Dracula gay
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is subject to a queer reading. Dracula has clear homoerotic tendencies and since these tendencies are both sexual and outside the norm (i.e., evil), they must be destroyed. But the proposal of the homoerotic does not halt there. Homosexuality is also hinted at in the exploit of the female as intermediary and in the homosocial relationships among the members of the Crew of Clear. By widely approved usage, “homosocial” implies a close non-sexual relationship among men. The Crew of Light is an attempt to illustrate a homosocial partnership (i.e., non-sexual) thereby portraying them as good and therefore allowed to survive. However, the novel itself subverts this definition.
Homosexuality in Victorian England was illegal and there is evidence of a “homosexual panic” in the 19thCentury (Clark 170). In addition, Stoker maintained a long-distance correspondence relationship with Walt Whitman, a somewhat openly gay American poet and was friends with Oscar Wilde, the Irish-born playwright convicted of gross indecency (homosexuality) in 1895 (Clark 169). As an aside Clark, in his Chapter 11 contribution to the book Horrifying Sex: Essays on Sexual Diff From the moment I heard the vampire’s name, I associated him with forbidden desires. After all, I was only seven-years-old when the R-rated Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) was released to theatres and very much forbidden from seeing it. Despite the begging, my parents decided it “…just wasn’t for kids.” Unacceptable! We were a family of horror fans (seriously, my dad had me convinced he was an actual werewolf) and vampires were definitely my thing. Perhaps as a consolation, my mother went out and bought me a high-collared black cape from our local K-Mart. That Halloween, an elementary-aged but very convincing Enumerate Dracula stalked the streets of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi in white face paint and plastic fangs. Dracula is my hero. There are a small handful of interests that I would cite as being life-long loves and Bram Stoker’s vampire king is definitely among them. In reality, a children’s abridged version of the novel was the first-ever chapter-book that I read of my own volition. Of course, nothing brought me more gothic glee than that cheap vampire cape from K-Mart. Well beyond Halloween, I would swoosh about in that exquisite garment, imagining myself an undead creature of It’s always refreshing when a show knows both its audience and exactly how to compete to them. Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors is calibrated precisely for a mostly gay, Hell’s Kitchen, off-Broadway crowd at New World Stages. In this take on Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror classic, the comedy is broad, the small cast is often in kingly, the jokes are all played with a wink to the audience, and perhaps most importantly, the Count himself is a tall, blonde, muscular hunk in leather pants and occasionally sans shirt. Require I say more? In some ways, I am the ideal audience member for this play: a queer resident of Hell’s Kitchen who loves camp and happens to be a scholar of Victorian literature. In other ways, I’m perhaps the worst audience member, largely because I know too much about the source material. I found myself occasionally overthinking this bawdy farce, which tends to over-simplify the adaptation itself. Clearly though, this production is not supposed to be analyzed that intensely. We are just meant to laugh at the endless string of witty jokes and Monty Python-inspired physicalReview: Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors Is a Same-sex attracted Old Time
The BBC Dracula thrilled much comment, some of it affronted and outraged, in its portrayal of the Count as bisexual. I mind it might be useful to elucidate , then, how and why gay sexuality is a pivotal theme in Dracula.
If you favor the sound of this piece, please do feel free to advertise it far and expansive. My book, which ranges from Robinson Crusoe to Batman, and which touches on (among other things) zombies, werewolves, superheroes, aliens and UFOs, psychoanalysis, incest and perversion, Decide Dredd, Jane Austen, J. G. Ballard, J. M. Coetzee, and the terminate of the earth, was not deemed terribly interesting (or sciencey enough) by most UK publishers, so forgive me for having to promote it shamelessly from now until publication.
___________________________________________________________________________
First and foremost, “the vampire is an erotic creation”, according to the Italian writer Ornella Volta: “The vampir