Just in time for the TVL finale to leak, I bring you my present day Lenora Molloy design (late 30s). Close ups and versions with no make up AND goth makeup (because she’s a goth baddie in my heart) below. I have my own head canons about her but let me know what yours are if you have any :)
so they changed armands race not to say anything about the character or his history but PURELY to write him as a complete villain who abuses black characters and who effectively draws blame away from the white lead
im not even tagging this critical bc its just facts
i just cant get past it. they cast a brown actor not to do anything with his backstory as a kid trafficked into europe for sexual exploitation, but simply to make him an over the top bad guy who seems to have gotten worse over the last 2 centuries instead of making any progress
they cast black actors as two main characters just to have one of them be subjected to extreme physical tortures that never happened in the books, and to make the other a lying manipulator who doesnt matter beyond her abuse serving other characters' stories
they set themselves up as the Thoughtful Nuance Show and then gave us this? they pretended they were taking these. characters seriously and then butchered them on multiple levels, undid all their own work, bait and switched their devoted and engaged fans, and for what? tiktok jokes?
also we should absolutely question the show's choice to remove gabrielle, magnus and marius' overt antiblackness from the tvl book when the writers got armand out here acting like he's auditioning for kkk grand wizard. clearly the show isn't shying away from depicting antiblack violence considering the treatment of black characters in the past two episodes, so the refusal to depict gabriella, marius and magnus as the white supremacists they were in the source material, is a blatant tell- the writers are protective of their white characters, even the antagonists, and don't want them to seem "too" evil (which tracks for white and nonblack liberals acting like being called racist is worse than being racist.) and this clearly isn't a concern they have when it comes to the characters of color- armand has for 2 seasons now enacted forms of explicit violence inflicted on enslaved black people- louis and claudia's cut ankle tendons, the entire public humiliation of the trial, claudia's burning, louis' head on a spike, coercing him into a performance of self-debasement and contrition and branding his body- and claudia calls her black father a slave in a bioessentialist, derogatory context and expresses a level of internalized antiblackness she was never even hinted at feeling when she was alive. in both scenes, the narrative is much harsher on louis than on lestat and the nonblack writers go into extreme detail in their antiblack dialogue and racialized, borderline pornographic depiction of louis' torture. but gabriella is portrayed shallowly complimenting louis' beauty when realistically she would be calling him slurs when talking about him to lestat, magnus' "master race" aspirations and fixation on white supremacist beauty standards for how he chose his victim pool and "heir" aren't addressed, and marius' racial politics ("rotten boy", the whitewashed portrait of armand- we know he's racist, the show just hasn't acknowledged it and intentionally excluded the parts of tvl where he expresses that racism when talking to lestat) remain an elephant in the room. and ofc the way the writers are tryna be like "see lestat isn't racist, black people love him" in-universe through characters like merrick and paul (lol. lmao even) and tryna overwrite or dance around every textual example of lestat's antiblackness is so transparent in its clumsiness.
July disability pride month. Please don't forget about disabled Gazans.
Noor's little boy, Muhammed, is physically disabled. His condition is worsening as he is unable to get the regular physical therapy he requires while his family is barely able to keep shelter. He is regularly missing his medication which is scarcely available at too high a price.
This July, can we please give their fundraiser the push it desperately needs?
I'm kind of glad they pushed so hard for s3 to be called the vampire lestat because it makes it such easier to pretend its entirely different from iwtv
I'm going to start this by saying if you're NOT BLACK and you come on here trying to tell me what other Black people are saying, or tell me about the books - A)you're getting blocked B) I know what you are - so stay in a white baby's place, which is not my comments.
See. the one thing that has remained true about all three seasons, is that Memory IS A Monster. Just not in the way these showrunners and writers are thinking.
The importance of having Black people in the writers room is not just the handling of dialog, but in the assistance of knowing details and the effect it may, or may not have on an audience. Now we know Rolin Jones wasn't eeeeeeeever going to allow them to call the trial a LYNCHING, because whiteness has to defend itself, but there are other things that stand out to me as a Black viewer.
LOUIS THE PIMP
I remember the very first time Mr. Charles and I watched S1Ep1 and Daniel says "You were a pimp!" in this kind of 'homg, what kind of Black debauchery is this' way. We were cackling.
Have you ever met S1Ep1 Louis de Pointe du Lac? He banters with the girls, who in turn are not afraid to say whatever they want to him. He tries to smooth over problems and the only person we see him get rowdy with is Paul, because "You couldn't look weak on Liberty Street”
This was no Iceberg Slim. This wasn't Max Julien's Goldie. He wasn't even Willie Dynamite. That doesn't take away from the effect Louis had on his girls, those that cried and as he said, he stuffed his ears from the hearing of said cries - but he wasn't like others that I knew from the culture.
So, why has so much been made of Louis The Pimp this season? It's been hammered on again and again. Well, I think Merrick Mayfair tells us what the issue is in Episode 6.
"Great Mama Ernestine sends her regards, says the du Lac boys walked past her porch heads so high you wouldn’t know their money came from flesh."
You know who else had money that came from flesh? Louis de Pointe du Lac. The white one, from the books and films. Vampiredom's saddest, loneliest Participant in That Most Peculiar Institution.
I think this is RJ & Crew's way of saying "Sure, swap 'em out. Racebend to your heart's content, but he's not any better than the slave master and don't you forget it!"
Which is disingenuous for reasons I shouldn't have to explain to grown ass adults on this site.
This season, in my opinion, is about resentment of the Black characters. You don't have to agree, because I'm not writing this for agreement. I'm just thinking out loud. If you like s3, I love that for you. Anyways, the fandom to some degree has always hated Louis, but now I believe the writers are showing their hatred of this Louis to us. This Claudia This season is about the unmaking of these Black characters.
We've all seen the "Louisiana fried chicken" comment. That's not by accident, or a throwaway line. That's to "humble" the Black man that bought his sister a honeymoon package on The Blackstar Line - a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, the organizer of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Rolin & Co. have fans clamouring for the 'knocking down a peg or two" of the Black man who loved his 'churchy', mentally ill brother enough to not institutionalize him and with him, give us a taste of our much beloved Nicholas, or Hines Brothers.
"With Episode 1, titled “In Throes of Increasing Wonder…,” the show not only crafts one of the best pilots in the history of television, it also showcases Black culture in New Orleans, and how essential this is to Louis’ life. It’s clear here, from Louis being called a slur by a fellow businessman to the familial joy seen at his sister Grace’s (Kalyne Coleman) wedding, that Blackness is not only integral to Louis’ story, but the story this adaptation is trying to tell." Paste Magazine
This is about the unmaking of Louis de Pointe du Lac and Claudia.
"I always thought that Louis slightly cribbed James Baldwin's speech patterns, and that's what he took with him to Dubai. It's an affectation. But then as he comes back to himself, his real, true New Orleans accent creeps back in." Jacob Anderson, Backstage
Claudia, Episode 6:
"took your Black queen and ran off with him across the ocean..."
Young militants referred to Baldwin, unsmilingly, as Martin Luther Queen. Henry Louis Gates, The Fire Last Time
The use of another Black voice to say these things is certainly interesting, but unsurprising. (I don't need to get into everything she said for obvious reasons - if you're fine with everything she said, hooray for you, we're here for what I think.)
"The one good thing in my bleak… [sobbing] Black life, and I don’t know where she is!"
I won't argue the difficulty of living as a Black woman with people who aren't either one, or agree with the sentiment above. I will point out that in her time in NOLA, following her transformation, Claudia did live better materially than most Black girls and women. The most notable exceptions that we know through the show being Grace and Florence - who did not live 'bleak Black lives'.
Claudia as a vampire had better chances at survival than most Black girls and women, even in her worst circumstances. But that line, isn't about any of that - that line is to undo every moment in S1 where Claudia did have moments of happiness. To undo moments in S2 where she found acceptance and what she wanted.
"Bleak Black Life", indeed. Catchy isn't it? Like the antithesis of 'Black Lives Matter'. AND IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE US - LOOK AT DEE PHARMA. A COCAINE WHORE BUCKET. (they like buckets, these white writers - buckets of chicken, whore buckets...)
AND SPEAKING OF HYPERSEXUALIZATION…
"Some joy I know, knowin’ is how good I humiliated you in New Orleans, how I ginned up the train for the slave here.
'Lestat said he’d do worse than rape me, Daddy Lou.'
Worked good, didn’t it?"
Because the only solution to having an audience thinking their white lead was capable of victimizing these Blacks that the writers didn't want in the first place, is to show that a lynched, Black female (I use this word deliberately) is unworthy of your belief with regards to him.
The same white guy that killed poor Miss Lilly for the crime of being a poor substitute for Louis. That dropped Louis from miles above earth. That raged at Claudia like she was a rival lover instead of an inconvenient daughter.
This guy can't be held up as the great focus for the Great Conversion to S3 and a whiter audience and whiter tastes without the undoing and unmaking and unmanning of the lead/s of S1&S2.
Come on now, this was a bit heavy handed (from Merrick's summoning):
"Son of Ham," - That's real cute, paired with Claudia calling him a slave multiple times.
I don't need to get hit repeatedly on the head with a hammer to get the message Rolin & Co are sending. I'm out - but I just wanted to be clear about the why.
jacobvanloon
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