Thank you to Sen for his time and thoughtfulness. Introduction music is by YellowTree on freesounds.org, used with CC BY 4.0 Deed license.
Transcript:
[Introduction music, light synths]
J: Hello and welcome to night creatures, audio version. You're about to hear a chat with my friend Sen, a writer and filmmaker. We talked about race in the show and how this makes us stand out as an adaptation. I hope you enjoy.
S: Okie dokie.
J: Okay. So. Interview with the Vampire.
S: Interview with the Vampire! [J, again: Interview with the Vampire.] It's been pretty good.
J: It's been good.
S: It's been good. Yeah. Yeah, I think that it kind of stands out from a crowd of adaptations and reboots that have really not been very impressive and not been interesting in the way it engages with the text. And I'm very, I was very impressed with the way Interview with the Vampire decided to actively kind of revamp and also put like—
J: Haha revamp. Like vampire.
S: [Laughs] Yeah, there we go. Yep, revamp. Ha ha. Yeah, [revamp] the story and also put a lot of sort of really interesting cultural kind of nuances into it.
J: Yeah. I think… I think changing the context and adding that racial dynamics really did transform the original, which I enjoyed. But I think that the show is a much stronger text, actually.
S: I mean, I think there's kind of been a hesitance for adaptations to actually be transformative.
J: I think that people are scared of alienating fans of the original text. But then they never really think about it how they should build on that.
S: Exactly, exactly.
J: I think the other thing I want to talk about was Claudia the vampire? Yes.
S: Yes. Claudia, the vampire.
J: Again, just. I do find the racial dynamics so interesting. Because you have Louie and Claudia who are both created by Lestat. And then they’re both, like, racialized in the American South.
S: And they can talk to each other telepathically.
J: And they can talk to each other in their minds.
S: Yeah.
J: Crazy.
S: Yeah. Like that kind of thoughtfulness, I guess, when including these nuances of race and kind of blending them into the text is so impressive.
J: Yeah. Because then, again. It's not, I guess it's not really spelled out, but it is something that you can just see visually like Claudia’s feeling of isolation is obviously compounded by those dimensions of gender and race.
S: Exactly, yeah. [pause] And yeah, like even Lestat kind of being this person who comes from Europe to the American South and has no kind of real understanding of the way the context works. Is both kind of a textual, this needs to happen for the plot thing and a very compelling kind of metaphor, or implication, I guess. Yeah.
J: Yeah. I mean, it's a very colonial narrative.
S: It is, yeah. And yeah, I think also kind of just in the larger context of vampire media, I think. Interview with the Vampire also manages to stand very strongly on its own is a very compelling kind of take on it because it's— also, it's just a very common monster to have, I guess.
J: Yeah.
S: Yeah. And I think you know, we do owe kind of Anna Rice for that, a little bit. But the show really has extra dimension.
J: Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting. That the books were written what, like 1970s, the first book. And then we've had all of this vampire media since. And then it does feel like the TV show is kind of responding to that in part.
S: Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, the racialization of the vampire myth particularly is so interesting. Because it's not often something that happens. I think vampires kind of being represented as, you know, the monstrous other in correlation with being ostracized from, feelings of being ostracized from society and etcetera are often in a very white context.
J: Yeah, this is true.
S: Yeah, adding that entire new layer. It is a response and it's really, it's fascinating.
J: It's fascinating. It's really compelling.
S: It's really, really compelling. Yeah, it's a good show.
J: It's a good show!
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