@librariesare4lovers: Good call! I was actually kind of disappointed in that novel, although I generally really enjoy Butler's fiction. But it's a superb example of a piece of literature that does not conform to this thesis.
True Blood is basically a soap opera with Vampires filling the roles of any other undesirable groups/minorities. But apparently, the Vampire Queen, played by Evan Rachel Wood is about to make her way onto the show, so Im stoked for that.
@ArtfulSlinger: My issue with the vamps-as-minority metaphor (and I think Ball has specified that it's supposed to be a metaphor for how homosexualized are demonized) is that it...doesn't really work. In order for it to work the vampires would need to be...not actually bad. Except they are. They kill people, lock them in basements, that whole tribunal was creepy, etc.
I mean, yes, Bill makes some effort...and they're at least nuanced characters. But the metaphor just completely doesn't work for me. I suppose they could be saying that people literally view "others" as non-human...but again, for it to be a workable metaphor, they'd need to be misunderstood. Which so far, not so much.
I dunno...I think I'm just disappointed with the show. I really wanted to like it and have fun with it...and mostly I'm just finding myself bored or annoyed by it.
@tiredfairy: This is a late reply, but I totally agree. It's becoming more and more apparent to me as I watch the first season how faulty the show's main metaphor is...and it is marring my enjoyment of it. The people who are against vampires and vampire society are portrayed as bigots and ignorant rednecks, when in reality, they have a really.good.point. Aside from Bill, we really don't see any vampires that are trying very hard to not be brutal and violent (at least as far as I have seen, nearing the end of Season 1). There are all sorts of other things I could nitpick, like how vampires want full civil rights and yet they have their own government and judicial system. We're supposed to be on Sookie's side and think her friends are unfairly thwarting her great love with Bill and yet I can see exactly why they would be so freaked out. At least in the Buffy-verse, Angel was an obvious exception. He was good for very specific reasons, it was made explicit that all other vampires were evil though-and-through and that Angel was only held back from that evil through a tenuous ensoulment.
@KainTheGreat is a Spy!: I would totally watch that. I was really worried for my dear, sweet, innocent Hoyt for a while there, but somehow it all ended up 100x cuter than I ever imagined was possible. Adorable + adorable = super crazy adorable!
I would think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the current vamp lit is really marketed for women... and plenty of women want to see hot male vampires. Simple as that.
@dj_chick: Yes, but why is the current vamp lit primarily marketed toward women? If women like hot male vampires, dudes should like hot female vampires.
@Pixley: And they do. I have yet to meet a man who doesn't go completely bonkers over either Kate Beckinsale in Underworld or Alyson Hannigan as Bad Willow.
@wednesdayam: yay I love people promoting Martin Miller. The man is a genius. There will a be a sequel to Lonely Werewolf Girl next year in March btw. Also read all his other books if you can they are fantastic. One of them features punk rock fairies in New York and is a work of genius.
@la.donna.pietra: I can never hear about Alice without thinking of Cleolinda's stern admonition when she starts froofing about with the crazy wedding talk:
"Alice, I am putting you on notice. You are my favorite character! Be more awesome."
So you're a Victorian Englishman and you have a bunch of worries about creepy, vaguely non-white ethnic types from a poorly demarcated part of Europe in which the boundaries between white and Asian, Catholic and Muslim, Western and Eastern, and aristocrat and peasant are fuzzy. You also have concerns about disease, racial purity, and violent penetrative sex (namely, that you aren't getting enough of it). Just to frost the cake, you have some major hangups about the sanctity of motherhood and womanhood.
Of course you're going to write a novel about male demons shoving sharp objects into pale flowers of helpless English womanhood.
@emilyanne: Yeah, I've read some of that. Then there's the Brontes' obsession with Byron, and Meyer's obsession with Wuthering Heights, and eventually it feels as though all vampire fiction eventually comes back to a slightly pudgy dude with a huge ego and no sense of commitment.
@la.donna.pietra: And Lord Byron's personal doctor, upon whom Ruthven was heavily based. Rumor has it that Polidori stole parts of the story from one of Byron's works.
He was there at the famous summer when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.
@la.donna.pietra: "...eventually it feels as though all vampire fiction eventually comes back to a slightly pudgy dude with a huge ego and no sense of commitment."
Pietra, you know I love you, but this just made me adore you even more. If that's possible.
@la.donna.pietra: Have you seen Guy Maddin's 'Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary'? He skewers the colonialist narratives behind Stoker's Dracula so well.
@Ginmar Rienne: That rumor mostly stems from some poor attribution on the part of the original publisher(New Monthly Magazine) who credited it to Byron. Byron denied it aggressively, though.
@taxbaby: I have not, but I will check it out. One of my favorite professors in college wrote several critical works on Dracula, so I've hoovered up a lot of that general theme.
The blood-sucking, controlling, undead female is pretty well represented amongst the wife characters in Judd Apatow's movies though. So we've got that going for us.
11/18/09
#buffythevampireslayer
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Are you familiar with Octavia Bulter's novel Fledgling? That has a female vampire protagonist who is also black.
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I mean, yes, Bill makes some effort...and they're at least nuanced characters. But the metaphor just completely doesn't work for me. I suppose they could be saying that people literally view "others" as non-human...but again, for it to be a workable metaphor, they'd need to be misunderstood. Which so far, not so much.
I dunno...I think I'm just disappointed with the show. I really wanted to like it and have fun with it...and mostly I'm just finding myself bored or annoyed by it.
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Everyone go watch it anyway. It kicks ass.
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[www.amazon.com]
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"Alice, I am putting you on notice. You are my favorite character! Be more awesome."
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Of course you're going to write a novel about male demons shoving sharp objects into pale flowers of helpless English womanhood.
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He was there at the famous summer when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.
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Pietra, you know I love you, but this just made me adore you even more. If that's possible.
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@Ginmar Rienne: i always prefered lady Caroline Lamb's completely demented take myself.
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+ Watch video
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