"A Grand Amount of Fagginess": The Faggiest Vampire, Bizarro Fiction for Children, and the Dehomosexualization of LGBTQ Terminology

Susan Sontag, in her seminal essay "Notes on 'Camp'" (1964), described this aesthetic as a "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration" (275). Rooted in hyperbole, excess and attenuation, "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a 'lamp'; not a woman, but a 'woman'" (280). Decades before widespread discussions about the performativity inherent in identity, Sontag identified both the dramatic and the artifice that are central to this style: "To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater" (280). For this reason, camp possesses what Sontag calls a "failed seriousness" (287), and this trait results in "gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders" (281). Highlighting the parody and self-referentiality inherent in camp, she explains that "Behind the 'straight' public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private zany experience of the thing" (281).

Given camp's interest in visual and verbal double entendre, as well as its use of a sophisticated set of wink-and-nod codes, this aesthetic mode may seem to have little to do with the allegedly innocent and uncomplicated realm of childhood. However, as figures like Kerry Mallan, Roderick McGillis, and Freya Johnson have demonstrated, camp has long been a central facet of children's print, visual, and popular culture. For example, "re-readings of such canonical texts as . . . Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows can find a camp sensibility at work" (Mallan and McGillis 10). Meanwhile, contemporary authors like Lemony Snicket and Edward Gorey employ the doubleness, self-referentiality and blurring of boundaries that are hallmarks of this mode.

In March 2009, prolific avant-garde author Carlton Mellick III added to the ongoing tradition of campiness in children's culture when he released his latest book, The Faggiest Vampire: A Children's Story. An illustrated narrative that combines the conventions of the fairy tale with those of gothic horror, the story chronicles the experiences of protagonist Dargoth Van Gloomfang—or, as he is more commonly known, "the faggiest vampire." As the blurb on the back cover announces, "The citizenry of Broodsarrow sure has its share of faggy vampires, but old Dargoth has always been by far the faggiest of them all." Accordingly, the opening chapters detail this character's various "faggy" qualities: his perfectionism, his fussy dress, his servant named Rococo, and—most of all—his meticulously-groomed mustache. The central conflict of the book emerges when a new resident—"A younger, hipper vampire" (back cover)—moves to Broodsarrow. This figure, as the narrator notes, "emits [such] a grand amount of fagginess that one cannot help but be completely overwhelmed by his presence" (35). Consequently, Mellick's eponymous character faces a challenge: as the teaser on the back cover informs potential readers, Dargoth now "must figure out a way to out-shine this young newcomer if he wishes to ever reclaim his throne as . . . the faggiest vampire."

Mellick has long been known for defying sociocultural conventions in his work. A leading practitioner of the millennial literary movement known as "Bizarro fiction," his previous books bear such titles as Satan Burger (2001), Sea of the Patchwork Cats (2006), and Teeth and Tongue Landscape (2006). Although all of these texts are intended for an adult audience, Mellick has long asserted that his work follows in the tradition of some of the most beloved writers for children. His official Web site indicates that his influences include the somewhat expected work of filmmaker John Waters, but also the writings of Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl ("FAQs" n. pag.).

In The Faggiest Vampire, Mellick extends both his interest in and his indebtedness to literature for young readers. As the subtitle of the 2009 text indicates, this is "a children's story." Lest readers be tempted to view this classification as a joke—a purely farcical detail that adds to the comedic nature of...