The last Rice I read was Memnoch the Devil (the only one I reccommended to someone else, mainly due to the religous nature of the book) and haven’t read her latest. That being said I’ve noticed her books do jave a high homoerotic content, but I’ve noticed that with other Vampire books too. Try Lumley for a different/scifi-esque perspective.
I can’t read Christopher Pike, the writing to me is horrible and seems little more than violence packaged for juveniles. But that’s just my opinion.
(BTW, try Saints and Sinners if you liked Memnoch)
Could have been him; that was in 1890. The Volsunga Saga (? date) has a sleeping beauty named Brynhild, Perceforest (1528) has a sleeping beauty names Zellandine, Basile collected fairy tales with a Beauty named Talia (1634), she didn’t have a name in the Perrault story (1690 or so) though her children are sometimes called Aurora and Jour (and sometimes Morning and Day) and she was Briar Rose in the Grimm (early 1800s). She’s also Aurora in the Disney movie.
A little gay kiddie porn and you start getting your knickers in a twist!
Anne Rice has been writing true porn for years. Unfortunately, she overwrites her porn as much as she overwrites her regular stuff. It’s a shame, because she does have an interesting take on some things.
My two favorite Rice books, after * Interview *, are * Cry to Heaven * the story of a boy turned into a * castrato * against his will by his family, and another one about a mulatto woman in New Orleans in the 19th Century. Can’t remember the name.
Anyway, they were written around the same time as * Interview* and are therefore far less in love with themselves than her later works.
As for the OP…Scylla, we disagree ** again! ** I fear we are doomed. I think it is perfectly OK to write about and have published any damn thing in the world. In fact, I’m upset at the way the courts are leaning on this subject, because I think that while their aims are excellent (protection of children from molestation/rape) I think the means are, as usual, misguided.
Every reputable study that has ever been done has shown repeatedly that porn does one of two things:
Gives an outlet to those who want one.
Has no effect at all.
Despite desperate attempts to prove otherwise, it has never been demonstrated that pornography is in any way harmful, and in fact can be helpful. Since we know there are pedophiles in the world, better they should get their jollies reading fictional nasty stories than looking at nasty pictures that required the exploitation and harm of actual children, eh?
stoid
PS: Hey Scylla…what ever happened to freedom? It doesn’t include the freedom to have a dirty mind? I will give you this: if the book is as vivid as you say, they might have given some kind of warning to people with delicate sensibilities.
My folklore books are at home, unfortunately, but there have been stories of the enchanted/magically sleeping heroine (or hero, even before Mr. van Winkle) for millennia. It’s not surprising that there are many different names for the Sleeping Beauty beyond the story collected by the Grimms. Some Norse legends speak of Loki being bound in a dreamless sleep instead of merely chained. Early Greek legends tell of Persephone being kept asleep by Hades, before the legend involved wedding bells.
And of course, in the original script for Army of Darkness, Ash originally returned to his own time by drinking a magical potion and sleeping for six hundred years.
I haven’t read a lot of Ann Rice, just the 1st vampire book. I thought that the relationship between the Vampire and the little girl was slightly erotic (I don’t remember any of the names). I figured this was just her doing the “gothic novel” thing or maybe a touch of Edgar Allan Poe. I didn’t really like her writing, but I liked the story line enough to read it and buy the second one. About the OP, if this was part of her artistic vision then I don’t think that it should be censored. Maybe she is just going for the shock value, which in my opinion is probably what she wanted. To state the obvious, Lolita is one of the greatest books ever written, I’ve heard people call it porn. Should we ban it? If it were up to me it would be required reading in high school. (the movies should be banned though, they are horrible interpretations of the movie, but as mentioned before, if they were true to the book it would be illegal). If no one gets hurt I don’t think there is anything wrong. If you are offended by it then you did the right thing by throwing it away. A book is not going to turn people into pedophiles. The world is not all sunshine and roses and if someone chooses to write about the darker things in life then so be it. And remember since we are talking about Vampires here, they don’t necessarily have the same morals that we do.
I’ve never actually read anything by Anne Rice, so I can’t really make any esthetic judgements of her work. I could make some ethical judgements of it based on the second-hand reports I’m seeing here, but I’d have to take y’all’s word for it about the content of the books.
I am disturbed, however, by Bricker’s description of the current legal status and definition of child pornography. I’ve got no problem with banning classic kiddie porn, on the grounds that it’s the same as a “snuff film”; i.e., a crime has to be committed in order to make it. But what Bricker’s describing with regard to the opinions of the First, Fourth, and Eleventh Circuits seems to go way over the line. Sure, we all want to Protect the Children. But it seems to me that line of reasoning could also be applied to “rape pornography”; i.e., artistic or literary (or hack and schlock) depictions of adult women being raped or assaulted. (There are feminists of a certain type who would like to do just that, and their definitions of “rape” can be pretty broad.) And what about books that advocate or could encourage racist genocide? Or what about all those Clancyesque thrillers about generic Presidents of the United States who are assassinated by evil terrorists? After all, you never know what might set off the next Timothy McVeigh or Ted Kaczynski.
Oh well, I suppose this has now become a complete hijack from the topic of the Anne Rice oeuvre.
I think you’re thinking of * The Feast of All Saints * I’ve tried to read that book several times, but can never get past the first few pages.
Anne Rice has stated in interviews that she’s “a gay man trapped inside a woman’s body.” Also, the lead character of * The Witching Hour * (Rowen? Rawena? I can’t remember the name,) shares her favorite sexual fantasy of being a man, and being made love to by another man. Rice stated in one interview that gay men love her vampire books, because some see vampirism as a metaphor for the AIDS virus. Go figure.
But what can you expect from a woman whose real first name is Howard?
Actually, rape porn is illegal, kinda. Or at least, bondage and discipline combined with sexual activity is illegal, I’m not entirely sure about rape porn. But I assume it probably is. The reasoning on the B&D, I think, is that we can’t “be sure” that the participants are willing. Which strikes me as perfectly absurd, but what can ya do?
It’s a damn shame, too. B&D is much more fun with some sex thrown in.
Well, maybe I’m misreading what Bricker said, but he seemed to be saying that a novel with “child pornography” in it could be criminalized. Are novelistic or purely verbal depictions of rape or bondage illegal? Surely no (but IANAL).
I don’t think this applies to written pornography, but rather only to photography and film/video. And even then, unless I’m grossly misinformed, the restriction on showing penetration in conjunction with bondage and/or violent rape is basically a voluntary self-censorship on the part of the pornography industry.
Basically, they don’t show it because they want to avoid a massive backlash which might lead to anti-pornography legislation.
The biggest exception I can think of to the “anything goes” textual pornography is when it names a specific, real person. I remember somebody got sued over that a while back, after writing some kind of violent rape fantasy story about an acquaintance and posting it on the net.
As things stand now, only visual depictions are illegal; text is not criminalized at all.
What I was saying, though, is that my read of the approving circuits’ opinions suggests that a law criminalizing written content of the type mentioned above would also pass constitutional scrutiny.
I found the book disturbing because it was glorifying pedophilia IMHO. I don’t shock all that easy, but this got me. I thoroughly enjoyed Farmer’s A Feast Unknown which was pretty far out there in terms of sex and violence. In that case, the action furthered the story. In Armand it’s just gratuitous, and I personally draw the line at anything involving sex with minors.
Stoidela said:
This is of course, completely false.
The Bradley, Frasier, and Rogers studies showed a direct link between usage and posession of child pornography, and the likelihood of a Pedophilic offense.
Here’s a short item from a link I found quite easily.
Which, of course, says nothing about causation. While it is very likely someone who likes to diddle kids would also enjoy pictures of same, I doubt that if someone showed you a picture it would cause you to run out and cruise the elementary school.
Myself, I think that saying porn causes rape, video games cause school shootings, Dungeons and Dragons causes suicides and Satanism, or kiddie porn causes molestation are all examples of people really overreaching. Obviously laws were broken in the production of the kiddie porn if it’s the type that includes pictures of sex acts, but that doesn’t say anything about the folks consuming it or about drawings or written text. The thing that is needed to get a better picture of what’s what is to find out how many people enjoy the pictures but never molest a kid. For obvious reasons though, I doubt that information will ever be readily available.
a) no one is defending hard-core child pornography.
b) in order to justify textual or other non-photographic pornography to be banned, you claim it is part of the molestation process. For many, so is alcohol or other drugs, for the same reasons (lowering inhibitions, etc). So should we also ban alcohol?
c) following from b. Of course we shouldn’t ban alcohol for that reason. Why? Because many more people use alcohol outside of the context of molesting children. You haven’t demonstrated any facts which show the same isn’t true for these forms.
jb
p.s.- and no, I am not implying that as many people utilize textual or other non-photographic child pornography as drink
Thanks for the legal viewpoint. I appreciate it. I understand that written child pornography is illegal in Canada. Is this the case?
Getting back to Rice’s book, and some miscellaneous points that were brought up, quite frankly I don’t care about the homoerotic overtones one way or another.
According to rice, vampire’s have no sexual urges in the human manner, but get their satisfaction Bom! Bom! Ba Da Dom! from feeding, and don’t particularly favor one gender over another. They can also feed off of one another, regardless of sex. There’s no homosexual vampires, but there’s no heterosexual vampires either. They’re basically genderless.
Rice makes a big point of this in her earlier books, which is why I was so confused with a pedophiliac vampire giving kiddies blowjobs.
Should it be banned? I dunno, having that kind of action in a pretty mainstream novel does legitimize the act. At the very least it shows poor editorial and authorial judgement, as it in no way seemed to further the story, but was just plain gratuitous.
I’m not sure it’s my place to tell people they can’t read it if they want to, but it seems pretty close to the border. I’ll just make the protest that I can. I won’t purchase any other of Rice’s works, and maybe I’ll fire an email off to the publisher expressing my dismay.
