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IWTV S2 Ep8 Musings - Lestat & Gender: "I am she, she is me."
Scrolling the tags and sighing, cuz I just KNEW people were gonna take this line out of context, as proof that Lestat's the woman/wife/mother/femme-fatale (which @dwreader had to explain cuz folks just don't get it X X), blahblahblah. I've already said my whole bit on Lestat as the patriarchal father/husband, and the dandified matador/killer (a la Bruce). But I just wanna remind y'all that THE SAINT IS NOT A CITY.
Either the fandom's got a bunch of new Lestans posting who missed the discourse from S1 about the meaning behind Les's monologues from the books; or y'all just have frightfully short memories.
He's NOT talking about stupid effing New Orleans; and he's NOT calling himself a woman. He's talking about LOUIS. Louis' motherland! Louis' culture! Louis' ancestor's bones! Louis' grave soil! Louis's HOME--Louis' back at home, and Louis IS his home.
But here y'all go, always centering everything on Lestat's yaasification, and ignoring the Louis-shaped elephant in the room.
Lestat's been talking about Louis to his nameless Millennial Fledgling this whole time. Everyone knows who Louis is--and what he means to Lestat. This is CRUCIAL for Loustat going forward in TVC, when Lou's held as collateral against Lest by Akasha and Rhoshamandes.
But for some reason Lestans are hella quick to separate Lestat's identity from Louis every chance y'all get, then wanna whine & complain about the QotD movie pairing Lestat with Jesse, or AR tryna pair Les with Tom, Dick & Harry.
And YES, I will die on the hill that this whole anti-feminine discourse about AMC!Louis is couched in racial prejudice and biases--a trap that even Black fans who are pro-Louis fall into, while ignoring the struggles of effeminate/feminized gay Black men in their own effing community (X X X X).
But this is BY FAR more endemic in spaces predominately occupied by straight white women, who utterly fail to relate to their direct antithesis: gay Black men (X X). So of course they'll leap on every chance they get to glom onto long-haired blonde white drama queen Lestat as their spirit animal, even when he's LITERALLY TELLING Y'ALL that he himself identifies himself with LOUIS.
(Lestat's toxic color blindness is a whole 'nother conversation, omg. X X X)
Lestat says "she" because it's conventional speech to refer to places--especially continents, countries, and cities--as female, denoting motherhood and wives--places as people that take care of their own, as a mother would her children and/or spouse; a la the Statue of Liberty, personified virtues, and most abstract concepts we've inherited from Greco-Roman gender inequality about women as home-makers (HOUSEWIVES) being barefoot & pregnant in the kitchen. It's not even an exclusively English phenomenon. NOLA, like any city, is referred to as a "she."
So yes, to an extent, Lestat is channeling LOUIS; waiting at home for his spouse to come back and TAKE CARE OF HIM again. But Lestat is NOT a home-maker. He's living in a nasty AF shack, with only his music for company (and we know his tour's all about TVL & Akasha & Marius & Claudia & Louis). He treats his own Millennial Fledgling (his BLOOD CHILD) like trash; setting him on fire "IN LOUIS' HONOR" and not even knowing his name--he's NOT tryna be no one's MOTHER. He couldn't even bring himself to be Claudia's effing FATHER when she was literally burning alive two feet away from him, FFS.
But it's not about the brick & mortar or the PLACE itself--it's about the PERSON it's attached to--cuz Lestat always knew that Louis would eventually come back to NOLA--come back HOME--and FIND LESTAT WAITING FOR HIM THERE.
EVERYTHING & ANYTHING FOR LOUIS.
But AMC leaves it deliberately open-ended and ambiguous what Louis says to Lestat during their hug, and we don't see Lestat in Dubai, or any implication that Loustat is remarried/a couple again. Louis' putting down the torch, to stop accepting everyone's effing dregs; "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." Cuz Lou's decided to finally start learning how to live on his own for the first time in his entire life; for himself, not other people--AND realize that he doesn't need to rely on his husbands to fight his battles for him. "I own the night!"
