halloween – Ashley ML Guajardo

Halloween is a Sexy Holiday

All I really want to say in this post is in the title, but I suppose that is too short and I suppose most of you will have clicked on this link as you settle into your desk with a steaming [witches’] brew by your side, so the least I can do is give you a little more to read during this spooooky Halloween week, eh? Also, given my previous two posts about the (un)erotic nature of vampires and the very erotic nature of werewolves, I feel a weird compulsion to round out the month. So… just humour me.

pumpkinlady — Candy-beggers can be truly terrifying. Photo sourced by evilbloggerlady and posted on BuzzFeed, where there is a whole list of terrifying old costumes.

I don’t think saying Halloween is a sexy holiday is necessarily a difficult argument to make because, unless you are pagan or participate in the Christian appropriation of pagan holidays, it is pretty obviously about dressing up and hooking up. Well, if you are a grown up, that is. I suppose if you have children and live in a country which participates in Trick-or-Treating, you’re probably somewhat forced into a rather unsexy ritual of candy-begging which has its own type of associated fun.

meangirls — “In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” Mean Girls, 2004

For those of us childless-adults, the holiday, whether we like it or not, becomes much more of a fertility ritual. Depending on social group or outing or gender, spooky costumes can be rare, replaced by much more revealing fare. In fact, the amount of skin on display prompted American journalist Dan Savage to compare Halloween to a straight pride festival.

Savage’s article (linked above) is convincing and well worth the read, but not immune from critique. The crux of his argument relies on our acceptance of the fact there should be a straight pride- a very contentious idea indeed. However, I tip my hat to Savage in that he doesn’t attempt some well-intentioned-but-offensive, apologist, ‘we will only truly be equal when…’ statement, but rather appeals to the reader’s sense of pure hedonism. He writes:

You move through life thinking about sex, constantly but keenly aware that social convention requires you to act as if sex were the last thing on your mind. Exhausting, isn’t it? It makes you long for moments when you can let it all hang out, when you can violate the social taboos you honor most of the rest of time, when you can be the piece of meat you are and treat other people like the pieces of meat they are.

Whilst I won’t go as far as to start calling the 31st of October Heteroween, nor will I ever argue for a straight pride in any context because I believe straight people have many opportunities in daily life to seek out and express affection, I do think there is a nugget to be gleaned from Savage’s argument. Halloween functions like Mardi Gras, Carnival, Fasching, and any number of other holidays wherein people are encouraged to act mischievous, overindulge in food and drink, and flaunt their ‘pieces of meat’. It is an opportunity for socially-sanctioned dark play and it can feel as liberating as dancing half naked on a float at Pride… That is, if you find dancing half naked on a float at Pride to be liberating. 😉

255px-Slick_Chicks_Halloween_1947 — Four contestants in the Halloween Slick Chick beauty contest in Anaheim, California, 1947. Halloween has been sexy (for women) for quite a while.

Actually, I take issue with the term ‘liberating’. Liberating implies some kind of long term, freeing effect which I don’t necessarily think can be gained from booty-shakin’ on top of papier mâché. Doesn’t mean it isn’t fun or pleasurable though. But aside from pointing out the hedonistic aspects of the holiday, the Dan Savage article also does a good job of pointing out its historical significance for the LGBT community. He writes:

Back in the bad old days—pre-Stonewall, pre-pride-parades, pre-presidential-gay-history- month-proclamations—Halloween was the gay holiday. It was the one night of the year when you could leave the house in leather or feathers without attracting the attentions of the police.

800px-Goth-p1020641 — Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr

To this argument I want to add that Halloween is also the goth holiday. It is often called ‘goth Christmas’ because it is the one day a year where those who prefer black, leather, corsets, make up, and other chosen trappings of the subculture can also leave the house without attracting unwanted attention. So the idea that Halloween is both the gay holiday and the goth holiday makes sense. Both are subcultures which wear their sexuality on their sleeve- or rather incorporate sexual symbols into their dress for special occasions. Particularly for goths, the leather, zips, chains, and corsets evocative of bondage and fetish gear evoke both the sexy and spooky. And both are threatening to how sexuality should be expressed in daily life- which is usually not at all.

Hope you all have a wonderfully sexy Halloween. Until next time,

Ashley

The Erotic Nature of Werewolves (and Also Witches)

As a companion piece to my last post about the unerotic nature of vampires, and because I’ll take any excuse to write about spooky things in October, I decided to write about werewolves… but then I got distracted and wrote about witches also. Deal with it. On the topic of werewolves, however, I have to say that once again I think the World of Darkness got it right. Of all the creepy-crawlies and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, werewolves should be the most sexually active and perhaps by extension the sexiest.

330px-Bronsplåt_pressbleck_öland_vendeltid — Vendel era bronze plate found on Öland, Sweden. Public domain.

Although the mythos surrounding werewolves tends to vary by region, most European accounts centre on man-turned-beast narratives. The Norse Úlfhéðnar, pictured left, is (from my feeble understanding) a variation on the berserker. The central idea being that a warrior wears the pelt of an animal, in this case a wolf, and then channels that animal’s spirit into their body during the heat of battle. The ferocity of the wolf’s teeth and claws was meant to come out through the berserker’s shield and axe and they were meant to feel no pain until battle had ended. If the purpose of the pelt was to turn warrior into beast on the battlefield, who’s to say it wouldn’t turn them into animals in other, more domestic locations?

Speaking of domestic locations, I recently learned of a more recent werewolf legend in Dogtown, Massachusetts. Now, when I say ‘learned’, what I actually mean is ‘saw-on-a-dodgy-Animal-Planet-reality-show’. The show features interviews with pet owners who think their house is haunted and that their pets can see the spirits doing the haunting. It is called The Haunted and no, I am not kidding.

My poor taste in television aside, this town has reportedly had werewolves lurking in its moors since the mid 1800s. After the War of 1812, the widows of soldiers and sailors who never returned bought dogs for protection and company. Due to a series of unfortunate events, farmers and assorted businesses moved away from the area. When the widows eventually died, the dogs were left to roam feral, giving way to sightings of werewolves in the nearby forests and assorted superstition.

dogsoldiers — Dogs… Soldiers… Dog Soldiers!

This information, admittedly coming from a 30 second clip on a show about pets who see dead people, didn’t seem to make sense to me. If dogs go feral, which seems plausible, why would they be mistaken for werewolves and not just wolves? Somewhere deep in my brain I remembered reading something about the Malleus Maleficarum. Weren’t the women accused of witchcraft in the 16-17th centuries usually accused of sleeping with beasts? And weren’t most of the women accused of witchcraft also widows? As it turns out, I remembered correct. In the article ‘Women and Witches: Patterns of Analysis‘ Clarke Garrett details how the paradoxical role of women as the least valued and most important member of a household gave way to witch trials.

J._Sprenger_and_H._Institutoris,_Malleus_maleficarum._Wellcome_L0000980 — “J. Sprenger and H. Institutoris, Malleus maleficarum. Wellcome L0000980” by http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/9b/44/a3099ffc223cb9f244846af2909a.jpg

In the article, Garrett notes how the role of women has traditionally been ‘grubby’. Our domestic domain has traditionally dealt with birth (and all the weird fluids that come out of the process), death, illness and feces. In addition to the whole pregnancy thing, as primary caregivers, women have typically had the dirtiest jobs to do. And yet we are meant to be the (morally) cleanest. The reputation of a family, at least traditionally, rests on the behaviour of the women in the house. This tandems with the traditional economic dependence of women on men to leave widows, like those in historic Dogtown and Salem during the Witch Trials, in a precarious position. Widows, at least in the pre-modern United States, were required to rely on the charity of outsiders. Before pensions, if the primary bread-winner died, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice. You begged or you starved.

Witches_going_to_their_Sabbath_(1878),_by_Luis_Ricardo_Falero — “Witches going to their Sabbath (1878), by Luis Ricardo Falero” by Luis Ricardo Falero – http://www.artrenewal.org. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

How do you refuse a poor widow charity if you are living in Puritan New England? Why, you call them a witch… or you accuse them of keeping werewolf ‘companions’ *wink wink, nudge nudge*. The Malleus Maleficarum, which you can easily find for free-or-almost-free download (but be aware of differences in translation), is full of references to women’s wicked and lustful nature. Women deny God and the Holy texts because we are, at the very core of our beings, lustful and doubtful. This leads us to consort with the devil, follow the Dark Lord’s teachings, tempt innocent men to lay with us, etc, etc. In the Witch Hammer’s light, the curious case of Dogtown seems a lot clearer, no?

Oh, and before I change topic, according to the Maleficarum’s Wiki page, men could also be witches, but it was rare. The most common form of male witch was a sorcerer-archer, which sounds more like a shitty D&D multi-class than something to burn someone at the stake over.

Okay, back to my original point. If we were to have a hierarchy of the sexiest supernatural creatures, werewolves would be at the top of the list. Logically speaking, of course. Why would we need such a list? FOR SCIENCE! Clearly! Ahem, but logically speaking, the animalistic nature of werewolves would probably make them the most prone to outbursts of lust. Unless, of course, you buy into the argument presented by the Malleus Maleficarum and want to argue that women are by their nature prone to lust and devil worship. Even if we skirt around the ol’ witch hammer, folkloric representations of witches tend to focus on hermit-chic rather than the sexy side of forest-dwelling.

Stay tuned for my final Halloween post in a couple weeks’ time in which I’ll talk about why Halloween, in its modern form, is a sexy holiday.

Until next time,

Ashley

The (Un)Erotic Nature of Vampires

It is about that time of year again. The air is crisp, the leaves are falling, and I have an insatiable urge to listen to ‘Fall Children’ off AFI’s All Hallows EP. I also have an urge to begin my annual re-play of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. It is tradition. And, given the law of the internet, because I mentioned it you probably want to go re-play it too. It’s okay. Go play. I’ll still be here when you forget you haven’t installed any of the fan-created patches and run into one of the game’s many glitches.

Burne-Jones-le-Vampire — The Vampire, by Philip Burne-Jones, 1897

Anyway, as the title of this post suggests, we’re here to talk about how gross vampires are. I mean, take the banner image above. The silhouette of the titular character from F. W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu (1922) looks like Mr. Burns having a quiet evening at home. So how do we go from that image to the one on the left? How do we go from gross monstrosity to erotic companion? Well, this post wasn’t meant to be about how I apply my makeup in the morning, but hey oooo! Okay, I’ll stop with the jokes. This is a blog post. This is serious! (It really isn’t).

There is a temptation here to blame contemporary portrayals of vampires in the media. As tempting as it is to climb aboard the “I hate Twilight” bandwagon, there’s little merit in doing so. Vampires have been sexy for quite some time, but it is usually a dangerous or forbidden type of sexy. I think the main reason people take issue with the sexiness of Twilight, aside from the creepy-stalker love story, is the lack of danger. Edward Cullen is to vampires as Judd Nelson circa The Breakfast Club is to the bad boy archetype. It just doesn’t strike the same erotic chords as the truly forbidden.

1277px-VampireBat2010 — I suppose we could add a third forbidden sexuality: zoophilia?

Vampires touch on two forbidden types of sexuality- and by forbidden I mean they have made guest appearances in the DSM from time-to-time. Let’s start with the obvious: necrophilia. Because their biological functions have ceased, any sexual interaction with a vampire is by default an act of necrophilia- right? Maybe you could argue that because they can consent, it doesn’t count… but, whatever. They lack a pulse. Which, coincidentally raises other questions about how sex with a vampire might function. How does their blood pump to the areas it needs to facilitate intercourse? And surely all their orifices are like dried shoe leather? In World of Darkness games they can spend blood points, which makes sense, but in other mythos…

330px-Carmilla — “Carmilla” by D. H. Friston, 1872, from The Dark Blue has some Sapphic connotations.

Okay, I won’t pursue that line of logic any further. Instead, let’s move onto the big one: homosexuality. Harry Benshoff (2004) notes how in cinema the homoeroticism of interviewed vampires Lestat and Louis are no accident, nor is the strained relationship between the Frog Brother’s macho heterosexuality and the queer-punk aesthetic of the titular Lost Boys. In both instances, the queerness of the on-screen vampires is seen as intrinsic to their nature. They are thirsty and, as contemporary slang use of the term helpfully points out, only blood (or any other bodily fluid) will satisfy them. The behaviour of vampires… prowling the night for victims, exchanging fluids, leaving some with an incurable and fatal disease… sounds like an all-too-familiar rhetoric from the Christian right which warns of the dangers of predatory homosexuals, no?

Lilith_(John_Collier_painting) — Lilith (1892), by John Collier. The mother of vampires also provides a near-perfect image of the fear of women’s unbridled sexuality.

The allegory of vampirism and homosexuality is taken to an almost literal level by Charlaine Harris in her Sookie Stackhouse novels (which were the inspiration for the HBO programme True Blood). As Lisa A King (2012) writes, the symbolism of vampires and other supernaturals announcing their true natures and then being shunned, attacked, even murdered is unfortunately not a terribly different narrative from many LGBTQ coming out stories. Hell, its not a terribly different narrative from many women I know who dare to have sex for purposes other than reproduction. Women’s sexuality is something which should be regulated and controlled by doctors, priests, husbands, fathers, and even brothers or all hell will break loose, right? I mean, surely this is why access to birth control is still a struggle in the USA, right? Ahem, *gets off soapbox and stores it away for winter*.

4085143757_114ba3d613 — The beauty of death as told by nature.

So far I have prattled on mostly about how vampires are erotic, which isn’t actually what I had set out to do. In fact, it is the opposite, but seemingly in the process of trying to work out my argument I might’ve convinced myself. Vampires can be erotic, but only if we are willing to accept that death is beautiful.

Edvard_Munch_-_Vampire_(1895)_-_Google_Art_Project — Vampyren, “The Vampire”, by Edvard Munch

I think, and I think goth culture can attest to this, that some people find something about death to be romantic. Or perhaps it is that we want to find something beautiful in death to lessen the pain of loss. In fact, one of my favourite film quotes of all time comes from a vampire and makes this point beautifully. In the 1994 film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, Brad Pitt’s character Louis de Pointe du Lac opens the film with a narrative about his loss of wife and child. In a cold, reflective and monotone voice he recounts his coping strategies of over indulgence and intoxication before coming to the conclusion that, “Most of all, I longed for death. I know that now. I invited it. A release from the pain of living.”

In the vampire mythos, the loss of life brings with it a loss of life’s inhibitions. This combines with eternal youth and an eternal hunger which makes for a potent and alluring cocktail for some of us who can see the beauty in loss. Even if it might actually be necrophilia.

Until next time,

Ashley