Mothership member John Hartley explores the parallels between the gay and vampire cultures
Twilight
With films like Twilight, its sequel New Moon, and tv productions such as True Blood capturing the collective imagination, vampirism is enjoying its biggest revival since Bram Stoker launched his mould-breaking novel Dracula on an unsuspecting world in 1897.
When I speak of dating gay vampires for real, many of us will be aware of guys who can drain the marrow out of a relationship financially and emotionally, and not a few will have met the devouring suction kisser, but what I’m talking about here is a form of historical consciousness.
From a gay point of view (unless you’re a confirmed chubby chaser), these ultra-lean, pale and darkly handsome men who deliver the ultimate in lovebites, prove endlessly fascinating.
This was not the case in the beginning. The early German expressionist film Nosferatu depicted a hideously skeletal vampire worlds apart from a Robert Pattinson or a Stephen Moyer.
Gay men who are devotees of the genre today may not realise how intimately vampiric themes are woven into our own gay history.
Karl Ulrichs
Austrian writer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), is recognised as a courageous pioneer of LGBT rights, the first to speak out publicly in support of homosexuality as normal, and against repressive laws. The term ‘homosexuality’ was also invented by a fellow Austrian, Karl-Maria Keatbeny,in 1869.
Dismissed from his job as a legal adviser when his sexuality was uncovered, Ulrichs’ books were confiscated and censured. He escaped to a wecome exile in Italy where he was able to write and publish as he pleased, eventually being granted an honorary diploma by the University of Naples.
Ulrichs composed a tale called Manor which combined the ingredients of vampirism and gay love, or Uranism as he named it. He also wrote Uranian Love and Bloodthirstiness in 1869 which was inspired by the real-life trial of a gay man called von Zastrow who killed a boy after sexually abusing, castrating and “driving a stake up through his abdomen.”
Manor is a story about a 19 year old sailor who falls in love with Hars, a boy of 14. When Manor is drowned at sea, he comes back to haunt Hars in the form of a vampire who, interestingly, sucks the boy’s nipple instead of feasting on his neck. The locals attack Manor as an abomination, but are surprisingly unperturbed about his homosexuality! The moral of the story is that only in death can Manor and Hars be as one.
All this echoes a constant theme throughout gay history - the homosexual is hounded by the wider straight society, forcing him to live in a vampiric twilight in which his sexuality cannot be openly or freely expressed. Similarly, Susan Sontag observed in AIDS and Its Metaphors, the hostile media presentation of the unfolding epidemic as a plague bringing punishment to gay men. Events still try to drive a stake through our dreams as we dally with our beautiful vampire heroes.
By John Hartley
(c) Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Related posts:
Why do gay films suck?
Gay Harry Potter
Hot gay guys
