Anne Rice on the Allure of Vampires

I will confess that I have read every one of Anne Rice's vampire novels. I love the homoerotic subplots and I identify with the need to deal with being "other" that the main characters such as Lestat grapple with. While the vampire genre had always been around, Rice was one of the first authors to take it to new levels with The Vampire Chronicles. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Rice talks about the derivation of her own books and her thoughts on the burgeoning genre in the form of True Blood and the Twilight series. It is noteworthy what she has to say about the parallels between gays and vampires in society. Here are some highlights from the interview:

So what’s your take on the Twilight series? It really does seem to go against the grain in its depiction of vampires.

I think the concept is so rich in itself. It’s like the concept of the cowboy or the detective. Vampires have become almost like a genre, like the Western. What I see happening, with writers like Charlaine Harris and Stephenie Meyer, is the domestication of the vampire. I was more interested in a powerful, Old World figure that had a lot of knowledge, experience, and was surrounded by a lot of glamour and mystery. I wanted to keep the romance. I loved the idea of these people gaining wisdom as they aged, and how that might cause them to be ever more tormented by the fact that they don’t really belong in the world and they prey on human beings, who they’ve really come to appreciate. Charlaine Harris is doing something different by imagining what it’s like if vampires are legal and you have them living in your Southern town, and I think she gets a tremendous amount of energy out of that.

True Blood is set in your native Louisiana, and it really uses vampirism as a metaphor for outsiders, including the gay community. What are your thoughts on using vampirism as a metaphor for the disenfranchised?

It’s a given! The vampire is an outsider. He’s the perfect metaphor for those things. He’s someone who looks human and sounds human, but is not human, so he’s always on the margins. When I write and assume the point of view of the vampire, I understand the agony of being a public outcast—someone who doesn’t belong anywhere, yet longs to be part of something and gravitates to other outcasts of his own kind. I remember the year Interview With the Vampire was published, a young man came to me at Berkeley and told me he thought Interview With the Vampire was “the longest sustained gay allegory in the English language.” I was kind of amazed and honored that he was unpacking that from it, but it wasn’t a conscious thing.

I saw your cheeky Facebook post about how your vampires would “feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun.”

[Laughs] Oh, I was just joking. People ask me what I think about that, and I finally pretended that Lestat and Louis were real and gave their opinion on what they thought of the vampires in Twilight. Unfortunately, I think some of Stephenie Meyer readers took it the wrong way, came to my Facebook page, and were quite unpleasant. But I think they’re very … young. It was quite a ruckus!

Back to True Blood, how do you feel about the show’s depiction of vampires as these uninhibited, primal, sexual beings?

I’m a fan of the show. I see it as a logical part of it all. [Harris] has expanded the sexuality that’s inherent in that idea. I didn’t think of that, but as my books went on, I involved my vampires in more sexuality. But I couldn’t go as far as Charlaine Harris did, because I had said that my vampires can’t have sex; that the act of drinking blood is orgasmic for them. She’s doing it a different way. She’s saying that this blood drinker must also be dynamite in bed. Makes sense!

The Real Reason Christians (and Others) Get So Crazy About Gays

John Shore has a piece at Huffington Post which while tongue in cheek in someways looks at the bizarre emotions gays evoke in some and makes the case that power, not true religious belief that motivates the homophobes - that and their own psychological insecurities. He maintains that the Bible is a convenient crutch when an excuse is needed, but the quest for a sense of power - and money in the case of members of the whore-like professional Christian set such as James Dobson - is the true driving force. The flip side is that men and women who are secure in their own sexuality and sense of who they are don't get all crazed and hysterical over the issue of gays. Closet cases like Robert Knight and Peter LaBarbera truly take the crazy right off the charts, while those comfortable with themselves do not. Here are some column highlights:
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The reason is power. It's all about power. The problem Christians and others have with homosexuality isn't about sex. Nobody cares that much about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Sure, it says in the Bible that homosexuality is bad. And of course that matters. As a Christian, what the Bible says certainly matters to me. But the Bible also says that slavery is good, and that women shouldn't speak in church, and that Christians should never eat shellfish, and on and on an on. We've long ago made our peace with the idea that sometimes we have to modify our understanding of Biblical texts---especially when (as is true with the Pauline proscriptions of homosexuality), there are sound reasons to question the way the text has been translated.
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What fuels the fiery hatred that so many Christians and others harbor for gays can't be explained by pointing to the Bible alone. Clearly something more visceral is going on with that.
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When you hear the word homosexual, what's the first thing that comes to mind? A gay man. It's always a gay man. It's gay men that get people out on the street waving signs and screaming. It's gay men about which people tend to get so emotional; in the main, that's what all the hate and anger is about.
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Why are we, both personally and societally, as reactive to gay men as we are? What is it about them that we hate so much? And the answer to that question is simple: they threaten the traditional power base of men. Here's the basic run of it inside a man's brain/heart/subconscious: I may not be much. But I'm a man. And that entitles me to a lot.
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[T]wo men together? Yikes. That's a problem for me. That's when all the walls in my world begin to crumble. Each of those men is my equal, my peer; they're my kind. If it's okay for them to be romantic with each other, then, for me, everything gets upended. [Oh, will you just stop already?!] Because where the heck does that leave me?
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Today, the ground beneath the personal politics and power of gender is shaking like a California earthquake. And grabbing onto your Bible won't stop that movement. Nothing can. Men are going to kiss men. And that will always seem intensely weird to straight people---just like men and women kissing will always seem intensely weird to gay people. It's a new world, y'all. And it's time to be brave about it.

Ways to Maintain or Kill a Relationship

Maintaining a loving committed relationship takes effort. No matter how well you think you know someone and/or how well you think that you can read their thoughts and feelings, the reality is that no one can fully know another. As a result, if you presume to know their thoughts and motivations, you are placing your relationship in peril and may be risking losing that person that you claim to love beyond all others. I have seen this phenomenon both in my own past relationships and with friends. Never assume you fully know another's thoughts and feelings. We all come with our own unique experiences and baggage. What we may think is obvious may be totally wrong. Honest communication is needed and by communication I do not mean talking at someone until you have beaten them into submission. Sadly, not everyone approaches others this way.
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Why is this a problem? Because interpreting your lover/partner's thoughts and behavior through the prism of your own emotions and experiences can result in you reaching totally incorrect judgments. You cannot read someone else's mind. Jumping to conclusions and/or always assuming bad motivations on the part of your love/partner will only erode the trust and security of your relationship. The reality is that you want your relationship to provide each of you with a safe haven and not, instead, a never ending Hurricane Katrina. The bottom line is do not jump to conclusions and never presume to know the thoughts and reasoning behind your partner's actions, motivations or responses. Always check things out with your partner to make sure you're both correctly understanding the other. This will save you from much grief and possibly save you from looking back on love lost because of your own presumptions and possibly, even arrogance.

Finding The Perfect Lover - Follow Up

As a matter of clarification and to be fair to Raymond, I wanted to explain my post on Finding A Perfect Lover. July 3, 2007 was the 3 year anniversary of my meeting Raymond. Our meeting turned my life around and washed away my thoughts that I would kill myself before my birthday rolled around in August, 2004.

With that background, on the evening of our anniversary, through miscommunication and a lack on my part of knowing his surprise plans for that evening, I got home late, having stopped for a drink with client/friends. When I did get home, he was very hurt and instead of spending time together alone (I had brought home a bottle of chilled champagne), we ended up at a party at our next door neighbors. When we finally got home, things basically further deteriorated through talking at each other as opposed to actually communicating. Thus, I was in a sad and forlorn mood when I wrote the post and did not give Raymond his due for what he has meant in my life.

Try as we might, I think two people can never fully know the workings of another's thoughts and emotions. We can think that we can, but such thoughts are hubris on our own part. Each of us is influenced by our past experiences, past heartbreaks and hurts, and often dysfunctional childhood family settings. As a result, all too often we interpret perceived thoughts and actions of others through the prism of our own experience and baggage accumulated over our own lives and tribulations, giving insufficient thought to the other's thoughts and feelings. All too often, our interpretations of the other are incorrect. Admitting we were wrong later, is not something most people like to do, so the error goes on uncured.

Which brings me to thinking of one of the lines towards the end of "To Kill A Mockingbird" - one of my favorite books/movies - where one of the characters states something to the effect that you cannot understand another until you walk in their shoes. In short, I -and I believe most of us - should not judge a lover's or a friend's motivations too quickly, because we can never really know their thoughts or what is in their hearts. I do know, however, that Raymond loves me and that I love him.