I’ve been watching True Blood and I can’t seem to decide whether I like it or not. I love the concept, but the characters appear to be either one-dimensional or unsympathetic. Furthermore, for those who know me, I’m a prude and there’s way too much sex going on. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against explicit sex on cable television, but this show is basically — inadvertently or not — comparing vampires to homosexuals. The show has used terms such as “coming out of the coffin” and this clever gem:
Anyway, the “danger” of such a metaphor is it just instills the “myth” of homosexuals being always “hungry” for sex (truth is, all human beings are “hungry” for sex). Worse, being compared to vampires, it even perpetuates another fear of heterosexual folk: gay people will victimize and molest both children and straight adults.
I am probably reading too much into this, but I guess I personally wish that the vampires and people presented in the show are, well, multi-dimensional and sympathetic. Luckily, the straight folk are also always hungry for sex, so I guess it all balances out. Also, as much as I love Anna Paquin’s character of Sookie, It’s just hard to root for a heroine who can read other peoples’ minds. However, the main vampire, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), is the only character so far that I could truly root for. He’s the saving grace of the show, in my opinion.
Anyway, enough of my criticisms. Regardless of my feelings about the show, I’m pretty much hooked and will watch this show and see where it leads. Also, there’s this cool web-comic where it gives you a background on the mythology of True Blood:
http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/comicreader/
The following are some screenshots of a cute husky bear from the opening credits. I’m not sure if these are “stock footage” or if he’s an actual actor.
The following are screenshots of some bearish men in episode 4, Escape From Dragon House. It’s pretty unfortunate as they had like 5 seconds of screen time each where we get to hear their thoughts. Bonus question: Guess what kind of thoughts we would hear from these “bearish” men?
Jonathan Spencer (previously posted about him here)
