Movie analysis

“Only the Doll Had a Human Face”:

The Vampire Child as Horror Doll

            In her essay, Eva-Maria Simms summarizes the symbiotic relationship between dolls and horror, stating: “Without the child’s compassion and imagination, the doll is a corpse” (676). That is to say, when the doll is removed from its cultural context as a companion for female children, it is no longer viewed as a “source of comfort” (Mitchell 54). Instead, it is viewed as a symbol of malevolence and fear, as exemplified throughout the years by horror films such as Child’s Play (1988) and The Conjuring (2013; Mitchell 53-54). Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994) is no exception to this genre trend. It embraces it wholeheartedly, with one of its pivotal characters—the vampire child Claudia—represented as the film’s “doll” motif through not only her hair and clothing but through other characters, as well. Furthermore, as Claudia is symbolically linked to dolls by the film’s mise-en-scène, dolls and all they represent are, in turn, symbolically linked to Claudia. Thus, more than any physical doll in the film, Claudia embodies the “horror” doll and its role of a “lifeless facsimile of a living being” as well as of “emptiness, death, and futility” (Mitchell 53; Simms 666).

            Throughout Interview with the Vampire, Claudia is viewed through the eyes of the on-screen characters and off-screen audience as a doll made flesh. Both of her vampiric guardians Louis and Lestat reinforce this perception of Claudia by treating her as one would treat a doll, not as one would treat a child and, as the film progresses, an adult. As Claudia states in a moment of frustration to Lestat: “You dress me like a doll. You make my hair like a doll. Why?” This exchange is representative of her mounting frustration towards Louis and Lestat as she is routinely denied any agency by them. Instead, they ignore obvious signs of her mental maturation, such as her longing for an adult body, as it does not fit the role that they have created for her within their “nuclear family of vampires” (Mitchell 58; Benefiel 263). In other words, they—and by extension the audience—see her as they want her to be and not as she is. Her identity, independent of her representation as the “horror” doll, is overshadowed as Claudia is confined to the role of the “doll-like creature that acts as a memento of the life it once embodied” (Mitchell 55). Claudia’s “continued shared identity with her dolls” is further reinforced by Lestat gifting her dolls each year on the anniversary of her death (Mitchell 57). These yearly gifts are not truly meant for Claudia, as they continue long after she has outgrown dolls. Rather, these gifts are meant for Louis and Lestat as they need them in order to continue to see her as a doll and not as an independent being.

            Additionally, the dolls gifted to Claudia have the added effect of reminding Louis that, ultimately, he is what killed her. Like the doll haunted by the ghost of its deceased owner as seen in so many horror films before and since Interview with the Vampire, Claudia is a constant aide-mémoire of the little girl that Louis killed. She haunts the “lifeless . . . corpse” she inhabits: never growing old, but remaining forever at the age which she died (Gonzalez 340). Claudia as “facsimile” is further stressed by her relationship with Madeline, a doll maker who later on becomes her vampire guardian. As stated by Mitchell, the store that Madeline owns “encompasses the notion of the doll as a memento infanti in the most literal sense” as the dolls Madeline makes are crafted in her deceased daughter’s image (58). Since Claudia bears a striking resemblance to her daughter, she “[unifies] . . . corpse and doll” in Madeline’s eyes, acting as a “memory . . . of a child that no longer exists,” ultimately leading to Madeline assuming the part of Claudia’s caregiver (Mitchell 58).

            Claudia’s role of “memento infanti” is one that occurs off-screen, as well. Anne Rice, the author of the novel from which the film is adapted, modeled Claudia’s looks after her own daughter, Michele, who was five-years-old when she passed away from leukemia (Ramsland 65; Mitchell 55). The shared physical appearance coupled with the shared death from what are both blood diseases—vampirism in Claudia’s case and leukemia in Michele’s—leads to Claudia serving as an imitation of Michele, the same way dolls imitate little girls (Mitchell 55). As Rice stated in an interview (qtd. in Ramsland): “I wasn’t conscious of the connection [between Michele and Claudia] . . . but there’s no question that this is the symbolic working out of a terrible grief. What else can it possibly be?” (65).

            In summary, Claudia acts as Interview with the Vampire’s doll motif. She fulfills the role of “horror” doll by representing all that such dolls represent: an unsettling imitation of the living girl. As with physical dolls, when Claudia is removed from “the child’s compassion and imagination” (i.e., when she is turned into a vampire), she becomes a “corpse” that serves as a “facsimile of a living being” (i.e., the little girl she once was; Simms 676; Mitchell 53). As previously mentioned, her role as the film’s symbolic doll is further stressed by how she is treated by the other characters. To Louis and Madeline, she serves as a “memento infanti” which haunts them (Mitchell 57-58). To Lestat, she is continuously linked to dollhood via his yearly gifts to her. Finally, she serves as a representation of Rice’s daughter Michele, the same way that dolls represent girls (Mitchell 55).

Works Cited

Benefiel, Candace R. “Blood Relations: The Gothic Perversion of the Nuclear Family in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 38, no. 2, 2004, pp. 261-273.

Gonzalez, Eugenia. “‘What Remains? an Empty Doll-Case’: Deconstruction and Imagination in Victorian Narratives of Doll Production.” Journal of Victorian Culture, vol. 18, no. 3, 2013, pp. 335-349.

Interview with the Vampire. Directed by Neil Jordan, performance by Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, Warner Bros., 11 Nov. 1994. YouTube Movies, https://youtu.be/X-Kib-WiIms.

Mitchell, Donna. “Doll as a Memento Infanti.” Interdisciplinary Humanities, vol. 33, no. 3, 2016, pp. 53-65.

Ramsland, Katherine. The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993. Print.

Simms, Eva-Maria. “Uncanny Dolls: Images of Death in Rilke and Freud.” New Literary History, vol. 27, no. 4, 1996, pp. 663-677.