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April 18, 2019 11:39 AM   Subscribe

A Perfectly Normal Interview with Carmen Maria Machado Where Everything Is Fine
The connection between narratives of vampires and narratives of women—especially queer women—are almost laughably obvious. Even without Carmilla, they would be linked. The hunger for blood, the presence of monthly blood, the influence and effects of the moon, the moon as a feminine celestial body, the moon as a source of madness, the mad woman, the mad lesbian—it goes on and on. It is somewhat surprising to me that we have ever imagined male vampires at all.
posted by chappell, ambrose (26 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
Carmen Maria Machado: Carmilla simply isn’t as well-known; I was as surprised as anyone to learn about it.

Funnily enough, just prior to reading this interview I was watching some supplemental material (a mini-documentary about vampires called Leaves of Blood) on the Doctor Who State of Decay DVD and they include Carmilla in their timeline of vampire fiction, noting it was a sensation prior to Dracula. I just assumed vampire aficionados would have known about it (I didn't)... perhaps not!

I need to move up Her Body and Other Parties on my to-read list, I didn't realize Machado wrote in the fantasy/horror domain.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:10 PM on April 18, 2019


I just checked out this collection and came across Especially Heinous: 272 views of Law and Order which was wonderful. It has previously been discussed here.
posted by mecran01 at 12:31 PM on April 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


This is the most delicately terrifying interview I've ever read, even with frequent pauses to rip out bits to show to friends.
posted by mittens at 12:47 PM on April 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


I don't read enough author interviews, clearly, but at some point the actual interview falls away to metatextual silliness. Can someone tell me if there's some kind of Alternate Reality game happening here? Is CMM adding her own layer to a public domain work? Was Marcia Marén a real person?

Speaking of alternate reality, I came in to say that no queer reading of Carmilla is complete without at least mentioning Carmilla: The Series, which updated the premise to a humble college girl's fake video blog (a la Lonelygirl) and quickly became a kind of Buffy-meets-Archer, hang-out-chat-and-save-the-world romp.

It was so successful that its YT channel pivoted from general women's interest videos to other queer-narrative light fantasy and romance, and then gathered enough interest to finance its own feature film conclusion.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 12:48 PM on April 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


Was Marcia Marén a real person?

https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:55 PM on April 18, 2019


"I AM A MERMAN"?
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:14 PM on April 18, 2019 [8 favorites]


maybe that is too deep of a dive, so to speak
posted by lefty lucky cat at 1:19 PM on April 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


I mean, I did think of "I AM CARMEN" but that left me with an extra R, so... help? Straight answer, pretty please?

(And looking back, I do now see that MERMAN lost the extra C somewhere, oops.)
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:23 PM on April 18, 2019


I mean, I did think of "I AM CARMEN"

It’s instructive to think whether there might be a relationship between Marcia Marén and the subject of the interview, Carmen Maria (if that isn’t too much “metatextual silliness”, of course...)
posted by chappell, ambrose at 1:34 PM on April 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sigh. Thank you OP. I did, in fact, note the name of the person being interviewed. There is a reason I looked for her name in the anagram, and then having found it, noted that it still leaves an extraneous letter.

And as long as we're all being patronizing to each other, it's "instructive" to note that I already asked for a straight answer and now two Mefites, rather than obliging, are jerking me around.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:40 PM on April 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


This paragraph
"Machado and I find ourselves, appropriately enough, in a refitted Victorian in Cheyenne, Wyoming. First built as a cattle baron’s folly, then converted to a boarding house for unmarried women, it’s now run as an opulent but gloomy bed and breakfast. We’re in a sitting room in a princess tower overlooking the thick, obliterating snow; this tower room, Machado tells me, is where the women boarders were able to lounge uncorseted in each other’s company, outside the scrutiny of men."
suddenly reminded me of a recurring scene in Between My Flesh and the World’s Fingers, Talena Sanders's recent short documentary/visual essay about Mary MacLane, the "Wild Woman of Butte, Montana," whose queer works have also either disappeared or have been forgotten.

Anyway, this was good! And scary.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:43 PM on April 18, 2019 [5 favorites]


former vampire aficionado already sufficiently aware of carmilla to suspect metatextual silliness, which was clever enough, as it arose. maybe not sufficiently versed in literature concerning the erasure of women and queer works to have appreciated all salient metatextual silliness.

anyway, cursory internet searching finds no professor leigh's 1973 work or later reference to it. no instances of marcia marén and veronika hausle mentioned in proximity.

carmen maria machado's forthcoming lanternfish press edition of carmilla, however, appears real. naturally, one wonders what she does say in the introduction.
posted by 20 year lurk at 1:59 PM on April 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


And as long as we're all being patronizing to each other, it's "instructive" to note that I already asked for a straight answer and now two Mefites, rather than obliging, are jerking me around.

Hey man, it’s possible that other MeFites might want to approach the link after glancing in the thread first, and might not want everything spelled out for them?
posted by chappell, ambrose at 2:02 PM on April 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


There's always MeMail, then? All the coy bullshit above mostly just reads as bullying to me.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:10 PM on April 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


"Morbid Harlotry" is my new favorite phrase. Maybe I need to slip that into the "Special Skills" section of my resume. Also a great band name for a Goth-punk girl group.
The hunger for blood, the presence of monthly blood, the influence and effects of the moon, the moon as a feminine celestial body, the moon as a source of madness, the mad woman, the mad lesbian—it goes on and on.
That sounds as much like lycanthropy as vampirism. (IIRC just a few minutes ago I was reading a tumblr post about how nice it was that the vampire and werewolf on Dark Shadows were buddies instead of adversaries.)
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:14 PM on April 18, 2019


Oh, and if you haven't already seen it, allow me to put in a plug for Hammer's The Vampire Lovers (1970), which is based on Carmilla. I mean, obvs. it's not Citizen Kane or anything, but it's moody and beautiful and has Ingrid Pitt and Peter Cushing in a dashing uniform and great lashings of creamy skin and scarlet blood and girls en deshabillé (and is available on YT).
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:33 PM on April 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


"Morbid Harlotry" is my new favorite phrase ... Also a great band name for a Goth-punk girl group.

And if it isn’t a lipstick shade already, it should be.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:22 PM on April 18, 2019 [8 favorites]


It's strange how obscure "Carmilla" is when there are seriously something like two dozen films based on it. Most of them were made in the '70s, for some reason.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:54 PM on April 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


This was delightful. Thanks for sharing.
posted by crush at 5:09 PM on April 18, 2019


Mod note: Couple comments removed; I'm not clear why it's gotten a little weird in here on the meta side but folks please just ease back and let that drop all around.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:25 PM on April 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


I would appreciate if someone could explain in a straightforward way WTF is going on in this interview.
posted by medusa at 6:36 PM on April 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


If nothing else, this interview is a great way to tell if your loved ones actually read the links you send them.
posted by Enemy of Joy at 7:51 PM on April 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


I would appreciate if someone could explain in a straightforward way WTF is going on in this interview.

The first two paragraphs in the text refer to real books and people (Carmen Maria Machado and "Her Body and Other Parties" and J. Sheridan Le Fenu's "Carmilla" which is being reprinted with a forward by Machado next week). From paragraph three onwards, the text addresses the vampire novel Carmilla, the interview itself, and related topics... with decreasing veracity but increasing truth. Be sure you follow all the hyperlinks. Plainly speaking, Veronika Hausle, Marcia Marén, Jane Leight, and Peter Fontenot do not appear to exist outside of this text. Marcia Marén, as hashed out above, is an anagram of Carmen Maria.

I found it joyful to read and consider, it reminded me of Umberto Eco or Douglas Hofstadter, popping up and down in a referential stack, the text addressing itself, playing with words, but with balls in play that the authors clearly care about. Best thing I've read online in a while.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:00 PM on April 18, 2019 [8 favorites]


Thank you.
posted by medusa at 5:07 AM on April 19, 2019


For those who might not be aware, one of the aspects of the novel Carmilla is that the vampire goes by various names, which include Carmilla, Mircalla, and Millarca.
posted by kyrademon at 5:29 AM on April 19, 2019 [4 favorites]


I recently finished reading Her Body and Other Parties and I found this interview to be like many of her stories: twisting, metatextual, and slightly shaggy. I don't always love all of her writing (personally I found Especially Heinous to be exasperating) but I'm in awe of her fabulous brain. Curious to read Carmilla now.
posted by Rora at 8:16 AM on April 19, 2019 [2 favorites]


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