I’ve never been very interested in vampires, as a kid I never found them very scary and as an adult I never found them very sexy. It seems the attraction to the genre comes from one of those two (often with a sprinkling of fascination for immortality, which I also find intriguing but authors rarely have a good way of going about it). Most modern authors have completely leaned away from the scary vampire and into the sexy one.
In ‘Interview with a Vampire’, the concept of vampirism is used to highlight the homoerotic relationship between Louis and the male characters Lestat and later Armand. The emotion is barely never explicitly stated (I mean, Lestat turned Claudia to be their ‘daughter’ and Madeleine was turned by Claudia basically as a replacement for Louis’ attraction to Armand), but its close to being stated when viewed as a part of the vampirism.
The connection between vampires is often very erotic feeling, even if they never have sex. Even the character of the 5-year-old girl (Claudia) and Louis’ relationship sometimes feels very erotic (which is odd, considering the Claudia is inspired by Rice’s dead daughter). Note I call the relationships erotic and not sexual, I think Rice did this on purpose so she’d have plausible deniability against anyone saying she sexualized the relationships. Just barely she (and her readers) canvc claim all the relationships are platonic but ‘close’. I’ve read many middle age women readers (and viewers of the film) using this, claiming theres no subtext. Which yeah, okaaaay. But reading the books or seeing the movies (thought its been years since I’ve seen the movie) its pretty obvious that she’s leaning into the erotism of vampirism.
I do have some issues with Anne Rice and sexuality, specifically homosexuality, mainly because her erotic literature is pretty… suspect. A lot of rape and slave kinks. Both in the het and gay relationships. Yikes. This book to me sort of reads like a repressed version of her erotic stuff, which made it harder to take some of the deeper meanings seriously. I felt the mentality that makes her write the unfortunate erotic literature still exists in a veiled way in her non-erotic literature.
The movie ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’ was a LOT more interesting to me, because of the way the film maker used vampirism as a way to basically ‘reclaim the night’. The vampirism became less of a sexual/erotic thing and more of something feral. The Girl had a lot of power, she became a predator. Every scene she was on scene you felt her danger, but it was a sexual danger, which made it all the more intriguing. Her moments with the male main character were sensual, and had an undertone of danger (because up until the end, you never knew if she would kill him or not) but it felt more like the vampirism was the knife in the sleeve for a woman who lives in a world where she is constantly at risk of sexual assault. It felt like power fantasy in a different way ‘Interview with a Vampire’ did. In ‘Interview’, the victims of the vampires are prostitutes, black slaves (being preyed on by their masters! Ew!), and people the vampires wish to spend eternity with. Easy targets. It feels like the power fantasy comes from using power that already exists and just dumping fantasy on top. This has a bad feeling knowing the author writes porn about slavery and rape.
In ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’ the ‘victims are the people WITH power (with the exception of the homeless man The Girl attacks in a quick scene, a scene I personally think goes against the purpose of the film). The victims are the ones who spend the story scaring and terrorizing others. The power trip for this is that so many women wish they had a defense against the night. Even the title, ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’, creates a sense of fear for women. A girl walking home alone at night is a assaulted girl. A dead girl.
But in the film, she is the threat! She is the one to fear! She’s a predator and a threat, but only to those who try and hurt weaker people.
It’s a take on vampirism that I’ve not seen before and I would love more stories like it, I might find myself more interesting in the genre if that was the case. Less using the trope of vampirism as a thinly-veiled sexual symbol (something it seems really religious authors do— authors like Rice and Meyers— thats a interesting trend that should be explored). More vampirism as a tool to give weaker people power.
Enough with the sexy vampires
