Happy Vampire's Day

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and I was too busy to post. So I am only now making my belated V-Day post.

Holly Horrorland has invited all of us Goth bloggers to a Sanguinary Soiree for V-Day. So this post will be about the hominoid leeches of the night. Specifically since it's Valentine's Day, I'd like to ask: Are vampires sexy? Why or why not?

Vampires definitely weren't sexy before the 19th century. They were little more than reanimated corpses returned to haunt and decimate their families and loved ones. Ghoulish revenants. Impure but simple.

Then the Romantics did what Romantics do and romanticized them. Turning the creepy grave crawlers into dashing and debonnair and terrifying blood-sucking men of quality. Vamps became tramps. Undead sexy. And that is now the norm.

An exception is 30 Days of Night. These vampires are truly horrifying. Not just plain vanilla scary. But scary in a completely unearthly and inhuman way. These vampires aren't sexy at all. And that representation suggests something about the twisted sexiness of vampires in general. And us, as we shall see...

Are any of the other vampires in our Gothic multiverse sexy either? Dracula and Lucy Westenra sure weren't in any normal human way. Indeed, Dracula is often read as a psych eval of Victorian sexual hang-ups. Like it is all about the fear of sexuality. All-consuming and implacable lust. Are vampires then representations of the dark side of sex?

That would seem neatly Gothy, wouldn't it? Vampires as explorations of forbidden sexual urges and practices. But that doesn't quite fit...? It is too human, all too human. Too warm and soft and yielding still.

Sex and sexiness have a definite social context. These most private of acts are very much social acts. We don't decide how to have sex on our own. We learn how to do it. Just like sexiness is a collective product, a collaborative project. Sex and sexiness are about human connection and the production of humans both directly through actual physical reproduction and spiritual reproduction. Sex makes us 'humans' in all kinds of ways.

But vampires are something else. Something other. Something, even totally Other. And that's where the disconnect begins...

Vampires seem to ooze sexiness. But the context is all wrong. The vampire isn't sexy like a person because the feeling and presence isn't there to liven up or inspirit the performance or the body. Vampires are just body. Purely physical unending mortal flesh. But cold cold cold reanimated flesh.

This reanimation breaks the link between the body and the human. What returns isn't human at all. The vampire looks human. And even acts human. But it is an uncanny imitation. It's just not right. And we know it isn't right. And that's what's so terrifying about them. They aren't alive but they appear that way. And mere appearances are very deceiving. And unsettling.

Horror writer Thomas Ligotti explains why supernatural creatures like vampires are so terrifying in his nonfiction book of philosophy titled The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. He uses vampires as an example of the 'uncanny', that eerie sense of pseudo-familiarity that is so alienating, 'because their intrinsic supernaturalism as the undead makes them objectively uncanny things that generate subjectively uncanny sensations. They are uncanny in themselves because they once were human but have undergone a terrible rebirth and become mechanisms with a single function--to survive for survival's sake (p. 91).' Reduced to mere 'mechanisms' they are terrifying in themselves but it is their effect on us that is truly horrifying: vampires 'also inspire a subjective sense of the uncanny in those who perceive them because they divulge the "dark knowledge" that human beings are also things made as they are made and may be remade because they are only clockwork processes, mechanisms, rather than immutable beings unchanging at their heart (p. 91).'

Vampires reflect our worst fears about ourselves. That we don't exist as selves at all but as zombies or 'human puppets--things of mistaken identity who must live with the terrible knowledge that they are not making a go of it on their own and are not what they once thought they were (italics in original, p. 84)' or...that we are just like vampires ourselves. Empty husks fulfilling externally imposed drives without purpose or meaning. Lust and hunger. Lustand hunger. Lustandhunger. Hunger-lust.

And what does that say about sex? Ligotti writes: 'As uncanny mechanisms, vampires...usually perform the mechanical act of reproduction with no weighty deliberation, or none at all--the replication [of] their kind being epiphenomenal to the controlling urge that drives them (p. 91).' Which also tells us way too much about human sexuality, too. Through the 'sexy' image of the vampire, the human gloss over sexuality is sucked right off of it, as it were, and replaced with the purely physical mechanism of bumping and grinding. And the alienating feeling porn often produces--that the sex is nothing but geometry, physics and motion--is here repeated in the vampire whose sexiness and sexuality is nothing but mindless and mechanical repetition in the pursuit of mindless and mechanical repetition indefinitely as it was, is and ever shall be.

Sex is no longer sex. It is no longer human. It is no longer intimate or spiritual or even pleasurable. It is something terrible. Destructive of selfhood in a completely negative way. And its relentless and compelling nature makes it only more terrible. The vampire and its horrible drives as representative of our secret nature turn pleasure into jouissance and sex into a living death.

So vampires aren't even a parody of 'sexiness' because they reveal the very non-existence of 'sexiness'. There's nothing there to parody.

Happy belated V-Day, my pretties!

Graceless still undead!

Oh joy! Oh bliss! Graceless: a Journal of the Radical Gothic is still undead. And apparently they are still taking submissions for the next issue, even if it is an old post. So if you have some gothy or radically or anarcho-gothy to say, well send it on down to them.

Write on, my dark comrades!

Graceless...but beautiful

Surfing through BoingBoing this morning accompanied by my third or fourth coffee like I do every morning at work, I always expect to find something intriguing or amazing or interesting. But not like this! Today I experienced untainted serendipity. The remarkable combination of my two most favouritest things in one: goth and radical politics. Together in Graceless: A Journal of the Radical Gothic. Bliss. Pure bliss. Admittedly, it looks like a one hit wonder but still...bliss. Pure bliss.

I haven't had time to read through it yet but I just couldn't wait to share it with all my dark comrades! So enjoy, gothlings!

The Wicker Man and Role Reversal

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post about The Wicker Man is its central plot device of gender role reversal. Just another way that movie walks the line between weirdness and absurdity...

Sgt. Neil Howie, the main character, comes to Summer Isle to investigate the disappearance of a local girl. The islanders act in a very peculiar and mysterious way while indulging in various pagan rites. Including orgies. Oddly, gosh, the strange island is blessed with unusual fertility. Except that something is very very wrong...oh my...

To fix the problem, Lord Summerisle (the antagonist...anti-hero...secret hero) and the islanders have decided that they need to sacrifice a virgin. That hoary jab at paganism. But...

Surprise. Surprise. Instead of the standard nubile young female virgin. The sacrifice is Sgt. Howie!

It's a good little twist on a tawdry old tale. The horror version of the 40 Year-Old Virgin. Finally, a man is killed to placate the deities. And finally the sacrifice is middle-aged and average. Unexceptional, except for his virgin status and his prudish Puritanism.

And the burning of the pagan's arch-enemy inside the Wicker Man marks the end of this weird and wacky film. Ah! Delicious contrast...

A Muppet Wicker Man

Let's come up with the weirdest combination of seemingly unrelated ideas and see what happens...And it is. Utter and stupendous perfection.

The Muppets do The Wicker Man. And they do it better than the original.

The Wicker Man just didn't cut it as a horror movie. Something was just askew the whole time. Like an art movie gone wrong. Silly. Contrived. Embarrassing. Awkward. And then omg!!! Horror ineffable.The horror was real but it was hard to tell whether the gawky pretentiousness was a set-up for the climax. Or a cheesie sex comedy attached to the wrong ending...? The Wicker Man worked if the film makers wanted to keep us on that uncomfortable edge between nervous laughter and terrified screaming.

Probably the most awkward moment was the scene where the landlord's daughter Willow flings her naked body against the bedroom wall between her and the main character Sgt. Neil Howie over and over again. All the while singing in an attempt to seduce him. Ok, is this supposed to be sexy? Or a turn-off? Kind of like when an attractive drunk drools endearments all over your ear at the end of a party...?

But then you twist the gawkiness up a bit with the addition of a few Muppets. And you have a mash-up of monstrous magnificence.



Source: Coilhouse

 Puppets are the perfect uncanny vehicles to maintain the kind of unease that The Wicker Man aims for. Psychological anxiety that keeps getting ratcheted up until its comic-horror denouement. Contrasted so brutally and effectively with a happy harvest song. Or in this case, 'The Muppet Theme Song.'

The final scene of The Wicker Man was always brilliant horror. But it's better with Muppets.

Cthulhu watch: underground lakes in Antarctica!!!

HP Lovecraft would love this story. Except for the lack of mountains, it almost reads like a report from the Antarctic geological expedition covered in his one novel, At the Mountains of Madness.

...wait...weren't there underground lakes in Lovecraft's story? Wasn't that where the Elder Things went to escape the changing climate, the rebellion of the shoggoths, endless wars with the Great Race and the star-spawn and the destruction of their civilization?

What do you think the Russians are going to find when they drill through that last layer of ice? And break through into the true netherworld of an ice cold subterranean lake that hasn't seen the sun or felt the air for 20 million years?!!!

Do you think they will find the Elder Things?



Source: henning.deviantart.com

 Or the shoggoths? Their rebellious and malleable servants?

Source: toyvault.com

Or their enemies? The Mi-Go?

Ruud Dirven
Source: wikipedia

Imagine being at the edge of the ice when the drill bursts into the "pristine" water? I can almost here the sound...

Tekeli-li...
Tekeli-li...
Tekeli-li...

When drag works...

Back in the day, the Kids in the Hall did a sketch featuring three men sitting on a front porch discussing...well, gay things. One of them starts talking about a 'queen' he knows and another responds that drag is 'misogyny' and...well, at least, that's how I remember it...

Anyhow, the sketch highlights the ambiguity around drag. Does it reinforce or subvert gender norms? Is it mocking or challenging? If mocking, what does it mock? A lot of this debate goes back to Judith Butler's comments on drag and gender performance in Gender Trouble where she was interpreted as emphasizing the transgressive aspects of drag without acknowledging the potentially reactionary side.

So when is drag subversive? When does drag work to undermine the stability of the 'heterosexual matrix' (Butler's term)? And conversely, when does drag fail?

Exhibit A: when drag doesn't work...

If you didn't know that this was a man in drag, don't worry. How could you? He is absolutely stunning. And that is the problem. Andrej Pejic passes and he passes superbly. It would appear that the perfect woman is a man!!! And with all you know about gender, how it works and what it serves are you really surprised?

I've written about Andrej Pejic before and the massive confusion he causes both heterosexual men and women. But what precisely is the cause of that confusion? Well, this man in drag is a walking idealization of everything a woman is supposed to be. So, yes, he does point out the arbitrary nature of "womanly" signs and symbols and features and curves but does he challenge the categorical qualities of woman as such? Or does he simply reiterate gender norms and contours?

If you really can't tell the difference, then there is no difference. A man in drag is a woman. He is a copy of a copy of a copy...And that's a fail! A gloriously beautiful one but a fail none the less!

Exhibit B: when drag works...




Source: rosalarian.tumblr


Aside from the obvious cartoonishness, what is different about this picture compared to the ones of Andrej Pejic above? No, not the dress. Perhaps the projectingly obvious manliness in musculature and pelvic contours...? Here is a man in drag. The drag is not hidden or subtle or alluring. It is out in the open. The gender issues all hang out.

Exhibit C: when drag works...




Source: rosalarian.tumblr


If the point made in the first picture of the man in drag was too subtle, well look above. Is that too nuanced for ya?

Exhibit D: when drag works...

Source: rosalarian.tumblr

And, as if the point needed to be made again, well here it is anyway. And in quadruplicate!

So why do these images of superheroes in drag work? Well, ask Megan Rosalarian Gedris, the graphic artist who drew them...

She was tired of hearing 'Men are idealized in comics, too' as a response to her complaints about the idealization of cartoon women, so she drew these pictures to show just how ridiculous and off-base that remark was: "Because while the men are impossibly muscular and the women are impossibly skinny/boobular, the men aren’t being sexualized out the wazoo." The idealization of the different genders is clearly not comparable: male strength is exagerrated while female sexiness is taken to absurd extremes.

Gedris' pictures emphasize just how ludicrous the appearance of female characters actually is: "It’s not the characters’ bodies themselves that are the biggest problem, but how they are dressed and posed. Tits out, ass out, lips pouty, legs spread, hips cocked, eyelids at half mast. Outfits that make Wonder Woman’s star spangled panties look fit for a Mormon picnic. Short skirts, cutouts, stilettos, fishnets, thigh-highs." Even while fighting evil, women can't stop being 'woman as sex' whose real purpose is to display her form for the pleasure of the men ogling her.

The idealization of men in comic books has nothing to do with sexiness: ' You don’t see male heroes wearing these costumes or posing like this...their costumes tend to have full coverage, and when they pose, it’s to inspire fear, not boners.' Man is strength and virility. Woman is sexiness. That's the essential truth you need to know.

The representation of women in comic books is beyond absurd and sexist. It is misogynist and oppressive. A woman looks and sees in the cartoon mirror the reflection of the male mutilation of the female body. And men wonder why women don't read comics? As Gedris says,

'Dudes, I want you to imagine a world where most of the portrayals of your gender in comics look like the above. Are you going to think “Well, I really like the stories so I’ll just suck it up and read this anyway”? Or are you going to be alienated from reading most comics? Be honest. Are you willing to stare at that much thrusting crotch just to find out if Spiderman is gonna win?

Lots of people in the comics business look at their demographic breakdown and think women don’t like superheroes. The creator of DC Women Kicking Ass made a very apt point when she said, “Let me put it this way, if you keep keeping putting food on a kid’s plate and they don’t eat do you assume they don’t like to eat or they don’t like the food? Right.”'

Fantasies matter. They are more real than reality because they are the visions that form reality. And they are social acts because we do not create our fantasies from nothing. We develop them in conjunction with other people, our upbringing, the media, etc. Fantasies represent the subterranean economy of social desire: what our society really really wants. Sexual fantasies represent the spectre of the true relations between the sexes: men should be and do such to be real men and women should be and do such to be real women. Sexual fantasies are about what haunts us...

The idealization of men and women in our society and its artifacts are a social stamp that brands and burns and mutilates the bodies of men and women. This idealization tells us what we really want to be. This idealization tells us what we really want...

If Gedris is right and women don't read comics because of the idealization of women found there then maybe this form of gender oppression can be overcome. If women don't want this and men still want women, then maybe men will need to learn to want something different. Something more equal. Something more free. Something more fun. Something more ideal than 'reality.'

Something else, my dark comrades!