seperation or lack of finding the edge

it occurs to me that perhaps there is some validity to the mythology of Zues chopping selfs in half. If one looks at the main characters in Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. Lestat needs his other self. Louis other limbs may be more in the line of knowledge; answers none can produce. Claudia a mother, an arm to enfold her, and a body that will not betray her and wrap itself about her as taut as woven shroud. She was rather fond of the finer things in life and a shroud of linen and cotton certainly would not behoove her. And this space this lack of, the distance between need and want. These characters need and believe it to be want. Sex is food.

Futhermore, those as food is there a distance where euphoria enters as desire and the distance between living and a high so great simply decides it is the other half lacking. The euphoria an opiate so powerful that a young girl terrified hears no pain as the entry point as how many fear a painful death. Moreover, how many fear more a painful life as Armond when Louis finds the distance between them to be greater than the desire to cross it.

Of all the characters , Claudia is surely the one to be pitied, the outcast among outcasts. Yet, they had their versin of untouchables in their caste system the mumbling, noncognizant distant relatives. How easy it is to forget, to create a victim, when one has been victimized themself and
how luxurious to have others to generate stored, simmering for centuries.

Finally, it imortality appears to have its drawbacks, just survivng, rather like a junkie itcing for a fix eliminates qualities such as compassion, love and trust. If there is a fountain of youth I believe I would settle for a local watering hole.

Bittersweet Eternity

Well I have a lot to say about Anne Rice's, Interview with the Vampire...I can't believe I just now saw the movie and read the book, the story is so amazing! I could not get my head out of the book first of all and the movie was addicitve too, I've now watched it 3 times since I rented it. It might just have been young Brad Pitt to whom I was addicted, he's so beautiful even when he looks dead. I's probably lend him my neck if he were ever thirsty, haha. Anyway though so I've been thinking the last week about the whole concept of Bittersweet and so much in life is just that, bittersweet. I especially focused in on the bittersweet while watching and reading IWTV because so much in the story is bitter and sweet all in one. The fact that Louis and Lestat are "companions" yet Louis hates Lestat and Lestat simply uses Louis is bittersweet. Their relationship is on a bases of needing one another, not loving one another. Although Louis does not like Lestat he feels as though he needs him therefore he stays with him, it's a bittersweet realtionship. It is also truly bittersweet that Luois and Lestat are immortal as vampires because you would think that would be like the ultimate thing, to be able to live forever! But why would you want to live forever, miserable and alone? Everyone you love eventually dies and every 50 years you don't even know your own world anymore.

The book vs movie and homosexuality

I enjoyed the movie over the book a great deal. While I was reading the book, I always found myself becoming bored with the style of it and the way it was written. Sure, I liked the parts when Louis was telling his story of how he became a vampire and the things he did, but I didn't enjoy the parts when the book got away from the story and more towards the interview. I guess thats the way to put it. Sometimes Louis would be telling his story and then something would trigger the boy to interupt him. Asking him questions and such, which then Louis expanded on, creating another story that I felt wasn't required. I guess I found myself wanting to get back to the origianl story of it all instead of hearing about all the chit chat between Louis and the boy. So i liked the overall story, just not all the stuff inbetween the story. Just my opinion.

The book/film brought up what I think is a problem in homosexual relationships today. The question comes up: Is it ok for a couple in a homsexual relationship to adopt? This becomes a a problem for Lestat and Louis when they have Claudia. Claudia sees a woman in the distance who she looks up to and desires and eventually wants her for her own. She brings her half dead to Louis requesting him to turn her into a vampire because she needs her. In these relationships, the child is left missing out on either a father or motherly figure in their lives. Is this fair to the child?

Why are Vampires so Damn Sexy?

Wow, there sure is a lot of eye-candy, for both male and females, in the film version of Interview with a Vampire! I must say I enjoyed looking as Brad pre his Bradjolina days. Don’t get me wrong Angie is a nice girl, but Brad was just so much more appealing in the role of single vulnerable Louis! The camera does really love him. I mean I don’t know any other actor that could pull off being sexy while having almost translucent veiny skin….put he did it! Okay, Banderas managed to pull this look off too! Also, there was something very intriguing about Brad’s fierce eyes. I wouldn’t mind sinking my teeth into him! Looks like I have fallen victim to “the gaze” Mulvey talks about in her essay. I must say, I was a little turned off when Louis decided to dine on two poodles…PETA would not have been pleased. But, another thing that was alluring about him was his androgynous looks. While we all know Mr. Pitt is somewhat of a pretty boy, he took on a very different feminine look in the film. There were actually some shots where I thought, “He would make a really beautiful woman”! It was nice to see that the director played up Pitt’s fresh face and managed to make him masculine yet elegantly ethereal. However, this doesn’t make up for the fact that the film never fully touched on the homosexual undertones presented in the novel.
For the heterosexual male this film was teeming with appeal. Particularly, the scene where the vampire theater company devours a luscious nude beauty. There is a bit of time allotted to the viewer to gaze at her supply young naked body with appreciative eyes. In a sense, this was cool because it was as if the film-viewer was now in the old playhouse watching the risky pulse-pounding production. It was also interesting that the female used for this scene looked like the picture of pure simple beauty and innocence. While some may lament about the scene being thrown in solely for hormonal teens to ogle a hot bod, I can appreciate it for its artistic beauty and symbolism.
Kirsten Dunst’s performance really blew me away. She certainly held her own and stood out amongst her older, more experienced cast members. She truly captured Claudia and managed to still look cute while killing innocent people. Her doll-like locks of golden curls and frilly dresses no doubt let her get into the character. What a fun role that must have been to play! I loved the fact that she really captured the frustration and rage that came along with never growing up and never dying. The scene where she chops off all her hair that manages to instantaneously grow back is chilling. I haven’t seen such a powerful performance from a child star in a long time.
As for Cruise in the role of Lestat…ummm…I wasn’t that impressed. His actions and mannerisms seemed almost comical at times. Okay, maybe I am being a little harsh on this couch-jumping scientologist, but I don’t know if I would have necessarily cast him. I guess because in the book I pictured Lestat as overpoweringly handsome. Maybe I just don’t find Tom all that attractive. Who do you think would be a better fit for the role?

Pointe du Lacan?

I don't know why I'm so fascinated with the ideas of lack and absence. I just can't help it.
And I can't help seeing it all through Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.
Pointe du Lac, for example. Louis's home, and the place where Lestat "vampirizes" him. See, if you loosely transliterate Pointe du Lac, it reads as "point of lack" or "place of lack." I believe I brought this up in class. There's more to it, though.
Remember Lacan? French psychoanalyst, had the idea that desire is fueled by the subject's lack of the Other; in Lacan's case, desire is the desire for what the subject lacks--seems Lacan is channeling the ancient Greeks, methinks.
I won't go here into the realm of Lacanian castration fantasies or anything--fear not. Back on topic, if Pointe du Lac reflects the "point of lack" for vampires, what is lacking, what is absent? Christ, they're immortal! Shouldn't everything be theirs?
And there it is: immortality--vampires can't physically change. They lack change. A mighty absence, I'll say, seeing as a body's physical change is integral and inseparable from understandings of sexuality. And Rice certainly paints her revenants as sexual beings. Sexual beings, yes, whose locus of sexuality circles around the desire for blood. If we were to categorize, does this make vampires "hemosexuals?" Ha! Just kidding. A desire for blood is as easily sated as a desire for change is hopeless--a "point of lack."
Bodily changes for vampires stagnate, but their minds change, develop, mature. This is the case with Claudia, the grown mind in stunted flesh, and she's pissed about it--"To give me immortality in this hopeless guise, this helpless form!" she accuses of Louis.
And Claudia's ominous obsession with dolls? I thought this one of the creepier angles in the story, and not simply due to my feeling that all dolls are somewhat eerie. Back, Barbie! I've got a Zippo!
Claudia and the dolls bring back the lack. Dolls can't change; like the vampires, they are physically fixed in time and space. Fixed, yes, unless they are destroyed. Once again, just like the vampires, destruction is their only path of physical change. A lack of existence equates a death of lack.
Perhaps this is why there is so much foreboding when Claudia says "I want to burn the doll shop!" Foreshadowing what happens to the Theatre des Vampires, I know, but it also reflects and inverts what Roland Barthes--aaargh!, more theory!--said about toys--read: dolls--as a coded microcosm of the real world. Any lack or absence detected in the real world is similarly represented in a microcosm of play. A burning doll shop=a burning theatre rather than a burning theatre=a burning doll shop. Claudia spins Barthes to kill the lack, the absence.
Seems I'm not the only one with an itchy Zippo finger.

The Bittersweet Love Between Claudia and Louis

In IWTV, I noticed several examples that related to the topics we discussed in Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson. In my opinion, the most obvious of these examples existed in the relationship between Louis and Claudia. On several occasions, Claudia talks about her love for Louis in a manner that extreme; she both loves him and hates him at the same time.

I think that the root of this “bittersweet” relationship may be in that there are really two separate relationships between the two, one of father-daughter love, and one of lover-companion love. Although Louis is Claudia’s father, it appears that she begins to develop a love for him that goes beyond what her child body allows. She even calls him “Louis. Lover,” (pg 116) and at one point, suggests that he holds a position in her life that, if she were human, would be fueled by desire.

Another problem is that these “duel” relationships seem to always be in conflict with one another, putting strain on the feelings that Claudia has for Louis. At one point in the novel Claudia expresses to Louis that she feels that they are eternally “locked together in hatred,” (pg 116), and yet she is constantly telling him that she loves him. I think that she is tormented by her feelings for Louis, and hates that he views her as a daughter, and more specifically a child. Claudia even begins to resent Louis for taking her life so early, wishing that her human body had been further developed before she had become a vampire. She seems to wish that Louis could physically see her as she is, a “woman” who loves him.

Also, in my opinion, her decision to kill Lestat was fueled by her desire to have Louis all to herself. I think that Claudia was happy alone with Louis until he met Armand and she realized that her love would never be returned in the same manner. Louis needed love from some one he could look up to, and relate to, and although he loves Claudia, she is not this person. She is angered by this, and again, the “bitterness” of her love for him is revealed. In the novel, when Claudia begs Louis to give her Madeline and then leave her she states, “I love you still, that’s the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The measure of my hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you know now how much I hate you!” (pg 262).

She really couldn’t make it any more obvious! She both loves and hates Louis with the same intense “bittersweet” passion. Its hard to tell in the novel if Louis even understands what is troubling Claudia, but I think that he does realize that, like most women, she wants to possess him for herself and doesn’t want to share!

Comparison of the book and film of Interview with a Vampire

From watching the movie I didn’t feel that there was too much different. Yes of course the movie didn’t give you all the scenes that are in the book, but it did convey the struggle that happens internally for all the characters and the struggle that existed amongst them all. What I was surprised to see is that they didn’t censor out too much of the feelings of love and hate that exist between Louis, Lestat, Claudia, and Armand.

A scene from the book that I would have liked to see how cinema would have portrayed would be the relationship between Louis and Babette. In fact, considering on how cinema likes to use heterosexual tension in film, I was surprised that they didn’t use any of that material. I can only imagine that it would have taken up too much of the video to focus on the real struggle, so in the end I’m glad they didn’t waste time on it.

One of the things that I did notice that they seemed to alter was Louis’s personality. In the book I kept feeling what a sad weak character he was, always so afraid and worrisome. In the movie you can see that Louis, Brad Pitt, does struggle, but yet he does it in such a masculine way. At times I would think of Louis as a coward when it came to dealing with Lestat, Claudia, or his inner struggles. I thought this mostly because through the book I could read his inner thoughts, so maybe if I was able to read the movies Louis, then maybe I would have felt those same things conveyed.

As an overall summary I would say that I did enjoy the movie just as much as I enjoyed the book. I felt it kept a similar story line and didn’t leave out the feelings of love and hate that struggles all through out the book. I wasn’t too surprised that they had Brad Pitt portray a more masculine and secure character since he was, for most, the focus of desire in the film.