alexander

The Brittish goverment was unwilling to do anything for two reasons. First was the laissez-faire capitalistic ideology, that put the rights of property owners to make profits above human lives. Rent freeze was unthinkable and they even were unwilling to do proper relief efforts as free food would lower the cost of food. The second reason was distain for the Irish, and the thought that they were “breeding too much” and the famine was a natural way to trim down the population, aka genocidal reasoning.

This is why it’s important to stress it was not a potato famine. The potato blinght was all over Europe but only in Ireland there was a famine. The reasons behind it had nothing to do with potatos and everything to do with the Brittish.

Apparently what made Choctaw want to offer relief to Irish was the news about the Doolough Tragedy. Hundreds of starving people were gathered for inspection to verify they were entitled to recieve relief. The officials would for *some reason* not do that and instead left to a hunting lodge 19 kilometers away to spend the night and said to the starvqing people they would have to walk there by morning to be inspected. The weather conditions were terrible and many of them died completely needlessly during the walk thoroung day and night.

This apparently reminded the Choctaw of their own very recent (and much more explicit and bigger scale) experiences of ethnic clensing, where they were forcibly relocated. It was basically a death march and thousands of Choctaw died from the terrible conditions also completely needlessly.

In 2015 a memorial named Kindred Spirits was installed in Southern Ireland to commemorate the Chactow donation.

Then in 2020:

Lavonte and HJ represent exact tropes of homosexuality and vampirism of the 1980s; by the 80s, vampires had shifted from countryside landed gentry hiding away in musty castles to urbanised capitalists - the setting changes, but they still benefit from the toil of others as the bourgeoisie against the proletariat (Morrissette, 2013). At the same time, people moving to cities during the industrial revolution to work formed proletariat communities of their own, including homosexuals that left their homes in search of a better life; the city was different than their small-knit towns where everyone knew everyone, and gave them freedom. By the 80s HIV/AIDs crisis, horror had synthesised vampires and homosexuality to be intertwined urban concepts; for members of these groups (homosexuals/vampires), there is an element of hunting or pursuing a partner (cruising/finding a victim), exchanging fluids (cum/blood), and those fluids put you at risk of sickness or death (AIDs/vampirism) (Clark, 2022). There is, further, the idea of “turning someone” - this is framed as a bad thing by out-members, but contains nuance within the community. They are both seductive. They are both abnormal. You should warn your children about (homosexuals/vampires), do not let your daughter move to the city, or she will become a (homosexual/vampire). Within horror, vampires began to be queer coded; Daughters of Darkness (1971), The Hunger (1983), Fright Night (1985), The Lost Boys (1987).

HJ is the exemplar of the 80s vampire - he is a businessman with immense power, he is slick, he is clean shaven and well dressed, he is a confirmed bachelor. He is coded as (homosexual/vampire), and it’s interesting to think about whether Lavonte pursued HJ because he was a vampire, or because HJ was a man. It is risky for either of those factors to be what makes him appealing, but the desire alongside the disorder is what makes it a (homosexual/vampire) love story - it would be horrifying to want someone while also being terrified of what they can do to you. It completely makes sense to me that Lavonte, even though Lou played it as a joke, would have reservations about people thinking he was gay. Being gay in the 80s meant being dirty, meant being sick, meant being less masculine or respected, meant being the “other,” regardless of if he’s gay or not (Clark, 2022). Even though I see Lavonte as being totally accepting, being gay himself would be an admission of guilt in some way. Lavonte is focused, charismatic, and doesn’t like hearing “no” - if someone implied he seduced HJ to gain vampirism, I think that would be his nightmare.

Truly, even though none of their 80s-gay-vampirism coding was intentional, and even though Lou and Ally were playing up the miscommunication as a joke, I think it's interesting to see how character moments make logical sense within meta-horror. It’s been a great season so far.

Clark, Ian (2022) "Infectious Queers: HIV/AIDS and the Vampiric Body in Interview with the Vampire (1994)," Journal of Dracula Studies: Vol. 24: No. 1, Article 4. DOI: 10.70013/n1p5h7g4 Available at: https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/vol24/iss1/4

Fullilove MT, Wiley J, Fullilove RE 3rd, Golden E, Catania J, Peterson J, Garrett K, Siegel D, Marin B, Kegeles S, et al. Risk for AIDS in multiethnic neighborhoods in San Francisco, California. The population-based AMEN Study. West J Med. 1992 Jul;157(1):32-40. PMID: 1413740; PMCID: PMC1021901. 

Heller J. Rumors and Realities: Making Sense of HIV/AIDS Conspiracy Narratives and Contemporary Legends. Am J Public Health. 2015 Jan;105(1):e43-e50. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2014.302284. PMID: 25393166; PMCID: PMC4265931.