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Representation of gays/lesbians in cinema
Representation of gays/lesbians in cinema
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‘To understand the chronicles they must be read as gay’ , at least this is the incredibly bold statement made by George Haggerty in his essay on Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture. There is no denying that Anne Rice’s Vampires have much to do with homosexuality and Haggerty’s highlighting this is in no way new criticism, but the claim that is must be read as gay is entirely dismissive of the many other sexual paradigms that exist within the collection.
To begin with, his referral of Lestat as a ‘gay predator’ seems unfair in its definition. The fact of his being a vampire automatically asserts him a ‘predator’, but his relationships are not exclusively homosexual. He is a vampire that merely does not differentiate between male and female prey, making his sexual orientation identify with bisexuality rather than only homosexual as Haggerty seems to suggest. In fact, in reference to the sexuality of her Vampires Rice defined them as bisexual herself by saying that ‘the imagination is bisexual’. Haggerty fails to mention any of the heterosexual encounters Lestat has within the chronicles and furthermore completely neglects to mention Queen of the Damned, in which Lestat’s relationship with Akasha is largely heterosexual, despite his sometimes unwilling attitude towards her, he even admits his feelings towards her in conversation with Gabrielle, “Did I love her? Is that what you want to know? Yes, I loved her." This admission of romantic love for Akasha, as well as his sexual encounters with other female characters, is evidence of his bisexuality, something Haggerty seems to have chosen to disregard in favour of reading him as exclusively homosexual. This inability to separate homosexuality and homosexuality within bisexuality i...
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...re original and inspiring in placing these readings in a historical understanding of the receival of homosexuality in society and the way in which Rice both simultaneously defies and reasserts these opinions.
Works Cited
Benefiel, C. R. (2004) ‘Blood Relations: The Gothic Perversion of the Nuclear Family in Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire’ Journal of Popular Culture V:38 (2)
Ferraro, S. (1990) ‘Novels you can sink your teeth into’, The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/14/magazine/novels-you-can-sink-your-teeth-into.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Garber, M. (2013) Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Routledge
Haggerty, G. (1998) ‘Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture’ NOVEL: a forum on fiction. V:32(1) Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/1346054
Rice, Anne. (2003) The Vampire Chronicles Collection. Ballantine Books Limited.
“How could it feel so good when it should be disgusting and painful?” (Butler 75) These words spoken by Theodora, an elderly white woman, about her symbiotic and sometimes sexual relationship with Shori, a black “elfin little girl” (Butler 75), express the societal fear that Octavia Butler exposes in her characterization of Shori as a monster. Shori is a monster because her very existence is a testament to the blurring of historically concrete lines. She is androgynous, vampire and human, black and white, a child with adult strength and urges. Shori’s relationship with her human symbionts and other Ina usually defies normal standards of behavior and acceptance by using pleasure instead of pain as a mechanism of control and abandoning traditional ideas about gender, sexuality, and crossbreeding.
Soyokaze. "Thread: Female Sexuality in Bram Stoker's Dracula." Urch Forums RSS. N.p., 8 Mar. 2008. Web. 6 May 2014. .
This essay explores the blurring of gender roles within Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love, focusing on the presentation of a sexually assertive female and its threat to the patriarchal society, and the duality of the female characters as they are presented as enticing and thrilling, but also dangerous and somewhat repulsive.
Irigaray, Luce. "This Sex Which Is Not One." Feminism: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndle. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1991.
Conclusively, while Bram Stokers novel Dracula is seen as a gothic and horror story, I argue that it is a novel that seeks to address female sexuality directly. Seen through numerous passages, Stoker confronts and battles the views between sexuality during the Victorian era though his genius of characterization of characters present within the novel. As it seems highly intentional to me, I respect the way in which he criticizes and critiques upon female sexuality by bringing into light new ideas regarding female desires. When contrasting his text upon today’s culture, the differences to how one perceived the vampire has changed significantly.
Kimmich, Allison."Alice Walker, Overview." Feminist Writers (1996). Literature Resource Center. 2003. GaleNet. Nicholls State University Library, Thibodaux, Louisiana.
“What makes for a livable world?”, and what constitutes the human?”, are two questions Judith Butler inquires in her opening paragraph and throughout her writing that determine the mindsets of individuals throughout our society. Both of these arguments are answered differently, by different persons, within different cultures, yet play a dramatic role in Butler’s view of herself, the LGBT community, and most of all, every other human
Angela Carter was a writer in the 1970s during the third wave of feminism that influenced and encouraged personal and social views in her writing. This is demonstrated through her own interpretation of fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber. She combines realism and fantasy to create ‘magic realism’ whilst also challenging conventions of stereotypical gender roles.
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Halperin, David. "Is There a History of Sexuality?." The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader. Ed. Henry
Fisher, Jerilyn, and Ellen S. Silber. Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2003. Print.
As Tamsin Wilton explains in her piece, “Which One’s the Man? The Heterosexualisation of Lesbian Sex,” society has fronted that heterosexuality, or desire for the opposite sex, is the norm. However, the reason behind why this is the case is left out. Rather, Wilton claims that “heterosexual desire is [an] eroticised power difference [because] heterosexual desire originates in the power relationship between men and women” (161). This social struggle for power forces the majority of individuals into male-female based relationships because most women are unable to overcome the oppressive cycle society has led them into. Whereas heterosexual relationships are made up of the male (the oppressor) and the female (the victim who is unable to fight against the oppressor), homosexual relationships involve two or more individuals that have been freed from their oppressor-oppressed roles.
I am writing a new introduction to the English edition (1987) of Reading the Romance (1984), in which I study the particular nature of the relationship between audiences and texts. My theoretical claim to be doing something new will seem odd to a British audience. Nevertheless, my book takes up questions that British feminists and cultural studies scholars have tackled. I would like to discuss those questions, and so say something about the political implications of Reading the Romance (p. 62).
This quote addresses directly the primary difficulty of the issue. The terms gay and lesbian are useful in literature in that they allow a group of people who have been marginalised and even persecuted to become visible. They enable a way of life and a set of identities, harmonious or conflicting, to be presented, to be questioned, to be understood and accepted. As categories they create ‘space’ in which there may develop a more evolved understanding of texts and they also create a genre within which many lesbian and gay writers are comfortable with being placed. A gendered reading of a text can reveal undercurrents and depths which might otherwise not be apparent. These categories also make ‘space’ for the author within the text which leads to a closer tie between the author and the reader in the reading process.
The word “Queer” means “strange, unusual”, the same with word “odd”. The theory of queer gender is not a specific theory, but a comprehensive interdisciplinary discourse that come from multiple subjects such as history, society and literature. The theory of queer gender established outside of the mainstream culture: these people and their theory cannot find their position in the mainstream culture, and they do not have intention to do so. “Queer” is a appellation for a social group including people who are not conform with the mainstream society about sexual preference and gender identity, like homosexual and bisexual.