#and thinking about the pattern with how the show is bringing up Lestat and blow jobs this seasonâŠ
What does this make you think?
And Lestat making himself burn while he sings about the laws that burned Claudia and only Armand deciding who lives and who dies and trying to get Nicki out of his head.... I love this show
I think they're riffing on this idea of Lestat effectively being gagged, and how that intermingles both with his explicit sexualisation, but also his inability to both express himself truthfully, or be heard when he tries to.
The first time it comes up is when TC's reading the book and, in the moment, starts to relate what she's reading to the songs Lestat's writing. Louis' story (which again, I do think he had a right to tell!) as recorded by Daniel speaks for, and over Lestat (and Claudia, of course, but that's a whole other post), which alters TC's understanding of Lestat's songs. Music is about expression, it's about artistry, not necessarily truth or story, but the context of the book forces dialogue, it forces narrative, which Lestat partially embraces by touring as The Vampire Lestat (interesting in a season where Louis removes himself from the narrative by living publicly as Thomas Pitt), that he can handle so long as it's all pretend. The Fang Gang attack and the band finding out makes the public performance and personal narrative collide, and the reality of that is that Lestat's truth has ultimately been chewed up and spat out by Louis' truth.
(This got cap heavy, so I'll put it behind a cut!)
TC's confrontation here is about performance and narrative colliding, which is forcing her to recontextualise what she's involved in and who she's involved with artistically and professionally, and the shortcut she takes in applying Lestat as she knows him - a hypersexual frontman - has her reduce his truth to Louis' sexual gratification, which diminishes both Lestat and Louis' stories, and their reasons for speaking.
It's a sentiment revisited directly at the start of 3.03 by Daniel, and like TC, when offered a truth - more than the one TC got about what the song's about - Daniel deflects to sex. Lestat can speak, can put things out, but Daniel, here, would put things in. It's not words in his mouth, which he'd do sometimes to Louis, it's - for want of a better word, haha - dicks. It's all sexualised, all objectifying, something punctuated by the later blow-up doll line.
In interviewing here about both Nicki and Magnus, Daniel seeks to exploit traumas that never should've been shared with him in the first place, and in doing that, Lestat's truth isn't what Daniel's after, but his pain. He's looking for something he can sell in Lestat, a juxtaposition to his interview with Louis which while no less exploitative, was steeped still in a place of genuine journalistic interrogation and truthseeking, no doubt tied to their shared history.
For Daniel, Louis' story was about the story, Lestat's story is about the product, two different sides of his career aspirations - profile and profit.
The glory hole in the same episode twists that thread of truth not as something ignored, but something that needs to be silenced. With the book and Lestat's music being vehicles of vampiric truth, Lestat's violated image behind Louis' shoulder escalates the sense of silencing to a literal and violent 'gag order'. It eschews TC and Daniel's initial introduction of the thread at least as something consensual between two married men, and compounds the objectification of the blowup doll to dehumanising effect, punctuated by its place within the broader episode.
But then in 3.04, another pivot - an important pivot, in my opinion, because for the first time, Lestat ends up playing into it. It's at the party, documentary crew in tow, after Lestat recounts his time with Gabi in the Italian tavern, when Daniel asks if the religious man still clutched his Jesus figure while Lestat sucked him off.
Of course, Lestat's not the one who fucks him. No, that scene precursors the later reveal of Gabi's coercion of, and rape of Lestat, and here, Lestat takes Daniel's sexualisation of him, the ease with which he'd put something into his mouth rather than listen to what comes out of it, and uses it as cover for his own shame and violation. This time, the first of these four instances, truth isn't what Lestat wants to express, but rather something he wants to conceal, and he uses his own sexualisation to do it. If he blew the man that night, maybe his mother didn't take him instead.
I was already thinking about this, but that sneak peek today with muse!NIcki talking about Lestat going down on Armand as Lestat tried to sing Big Boss really made me think it's a thread that's going to have another evolution, and how it's tangled up in truth and silence and sex and violation will, I think, be really interesting to see.
(Apologies as always for my dodgy capping on unsubbed videos, haha).
But yeah! I think the show's exploring the mouth as a tool of communication, and all the ways that can be quietened or hindered, and I think the specific focus on sucking dick is a part of exploring both the ways that Lestat's hypersexualised by others, but also how he uses that hypersexualisation to hide the truth when he wants or needs to.
the performance of big boss is a call-back to armand and lestat's conflict back in 1790s, no? lestat is on stage in front of and around mortals, exposing the existence of vampires to the world (him flying during the loneliness = his book counterpart performing vampire tricks after returning to the theater; him getting shot and surviving = book lestat getting shot and surviving). armand wants lestat to stop doing this and allow vampires to remain hidden. in the 2x3 fanfic, armand says that lestat showed himself off to mortals in paris while performing as the harlequin; lestat's makeup in big boss resembles harlequin!lestat's. it's a very clever way of blending the past with the present and showing how essentially, rockstar lestat is him reliving his experiences in the theater
Itâs a brilliant scene, full of nuance, because it has everything you mentioned.
But on top of that, the makeup and the pigtails portray Claudia as âBaby Lou,â and the pants are the same ones he wore (or was he forced to wear?) at the âtrial.â
And, as if that werenât enough, the song is also a complete mockery of the absurdity and hypocrisy of the five vampiric rules.
âI donât believe it,â Nicolas said bitterly. âHe wouldnât be ashamed of us.â There was a suppressed rage in his voice, an ugly grief. âAnd why did he leave the way he did? I heard him calling me! The window was smashed to pieces! I tell you I was half awake, and I heard his voice.â
â THE VAMPIRE LESTAT
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