Analysis of Film Transylvania under the Lens Alexander Dotys Queerness - Essay Example

One of the recent films that easily and best represents Doty’s queer theory is the animation film Hotel Transylvania Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky.  The film became queer because a movie along with its characters is supposed to be queer and scary but the movie presented it as non-threatening, mainstream, and to some extent, even romantic.  The rendition of the film is the reverse of Doty’s assertion that sometimes what is considered a normal rendition of a film can be the most queer of all.

The film dislodged the viewer's traditional concept of supernatural entities.  For example, Dracula has a daughter who wants to be friends with humans and runs a hotel for monsters.  Transylvania in this film is a hotel and not the regular impression of an old scary castle.  Werewolves and vampires are also relatives (Daughter Mavic called Wayne and Wanda as aunt and uncle) instead of being mortal enemies.  Frankenstein has a wife and above all, it is the humans who are in fact “monstrous” that they should be scared of.  And lastly, monsters love to party.  It also talks about sexuality only not in the queerness of homosexuality but rather the emerging sexual drive of a teenage vampire that put normalcy in an otherwise abnormal character of a vampire.  

Perhaps the biggest queerness of the film was the reversal of roles between humans and monsters (vampires, werewolves, Big Foot, mummy).  The supposed culturally marginal, in Doty’s words (4) became the dominant culture and the dominant culture became marginalized.  From the point of view of the monsters, they are the mainstream entities, and humans are considered as sub-entity and are the monstrous ones that should be feared.

Tartakovsky made an interesting confrontation of his characters who assumed reversal of roles where the monsters view the human (young traveler Jonathan who became the fiancee of Mavic) as monstrous and the human not threatened by the actual monsters.  The queerness of their situation brought an interesting hilarity to the film that engaged the viewers to anticipate the succeding scenes.

The film may not be erotic as it is an animation and targeted at o young audience but asserts a certain sexuality between two individuals to become mainstream and live normally.  It leaves the audience wondering how the queer aspiration of this queer couple can become a reality given the physical limitation (she’s a vampire, she burns under sunlight) of Mavic.  But never mind the un-queer logic, the logic is queerness, so Dracula did not only assent for his daughter to engage with a human but contrived things for the couple to be together.  Queer.   Read More