Playing Dirty: Dracula wears eyeliner
Every other week, Bonnie Ruberg contributes Playing Dirty, a column on sex and gender in video games:
For Castlevania fans, it's hardly news that the series has undergone some serious shifts in art direction over the years. But with the recent release of the Castlevania retrospective art book -- a Portrait of Ruin pre-order bonus -- it's gotten easier to track just how much things have changed. From romance novel-esque to stunningly stylized to "Didn't I see this anime on Fox Kids?," Castlevania's art aesthetic, if not its gameplay, has covered a vast range. But it's not just the approach that's different, it's the characters themselves.
In the beginning, titles like Castlevania II featured heroes with rippling muscles, loincloths, and virile locks of coarse blond hair. In contrast to these manly men, protagonists from later games, like Symphony of the Night, became thin bishounen, elegantly dressed, with delicate and undeniably feminine features. Most recently though, Castlevania heroes have reclaimed some of their traditional manhood. The protagonist of Portrait of Ruin may have fancier duds than the he-men of earlier titles, but he's grown back his six pack, his unromanticized features, and his save-the-day blond bangs.
Of course, the art direction for long-running series changes all the time -- as popular taste differs, as people come and go. But the thing that makes Castlevania's art history so interesting is it's hit on such extremes -- in terms of style and attention to details, but also in terms of representation. There aren't many franchises that, at one time or another, have had as their poster boys both archetypes of masculinity and curvy male beauties in leather pants and eyeliner. That's especially true for the American video game industry, where Castlevania has flourished despite its intermediate years of super-feminized male characters, heroes and villains alike.
The fact of the matter is, for a Western audience at least, it's a pretty radical move to take a stereotypical, hetero-normative protagonist like the firm-bodied Belmont's of Castlevania and transform them into gender-defiant Alucards, lacy sleeves and all. Remember, we're not just talking about abstract figures, these are avatars, characters with whom players can't help but identify. In a culture so testy about threatening masculinity, how could Castlevania get away with it?
It's important to remember that the switch in art direction came at the same time as a switch in plot. Symphony of the Night, the first Castlevania game to portray male characters in the bishounen style, was also the first to feature a vampire hero. Since the vampire is logically the Other, it wasn't such a stretch to make Alucard, Dracula's son, what might otherwise be considered despicable: sexual, effeminate, the dandy of the paranormal. Besides, since Stoker, vampire stories have been thick with homoeroticism. No biggie.
From there it's a matter of simple transference. When the series switched back to human heroes, it was a much subtler jump to retaining the "I'm powerful but I wear mascara" style. Consider the original vampire-whooper, Simon Belmont, who went from hunk to pale-faced redhead. How shocking would the art for Castlevania Chronicles have been if it hadn't been preceded by Symphony of the Night? These new traits had to be adopted by the vampire Other before they could be acceptable for the human self. But where does that leave humanity? Like Dracula's castle, it gets turned on its head, inverted -- in other words, queered. The old fear of vampiric contamination has come back around, infecting our masculine ideal with wind-swept hair, high mink collars, and makeup so perfect it must be supernatural.
After all that, why switch back to a simple aesthetic and an old-fashioned hero? Check back for a continued look at the changing of art of Castlevania and the comfort of cleavage, whips, and happy endings.
Bonnie Ruberg is a writer, researcher, and all around fangirl with a big crush on games. Find more of her work at Terra Nova, Gamasutra, or her blog, Heroine Sheik. She can be reached at .
