IWTV Musings: Layers of Lestat's Racism
Bipocs, please don't let white folk gaslight & whitesplain you into believing that Lestat genuinely "understood" Louis' struggles & frustrations as a Black man dealing with antiblack racism in Jim Crow America.
Acknowledgment is not the same as understanding. And understanding is not the same as empathy. And empathy is not the same as love. And love is not the same as racial allyship.
You can have Black/Bipoc friends, and be in an interracial relationship, and have mixed-race children, and live in a predominately Black/Bipoc community, and still be a tone-deaf raging narcissistic racist; with patterns of behavior that constantly minimize, deride, whitesplain, dismiss, mock, and victim-blame racially-charged actions targeting Black/Bipoc people.
Despite one's claims to be "color blind", white people have eyes & ears. You can acknowledge when racism is done to others, while STILL lacking understanding and/or empathy for Black people's anger & violence in retaliation against microaggressive/macroaggressive acts of racism against them & their people. (And even some Black folk fall for this nonsense, listening to ignorant people who failed to recognize the nefarious ways that Remmick & Lestat resemble each other wrt to vampirism as a metaphor for racism & fake allyship.)
And we see that in the IWTV fandom all the time, where some white fans are fully capable of acknowledging/admitting that Lestat treated Louis wrong (because these are vampires & vampires are monsters & monsters have no human morals~! and whatever other Santiagoisms they vomit up, eff what Anne Rice said x x); while still pointing the finger at Louis to blame him for being the "aggressor" in the Ep5 fight; or saying that Louis & Claudia got their "karma" in 2x7 and "deserved" to be tortured & killed cuz "Louis was a pimp" or cuz they abandoned Emilia in 2x1 🤣 or cuz they abandoned Lestat after he trauma-dumped his Magnus backstory; or that the Ep5 fight was "even" (although Lestat has all this superblood & "godlike strength" from Akasha and both the Cloud Gift AND Fire Gift as early as 1x1).
Watch out when people use that loaded rhetoric in fandom spaces, because it mirrors the exact same talking points that racists use IRL, particularly wrt the criminalization of Black people, esp. Black males vs the white people in positions of power. It's always about policing Black people's actions, rather than critiquing white people's own (why was Trayvon Martin outside at night; what did he have in his hand; why was he so argumentative; why did he fight back; it's his fault he got killed; George Zimmerman's innocent cuz the racist law says so); all while ignoring the blatant racist micro/macroaggressive attitudes that permeate real and fictional people's lives.
Some white fans in the IWTV fandom will claim that they "understand" racial nuances and power dynamics, with all this crap about holding mirrors up to the audience's faces; and then simultaneously state that because Louis defended himself & his daughter Claudia against Lestat in Ep5, it proves that Lestat is NOT the "big bad white abuser." Which tells you precisely what offends them the most--any negative portrayal of a white man vs a Black person (let alone multiple Black people) automatically rears their defensiveness & abuse apologia; even when it is clear as crystal that a man who starved himself for years on end was in no way shape or form the physical equal to a well-fed vampire 100+ years older than him. Even when Daniel (the white audience surrogate) says over and over again that Louis was abused by Lestat. Even when the S2 guignolettes in the front row of the TdV mirrored all the cockeyed nonsense that the IRL IWTV fans had been up to since S1. Even when parallels were paralleling between the way Loustat & Loumand's dynamic ended up underscoring the FACT that while Louis thought he was in equal relationships (or worse: that HE had the power), the REALITY was that he was the one being played the entire time! "She was at the ball tonight! Like one of those girls on the telephone switchboard, eavesdropping in on things that she shouldn't." | "He directed the play! You were supposed to die with Claudia!"
But of course, the perfect victim is someone who's never done anything wrong in their entire life; who sits back and lets themselves & their loved ones be terrorized & controlled & manipulated while never lifting a finger to fight back and never opening their mouths in anger or hatred. If someone dares to stand up for themselves, verbaly or physically, they're not the victim, they are "the aggressor;" and it's their fault that a fight escalates when they failed to coddle their white partner's fragile feelings and capitulate to their demands just to keep the peace; even at the expense of their own dignity. Why didn't Louis just walk away? Why didn't he just let Lestat choke Claudia again? It's not like Louis' the paragon of good parenting anyway, so what leg does he have to stand on to stop Lestat from being horrible!? 😩
Cuz ofc, any form of resistance is forbidden; valid or justified or not. Autonomy & agency only matters when Black people apply it to do as their white partners tell them to & want them to behave--acts of love automatically negate acts of fear. Louis cannot be a victim, because "he didn't act scared enough" in 1x6 and 1x7--even though in 2x1 - 2x7 Louis (and Jacob Anderson) repeatedly voiced how Louis was scared Lestat was going to kill him in revenge (a la DreamStat). Because Louis never wanted to leave Lestat, he's not "locked together in hatred" in a no-win situation in the well-with-no-bottom on a sinking ship of a failmarriage. Because Louis' in a prison of his own making by choosing Lestat (and then Armand), he's not a prisoner at all~! Because he chose Lestat over Paul/Claudia/God/etc, Lestat can't abuse his power over Louis at all~! The logical fallacies in this fandom are staggering.
The same white fans talking out the side of their neck about how the Trial was NOT about racism cuz Delainey Halyes said they didn't talk about it (even though racism was peppered all over S2 for actually educated & informed audiences x x x x x) will then have the nerve to try and speak on race from their own ivory towers of white privilege; meanwhile having NOTHING of actual substance or value to say about the history of racism in America, and how S1 & S2 subtly or overtly reflect IRL events they know EFF ALL about.
CREDITS: Gifs by tuserlivia, sophsun1, splashesdarling, armavnd, redmyeyes, apaethy (x x)
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