Ok guys, we need to talk about J.C.Leyedecker, and how its a fucking travesty that no one has made a film about him yet.
So Leyendecker was an illustrator during the 1910′s-1940′s. His work was absolutely gorgeous and highly ubiquitous at the time, and his llustrations for the Arrow shirt company created one of the most iconic images of male beauty of the early 20th century. But this icon came with a delicously romantic twist.
So this image of The Arrow Man was both incredibly macho and well built, but also ethereally pretty and dapper. But the model who the drawing was based on cropped up in A LOT of Leyendeckers work. In many he was engaged in casual social scenes with other men, in others he was shaving in the bathroom or getting dressed, broad shouldered, skin glistening, dark blond hair perfectly in place, jaw sharp as a fucking shovel, but with a slightly rounded chin. In one ad for war bonds he even appeared as the statue of liberty. This same man appeared in hundrereds of drawings, each with the same sharp care and attention to detail which makes looking at him almost feel voyeristic.
So this mans image is EVERYWHERE during the early 20th century, and he is a fashion/lifestyle icon for men on par with the female gibson girl. He was the celebrated symbol of male strength, virility, and power.
And man who modeled for Leyendecker’s iconic univerally adored macho man? That would be his lover, Charles Beach.
so all this gorgeously homoerotic artwork defined the image of hyper macho masculinity during the interwar period. Leyendecker painted Beach onto the face of the world, that was his love letter. He basically immortalised the love of his life by making the whole world adore him as much as he did.
Leyendecker’s work would go on to influence the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Norman Rockwell. After his death in 1951, when people figured out that the unmarried man he’d been drawing and living with for decades, right up until the time of his death, was actually his lover, Leyendecker’s name has sadly been pushed out of the history books in favour of more wholesome characters.
And that fucking sucks
I would like to request a full length movie, with all the jazz era glamour and steamy romance that this genius deserved. During a time when homosexual men where thought of as weak deviants, this man not only had the nerve to use his lover as the model for all his great works, but he made him into the STANDARD of what it was to be a man.
J.C. Leyendecker and Charles Beach deserve your rememberance.
Okay, so this lowkey makes me wanna develop an animated film about JC Leyendecker someday
(1) First of all, I would encourage you to post your own interpretations, share with us how you see these characters, we have an insatiable hunger for more fanart ;]
If your headcanon is different, that’s great! Variety is the spice of life.
(2) In my experience, having been in VC fandom for 20+ years and on tumblr for about 3.5 yrs, yes, I’ve seen a lot of IWTV-era fanart depicting the male characters with feminine features, you may be right about that. But not all of it is.
[^X Louis, Claudia and Lestat, IWTV-era, by @superhiki, who often uses Daniel Tighe as a reference for Louis, and fandom favorite Danila Kovalev for Lestat (and, not pictured here but worth mentioning, Hiki uses fandom favorite Bjorn Andresen for Armand)]
(3) I get the impression from your message that you consider that “fanart of IWTV makes the boys look like girls” is bad/wrong/incorrect. If that’s not your point, I apologize, and you can skip to (4), but if it is your point, please see this post about fandom policing, here’s an excerpt from @spiderladyceo:
“And no matter how well-meaning you are, you don’t get to tell other fans what they can and cannot write, or draw, or enjoy.
When you start telling people what they can create or enjoy, you invalidate the purpose of fandom, and create a situation where instead of free exploration, we have something similar to mainstream media in which certain tropes or topics are not allowed. This limits the free expression, exploration and innovation so highly prized in fandom.
…You don’t get to tell fans how to enjoy fandom. You mind your own path, your write your own fic, you write meta on why x trope is offensive/problematic/bad but you do not tell other fans how to enjoy fandom.”
(4) I don’t quite understand your distinction between “feminine” and *female* features, except that I consider “female features” specifically to mean female genitalia and secondary sex characteristics (breasts). So I’m only going to address “feminine” features.
On that point, “smaller jaws, bigger eyes, softer features, bigger lips, small/arched eyebrows” are not exclusive to female characters. Jason Momoa is a man with
BIG EYES, thick lashes, arched brows, big lips, soft jaw, round face,… and I think he is a cis man.
(5) I don’t speak for all the fanartists, but I sent your ask out privately to several fanartists, fic writers, etc., and the general consensus was that if you want to know why a fanartist or writer has made certain artistic choices, you should ask them directly about it and they will answer if they choose to do so.
Some reasons they gave for drawing characters the way they do:
Some fanartists have a different idea of what is “masculine” than you do. It just varies, even in people who express their assigned gender, features differ wildly.
Anne Rice often describes the characters in feminine and androgynous ways.
Many of her vampires were turned young,before developing your idea of “masculine” features, or they never did. Armand was “perhaps seventeen” (TVA) when he was turned and had stopped growing, had not developed masculine features by that time. “My hands are as delicate as those of a young woman, and I was beardless,” (TVA)
It was more fashionable for men during the IWTV-era to be fashionable and cultured, the style of which might be considered a little more feminine by today’s standards. See Dandy.
Their own aesthetic taste may be inspired by anime/manga. One example is Dany&Dany.
Fanartists often use models and actors as references. Many male models and actors have feminine features. One of them, Andreja Pejić, was a fan favorite as Lestat for many years, and she transitioned MTF in 2013.
[X] this picture of Andreja Pejic (left) and Erika Linder (right).
Fanartists may have been inspired by movie!IWTV. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt already had somewhat feminine features in the early 90′s, which were enhanced in movie!IWTV. This is one of my fave fanarts of Lestat, and it’s based on Tom’s Lestat:
^X Lestat by *HRFleur is so lovely. And someone commented on it that they think he is handsome w/o looking feminine.
“I don’t think he looks like Tom Cruise. I think he looks better! it’s as if you took the essence of Lestat from Tom and pulled the real Lestat out. He looks as though he’s about to say something sarcastic or perhaps become peevish over something. I like that you made him handsome without looking feminine.”
Feminine Jesus Christ:
The idea of drawing men with female or feminine features predates fanart. People depict Jesus Christ with feminine features when there is plenty of controversy about what he actually might have looked like:
^Not my comparison pic, I took it from Janet Carr @ THIS BUG’S LIFE’s post about the Jesus depiction issue. Carr writes that the more feminine Jesus depictions are “actually pictures of Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, and brother of Lucrezia Borgia… Pope Alexander VI had all previous depictions of Jesus destroyed in about 1492, and replaced with images of his son. Henceforth, these have been the images used to depict Christ.”
^Here’s our feminized Jesus and early 90′s Brad Pitt, for comparison. I remember Brad being criticized
in the early 90′s
by men for looking too feminine. The pic above is from a magazine, the Italian caption is “Blond, blue eyes, beautiful in spite of himself, and with a smile <<capable of reversing feminism 25 years>>.”
//end. Sorry for the long post, everyone.
I didn’t put any of that under a cut bc I spent a lot of time on this response and I have found that people will reblog, trying to make a post into a discussion, without reading what’s under the cut. People may still want to try to do that, as this is a social network that encourages discussion, but I’m probably not going to engage any further in this topic. I think I’ve made my point, which is that fanartists draw what they want to draw.
I understand, and I sympathize, we’d all love to have someone who’s closer to our headcanon for Armand *hugs* (I also appreciated Banderas’ Armand*, and @vraik had a post worth checking out re: the casting of Banderas instead of someone who fit the canon description better).
That said, an “accurate representation” is pretty tough to ask for bc actors are all human, and there will always be room for improvement. This is especially true re: a character like Armand who may be one of the furthest from being human than any of the other VC characters. Angel, demon, coven leader, youth, imp, etc… he is many things. And AR is not totally wrong, people do age, and it would be unfortunate to have to recast a character bc their actor “aged out” of the role, extra sad if they had built up good chemistry with the other actors!
What we need is someone who’s a little older than necessary who has that elusive *~forever-young gene~* (you know, like Keanu Reeves, someone who doesn’t age), and there are such ppl! I have it. I’m 33 and people still think I’m 17:
^This was before I got my haircut, but it’s pretty recent, no airbrushing, the mirror’s a little dirty tho OH WELL. I’m also posting it w/ this response bc really, the only VC character I could cosplay would be Armand, it’s just the face shape I have, being half Russian and all.
You can dig around in my #VC Casting tag for more ideas but here’s a few, under the cut.
Casting Armand is gonna be tough, bc not only does he need to look that young and stay that young, he also needs to look like a painted portrait, I mean who really looks like a Botticelli angel?! And even then, we don’t all agree 100% on what these characters look like, we’re all influenced by our own culture’s ideals of beauty, our own aesthetic tastes, etc. So my choice of Botticelli angel might not even be yours.
But let’s assume we all agree on THIS angel for the sake of argument, and we hand this over to a casting agent:
Fortunately, there are ppl out there who refuse to age, who look younger than they are already, and that’s the kind of actor I’d want ;3 so…
Hit the jump for some options, cut for length.
Levi Miller – AR’s choice at one point.
Jaco Van Den Hoven
Matthew Clavane
Thomas Brodie-Sangster
Kirill Nikolini
(leaving out the fan fave, Bjorn Andresen, bc he is not an option, too old now!)
^Levi Miller,AR’s choice at one point, not sure if she still wants him. I think he’s 15 now, but that face, very childlike. Too childlike? idk.
^XJaco Van Den Hoven, model, is 26 now, but looks like he could pass for ten years younger.
^X Armand by @teambratprince (hit the X for larger version!) which is really one of my fave fanarts of him ever, and it was based on Jaco Van Den Hoven.
^XMatthew Clavane, a current fandom fave, idk how old he is. Could pass for 15 but he’s a working model so I assume he’s 21+?
^Thomas Brodie-Sangster is 26 and could pass for 15. Idk how old he is in this gif.
^Kirill Nikolini, also a model. @faceofabotticelliangel‘s FC for Armand for awhile. Idk how old he is in the pic or now but… an option? Maybe.
*The book version of Armand, IIRC, was not really developed as much in IWTV, yet another reason they could cast Banderas (preeeetty sure you know by now that I have a place in my heart for his Armand, too <3). I’m pretty sure that his physical appearance is sketched out (auburn hair and brown eyes) in IWTV, the focus is more on his attitude and what he says. His description is clarified in TVL and the later books.
I-want-my-IWTV 