TVL ep7 was brilliant and here's why (#1)
For some reason, tvl seems to invite a wave of dislike from the fandom none of the previous seasons did and i geniuenly. Don't. Get. Why. Yes, the season has its flops because shrinking the material into 7 episodes while still including and giving significance to characters who aren't in the book takes a lot of pondering. BUT. But. but.
First, let's get something straight: iwtv is a NOT A GOTHIC ROMANCE. For god's sake, please stop calling it like that. Let's not mix up period styles, 'romance' (~early novel) components and the adjectives 'romantic' (loveable) and 'gothic' (eerie) as qualificatives etc. It is a supernatural horror. Like Hannibal level of horror. I would add, psychological (or queer, if i really wanted to label). Most aspects I'm gonna touch on are psychological. The sole purpose is not loustat, loumand or dm, so crying or complaining about not getting any 'saucy scenes' or kisses this season show a lot about misaligned viewer attitudes. Yes, and these are usually the same people that criticise the show's realistic SA rep, saying it's not needed or deeming it distasteful towards survivors. Just because you don't want something this disturbing to exist, it won't disappear from the world. Quite frankly, consent becomes very blurry in the vampiric context, so I would argue that most sexual encounters we see in the show would be considered plain violations in the real world. See? Pretty horrific, and not romantic at all. And yet again, so horribly realistic.
(I’m gonna view the 3 seasons together, as a coherent body of work that is able to stand on its own, naturally, as an adaptation of the chronicles. RJ’s logic is sometimes hard to decipher but I’m giving it my best shot. If something isn’t making sense, I’m gonna call that out as well.)
but humbly, let's dive in, let's continue.
#1/ Eternalized human experience: It is human experience that inherently shapes all vampire into the form they're going to be trapped in enternity in. For example, Louis is often mocked for being sentimental, melanchonic, too attached to his humanistic (!) humanity by Lestat and others. Ep7 showed us that no vampires are able to overstep the limitations they faced as humans, almost all cases getting more serious with the amounts of trauma they've inherited and accumulated since their turning. Selfishness, pimping, domestic and sexual abuse, rape, sexual slavery, a fear of loneliness or sickness or death, possessiveness, thirst for appreciation, love, recognition, reassurance, guidance. An obsession to control, to rein, to gain the upper, decisive hand, to dominate, to use, to eternalize the 'rotten experience' Marius uses to conquer his own narrative because, in their vampiric minds, there is no o-t-h-e-r option. Failure falls on top of failure. At the end, all vampires remain humans. No transformation took place. We have yet to encounter a sane, independent one. That's why Lestat's purgatory especially important: he, and not others we thought as better equipped for an inner therapy process like this, took the FIRST STEP.
#2/ Louis's pimp identity: As I have propagated for YEARS, Louis's human identity as a 'collaborative' Black pimp is essential to his character and now it is finally canonically proved. The practice of human Louis conforming white standards in order to satisfy his desire of ambition, personal significance, wealth and status is historically inevitable, since minorities were forced to compete within the colonial economy or market. Louis abstractly or quite literally 'enslaved' his own community, the residents of his new orleans quarter in order to rise up on the social ladder. Once, turning, he refused to conform anymore, because he partly got out of the human 'oppressed-oppressor cycle'. At the same time, he didn't consider that his newfound immunity didn't extend to his community (the lynching leading to Claudia's turning). Obviously, during the process of conforming, he's hurt just like any Black person. He's a vamp but his pimp identity influences his relationship dynamics. He knows it and what's more important, consciously utilizes it to get the upper hand, like we saw in the kitchen scene with Armand.
#3/ Armand's breakdown: Armand's character is the most realistic and painful SA representation I've seen on screen so far. No miraculous recovery, no sudden realisation, no 'speaking-out' for himself. He was born in 1481. He knows, recognizes modern terms, but cannot internalize them, cannot understand them the way we do. The abuse is normalized by not being recognized by the very people he claims to have made him happy in the past (Louis, Lestat) or even people who are capable of contextualising the vocabulary needed for voicing the experience (Daniel). The uncomfortable power-exchange hierarchy in loumand briefly touched on in previous seasons becomes obvious and very frontal. As Assad said "Armand has given up on others understanding him". Each vampire is basically a solitary confinement and Armand doesn't have a voice, doesn't have a vocabulary to express what has happened to him. Louis tips him over the edge once again. His primal instincts: "how I make this right quickly so I can avoid forthcoming punishment?" "oh god, I need to set everything right in this instant to escape the retaliation." "please, I'll do anything, quickly, just don't hurt me anymore." Complete fawning. For a traumatized individual, no clear thoughts exist in that moment. Just the frantic need to escape and to redo any mistakes they've made. All other sectors of their reality are blocked, floating, drifting, slowing down, shutting down. Armand is so deep down in this, he can only act out of hurt because that is the sole emotion capable of occassionally outmatching the burden he carries within. But make no mistake, this does NOT make him a disney level sole villain, nor villainistic.
Let's train back our minds into critically engaging with a viewed material.
Let me know your thoughts whatever they may be~🫶
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