Vampires, especially in modern American literature, film, and television, can be used as a “window” on gay culture of the corresponding era. As times changed, these vampires and vampire stories, movies, and later television evolved as well. In a time of extreme repression and fear for gay people, using their vampire characters as a metaphor for their own hidden sexuality was an outlet for self-expression. The lesson must have been obvious, but there are several homoerotic scenes in Dracula. In 1895, Oscar Wilde was being sent to prison for “gross indecency” while Bram Stoker was writing his novel. In the Romantic and Victorian Eras, vampires often served as sexual metaphors. Sexuality and homosexuality have been a part of vampire stories in popular culture, mostly as a subtle undercurrent, since at least the 19th century. By the 1920s, the Germans had produced Nosferatu, and in 1931 Hollywood jumped in with Tod Browning’s Dracula.
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The first vampire films were actually made by the French in the 1890s. Hugely popular in the U.S., it had been adapted for both stage and screen by the 1920s. In 1897, the best known vampire book, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was published. In 1871, a vampire story with subtle lesbian undertones, “Carmilla,” by Sheridan Le Fanu was published.
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Polidori was Lord Byron’s physician, and many readers saw a resemblance between Byron and the vampire.īy the 1840s, vampires were seen in English theatrical productions, and “Varney the Vampire,” created by James Malcolm Rymer, was a popular newspaper serial. Well-known precursors to today’s stories include the 1748 German poem, “Der Vampyre” and an 1819 short story by John Polidori titled “The Vampyre.” In this story, the vampire, Lord Ruthven, was first portrayed as the “aristocratic seducer” that is so familiar to Americans. The contemporary vampire story has roots in traditional folklore, in 17th- and 18th-century pseudo-science, and in historical figures such as the “Blood Countess,” Elizabeth Bathory, and Romanian ruler Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes.
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American vampire stories are rooted in the folklore of Eastern Europe, but similar creatures have also turned up in Western Europe, India, and China. VAMPIRES HAVE BEEN a part of popular culture in the West for several centuries.