i think if i was a fish and a man caught me on his line and reeled me into his boat and then removed me from his hook and then delicately cut the artery between my gills and bled me out in the water and then put me in his cooler on ice to take home and he cut me into strips and dipped me in eggs and then flour and fried me in hot oil and then sat down and ate me in front of the football game with a beer and then fell asleep with his feet up on the couch with my bones in a plate on his lap i would truly feel loved for once
i love writers and journalists as story-driving characters, so i was bound to find daniel molloy interesting, but right now i specifically want to think more about how his narrative and claudia's serve each other.
i am obsessed with the fact that daniel's not on speaking terms with either of his daughters —or, i assume, that they are not on speaking terms with him. i am fascinated by how daniel is the one person in this story with no personal connection with claudia, and yet his function appears to be to insist on the value of claudia's whole, unedited story. i am curious about the arguments he uses, about the question of his real motivations.
— you had a daughter.
— i had a daughter.
— i've got two. the love is kind of...
— and if you were to come across their diaries and learn, in detail, how and when you failed them, would you share those failures with a brash young reporter you met at polynesian mary's?
what we know about his personal life isn't much, because the story isn't about him. he sums it up succinctly: "drugs, humiliation, self-pity kind of thing". two marriages, i don't remember if he says he's twice divorced but it does seem apparent that he's alone now. two daughters (same marriage? half sisters?) and the two of them not talking to him. both apparently unmarried, and young enough that daniel still mentions the possibility that they will have children in the future. meanwhile, he is dying of a degenerative illness.
what we know of his career is also little, but its intention, to me, is clearly to present him as credible —a skilled, righteous, but troubled journalist: two-time pulitzer winner with three published books besides working for renowned newspapers, concerned with controversial and groundbreaking issues, his two books seem very thematically relevant: about the aids epidemic, and capitalism-fueled environmental collapse. we know his life was tumultuous and addiction played into it, we know he's still well-respected but not actively reporting, he himself says his career as a journalist is dead. he doesn't address louis' question as to why he decided to come. he disregards louis' offer for immortality. so what is he after?
— and you? why again? what's changed?
— the world, circumstances. me, i've changed. and i, too, find the tapes lacking.
— so… a do-over.
— truth and reconciliation.
— career's been over for years. legacy? that's for board members and assholes in loafers. my daughters aren't even speaking to me anymore, so at least i can leave them some cash. but an honest reckoning? no.
again, we don't actually know his reasons, but i have my interpretation as to why he accepts louis' invitation. i am convinced that that first interview is something that has haunted him for most of his life —as to how, exactly, i have many theories, which are not relevant here. i really liked what bogosian said here about daniel's motivations, that he's a guy who has been driven by ambition all of his life and he doesn't know what to do without a clear purpose. this is a man who has been chasing the truth his whole life, and this is one truth he could never get at, and he can't pass up this chance. there's also a strong fuck it, i'm already dying energy around the way the whole character is written and played.
so, his insistence on getting to claudia's complete, unedited story is first and foremost consistent with his role in the narrative: louis wanted him because he's a no-bullshit reporter who covers stories of deep ethical and ideological implications, and louis —if we believe that "that's the purpose. our book must be a warning as much as anything."— is trying to make a statement about the ethics of vampirism. this all makes sense to me when i think about the original interview: in the book, louis overtly argues the subject of catholic morality and the nature of evil, while the story is also a vehicle to explore his (and rice's) grief about the loss of a daughter.
truth, and reconciliation. daniel, as of the pilot, doesn't seem to care much for reconciliation, but he is hounding after the truth from the get-go. he is sharp, he is aggressive, and he never minces words. and what i like most about his character in this show: if he is fascinated or attracted by vampirism (as he was in the 70s, as he is in the books), he absolutely refuses to show it.
he is the human in the story, and his purpose is to remind us that the charismatic romantic leads are actually killing machines.
and yet, from the moment he reads claudia's words, his constant disgust with vampirism seems to give way to something else. if anything, he is charmed.
for a killing machine, i kinda like her.
now, i mentioned several times that i found some of daniel's dialogue in the first three episodes to be a friction point, but at the same time, i think the aspect that grinds my gears is purposeful and well executed: when interrogating louis' narrative, daniel often speaks in soundbites, in headlines, in twitter hot-takes. he's intentionally offensive, always trying to trip louis up by facing him with the most bad-faith possible reading of his narrative. i wasn't sure about what to make of these sometimes cringe-worthy interventions until we got to episode five:
— poor dear. she wasn't held enough in between ritualistic murders.
— she spent every night for half a decade with no friends, locked in the emotional storm of puberty.
— look, charlie manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. still, he was charlie manson.
— is that all you think of her?
— mostly. i also think she makes you and frenchy look like a couple of whiny, existential queens. probably why she's a fuckin' gold mine. the girl who moves a million books.
— i won't have her exploited.
— won't matter what your intentions are. it's the world out there now. she's the… the… single-shooter, xbox, mouth-breather shit they crave.
— you can put the diaries in a proper context.
— context? sure. warn the world about a forthcoming apocalypse. or maybe inspire a line of sexy claudia halloween costumes. or a cool dismemberment trend amongst the suburban sylvia plath set. once you put it out there, they decide what it is. it can get away from you.
this exchange sets the tone of exactly how i think every one of daniel's interventions should be read: a fairly hostile interrogation of a fairly hostile subject. whether one agrees with his approach or not, whether one likes its role in the narrative, or enjoys daniel's character at all, that's another deal. i have seen people express distaste and/or discomfort at his flippant and even cruel way to address the black characters' trauma, which is of course perfectly justified, and i wonder if the show plans to address these dynamics in the modern day narrative in the way that they have been addressing them in the past story.
but let me go back to the subject of daniel's narrative function as human audience stand-in who prompts us to question louis' version of the story. his function, as a piece in the chessboard of the narrative, is to call louis a hypocrite. if louis wanted his version of events to go unchallenged, he could have dictated it to a transcriber. daniel is here to question his motivations, and to remind the audience that we should question both louis' and daniel's reasons. that we should never take anything they say at face value.
this same episode reminds us of the human aspect of this role, when louis exerts his vampire powers over daniel. this is a situation in which there is a stark power difference, and in which daniel insists on pushing boundaries in the pursuit of truth despite the very real risk he's putting himself in. the way he puts it, this is as dangerous to him as a journalist as meeting up with a dictator. we have seen him flinch when louis rushed at him in the pilot, when he set the tapes on fire. now he pushes and gets another show of power in return:
— there are four pages torn out.
— i'll repeat myself. i will not exploit her.
— did she tear them out? doesn't seem like something she would do.
— it's clear what happened.
— and she wrote about it, and i'd like to read it.
— no.
— when you do that, louis, when you editorialize, however noble the reasoning, it calls into question the other shit you're shoveling my way. or… or… or maybe you can recite it from memory, as you've demonstrated before. uh, let's see. "bruce walked back from the fire and leaned down over me and…" torn out pages…
"doesn't seem like something she would do." claudia, another character who doesn't mince words, who is always speaking her mind. louis says he won't exploit her, but we don't know if she would have ever agreed to her diaries being shared, and we definitely have no reason to believe she would have wanted her writing censored. now that the season is over and the show has established a clear thread of louis being not just a bystander while lestat abused her, but complicit and often participant in her suffering, i have no doubt in my mind that we are meant to understand these ripped pages as another extension of louis disrespecting claudia's autonomy and agency, twisting her version of events for his own benefit. i'm not saying that the narrative is setting up daniel as some white knight, just that his function is to make us notice that louis is exploiting claudia's story just as much as he is accusing daniel of wanting to exploit it.
— don't ask again.
— mr. du lac occasionally finds it difficult to talk about claudia.
— got that.
i find it an incredible character moment for all of them that daniel has the courage to slap a literal vampire, and that louis and armand allow it. so many questions from that scene! but i digress. daniel and us, we are reminded that louis is an incredibly powerful immortal being and daniel is a dying old guy. and yet daniel, as aware as he must be of this, doesn't let himself be cowered:
— well… isn't that neat and tidy?
— there was a ship. we did get on it.
— yeah, i read that, the first 50 pages. not exactly the, uh, adventure-of-our-lives feeling i'm feeling.
— it was a traumatic escape.
— yeah, but she didn't say that explicitly. i mean, maybe in some of the pages that got torn out. well, not torn out, exactly. more like with a ruler. but, um… there's a feeling that she hated your guts there for a while. why is that?
— i was haunted by my brother's death, by the abandonment of my sister, by the murder of lestat, i…
— murder? what murder?
— i couldn't burn him.
— but claudia could.
— no, she couldn't.
— she stuck a pen in his neck. she recorded his last words in his own blood. the girl did not have a fuckin' problem tossing him on the grill, okay?
i like that he speaks as if he knows her, because i think he truly feels like he does. to me, it sounds like against his better judgement, and despite every cynical thing he said about her killer nature, he feels a personal closeness with claudia, and this fuels his drive to get her story as much as his hunger for truth does. and i think the reason he feels this way about claudia is that he has failed both his daughters. i think for all that he insists he is not part of this story, from the moment that claudia was introduced, he started getting sucked into the narrative.
notice how in s01e06, we learn that daniel asked to be turned when he learned of claudia leaving for europe to seek vampires on her own: as if that 20-years-old daniel had seen himself in the story of an ambitious, driven young vampire hunting after adventure and knowledge, and wanted to follow her steps.
and also look at how daniel is almost never at a loss for words —only other time i can think of is when he's distracted by suspicion in the finale— and yet when he tries to talk about his daughters, words seem to fail him:
i've got two [daughters]. the love is kind of...
and this one is a very personal interpretation and probably a reach, but consider this bit, just before he tells louis that both his daughters aren't speaking to him:
you cursed her into the darkness. you chose lestat over her, time and time again.
did daniel curse his daughters? did he choose his addiction over his family over and over and over again? was his career the source of the strife? does he also seek reconciliation?
i think that, just from what we actually have on the screen so far, the show has been genius for making daniel a father. the way both him and louis being fathers who failed their children weighs their conversation in s01e04 is incredible. it sets up a heartbreaking contrast:
a father who can never repair his relationship with the daughter he failed, but has eternity to mourn her; a dying man who is running out of time to fix things with his daughters.
the idea that daniel could in turn, unknowingly and unwillingly, be working through his own grief and his own failures, trying to undo the wrong that has been done to claudia because he wronged his own daughters in similar, or in starkly different ways… god, it breaks my heart. i don't know for sure that it's what the text is going for, but i think it would be a potentially very smart and surely devastating thread to follow.
i would love to see louis —or armand, for that matter— turn the argument on him, that daniel is exploiting claudia for his own personal benefit as much as louis is, both trying to use her story to expiate their own sins, one by bringing her story to light and the other by shrouding it in protective darkness.
YES love all of these! Don’t know whether it had been mentioned but just another note on the scene when louis remembers claudia’s escape (though failed) by railway that u noted, which to me is a very moving moment, when he is pained by her mistreatment under jim crow though also happy for her happiness, her anticipation for the future and liberation from an abusive white patriarch even though it means being away from louis himself also. But soon after this we are told that back in San Francisco, this was the part of his narration when the young Daniel insensitively asked to be turned, which could probably explain louis’ rage and almost killing him. But now in Dubai, when offered the ‘dark gift’, Daniel easily turns it down-- out of love for his daughters, for not wanting to bear their death. So he can now finally share louis’ love and grief at that moment forty years ago.
AND soon after, louis asks something like ‘are you planning on slapping me again?’ (and Daniel answers ‘no’), a question I used to think kinda out of nowhere until I realized that daniel slapped him before because louis punished him for the denial of claudia’s humanity (that she was a mass murderer and therefore her rape is unworthy of sympathy) and the dismissal of a father’s protectiveness for a late daughter who he failed. So louis here is more of asking ‘could you see now my care and grief for her?’ and Daniel now can. And yes, being given 'eternity to grieve' is perhaps the dark ‘gift’’s biggest curse.
fuck tolkein and fuck dnd for being the originator and modern popularizer respectively of the race science tropes that have glued themselves parasitically to the fantasy genre and refuse to come off
every time a work of any medium starts by saying ‘in a world where race science is real. there’s some ethnostates–’ nope. checked out already sorry. dont want to know. will probably read/watch/play something without any of that! thanks!
present day louis’s an antagonistic ass, and it gives me whiplash personally. my interpretation is that louis brought daniel to him BECAUSE he’s an ass and he’s losing the last remnants of his humanity and the second interview is a warning (as we know) AND a personal cry for help. he’s saying to daniel, “please, human man, before you die, remind me how It Was. you know who i was 40 years ago. you still know how to be human. let’s eat the dessert you ate with you exwife together, even though it tastes like paste to me. tell me about your daughters. challenge me. when i shove you, tackle me. i don’t like being so powerful. i like to think i do, though”
like what daniel’s actor was saying about louis being the only man who knew daniel “back then”, daniel takes on a similar role for louis. daniel is the only one who “knew” louis “back then”.
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