Why Bisexual Vampires Suck

It’s time to bare my fangs and reveal a major pet peeve of mine: bisexual vampires.

They used to be all the rage in movies such as Vampire Lovers, The Forsaken, The Brotherhood, Blacula, Interview with the Vampire, Fright Night, The Lair of the White Worm, The Hunger, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Lost Boys (arguably), and countless Hammer horror films in the 1970s.

It’s kind of impressive when you think about all the major leading men who were willing to play at least strongly implied bisexuality – Tom Cruise (1994), Brad Pitt (1994), David Bowie (1983), Kiefer Sutherland (1987) – just as long as their characters were vampires when they did it.

Hell, it’s arguable that, with 1960’s Blood and Roses, we had bisexual (or lesbian) vampires in movies even before we had actual on-screen lesbians, in The Children’s Hour, which came out a year later.

Blood and Roses (1960)

On TV, we’ve had just as many bisexual vampires, on shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Xena: Warrior Princess (in “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” Xena and Gabrielle finally start to get it on – but only because Gabrielle’s been turned into a decadent member of the undead who will clearly sleep with anything and anyone!).

Do I like a lot of these movies and TV shows? Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that, for all the talk about the vampire genre being “subversive,” the bisexual vampire trope subtly communicated to viewers the most conventional message possible: namely, that gay – and especially bisexual – people are amoral hedonists who hide in shadows attempting to prey on unsuspecting victims, who they will destroy in the end if they are not first mercilessly defeated. Either that or we’re weary moral relativists, the ultimate elitists, scorning the petty concerns of the common man, and hell-bent on destroying the pillars of “normal” society.

No, seriously.

Let's face it. Bisexuality – usually a kiss between two women – has long been used to communicate to an audience the idea that someone or some group is completely free from any morals whatsoever: that the brakes are off and animal lust has been allowed to run completely wild. This is how Supernatural, Xena, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Caprica have all indicated that their main characters have crossed over into some truly anarchical, hedonistic realm. (Why is it usually a kiss between women? Men kissing is apparently too decadent even for hedonists. They have to have some standards, after all.)

Anyway, vampires are just one manifestation of this old, depressing trend. But this idea that vampires wantonly seduce innocents, desiring new victims every night? It’s just about the most pernicious stereotype about bisexual people there is.

Despite all the current talk about bisexual invisibility, bisexuals haven’t really been all that invisible in movies and on TV – they’ve just usually been portrayed as vampires!

Why more people haven’t been more upset by this, I do not know. But I’ll run down the arguments that I heard from people whenever I’d go off about yet another bisexual vampire:

(1) Sure, they’re bisexual vampires, but hey, visibility is visibility! Besides, if we want to be truly equal, we can’t always be the hero.

To which I say: we were never the hero. Seriously, can you think of one mainstream vampire project ever where there’s an outright, non-morally-ambiguous gay or bisexual hero? They all have them, they're just never gay.

And when you’ve got an entire genre when virtually the only time gay or bisexual characters appear is as hedonistic villains or at least morally ambiguous figures of weary elitism – characters with qualities that just happen to reinforce big stereotypes about our community – that’s pretty much the opposite of visibility.

Next Page! The two other "pro-bisexual vampire" arguments!