The shallow political commentary in Lestat’s music
To begin this post I’d like to start with a little history in rock music.
Rock music is historically a working class white genre, that has its roots in the black genre rhythm and blues and has historically been very exclusionary and racist against black people.
So for Lestat - a bourgeois “color blind” white man who participated in a lynching, to start posing as a rock star would make perfect sense for the Lestat we saw in IWTV. His hypocrisy on display - Right? Right? Except we don’t adress that.
I’ll be breaking down some lyrics with political commentary and why they fall flat.
Arguably the most political song. Or well. The one with the most political references that refuses to have a coherent point. It serves more as Lestat pointing a finger at white American society.
… but as a listener it feels more like the song writers being “hey this political person/event happened! I know about it - Aren’t I smart?”
What Lestat is conveying in this song is that America is suffering from racism, consumerism and wealth disparity. That it’s a warmongering destructive country who doesn’t consider the worth of human life… and quoting Trump. The song also refers to many right wing figures, ideas and terms. But does it criticize these ideas and figures… let’s discuss.
In my opinion no - it’s serves more as a ‘you humans wanted this and did this aren’t you stupid?’
And in the larger context of the show? No.
This commentary falls extremely flat because of the politics of the rest of the show. THESE ARE NOT SUBJECTS EXPLORED IN THE SHOOOW - in fact the only race politics explored is the show being racist.
It falls flat because the show refused to explore Magnus, Marius, and Gabriella’s white supremacy.
It falls flat because Claudia, Louis and Armand are all victim to racist narratives and writing.
The wealth disparity reference makes me puke. The show actively chose not to explore the French Revolution, which was a thing in the book, probably because it would make Lestat seem less sympathetic. Lestat is part of the social class that oppressed the French people. He’s part of the oppressor class and embraces that part of himself. Lestat has dolls of Elon Musk and Mr Amazon in his tour bus.
This… reference makes me very sick. Because later in the show we see Lestat exploiting racial differences in humans and vampires to fuel his great conversion movement… They are knowingly or unknowingly comparing him to these racist figures while framing his as the hero of the show… and being extremely racist towards the black characters. And erasing Louis resistance and hatred towards the great conversion bc lol who cares about Louis let’s have someone call him the n word and a slave.
In another show these references could have worked but not in this show whose ethos aligns with whites supremacy, victim blaming and western colonialism.
So what ends up being the message of this song in the context of the show? Endorsing and siding with these right wing ideals. Lestat has a point ~ these people deserved this ~ they are evil but so am I, your life are worthless.
This could have worked in a show that highlighted how this is victim blaming rhetoric that excludes the voices of marginalized people and people of color. But it’s not.
What could they have done differently to show Lestat is in the wrong and these right wing figures are not people Lestat’s aligning himself with?
1. Included a part where Lestat refers to any political figure that’s left wing or not white.
2. Have people in the show react badly to this song to show how wrong it is.
3. For the show not to have been racist.
4. For the writers room to not have been racist and fully non-black.
The queer anthem that reclaimed the slur cabbage… yea right.
What’s this song actually about ? It’s about Lestat and Gabriella’s white nationalist movement the great conversion.
Why is the great conversion white nationalist? Because it directly refers to the great replacement theory - a white supremacist conspiracy theory that white people are being replaced in mass by brown people… and since white people are at the helm of the movement in the show and the politics of TVL is white supremacist - you see my point.
So… in this one Lestat laments how he is “drawn to trauma”, and how he’s a victim of how hard he loved and - oh don’t forget to make more vampires and kill the planet! But also poor me all I wanted was love :( and all I got was a white nationalist movement. Don’t remember me lynching my black husband and daughter - I loved them TOO HARD and they didn’t love ME.
Killing a massive amount of people you deem undesirable and rebuilding it in your (white) image. Do I need to say more?
Lestat is circling back to plastic friends and says he is no longer pointing fingers. He will enact the evil himself - INDULGE IN CAPITALISM, OVERCONSUMPTION AND USE RACIAL DIVIDES TO BUILD YOUR CAREER.
This could have been a great villain song if done correctly. This song falls flat bc there’s no conclusion to Gabriella and Lestat’s great conversion plot… Lestat is not painted as a villain for this song.
The great conversion is not even brought up by Louis WHO STARTED THIS SHOW BC HE WANTED TO STOP THE MOVEMENT!!! Louis who is framed as having left wing and anti racist politics!! Nope. Louis gets humiliated and “humbled” and gets hurled racist slurs towards in the show - what does that tell us viewers? Racism is depicted while white supremacy goes unaddressed and expected to just be accepted.
So this ends up just being a Charlie Kirk anthem. We are Charlie Kirk ~ we carry the cabbage ~
My phone is dying so I’m gonna end this post here. If you guys are interested I might talk a bit more about the songs in TVL.
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