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Abstract
This essay explores queer imag(in)ing by analyzing a contemporary vampire text, Let The Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist. As I argue, the rhetorical act of humanizing vampires is inherently limiting for (queer) audiences and indicative of processes that seek to clarify, assimilate, and tame—in short, normalize, which as Michel Foucault states “imposes homogeneity” by stamping out difference. Furthermore, I argue that a text can actively resist moments of normalization with the strategic use of what Victor Turner calls liminality—a (queer) rhetorical tactic that resists while seemingly/simultaneously buttressing a liberal humanist belief wherein difference is denied thus displacing and denying the significance of the Other.
Acknowledgements
The author is very grateful to Karen Rasmussen and Amy Heyse for their guidance and support. Additionally, the author would like to thank Dr. Greg Wise and the two anonymous reviewers at CC/CS for their insight, thought-provoking questions, criticism, and general feedback. Finally, the author would like to thank his peers for the critical dialogues that led to this piece.
Notes
1. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, ed., Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery, ed., Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Curt Herr and Anne De Long, ed., Journal of Dracula Studies, http://www.blooferland.com/drc (accessed 15 March 2009); Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (New York: Routledge, 1994); Sue-Ellen Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3 (1991): 1–20; Steven Bruhm, “Gothic Sexualities,” in Teaching the Gothic, ed. Anna Powell and Andrew Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 94; Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995); Andrew Schopp, “Cruising the Alternatives: Homoeroticism and the Contemporary Vampire,” Journal of Popular Culture 30 (1997): 231; Teri Ann Doerksen, “Deadly Kisses: Vampirism, Colonialism, and the Gendering of Horror,” in The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night, ed. James Craig Holte (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 137; James Twitchell, “The Vampire Myth,” in Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics, ed. Margaret L. Carter (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988), 110; Nina Auerbach, Our Vampires, Ourselves (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
2. Elana Levine and Lisa Parks, ed., Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Roz Kavaney, ed., Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Complete, Unofficial Guide to Buffy and Angel (New York: Tauris Parke, 2001); Lavery and Wilcox, Fighting the Forces; David Lavery and Rhonda V. Wilcox, ed., Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, http://slayageonline.com (accessed 3 April 2009).
3. John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In, trans. Ebba Segerberg (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2007).
4. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Robert Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 184.
5. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992), 31, emphasis in original.
6. Lindqvist, LTROI; Charlaine Harris, The Southern Vampire Mysteries (New York: Ace, 2009); Stephanie Meyer, The Twilight Saga Collection (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008); J. L. Smith, The Vampire Diaries (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991).
7. Amazon.com, “Customer Reviews: Let the Right One in: A Novel,” Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Let-Right-John-Ajvide-Lindqvist/product-reviews/0312355297 (accessed 20 March 2009); Barnesandnoble.com, “Customer Reviews,” Barnes and Noble, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Let-the-Right-One-in/John-Ajvide-Lindqvist/e/9780312355296 (accessed 20 March 2009); LoveVampires, “Let the Right One In,” http://www.lovevampires.com/jalletin.html (accesses 20 March 2009); LibraryThing, “Let the Right One In, or Let Me In,” ed. Tim Spalding http://www.librarything.com/work/662641 (accessed 20 March 2009).
8. Overture Films, “‘Let Me In’ Begins Production in New Mexico,” Overture Films, http://www.overturefilms.net (accessed 3 November 2009).
9. Mel, “True Blood Casting News: Grant Bowler's Character, Plus Talbot!” True-Blood.net, http://true-blood.net/2009/12/02/true-blood-casting-news-grant-bowlers-character-plus-talbot-spoilers (accessed 10 July 2010).
10. Ollie Chong, “True Blood Season 3 Spoiler: Talbot Has Affair with Bon Temps Stud,” True Blood.net, http://truebloodnet.com/true-blood-season-3-spoiler-talbot-affair-bon-temps-stud (accessed 10 July 2010).
11. R. Anthony Slagle, “Queer Criticism and Sexual Normativity: The Case of Pee Wee Herman,” Journal of Homosexuality 45 (2003): 133–7; “Ferment in LGBT Studies and Queer Theory,” Journal of Homosexuality 52 (2007): 309–28.
12. R. Anthony Slagle, “Queer Criticism and Sexual Normativity: The Case of Pee Wee Herman,” Journal of Homosexuality 45 (2003): 133–7; “Ferment in LGBT Studies and Queer Theory,” Journal of Homosexuality 52 (2007): 309–28.
13. David Allen Grindstaff, Rhetorical Secrets: Mapping Gay Identity and Queer Resistance in Contemporary America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 6.
14. Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111.
15. Slagle, “Ferment,” 318.
16. Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 3.
17. Bruhm, “Gothic Sexualities,” 94.
18. Noreen Giffney and Myra J. Hird, ed., “Introduction: Queering the Non/Human,” in Queering the Non/Human (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 4.
19. See Note 1; Susana Mandala, “Solidarity and the Scoobies: An Analysis of the –y Suffix in the Television Series Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Language and Literature 16 (2007): 53; Schopp, “Cruising the Alternatives,” 233.
20. Lane Van Ham, “Reading Early Punk as Secularized Sacred Clowning,” The Journal of Popular Culture 42 (2009): 320. Symbolic inversion refers to any “act of expressive behavior that presents an alternative to commonly held cultural codes.” For further discussion on symbolic inversion, see Barbara Babcock, The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 14.
21. Victor Turner, “Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality,” in Performance in Postmodern Culture, ed. Michel Benamou and Charles Caramello (Madison, WI: Coda Press, 1977), 33, emphasis in original. See also Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1995).
22. Angela Jones, “Queer Heterotopias: Homonormativity and the Future of Queerness,” Interalia: A Journal of Queer Studies 4 (2009), http://www.interalia.org (accessed 20 February 2010).
23. Angela Jones, “Queer Heterotopias: Homonormativity and the Future of Queerness,” Interalia: A Journal of Queer Studies 4 (2009), http://www.interalia.org (accessed 20 February 2010).
24. Angela Jones, “Queer Heterotopias: Homonormativity and the Future of Queerness,” Interalia: A Journal of Queer Studies 4 (2009), http://www.interalia.org (accessed 20 February 2010).
25. Natalie Hess, “Code Switching and Style Shifting as Markers of Liminality in Literature,” Language and Literature 5 (1996): 6.
26. Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), 54–5.
27. Slagle, “Queer Criticism,” 133; See also Slagle, “Ferment,” 309–28; Slagle, “In Defense of Queer Nation: From Identity Politics to a Politics of Difference,” Western Journal of Communication 59 (1995): 85–102.
28. Turner, Forest, 99.
29. Brent M. Heavner, “Liminality and Normative Whiteness: A Critical Reading of Poor White Trash,” Ohio Communication Journal 45 (2007): 72.
30. Anjali Gera Roy, “Translating Difference in Bend It Like Beckham,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4 (2006): 64.
31. Turner, From Ritual, 41.
32. Turner, From Ritual, 47.
33. Turner, From Ritual, 47.
34. Case, “Tracking the Vampire,” 6; Patrick Johnson, “Count Dracula and the Folkloric Vampire: Thirteen Comparisons,” Journal of Dracula Studies 3 (2001), http://www.blooferland.com/drc (accessed 15 March 2009).
35. Halberstam, “Skin Shows,” 21–2.
36. Halberstam, “Skin Shows,” 21–2.
37. Schopp, “Cruising the Alternatives,” 233–4.
38. See Jules Zanger, “Metaphor into Metonymy: The Vampire Next Door,” in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, ed. Joan Godon and Veronica Hollinger (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 17–26.
39. Montague Summers, The Vampire (New York: Dorset Press, 1991), 1–76; Dudley Wright, The Book of Vampires (Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1981), 1–34; Olga Hoyt, Lust for Blood: The Consuming Story of Vampires (Lanham, MD: Scarborough House, 1992), 21–41.
40. Zanger, “Metaphor into Metonymy,” 18.
41. Chris McGunnigle, “Root Canals: The Neutered Vampire and the Metamorphosis of Undead Metaphor,” Journal of Dracula Studies 4 (2002), http://www.blooferland.com/drc (accessed 15 March 2009); Margaret L. Carter, “The Vampire as Alien in Contemporary Fiction,” in Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, ed. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 27.
42. Foucault, Discipline, 184.
43. Foucault, Discipline, 170–94.
44. Giffney and Hird, “Queering the Non/Human,” 7–8.
45. Lindqvist, LTROI, 2.
46. Lindqvist, LTROI, 18.
47. Lindqvist, LTROI, 36.
48. Lindqvist, LTROI, 36.
49. Lindqvist, LTROI, emphasis mine.
50. Lindqvist, LTROI, emphasis mine.
51. Turner, Forest, 98.
52. Van Ham, “Reading Early Punk,” 323.
53. Lindqvist, LTROI, 170.
54. Robert E. Terrill, “Going Deep,” Southern Communication Journal 71 (2006): 165.
55. Robert E. Terrill, “Going Deep,” Southern Communication Journal 71 (2006): 272–3.
56. Robert E. Terrill, “Going Deep,” Southern Communication Journal 71 (2006), emphasis mine
57. Shauna M. MacDonald, “Leaky Performances: The Transformative Potential of Menstrual Leaks,” Women's Studies in Communication 30 (2007): 351.
58. Lindqvist, LTROI, 170.
59. Turner, Forest, 99.
60. Lindqvist, LTROI, 347.
61. Harold Garfinkel, “Passing and the Managed Achievement of Sex Status in an ‘Intersexed’ Person,” in The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (New York: Routledge, 2006), 62–5.
62. Turner, Forest, 98.
63. Turner, Forest, 98.; For a further discussion, see also Van Ham, “Reading Early Punk,” 324–5.
64. Lindqvist, LTROI, 57–8, 284.
65. Roy, “Translating Difference,” 64.
66. Lindqvist, LTROI, 289.
67. Turner, Forest, 97.
68. Lindqvist, LTROI, 351.
69. Lindqvist, LTROI, 351.
70. Lindqvist, LTROI, 353.
71. Lindqvist, LTROI, 353.
72. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., s.v. “Eunuch;” For an in-depth discussion on eunuchs, see Kathryn M. Ringrose, “Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium,” in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: Zone Books, 1993), 85–109; For a detailed and historical account of eunuchs, see Piotr O. Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History, trans. John A. Broadwin and Shelley L. Frisch (Princeton, NJ: Marcus Wiener, 2001).
73. The idea of a “first read” refers to R. Anthony Slagle's notion of a dominant reading. In essence, a first read reflects a hegemonic (dominant, heterosexist), unquestioned reading of a cultural text. For further influence of dominant versus subversive readings of a text, see Alexander Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 1–16.
74. In R. Anthony Slagle's view, a second read can be viewed as an oppositional reading.
75. Charles E. Morris III, “Contextual Twilight/Critical Liminality: J. M. Barrie's Courage at St. Andrews, 1922,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 (1996): 220.
76. Slagle, “In Defense of Queer Nation.” Similarly, for a “postidentity politic,” see Steven Seidman, “Identity and Politics in a ‘Postmodern’ Gay Culture: Some Historical and Conceptual Notes,” in Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory, ed. Michael Warner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 111.
77. Hess, “Code Switching,” 6.
78. Lindqvist, LTROI, 433.
79. Lindqvist, LTROI, 220.
80. Lindqvist, LTROI, 410–1.
81. Lindqvist, LTROI, 383.
82. Lindqvist, LTROI, 435.
83. Morris, “Contextual Twilight,” 196.
84. Jones, “Queer Heterotopias.”
85. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 101.