Kimberly Hirsh @kimberlyhirsh - Tumblr Blog

Movie tag game! I was tagged by @genderlessspacerock

Without naming them, post a gif from ten of your favorite films, then tag ten people to do the same.

I'm not tagging anyone, just posting to satisfy @genderlessspacerock's curiosity but if you see this and want to do it, pretend I tagged you.

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THE ADDAMS FAMILY

1991, dir. Barry Sonnenfeld

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We need more gothic fiction where men are going mad and running around in billowing nightgowns and women are brooding, byronic, and morally dubious

kimberlyhirsh

Okay, hereby devoting myself to being a thoroughly Byronic lady. I've already got the brooding down.

Source

Nico Minoru, goth icon, in Runaways

#romantic goth #romantigoth

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Me: gosh I sure am having a nice day with all my blood inside my body

The villainous vampire:

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[ID: gif of three kittens, the species some sort of wild cat, standing in front of a den in a field. one kitten bites the neck of another/end ID]

official vampire post

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from Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, by Anne Rice

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I’ve been very frustrated by the gender discourse in this fandom, which often seems far too rigid. But these passages reminded me of why I loved these books so much when I read them, so many years ago, and why they still remain important. The show is also playing with gender, and I’d love to see more of that play in the fandom.

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@vampire-scripture

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That was part of what bled into the characterization of Claudia, the idea of being less worthy of respect just because of your body or how you are perceived by society.

“I saw Claudia as a woman in a child’s body,” says Rice. “There are women who are eternally called girls - cute, sweet, adorable pinchable, and soft- when in fact they have a strong mind that’s very threatening” - The Vampire Companion

‘Let tears gather in your eyes. You haven’t tears enough for what you’ve done to me. (...) Monsters! To give me immortality in this hopeless guise. - Claudia, Interview with the Vampire

Claudia is brilliant and dangerous. Yet her fathers treat her as a "doll", a child. Part of her character arc is fueled by rage, caused by this constant paternalism.

Of course, Lestat gave me a doll as usual, the replica of me, which as always wears a duplicate of my newest dress. (...) And what should I do with it? Play with it as if I were really a child? "Is there a message here, my beloved father?" I asked him this evening. "That I shall be a doll forever myself?" - Claudia's Diary, The Queen of the Damned

There is a great interview in which Anne talks about the rage in the character of Claudia, I'll try to make a gifset of it for this week ^^.

Still, it is wild to see some interviews (old interviews) of a bestselling author, in which the host asks things like: "what does your husband think about you writing "x"?".

Which, you know, sometimes can be pertinent (e.g. what does your husband think of you featuring his poems in your books), but in some other cases...

apoptoses

Something I think gets lost in the discussion of gender in Anne's work/her view of self is the context of the time in which IWTV was written and published.

IWTV wasn't published until 1976.

Women in the United States were not legally allowed to have a credit card or get a home loan in their own name, without their husband's approval, until 1974. Laws were just being put into place regarding discriminating against women in hiring and discriminating in pay for women. Most women still couldn't get birth control without their husband's approval. There was no such thing as no fault divorce, or even the concept of marital rape.

While there was no law against a woman getting a driver's license on her own, in the 60s and 70s it could still depend on where you lived and who was working the DMV that day. Anne herself did not have a driver's license and did not drive because Stan would not permit her to drive.

I wish I could remember the exact interview, because she did talk extensively about how in her early days of writing their mutual friends would just refer to her as 'Stan's wife'. 'Stan's wife' wrote a book. 'Stan's wife' is getting published. 'Stan, how is your wife getting on with her book?' being asked while she's in the room. No matter how libertine we view the 1970s, socially women still weren't really looked at outside their roles as wives.

Interview with the Vampire was published right on the cusp of women getting important financial rights, labor rights and marital rights (many of which didn't even come until decades later). So I think Claudia's pent up rage at being a woman trapped in a child's body and Anne's desire to make vampires something that are not male or female but something other is so, so timely and we don't really consider that context enough.

kimberlyhirsh

I love all the things everyone above said. I've always found Claudia so compelling.