Vampire = Gay Man?

[shipperx]

From EW.com:

Esquire has an interesting theory about the success of Twilight, HBO’s True Blood, and The CW’s Vampire Diaries: “Vampires have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women want to have sex with gay men,” Stephen Marche writes. “Not all young straight women, of course, but many, if not most, of them.” Among his support statements, the following analysis of Twilight’s Edward: “[He's] a sweet, screwed-up high school kid, and at the beginning of his relationship with Bella, she is attracted to him because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her. This exact scenario happened several times in my high school between straight girls and gay guys who either hadn’t figured out they were gay or were still in the closet.” Had Marche wanted to, he also could’ve pointed out that on True Blood, telepathic Sookie can only be intimate with a man (Vampire Bill) whose lustful thoughts she cannot hear, and on Vampire Diaries, Elena knows that Stefan has been hiding who he truly is, that he’d sworn off women for quite a while, and that he cooks and journals. (Marche could also have mentioned that True Blood’s Eric gets his hair highlighted and enjoys solo candlelight baths, for that matter.)

When I first read the essay, I wanted to flat-out shoot it down. But then I remembered that I’m someone who’s said “I’d like a man who’s just to the left of gay” and “I know I’m really into a guy when I fantasize about watching Golden Girls with him.” (It’s a turn on to watch him appreciate vocal, funny women and their friends.) So maybe I can’t call total bulls—. What do you think? Are, as Marche suggests, young straight women attracted to vampires because they’re dangerous — see: their ability to kill through draining or incredible sex — yet safe? They are, after all, at first unattainable and then ultimately fictional; we can mute their desires (Bill) or hinder their powers of seduction with an herb (Vampire Diaries‘ Damon) or code of conduct (Eric). Does the fact that we constrain them — and have a preference for sensitive souls (Edward, Stefan, Bill) or bad boys with a heart that only one woman can touch (Damon and Eric) — turn them metaphorically gay?

 

You know, even with the popularity of slash, I'm not sure that I exactly buy this theory.  Most pop-cult vampires aren't particularly different than your standard variety romance alpha-male.  Dangerous and mysterious (but at a safe fictional distance) is generally sexy no matter what the gender or sexual orientation.  So I don't see asigning the appeal of that romantic trope to one gender or one sexual orientation.

Haunted, damned, full of self-loathing? Engage Florence Nightengale/'Only I can save him'/ Hurt-Comfort kink in 3...2...1...   The woobie potential is huge!

There's a reason the likes of Mr. Rochester existed and sold lots and lots of books.  Romance novels have been filled with these men for over a hundred years.

Eternal life / eternal youth + superpowers = attractive and kind of scary  = sexy....again. And a somewhat natural byproduct of our youth obsessed culture.

Vampirism has been fueled by psycho-sexual energy (and particularly in association with female cravings for 'naughty-sex') since the days of Bram Stoker.

And, hey, the slash potential doesn't hurt.  It never hurts.  But I also don't think it's the sole motivation driving this pop-cult phenomenon.

Comments

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no.

Besides one sparkly vampire, I'm missing the correlation they're trying to make between vampires and homosexuals.

I have no problems with slash--my OTP is a slashy one. But still doesn't mean all male vampires are some kind of metaphor for gay men or...

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I think it's stretching to make something beyond what something is. I mean, if you want gay vampires, there are gay vampires. There are many things that fuel the surge in vampire fiction, but I don't think it can be distilled into something as simple as "vampires= gay men"

[rahirah]

Mmmm... vampirism can be seen as a metaphor for homosexuality, both in the older, OMG-scary-deviant-SEX! sense of things like Carmilla, or later stuff like Anne Rice - but it can work equally well as a metaphor for addition or pathological isolation or... a bunch of stuff. But I think you're right; the OP is looking too far afield for explanations of something that strikes me as pretty simple.

I'm not sure that slash even figures into something like this, because slash readers/writers aren't generally imagining hot gay guys making out with them. They're imagining hot gay guys making out with each other.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

True Blood pretty blatantly equates vampires with "coming out" ala homosexuality (which, quite frankly, I have a few issues with. True Blood vampires are, homocidal. It bothers me that they try so hard to promote a concept that prejudice against vampires is just like other forms of prejudice because, hello! Vampires kill people! For fun! Even the so-called "good" ones have been shown killing humans(assuming that Jessica killed that trucker in the finale). So prejudices against vampires really, really isn't the exact same thing as racism and homophobia. It just isn't.)

But, yes, I think it's not unusual to have vampirism as a stand in for a lot of things. In most modern vampire stories, they have a tendency to be sympathetic outsiders which allows them to represent many things. I'm a bit more doubtful, though, that when female viewers go "that vampire is hawt!" they are necessarily reacting to wanting to get it on with a gay man. For one thing, as your point about slash readers/writers makes clear, many women have no problem appreciating "hot gay man!" for being a hot gay man. (Over on OLTL's boards, there's no lack of female Kyle/Oliver fans -- not vampires, but openly gay men).

Sometimes they are reacting to actors more than character. And the whole "mysterious, elusive stranger" is a pretty standard romantic trope no matter what the gender or the sexual orientation. There's no need to prescribe it to just one.

At any rate I tended to think that the writer was searching for an explanation where little explanation is needed. Charlaine Harris's vamps are pretty standard issue romance heroes. And it's hardly a new revelation that tween girls often develop crushes on non-threatening teen idols, be they boy band Jonas Brothers, or sparkly vampire Edward Cullen. And, somehow, people forget that the Twilight saga was written and marketed for tween/teen girls.

And, I don't know if the OP noticed but there actually are gay vampires. Several in Harris's True Blood-verse, and I always thought both Louis and Lestat were explicitly gay. Well, at least bisexual (Louis did mention having had a wife, but the only lovers in the books -- that I remember -- were Lestat and Armand. Lestat was a bit more Capt. Jack omnisexual, but it always seemed that on a Kinsey scale Lestat would rate as perhaps more homosexual than heterosexual. So I think it's entirely possible to think "hot gay vampire" too.

[shapinglight]

I read this article yesterday and partly agreed with the critiquer, that the original article was trying too hard to bend the facts to fit their theory.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It also amused me the things the writer chose to support his thesis, such as choosing the fact that True Blood Eric has his hair highlighted. Sure, choose is coiffure and ignore his canonically sexual relationship with his sire Godric. That makes total sense. :)

[shapinglight]

Ah, I didn't know about that. And Godric? Really?

[(Anonymous)]

Godric was an ancient Celt (who looked about 15. 16 tops), so the name went with his history. Eric was a Viking (that's practically cliche).

On the show it was quite heavily implied that there was a sexual relationship (it certainly came off that way, although it was never explicit). I gather that in the books it's unambiguously sexual. (I also gather that in the book Godric has molested children. The TV version was as close to a saintly vampire that we've seen. Not sure what that says.)