Presently delivering is AMC's Interview with the Vampire. The show is well-made and true to the themes developed by Anne Rice in the book, and it also discards subtext while pushing into the gay vampire angst with sprinkles of humour. Even though there have been certain adjustments, such as the period at which these events take place, some people have obviously not stopped criticising the "woke" casting of Jacob Anderson as Louis de Pointe du Lac.
On the one hand, it's genuinely stupid for people to criticise "wokeness" in a book series about perceptive homosexual vampires. It becomes even more ridiculous, though, when you consider how Anne Rice, in works like The Feasts of All Saints, would use concepts like the "tragic mulatto" and free people of colour (1979). The powerful witches who are a part of the Mayfair family are mingled with slaves' ancestry in the Mayfair Witches canon.
There was racial and ethnic mingling because a lot of Rice's works are set in or have their roots in a period when slavery was practised.
The fictional character Louis is the son of a plantation owner who succeeds to the post after the passing of his father. There is nothing implausible about Louis being mixed race and still holding that job, even though this is altered in the television series. Black slave owners existed alongside white plantation owners who elevated their mixed-race offspring to positions of authority. This did not shield them from racial prejudice, either. The fact that Louis is Black is not "woke," as Anne Rice would be aware of this.
There are black individuals. The city of New Orleans itself has a very complicated connection with people of colour who are mixed races, which makes it possible for a figure like Louis to exist there. And perhaps most crucially, Jacob Anderson excels in the part. If you believed that Game of Thrones was the extent of his work, whoo, you're going to be gleefully wrong. His character works because he possesses all the self-loathing, shame, and bittersweet attraction to Lestat that are necessary.
Why does Jacob Anderson's race matter more than his ability to portray the character if race isn't meant to matter and it's about having the best person for the job, as the folks voicing these criticisms so frequently claim? Would you refuse to enjoy watching this series brilliantly brought to life just because a character is Black if you like it? That strikes me as sarcasm for sarcasm, and the only ones who suffer are those who are trying to portray Louis as being defined by his whiteness. He is known for being a depressed young man who despises his ex and is unable to accept full responsibility for his conduct.
Anne Rice wasn't some "woke" author who created an ideal gay, progressive, and multicultural society. Although she occasionally wrote about people of colour in problematic ways, this does not imply that she was unaware of how her writing had changed over time. The quality would have dispelled any misgivings she may have had, just as it did when she was concerned about Tom Cruise as Lestat in the 1990s film adaption.
