Counterpoint: True Blood Wants to Do Bad Things With You
True Blood is a popular show about vampires and many other supernatural creatures. As we see in “Dirty, Pretty Things” by Melissa Maerz, the show actually started as sort of an allegory for the struggle faced by homosexuals and other subaltern groups. As time went on they decided to move away from that and focus more on sex and action. The show always had some problems, but this change in tone really cemented some of the show's more negative elements. Let's take a look at the ways in which True Blood reinforces hegemony.
True Blood has a lot of problems with male characters holding power and dominance over female characters. Sookie, despite having some powers of her own, almost always has to be saved by men. If Bill doesn't save her, then Eric saves her. If Eric doesn't save her, the Alcide saves her. If Alcide doesn't save her, then Sam saves her. If Sam doesn't save her... well, you get the idea. She is constantly being told where she should go and what she should do, all in the name of protecting her. Most of the time she is only in trouble because of one of these supernatural men to begin with. Sookie is also constantly being manipulated by men, sometimes even without her knowledge. When Sookie drinks Bill's blood, in order to heal her after she was attacked, it causes her to have sex dreams about Bill. This directly leads to her becoming infatuated and pursuing a relationship with him. Later, Eric tricks Sookie into drinking his blood and she then has sex dreams about him. That's right, drinking vampire blood gives you sex dreams about that vampire. It also allows the vampire to sense where you are. That is messed up. While this power isn't inherently specific to male vampires, the show almost always shows it in this context. Sookie is being watched and on some level controlled by the vampires without even realizing. We even find out later that the vampires are only initially interested in Sookie because she has special blood. She isn't even being fought over as a person, but as a container of a special liquid.
Even the more mild mannered Sam holds some form of dominance over his female employees by requiring them to dress in revealing attire. The women are being dressed not for the physical job they do, but for the male customers who look at them. While Laura Mulvey talks about women in film performing for the male gaze in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” the same ideas can be applied to women in a restaurant. Sookie and the other waitresses are dressing up to perform for the male customers. Not to be outdone by vampires, Sam also follows Sookie around, while transformed into a dog, without her knowledge. He does this, much like the vampires, in an attempt to protect her. While his actions are more passive than Bill or Eric, he is still treating Sookie as though she cannot take care of herself. For as much as Sookie asserts that she can, in fact, take care of herself, the men in her life pretty much never listen. Even the female vampire Lorena is shown being physically dominated by Bill, despite her supposed position above him as his maker. We'll get back to them in a second.
But, hey, what's power without sex? Not an HBO show, that's for sure. True Blood is full of sex. While there are good points being made about representations of sexuality in the show, there are also problems. The sex in True Blood is often linked with violence. When a vampire has sex they have a strong desire to feed. Being bitten during sex is shown as a common practice. Things can get far worse than a little biting though. When Bill is shown having sex with Lorena, he physically twists her head around 180 degrees so he can continue to finish the act without having to look her in the eye. She is a vampire, so she was more or less fine, but it was still a disturbing scene. What is even worse than that, is that there are multiple occasions in which the show depicts non-consensual sex. Franklin, a particularly psychotic vampire, is easily about to overpower and kidnap the human Tara. He keeps her locked up and rapes her. Tara suffers not just physical, but also immense mental trauma. We also see Jason, Sookie's brother, being kidnapped, and repeatedly raped by female werepanthers. When sex is associated with violence it leads to many problems including real life domestic violence. We can see parallels of supernatural sex and domestic violence in other works as well. As Tanya Ezren points out in “Forbidden Fruit Tastes the Sweetest,” the first time Edward and Bella have sex in Twilight, Bella is left violently bruised. Sexual violence is all too common in supernatural stories.
Finally, while True Blood does an admittedly good job of including a variety of representations of different people, not all of those representations are positive. There are very clear class differences present. True Blood takes place in a somewhat poor area of Louisiana. Almost none of the human characters are shown to be wealthy or particularly classy. Yet the vampires, who are shown to have the most power and influence, are very high class. They are rich and well dressed. They live in mansions or own businesses. They have Kings and Queens. The vampires are also shown to have their own sort of shadow government that seems to be in control of a lot of what happens in the world. In contrast, we have lots of representations of lower class characters who work in physical labor jobs, or are even criminals. These characters are often werewolves, werepanthers, or shifters. They all turn into animals. So these characters who work with their bodies and have very little political influence or power are directly correlated with animals. They are also sometimes shown under the control of the high class vampires. Even Sam, who owns his own business, isn't considered high class. When we meet his family, they are trashy criminals. The entire clan of werepanthers are depicted as extremely stupid, incestuous, drug dealers. In addition, it is only the powerful, high class vampires who are known to the public. The lower class wereanimals and shifters are hidden from the masses. It's a problem when we associate lower class, blue collar people with animals that are almost sub-human. Conversely, we associate wealth, prestige, and high class with vampires who are powerful and super-human. This puts more and more emphasis on money and power and further reinforces the social stratification already present in our society.
True Blood has some good things going for it, but it still has a lot of problems. As long as relationships are predominated by dominance, violence, and class, there are going to be problems. Not just problems on the show, but problems that translate all too easily into the real world.
This is a point/counterpoint analysis on True Blood with lwilmes2.
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