the hierarchy of fantasy

So we just finished watching Underworld on DVD tonight -- fully enjoyable for its genre. Sort of Matrix + Lost Boys + The Hunger + X-Men -- stylish and stylized battles between vampires and lycans (werewolves). Easy on the eyes (Kate Beckinsdale in hypertight leathers) and on the ears (the industrial soundtrack not quite as cool as Bauhaus in the Hunger, but good).
In this film, vampires are the aristocrats who formerly had the Lycans enslaved. Centuries of Lycan rebellion and warfare ensued after a cross-species romance was forbidden and punished. Now, a hapless human gets caught in the battle...
And of course, it's the vampires who are cool, sexy Eurotrash Goths. The werewolves (when they are not transformed) look like Eastern European mobsters. And there are no female Lycans shown in the movie -- but plenty of sexy vampire babes... And it's nearly always that way -- in Stoker's Dracula, and J.S. LeFanu's Carmilla (a great lesbian vampire story published in 1871-2 that inspired Stoker as he planned his novel), vampires are sexy. Their power over their victims is seductive, enthralling -- thus Stoker's novel so easily melds with our society's concerns about invasion, infection, and the blurring of social boundaries. My students are usually shocked when reading Stoker's Dracula to realize his Dracula is old and kind of repulsive -- our film versions are usually so slick and suave.

Most fantasy worlds have similar structures -- vampires are sexy-cool, werewolves are not; elves are cool, dwarves and hobbits are not. Etc. It's the same old idealization of the upper classes, remapped. (ever seen a fat elf or vampire?) It's worth remembering that most of us would have been dwarf-equivalents in previous centuries...

At its best, SF/fantasy offers new ways of thinking about social structures, gender categories, the meaning of intelligence. But the versions most popular in our current culture rely on the same old binaries. I'm as susceptible as the next viewer -- who wouldn't want to be a cool elusive elf? Go ahead, get your own Crappy Little Elf Name from Rum & Monkey. I'm Tealeaf Horsebeard. That's Mistress Tealeaf, to you...