whole
awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a
filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.” By the late 20th cen-
tury, Anne Rice was writing about a sympathetic vampire
named Armand who feels love: “I felt an instinctive shame, but
this quite slowly vanished. He picked me up, easily as always,
and pushed my face into his neck. The wind rushed around us.”
What does the 21st century hold? I can see nothing but a
continuation of a parallel trajectory for both gays and vampires.
No one is really scared of vampires any more, as witness the
continuing popularity of the romantic vampires in the ever pop-
ular “Twilight” series and in The Vampire Diaries. Similarly, a
majority of Americans now favor same-sex marriage, which
was a truly scary prospect only a decade ago. President Obama
announced his support for marriage equality and was re-elected
handily. Gay people, like vampires, have lost their alien status
and no longer frighten people—including voters, whose fears
cannot be so easily demagogued by right-wing politicians. If
people want scary, they can always go back to the old vampire
movies. But here is where reality and fantasy part company:
there is no going back to the bad old days of GLBT ostracism
and oppression.
REFERENCES
Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Craft, Christopher. “Kiss Me with Those Red Lips: Gender and Inversion in
Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” in Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics, edited by
Margaret L. Carter. UMI Research Press, 1988.
Haggerty, George E. “Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture” in NOVEL: A
Forum on Fiction 30.1 (Autumn 1998).
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era,
20th annivsary edition. Basic Books, 2008.
Schaffer, Talia. “AWilde Desire Took Me: The Homoerotic History of Dracula.”
ELH 61.2 (Summer 1994).
Skal, David J. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to
Stage to Screen. W. W. Norton, 1990.
March–April 2014 21
A staid, middle-aged man of letters, Jameson Frame, escapes the cold
canyons of Manhattan for the Bedouin village that is Venice, California,
home to wiccans, vegans, transients, artists, drummers, plastic surgeons, tarot
card readers . . . and Chase, a youth of such arresting beauty that he becomes
the object, the subject, and the reason for Frame’s obsessive yearning.
Available at bookstores everywhere
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P UBLISHED BY THE PERMANENT PRESS
"A lovely, sad, beautifully wrought
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toxicated by young beauty."
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Death in Venice, California is one of
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— Martin Hyatt, author of The
Scarecrowʼs Bible
DEATH IN V ENICE, CALIFORNIA
by Vinton Rafe McCabe