Vampires and Violets
Review by Evelyn C. Leeper, submitted on 01-Jan-1994

VAMPIRES AND VIOLETS by Andrea Weiss Penguin, ISBN 0-14-023100-5, 1993, 184pp, US$12.50. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper

Subtitled "Lesbians in Film," this work is obviously written for the academic audience. Though its lengthy discussion of female vampire films might initially attract a less intellectual audience (I admit I was first interested in it because someone said it contained a long section on Hammer's vampire films), passages such as "One way the narrative structure enforces these cultural myths is by closing down the range of possible, alternative interpretations that spectators can read from the film" are likely to warn off the casual reader who was expecting another book on horror films aimed at the teenage reader. And in fact the vampire chapter is only one part of VAMPIRES AND VIOLETS, which begins with a look at the portrayal of lesbians in the silent and early sound cinema, continues through the 1930s (focusing primarily on Dietrich and Garbo), post-World- War-II films, and art and independent lesbian cinema.

Not surprisingly, many of Weiss's observations and interpretations deal with the role of women in general in film. She frequently discusses the intent of the studio to attract and please the male (heterosexual) viewer while also pointing out the director's or female actor's or even lesbian viewer's attempts to subvert this intent. Dietrich in MOROCCO may dress in a tuxedo and kiss a female nightclub patron as part of her character's attempt to seduce a man, but viewers can also read the kiss as being the real Dietrich momentarily showing through her character.

The basic text for people interested in gay and lesbian images in film remains Vito Russo's CELLULOID CLOSET. (And indeed Weiss frequently quotes Russo and gives him special acknowledgement.) But Russo's book deals more with the portrayal of male homosexuality in film than female. For example, Dietrich gets two sentences in Russo's 276-page book versus a dozen pages as well as additional mentions in Weiss's 180-page one. This is due more likely to the dearth of archival material on films with female leads than to bias on Russo's part. (Weiss discusses some of the difficulties she had in viewing some of the films, or in finding subsidiary material, so this is not unlikely.) On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that Russo would be more likely subconsciously to write about the films he was most familiar with, and those would be those dealing with male homosexuality. (The basic text on vampires in Hammer's films, by the way, would be David Pirie's HERITAGE OF HORROR.)

VAMPIRES AND VIOLETS is a book that will appeal only to a specialized niche audience, and for its audience it serves its purpose moderately well, although I take exception with many of Weiss's conclusions. For example, she says that a scene from THE VAMPIRE LOVERS is "a perfect example of male voyeurism and, ultimately, male sadistic impulses." Why? Well, because "at the moment when the lesbian vampire is about to seduce her victim for the first time, her image is rendered less threatening: it is visually fragmented onto different spatial planes through the framing of the foreground and mirror images. This symbolic dismemberment of her body foreshadows her eventual destruction by the film's end." While I agree that the use of showing a vampire reflected in a mirror runs contrary to vampire lore, I suspect its use here was because Hammer felt that showing a woman's breasts in a mirror would be less likely to cause problems with the censors--a sort of distancing effect.

There are no amazing new insights or revelations here. Weiss chooses to analyze a few films in detail rather than to provide a list of films with lesbian images. She succeeds in that, I believe, but in doing so does not write for the masses.

%T Vampires and Violets
%A Andrea Weiss
%C New York
%D 1993
%I Penguin
%O trade paperback, US$12.50 [1992]
%G ISBN 0-14-023100-5
%P 184pp