Invited by Count Dracula, Jonathan, a young and beautiful-looking young man, went deep into the castle in Transylvania, Hungary, and went through a small life and death adventure.
After escaping and waking up in a monastery, the first question Jonathan asked by the nun turned out to be:
"Did you have sex with Count Dracula?"
It's a product of Corruption, and it's also a team of "Detective Sherlock". In one sentence, the latest version of the BBC drama "Dracula" is very basic.
The earl shouted a "bride" in his mouth. Although imprisoned in the castle, he was alive and waiting. After finally biting him, he said to him: "Stay, stay! You can be my most beautiful bride!"
There is indeed a very unique relationship between Earl Dracula and Jonathan. Whether it is the original work in 1897 or the new adaptation in 2020, it is not naked on the table, but vague and sultry.
It is said that after "Dracula" was aired in the UK, some viewers expressed dissatisfaction on Twitter, saying that it was unacceptable to film Dracula as gay/bisexual, and clamoring to withdraw from the membership, which led to the screenwriter Moffat. Refutes the rumors: "No, no, not gay."
It's not unnecessary, it's not necessary. Dracula and the vampire image he represents have not changed gay since 2020. Maybe they have had LGBTQ metaphors since they appeared.
01
Let’s start with Bram Stoker’s writing "Dracula."
As we all know, the original novel "Dracula" in 1897 is very classic, from Mornau’s [Nosferatu] (1922) to Browning’s [Dracula] (1931), and then to Coppola’s [ Four Hundred Years of Surprise] (1992), has been filmed in many versions, each classic is known as a fan.
Dracula's name has almost become synonymous with vampires.
The LGBTQ metaphor of vampire theme can also be traced back to Stoke's "Dracula" or even earlier.
The lawyer Jonathan came to the earl’s castle in Transylvania. He was invited to deal with the earl’s property, but he soon found out that he was under house arrest and found more and more things wrong in the castle.
Later, Dracula came to London and climbed up the window of Jonathan’s fiancé Mina. Before his wish to conquer London and the whole world came true, he was stopped by the vampire hunter Van Helsing and a group of people and turned into dust.
According to Stoke's own account, the inspiration for "Dracula" came from one of his dreams. In the dream, a young man was surrounded and seduced by a group of strange beauties, and an old and strange exotic male aristocrat suddenly shouted: "This The man is mine!"
This already quite obvious male-to-male plot was completely written into "Dracula" by Stoke.
When Jonathan was under house arrest in the old castle, he was almost kissed (bited) by a few female vampires at night. The earl appeared very timely and annoyed. "Viciously, his face was blue and his eyes were shining with hot light", the voice He said in a low voice: "How dare you come to move him, just you? Go back, I warn you! This person is mine!"
The woman choked: "You have never loved yourself!" The count replied, "Yes, I can love too."
There are also some secret and unthinkable flirting plots, such as Jonathan being taken to the bed by the earl and taking off his clothes, and the earl’s reaction when he bleeds when Jonathan shaves and scratches himself:
As a blood-loving vampire, the earl did not directly pounce on it, but first "devilish anger burned from his eyes, and then he slammed my neck with his hands."
Then calm down, "Be careful." He said, "How did you cut yourself? Do you think I'm more dangerous."
Regarding the author's own sexuality, it is also another focus of discussion that is often speculated.
It is generally believed that Stoke’s same-sex/two-sex tendencies are somewhat related to the famous gay writer Oscar Wilde. At least Stoke highly respects Wilde. The critic Talia Schaffer once wrote:
During Wilde's trial (for sodomy), "Dracula" explored Stoke’s fear and anxiety as an undisclosed homosexual. The unique horror tone of the novel originated from Stoke’s history of homosexuality. The emotion of a unique moment.
Biting the opponent's neck and inserting the tips of the teeth into the blood vessels gave birth to a kind of pleasure accompanied by tyranny and danger. The existence of vampires and the way they transform through blood sucking is full of erotic meaning.
For the Victorian era, which was regarded as heresy and even suffered severe punishment, the vampire, the evil devil image, can also become an excellent phantom of concealed expression of same-sex love.
For example, earlier than "Dracula", John Polydori's "The Vampyre" (The Vampyre, 1819) is considered to be a vaguely writing about the ambiguous relationship between the great poet Byron and Polydori himself.
The famous female vampire novel " Carmilla " (Carmilla, 1872) said that a female vampire named Camilla borrowed from a carriage accident to live in a noble house, and then stretched shadows and fangs to the noble girl at night. Bed.
The blood-sucking scenes of "Camilla" are extremely lingering, and the relationship between the two women is also sticky and ambiguous. It is recognized as a famous lace-side novel.
02
Compared with the same-sex subtext in the Victorian vampire novels, the expressions in the later adaptations of the film are more obscure, and many of them are even directly deleted.
In 1931 Todd Browning's [Dracula] , the producer felt very uncomfortable with some homosexual content in the original script, and the original script was deleted beyond recognition.
"Dracula can only find a woman, not a man!" he wrote angrily on the final copy of the script.
Danish director Dreyer's 1932 film [Vampire] partly adapted "Camilla", but deleted all the content about lesbian sex.
In 1934, the infamous "Hays Code" was promulgated, and since then it has dominated the American film industry for nearly 30 years. Sexual temptation, nudity, obscenity, and even passionate kisses and hugs are all cut across the board and locked into the gate of so-called "public value."
In an era when even a couple can't live in the same bed in the movies, the same sex in the movies has become a ghost and invisible person in the true sense, and can only quietly appear in a secret face and way.
The vampire theme is just right.
[Daughter of Dracula ] in 1936 , Dracula's daughter became a "monster", she went to London to look for prey, and the objects were young girls.
In a scene in the studio, a female vampire took a girl into the studio in the name of being a model, and gradually approached her, seduced her, and pounced on her. The coveting of the same-sex body and blood became a naked sexual suggestion.
Critic Steve Simels commented on this scene and said: "The tease segment is too hot to imagine how it passed Hollywood censorship in the 1930s."
Later, in the 1960s, there was the first public lesbian vampire movie [Blood and Rose], adapted from "Camilla".
This is an Italian film, because the meaning of the same sex in it is finally no longer concealed, and the distribution in the United States has been greatly affected, but it cannot affect it to become one of the greatest vampire films.
Novelist Anne Rice later got inspiration from the movie [Dracula's Daughter], and her fictional story attracted a large number of mainstream readers and audiences in the 80s and 90s.
This is her "Vampire Chronicles" series represented by "Interview with the Vampire".
[Interview with Vampires at Night] (1994) The film was widely spread and had a far-reaching influence. Not only did it achieve great commercial success at the time, it even caused a certain turmoil of the times.
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, two handsome guys co-starring on the screen, are really eye-catching. Although many same-sex elements are weakened in the movie, there is still no doubt that they are in love.
In the original novel, the two met in the gay community in San Francisco. The process of transforming another vampire into a vampire is itself a metaphor for sexual behavior. The original novel describes the feeling of being close to climax more than once.
This part of the movie is also very charming: the two look at each other deeply through the gauze bed net, one elegantly and tenderly kisses the other's neck, biting the blood out, and the person underneath is trembling all over, as if Enter some kind of passion and ecstasy.
Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" series has similar styles, and they are mostly vampire stories infiltrated with a lot of ambiguous emotions of the same sex.
On another level, the age of [Night Interview with Vampires] is also destined to have another meaning. Some people say that it is "the latest repercussions of AIDS in the field of art."
"The red death disease has been raging in this country for a long time. No other plague can be as deadly and shocking as this disease. Blood is the embodiment and imprint of this disease."
Allan Poe wrote this in the 1845 horror short story "Mask of the Red Death", but no one could have imagined that in the 1980s, a blood disease struck, leaving people away from the situation in the novel. So close to panic.
In the 1980s, on the ruins of sexual liberation, the ghost named AIDS floated, and at this moment people's fear of blood pollution reached a climax. The vampire theme, which has been stagnant for a few years, unexpectedly revived a new theme and vitality through the crisis.
From newspapers, novels, to movies, Broadway dramas, the blood disease and its transformation and infection are ubiquitous in stories that resemble horror movie plots. The images of homosexuality and vampires truly overlapped in the 1980s.
In a funny skit in the comedy show "Saturday Night Live" at the time, James Woods once played a vampire who was highly vigilant against AIDS and made a joke. The vampire spent the whole night checking the blood problems of the vampire, but before he could drink the blood, the sun rose and he passed away.
In Japan, Dracula's image has even become a "ban on AIDS" propaganda ambassador, "Even I am afraid of AIDS", Dracula on the poster facing the audience, his face admonished.
Charles Brown’s comedy "Sin Land of Lesbian Vampires" was one of the most sensational Broadway plays in the 1980s, and it was performed in Greenwich Village for several years.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, vampire novels were one of the best-selling themes at the time, with independent bookshelves in bookstores.
Vampires have become a symbol of evil, blood-ingesting ghosts and disasters, the externalization of people's inner fears, and at the same time a symbol of ultimate transcendence over death.
Since then, in countless vampire themes such as [Thousand Years of Blood], [Ghostbusters], [Heavenly Fighting Zombies], "True Love Is Like Blood", homosexuality has played an important role either implicitly or explicitly. Part.
Speaking of this, more than a century has passed since the earl shouted "This man is mine".
Even if the BBC version of "Dracula" really portrays the Piaget as homo/bisexual, it is not subversive. On the contrary, I think the current version is too conservative.
The castle is gloomy, the lights are dim, and the men are mysterious. This atmosphere is more suitable for something to do.
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Author/curl
This article was first published on WeChat public account【Pocier (pocier)】
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