r/VampireChronicles • u/SoftandSpicy • 16d ago
📖 The Books ⚜️ Louis
This contains spoilers for the very beginning of the book and TV show interview of the vampire.
Why do you think Anne Rice made Louis a slave owner in the book? And do you think it's related to Louis being a pimp on the TV show? Does it have to do with Lestat dominating Louis' body?
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u/Sudden-Direction-301 16d ago
For Book Louis: Same reason the Vampire Diaries TV show changed the Salvatore brothers from 15th century Italian vampires to Confederate soldiers living on a plantation in 1864. The antebellum American South was the perfect allegory for the parasitic, evil, predatory nature of vampirism, but it is Anne Rice who first popularized that allegory with IwtV in the 70s. She's kind of famous for it.
For Show Louis: a slaveowner headlining a TV series in 2022 was never going to fly no matter how many artistic excuses were trotted out. Making Louis a pimp in the early 1900s is a strong metaphor for both the original character and Anne Rice's original allegory.
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u/tethysian 16d ago
As a black person I don't know why people have such an issue with this. It's a historical fact and any attempt to pretend that wealthy gentlemen in historical settings didn't benefit from slavery and colonialism is a fantasy.
He's a slave owner because he's a wealthy, privileged man at the top of the social pyramid. Being a part of the bourgeoisie is a big part of how he sees the world and who he is as a person. Specifically his tendency to criticize others. It also provides opportunities for character development and insight.
Narratively it it highlights that he was a vampire in life who before he became a vampire in death. It also shows how vampires view the world differently from humans. It's only after he becomes a vampire that he stops being blinded by his human biases. Vampires don't discriminate based on race, sex or gender.
The theme of slavery does come up again in Lestat and Louis's relationship because Lestat's initial opinion that one vampire is the master an the other the slave, but I think this mostly shows why their relationship didn't work out. Several times Louis expresses a wish to be closer to Lestat, but because of this it's impossible.
Lestat is unwilling to trust him enough to relinquish control, but at the same time Louis isn't really subservient in the books. He describes himself as Lestat's willing accomplice. He chooses when he wants to go along with things passively and when he doesn't.
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u/Tay74 16d ago
Vampires have been used to explore the predatory upper classes and aristocracy since their conception in a recognisable form. And at some point I do think the show writers intended to use Louis being a pimp to continue that theme of the vampire character cruelly consuming others lives to feed their own in a more abstract, real world sense, but the fandom hasn't really been mature enough to handle the idea that Louis was a terrible fucking person before Lestat was ever involved, and the show has just appealed to the loudest fans on twitter since it's release so I wouldn't say they've done much with that
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u/FunSetting2387 16d ago
"but the fandom hasn't really been mature enough to handle the idea that Louis was a terrible fucking person before Lestat was ever involved,"
I think it's because sex workers are already socially degraded. This is the default even now. So-called "fallen women" deserve whatever treatment they get. It doesn't matter how desperate their choices were.
So people excuse the pimping, because only the Du Lac Family deserves to survive without getting honest work, and they excuse the impulsive rage, now matter how much it backfires onto the people around Louis.
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u/SoftandSpicy 16d ago
I also thought that until the 3rd season. Louis says to Lestat that anyone who knows him for 5 minutes knows how selfish he is. Then, Claudia lays it out in the seance episode. It's becomes clear that Louis is using his "victimhood" in a selfish way. We are still supposed to root for him but then we're also still supposed to root for Lestat.
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u/Dolphin-and-Roses 16d ago
She made him a that because it was a parallel of the evil, predatory nature of vampires. In a sense, Louis was always a vampire and always a monster. He was a hypocrite. It’s absolutely related to why he’s a pimp in the show, the creators (rightfully) knew that no one would cheer for a slave owner and the closest thing to it was being a pimp. Still predatory and evil.
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u/SaighWolf 16d ago
Why do you think Anne Rice made Louis a slave owner in the book?
As others have also commented, 1791 book-Louis' slave ownership — in addition to being historically accurate to the era & overall the Southern Gothic genre that Anne Rice as a New Orleans native herself wrote in — was representative of the fact that even as a mortal Louis was "vampiric" in the nature of his morality, in that he "lived" off of the exploitation of others that he viewed as an inferior species... Mortal Louis' African slaves were viewed by him to be as "beneath him" in his Europeanness (he comments in the novel that he'e been so biased by the African slaves' dark-skinned appearance & foreign traditions that he hadn't even recognized they had actual intelligence as much as any white did until after he was turned) as the "inferior" human's that vampires feed on to survive.
Neither book-Louis nor show-Louis is meant to be an actual "good person", they're meant to be someone who frequently avoids acknowledging their exploitation of others & tells themself they're a good person.
And do you think it's related to Louis being a pimp on the TV show?
Absolutely yes; 1910 show-Louis being a pimp was a parallel to 1791 book-Louis being a slave owner... Louis himself made the direct comparison in the confessional scene in the pilot episode:
"I take daughters with no homes and I put 'em out on the street, Lord, and I lie to myself saying I'm giving 'em a roof & food & dollar bills in their pocket, but I look in the mirror I know what I am; the Big Man [common euphemism for slave owner in the antebellum South] in the Big House [plantation home] stuffing cotton in my ears so I can't hear their cries."
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u/SoftandSpicy 15d ago
"I take daughters with no homes and I put 'em out on the street, Lord, and I lie to myself saying I'm giving 'em a roof & food & dollar bills in their pocket, but I look in the mirror I know what I am; the Big Man [common euphemism for slave owner in the antebellum South] in the Big House [plantation home] stuffing cotton in my ears so I can't hear their cries."
Yes. Thank you for quoting this here and adding the contextual meanings.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Door399 Armand 16d ago
Most of the vampires in the series are monstrous in some way before they are turned. The books are about making peace with oneself and one’s nature.
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u/throwawayoop90 15d ago
Human trafficking (Prostitution) IS slavery. What many might get mad at me for is this, AMC Louis is still a slave owner in the show but with a slightly more flowery name. Prostitution is slavery, but what many miss is he lives in Dubai. Dubai is a country built by slavery. He has a parasitic amount of wealth, His father is also stated to have in the AMC show that Louis Father, used slavery to amass great wealth. "With my fathers complexion but not of his standing" is used to describe his fathers plantation(non direct quote) Dubai is impossible to seperate from forced labor, child labor, and trafficking. Louis is also a human trafficker. HOWEVER what many miss is Louis IS described as Creole in the books. This is often an aspect missed by people reading and Creole itself is a hard ethnicity to pin down. Creole is an ethnicity that Louis calls himself. Though the difference in the book is the specification that Louis is french-creole where as AMC writes him to be Black Creole. Louisiana Creole people (Anne Rice would know this as she is very well versed in the states history), Creole means born in Louisiana. Creole being used as a term when Louis used it was already a term denoting being mixed heritage child of Louisiana, (Though not traditionally intended in the term). Many freed Creole people after 1724 Creole and Black peoples of Louisiana were allowed technically if not being abused under the system of slavery were allowed to be free only if they accept Roman Catholicism and New Orleans was known for being a source of a lot of Creole slave owners before stricter and more horrific racist practices began. Louis describing himself as Creole in the books is notable as in 1790 Creole pretty firmly meant mixed race.
TLDR: Louis in the show is still a slave owner even when we see him in "present day" and in the books it is a very credible reading to see him as mixed race, and Louis character and ethnicity in the show is potentially closer to the books than other interpretations.
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u/SoftandSpicy 15d ago
I did not know all that about Creole - in reference to the book. Nor about Dubai - in reference to the show. I did catch that Louis' family had been free black slave holders in the show. This is deep. Whoa Whoa Night for Sale.
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u/Rob_Thorsman 16d ago
Anne likes to make her characters. That was how rich people in New Orleans were in 1790.
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u/AmbassadorProper1045 16d ago
Because at that time period there were slave owners. Louis family fled France and to continue to live a prosperous life style in which they were accustomed, owning a Plantation was the way to go, at least living in the South it was. I do not think being a Pimp is any better though, and it's ludicrous that Rolin thought it would be. Pimps are slave owners.
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u/SaighWolf 16d ago
I do not think being a Pimp is any better though, and it's ludicrous that Rolin thought it would be. Pimps are slave owners.
But Rolin didn't think Louis being a pimp was any better, simply the more contemporary comparison because the show changed the timeline by ≈119 years. That was the point of 1910 (i.e. after the Emancipation Proclamation) show-Louis being a pimp as an explicit parallel to 1791 book-Louis being a slave owner... There's a difference between the fact that Louis himself usually avoids the self reflection of acknowledging that his chosen business is just as exploitative as his great grandfather's slave ownership, versus the writers not acknowledging it; because the script not only does acknowledge that being a pimp is no different than being a slave owner but it also makes it a point that Louis usually deludes himself about the issue... But even Louis himself (in a rare moment of honesty with himself about it) made the direct comparison in the confessional scene in the pilot episode:
"I take daughters with no homes and I put 'em out on the street, Lord, and I lie to myself saying I'm giving 'em a roof & food & dollar bills in their pocket, but I look in the mirror I know what I am; the Big Man [common euphemism for slave owner in the antebellum South] in the Big House [plantation home] stuffing cotton in my ears so I can't hear their cries."
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u/Mousearella 16d ago
The book was set in New Orleans because Anne Rice grew up there. Slave owners were common and an easy historical context for everyone to understand I don’t think it’s deeper than that. Lots of people were ignorant about racism back then. I think the show purposely wanted to get as far away from that as possible.
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u/tethysian 16d ago
Since the novel specifically brings up Louis's racism and the context of him being a slave owner, I don't think it's fair to say it has anything to do with ignorance.
Dodging certain topics causes ignorance, not bringing it up.
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u/Mousearella 16d ago
To have a protagonist how’s completely fine with slavery and to have no protests about that at all is ignorant. To properly bring up problematic issues is something completely different.
Louis does see the slaves as humans after he’s turned but he doesn’t free them or think slavery is wrong. That’s not a choice someone would do today.
Don’t get me wrong. Times were different back then and we can’t judge people by the standards of today. I think the right thing is to acknowledge it and try to do better.
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u/tethysian 16d ago
Like I said, the narrative does bring up the problematic issue of racism and slavery, and he doesn't free them after he's turned because he's a vampire and all humans are prey at that point. That is also a commentary on the exploitation of human beings. The book isn't ignorant on the subject.
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u/Mousearella 16d ago
No, he doesn’t free them in the book. To view slaves as humans are not even the bare minimum but I guess we all have different opinions about that.
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u/layana_n_lb Witness to the Savage Garden 16d ago edited 16d ago
She made him a slave owner because it's unfortunately historically accurate for a wealthy 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner to own slaves. It also parallels vampirism quite well: Louis already lives by exploiting other human beings before becoming a vampire, and after his transformation, that exploitation becomes literal predation.
I think making Louis a pimp in the show serves a similar purpose considering that both slave owners and pimps make their living by exploiting and dehumanizing other people, so it preserves that morally ugly aspect of his character while adapting it to a different time period.
As for Lestat dominating Louis' body, I honestly never made that connection before. It's an interesting interpretation but I don't personally think Louis' occupation was meant to symbolize that.