I found a 200 page dissertation on the gendering in the Vampire Chronicles, and the contents page alone sucked me in so to speak. And it starts with a quote from the X-Files. The abstract states the books could be more conservative than liberal, which is a really interesting thesis premise, and she's only looking at the "original trilogy" (I think that's a fair way to describe them because they were closely linked by chronology, and my editions "matched" in terms of cover art).
I'll try skimming this but I wanted to say how tantilised I am by the clever chapter headings referring to song lyrics in the 90s, and makes a point that there's a distinct lack of theory about her books. I am so upset I cannot find the documentary I watched to death as a kid. Scratch that, it was called Birth of The Vampire not The Vampire's Life, which is what I remembered it as. FFUUUUUUUUCK I am so 14 right now. I loved the narrator reading from the book. The whole presentation itself is as haunting as the content. It's very much a love letter to New Orleans and superstition, I was probably more obsessed with this than the movie. I sidetracked on the dissertation. There's syncing issues with this VHS rip but I'll take it. The music is incredible, it's such a well made documentary. I learnt more of New Orleans paranormal stories, and had such a very quiet, peaceful contemplation of death. I wanted to go there more back then, I wish I had when I wanted to. It's a very sensitive portrayal of supernatural belief given they speak to people channel the dead, there's no sensationalism or mockery involved as it's depicted as a culturally significant, as any culture can be examined. I swear the TV guide said it was on TV at 2.22 pm. I have so many vivid memories of this which have made me so desperate to find it. Rice taught me more about religion than I willfully would accept at the time. There was a marrying of Catholic mysticism and the supernatural that made it kinda cool to me. This was probably slightly before I got into witchcraft. (They've cut some of the narration, which sucks).
Back to the dissertation, I see why I had many parallels with her, our aversion to fan fiction, our frustration over being misunderstood with our content. She was unfairly reviewed, so her responses to critics were really off-kilter. She felt off-kilter after Stan died. Losing your kid wouldn't be good for your mental psyche. Stan prophetically knew Michele had cancer. I was obsessed with Christopher's account of discovering his sister's existence. I argued Claudia was Michele (or Mouse). Any of the sexual subtext between Louis and Claudia was misconstrued. If it's read through the lens of a mother/daughter relationship it has more weight to it. So it's gross people harped on Kirsten Dunst kissing Brad Pitt as a child. (Goddamn the syncing gets so much worse on this. Such a shame. I wish I'd transferred my copy at some point, this has skips of dialogue and I can't say why). I didn't know she also had to deal with the vampire culture being attributed to her and having to distance herself from the real implications of blood drinking, why her books are considered satanic when they're probably the most biblical I've read. I don't think I would've known much of any history without them.
In the documentary there's something about the orphanage she saved which I think was cut from my broadcast. I think we got maybe half of it. I'm kinda smooshing these two documents together. The dolls reminded me of my obsession with ponies. How she lived in her head from childhood.
The dissertation mentions a psychotic Brisbane woman who was a supposed lesbian vampire murderer. And someone who believed Akasha herself (the movie version which he saw 1000 times) was telling him to kill his friend. Then they mention Rice's vampires likely bred the more humanistic counterparts in stuff like True Blood and the other thing. I don't entirely think that's true.
I don't think I'm going to read over all of this, but someone suggested exploring later books is pointless as they're repetitious. Telling the same story from other angles isn't necessarily bad, I liked having Armand, Marius and Pandora's stories expanded upon where they overlap. I'm skimming but I'm also glad this predates the AMC series since it debunks the actions of some of the characters so severely they may as well not even be related. Why does Daniel go from desperate for the Dark Gift to holding Louis in contempt? Why does Louis suddenly overindulge in decadence when he shunned it previously? They had to retcon core principles of the characters to justify them suddenly being actual assholes rather than deeply flawed, humanistic characters. According to this Anne wanted Louis to be a woman in Interview, so you could've gotten rid of all the pedophilic issues of Louis and Claudia's relationship by making Louis a mother figure in the more literal sense. If you're going to fuck with the original, do that. Be literal about their relationship as mother and daughter instead of father/daughter/lover/beloved and have everyone shit on it. Then Kirsten Dunst can avoid having awkward questions raised. That would've been a conservative reading of the text. It takes great pains to mention Babette, there are big chunks of text missing from the movie the series could've easily expounded on.
At least the paper cleared up my recollection of Enkil's castration, I forgot they just assumed the roles of Osiris and Isis, it was this overlap with reality that stupidly led me to want to study Egyptian mythology to see if there was any basis of truth in the story of the twins. The paper rightfully points out of Anne white-washing the ancient vampires as being white and not coloured. I'm inclined to agree in her attempts to make a feminist statement with Queen of the Damned, she failed to really present feminism as necessarily good. I've always recognised Louis as Claudia's mother figure, again people ignoring that entirely because he's an older male is fundamentally irritating. Lestat doesn't shy from calling them a family. He doesn't demand Louis man up entirely, just make sure she doesn't misbehave. It seems progressive for its time but then adheres to normative gender roles anyway.
And Louis never has his own voice. Interview is third person narration, we're seeing a conversation between two people in a room primarily, it's not Louis's unique point of view. Lestat gets to speak for himself. Claudia also remains voiceless except through her diary entries. I don't know if Anne could inhabit Claudia's headspace adequately, I'm glad she didn't but someone made a graphic novel from Claudia's point of view instead. I wanted to like Merrick as it was "bringing back" Louis and Claudia but it's not entirely about them. It's a long-con for Merrick to become a vampire. I'd have rather Lestat turn Rowen and have her go nuts than Mona Mayfair. I'd still rather both "families" exist in the same universe independently than join up. It seemed like a weird combination to have the supposed heroes of both chronicles fall in love, and pointless as it goes nowhere and isn't brought up later. I still maintain it was a quick way of ending both series and just blew up because Amazon has no filter for reviews.
I figured out what was wrong about the documentary I saw. It was missing a very specific story from a man sitting by a camp fire about a local version of what we'd consider a vampire, and a week later it only occurred to me it was gone. There were two versions, the one I saw called the Vampire's Life (which Vimeo has and calls Birth of the Vampire) and the one I saw on Youtube. The Vimeo one is better synced as well, and a cleaner transfer, it's not missing bits, so now I know the YouTube one was cut down a decent six or seven minutes, which basically covers the native storyteller's sections, which is shitty because they were the best parts of the whole thing, and some other parts about Anne. I knew they cut some of the narration to so I'm bummed I didn't find this version first to watch the other day, but it's nice to know it's there. It's a shame the score doesn't exist anywhere for how haunting and beautiful it is.
After over 20 years of refusing to touch Vittorio, I bought it with the hope it'd be a kind of romance story of a younger vampire. I shunned it back in the day for being devoid of any attachment to the other books, there's a big point made about this, however it's already boring me and I doubt teenage me would read it. It's more a history lesson on Italy, and it's lifting a lot from the Lestat, Vittorio is from a wealthy family who owned a remote castle. This and Pandora were supposedly separate and possibly initial books in an offshoot series but I think they did so poorly by comparison she had to go back to the core characters. I'll probably take forever to read this, to be honest. If I do finish it at all.
I decided to do a tier list and I've already marked it as no. If I ever read the Atlantis book it'll be because I got too curious about it to ignore it. We didn't need the recent books but having read Prince Lestat, I had to give it an F. Some of the rankings are based on me remembering enjoying the book or not, so the top four were the ones I liked. I don't know if I read them now if it'd be the same. But it's looking bleak for Vittorio.
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