(@luthi69 beat me to the punch on that one!)

[WWDITS/IWTV mashup by @luthi69 please reblog from the link or the source]

I admit that I have a lot of nostalgia for Antonio!Armand, so it doesn’t seem as weird to me… I hope the new adaptation(s) have a more canon-compliant Armand bc I think it can be handled in a way that wasn’t possible in the early 90′s, the pedophilia inherent in an adult-looking vampire being in a relationship (of some kind) with a teenage-looking vampire, even though they are ~90 and ~400 years old, respectively.

There were a lot of good reasons for casting a non-compliant Armand, and I talk about it in my #Defending Antonio tag, @vraik captured the taboo aspect of it very well [X]:

HEY. HEY. YOU KNOW WHO I LOVE? 

Antonio Banderas Armand. 

I ranted about this at length once, and realized it might be worth excising that particular section from my recaps and letting it stand on its own. SO LET ME TELL YOU A THING.

“Not only does Banderas give one hell of a performance, clearly entranced by Louis and convinced his ruthlessness is an acceptable means to an end (and then Louis dumps him immediately and Banderas’ crushed look that WHOOPS OVERESTIMATED just destroyed me). It’s really genuine, maybe the movie’s best after Cruise and Dunst, and at least half his dialogue is lifted without change from the books. But all that gets overlooked, because he doesn’t look like a teenager. And there’s a certain fairness to that – Armand’s body adds a dimension to his interactions with others as much as Claudia’s does. But now let me give you a hot dose of context.

In 1994, it was still a pretty common argument to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia, particularly with gay men.  THINK OF THE CHILDREN, Y’ALL. The movie already had to deal with the Claudia/Louis relationship, which only tenuously steps the worst landmines of creepiness, as we discussed, by avoiding physicality and giving mentally grown Claudia all the power. So, the filmmakers maybe didn’t want to stack, on top of that stack of gunpowder, a relationship with yet another underage character, particularly one that so played into existing stereotypes.

Then there’s the fact that, by virtue of the script, Louis’ feelings for Armand are a lot more explicitly tender and obvious than his relationship with Lestat. Back then, it was a big deal if you asked an actor to, gasp, play gay. Heavens forfend. But Banderas, in addition to being a handsome fellow and a marketable star, had also appeared in Philadelphia in 1993 (aka the movie where the Noble Gay dying nobly from AIDS is nice enough to teach A Straight to be a better person before he croaks). While their scenes were scrubbed of basically any intimacy, he was playing Tom Hanks’ lover, and apparently that was proximal enough to The Gay that he was an okay dude to ask. And then he fucking killed it with the material he was given it, in spite of the fact that the majority of his scenes were opposite the totally catatonic Pitt (who has made no bones about how much he haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated being in this movie). He’s a champ, and a treasure, come at me.”