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has anyone ever had the hot take that the relationship between Marius and Armand parallels the imperialist control of Europeans over the colonized people of the Orient?

good, white, educated, moral, powerful men of the West "saving" the poor, subjugated, abused, voiceless, uncivilized people of the East. speaking for them, knowing best what they would have wanted, had they had a voice. we're not colonizing you, we're saving you! and we're going to completely misrepresent and fetishize your culture for our own gain.

now - a wealthy, white, European, educated, powerful vampire "saves" a brown child from the horrific abuse in a brothel (by purchasing him, of course), offers him what he knows is best for him, loves him (grooms him, rapes him), sexualizes his exotic beauty and exploits it for personal gain by making him pose for paintings and by pimping him out to his buddies. he owns him, the child is a commodity obtained with power, without his consent - he is being used and treated as if such abuse is the best life he could have ever gotten.

lemonandpie

Spent my entire liveblog screaming about this coz TVA is literally an extended metaphor for colonialism. Armand is Constantinople, repeated over and over. His body a ransacked church (by evil Ottomans [ie Muslims] no less). Passed as a figurehead from one religion to another. Creates beautiful art but no one cares beyond that. Abandoned by the Venitians (Marius) once captured by the Infadel (Children of Darkness).

Armand also represents the new, 'savage' world while Marius represents the enlightenment. The renaissance was sparked by the fall of Constantinople leading to the flood of texts from Ancient Rome and Greece being spread throughout Christendom, reviving lost schools of thought and bringing humanity out of the supposed 'dark ages'. Armand comes from a country made of ruin, where they want to bury him alive to prove devotion to God. He is rescued by a much older man from Ancient Rome, who teaches him about art and philisophy, and takes him away from his 'backwards' ideals, only for Armand to slip into the forces of puritanism and religious conflict (which if you know anything about European history in the 16th and 17th centuries, then you know why that is. And the importance of Lestat bringing Armand out of his puritan ways via theater).

I do want to say that, despite the Imperialist and Orientalist ideas in Anne Rice's work, Marius is explicitly wrong at the end of TVA. He is incompatible with modern life, unable to trust humanity's progress, and that is why he and Armand never get back together. Armand has grown too far beyond him.

Anyway, making Armand South Asian is a great way to ensure the audience is getting those vibes off Marimand without spending the time on it that Anne Rice did. But I still really hope we get at least a couple of these metaphors used in the show.