Vampire Queen of Louisiana, Sophie (Evan Rachel Wood) on True Blood.
"...mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual....Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice-politics."
The idea of reproduction as art found in the modern pop-art movement is in keeping with Walter Benjamin's idea that the reproduction of art has moved art's function from the ritual (i.e. spiritual) to the political. True Blood is undoubtedly a commodified, reproduced, slice of "low-brow" pop-art. It recycles Peyton Place-Southern melodrama and soap opera tropes and combines them with supernatural and classic horror elements, creating a work of popular art with layers of symbols and meanings.
First, a little background on Supernatural Soap Opera Television. The genre can be traced back to Dark Shadows, the gothic daytime soap that ran on ABC from 1966-1971. The series started out as supernatural-free but changed its tune a year into its run by introducing the vampire character of Barnabas Collins. Ghosts, zombies, time-travel, werewolves, and alternate dimensions were added to the mix, creating a bizarre and original new television genre. Canada followed the U.S. with Strange Paradise from 1969 to 1970. Soon, supernatural elements could be found in television ranging from Kolchak: The Night Stalker to The X-Files. Buffy the Vampire Slayer took the concept of teen-dramas/soap opera and added supernatural elements to compliment its "high-school as a horror movie" concept.
Enter HBO and Alan Ball. Ball (from Georgia) had achieved much success as the creator and producer of Six Feet Under (as well as writer of American Beauty) for the network. He happened upon the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlenne Harris, which follow the character Sookie, a small-town waitress who happens to be a mind-reader. In this fictional world, Japanese inventors have created a synthetic blood that can feed vampires and prevent them from attacking humans. This causes vampires to come out into society and demand equal rights. Ball developed the concept into a biting, sex-filled, soap opera/melodrama that used the "vampire rights" angle as a metaphor for gay rights.
The show may have begun as a metaphor for gay rights, but this quickly proved to be a flimsy one. After the "God Hates Fangs" and "Coming Out of the Coffin" jokes wear off (after, say, the pilot) the show steadily began to hit upon another, perhaps unintentional political nerve. True Blood presents sex, and the dark/dangerous aspects of it, as something not terrifying or forbidden, but exciting and empowering. Beneath all the maenads, feys, werewolves, witches, shamans, werepanthers, shapeshifters, and vampires there lurks a much more subversive monster: the idea that the sexual revolution is far from over and is still being fought (even in the backwoods of Louisiana).
Since the 1980s and the onset of the AIDS epidemic, blood has been seen as the ultimate taboo...a carrier of disease and bringer of death. The occurrence of blood in sexual interaction has been ignored or denied by focusing (at least on camera) on the sweat, saliva, or tears. ALL of these types of secretion in True Blood are, well, BLOODY!
Most of our culture, and especially the way we present sex in art or on television, wants to NOT think about blood in sex. True Blood wallows in it. Characters bleed all the time, everywhere. They spit blood onto each other, shower in blood, lap it up, and revel in it. Whoa! I thought maybe my observations that all this "blood play" was ultimately politically subversive were stretching things a bit, but check out this quote from actor Denis O'Hare, who plays vampire Russell Edgington...
"I was in college at the beginning of AIDS, and I"ve spent my life being scared of blood because it's the carrier of HIV. And now, suddenly, our culture seems to be bathing in blood."
By being mostly a "trashy" soap-opera, and owning up to that, True Blood is able to strike a cord with viewers and fans who are tired of their vampire myths coming with an abstinence manual (hello, Twilight). I think the popularity of the show also has a reactionary component to it, using popular myths to flaunt sexuality in the face of a conservative culture attempting to hijack these myths for their own political purposes. We mentioned Twilight vs. True Blood in class and I think there is an interesting battle occurring there. One side, championed by a Mormon writer, sees the darkness as something attractive and tempting, yet ultimately to be avoided. Alan Ball, HBO, and the True Blood crowd just want to bite, fuck, and not feel sorry about it.
I'm for Team Ball.
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