Last night, whilst being ferociously kissed
by a girl with very sharp teeth, I got to
thinking about vampires. It wasn't simply
the growing pain in my lower lip that sparked
this thought, nor my mounting concern that
I get out of there with both nipples intact.
Rather, it was what happened next.
The Girl's original
date had left rather abruptly (possibly
in a bid to save her own assets), and I
wasn't overly enthused about being employed
as a substitute. It must have shown because
she started berating my lack of initiative,
finally concluding that I 'didn't really
like girls at all.' Needless to say, I stalked
off with as much dignity as six tequilas
would allow.
It was the only the
next morning when, hungover and watching
The Lost Boys, the connection became
glaringly obvious: Vampires. Bisexuals.
Vampires and bisexuals - of course!
Broadly speaking, and minus the bits about
drinking blood, turning into bats and living
forever, we had much in common.
Watch any vampire movie
and you are left with a similar impression
- that of an enviably glamorous, beautiful,
powerful yet ultimately doomed being. Free
to move between the realms of the living
and the dead, vampires are not confined
nor adhere to the usual rules of human interaction.
They inhabit a strange, indefinable space,
avoiding proscriptive social dictates and
enjoying the benefits of both worlds whilst
belonging to neither. They transgress boundaries,
and any labels bestowed upon them are always
shown to be lacking.
Despite the enormous
rewards of being a vampire there is, of
course, a terrible price to pay. Enslaved
to an all-consuming thirst, vampires are
compelled to hunt and feed off humans in
order to live, thus breaking the most fundamental
of all social taboos. In doing so, they
are doomed to isolation, persecution and
distrust - caught between a desire to be
free and a desire to be 'human' they fit
in nowhere, and must by necessity occupy
positions of alterity, living isolated,
marginal lives on the peripheries of society.
A number of theorists
have concentrated on the relationship between
representations of vampires, and representations
of subversive female sexuality. Female vampiric
characters tend to be highly sexualised
and display lesbian tendencies - indeed,
lesbianism is a hugely prominent theme throughout
vampiric literature and film. This can be
seen as far back as 1871, for example, in
J. Sheridan Le Fanu's literary vampire classic,
Carmilla; in numerous films from
Dracula's Daughter (1936) to Hammer
Horror nasty The Vampire Lovers
(1970), and in more recent depictions of
the lesbian erotic such as Ridley Scott's
The Hunger (1983). Even at its
most progressive, female desire/homosexuality
is portrayed as aggressive and uncontrollable,
the perpetrator a sexually predatory bitch.
Of course, this stereotype
is not new - she is the Medea of Greek tragedy,
the manipulative and immoral whore of Renaissance
drama, the femme fatale of crime noir. Her
sexuality is dangerous because it contradicts
patriarchal and heteronormative patterns
of sexuality, and must be controlled. Such
exaggerated stereotypes do that by providing
a safe way of confronting female (lesbian)
eroticism - by firmly positioning Women
Who Desire (Women) as social pariahs or
'Other', they become easily recognisable,
knowable, and therefore punishable.
However, this correlation
between lesbianism and vampirism is both
overly simplistic and reductive. It implies
something of a fixed space in society -
albeit a negative one - and fails to acknowledge
the freedom and transience that is at the
heart of the vampiric character. It also
neglects male vampires who, whilst not as
well known for jumping into bed with other
men, do exhibit pronounced gendered and
sexual ambiguity. With their opulent and
extravagant dress, sleek hair and aristocratic
decadence they are far more Oscar Wilde
than Alpha Male.
It seems to me that
a more useful comparison might be made between
cultural representations of male and
female vampires on the one hand, and the
bisexual on the other. Like the vampire,
the bisexual experiences elements of both
worlds, in this case able to move between
the gay and straight communities whilst
being tied to neither. As a result, s/he
stands in direct opposition to the well
established twentieth century myth that
for society to function people must be categorised
for purposes of identification. And, despite
the increasing diversity of labels, we must
nevertheless be content to stay within our
box.
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A
particularly powerful part of the identity
myth dictates that individuals must clearly
'choose' between hetero or homosexuality,
adopting concomitant codes of behaviour
in the process. But what of those who cannot,
or do not wish to, delineate their sexuality
in so rigid a fashion? It would seem that
the oscillation between these presumed sexual
poles constitutes a major social transgression.
By refusing to remain safely in one place,
the bisexual breaks one of the most established
tenets of the social order and becomes,
like the vampire, difficult to recognise,
identify and ultimately control. This perceived
social transience is exacerbated by the
fact that, short of tattooing it on our
foreheads, bisexuals have no visible way
of conveying sexual orientation. A person's
sexuality is most frequently identified
through partner choice, but of course this
strategy falls flat on its face when the
individual refuses to restrict his or herself
to either gender. Similarly, while certain
modes of dress and behaviour can be adopted
by members of both the gay and straight
communities, there are no such signifiers
available to bisexuals.
It is interesting that
a visible bisexual persona has not been
developed by the bisexual community. Personally,
I see this escape from the stereotype as
immensely positive, since sexual orientation
is an element, rather than the defining
factor, of our identities. It does, however,
appear to cause huge unease in others and
as a result, behavioural characteristics
are projected on to us. We're all familiar
with the stereotype of the sexually promiscuous,
capricious, bisexual; that vampiric predator
who takes what they want and then leaves,
usually for someone of the other sex. More
often than not, however, people will assume
that we're 'just a bit confused', unable
to make up our minds, and I've personally
lost count of the number of times someone
has said to me, 'But you prefer men, right?'
or, 'But you like women, so you must be
a lesbian.'
This refusal to acknowledge
bisexuality as a viable option results in
a social and sexual instability that is
key to the correlation between vampires
and bisexuals. It also brings me back to
the girl with fangs and the barbed tongue.
Despite knowing that I was attracted to
both men and women she simply couldn't acknowledge
or accept it and, rather than deal with
why I didn't want to kiss her,
managed the situation by putting me in a
comfortable and recognisable box. By labelling
me Straight, she satisfied her own sense
of self worth, and effectively wiped my
sexuality off the map.
In this way bisexuals,
like vampires, inhabit an unheimlich social
space - they are the invisible enemy within.
The vampire's punishment is to get staked,
scorched, exploded or decapitated. The bisexual's
fate is death by erasure, since social reluctance
to 'believe' in bisexuality means that we
are constantly shoehorned in to more comfortable,
knowable categories. Such intense paranoia
of what cannot be easily recognised results
in the rejection of bisexual experiential
knowledges, and in the ensuing battle for
our souls, the bisexual becomes obliterated.
The socio-political
erasure of bisexual representations extends
to literature, where the bisexual is often
portrayed as promiscuous sexual predator,
or overlooked completely. In terms of cultural
production it is assumed that, since bisexuals
are apparently able to identify with both
mainstream (i.e. straight) and gay literature,
there is no need for a bisexual literary
genre. As a result, queer literature is
usually categorised as Gay or Lesbian in
the mainstream bookstores, if at all. This
can prove difficult for those writing from
a bisexual viewpoint in terms of getting
work published or recognised for what it
is, and also for those trying to track such
work down.
Under-representation
is also rife in literary and cultural theory,
an example of this being the way in which
bisexuality has largely been ignored in
the theorisation of vampiric sexualities.
Additionally, theorists will often claim
work that more readily lends itself to a
bisexual reading as gay or lesbian, using
ridiculously convoluted arguments in the
process. Although some excellent and highly
influential work has been done on the subject
of bisexuality in literature and culture,
it is still disproportionately small in
comparison to the large body of gay and
lesbian analysis that has been produced
since the 1970's.
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