‘True Blood’ – season five

I watched the season opener of True Blood last night. Then this morning I read this post about the Charlaine Harris books, which was an was an angry bit of Catch-22 sex-hating bullshit, and then I read a few of the links that post used as references. No surprises: everyone missed the point. A small minority (this word I use mathematically, you trigger-happy connotating twits) of readers and viewers does not understand how a series like this is fun.

Yes, the books and TV show are a contradictory mess of sexism with rape overtones, and bits of racism and ethnocentricity disguised as monster mythology. Yes, the books are written on a Young Adult reading-level (short sentences, chapters, paragraphs, nothing too ambitious)  which is the new normal, and which is now considered the new place for quality books, Booker prize be damned, because people have stopped reading and largely forgotten how to write.

But people read them. Hell, women read them and enjoy them. I don’t think that fact proves the racism of white people: everyone likes to read books and characters from their own lens and viewpoint. I’ve even heard that (gasp) minorities like to read books from the viewpoint of their own culture - just like us whiteys. (PS. I use the term ‘whitey’ because it’s popular among a certain subset of rage-bloggers out there)

What I can glean from the popularity of the Harris characters is that sexuality and morality is complex. Sookie Stackhouse is a bit of of a bitch, which a lot of women might like to be if they weren’t so concerned about what people think. Other women annoy her and she likes to have sex with lots of handsome men/monsters. Again, why not play to a certain power fantasy women have – of not being tied down by values? A lot of the sex in these books provides a frisson of power and danger, and yes, even a hint of rape, which sort of works like strychnine in your heroin: a little bit of poison makes your freakiness ten times more potent. On the show, the men, while dangerous, are mostly naked, entirely objectified, and running around at the behest of the female leads, who get to keep their clothes on. At one point, when the blonde Eric Northman and the black Lafayette were linked by blood, Lafayette began having erotic dreams about Eric. The online fanbase went bananas – they wanted to see some ebony-ivory love between two of the series’s most prickly characters.

But back to True Blood, y’all.

Last season was regrettable: the advent of a necromantic witch, who was pretty badass, until Bill used his vampiric prowess to… shoot her in the head. Eric lost his mojo and became a big blonde gerbil, and Sookie missed out on being meat in a supernatural stud sandwich. Lafayette loses his boyfriend Jesus to circumstances too silly to talk about here, and Tara gets… shot in the head. A lot of shooting in the head for a show about vamps and weres. Sam Merlotte and Alcides kill Marcus, the local pack leader, because despite his werewolfery, he is still a douchebag abusive ex-husband to Sam’s new girlfriend and her daughter. I hated last season.

Last night, Pastor Newcomb makes a comeback and coming out) as a creepy gay vampire who can’t get the point. Although the show is going to milk this joke to death, it’s been done before – Russel Edgington, as the best gay vampire ever, and the pasty middle-aged white vampire who hired Lafayette for sex and paid him in illicit vampire blood. Newcombe won’t add anything new.

And it also turns out, Eric has a blood sister – a woman who was also created by Godric . They have wild sex in a shipping container. I don’t see why she’s even here – she doesn’t add anything, and it’s not like Sookie has much to complain about it anyway.

Also, Andy and Terry Bellefleur are back, and at least they’re funny. Terry has the misfortune of having a possessed baby stepson and some sort of Mid-Eastern demon coming after him and his former Desert Storm unit. At this rate, what with the weepiness, the pointless treading of water done by Bill and Eric as they meander away from the Authority, Andy and Terry might end up being the only characters worth watching this season.