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Pamela Rabe moments that live in my mind rent free

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Portrait, Cristina Rusu // The Poet, Reynier Llanes // Annihilation (2018) dir. Alex Garland

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Virginia Woolf, from The Waves

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Albert Camus, from a diary entry featured in Notebooks, 1935-1942

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Harold Nelson - Undine by the river. The Caxton Series, 1901.

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Anaïs Nin, from The Voice

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Happy one year anniversary to this scene xx

Wentworth // 8.20 // Legacy

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So you can sit in this big chair you’ve coveted for years

Wentworth // 3.12 // Fire and Blood // deleted scene //

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Wentworth // 4.12 // Seeing Red //

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THE VAMPIRE LOVERS

// PART ONE // PART TWO // PART THREE //

Welcome back to me making unhinged parallels between the lesbian vampire trope and Joan Ferguson. Looks like I have managed to fall a little too deep into this information pit. Joan is a vampire. Of sorts. I’m convinced. This post is a continuation on my previous post and references the book Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film by Andrea Weiss.

The next point made in the chapter, focuses on how the camera frames and ‘fragments’ the physical form of the lesbian vampire.

‘When the lesbian vampire is about to seduce their victim for the first time her image […] is fragmented onto different spatial planes through framing of the foreground and mirror images. This symbolic dismemberment of her body foreshadows her eventual destruction’

Joan is especially fragmented in scenes where she victimises with a degree homoerotic subtext or sadistic pleasure. Whether she is torturing Jodie, attempting to murder Bea, degrading Allie, or cutting out Juice’s tongue, she aims to seduce them to be docile to her will. All of which are performed on women. Cell windows and mirrors are used to frame and fragment her form as well as extreme close-ups which are used on her facial features and gloved hands.

The remaining question is: by the end, Was Joan Ferguson destroyed? She is certainly changed. If we consider losing her memory and sense of self as a kind of destruction. Visually, production does not fragment her much if at all in season eight after her memory loss. It is as if the old Joan has been destroyed and is forever changed. Something else to note is how much they framed the gloved hands in the foreground of the shot being the most important image relating to Joan, but by the end season eight, both of her hands had being burnt as a result of Kaz in season four and then Lou in the final season. It’s kind of a symbolic destruction of the part of herself that she performed all her crimes with.

Another point that is made in the book is that the lesbian vampire representation ‘maintains’ the cultural notion that lesbian sexuality equals innate narcissism. Women loving women, oh my! you must be obsessed with yourself! This is shown when the lesbian vampire’s victim becomes under their influence, and they are then visually depicted as ‘narcissistically matched’ via costume or hair. This is very relevant to after Vera’s metamorphosis whereby she attempts to replicate Joan’s hair.

Weiss continues to explain that these kind of scenes aim to minimise their physical differences. Differences that had previously been emphasised. In the shot (above right), the positioning of the camera means the pair’s height differences are less stark. Whereas if you compare to a previous scene (above left) shot prior to Vera’s metamorphosis, Joan looks down onto Vera which serves to assert their difference in size. I hypothesise that in the scenes where Vera is obedient to Joan’s will, their differences in height are lessened but that’s a few hours of me being anally retentive and checking every scene they share with a magnifying glass and also there is a gif limit of ten so I’m going to finish this post up. I am actually obsessed with lesbian vampires. Send me to Romania to be sucked dry.

Wentworth (2013-2021) // 3.03 ‘Knives Out, 3.06 ‘Evidence’, 4.08 ‘Plan Bea’, 4.11 ‘The Eleventh Hour’, 5.06 ‘Happy Birthday, Vera’, 5.07 ‘The Pact’, 2.08 ‘Sins of the Mother’, 2.01 ‘Born Again’ // Andrea Weiss, from Vampires And Violets: Lesbians in Film, 1992 //

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Dracula’s Daughter (1936) Dir. Lambert Hillyer // Wentworth (2013-2021), 4.12 Seeing Red //

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Dracula’s Daughter (1936) Dir. Lambert Hillyer // Wentworth (2013-2021), 2.10 Jail Birds, 4.11 The Eleventh Hour //

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joan ferguson + vampiric reflections

Dracula’s Daughter (1936) Dir. Lambert Hillyer // Wentworth (2013-2021), 3.08 Goldfish, 3.11 The Living and the Dead, 5.02 The Bitch is Back //

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Dracula’s Daughter (1936) Dir. Lambert Hillyer // Wentworth (2013-2021), 2.02 Whatever It Takes //

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Dracula’s Daughter (1936) Dir. Lambert Hillyer // Wentworth (2013-2021), 8.09 Monster, 7.10 Under Siege Part Two, 8.12 Requiem, 8.16 One Eye Open, 8.14 Judas Kiss //

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Wentworth // 8.19 // The Reckoning //

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THE VAMPIRE LOVERS // PART ONE // PART TWO // PART THREE //

I’m currently reading this book about lesbian representation in film, and there is a whole chapter on lesbian vampires which is my absolute favourite trope - like yes please, drain me until I’m a husk. So, here is some unhinged thoughts:

So, the chapter speaks of the vampire and the mouth, I read the passage and immediately thought of Joan, because her mouth is as much the source of her power as it is for a vampire. Joan might not use her teeth to bite, but her words certainly do. Wentworth directors deliberately frame her mouth in close up shots to show the power she holds, to show it as a tool for coercion and control. they only use a close up when she is trying to manipulate, has a plan, or has the upper hand. Most often, the shot is used when she is talking to Vera, to talk down to or to manipulate her.

‘Medical case studies in the early twentieth century reveal deep anxieties about the possibility of female penetration. […] In the lesbian vampire story, this anxiety has been displaced and refocused on the mouth, [a] ‘feminine’ sexual orifice which combines the ‘masculine’ ability to penetrate, via the teeth. This, the vampire embodies age-old popular fears which have been expressed through the ‘vagina dentata’, the vagina with teeth, the penetrating woman’

- Andrea Weiss, from Vampires And Violets: Lesbians in Film

So, image of the mouth is subversive for a female vampire. At first, it can be seen as a simply receptacle, but the teeth: they are penetrative. The reason the lesbian vampire always dies in the end is because she penetrates, because she has power, and that is a threat to men. Men fear women who subvert their expectations, women who assert power in the same ways they do. I find it interesting that after joan becomes kath, and even after joan returns, there is no use of a close up shot of her mouth again. It’s like the vampire is dead, the monster is dead, and therefore, in the finale Joan is allowed to survive.

Furthermore, female vampires always have a female victim, and the female vampire is condemned to suck the life out of her. Historically, lesbian relationships have been been portrayed as just that. One partner is destined to ‘take over the personality or the soul of another’.

Right up until the finale, this is the internal battle vera faces with joan. Vera tries to remain her own self, attempting to deny all she has assimilated from Joan’s personality - from season 4 onwards she tries to fight off anything has picked up from joan, but these things she has learnt always tend to bleed through. She does eventually shed them (the loyalty, the uniform pants, the strategy, the bun ect.). Until the only remaining feature is the copycat twinge of the upper lip. It’s an unconscious and compulsive movement, which demonstrates just how deep joan managed to bed herself underneath Vera’s skin. The twitch was all instinct. She was consumed by her.

So I guess I’m theorising about how the lesbian vampire trope still plays out within female relationships even now. Even in contexts with no supernatural elements, these signifiers still persist.

Wentworth (2013-2021) // 2.07 Metamorphosis // 3.06 Evidence // 3.09 Freak Show // 4.01 First Blood // 4.02 Poking Spiders // 4.03 Prisoner // 5.11 Coup de Grace // 8.04 Revenant // 8.10 The Enemy Within // 8.19 The Reckoning // Andrea Weiss, from Vampires And Violets: Lesbians in Film, 1992 //