Nine Reasons to Watch True Blood

Mar 30, 2010 18:20

I've been meaning to do a post about the awesome that is True Blood recently; I think it's a show that a lot of people from Torchwood/Doctor Who fandom would enjoy. I know we're all into White Collar at the moment, but if you're after something a bit grittier, with more of a supernatural bent to it -- well, I don't want to say that one show is better than the other (although I do think that True Blood has tighter plot arcs) -- it's more that they each satisfy a different need. True Blood pushes buttons the White Collar doesn't and vice versa.

For those of you completely unfamiliar with the show: True Blood is based on Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries, and they both share a central premise -- they focus on Sookie Stackhouse, a 25 year old telepathic waitress from Bon Temps in northern Louisiana. Two years before the story begins, the Japanese developed synthetic blood, which allowed vampires to "come out of the coffin", as they no longer needed to feed on human blood. Vampires have attempted to integrate with human society, and are seeking out full civil rights, although they also maintain their own hierarchies. When vampire Bill Compton moves to Bom Temps, Sookie begins a relationship with him and gets caught up, not only in vampire politics, but the politics of supernatural beings in general.

Harris's novels are what I'd call "feminist brain candy" -- they're not actually all that well written, but they're engaging, amusing, often sexy, and unlike a lot of light entertainment -- you don't have to turn off your feminist brain while you're reading them. In True Blood, Alan Ball takes Harris's basic premise and makes it into a spectacular, complex, well-realised narrative. Two seasons of the show have already aired, with a new season due this June.

So, without further ado, here are nine reasons that I think you should watch True Blood:



1. Women are central to the story. It's not just Sookie, who is amazing in her own right -- Sookie's best friend Tara is also a prominent character who is central to many of the show's storylines. The second scene in the first episode passes the Bechdel Test, and that standard is maintained throughout both seasons. None of the women in this show are Bella Swan types -- they stand up for themselves, they don't let people push them around. They're all flawed too, in complex ways -- in short, they're all REAL PEOPLE.

2. There are visible characters who happen to be queer. This show doesn't have token queer characters who are defined solely by their sexual orientation, but it doesn't erase sexual orientations other than "straight" either. In particular, Lafayette Reynolds, who is a relatively minor character in the books is fleshed out and made into one of the most interesting characters on the show (and he also gets one of THE BEST homophobia smackdown moments EVER). Having read the books, I know that there are actually a number of queer characters who have appeared in the first two seasons, but haven't had their sexual orientation mentioned explicitly (although there are hints), simply because it hasn't been relevant yet -- given that Ball has done such a good job with the characters whose queerness HAS been relevant, I have high hopes that this is NOT an attempt to render the sexualities of these characters invisible. Ball has also indicated that queer storylines are going to become much more prominent in S3 (which is in keeping with what happens in the books). Recently, Alan Ball, who openly identifies as gay, was voted Best TV Writer of The Decade by readers at AfterElton.

3. There are visible well-realised people of colour. There's a lot that I'm unaware of when it comes to my understanding of US race relations, especially in the South, but I do know that this show passes the PoC version of the Bechdel Test -- ie, it has at least two (more than two) PoC who talk to each other about things/people other than white people.

4. Being working class is not a Great Tragedy. In a lot of the American TV (and film) that I've seen*, the main characters are comfortably middle-class (even when it's not realistic for them to be so) and working class people are only represented as part of a morality tale -- ie, This Is What Happens If You Screw Up, OR These Are The Terrible Circumstances That I Managed To Overcome. True Blood isn't like that. A lot of the characters are poor or at least on shaky ground financially speaking. Many of them live in trailers or in houses that aren't Nice and Shiny. Very few, if any, have college educations. And this isn't a Bad Thing -- it's just how things are. They aren't stupid or undignified because of their economic circumstances.

5. Well-realised characters in general. Every character -- even minor ones -- is complex and interesting. There are a few characters, such as Sookie's brother Jason, who could easily be portrayed in a simplistic way, because they are shallow or not too smart -- but the writing team on this show don't do that. Even shallow characters are portrayed skillfully. Everyone is a multi-faceted human being/vampire, and we see that in each and every member of the main cast, and in most of the secondary and tertiary characters too.

6. Because I'm a character person, I often don't care too much if plots are weak. So long as the characters are well-realised, I'm a happy fangirl. However, it is a fine treat to discover a show that has both strong characters AND strong plots -- and True Blood is that. Working from the basic framework of Harris's novels, Ball weaves a complex and extremely tight series of narratives. Because he's not limited by first person narration, he can expand the story much further than Harris can, which means that people who have read the books can still be surprised. Minor plot points in the books become well-realised stories, and there are some narrative strands that are completely new altogether -- yet they all tie in perfectly.

7. Complex ethical quandaries -- the characters in this show often end up in situations where they find themselves faced with difficult choices where it seems like there is no completely ethical solution. Sometimes they fuck up. Sometimes we, as the audience, are asked to have sympathy for people doing unethical things, even if we're not always asked to condone them. This is not a show that gives you easy answers.

8. TEH PRETTY. Hey, I'm allowed to make one superficial point, aren't I? ;) Seriously, no matter who you're attracted to, you'll be able to find someone you like to look at on this show. YET, I don't feel like this show does a great deal of objectification. Even though there's a lot of sex (and a lot of it is pretty gratuitous), and a lot of nudity, I've not had the feeling, as a woman, that I'm being shut out of the text by the way that women's bodies are portrayed. They feel real, as do the men. I'd put it on a par with Torchwood and Doctor Who in that regard -- there's more that the show could do, but it's still a damn sight better than a lot of shows where the characters constantly seem to be airbrushed and where women are held to higher beauty standards than men.

9. The opening credits. Seriously -- they perfectly contextualise the whole show:

image Click to view



*I'm not saying that this sort of TV doesn't exist in the US -- just that it's not typical of what I've seen.

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