Max Sexton

In 1983, the *Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature* was already noting
Gothic's altered eroticism from Byronic villainous figures in the works
of Anne Rice; albeit still evil and dangerous and consumed by tormented
doubt.  Since then, the indefiniteness of the Gothic genre in its latest
iteration, AMC's *Interview with the Vampire,* (2022) provides pictorial
scope for the bold attractions of the male body.  In the show, corporeal
strength which is gendered and, to a degree, race-based, after the
erosion of agency leads to the showcasing of personal trauma.  Lestat de
Lioncourt (Sam Reid) and Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) revisit
the Gothic domain of tormented heroism: a powerful male body which is
threatened by psychological insecurity, vulnerability and damage. 
Masculine trauma within the spectacle of *Interview* records vampiric
lifestyle transformations as a discourse of sexual exhibition.  The
transformations in *Interview*'s visual configuration and the meaning of
quality as a criterion of cultural value is the understanding of style
and performance in this example of high-end TV drama.

Familiar tropes of vampirism and sexual perversity are intermingled with
a renewed interest in the social construction of identity to create the
televisual performances of Lestat and Louis's extravagant excess. 
Lestat's assertion of a masculine self becomes almost ceremonial in its
decorative attractions but is situated in his growing anxiety before
seeking redemption through violence.  His personality magnifies his
performance or, perhaps, the other way round, but the show's star
performance certainly has fangs.  The importance of performance draws
attention to itself to showcase the vampiric lifestyle with its vivid
eroticising.  In this way, acting techniques are made to reinforce a
spectacle/performance paradigm.  For example, glorious colour appears
most during vampire/victim encounters, as well as in the spectacle of
fanciful dress codes, to align acting techniques with a range of
emotions such as hot anger, horror, great joy and incredible pain.  The
rapport of the viewer with *Interview* is to behold a performance
relying on Lestat's narcissism to work through the psychological
processes of identity on display within the show's spectacle.  It is
this cultivation of extravagant style to extend notions of identity in a
lifestyle fantasy that further implies *Interview*'s consumerism within
an example of high-end drama.

The violent horrors inflicted on the men of faith in the show, for
example, the decapitation of a Catholic priest by Lestat who finds Louis
at confessional, prefigures the theme that if Lestat is exotic and
immoral, he is consumed by monstrous anxiety.  His doubts throughout the
series, expressed as various forms of psychological loss, culminate in
the final episode of *Interview* and the spectacle of the destruction of
Lestat's (white) male body.  First, he is drugged by Louis and rendered
passive, followed by grievous forms of bodily damage, including
mutilation ending in immolation.  Lestat's ability to survive attests to
physical indestructability.  However, the need to reassert the (male)
body is at a high price within a circuit of performance and spectacle,
additionally, betraying *Interview's* fascination with wound culture and
its fetishisation.

::::::::: {#arve-youtube-humrmpcs-uo .arve .aligncenter mode="normal" oembed="1" provider="youtube" style="max-width:600px;"}
:::::::: {.arve-inner}
::::::: {.arve-embed .arve-embed--has-aspect-ratio style="aspect-ratio: 135 / 76"}
[]{.arve-ar style="padding-top:56.296296%"}

:::::: {.iframe}
::: {#player}
:::

:::: {.player-unavailable}
# Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten. {#ein-fehler-ist-aufgetreten. .message}

::: {.submessage}
[Sieh dir dieses Video auf www.youtube.com
an](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUMRMpCS-uo){target="_blank"} oder
aktiviere JavaScript, falls es in deinem Browser deaktiviert sein
sollte.
:::
::::
::::::
:::::::
::::::::
:::::::::

Louis's story is about the individual experience of becoming a vampire
but also his experience of being a black Creole man.  For *Interview*,
the privatised nature of Louis's experience of race and sexuality in New
Orleans becomes the public presentation of lived history.  This is
history which emerges from underneath the 'official' past and instead
consists of fictions focussing on characters within what has been a
marginalised social milieu.  Louis displays a social self to the world
which becomes the central process in *Interview* of representing the
overt/covert.  *Interview* signifies the inner self by its use of
Storyville, one of the famous red-light districts in New Orleans, and
linking it to Louis's frank expression of identity in terms of how he
feels rather than what he does as owner of a brothel.  By connecting the
theme to a televisual mode of performing the 'real', the show as it
moves from turn of the century to the 1940s becomes a compelling form of
'lived history' in the form of a fantastic (vampiric) narrative. 
Equally, the richer use of images and sounds (including jazz music)
recreates a version of the once notorious Storyville district of New
Orleans.  But, as with Lestat's performance, the staging of events by
Louis is to create viewer consumption of a 'quality' televisual
production.  Nevertheless, there remains an unresolved tension in
*Interview*: how to precisely chronicle the socio-historical by
conflating the public with the private.

To answer this, there is the sense of a sustained performance from
Lestat and Louis and their felt experience of physical pain, as well as
psychological self-exposure.  As mentioned earlier, in *Interview*, the
'true self' of Lestat and Louis is seen to emerge from their 'performed
self.'  *Interview* is built on opening up space for debate about the
display of the identities of Lestat and Louis.  The emphasis in the show
on a type of self-reflexive performance encourages the TV audience to
have their attention drawn to the showcasing of a gendered and
race-based trauma.  By becoming a vampire, bodily and psychological
insecurity in the show becomes a discourse on the exhibitionism of male
physical strength and masochism: the show goes from the imperviousness
of the masculine vampire body to its decline.  The performance shifts
the spectator from interest of what happens next to spectatorial
registers of feats of endurance by Lestat or Louis and their near
destruction to the former's survival from his deadly incarceration in
the final episode.

Within this brief look at style in *Interview*, performance finds
inspiration in Gothic spectacle.  This includes the detailed flamboyant
outfits such as wigs, gloves, clothes and jewellery to form a discourse
about the performative self and exhibitionism, while the show's
aesthetics incorporate the spectacle/performance paradigm.  The kiss in
the final episode between Lestat and Louis signals liminal borders
beyond socially established binaries and the loosening of boundaries of
masculinity.  The textual world of *Interview* and the scope of possible
meanings, suggest further complex aesthetic development in high-end TV
drama, which I have described at greater length in my earlier book
(2021).  *Interview with the Vampire* offers its fans avenues to engage
with its core issue of overt/covert sexuality and identity, allied to
current social attitudes and their historic origins.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Max Sexton** leads a degree in film and television practice.  He is
interested in aesthetics, particularly in how they can be used to
disrupt production practices in high-end TV drama before forming new
paradigms.  His latest book due in 2024, *Uncovering the Gothic: Six
Feet Under and Beyond,* includes arguments about how aesthetics
complicates our understanding of how cultural value is assigned to a
production. His Academia.edu profile:
<https://birkbeck.academia.edu/maxsexton>


In 1983, the
<em>
 Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature
</em>
was already noting Gothic’s altered eroticism from Byronic villainous figures in the works of Anne Rice; albeit still evil and dangerous and consumed by tormented doubt.  Since then, the indefiniteness of the Gothic genre in its latest iteration, AMC’s
<em>
 Interview with the Vampire,
</em>
(2022) provides pictorial scope for the bold attractions of the male body.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

SEXY VAMPIRES: A SPECTACLE/PERFORMANCE PARADIGM