Monsters with family and tradition: queering family in Central Russia’s Vampires

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the web series Central Russia’s Vampires (streaming platform Start, since 2021) as a site of articulating queerness on screen in contemporary Russia. I zoom in on the layers of family and tradition that lie at the core of the show and argue that by exploring them through the trope of the vampire – an immortal, subversive, queer figure – the show offers a non-normative spin on the patriarchal treatment of these topics in contemporary Russian hegemonic discourse. I demonstrate that the queering of family and tradition in the show happens on three levels. First, the series delivers a complex cartography of intertextual and multimedia references and produces a queer family with a cultural tradition of media presence that extends far beyond the show. Second, the series queers the idea of ‘traditional families’ that animates current Russian hegemonic discourse by portraying a family of Others – the vampires – who fit into majority scripts and are literally part of Russia’s tradition due to their centuries-old age. Finally, Central Russia’s Vampires queers the family and tradition on the level of genre, by producing a special New Year episode that normalises families of Others within Russian holiday-season films.