one thing I will say. assad the actor you are. because I have been a day-1 Armand hater and i have been twisting myself in knots this season (including the finale!!) attempting to consider that maybe Armand isnt so bad after all and i feel absolutely disgusted with myself over it!!!
For me the Interview with The Vampire book was an allegory for the very human experience of making peace with the truest version of oneself. The Vampire Lestat book expands that universe with a character that seemed to have it all figured out in the first one ("embrace what you are!") but is also quite (charmingly) messy navigating the world. The two books play with power and perspective and are funny and haunting and sexy. TVL moves the plot forward with a sense of impending doom, but it doesn't really take off until QOTD. What you're left with is a monstrous character taking stock of their life, trying to understand their place in this world.
I feel like I got that in spades with the AMC adaptation, not only from Lestat, but with Armand, and Louis, and Claudia.
spoilery~below
Lestat's whole storyline in the finale did absolutely nothing to drive the plot forward, but it was a wonderful epilogue to a character study. For me it was perfect and did what it was supposed to do ASSUMING we get another season to work through the meat of the QOTD plot. I was locked in from beginning to end. The way it was written, the way it was shot, all the surprise appearances at the end.
I really enjoyed the Armand and Louis storyline in the finale too. Absolutely mesmerizing. And while I can come up with half a dozen ways to make sense of it, it didn't necessarily "click" for me the way the rest of the season did. I can make it make sense, but I can't be sure what the show wanted me to take away from it. Maybe it pays off in a future season? Maybe its just cruelty for cruelty's sake? Personally, I read it as Armand making Louis suffer for being the subject of Lestat's affection, mixed in with some pimp/maker trauma revenge, but who knows? Perhaps Rolin Jones is intentionally weaponizing these questions to secure a season 4?
Regardless of the intention, the moment serves as a vehicle for additional characters to make peace with who they are and the harm they've caused, and because of that it felt right as a way to wrap up the season (even if I dont necessarily understand the motivation/trigger/timing).
Not letting Louis and Lestat have a little tiny kiss at the end was diabolical though.
And by the way, when these other characters think or say of me that I am beautiful or irresistible, etc., don't think I put these words in their heads. I didn't!
— THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED | Prologue
[for a parallel, see: x]
I've seen a lot of great posts documenting the theatrical inspirations of The Vampire Lestat/IWTV, including Kushner's Angels in America and the works of Beckett. The show generally owes a huge debt to Beckett (which is why we now have him in annoying vampire form producing Lestat's album)--including 'Waiting for Godot/Guido' in s2 and IWTV's general 'odyssey of recollection' themes present in Krapp's Last Tape (in which an old man plays back tapes recorded by his younger self while he criticizes, contests, and grapples with meaning (!); it's also arguably the source of 3x5's ice cream 'scoop' ref). The human crisis of meaning that's at the heart of most of Beckett's work is central to the vampires of IWTV/TVL, and it may even be more keenly felt by them (does the meaning of life matter more when you live forever?)
I want to zero in on one reference I haven't seen mentioned yet to consider Akasha's great monologue in 3x5 and how it and actress Sheila Atim's delivery relate in particular to Beckett's "Not I". (It's a 15-min play; you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube here - I really recommend - it's a bizarre, trippy, delightful experience)
First, relating to form - Beckett loves stillness and isolation (his characters may be stuck in urns, trash cans, or a sand hill) and this particular play takes place within the extremely restricted frame of a disembodied mouth hanging on stage. This suits a queen frozen on a slab for thousands of years.
Second, content - One reading of 'Not I' (since there are never singular definitive readings of Beckett's play) is that it shows a woman who has gone through a traumatic experience and is caught in a repetitive, dissociative state, re-living it and recounting events that happened to her from a scattered, distanced third-person perspective.
This is the source of the title, 'Not I' -- words which don't actually appear in the play text but are ghosted in the repeated refrain "What? Who? No -- SHE!" It is as though someone has posed the question 'did these things happen to you?' and the speaker is responding 'no, they happened to her!' or essentially, 'Not I!' (Many of the IWTV/TVL characters take a similar approach of misrecognition/disidentification in relation to their own trauma, including Lestat.)
Consider how this format mirrors the similar third-person framing of Akasha's monologue ("And why is she kept? And why is her death prolonged?"); however, unlike Beckett's nameless protagonist, Akasha is eventually able to recognize her experience ("I am the girl! I am the voice! And I am her!)
If these resonances weren't enough, at one point, Not I's protagonist recounts the process of a gradual (metaphorical?) unfreezing, going from: "No part of her moving, that she could feel, just the eyelid", to the return of movement and voice: "She who but a moment before could not make a sound of any kind, and now can't stop; can't stop the stream" (stream as in the steady stream of words currently spewing forth). Sound familiar? (!!!)
Another nice point of connection is the persistent buzzing in Beckett's text: "all the time the buzzing in the ears" (which could be read as the voices of the vampires that Akasha hears.)
Thirdly, delivery: There is a frenetic pace and distance to Atim's delivery of Akasha's monologue and to 'Not I', a 'stream' that makes the 'noiseness' of the words as much a feature of the experience of listening as their meaning. This ties into an absurdist devaluation of language ('scoop!' - but we might even read Lestat's nonsense lyrics in a similar vein -- 'doo doo' 'wa-ah', etc - part of this grappling with meaning - (that's right, I'm justifying the nonsense lyrics with Derrida!))
Finally, we can bring these together with the broader thematic/philosophical resonances of Beckett's work.
These relate to the fundamental existentialist questions: why are we here? What is the meaning of life? -- which we see young vampire Lestat grapple with in the episode-- and I would argue are also the questions that Akasha is posing herself as the answer to. These questions/ideas, also found in Beckett's theatre of the absurd, trace back to philosopher Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. According to Camus life is inherently meaningless (or absurd), and there are three responses one can have to this realization: physical suicide (think of all the vampires throwing themselves into the flames), philosophical suicide i.e. religion (see Armand, structure, etc.), or acceptance.
Akasha, at the close of her monologue, seems to be posing herself as another answer -- one informed by the context/current of the violence that permeates her speech ("And why is her death prolonged? Why the girl curled?") --- an answer which also contains strong shades of the 'religion' response above: vengeance against the patriarchy that is the source of this violence and subsequent trauma.
(When I first started this I was like 'oh, cute, similarities!' but now I am completely convinced that this reference/inspiration is deliberate. Like the parallels are just so rock solid and speak both to the show's concern with trauma and cycles of abuse AND of meaning-making)
When I saw this scene I imagined Akasha had been suckling (for centuries) on the firehose of horrors that is social media, when she let out a Molly-Bloom-Soliloquy-like response from her finally liberated lips in a way that felt quintessentially female. It was not rage. It was not hysteria. It was an appropriate response. And my mind kept the pace with each phrase in real time....
And why is she curled on the ground?
And why is it wound {around her throat}?
And why must he break her?
And why with his hands, and why with his fists?
And what is it to see and to know, but to be told…
You have not seen, you have not known
And why is she kept?
Why must she be kept?
And why in this place must she be kept?
especially at this specific moment in time, I understand why black people might feel like white people are inherently unsafe. i see how claudia might be embraced by the community as a sister. I see how people might be protective of her. i see all of that and i know the grief is valid. i do think everyone involved in this show has gone above and beyond in their due diligence and have portrayed themes that are triggering and sensitive with the utmost care and love so I'm fully on board with the storytelling, but obviously everyone is entitled to their discomfort and I hope humanity in general does better so no one has to ever feel unsafe.
romaincrisis
izzy806
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
