True Blood vs. Buffy in Depicting Death/Grief
On the basis of several friends' recommendations, I have been watching True Blood and have gotten up to just about episode 7 of season 1, which will be the frame for this commentary. It is, of course, impossible to watch True Blood without comparing it to Buffy. And with Buffy swirling in my mind again for the first time in a few years, all I can say is "Buffy. Wow!" It is a hard act to follow. True Blood is courageous to try, and it is a testament to the show's overall quality that it doesn't suffer too much in the comparison. It also boasts some areas in which it exceeds Buffy: a thoughtful depiction of race and attention to local culture immediately come to mind. Sadly...
...killing off the cute blonde protagonist's main parent figure absolutely demands comparison to Buffy, and in this particular arc, True Blood falls on its face. Sookie's grandmother, Adele, and Buffy's mother, Joyce, are similar entities. They're both good, well-developed, "normal" women who are the cornerstone of their households and vitally important to the network of young people who rely on them for parental support. If anything, pound for pound, Adele outdoes Joyce. Joyce had five years of intermittent development to become the mother we'd all miss. Adele had about five episodes, but she emerged as one of the most interesting and important figures in the story. The depth of her relationship with Sookie was palpable--until she died, whereupon she might as well almost have never existed.
The episode that deals with Buffy finding Joyce dead, "The Body," is, for my money, the best in Buffy, and one of the best pieces of television ever produced. I don't expect True Blood to live up to it, but it is an example of how to get it right. The first fifteen minutes or so of the episode are a brilliant representation of the horror of finding a loved one dead: the initial incredulity, panic, frenzy, stunned sense of everything coming unbalanced. Buffy, who routinely saves the world, notes she didn't even think to start CPR till the 911 dispatcher told her to. When the paramedic pronounces her mother dead, she stares off-kilter past his face, visible in just a corner of the screen, to the body lying on the floor. The paramedics leave. She walks into the kitchen. Cheerful, yellow light blazes through the window; the sounds of birds and laughing children outside are overpowering.
Later, we see Buffy's friends and family stumble through the first hours of life without Joyce, gathering at the hospital, stunned, subdued, talking about what snacks to get from the vending machine because there is nothing to be said, nothing to be done. They have all lost their mother, in some sense. Anya gives a tearful and heartfelt speech about the incomprehensibility of death, the impossibility of wrapping her mind around the idea that Joyce will never comb her hair again. And no one can tell her why.
But one thing this episode does not have. Spike. Now, Spike is my favorite character, and I am usually the first to mourn if he does not put in an appearance, but there is no place for him here. This is an episode about Buffy losing her mother. It is not about supernatural hijinks; awesome fight scenes; or sexy, unrequited vampire love. It is about human loss. There is a vampire, but he's not a very impressive one: a naked, confused newborn, straight out of the morgue. Buffy can barely take him. He's a symbol of the fundamental truth: the slaying never stops. Life does not cease heaping responsibilities because you're having the worst day of your life. He's a symbol.
In True Blood, the writers made the lamentable decision of killing off Sookie's grandmother as a gimmick for getting her into bed with her vampire boyfriend. From the moment she walks in on her grandmother's corpse, everything is flat. She says she's numb, but it looks more like Anna Paquin desperate for motivation. Most of the characters scarcely seem to care that this woman who has been a pillar of the community for decades has been murdered; that includes Sookie's friends, Tara and Lafayette, whose main attitude seems to be "Sookie's having a bad day; that's sad." Before the blood is even wiped off the floor, Bill and Sam, rivals for Sookie's love, are having a pissing contest, albeit rather polite, about who gets to play her heroic protector.
In fairness, it isn't all like that. There are some very good B and C plots. Tara, after her initial "Sookie's having a bad day," does show genuine grief, as does her mother (in her manipulative addict's way). The way Adele's death drives a partial rapprochement between Tara and her mother is moving. Jason, too, shows real grief for his grandmother. He is a flighty, vamp-blood addicted mess in withdrawals, but somewhere between the desperate look in his eyes, the way he managed to squeeze himself into a suit and make it to the funeral, the anger that leads him to hit his sister, and the obviously miserable sex he uses to vent his feelings, there is real grief. Not so much Sookie, a.k.a. the one we're supposed to sympathize with. Yes, I believe she misses her. Her rejection of Jason speaks of emotions in turmoil. And the scene in which she sobs while eating the remains of the last pie her grandmother ever cooked is very believable and moving. But then it all culminates in super-sex with Bill.
...?
I am reminded of the scene in The Brothers Karamazov in which Alyosha, grieving his Elder's death and decay, goes to Grushenka's house because his faith is shaken and he wants to sin. Grushenka, not knowing his Elder is dead, puts some moves on him; she's wanted to seduce him for some time. She sits in his lap. He stares at her blankly. Although Alyosha didn't know it, Dostoevsky tells us, he was as well armored against Grushenka's advances as he could possibly ever be. He has no space for sexual desire. His Elder has just died.
Now, I'm not saying everyone reacts the same way. Of course, Jason uses sex to grieve; he uses sex for everything. And I buy that the emotional intensity (but less intense personal loss) creates a situation that drives Tara and Sam into bed. I could even find it plausible if Sookie's grief led her to act out by seeking solace in Bill's arms, if it really were grief, but there is no sign it is. Even the symbolism militates against it. It's as if the moment she takes off her funeral dress and puts on her white nightgown, she strips off the "performance" of grief (were the townspeople right that she's just hypocrite who never cared?) and closes the door on grandma forever. All we're left with is awesome sex in the best Hollywood tradition. No tears, no jitters, no gasping in the middle, "Oh my God, she's really dead!" The next day, she's all smiles and "sex with my vampire is awesome." (This is the day after her grandmother's funeral.) The best topic of discussion she and Bill can find is what sex with vampires is like. The deepest hurt she can express is her great-uncle fondling her slightly as a child. (This is the day after her grandmother's funeral.) Meanwhile at work, the only topic of discussion is how Sookie had sex with a vampire, which Sookie smilingly defends as fantastic in every way and bounces off to wait tables some more. (Did I mention that this is the day after the funeral of one of the pillars of the community, who singlehandedly raised Sookie, Jason, and pretty much Tara too?)
One of the sad things about narrative moves like this that use a serious issue as a gimmick for the A plot is that the A plot inevitably suffers. I like Sookie and Bill as a couple. I don't find them enormously exciting, but I'm not averse to their getting together. But using a gimmick like this requires making your characters treat the serious as if it were trivial, and that does not make them sympathetic; it makes them heartless. It's a shame that Sookie and Bill's great canonical first time sex will always stand, for me, as a testament to either incredible callousness on the part of the characters or just extremely bad writing. It reminds me of the death of James T. Kirk. It could have been better. But wasn't.
...killing off the cute blonde protagonist's main parent figure absolutely demands comparison to Buffy, and in this particular arc, True Blood falls on its face. Sookie's grandmother, Adele, and Buffy's mother, Joyce, are similar entities. They're both good, well-developed, "normal" women who are the cornerstone of their households and vitally important to the network of young people who rely on them for parental support. If anything, pound for pound, Adele outdoes Joyce. Joyce had five years of intermittent development to become the mother we'd all miss. Adele had about five episodes, but she emerged as one of the most interesting and important figures in the story. The depth of her relationship with Sookie was palpable--until she died, whereupon she might as well almost have never existed.
The episode that deals with Buffy finding Joyce dead, "The Body," is, for my money, the best in Buffy, and one of the best pieces of television ever produced. I don't expect True Blood to live up to it, but it is an example of how to get it right. The first fifteen minutes or so of the episode are a brilliant representation of the horror of finding a loved one dead: the initial incredulity, panic, frenzy, stunned sense of everything coming unbalanced. Buffy, who routinely saves the world, notes she didn't even think to start CPR till the 911 dispatcher told her to. When the paramedic pronounces her mother dead, she stares off-kilter past his face, visible in just a corner of the screen, to the body lying on the floor. The paramedics leave. She walks into the kitchen. Cheerful, yellow light blazes through the window; the sounds of birds and laughing children outside are overpowering.
Later, we see Buffy's friends and family stumble through the first hours of life without Joyce, gathering at the hospital, stunned, subdued, talking about what snacks to get from the vending machine because there is nothing to be said, nothing to be done. They have all lost their mother, in some sense. Anya gives a tearful and heartfelt speech about the incomprehensibility of death, the impossibility of wrapping her mind around the idea that Joyce will never comb her hair again. And no one can tell her why.
But one thing this episode does not have. Spike. Now, Spike is my favorite character, and I am usually the first to mourn if he does not put in an appearance, but there is no place for him here. This is an episode about Buffy losing her mother. It is not about supernatural hijinks; awesome fight scenes; or sexy, unrequited vampire love. It is about human loss. There is a vampire, but he's not a very impressive one: a naked, confused newborn, straight out of the morgue. Buffy can barely take him. He's a symbol of the fundamental truth: the slaying never stops. Life does not cease heaping responsibilities because you're having the worst day of your life. He's a symbol.
In True Blood, the writers made the lamentable decision of killing off Sookie's grandmother as a gimmick for getting her into bed with her vampire boyfriend. From the moment she walks in on her grandmother's corpse, everything is flat. She says she's numb, but it looks more like Anna Paquin desperate for motivation. Most of the characters scarcely seem to care that this woman who has been a pillar of the community for decades has been murdered; that includes Sookie's friends, Tara and Lafayette, whose main attitude seems to be "Sookie's having a bad day; that's sad." Before the blood is even wiped off the floor, Bill and Sam, rivals for Sookie's love, are having a pissing contest, albeit rather polite, about who gets to play her heroic protector.
In fairness, it isn't all like that. There are some very good B and C plots. Tara, after her initial "Sookie's having a bad day," does show genuine grief, as does her mother (in her manipulative addict's way). The way Adele's death drives a partial rapprochement between Tara and her mother is moving. Jason, too, shows real grief for his grandmother. He is a flighty, vamp-blood addicted mess in withdrawals, but somewhere between the desperate look in his eyes, the way he managed to squeeze himself into a suit and make it to the funeral, the anger that leads him to hit his sister, and the obviously miserable sex he uses to vent his feelings, there is real grief. Not so much Sookie, a.k.a. the one we're supposed to sympathize with. Yes, I believe she misses her. Her rejection of Jason speaks of emotions in turmoil. And the scene in which she sobs while eating the remains of the last pie her grandmother ever cooked is very believable and moving. But then it all culminates in super-sex with Bill.
...?
I am reminded of the scene in The Brothers Karamazov in which Alyosha, grieving his Elder's death and decay, goes to Grushenka's house because his faith is shaken and he wants to sin. Grushenka, not knowing his Elder is dead, puts some moves on him; she's wanted to seduce him for some time. She sits in his lap. He stares at her blankly. Although Alyosha didn't know it, Dostoevsky tells us, he was as well armored against Grushenka's advances as he could possibly ever be. He has no space for sexual desire. His Elder has just died.
Now, I'm not saying everyone reacts the same way. Of course, Jason uses sex to grieve; he uses sex for everything. And I buy that the emotional intensity (but less intense personal loss) creates a situation that drives Tara and Sam into bed. I could even find it plausible if Sookie's grief led her to act out by seeking solace in Bill's arms, if it really were grief, but there is no sign it is. Even the symbolism militates against it. It's as if the moment she takes off her funeral dress and puts on her white nightgown, she strips off the "performance" of grief (were the townspeople right that she's just hypocrite who never cared?) and closes the door on grandma forever. All we're left with is awesome sex in the best Hollywood tradition. No tears, no jitters, no gasping in the middle, "Oh my God, she's really dead!" The next day, she's all smiles and "sex with my vampire is awesome." (This is the day after her grandmother's funeral.) The best topic of discussion she and Bill can find is what sex with vampires is like. The deepest hurt she can express is her great-uncle fondling her slightly as a child. (This is the day after her grandmother's funeral.) Meanwhile at work, the only topic of discussion is how Sookie had sex with a vampire, which Sookie smilingly defends as fantastic in every way and bounces off to wait tables some more. (Did I mention that this is the day after the funeral of one of the pillars of the community, who singlehandedly raised Sookie, Jason, and pretty much Tara too?)
One of the sad things about narrative moves like this that use a serious issue as a gimmick for the A plot is that the A plot inevitably suffers. I like Sookie and Bill as a couple. I don't find them enormously exciting, but I'm not averse to their getting together. But using a gimmick like this requires making your characters treat the serious as if it were trivial, and that does not make them sympathetic; it makes them heartless. It's a shame that Sookie and Bill's great canonical first time sex will always stand, for me, as a testament to either incredible callousness on the part of the characters or just extremely bad writing. It reminds me of the death of James T. Kirk. It could have been better. But wasn't.