Lowering the Stakes

Written by Sam Downey, Arts Staff Writer Illustrated by Haley Wolff , Staff Illustrator and Designer

Vampires are the perfect storm of stigma and sex appeal, mortal peril and everlasting life, society’s most abject and it’s most affl uent. It’s no wonder they’ve so viciously sunk their teeth into our cultural imagination.

Historically, vampires have always been more metaphor than monster.1 They refl ect what people fear most at any given time, from the very concept of the undead to uninhibited sexuality, making them perfect literary fi gures to explore dynamics of predation, seduction and alienation.2

One iconic depiction of vampires is Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles,” a book series that began in 1976 and quickly sparked a cult fandom.3 The fi rst novel, “Interview with the Vampire,” describes a human journalist learning about the undead life of Louis de Pointe du Lac, who was turned in the 18th century by the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt.4 In 1994, the novel was adapted into a star-studded fi lm featuring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in terrible wigs.5

In Rice’s mythology, vampires aren’t the sparkly vegetarians seen in “Twilight”: very few abstain from human blood.6 This becomes a point of contention for Louis’ character, who grapples with the loss of his humanity as he’s slowly seduced by Lestat’s violent, hedonistic ways.7

These moral qualms are fascinating to track across adaptations. Louis hates

1 Rachel Bachy, “Surprise! Vampires have always been gay,” The Pitt News, 2021. 2 Ibid. 3 August T., “A Deep Dive Into the Anne Rice Fanfi ction Debacle,” Medium, 2021. 4 Judy Berman, “Interview with the Vampire Is the Season’s Best Fantasy Franchise Reboot,” Time, 2022. 5 Ibid. 6 August T., “A Deep Dive Into the Anne Rice Fanfi ction Debacle,” Medium, 2021. 7 Erik Piepenburg, “‘Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire’: Old Monsters, New Blood,” The New York Times, 2022. surviving off of the suff ering and death of others, but in the original book and movie he is depicted as a plantation owner and enslaver.8 In the movie, he frees the enslaved people by burning down the plantation to hide his secret; in the original book, he simply slaughters them all.9 This year, however, AMC launched a TV adaptation of “Interview,” casting Jacob Anderson, a Black actor, as Louis.10 This iteration of the character owns a brothel, not a plantation, which still allows him to take the background of profi ting from others into his vampirism.11 He grapples with his responsibility to his family and his desire to fi ght racism, a desire that Lestat struggles to comprehend even as he encourages Louis to be his true self.12

In the 2022 show, the two are also romantically and sexually involved, stepping beyond the specter of homoeroticism that haunts the original texts.13 Vampires have always carried queer undertones, often to make them appear more monstrous and feed into ideas of queer sexuality as dangerous, violent and even demonic.14 At the same time, gay audiences have identifi ed with vampires’ otherness and with campy portrayals such as Tom Cruise’s.15

Too often, representation-based or “colorblind casting” approaches sprinkle token diversity into stories without considering how these identities would

8 Judy Berman, “Interview with the Vampire Is the Season’s Best Fantasy Franchise Reboot,” Time, 2022. 9 Monita Hohan, “Why ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Changing Louis’ Race and Backstory Works,” Collider, 2022. 10 Erik Piepenburg, “‘Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire’: Old Monsters, New Blood,” The New York Times, 2022. 11 Monita Hohan, “Why ‘Interview With the Vampire’ Changing Louis’ Race and Backstory Works,” Collider, 2022. 12 Ibid. 13 Judy Berman, “Interview with the Vampire Is the Season’s Best Fantasy Franchise Reboot,” Time, 2022. 14 Rachel Bachy, “Surprise! Vampires have always been gay,” The Pitt News, 2021. 15 Ibid. change the ways that characters react to and interact with each other.16 By depicting Louis’ Blackness and Queerness as anchoring him to humanity, rather than othering him further, the 2022 “Interview” provides a model for weaving race and sexuality into stories in a meaningful way.

After years of sporadic Black vampires such as Blacula and Blade, such a storyline is welcome.17 Other recent vampire media has attempted to branch out: Netfl ix’s “First Kill” features an interracial lesbian vampire/vampire hunter couple, but the network cancelled it despite a successful fi rst season.18

Refl ecting on this, we must ask whether future vampire media will be allowed to engage identity in a meaningful way. Can vampires still be scary, or has sexiness defanged them? And if vampires no longer refl ect cultural fears, what does? ■

16 Stephanie Holland, “Review: Interview with the Vampire Brilliantly Weaves Race Into the Opening Episodes of Its Romantic Tale,” The Root, 2022. 17 DeLa Doll, “Examining Black Vampires in Media,” Deladoll.com, 2021. 18 Laura Zornosa, “Here’s Why Fans Are Outraged Netfl ix Cancelled First Kill,” Time, 2022.