The Humanization of the Vampire and Dehumanization of the Queer Community

Abstract

Today one cannot think of the vampire without a sexual connotation being attached to it. But why is this? What was the point behind portraying the vampire as a metaphor of sexual desire? We could look at Anne Rice’s creations or even Stoker’s Dracula for this answer, but there is a version of the vampire who predates these and is often forgotten for her more popular and mainstream counterparts, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, the protagonist of the novella by the same name. Focusing on Carmilla will help us answer the question, why did the vampire metamorphose from a terrifying monster to being idolized as an incarnation of sexuality? Vampires were first sexualized to strike fear into people of the taboo and sinfulness of sexual behavior, but later, this sexualization became a metaphor for repressed desires, until finally their sexualization caused them to be humanized. The vampire is already quite the human like beast, adding sexual attributes to them makes them become more human. This is mirrored in the LGBTQ community, as it has been and is still seen as monstruous, much like vampires, and like vampires has had to hide and walk in the dark, now coming out, freely showing itself. Vampires, in both books and films, have been transformed into a sexual creature to make them more human. The Queer community has taken control of their sexualism, be it to be free, to be who they are, or as an expression of speech and protest. In the following analysis, we will discuss the history and representation of the vampire and examine how Carmilla as a character helped shape the portrayal of the vampire today; we will consider how a classic LGBTQ themed story gave representation in the nineteenth century to an oppressed and silenced community. Both Carmilla the novel and Carmilla the movie, released in 2020 and directed by Emily Harris, feature the titular vampire, yet other characters are differently named and represented. The novel is the story told through the eyes of a third party who hears the story. The movie is seen directly from the eyes of our protagonist. This variance in storytelling, from a third party to a personal account, provides a different approach to the same story. I would argue that the sexualization to humanize the vampire has also caused a dehumanization of both the vampire and the Queer community. Both of these are also seen by some as no more than a fetish, be it of control, of curiosity of the unknown and “strange” but also of what is different or even considered “taboo.”