The Gay & Lesbian Review

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. R EFERENCES 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 N OVEL : 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. D EATH IN V ENICE , C ALIFORNIA by Vinton Rafe McCabe 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.

"A lovely, sad, beautifully wrought retelling of Thomas Mannʼs Death in Venice. Vinton Rafe McCabe substi- tutes the Pacific Ocean for fetid canals, and California dreaming for Italian decay, while bringing a bold new slant to a jaded faded man in- toxicated by young beauty." — David Henry Sterry, best-selling author of Chicken “Keenly observational, captivating, and sharply detailed, Death in Venice, California takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. With itʼs delicate, graceful touches, and with the ghost of Isherwood nearby, this book is one to be cherished. Death in Venice, California is one of those books that will be talked about for a long time to come.”

— Martin Hyatt, author of The Scarecrowʼs Bible

Available at bookstores everywhere Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com P UBLISHED BY T HE P ERMANENT P RESS

March–April 2014

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