Interview with the Vampire and the American Perspective

One of the most popular movies following a renewed interest in the vampire myth in the 1990s is Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994) based on Anne Rice’s 1973 novel. Rice is also credited with penning the screenplay for the movie. Rice’s narrative participates with the rising representation of sympathetic vampires visible in such films as Coppola’s 1992 version of Dracula. Moreover, Vivian Sobchack, in her essay Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange refers to a late twentieth century trend in horror film marked by a “mutual spatial relocation to the American landscape and temporal relocation to the present” (Sobchack in DD 145). Historically, most vampires were a foreign threat. By the 1990s, the vampire was ripe for sympathetic appropriation into the geography of American culture.
Indeed, this film is concerned with an American perspective. The opening pan-shot highlights a blood-red neon sign that identifies the location as San Francisco. The narrative is framed in that American location as Louis explains his life as a vampire to a San Francisco journalist. The narrative within that framework is also framed in America. Louis’ tale begins on a 1790s Louisiana plantation and it is to America he will return at the end of his narrative.
On a smaller scale, the cinematography also highlights a preoccupation with perspective. Following the opening pan-shot, the camera moves into the city and follows what appears to be the first-person perspective of Louis as he silently weaves his way through the crowds and traffic of the night-time streets of San Francisco. Jordan repeats this pattern at the end of the movie from Lestat’s perspective. Using both narrative framework and cinematography, Jordan effectively creates a domestic American perspective.

Works Cited
Sobchack, Vivian. “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange.” The Dread of Difference. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. 143-163. Print.