There’s a not-so-secret wish among many a queer person who loves a good fictional property. And that is very simply that every character on our screens or in our pages be queer. Not just one, for a treat, or worse, a token. Not even just two, enough to make a couple. But all of them, every single one. Yes, the man behind the counter at the coffee shop, queer. Yes, the leading lady, queer. Yes, the non-binary babe on dashing pirate rogue adventures, queer. That’s right, all of them, every single one. “The Gay agenda!” Some might wail in dismay at this thought. “But Ro, not everyone is queer,” Some might try to reason a bit more rationally. Either way, I must simply shrug my shoulders.
On that last point, I might beg to differ, but in my reality, and in the reality of many other queer folks in my life, everyone is queer. Queer people often, yes, hang out with other queer people. They can arrive in groups of four, twelve, or even a whole ensemble’s worth. And so, though we make the most of our crumbs in mainstream media, celebrating subtext and the barest brush of a hand against a shoulder, the true dream is for the big kahuna: for a whole show’s (or whatever medium) worth of characters to just be queer. And I feel thrilled to say that AMC’s Interview with the Vampire fulfills that dream of queerness—a dream that queer people deserve to see realized.
Interview with the Vampire is not the only show to have achieved this beautiful vision in the mainstream media, though only a few have. Sadly, other shows that managed to do so, literally or spiritually, such as Hannibal or Our Flag Means Death, have been sent to the television graveyard. But Interview with the Vampire is not only living its best undead life but, I daresay, it is thriving. At New York Comic Con this year, the audience greeted Interview with the Vampire‘s cast and creators with cheers louder than any other panels I went to that weekend. It filled the panel room and left a line waiting at the door. We couldn’t hear the moderator over the roar of the crowd, not even the panelists.
And that ardent love, that extreme devotion, that is not a coincidence. That comes as a result of knowing that not only are you seeing a narrative, but it sees you back. And although queerness is not the only thing Interview with the Vampire is able to reflect back to its fans, merely the thing I am qualified to talk about, it is definitely a powerful, critical part of its sight.
Here, I will mention that I extend the term queerness beyond the simplistic notions of who someone is romancing or loving to the idea of queerness as anyone living a life beyond the norm, anyone seen as Other.
Derisively, some might liken the feeling of Interview with the Vampire to fanfiction. Sincerely, I liken it to the same. But what does it mean for a television series to feel like fanfic? Nothing so paltry as the desire to see attractive men kiss, although we all love that. No, instead, fanfiction is where queer people can go to see the main characters become queer, friendships become queer, enemies become queer, frenemies become queer, fatherhood and motherhood become queer, hook-ups, long-term relationships, co-workers, I could go on, but the point is to see a whole rainbow of human interactions transform into queerness in the very real way our lives conduct themselves.
In fanfiction, we become the authors, and we have the power to prioritize our narrative in a way we deserve. And so when I say that Interview with the Vampire feels like a fanfic, that is what I mean. I mean that I can feel safe watching Interview with the Vampire, knowing that the baseline assumption is that every character is queer and that the reality of that queerness is treated as the most normal thing in the world. That it’s understood that queerness is a diffuse truth of many people and that the people who are queer engage in all sorts of roles and positions and NEED other queer people around them to be their truest selves.
In fact, famously, Ben Daniels, who played Santiago, shared of his casting, “Rolin called up and said, ‘Listen, are you OK if we don’t make Santiago queer?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I can sort of see it.’ But as the script started to come in, I thought the only way this level of vitriol that he has works is if he’s in love with Armand.” Interview with the Vampire couldn’t even make a character straight when it tried—the queerness jumped out, and that is what makes it so powerful. The show did not feel scared to know that vitriol twisted into love made both play more truly. It didn’t feel it had to limit the interactions between its characters, just because. It knew its queerness would empower it and saw that as its strength.
Perhaps from some perspectives, this vision of a queer utopia might feel limiting or alienating. But it’s, in fact, just the opposite. It’s freedom. The freedom for any character to interact with any other character in any possible way that makes sense. Everyone being queer doesn’t mean that everyone is romantically or sexually involved, nor does it mean that women-shaped characters will never kiss men-shaped characters. It just means everyone has a full array of possibilities inside of them when they engage with someone else, regardless of who that person is. And that they engage from this place of freedom, this specific perspective, no matter what they are doing. And it’s this reality that queer people long to see on screen, the idea that any kind of queerness, any kind of relationship is possible.
And isn’t it so much better in Interview with the Vampire that all four main characters are entangled in ways that lead to interactions beyond wooden, moody walks next to one another and a grunt now and again? I think it is SO much better. And how amazing is it that the queerness of Interview with the Vampire resonates from Black characters, from South Asian characters, from older characters, from men, women, and potentially genderfluid characters, and hopefully from some non-binary and trans folks in the future? This queerness comes in so many different ways.
Currently, there are 16.1 MILLION fics on Archive of Our Own. They may not all be queer, but I’d bet like 14 million of them are. On top of that, millions more readers and commenters never write a single work but come to warm themselves by this comforting place’s fire. That’s not a limited audience, that is a LEGION. A legion of people who just want to be seen, a million kinds of different humans all seeking something similar. It’s always nice to be seen in fanfic, but it’s really, really nice, and beyond that, merited, to be seen where everyone else is seen; to be prime time, to be the main character, the villain, and everything in between. There’s something revelatory about it. (Of course, none of this is to say that fanfiction or Interview with the Vampire are perfect beacons of existence; there’s always more work to be done in many arenas.)
But it is to say, I see you—all you fabulous people out there who’ve finally found a series to obsess over that loves and respects you the way you love and respect it—and Interview with the Vampire sees you, too. Celebrate it, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world! Celebrate it, you deserve it.
Much love—Ro
Rotem Rusak is the Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She’s been a fangirl all her life. She read her first fic in 2002 and never looked back. If Armand and Daniel don’t get together in The Vampire Lestat, she’ll be very disappointed.
The post INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE’s Overwhelming Queerness Is Revelatory & Queer People Deserve It appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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