don't you know that only fools are satisfied?

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain Rock me mama like a southbound train

1. Is Lestat's relationship to Claudia ever that of an uncle? What other reason might there be for Claudia to call one of the men "Daddy" and the other "Uncle"? Consider the setting.
2. Why might the filmmakers have chosen to include references to A Doll's House, Madame Bovary, Marriage In A Free Society by Edward Carpenter, and Pelléas et Mélisande? What themes, if any, do these references reinforce?
3. Claudia calls Louis "the housewife" and Louis later describes himself as "ignoring all other duties of the role Claudia had mocked me for... the unhappy housewife." What does this indicate about attitudes towards gender and sexuality in the society in which the characters live? What is the significance of the word "role" here in relation to Lestat's promise in the first episode to free Louis from "all these roles you conform to"?
4. When Claudia first introduces the idea of reconceptualizing her relationship to Louis and Lestat as a sister, what does Lestat's reaction suggest about his opinion? In the following episode, when Lestat calls Claudia "sister, daughter, infant death," what is his tone?
5. In the context of the story, what is a "maker"? What kind of status in the household does Lestat believe a maker should have?
6. Does becoming vampires allow the characters to escape the social structures of the world around them, or do they remain trapped? In what ways, if any, does sociocultural context in regards to gender, race, sexuality, and family influence the characters and their relationships?
7. The article "Undoing Feminism: From the Preoedipal to Postfeminism in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles" by Janice Doane and Devon Hodges argues that the novel Interview With The Vampire "depends on an oedipal paradigm" and says that "Rice sees the oedipal moment as beginning with the father's embrace of the girl child in a patriarchal order that so restricts her possibilities for development [...] that she develops murderous rages against the father. Freud calls the oedipal stage 'a haven, a refuge' for the girl; Rice shows it to be a coffin." Do you think AMC's Interview With The Vampire is engaging with this idea? Why or why not?

• the average human lifespan globally is 70+ years
• taking the threshold of adulthood as 18, you are likely to spend at least 52 years as a fully grown adult
• at the age of 30 you have lived less than one quarter of your adult life (12/52 years)
• 'middle age' is typically considered to be between 45-65
• it is extremely common to switch careers, start new relationships, emigrate, go to college for the first or second time, or make other life-changing decisions in middle age
• it's wild that I even have to spell it out, but older adults (60+) still have social lives and hobbies and interests.
• you can still date when you get old. you can still fuck. you can still learn new skills, be fashionable, be competitive. you can still gossip, you can still travel, you can still read. you can still transition. you can still come out.
• young doesn't mean peaked. you're inexperienced in your 20s! you're still learning and practicing! you're developing social skills and muscle memory that will last decades!
• there are a million things to do in the world, and they don't vanish overnight because an imaginary number gets too big