hi đ i was wondering, regardless of narrative coding, how do you interpret louisâs gender on the show? i personally hc as him as a fem-leaning, slightly gender-nonconforming but probably cis gay man (though i think the stuff about all vampires transcending gender makes sense). and it really bothers me when people say that anyone who shares my interpretation is âheterofyingâ loustat, calls it hetslop, gender essentialist/heteronormative etc. because this is still a queer relationship. do people think itâs heteronormative that fem queer men exist irl? is it âhetslopâ when a butch or he/him lesbian dates a femme lesbian? i just donât really understand it. and a lot of it gives very masc4masc let men be men vibes (unless lestat is fem/gnc instead, of course, because thatâs obviously fine and is just canon because he said âi am she, she is meâ on the show đ - sorry for the rant, always love reading your thoughts)
Unfortunately, my answer to this is very boring đŤ Because I don't really see the value in conceiving of the characters' identities outside of their narrative coding. I really just see them as characters in a story and not real people with real identities; the details of a given character are only relevant to me insofar as they serve the broader narrative. No shade to anyone who likes to concoct various headcanons not reliant upon the canon text (bc I know it is fun for a lot of people!) but that's never been where my interest lies. I rly just like to analyze the text as is, and abstracting the characters' identities outside of the story they exist to serve can get a little 'Thomas Jefferson Miku binder' territory to me lol. Louis is portrayed as a feminized character in the books and show bc it serves the story for him to be, so that's how I see him; if it wasn't important to the story/character dynamics for him to be that way, I don't think it would be an aspect of the character I ever thought about? I'm literally boring sorry đââď¸
I feel like so far the show's engagement with gender has been largely thematic rather than literal, so that's how I conceive of it too
Which is why it's so reductive/frustrating for ppl to latch onto things like 'she is me', like you brought up, as 'omg fem Lestat evidence!!' when the entire narrative is constructed around Lestat as a patriarchal masculine force....like consistently across book and show he's the dominating, powerful, toxic masculine entity that maintains control over the domestic household with physical violence...he's literally the father and the husband and the family portrait says "de Lioncourt" bc they take the father/husband's last name bc they are his property as well as his progeny bc vampire siring aka patriarchy........Sam Reid can talk about toxic masculine rage until he's blue in the face but Lestat has long hair so = girl. đ
if you read the show as a text and look at things like the invocation of gendered roles in terms of themes/symbolism, its very obvious (to the point of being heavy handed) that Lestat is cast in the masculine husband/father role and Louis is cast in the wife/mother role. Things like Lestat doing drag once or wearing eyeliner as a rockstar don't overwrite that narrative thread.....like if you put glitter on an abusive patriarch he doesn't cease to be an abusive patriarch...he's just sparkly lol. There isn't anything so far about iwtv that treats the Lestat character as feminine or feminized within the context of the narrative so it's just a really shallow reading for ppl to ignore all the story framing of the characters and fixate on 'he wore a dress on a parade float'!!! (I have to stop bc I know it is so boring to hear me repeat myself 10000 times uggughguh)
Louis is feminized by the narrative bc its reflective of the place he occupies in the family structure of the Rue Royale household, the less powerful, less socially mobile character who submits to their romantic pursuer and is brought into a new way of life where they are subjected to their husband's rules. Louis is a subjugated character within and outside of the domestic space bc as a black man in Jim Crow south he isn't taken seriously by his white male peers, so his access to financial success is limited, he couldn't reach Tom Anderson's level without Lestat's financial backing, and racism eventually costs him his business. Louis bears the burden of a masculine role without being able to access many of its privileges due to his race and unique social predicament (wealthy but without the same social power as a man with a more 'respectable' business would have), constantly having to navigate a tightrope of commanding respect and performing deference to white men, must be confident but not cocky/arrogant, must be friendly but not overly familiar/presumptuous etc etc but basically bc of his social position as rich Creole man/proximity to whiteness, all the privilege that Louis has just comes with more constraints on him as an individual. Like he's trapped in every conceivable way
This is in contrast to the incredible privilege Lestat has, as a white, wealthy, European man. When Louis first meets Lestat his impression is one of emasculation/admiration. Lestat has everything Louis lacks, is the 'man' Louis can't be, has all the freedom Louis wishes he had. Lestat takes whatever he desires and doesn't care who's watching ("staring me down as his hands wandered the seams of Lily's dress"), as opposed to Louis who flinches when a cop is around to see him lock eyes with another man. Lestat is a foreigner 'making a new life for himself' in America, free from all obligations, while Louis is shackled to the expectations of his family and community. Louis only sees Lily in order to maintain a facade around his sexuality and Lestat brags about 'emptying a bank vault sampling' prostitutes, a virile, wanton sexuality inaccessible to Louis as a gay man in the 1910s, and Lestat even outbids Louis for Lily's company, denying Louis access to his facade, displaying financial dominance over Louis and putting his proverbial dick on the table to thoroughly emasculate him. Lestat literally wields every possible male power/privilege that exists over Louis: financial, social, sexual freedom, physical power (revealed later), boundless confidence/arrogance Louis is socially discouraged from displaying, doesn't have to cater to/show deference to anyone else. Lestat appears to effortlessly possess all the masculine power Louis struggles to perform/access.
Even though Louis holds the masculine role within his human family structure as executor in charge and 'man of the house'/provider, he is portrayed as being only partially successful, and the role is explicitly a burden he wishes to shed; he is exhausted and ashamed of the 'dirty' work he does (the only work he could get as a black man that could provide for his family) and his mother/Paul look down on him for that work.
So Louis is immediately portrayed as a failed patriarch, someone floundering in the eyes of his family and suffering emotionally due to the strain that masculine role causes him. When he confesses his sins in the church, the nature of the work he does and the immense guilt he feels over it is one of them - as well as his failure in his duty to his family; literally part of his 'sins' is not being 'the way a man should' be.
Louis frames his avoidance of his masculine role as a running from responsibility - and running to other things, including Lestat.
"I run to the bottle. I run to the grift. I run to bad beds. I laid down with a man."
Obvs on the more literal level, Louis is saying his attraction to men is one of his faults and something that is the opposite of how 'a man should be' (bc gay isn't allowed) but subtextually, he's saying the way he is when he's with Lestat is the opposite of the masculine social role he's supposed to play. He's 'running away from how a man should be' and running into Lestat's bed...which informs us to how Louis feels when he's with Lestat, that he doesn't have to perform that masculine social role bc he frames being with Lestat is an avoidance of that role.
Which is in accordance with what we see during their first sex scene (the best Louis's ever had to Saturn and back etc etc). We see Louis start to act out dominance over Lestat, assuming he needs to take the role everyone else expects of him (trying to force Lestat's hands up against the wall) and Lestat exerts his physical dominance over Louis instead (forcing Louis's hands down and spinning him around like this), letting Louis know he doesn't have to play that role with him. Louis is physically giving over power to Lestat and shedding himself of the dominant/masc social role he is burdened with, and accepting Lestat's dominance of him instead. Aka adopting a feminized role (or at the very least a 'non-socially-prescribed-masculine-role' but I mean, the show goes as far as 'housewife' so yeah)
It's a part of Lestat's pitch to Louis that Lestat will allow him to shed that masculine role if Louis succumbs to him again and becomes his companion:
All Louis's burdensome roles, all 'forced' upon him, all male-gendered terms: landlord, businessman, son. None of them his true nature. An assessment Louis agrees with, bc this is the first time he feels truly seen.
So Louis accepts, is transformed by Lestat - and since making is siring, Lestat is taking on the father role as well as husband, aka Lestat takes on the ultimate 'man of the house' position over Louis and literally brings Louis into his house, a new domestic sphere where Louis has a new role.
Lestat carries Louis up to the coffin room like a bride to start their "vampire home/vampire romance"
(Also apparently the tradition of carrying a bride over the threshold has its roots in abduction/unwilling marriages......soooo the violent context of Louis's agreeing to be Lestat's companion makes this doubly appropriate đââď¸)
Louis's first coffin experience is very reluctant bride-coded
I know the "you can be on top" line is something a lot of ppl read as being a Louis topping moment but I don't agree (shocking I know)...in context I personally doubt they are having sex while Louis can barely walk and his skin is falling off?? but even subtextually like I said it reads to me as Louis the reluctant bride needing to be coaxed into the marital bed...also Lestat undresses with his dick facing Louis (not his ass) in order to be enticing lol and references again the exhaustion of Louis's former/human life (the weariness from suffering his masculine role) and the respite/rest from it Lestat can offer him (which again kinda conflates sex with Lestat and a freedom from his masculine social role)
And then this line of Louis describing the night as 'being desired' by Lestat, language that implies Louis as desirable object of Lestat's sexual attention (which goes more into Louis bottoming stuff than gender stuff specifically....but it does blend together in this show...and tbh that is the gendered sex framing of things in our misogynist/heteropatriarchal world...woman as desired object and man as desiring subject. BUT ANYWAY!)
This is all setup from the first episode that lays out the gendered dynamics around Louis and Lestat and it continues on through the rest of the series. IMO Louis's feminized nature is thematic and symbolic, I don't personally think we're supposed to read Louis as a literal 'woman' in the same way that Claudia is, BUT Louis does operate as a feminized character in the narrative. And obvs there are a lot of parallels between Claudia and Louis in terms of their lack of power in the household, their social limitations, the types of violence they suffer from men...even the telepathic bond they share that Lestat is shut out of could be read in terms of a shared gendered experience as well as a racialized one. And I've already talked about this (maybe more than once sorryyy it's getting harder to remember how many times I've referenced the same sources) but there has always been literary analysis of the original novel as recreating the nuclear heterosexual family structure with these vampire characters (and Louclaudia as mother and child who must escape the abusive father Lestat) - I added a few quotes from those at the bottom of this post.
This is already v long but here are some of the more literal nods to Louis as a feminized character
The most obvious one is Claudia's housewife comment, but I want to highlight that the house is filthy when Louis starts 'ignoring his housewifely duties', meaning Louis was doing the cleaning in the household/it was his role to maintain the domestic space (even though Lestat doesn't have a job....and presumably is just chilling at the house all day when he's not out killing or cheating, the housework is still relegated to Louis bc that's the feminized role he's taken). We also see Louis tidy up Claudia's room in 104 and Lestat orders Louis (or Louis and Claudia, it's unclear?) to 'clean up the mess and come to coffin' in 107. Cleaning is just not something Lestat does đââď¸ in accordance with a 'man of the house' role
When they dance together, Lestat leads; men lead in paired dancing (note the hand placement)
There are some fun art references associating Louis with women
I'm obsessed with this one, the nude woman lounging in the painting above Louis, her posture mirroring his, her vulnerable sensuality, the framing between his two suitors
(also Louis's bedspread is covered in flowers...yonic imagery....)
Venus de Milo aka Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, fertility...also apparently the patron goddess of prostitutes lol
The mother and child painting đđđ
(there are more but my computer's dying)
Also want to make clear that these little details are the not basis of my reading of Louis as feminized, but just accent/put a finer point on that theming the show has already established. If we only had things like the mother-child painting in absence of everything else about the setup of Louis's character, the gendered framing of his relationship to Lestat and the family structure of the Rue Royale household, I wouldn't feel as strongly as I do about this reading of his character. It's kinda like the whole 'curtains are blue' thing in lit analysis: like if we just have blue curtains in a void it could mean anything (or nothing), but if the story is about depression and blue is culturally associated with sadness and depression runs in the character's family and the character's depressed mom's blue eyes are always being brought up and the character is always laying in bed staring at their blue ass curtains bc they're too depressed to get up...yeah I think it's safe to say the blue of the curtains is an intentional detail included to emphasize the author's point! So that's how I feel about stuff like this vs the "fem Lestat" things ppl bring up that don't appear to bolster any larger point being made by the narrative (and in fact tend to only hold up if you ignore the broader framing of that character)
Thanks for the ask âşď¸
