I don't know if you agree, but so far Lestat was way more respectful of Claudia's death than Louis, at least to me?
He's antagonistic at mentions and towards Armand, he made a performance referencing Claudia (which is to me the most icky out of everything to he honest), he wrote a song for her, he constantly makes digs at Sam and clearly doesn't want to deal with him.
Meanwhile Louis is paying a woman to roleplay as his daughter and let her write in her diaries!!!!! Which is insane to me. And of course let's not forget reading her recounting of her rape to rapist himself. And of course, the book's existence.
Man, I don't know, maybe I misjudging situation, but so far Louis is way more exploiting one. I wonder, if it will affect how seance will go? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she has plenty of stuff to say to Lestat.
But If she's a GHOST (I'm theorising here) she's probably knows what happened after trial? Maybe she knows Lestat wasn't there willingly???? If he wasn't there willingly lol I mean Sam talked about all this hints about it. Perhaps, Claudia's rage won't be so focused on Lestat?
Listen, I have no idea how ghosts work, if Claudia sees everything what happens or not. But it's interesting to think about.
Mm, I definitely hear your points, but I actually don't know if how they're handling their feelings around Claudia's death are entirely comparable? They're different characters, with different relationships to her, different backgrounds, different experiences of the trial, Paris and everything that went down there, and, frankly, characters with deeply different understandings of story, performance and how quickly both can spiral out of control.
I do think a big part of the complexity with what Louis' doing and how he's handling everything comes from the fact that he's had her diaries for over seventy years and has read them to a point he knows them inside and out. They had an enmeshed relationship before she died, but the possession of her voice does I think give him a sense of ownership of her story, her character, her. That, I think, is really seen in his naivety of sharing those diaries with Daniel and assuming her memory would remain preserved and that she wouldn't be touched by the world beyond the apartment in Dubai.
Interestingly, that ties deeply to Louis' experience of art. He understands it as something owned and kept in private galleries or personal libraries, and even the work that he's moved by is a profoundly personal experience to him. The release of the book and the sudden exposure of her to the world is something he instigated but it isn't something he was prepared for, and the way he's subsequently grappled with her memory and his own grief is something - I think - that he's tried to draw walls around. Public revelations have become private shows, what he's doing with Bruce, what he's doing with Regina, are for him, personal commissions his vampiric power and his wealth / class power afford him, and importantly ones he completely controls, unlike the situation with Daniel. Still, they're steeped in his sense of ownership of her diaries - Regina has one of them! Or at least, is making notes in one identical to one of Claudia's on the boat.
His grief is about him, but then, so is Lestat's.
It's kind of an interesting thing, because Lestat doesn't have the mixed blessing of having had Claudia's diary for 70-odd years, his relationship with her is punctuated not by enmeshment, but by distance and othering, and in some ways, that's further embodied by the fact that he didn't know about the book before its release and was met with the sight of a girl in the costume of his daughter on Halloween. Lestat experiences the whip of the tail of the creature Louis let out, and as a result, he's able to make different choices.
Would Lestat have talked more about Claudia, sung more about her, used her memory more in his own work if it wasn't for Louis' interview becoming something out of their familial control? I don't know! It pretty clearly did shape how Lestat shared Nicki's story with Daniel, so that's a factor to consider, but Lestat also has a very different understanding of how art exists and who it's for and how narratives can be exploited. Lestat's worked as an artist, he was raped and murdered for his art, he understands audience and he understands how quickly a story can be taken from you and twisted in the hands of others. He understands art as public in all the ways Louis has historically understood it as private.
Lestat also though doesn't have that same sense of ownership over her because they weren't enmeshed, weren't as close or entangled, but also he didn't save her, and never had the chance to reconcile with her the way he did with Louis. The separation there is important, and also weights Lestat's inability to talk about her or really face the memory of her at all prior to these last two episodes, and the fact that he first would outside of the moment with Gabi through styling himself after her to bitingly mock Armand is selfish and exploitative too. It's a personal jab, but one he knows is being publicly recorded given the phones in the crowd and the trajectory of the band, and how that could snowball is something that prioritises his anger over Claudia's memory.
The song Lestat writes for her in this episode is a beautiful one, but in writing about her at all I think the show does pose an interesting question about whether or not it's possible to create artwork about someone dead without in some way exploiting their memory. It's not a question I think really has an answer, but it's one being asked especially as that song is placed alongside an oeuvre made of equal parts honesty and malintent, whether they're personally provocative like Big Boss or have bigger machinations at play with the 'make more' song ahead of the Great Conversion.
There is, of course, a purity of intent at least with something like Stained Glass Eyes, authenticity in expression, but I think you could make the case that boiling down what Louis' doing, on a character level, with Regina right now to its most base form is a pure intent and authentic expression too. He wants to see his daughter again, just where Lestat can explore that feeling through music, Louis currently only knows how to open his wallet and ask a stranger to play make believe with him.
In a lot of ways though that, to me, feels like it's a product of how Louis' grief has compounded in a way that Lestat's hasn't. Lestat's avoided the feeling, Louis' worn it, but Louis' is also more deeply perverted by the fact that he and Claudia were enmeshed, and, as I said above, his possession of her diaries for near a century has warped into a feeling of ownership of her more broadly. That part of it isn't necessarily about exploitation, I don't think, but more about the very specific way he was abusive of her which is different to the way Lestat himself was abusive of, well, both of them.
I do think that's likely to come to a head with ghost!Claudia, but how is anyone's guess right now!
