Another thing about this season is that it is just not sensual. There's sex sure, but that's just sex. And it's so weird for a vampire media to be so lacking in sensuality.
The "Come to me" of IWTV!Lestat was not only the seduction of Louis De Pointe Du Lac- it was a call to seduce us as well. It's the vampire story reeling us in, and we are both mesmerized and horrified on account of Louis. IWTV weaves its sensuality from the very first frame; Daniel Molloy in his own apartment, all alone in a pandemic. We are allowed to see him in an intimate setting. He is watching his own commercial, he is bored, he is listless and then he gets a package and suddenly he is breathing heavily- Daniel is afraid (fear and arousal both are enmeshed in vampiric stories). The way that scene is shot with Daniel going through his things to find the old recorder letting us get a glimpse of the life he has lived, to those tapes being played and the camera staying in on Daniel and letting us stay with Daniel as we hear the voices on the tape before it abruptly cuts off with the shout of a young Danny Molloy; I don't think Eric Bogosian has ever looked so good throughout IWTV/TVL as he did in that first scene. It is also here that for the first time we get to hear Louis! And oh how blessed are our ears to hear Jacob's voice in that cadence. Come to me is what he says to Daniel Molloy basically; I have watched (over) you, your whole life Daniel..Come to me. And off we go following Louis's voice to Dubai and then we are in his penthouse.
Usually it is the vampire who has to be invited in, but in IWTV we are being invited into Louis's coffin itself! ( Where's your coffin?/ You are standing in it). There's something so deliciously vulnerable in being invited into a vampire's "coffin" (where would you run to now?) and lo and behold it is here he wants to tell the journalist his story. It's intimate, vulnerable and yes it is sensuous. There's nowhere to escape, no room to move, they are trapped in the penthouse ( here's the horror, neither of them knows just how trapped they are and who has keys to the door- iPad controlled protective windows). I think we all talk about Louis's beauty but what about his sensuality? Louis is a sensuous being. All those feedings set up across from Daniel at the dinner table, the whole Rashidmand thing-> there always has been a very tangible push and pull between the interviewer and the interviewee. It's what made the Dubai setting come alive. This was what made it interesting. And not only in Dubai. Think about Louis in his red suit with Jonah. Think about Louis with Armand and gang going to hunt together for the first time. Think about him telling Armand " been thinking about you". Think about Louis and Armand's first time together and the shot of Louis in his undershirt with birth of Venus painting in the background ( if I am not mistaken), think about Louis in 1973 meeting Daniel for the first time- there's a lot going on in that convo including hints at Louis being suicidal ( what's in the bag? Is it a gun? are you an assassin? Are you here to kill me?)- but again there's always an underlying sensuality woven into these scenes. Episode 5 of s2 starts with Louis being playful with Daniel; Daniel is embarrassed with his "so we have never..." And Louis giggles out a 'No'. He goes onto tease him about if he wants to do it now since Armand lingers to watch the boats. What I am trying to say is in s1/s2 Louis has been filmed to be both beautiful and sensuous and playful in his sensuality.
I am not going to lie, this series always had a problem of subjecting Black bodies to the most graphic violence, but it also once knew how to show beauty and desire too. I will never not be mad about how Claudia and Madeline never got to kiss onscreen, some stupid decisions were made to have it so I am sure; but even then we knew how desire looks on Claudia. We saw it when the smell of Madeline's blood hits the air. Madeline getting her period and bleeding through leaving little droplets of blood all over the floor. Madeline saying she is leaving behind a trail, like in Hansel and Gretel and Claudia's fangs dropping. It's Claudia's sexual desire intermingling with her deepest wish to attain "womanhood". All of it filmed in a way that's just incredibly hot. What horror is it then that as Louis is draining Madeline, Claudia dives in for a taste? The blurring of lines and boundaries between her and her father-brother who later makes himself throw up the blood.
Vampirism is erotic. The monster has to penetrate the victim to suck out their life force to satiate itself. Think about Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. Think about the ethereal vampire feverishly grabbing onto the hands of the young girl ( Laura) and confessing how she loves her. Carmilla is in parts rapturous in pleasure and in parts manic during her confession, and at night she crawls into Laura's bed to drink blood from her bosom with every intention of draining her dry.
Where is this 'terrific' eroticism in The Vampire Lestat? In IWTV, Lestat massacres the priest to get to Louis. Louis is stumbling and falling and Lestat crawls over to him, hands outstretched offering him a way to be all the beautiful things he is without the world ever hindering him from doing so. Louis accepts and of course not all of it is so simple or straightforward since he is reeling from his brother's death, but when the camera flashes onto Lestat, we see him drunk on Louis's blood. He is drunk on Louis. Again I ask you where is the horror intermingling with the erotic in TVL?
What this season has done, and which I think is another problem is that it's unnecessarily voyeuristic without having any intention to address this voyeurism in any meaningful way. Which is crazy because many interesting things could have been said about the voyueristic use of camera, in reflection of our current times where we don't really know if we will end up on the net because some asshole decided to film us and post it. But for it to be so the documentary style for the season would have had to be treated seriously and Rolin and co, just abandoned it halfway through.
So what we instead have is just an uncomfortable mess where the horror of abuse is not addressed but fetishized. (GabriellA fucking Jarda in the bathroom and we see it and hear it for a long long time), where it empties the well of sensuality and eroticism that IWTV built around Louis, only to brutalize him onscreen in the most horrifying of ways. In its lazy attempt to shock the audience, TVL sacrificed the balance IWTV mantained between the horrific and the erotic. Rolin's "serve more cunt" to Sam Reid ( who mind you had to starve himself to get the physique of TVL Lestat) does nothing to add to Lestat's sensuality and eroticism. Lestat gyrating and thrusting onstage is a crude attempt at 'sexiness' that IWTV!Louis could so easily suffuse Lestat with in his narrative. The thrall of vampirism, that terrifying and yet all encompassing swoon that humans like Daniel Molloy found themselves in, has been destroyed. TVL as a vampire media is a 'Failure'.
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