The monstrous vampire has longed served to represent the Other, the repulsive outsider that society shuns. And it continues to play this role, despite the ascent of the sympathetic vampire and demonic lover. As OGOM contributors have charted in the book and the Gothic Studies special issue, the vampire has been used as a political metaphor by both left and right. Here’s a contemporary case of the vampire image employed to unfortunate and reactionary ends, in a polemic against gay and lesbian people.
- Join 9,947 other subscribers.
Blog Stats
- 286,480 hits
Site Map
Search by Category:
Meta
Tags
- adaptation
- aesthetics
- Angela Carter
- Animals
- art
- body Gothic
- Bram Stoker
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- CFP
- Children's literature
- Company of Wolves
- Conference
- Dracula
- fairies
- fairy tale
- Fairy tales
- Fantasy
- Female Gothic
- Feminism
- Film
- Folklore
- Frankenstein
- gender
- Genre
- Gothic
- Gothic novel
- horror
- Horror Film
- Intertextuality
- Monsters
- music
- myth
- Paranormal romance
- popular culture
- sexuality
- SF
- TV
- Twilight
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- witches
- Wolves
- women
- YA Fiction
- Zombies
This may not be a direct or conscious connection but I think it’s interesting to note that one of the charges levelled at Edward Cullen was that he was ‘gay’ or a ‘fairy’. Most of this hatred seemed to be because he sparkled and was described as being beautiful as opposed to handsome. Facebook actually forced some of the more homophobic groups to change their names. For those of us who are a little well-versed in the history of the representation of vampires, it seems rather reductive to level the charge of ‘queerness’ to vampires. (Quick nod to Anne Rice). Though I suspect the producers of this leaflet are not huge fans of subtlety – I note that later in the leaflet some of their points directly contradict one another.