Interview with the Vampire: Out of the Coffin and into the Streets | Alyona Shimberg

Interview with the Vampire: Out of the Coffin and into the Streets

The last thing I expected in the autumn of 2022 was to find myself obsessed with a vampire franchise. It came to me as an absolute surprise that after the ridiculously hilarious What We Do In The Shadows (2014, dir. Taika Waititi) I still could treat any kind of non-satirical vampire franchise seriously. But, apparently, all it took was one dysfunctional gay vampire family (and one brilliantly written show) to realize that I’ve always been drawn to vampires exactly because of their queerness. I’m talking about Interview with the Vampire – arguably one of the best shows of the year that, sadly, got overlooked by most people who are not fans of the original books. The brilliance of it comes from the way it takes Anne Rice’s story – and the image of the vampire in popular culture – further in its representation of queerness and the struggle of being “othered”.

For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the story and hasn’t seen that 1994 movie with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise which traumatized me as a kid (but also left me enchanted, though totally horrified): Interview with the Vampire follows Louis de Pointe du Lac as he tells the story of his life as a vampire to a journalist. Being a young man in New Orleans, he meets Lestat de Lioncourt – a vampire who offers Louis to become his companion. What follows is the story of Louis coming to terms with his new vampire nature, and the highs and lows of their complicated relationship with Lestat. Oh, and they also get a vampire daughter, Claudia, who just adds even more complications to the mix.

Vampires have always been gay. That’s not even a controversial statement, it’s just a fact. Even though the image of the vampire has different folklore origins, the “modern” vampire’s first literary appearances were very homoerotic. In an 1819 short story entitled The Vampyre, John Polidori supposedly wrote his aristocratic seducer Lord Ruthven off the image of his friend, George Gordon Byron, who was bisexual. The famous Dracula was written by Bram Stoker, a closeted, most-likely homosexual and a friend of Oscar Wilde. It was released as a reaction to Oscar Wilde’s being convicted of sodomy and expressed Stoker’s fears and anxieties during the time. There’s even a lesbian vampire story by Sheridan Le Fanu titled Carmilla from 1871.

At the time when anything sexual was taboo, vampires represented the fear and temptation of forbidden sensuality in general, but vampire stories always had homosexual undertones. As expressing sexuality became more and more normalized, there was nothing more to fear; but the horror mixed with attraction in the depiction of vampires persevered, and it perfectly described the struggles of queer people. Then comes Anne Rice with her Vampire Chronicles universe and the incredibly homoerotic stories. Interview with the Vampire was first published in 1976, and the whole series stayed atop for more than 40 years. Here, we see vampires as outcasts; they live among humans but lead a life completely separate from humanity. They are forced to hide and be active only at night because the sunlight destroys them. When they stay in the same place for too long, they become the subject of suspicions, fear, and, eventually, persecution, so they often move around to find new places to live and hunt.

The queer metaphor truly shines in The Vampire Chronicles. The image of lonely creatures in search of others of their kind resonates deeply with the experiences of queer readers. Anne Rice herself considered her vampires to be a “metaphor for lost souls.” For example, it’s very striking how Lestat describes his desire to be able to openly share his vampire nature – and the sheer joy he feels once he actually gets the chance to do that among some open-minded rock musicians in the 80s (who have probably heard weirder confessions). When queer audiences claimed the image of the vampire for themselves, not only has it become a representation of suffering, but it has also turned into a truly empowering symbol. Vampires are fast and strong, “the perfect hunters,” and they live by their own rules. They do what they want because no one can stop them. Definitely not the human police. They have their own community with its own rules, traditions and undoubtedly their own drama. On top of that, they’re super stylish and sexy. Clearly, vampires always had the potential to become the most queer of monsters.

The history of vampires in popular culture is intertwined with the history of the LGBTQ+ community, and the new adaptation of Interview with the Vampire makes a very important step further. It does not, in fact, follow the book word by word which allows for stressing the vampires’ queerness – which used to reside in the position of a metaphor – out into the light. Louis and Lestat are very much “out of the coffin” and unapologetically gay (or “nondiscriminating,” as Lestat points out). They kiss by the end of the first episode, share a coffin and raise a daughter together.

There’s a strong indication that Claudia is sapphic, too. She yearns for love and connection because Louis and Lestat have each other, but “who’s her Lestat?” Claudia’s very passionate about learning more about vampire history and origins – all because she wants to find others like them, and in her search she once states she’s sure that Emily Dickinson was a vampire. It could easily be seen as “I know Emily Dickinson is a lesbian!” because Claudia gets it from the poet’s works. Claudia sees the subtext, and we all know what the metaphor is about. We’ll have to wait for the next season to see it stated more explicitly if the writers ever go there.

The other brilliant thing that the show does when adapting the source material is that the writers do not shy away from changing the things that not just aged poorly, but were frankly never that good to begin with. In the novel, which is set in the 18th century, Louis owns a plantation, and he and Lestat feed off the slaves at first. In the show, the events happen in the early 20th century, and Louis is a black man in charge of a prosperous, if not the most seemly, business. He owns a brothel. Claudia is Creole, too. Louis being actually a closeted black man adds many new layers not just to his character but also to his relationship with Lestat. It creates different kinds of inner struggles for Louis and more reasons for him to feel “othered,” which is what the vampire metaphor in the series is all about. It allows for more tension between these two because there are things about racial discrimination that Lestat, as a Frenchman born in the 18th century, simply cannot understand.

In the end, the vampire metaphor, now more explicit than ever, gets a new richness of flavour for the queer audiences to savour. It enabled more audiences to see themselves in the story and connect with the characters more deeply.

P.S. Be vampire, do crime.