The Submissive Vampire: A kinky reading of Interview With the Vampire

I kind of simultaneously love and hate Anne Rice.

When I was 10, the film version of Interview With the Vampire was released and there I was, already with an interest in vampires and (people tell me) a slight resemblance to Kirsten Dunst, just starting to figure out this whole "attracted to people" thing that was starting to happen in my body and head. I was attracted to the idea of vampires, the power and sophistication that vampires implied, the idea of being more, being better than humans, being special.

I was also, it's worth noting, completely terrified of sex. I had only just recently learned about that whole penis-in-the-vagina thing that was apparently sex, and I was horrified. Also, in my not-knowing, sex had mostly been something that older kids made fun of me for not knowing about, something that was a cause of humiliation and shame and jokes that I didn't understand and would later get in trouble for repeating to my parents. Any mention of vampirism as a stand-in for sex in the nonfiction books I would occasionally read made me intensely uncomfortable, but vampires were also my own personal sex stand-in. Being interested in vampires, being completely obsessed with vampires in general and Dracula and Anne Rice in particular made it okay to be interested in sex--because I wasn't interested in sex, I was interested in vampires.

When the film version of Interview was released on video and Pay Per View, I watched the preview guide all day while my parents were at work, hoping to see commercials. I wasn't allowed to see the movie. It was rated R, it was full of nudity and sex and my parents did not think I was old enough. I saw it on the sly at a friend's house and was actually kind of disappointed, so I secretly got out the book from the library and read it late at night and hid it under the bed.

I'd buy my own copy in high school. Now, from the wise old age of 25, I can say that I think Anne Rice is guilty of serious over-writing. Her prose comes in many shades of purple, and "savage" and "exquisite" are to her what words like "eldritch" and "gibbering" are to H.P. Lovecraft. But in the depths of my high school gothiness, Interview seemed hot and dark and lush and swoony. I felt Louis' pain, understood and wished for his weird, dark fantasies and hallucinations, wanted to be under Lestat's power. Until midway through my freshman year of college when I tried to re-read the book for the umpteenth time, said "Wow, this is overwritten and wanky," and put it right back down.

But it had a huge influence on me, both the book and the movie. Seriously, if you looked at a line-up of the guys I've dated (with the possible exception of Jack) they look like an Anne Rice casting call. And while I mention above that people tell me I look like Kirsten Dunst, and have since that movie came out, I've always claimed to not see the resemblance--not because I have anything against Kirsten Dunst, but because I really dislike the character of Claudia. I'm not like Claudia at all, so how can you say I look like her?

In criticisms of Interview, people tend to talk about the "vampire family" idea. It shows up in lots of modern vampire fiction, the idea that vampires change humans into vampires out of loneliness, to create a blended family, in The Lost Boys and lots of children's vampire fiction (Nancy Garden's books like My Sister, the Vampire) it's a major plot-point. But it never connected for me when people have said this about Interview With the Vampire, mostly because they usually follow this up by saying that Louis is the mother figure and we have a nice little conventional nuclear family here. Even though the Lestat-Louis-Claudia group is referred to as a family in the text, it resembles an actual family much less than it does a leather family (though still an unhappy one), a triangle in which dominant Lestat and Claudia butt heads and power-struggle over who gets to control submissive Louis.

Louis is not so much a mother as he is submissive, to both Lestat and Claudia, and I'm uncomfortable with the reading that says his following Lestat's orders and wishes, even when he doesn't want to, makes Louis feminine and mother-like. Ick. Also, it disregards how thoroughly Claudia has Louis wrapped around her dainty fingers (or, if you like the image better, under the heel of her little slippers). One of the main ideas of the book is that, while Claudia looks like a child, she quickly grows out of this role and has the mind of an adult woman--so why are critics so quick to stuff her into a child-box when talking about the "vampire family"? Louis is the least forceful, the least commanding of the three, and he transfers his loyalty, his submission and willingness to serve, from Lestat to Claudia as Claudia changes from a child-doll to a, well...woman trapped in a child-doll's body.

This continues and is heightened when Claudia and Louis meet Armand. Louis gets all swoony and strange in the pull of Armand's age and power--he's pretty much in subspace when they interact. Weirdly, Armand is also able to subdue Claudia, in a domlier-than-though display that seriously creeps her out, because she doesn't want to lose Louis or lose control over him. Louis is always kind of a passive figure--he doesn't really decide much for himself, or do much because he wants to. He does what Lestat wants, then what Claudia wants, then, Armand tries to take him away to do what he, Armand wants. Louis doesn't seem to want much, except to make whoever his current dom-figure is happy. Or, in the case of Lestat, who Louis doesn't really get along with once the honeymoon period of their relationship is over, not actively angry.

I can see how this eager-to-please Louis can be read as feminine, as a mother-figure, but it makes me uncomfortable to read it that way. I don't like Louis being cast as feminine because he is passive, especially when Claudia an actual female character is there being all strong (and sometimes crazy and obnoxious and demanding) for contrast. I would instead argue that submission does not equal femininity or femaleness, and that Louis and Claudia's relationship much more closely resembles a femdom/malesub relationship than that of parent and child, at least once Claudia "grows up."

And while the "vampire family" idea comes up again when Claudia brings Madeleine, her chosen mother-figure, into the equation, Claudia is still in charge and Madeleine's characterization of Claudia as "'a child who cannot die'" seems creepy and wrong because Claudia is not a child at this point, except in appearance. Claudia wants a family, wants an appearance of normality, but she also wants to control her "parents." Also, Louis has no attraction towards Madeleine--and why would he, when he's clearly attracted to dominant personalities? Madeleine is more like his co-sub than any sort of interest for him. He doesn't want to "curse" her with vampirism, but he also knows her view of Claudia as a child is incorrect and, I suspect, resents her competition for Claudia's attention.

This also explains why, despite being a girl, and blonde, and looking maybe a little like the actress who played Claudia in the movie, I've always related far more to Louis than Claudia. In my reading, the book and movie were not about a vampire family or Louis' loving Claudia like a daughter. They're about Louis, and his transitioning from an uncomfortable relationship with Lestat (who would have him be subservient, but also mocks him for his "weakness") to a fulfilling one with Claudia (in which most of his actions serve to please and serve the object of his affections) to losing Claudia because of being drawn to a similar relationship with Armand. For an oblivious submissive girl like me, Louis was a far more relatable character than the one who was superficially more like me.

Note: This is not to say that Claudia and Louis have an ideal relationship, or that the whole Claudia-as-a-woman-in-a-child's body thing isn't kind of creepy, or that all people who identify as submissive are doormats like Louis who need to or can be taken away from their respective dom(me)s by force. No one should base an actual relationship on anything Anne Rice has written ever, and that's doubly true of her porn, which I'll probably write about in another entry.