Let’s talk about Alastor. Buckle in, this one is a doozy. This has been a long time coming, but thanks to @mak3morn for inspiring me to finish this.
Note: This deals with some pretty heavy content including racism and mentions of sexual assault. Full disclosure, I am mixed-race but not black. I did my best to contextualize the information thoughtfully and factually in an effort to help others understand this character. I find him to be extremely fascinating and the richness of his character deserves attention and care. Take care when reading!
Alastor lived and died within the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the south. He was born around the turn of the century and based on the design of his clothing and background he likely died around 1930-1935 and he was in his late thirties to possibly very early 40s. His heyday would have actually been closer to the 1920s, when prohibition laws were in full swing and massive shifts in the music scene led to the birth of the blues and jazz. New Orleans was something of an enigma, despite the religious piety and traditional culture, hidden speakeasies and mixed-race clubs dotted the city, always toeing the line between ravenous customers and the threat of police raids.
Slavery continued to be a very real and looming presence in Alastor’s life. Having only been legally abolished in 1865, he was barely one generation removed from the last of Louisiana’s emancipations. He would have personally known people who were slaves, possibly even his own family members.
Alastor’s skin color appears to be a bit lighter than the other black people around him. The history of interracial relationships in Louisiana is unique because of its ties to French colonisation. Louisiana Creole, broadly-speaking, is an ethnolinguistic group of people descended from Europeans, Indigenous populations, and the African diaspora. The echoes of a French practise known as Plaçage (coming from “placer”--which means something like “to place with”) was a practise in the late 18th century or so where european men entered into something similar to a common-law marriage with free African women. These interracial couplings were a practical solution to a problem that plagued colonists during the early stages of settlement. The colonies were rough places and living there was hard work, European women were just not interested in getting on a dirty, cramped boat for weeks to live in such brutal conditions. If you wanted companionship, sex, or maybe a little family, your best bet was to enter into one of these so-called “left-handed” marriages, at least until you made some money and found yourself a “proper” (i.e. European) wife.
The practice died out in the early 1800s but the impact followed and likely influenced future generations even through the racial segregation era that was soon to follow. This means that the population of Louisiana was vibrantly mixed long before Alastor’s time. I believe that based on the time period, his skin colour, and some small hints about his parentage– Alastor’s father was likely a white man who was not legally allowed to live with or claim Alastor as his own. Under Jim Crow, the “one-drop” rule meant that Alastor for all intents and purposes was a negro, and subject to the harsh segregation practices regardless of his mixed heritage. The question of how he fit into the community might not have been so clear. Who do you belong to when you are neither fully black nor white?
If Alastor’s mother was darker-skinned than him, it would have become increasingly clear that he didn’t quite belong to her world– and yet she was likely his refuge and safe place in every way. A white father would have been so incredibly alien from what he was used to, he would have spoken differently, dressed and carried himself differently. It would have become glaringly obvious where he stood in comparison to this. This being said, Alastor’s mother likely raised him all on her own, probably working her fingers to the bone to give him things like piano lessons. I like to think that during this point in his life, Alastor still spoke and behaved more like his mother. I bet they spent long nights cuddling and listening to the radio. I believe he was very attached to her, and possibly the only person he has ever loved.
We see this influence in his interactions with men and women. The women in Alastor’s life tend to be “safe”, where he is the least guarded and aggressive version of himself (both in his life and afterlife.) He does not see them as inherently threatening, even when they hold enormous personal power, like Rosie, who he seems to regard more as an obstacle. His interactions with men, however, are much different, for a series of complicated reasons.
As Alastor would have come of age, he likely noticed two things. The first being that the more he “acted” white, the more opportunities he got. He probably spent hours practising the Mid-Atlantic dialect he’s so well-known for. It probably drew the ire of those in the black community who felt that he wasn’t “black enough” to really belong. Would they have chastised him for “putting on airs” and making himself out to be “better” than everyone? Sacrificing the community he grew up with may have seemed like a just cause to scrape together a better life for himself and his mother. As he developed his voice, others must have noticed how lovely he sounded– and what better career for someone who doesn’t want to be seen, but heard…than radio? Radio was the equalizer of Alastor’s existence. The one place where he could successfully reconcile and hold all the pieces of himself at once. It’s no mystery as to why he’s so attached to radio, it liberated him dramatically from the constraints of his life as a mixed-race individual.
The second was that he, perhaps seemingly overnight, caught the eye of everyone around him because (let’s be real here) he’s strikingly pretty. He’s willowy and graceful, has a dazzling smile, warm brown eyes, and a shock of curls neatly piled on his head. He’s a talented piano player, a lovely singer and loves to drink and dance. What a catch he would be! He likely also noticed that he was catching the eye of men… white men, to be specific. The hypersexualization of black populations to justify the exploitation of black bodies was (and is) alive and well during this time, and white men who were inclined to seek other men likely felt that Alastor was novel and exotic, as well as feminine enough to counteract and rationalize their internal homophobia.
His blackness made him a very explicit target and he had to be acutely aware of this. He was in an extremely precarious and dangerous position. As he was permitted to access more and more spaces he would not normally be allowed into (due to increasing fame and “pretty privilege”), the more eyes leered…wayward hands “accidentally” brushed against him, drunken strangers might wrap around his shoulders and suggest they “go someplace a little quieter”. It’s hard to imagine that some of these men didn’t attempt to take him by force. Perhaps some even succeeded.
Alastor’s attachment to his mother (and the likelihood of an absent father) tells us that his formative experiences with men framed them as “takers”. Men show up when they want something, then disappear. Attention and love is conditional. Not giving men (especially white men) what they want results in violence. Men always want something from you, and will say anything to get it. Men especially want things from black people. Men clearly want Alastor’s body. He is not going to allow any part of himself to be taken if he can help it.
We see this dramatic difference in male-on-male dynamics with Alastor in every way once he’s dead. His form of self-preservation focuses entirely on fortifying himself so fully as to avoid any possibility of another male overpowering him. Remember– he doesn’t tend to see women as threatening. He makes a (bad) deal with the first demon he can make contact with to secure an extremely powerful position in hell, and spends a lot of time in what I can only describe as managing some kind of infernal pecking order– he spends all of his time identifying, stalking and devouring those who he perceives as a potential overtaker. His first instinct when entering a room is to seek and destroy whomever he thinks is the most powerful male in the room. Despite having the cunning and patience of an ambush predator, he sometimes loses the plot and tries taking on someone who is way out of his league (case in point: Adam; Lucifer.)
The details about Alastor’s existence in the afterlife are not so baffling when you focus in. Mostly, they are heartbreaking and reveal a rich character who lived and died in an unforgiving time and place. He was targeted for being a feminine-looking black man. People made it clear to him that they felt entitled to his body. He learned that staying safe meant he needed to be affable. He learned to hide behind a smile at all times.
He is a person defined by liminal spaces. He straddles the line between so many different states: black identity and white identity. Femininity and masculinity. Sexuality and asexuality. Modernity and tradition. Control and powerlessness. Privilege and marginalization. Predator and prey. Never quite existing fully in one state, always balancing to achieve his goals and avoid danger.
He lived so much of his life being targeted– sometimes from his own community, often from the law, and always from the people who could grant him the most power. The target he was born with was his skin color.
The man who railed against being prey by becoming a predator met his fitting end through a hole in his skull compliments of the hunter who mistook him for a deer. His daily reminder of what he will always be– a target, is visible any time he looks in the mirror. His perpetual smile stitched in place, mocking him, unable to frown even if he wanted to. Men still leering at him–wanting things from him everywhere he turns.
The most ruthless punishment of all: his dark skin colour gone, now some sickly greige, far from the warm, dark tone he had in life. The thing that defined his entire time on earth and his final connection with his mother, stripped in a brutal cosmic sentence. This to me, seems like his true tragedy.
(Author’s note: I know that the character design got a slightly darker skin tone in season 2, but it’s still not QUITE as dark nor warm as his human skin tone was– enough so that he doesn’t read as black when people see him in his demon form. If anything, I think he’s just deer-coloured.)
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