In essays on the subject of centricity, I've most often used the image of a geometrical circle, which, as I explained here, owes someth...
So this standard "jungle hero meets city ruled by women" sports not one but three suspicious names:
The culture itself is named NESBO...
The queen is named SOPHO (like "Sappho")...
And there's a minor character named LEBA.
Whoever was writing under the Quality Comics "house name" John Charles apparently had a bee up his bonnet-- and it wasn't a drone...
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction cannot so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.--Herman Melville, BILLY BUDD.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
After not having read Sheridan Le Fanu's CARMILLA in many years, I gave it a shot again last year, and found the novella underwhelming. Its status as "the first major lesbian vampire story" seemed dubious, though there's no doubt that exploitative film adaptations pursued that angle. In the story proper, though, the relationship between the vampiress and her victim Laura is strictly one-way. Laura doesn't even know what to make of Carmilla's weird claims of some shared destiny between the two of them. The closest the young woman comes to acknowledging some erotic fixation on Carmilla's part is that she briefly thinks about book-romances (possibly Byron's DON JUAN?) in which a "boyish lover" pretends to be female to gain access to a beloved. Yet Laura quickly dismisses that possibility, rationalizing that Carmilla's constant "languor" is "quite incompatible with a masculine system." Laura can hardly be a consenting partner in a lesbian affair if she can't even conceive of the possibility of girl-on-girl love. At most CARMILLA might rank as the first vampire story about lesbian rape.
However, on a more recent re-reading. I found myself interpreting the novella along lines similar to Melville's cited quote about "unfinished narration." In marked contrast to the more melodramatic vampire-novels, ranging from the 1847 VARNEY THE VAMPIRE to the 1897 DRACULA, CARMILLA feels very like a 20th-century modernist work, in love with ambiguity and "ragged edges."
One great ambiguity in the novella is that Carmilla seems to be a member of some strange network that has insinuated itself into human circles. This stands in contrast to both Varney and Dracula, who operate alone except for a few minions. But one never knows the nature of the vampire network. Numerous clues lead the reader to the discovery that Carmilla, languorous guest of Laura and her unnamed father, is Mircalla Karnstein, who has existed as an unholy bloodsucker since her death a hundred years earlier. But what about the other unnamed associates? One, the "Comtesse" who claims to be the mother of Carmilla in her various incarnations, may be a vampire herself, and may also be one of the vanished Karnsteins, whose castle stands in ruins at the start of the novella. Whoever the Comtesse is, she has resources enough to arrange the carriage that brings Carmilla to the estate where Laura lives. But who is the "hideous black man" in a turban whom Laura's governess sees inside the carriage? Similarly, when General Spielsdorf narrates the story as to how he lost his precious ward to the girlish-looking vampire-- at that time, using the name "Millarca"-- he mentions a "deathly pale" carriage driver working for the Comtesse. The later example of DRACULA invites the idea of human servants to a clutch of vampires. Yet Le Fanu proffers none of the copious explanations seen in Stoker.
How does Carmilla operate as an undead spirit? She first appears in Laura's bedroom when the latter is a girl of six. Little Laura sees the full-grown Carmilla, and feels something pierce her breast, though no wound eventuates. Then apparently Carmilla makes some chimerical decision not to trouble Laura again until the latter turns sixteen. Near the novella's conclusion, Baron Vordenburg-- Le Fanu's anticipation of Doctor Van Helsing-- claims that though vampires usually exsanguinate their victims right away, sometimes they make continued visits to a victim, as with "the gradual approaches of an artful courtship." All of the victims who are quickly slain by the vampiress are described as female. So was Le Fanu implying, very covertly, that Carmilla was a lesbian who only liked female prey? That would be a logical conclusion. But Le Fanu's characters never comment on the apparent preference, and Carmilla herself doesn't make even a passing comment on the male of the species. To be sure, Laura, living in a pre-lapsarian isolation from society, makes no comments on masculine charms either, aside from displaying a basic knowledge as to how men usually differ from women. But though Laura escapes either losing her life or becoming an undead herself, the novella certainly does not end with any ringing endorsement of the Daughters of Lesbos, and one never knows what Le Fanu thinks about the subject.
There are a lot of other "ragged edges" in CARMILLA, but I'll wind up with the matter of Carmilla's powers, contrasting Le Fanu's approach to Stoker's. DRACULA's opening chapters make the vampire's powers seem endless, but roughly halfway through the book, Van Helsing codifies all of the things vampires can and cannot do. The explications in the last couple of chapters of CARMILLA leave most questions unanswered. Why, when preying on Laura and on Spielsdorf's ward, does Carmilla manifests as a "sooty black thing," and yet as herself as well? Why does Laura manifest a wound from Carmilla's attentions when she's sixteen, but not when she's six? Carmilla is seen in her grave at the Karnstein ruins at the novel's end, but how did she get there? When Laura and her father leave their home, the father makes an excuse to Carmilla that they plan to go an errand. and he invites Carmilla to join them later for a picnic "in the ruined castle." The reader doesn't know how much the father knows at that point-- only that he's held some unreported conversations with the local doctor-- but one would think that any mention of the Karnstein ruins would keep Carmilla away from there. Instead, she makes a flagrant appearance there, before the eyes of Laura, her father and Spielsdorf. She easily thwarts Spielsdorf when he attacks her with an axe, but then, instead of attacking the three people capable of killing her, she simply vanishes. Does she take refuge in her grave because she thinks they can't find her there? Or-- is it possible that she practices bilocation? Perhaps the Carmilla at Laura's home is a magical double of the body that's confined to the grave, and only the spirit can leave, not the actual body-- which might one reason the non-physical form morphs into a shadow-creature.
So my verdict is that as a lesbian novel, CARMILLA is no great shakes. But as a horror story devoted to the utter unknowability of the twilight domain beyond the world of the living, it outstrips most if not all other vampire novels.
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Years ago, when I reviewed most of the James Bond movies for my NUM blog, I reread all of the books to compare whatever content they held in common with the films. I don’t plan to blog reviews of all of the books, but I decided to do so for GOLDFINGER, given that it’s arguably the most iconic of the Bond novels.
As others have observed, the seventh book in the series continued to build on Fleming’s penchant for larger-than-life villains, as seen in the previous DOCTOR NO and the future books involving SPECTRE mastermind Blofeld. To be sure, Mister Big, Hugo Drax and Rosa Klebb are similarly outsized, particularly Drax, who plotted to drop an explosive missile on London. But Fleming did start making slightly greater use of quasi-SF technology in both DOCTOR NO and GOLDFINGER: a jamming device in the first and a miniature atom bomb in the latter. That said, GOLDFINGER is not really “science fiction” despite the small A-bomb that the villain wishes to use to crack Fort Knox. The 1964 movie seems more in the SF-vein when its script substitutes a big laser for the bomb. The GOLDFINGER film also presented audiences with their first sight of a “spy car” outfitted with outlandish devices, whereas in the book Bond’s only special weapons are a pair of folding knives hidden in his shoe-soles. Between the knives, the A-bomb and Goldfinger’s insane plot to rob the U.S. gold depository, the novel is, like most of Fleming’s Bond books, purely uncanny in phenomenality.
The movie-depiction of Goldfinger’s super-villainy is so persuasive that it’s fascinating to note that none of the book’s villainy tropes appear in the first half. Fleming spends almost a hundred pages establishing the fragmentary background of Auric Goldfinger, a short man with seemingly mismatched body parts (perhaps reflecting a multi-ethnic background, as official record says he’s Latvian though his name suggests European Jew). All of the things viewers cherish in the movie—the “golden girl” murder of Tilly Masterson, Oddjob and his fatal bowler hat, Pussy Galore and the robbing of Fort Knox—are confined to the book’s second half. Early on, the only bizarre thing about the villain—reputedly the richest man in England—is that he has a special affection for gold that goes beyond simply smuggling it for profit. One suspects, though Fleming does not admit, that Goldfinger may have assumed one or both of his official names as emblems of his gold-fascination. Fleming doesn’t really create a psychology for Goldfinger beyond an unconvincing short man’s inferiority complex. However, Bond is a more rounded character despite the problematic aspects of his prejudices.
Though many critics of Bond overstate the case regarding the character’s racism and sexism, GOLDFINGER provides considerable grist for both mills. To some extent the villain with the Jewish-sounding name is not so much a stereotype of Jewry as he is that of a gauche non-British foreigner. Nonetheless, I accept the trenchant argument of Jacqueline Friedman in IAN FLEMING’S INCREDIBLE CREATION that social myths about Jewishness inform the character. Friedman observes that even if readers don’t believe the myth of the money-hungry Jew, the robbing of Fort Knox will still seem persuasive on an emotional level (“Doesn’t every Jew want all the money in the world?”) Far less subliminal is Fleming’s portrait of the villain’s Korean henchmen, largely represented by Oddjob, who dines on cats as delicacies and can barely speak due to a cleft palate. Oddjob appears in the wake of Fleming’s Doctor No—an urbane and intellectual super-fiend loosely modeled on Rohmer’s Fu Manchu (though clearly no match for the real thing). But Koreans had no major myths in the European consciousness, and so Oddjob seems no more than a rationalized ogre. There is one moment in which Bond attempts to respond to the Korean servant in human terms, though. In one scene, Goldfinger orders Oddjob to demonstrate his mastery of karate for Bond’s benefit by smashing up furniture. Bond is honestly amazed by such incredible skill, and the agent puts out his hand to shake, in order to salute the Korean’s mastery. Goldfinger warns his henchman to mind his strength as the two shake hands, implying that Oddjob is nothing more than a conscienceless brute who would enjoy maiming victims for amusement. It’s only after incidents like this that Bond makes a statement about the animal-like nature of all Koreans.
The case for Bondian sexism doesn’t stem this time from any sexual conquests with bizarre names like “Plenty O’Toole.” The hero has a consensual hookup with the villain’s aide Tilly Masterson and doesn’t find out for several chapters that Goldfinger has murdered her. The source for this information is Tilly’s vengeful sister Jill, but if the male reader was expecting Bond to score again with a second sister, Fleming blocks his hero’s conquest by making Jill a lesbian. Through the protagonist’s thoughts, Fleming offers his scornful opinion of homosexuality by deeming it “confused,” though the author may have introduced this element in part to spoof Bond’s lady-killing image. Jill is far more taken by Goldfinger’s lady crook ally Pussy Galore, though the two women never really cross paths and Jill dies in a foolish attempt to appeal to Pussy’s protection. I presume that later generations of lesbians have duly scorned Fleming’s psychologizing, particularly his analysis that the only reason Pussy turns lavender is because in her youth she was raped by her uncle. Pussy surrenders to Bond’s charms in the end, but the circumstances aren’t as clear a “win” for the forces of heterosexuality as they are in the 1964 movie. At the book’s conclusion, it seems evident that Pussy aids Bond against Goldfinger and Oddjob largely to save herself and to get in good with the law, so her comment to Bond that she likes him because “I never met a man before” may not be the whole truth. In any case, Fleming is never less than truthful in stating that hetero men may consider lesbians a challenge, and by putting that challenge into dramatic form, the author managed to make Pussy one of the most mythic lesbians in fiction, even as Goldfinger is one of the most mythic villains.
I tend to think that the "sexual conquest" scene in the movie is like many you saw throughout the history of sound cinema, and maybe silent as well (Rudolf Valentino anyone). The woman resists not because she's unwilling to have sex, but as a challenge to the man, defying him, as it were, to make herself seem more enticing. One can go back and forth on whether this trope is based on anything in real life-- but even if everyone agreed that it's pure fantasy, it's been grabbing both male and female audiences for decades. Check out 1942's BLACK SWAN. Power kisses Maureen O'Hara, and belts her when she bites him. Toxic masculinity, right? Well, despite his violence he keeps trying to conquer her with charm-- to which she responds, at least once, by cracking his head with a rock. She only relents when he acts heroically to save her and foil the villains.
Obviously it's a little different with Pussy Galore, even if her lesbianism in the film is less overt than in the book. I could be wrong, but I don't think the book has a scene in which Bond wakes up and beholds Pussy-- who is, incidentally, smiling coquettishly at him, rather than scorning him as a filthy breeder. In the book Pussy's not too interested in Bond until she switches sides to save herself some jail time, and at the very end she claims she turned lesbian because her uncle raped her and so she never knew what a "real man" was like. That tidbit probably didn't influence the movie, which is more in the line of sexual conquest fantasies from books and movies-- which is something the filmmakers knew would sell the movie better.
ENSEMBLES ASSEMBLE established simply that it is possible for a work to possess two or more "focal presences," who may work as a team (the two alleged vampires in 1935's MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, various superhero groups) or may be utterly opposed (1934's THE BLACK CAT, 1968's WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS). The latter is an important point in that the concept of "mortal enemies" pervades most if not all literary genres in one way or another. Usually either a "hero" or a "villain" alone is the focal presence, just as one sees with the examples from Haggard: the "heroic" Allen Quatermain and the "villainous" She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.On some occasions, the "centric will" may seem to emphasize the protagonist's opponent more than the protagonist-- as with the Batman tale "Laugh, Town, Laugh"-- and yet, in terms of the way the story is presented, it's still a Batman story, not a Joker story. But then, most if not all Batman stories follow the exothelic pattern. while all three of the horror-movies referenced above are endothelic: they seek to represent the nature of willing subjects that seem to be partly or fully negative with respect to the community within each narrative. All of the focal characters in these movies are "monsters," even though the "two alleged vampires" of MARK OF THE VAMPIRE are at the film's end revealed to be actors in costume, hired to embody the dark fantasies of the story's actual villain.