Showing posts with label bram stoker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bram stoker. Show all posts

13 Apr 2020

Vampiric Lesbianism 1: Carmilla (How Beautiful She Looked in the Moonlight!)

Illustration by David Henry Friston 
for Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872)


I. 

19th-century Irish writer Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu may not today be a household name, but the fact remains his ghost stories and horror books were central to the development of queer gothic fiction in the Victorian era and he is rightly celebrated within lesbian circles for his novella Carmilla (1872); a romantic tale of the relationship between the title character, the alluring Countess Karnstein - who happens to be a vampire - and the young female narrator, Laura:

"Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration. It was like the ardour of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet overpowering; and with gloating eyes she drew me to her, and her hot lips travelled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, 'You are mine, you shall be mine, and you and I are one for ever'."  [1]

It's not exactly D. H. Lawrence, but, like many others who grew up watching Hammer horror films, I can't resist a bit of fantasy lesbianism of this kind; i.e., what might be described as sapphism with added bite and often involving the seduction of (presumably) heterosexual young women by predatory lesbian vampires.    


II.

Carmilla, it is interesting to note, pre-dates Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by a quarter of a century and the latter admitted his indebtedness to Le Fanu - as have many later writers, though, of course, Le Fanu himself drew upon several earlier works, thereby demonstrating the intertextual nature of literature in which ideas, like vampires, feed off other ideas, in a perverse and unholy orgy of inspiration and bloodsucking.  

Having said that, I think we can concede that the character of Carmilla is the prototype for a legion of vampiric lesbians; she selects exclusively young and pretty female victims and isn't adverse to becoming emotionally (and, if given half-a-chance, sexually) involved with those she puts the bite on; she has a powerful physical presence that many find irresistable; she is able to change human form into that of an animal (in her case, a large black cat); she sleeps in a coffin; she can only be killed with a stake through the heart, etc.   

Whether this work - and others like it - help or hinder the rights of lesbians living in the real world who don't happen to have the charms, fangs, and supernatural powers of Carmilla, is debatable. But I can cerainly understand why many women have embraced the latter and bought into the darkly romantic ideas of vampirism and satanism that flourished in the late 19th-century Decadent movement - there is something strangely empowering in the aesthetics of evil and in openly declaring oneself against nature.   

However, there's also a downside to reactivating all the old stereotypes to do with both femininity and homosexuality. It's certainly worth remembering that the perverse lesbian given to us by poets such as Baudelaire and Swinburne and belonging to the (male) pornographic imagination, is shaped by desire but marked by misogyny and homophobia. 

In other words, I'm not entirely convinced that the fictional figure of Carmilla the vampire - or even the utopian politics of Renée Vivien embodied within her Sapphic verse - is enough to counter the profound fear and loathing for otherness that characterises morally and sexually straight society.  


Notes

[1] Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla, (1875), chapter IV.

The above work is available to read as an ebook thanks to Project Gutenberg: click here.

To read part two of this post - on Dracula's cinematic daughters - click here.

8 May 2018

Cruella De Vil: If She Doesn't Scare You, No Evil Thing Will

Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil in Disney's
101 Dalmations (dir. Stephen Herek, 1996)


Cruella De Vil is a character originally created by Dodie Smith in her 1956 children's book The Hundred and One Dalmations. But probably most of us know her via Walt Disney's animated film adaptation or later live-action version, starring Glenn Close (1961 and '96 respectively).   

As the (less than subtle) name suggests, the puppy-stealing London heiress wrapped in mink is one of fiction's great villains. She has become an icon of stylish (and stylised) evil within popular culture, both in the English-speaking world and beyond. The Polish, for example, are very fond of the woman they know as Cruella De Mon, whilst the French are equally attracted to Cruella D'Enfer. 

What very few people realise, however, is that her surname is also a literary allusion to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In the novel, the Count sometimes goes under the name of De Ville; he purchases a house in London under this alias, for example. Thus, Roger Radcliffe's description of her as a vampire bat and an inhuman beast, whilst intended to be humorous, is perhaps more apt than he realises.    

The animated Disney version of Cruella - voiced by Betty Lou Gerson - differed from the character described by Smith in several respects. For example, in the novel she is said to be cooly indifferent and detached. But in the film she's a manic character, only just managing to keep things together. Gerson is believed to have based her version of Cruella on the actress Tallulah Bankhead, known for her outrageous personality and many mannerisms.  

In the live-action 1996 film, meanwhile, Cruella was re-imagined as the glamorous head of a haute couture fashion house specialising in the use of exotic skins and fur. At the start of the film it's revealed that she had even had a rare white Siberian tiger slaughtered for its pelt.       

Although the movie wasn't particularly well-received, Close's performance in the role as the cigarette smoking doraphile and zoosadistic sociopath won critical acclaim and secured her a place within the pornographic imagination; as did her distinctive costumes, make-up, and jewellery (the latter made from teeth to emphasise her fetishistic penchant for wearing dead animal parts).

Ah, Cruella! Cruella! This evil Venus in Furs! This mad embodiment of coldness and cruelty!

The curl of her lips
The ice in her stare
All innocent children
Had better beware ...


Notes

The song Cruella De Vil was written by Mel Leven and sung in 101 Dalmations (1961) by Bill Lee. Lyrics © Walt Disney Music Company / Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Click here to watch on YouTube (and don't forget to sing along).

The animator for Cruella in all her scenes in the above film was Marc Davis. 

The costumes worn by Glenn Close as Cruella in the '96 movie were designed by Anthony Powell and Rosemary Burrows.