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Notes & Queeries: The Allure of the Lesbian Vampire

Notes & Queeries is a monthly column that focuses on the personal side of pop culture for lesbians and bisexual women.

As any regular AfterEllen.com reader knows, the number of lesbian and bisexual female characters on scripted television in the United States tends to hover in the low single digits.

In movie theaters, we have even less to cheer for. Hollywood barely manages to make films with interesting women characters, much less lesbian or bisexual ones. Independent film, niche television programming and internet video are all doing their part to raise the visibility of lesbians/bisexual women in entertainment.

But the fact is, we also need mainstream visibility. And this year, for better or worse, our best hope for mainstream visibility may lie in the lesbian vampire.

This past spring, the dreadfully reviewed horror-comedy Lesbian Vampire Killers attempted to update the campy exploitation films of the 1970s such as Daughters of Darkness and The Vampire Lovers.

Earlier this month, we learned that a new remake of Carmilla, based on the 1872 novella by Sheridan le Fanu, is in the works – this time starring British actress/model Jennifer Ellison.

Author Sarah Waters recently included Carmilla, which is probably the original lesbian vampire story, on her list of favorite ghostly tales: “For unnerving atmosphere and general queerness, this story of a beautiful revenant and her fascination with attractive teenage girls really can’t be beaten.”

Carmilla has been turned into a film several times already, and whether or not this version actually gets off the ground remains to be seen. But now is a better time than most to seek financing for a lesbian vampire film, because vampires in general are definitely back in style.

The movie Twilight, based on Stephenie Meyer’s young adult novel of the same name and released last fall, has so far raked in more than $191 million at the U.S. box office alone, and was the eighth biggest film of 2008. The sequel, New Moon, will hit theaters this November. The four novels in Meyer’s Twilight series have dominated the New York Times Series Books best-seller list for 96 weeks, prompting publishers to release countless other vampire-themed novels to capitalize on the craze.

Meanwhile, another best-selling series of vampire novels, Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, has been turned into a provocative HBO television series, True Blood. Executive produced by openly gay Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), True Blood just began its second season this month.

Amid all this bloodthirsty mayhem, it’s not surprising that the lesbian vampire, one of the most enduring (and campy) tropes in film, is also making a comeback.

The vampire, as a metaphor for our darker desires, has always embraced or even reveled in queerness.

Last year, when True Blood debuted, the show’s producers hinted that we would see a lesbian vampire, but all we got was the suggestively lesbian-ish character of Pam, a vampire who gazes a bit lasciviously at Sookie.

Suggestive gazing has its place (in fact, most of Twilight is about this), but it does not make a lesbian vampire.

The lesbian vampire is not about mere leering; she is, in fact, one of the only ways that lesbian characters are allowed to boldly, forthrightly express their desire for other women.

Given the limitations that Hollywood imposes on female characters, this actually makes some (unfortunate) sense. These days, the entertainment industry’s definition of womanhood is generally limited to thin, conventionally attractive, feminine, youthful white women.

This narrow understanding of womanhood has very little room for queerness.

The lesbian vampire – because she is damned to begin with – is one of the few ways that lesbian characters can even exist in the mainstream. She’s so far out of the norm that norms somehow need not apply to her.

True Blood‘s producers promise that this summer there really will be a lesbian vampire on the show, and it won’t just be about looks anymore. Actress Evan Rachel Wood (Once and Again, The Wrestler) will play Sophie-Anne Leclerq, also known as the Lesbian Vampire Queen of Louisiana, and she’ll embark on an affair of sorts with Sookie Stackhouse’s cousin, Hadley.

Even from the casting sides, which describe Sookie’s cousin as a “fresh-faced 20 something year old country girl” who “has been seduced into a whole other world,” we can discern the beginnings of a familiar tale.

The lesbian vampire, who is sophisticated, worldly, and entirely comfortable with her sexuality, seduces the naive young innocent, who is immediately, irresistibly drawn to her. This is the story line that animates most lesbian vampire films, including the one that many queer women might recall as one of their own favorites: The Hunger, in which Catherine Deneuve deftly pulls Susan Sarandon into a highly erotic and deadly embrace.

I must admit that though I’ve found the lesbian vampire to be a fascinating symbol, I’ve never personally felt any real draw to vampire stories.

Lesbian vampire exploitation films can be amusing and campy, but they also are not shy about their purpose: titillation for a male viewer. Nine times out of 10, there is an actual male character in the film who watches the lesbian vampire as she seduces and them victimizes a young girl.

And it is exceedingly rare for any lesbian vampire to survive – or even to live on in the body of her victim, as in The Hunger – at the end of the film.

She may be free to seduce women, but she almost always faces the ultimate punishment for it: death.

So is there really any use in reviving this archetypal character? Wouldn’t we be better off with creating well-rounded, human lesbian or bisexual characters?

Recently, several friends and I were discussing the global popularity of Twilight, particularly the devotion that many girls and women have to the character of Edward Cullen, the vampire boyfriend of the book’s main character, teenager Bella Swan.

Edward’s story is all about self-control: He struggles to rein in his vampiric urges, which could be fatal to Bella, who yearns to bond with him in the most intimate of ways. When they finally consummate their relationship later in the series, he nearly destroys her.

One of my friends said that she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to fall in love with someone who could kill her. And then another friend pointed out that this kind of tale is the ultimate consummation – it’s about being utterly consumed by your lover.

It’s about being desired so fully, so completely, that you are totally devoured by that desire.

As fantasies go, this one can be understood, I think, by almost everyone who has felt the intensity of first love. In fact, I believe that LGBT people might experience their first queer love especially intensely.

Not only does it involve the basic hormonal rush of falling in love – which is intoxicating enough on its own – it also involves turning one’s entire worldview around to embrace a desire that many people judge as queer. I think that this can’t help but make first love an even more delirious experience.

The first girl you fell in love with was most likely not a lesbian vampire, but perhaps you remember the feeling of being in a daze after a first kiss, as though your entire body were surrounded by a kind of hot, pulsing fog – or as if your body were turning into that fog itself, a vaporous, shifting creature drawn irresistibly toward that one person.

It’s hard to see clearly – to think at all – in the midst of that swarm of desire.

I think there is only a thin line separating the powerful intoxication of first love from the darker, more damaging emotions that can turn into hungry obsession.

If I were to write a story about a lesbian vampire, this is the kind of feeling I would draw on to shape her. Because I think she is the embodiment of all the unchecked feelings that we learn, as adults, to channel into healthier – and less dramatic – directions.

Queer women have just as much right as straight people to explore the seamy underside of our desires.

Certainly, there aren’t enough positive representations of lesbians and bisexual women on television or in the movies. But I think there is also a place for camp, and for some good old-fashioned unholy passion.

A quick search for the term “lesbian vampire” on Amazon.com shows that plenty of queer writers have already tackled the topic in all its erotic, fun-filled glory. We are already reappropriating the lesbian vampire for our own needs.

I’m looking forward to seeing if the Lesbian Vampire Queen of Louisiana in True Blood follows suit.

Disclosure: Malinda Lo’s forthcoming novel is also published by Stephenie Meyer’s publisher, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

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