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True Blood Season 2: All Star Romance Review Panel

Sep 16 2009 Published by Jessica under Sookie Stackhouse, Vampires

What happens when three romance novel readers and devotees of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series ruminate on an entire season of True Blood? Read on…

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Panelist #1 Wanderer, one of the three “opinionated booksluts” (hey, their words, not mine!) who runs The Scarlet Corset

Thank you to Jessica for having me here on her lovely blog. I answered the invitation to blog about True Blood without hesitation; however, as I sit here typing, it’s sinking in who the other ladies are that I’m sharing this space with: Robin and Carolyn. *gulp* No pressure, none at all!

First things first, the books – yes, I have read all 9 books by Charlaine Harris and yes, I went into the viewing of the HBO show with hope that it would stick to a lot of the key points. It was probably 4 episodes into Season 1 when I scrapped that hope and decided to go with the flow created by Alan Ball.

So, what are my thoughts on Season 2? I think it started out great. The Dallas vamps and Fellowship of the Sun storylines were strong points and the Maryann storyline was the weak point. Sadly, that weak spot was stretched out over the entire season, becoming the major plot in the end. I was annoyed from the start by Maryann and how Tara fell for her BS but then to watch it progress over the entire season – it was just too much. The wobbly distortion thing, the horned helmet, the mass possessions, the black eyes, the orgies…way too much! When I watched the finale and what happened to Maryann, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why couldn’t they do that sooner?”

Sookie and Bill – I’ve had issues with Anna Paquin’s portrayal of Sookie but try to ignore it and just watch the show as any other fan. Something about the TV Sookie doesn’t sit right with me. She seemed almost selfish at times. I never got that vibe in the books. As for Bill, I’ve always considered him a mediocre character (both book and TV versions). He and Sookie are alright together but anytime Eric is involved, Bill is totally overshadowed. Side note about the actor who portrays Bill: he’s gotten better but for a while he would pronounce Sookie as “Sukay” – made me laugh every time!

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Eric – Not since the Rachel Shag has there been such hoopla over a haircut. When I saw the first scene after the haircut it was like, hot damn! The trumpets sounded, a light shone down upon him and a sigh was heard across the land. What? That didn’t happen in your house? Anyway, I’m enjoying Alexander Skarsgard’s portrayal of Eric which is cool because I didn’t think
he fit the role when I first heard of his casting. I hope in Season 3 we’ll see more of Eric, Pam and Fangtasia. I want to see more of him as the leader he is. Speaking of seeing more, wasn’t that a lovely little dream sequence? Definitely saw another side of Eric!

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Jessica, Hoyt, Lorena and Godric were surprises for me. Jessica was too whiny at first but she grew on me this season. She and Hoyt are very sweet together and I don’t like the turn her character takes in the finale. I was glad to see Lorena and hoped she’d cause more trouble for Bill but then she sort of departed on a whimper. Godric’s final scene is probably my favorite of the season. The idea of having lived so long a life, seen and done so much, and now you’re ready to go out on your terms? I thought it was a very powerful scene.

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Lafayette, Arlene, Sam, Tara – These are the characters I feel are most different from the books. I’m glad they kept Lafayette and I like the current path Arlene’s character is on. I hope they don’t take the route the books take with her. Sam is like background noise for me. I mostly feel sorry for him because he seems to be the guy that gets crapped on all the time. My impression of Tara is too heavily influenced by the Maryann thing so I’m hoping Season 3 will bring her better material. Right now, I wish she’d go away.

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Jason – He is probably the character most true to the book. One slight change in the show is his and Sookie’s relationship. I liked the scene where they have a heart-to-heart after the bombing.

Misc final thoughts – The finale has a nice scene where most of the main characters are back at Merlotte’s. It was nice to see the gang back in a central place. When all is said and done, some people can’t watch because of the bad accents. I don’t mind them. Some think the acting is horrible. I think the acting is fine. Some don’t like the differences from the books. I’m ok with them. If I’m entertained at the end of the hour, I am a contented viewer.

Panelist #2: Romance novelist Carolyn Jewel

Mandatory Disclaimer: I have read all of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books. I’m also a romance author myself. What I’m not is a television watcher. I haven’t watched television for twenty years, aside from monitoring my son’s TV watching when he was young. (Sponge Bob, yeah!) I didn’t watch Season 1 of True Blood when it was on HBO, but I heard the talk about the show — what’s not to love about vampires? — and then downloaded and read a free copy of the first Sookie Stackhouse book on my iPhone (followed, shortly thereafter by my purchasing all the rest of the books). I bought the season 1 DVD and was just as hooked by the series as I was by the books.

My household then subscribed to HBO for the sole purpose of yours truly being able to watch season 2 of True Blood; the only television I have watched in twenty years. Despite what I’m about to say, I’m not sorry and I will be re-subscribing to HBO in time to watch Season 3.

My feelings about season 2 can be pretty much summed up by my feelings about the finale: Not enough Eric and seriously flawed by a major story line that lacked cohesiveness and tension. I refer, of course, to the Maryanne storyline. Maryanne, by the way, was brilliantly acted by Michelle Forbes.

Throughout season 2 I was sorry to watch Tara, one of my favorite characters, get shuttled into an offensive mess of a storyline that failed in every respect. They took her out of her interesting and transgressive relationship with Sam the shapeshifting bartender and plunked her into a nice little box of color. A show that is about the wrongs of prejudice segregated its African American actors and plunged them into every single racial stereotype known to American culture. Drug dealing, poverty, substance abuse, single-parent homes, absent fathers, domestic violence, you name it, the cliche was played out for us.

Why, I would like to know, were NONE of these characters able to figure out there was something wrong with Maryanne and her situation? Instead, Maryanne simply had a cadre of mindless slaves who did her bidding. Even worse, the relationship between Tara and Eggs (with a name like that, you knew he was marked for death) was suspect from the start in that at no time was it clear that Eggs was not a bad guy. Why on earth would I believe their relationship was true in any sense, when we never knew if Eggs was really a good person? He was Maryanne’s from the start. What a waste of some fantastic actors. By the time of the finale, with its focus on this disastrous storyline, the damage was done. I didn’t believe and I didn’t really care.

Thus, in the season finale, the Maryanne story line continued its wonderfully acted train wreck. I was sorry but not surprised to see those scenes descend into farce. The ostrich egg licking? What on earth does the Pallas Athena myth have to do with an egg? It was pointless and absurd. Jason and Andy continued to provide beautifully done comic relief up until the moment when they, too, were suddenly Maryanne zombies. I was so very disappointed by that cheap outcome.

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The series is picking up on Sookie’s non-human lineage — a lineage that Sookie’s brother Jason shares. Why wasn’t he immune too? The bulk of the finale was taken up by Maryanne with its nearly complete lack of tension and conflict. The means by which Maryanne met her end was quite satisfying but did we really have to suffer through all that soggy, tension-less mess to get there? All I can say is I’m glad that train wreck is over.

The best parts of the season and the finale were Romance focused; Jessica and Hoyt, Bill and Sookie, Sookie and Eric (except there was no Sookie and Eric in the finale. What where they thinking?)

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Stephen Moyer continued to show his acting chops when he feared Sookie was going to turn down his proposal of marriage. That scene was almost worth the mess that came before. But really, why, with all the wonderful tension between Bill, Sookie and Eric was the cliffhanger ending not more subtle? And why was Eric almost completely absent? We are, of course, to believe that Eric is responsible for Bill’s abduction. (The writers seem to have failed to appreciate the devious nature of Ms. Harris’s version of Eric. Alexander Skarsgard, who plays Eric, hasn’t, but the writers sure have.)

I have hopes this won’t be so appallingly simplistic as we get into Season 3. We’ve already seen that the major deviations from the book have, by and large, been disappointing. And by the way, Jason’s actions at the end were completely out of character. I expected much, much more. But I’ll still be tuning in to Season 3 to see what Alexander Skarsgard does with his role.

Panelist #3 Robin, blogger of Dear Author and Romancing the Blog Fame, and Twitterer extraordinaire

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‘Twas Dionysus proved our ruin; now I see it all. – The Bacchae by Euripides

If I had unlimited time and any measure of creativity, I’d write my summary of True Blood: Season in the style of The Bacchae, since so much of Alan Ball’s interpretive dance with Harris’s novels strikes me as a retelling of the Dionysian myth as dramatized by Euripides.

First let me confess my own prejudices: as a slavishly devoted fan of Charlaine Harris’s books, I’ve been alternately amused by and frustrated with the HBO series. I adore the opening song and visual sequence, find Alexander Skarsgard incredibly sexy if not perfectly cast as Eric, and think Stephen Moyer is a spot on Bill Compton. I still cannot see Sam as anything but strawberry blonde and comforting in his physical presence, though, and Anna Paquin annoys me on a regular basis. Then there is the Tara problem: the one character whose race is changed becomes the stereotypical angry black woman who has everything bad happen to her and can’t make one good choice. And she falls for the obviously dubious charms of the psycho maenad. Great.

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When I first heard that Ball was going to adapt the series, I was thrilled; who better to interpret the outsider theme of Harris’s books? Who better to fill in all the blanks of life in Bon Temps that Sookie does not have access to because of the first person narrative limitation in the books? Sensationalism, the dissembling that goes on in “respectable” families and towns, social hypocrisy – it’s all in Ball’s repertoire. Race and sexuality are both obvious issues in the tv series and the books, and Ball has been overtly investigating those via the supernatural beings (and Lafayette’s character, whose persistence has been a happy change from the books, as has the attention Jason’s character has gotten, and I wonder how much of that is driven by the talent of Ellis and Kwanten). And he’s been far more willing to delve into the violence of the vamps, something Sookie has been more reluctant to dwell on in the books.

But then there’s the maenad storyline.

Anyone who’s familiar with the myth or has read the Euripides play knows that the Bacchae, aka the maenads, represent chaos — celebration, intoxication, sensuality, and fertility gone to an irrational, violent extreme. Dionysus, the god of wine, is linked to nature, to the feminine, to madness, and to sexual indulgence. In Euripides’s play, Dionysus has been rejected, his worship made illegal, and his mother humiliated and disbelieved (for her truthful story that Zeus impregnated her with him). So Dionysus comes to extract his political and personal revenge. So while it is technically true that Dionysus catalyzes the destruction, Euripides complicates the idea that he’s completely at fault, suggesting instead that the suppression and rejection of Dionysian characteristics results in their tenfold manifestation. It’s the classic yin and yang: Apollo’s reason is essential, but so is Dionysus’s revelry.

But what’s up with Ball’s use of the maenad? There’s definitely an element of revenge (against Sam), and some kind of perverse punishment for a town of majorly judgmental folks, and, I think some general perversity for the sake of tweaking the establishment and illustrating the fine line between “civilization” and “chaos,” as well as the underbelly ugliness of the cannibalistic sentiments that characterize all the petty hatreds among the Ben Temps humans. And Ball keeps to the tradition of feminization in using Maryann to represent the maenad.

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But then there’s Tara, the conduit for Maryann’s infiltration of Bon Temps. Tara, with the alcoholic mother and a bad history with men. Who’s angry and feels deprived and like an outcast when Maryann intervenes on her behalf. Tara, who falls so very easily under Maryann’s spell and into Eggs’s bed. And who opens to door to Maryann’s victimization of the town by inviting her to stay in Sookie’s house, by serving as the intermediary between the town and Maryann. What’s up with that? If Maryann ultimately represents some sort of chaotic, unthinking violence, what does that make Tara? And what about the “family” that Maryann’s entourage represents for Tara? It’s clearly cultish, although attractive at first. So what’s the lesson – that it’s dangerous to long so much for belonging? That we can’t trust the angry black woman? That women are irrational? That it’s not gays and blacks who are the threat but women wearing bull’s heads? That we’re all easily compromised unless we have supernatural aspects of our personality that make us immune?

Seriously, if I could answer those questions, I might be able to understand what the hell I spent a bunch of hours over the past few months watching. Sophie Ann’s cryptic lines about how powers exist because we will them into existence seems like it should be meaningful, but I’m not sure how. I mean, what doesn’t exist without us willing it into existence?

Had I not been so disgusted with the hijacking that Maryann’s story represented to me, and had I not been so frustrated with how that stripped so much nuance out of Harris’s vision, I might not be so intent on understanding the purpose of the maenad subplot. And I suspect that it was ultimately a vague, somewhat abstract revenge fantasy that has little relationship to the novels and makes little sense to the overall logic of the first half of the TV series. Except that it allowed the writers to go hog (bull?) wild with the blood and the gore, the sensationalized violence that’s becoming more and more central to the tv series. All of which leaves me feeling cranky and unsatisfied. And in need of a glass of wine.

***

A concluding note From Jessica:

Thank you so much Wanderer, Carolyn, and Robin. I selfishly wanted to know more of your thoughts on the show than you could explain in 140 character Tweets, and I was not disappointed. See you all in — gasp — nine months for Season 3.

Nobody discussed in detail my favorite element of Season 2, The Fellowship of the Sun, aka Alan Ball’s hysterical sendup of a certain kind of hypocritical, fanatical, evangelical Christians. I have to throw in a pic because it makes me smile:

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PS. Here you go Robin! May it go down easier in Season 3!

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And finally, for those of you (like me) who missed it, here’s an image of Charlaine Harris’s Season 2 finale cameo:

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Academics Sucking the Blood From Twilight

Apr 10 2009 Published by Jessica under Academia, Vampires

Once again, here are my totally fallible notes from sessions at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Meeting
April 2009, New Orleans.

There were a number of Twilight papers, and I attended several, despite not having read any of Meyer’s books, because often these papers discussed Sookie Stackhouse as well.

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Two JR Ward Papers at the Pop Culture Association Conference

Apr 09 2009 Published by Jessica under Academia, Vampires

This was an 8:00am session at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Meeting (April 2009) with 4 papers, 2 on Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, 2 on the Black Dagger Brotherhood. Since the caffeine had not kicked in until the Ward papers, I present my notes on those only.

Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, Umea University, Sweden, “Lover Revamped: Sexualities and Romance in the Black Dagger Brotherhood and Fan Fiction”

This was a fantastic paper.

Fan fic addressed [you can Google these]: “One Treasured Memory”, “Skin to Skin”, “Forever Lovers”

Fan focus on gaps in the source text and develop alternative readings. Slash text challenges heteronormativity in the source text and recasts relationships as m/m erotic relationships. Slash may seem to offer a great deal of freedom, but the heteronormative framework of the source text is quite limiting.

The vampires’ vampirism does not seem to matter in the BDB. The main thing is the relationships.

Homosociality and homosexuality is a blurry line in the BDB. Homoerotic attraction is presented as problematic in the text, while homophobia is rejected. Homosexuality is fine, just not with them.

V. repeatedly states that “everything about Jane feels right”, a rejection of homoerotic desire as something that needs to be cured.

This tension is addressed in the slash, but the desires are presented as unreal or temporary. They are written as dreams, or as events, the memory of which can be destroyed via magic. Denial of homosexuality as extending beyond this particular association. This attraction jeopardizes Butch and V.’s friendship and the relationships of the BDBD.

A temporary space where homoerotic desires can be explored has, but there are no real consequences for the characters outside the space.

Women are presented as being attuned to the sexual tension, and allow V. and Butch to engage in sexual activity.

Refers to simultaneous orgasms as a “perpetuated myth of the genre”. Hah.

“Genre itself is limited to heterosexual desire”, so Ward is limited and even the fanfics are limited.

[Maria attributes this to the genre, not the Ward.]

She also notes a tension between the opening up of the universe on Ward’s own website by having the characters “show up” and be interviewed, yet her militant protection of her own copyright and rejection of the use by fans of her material.

Jessica Price, University of Cincinnati, Women’s Studies and Gender and Sexuality Department “Heteronormativity and Masculinity: Sexuality and Gender in JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood”

[Price make a number of interesting points. I can’t say I felt them gel. As with many papers at this conference, the difference between a fan and a scholar was not coming through to me on this one.]

Price mentions attending a Ward signing. She asked Ward whether there would be more homosexuals in the BDB. She notes that at the signing, the idea of more homosexual men was received with great interest, but when she asked whether there would be a lesbian warrior was greeted with silence.

Ward herself said she “writes men”. Price notes that Ward herself has admitted to being influenced by fan desires. On the other hand, Price notes that Ward has said “The stories in my head are in charge”.

Price notes the tension here in Ward’s account of how she writes. Price asks, “So why can’t Payne show up in Ward’s head and say ‘I want to fuck a woman?’”

Representation of alternative sexual expression – “V. has very specific ways of having sex” [My note: we all have “very specific ways of having sex”. We just don’t call vanilla hetero sex “a very specific way” because it is widespread and normative.]

Notes that female characters are either virgins, women who do not enjoy sex, or prostitutes.
Jessica notes that Ward participates in her own fan fiction, inserts herself as a character interacting with the brothers.

Xhex [Price pronounces it “Hex.”] is only example of sexuality without a penis in the BDB. But Xhex will be paired with John Matthew, thus denying her her own book.

The BDB attempts to queer the notion of the romance novel. Asks the reader to open their minds to different sexualities and gender performances.

Audience questions:

Q: How has the imposition of the romance genre changed the vampire genre? It is a very different experience of the vampire, and it has becomes so huge.

A1: Candace: “The literary vampires often cannot get a hard on, They use fangs instead. With the romance novel vampires…good lord.”

A2. Jessica: “Yes, it’s a hypersexuality. It’s all about getting inside something.”

A3. Candace talks about a novella in which the heroine gives Viagra to the vampire hero!

[My note: raises the question of whether vampire romance needs vampires.]

A4. Candace described Lara Adrian’s series as “BDB lite.” Says “You’ve got this lovely situation where vampires do not turn human lovers, but if they mate, the woman gets all the benefits of vampirism without bad consequences. It’s an interesting take on it.”

Sarah F: Would be interesting to do a study on how the genre affects how vampires are constructed. [My note: there have been negative studies, on how romance and the proliferation of vampires across genres has diluted the originary vampire myth and is “not really vampire.”]

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Academics Take a Bite Out of Sookie Stackhouse

Apr 09 2009 Published by Jessica under Academia, Sookie Stackhouse, Vampires

I’m in NOLA at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Annual Meeting (for posterity: April 2009)

I just attended am excellent standing room only 4 paper panel session on the Sookie Stackhouse series, their televised version, True Blood, and the Stephanie Meyer Twilight series.

There’s lots here but I wanted to note a couple of the points made that I found most interesting:

1. The TV series is an improvement on the novels because (a) the tone switches in the novels from humor to horror and this is better achieved with visual media, and (b) because the novels portray a white de-racialized, de-ethnicized rural South, which the show features complex African American characters

2. Sookie and Bella are viewed by a lot of academics as terrible literary protagonists, horrifying role models for women and girls, and passive nonresistors and even seekers of abusive relationships who serve to shore up capitalist patriarchy.

Here are summaries of the papers. I did my best, but readers should contact the folks listed below for copies of their papers, which are sure to be more accurate accounts of their views than my own hastily typed notes.

1. “The Vampire rises … Again: True Blood and the Sookie Stackhouse Novels”, Nicole Burkholder-Mosco, Lock Haven University

EDITED TO ADD: Professor Burkholder-Mosco sent a very helpful email explaining a few of her points. I appreciate the time she took to do this. Added bits are in this color.

“I did work directly with Charlaine Harris for this paper. I found her to be delightful, helpful, and an all-around lovely person. As far as her professional work, I like her books very much. In fact, I also find her books “instruct” as well as “delight”–that age-old paradigm for what constitutes important work in literature.”

[I offered to go up to my hotel room to get my Mac adaptor for one of the speakers and missed the beginning of this one.]

Race, homosexuality, and gender roles are explored in the series.

She thinks TB succeeds in a different way when it comes to the portrayal of the immediacy of violence, because with the visual media, the viewer can grasp the switch of pace and tone – images, sound effects, visceral fear. The visual reenactment makes us feel like the real fear is in the everyday. The TV show works better to show this.

Tara is an asset to the series. She is more a stereotype in the books. She is complex in the show. She shows a clip for the show, of Tara taking her mother to rid her of a demon in a voodoo ritual. [My note: Wow, I guess the show really departs from the book.]

[My note: I wonder what the methodology is in studies like this. Is it “academic” and what does that mean? A smart careful fan can watch True Blood with no training and make these observations.]

Professor Burkholder-Mosco very diplomatically pointed out in her email that because I had missed the first few minutes of her presentation, I missed the Noel Carroll/Nina Auerbach set up. Theory was, in fact, grounding her observations, in particular the theory of cylcical violence. Sorry!!!

Twilight, Anita Blake, Sookie – the new vampire tale is “terribly democratic”. Werewolves, demons, myriad of mythical monsters.

Quotes Harris: “I’ve had a lot of bad things happen in my life. None of them were caused by vampires.”

The post 9-11 world finds fear in the every day like never before. It’s easier to pretend the bad guys are easy to spot, as in supes.

Fear isn’t just the other. “Home grown terrorist”. The other looks just like us.

[My note: But this has always been the mark of the vampire genre. This is why the original vampires cannot see selves in mirror. We are they. They are us.]

2. “Shades of Bromance Between Vampires and Weres: Homoerotics and the Trafficking of Women in Sookie Stackhouse and Twilight”, Jennifer Moskowitz. Morningside College

**I found this paper the most interesting and troubling.

Why don’t we see Team Bella t-shirts at Wal-Mart? Because she’s nobody to root for. Same for Sookie.

Sookie is no more heroine or protagonist than Bella. She’s a vehicle by which men establish a hierarchy. Female characters are employed as eroticized figures of exchange for male characters.

Getting the girl is important because possession signifies power. Power is represented and augmented by “getting the girl”.

Werewolves and shifters represent hyper-nature (nature but better, better even than itself). Vamps represent hyper-humans. And the battle is on.

Historically, the rightful end of women in novels is social –community and social connectedness (citing Du Plessis). Social death is as bad or worse for women characters than physical death.

This has not changed for Bella or Sookie.

Note dig at romance (there have been a lot of these this morning): “Each woman is little more than a romance novel character.”

Bella – clumsy, needs protection. Sookie too.

Sookie is in center of action, but not an independent actor. She is aided by many characters, all men except for her guardian Claudine, who is on order from a man.

She is a “hard sell” as a protagonist.

Telepathy tells us about the other characters, not about Sookie.

[My note: this makes Sookie a complement to the vampires in a way I had not considered.]

She inhabits novel as a participant. Although it’s first person, we get third person omniscience via Sookie.

Vegetarianism and synthetic blood represent self-discipline of “good” vampires. They are more self-disciplined than the humans.

Ex. Edward repeatedly reminds Bella he must maintain sexual control because she cannot. He actually has more human characteristic than Bella has. He is hyper-human (humanity better than itself).

In Sookie books: Wisdom of the ages and ability to adapt. Uniquely suited to 21st century existence.

Weres and shifters have retreated to a more pastoral existence in both Twilight and Sookie. Compare difference between Sam’s bar and Eric’s.

Cites eve Sedgwick. Says both series shore up patriarchal capitalism.

Sookie often talks about improved physical status when drinks blood. Hyper human.

Contrast to weres’ imprinting (is this in Twilight) – bring characters closer to nature. Hyper natural.

Cites Rene Girard’s Theory of Erotic Triangle. Bond that links rivals is as intense as bond to beloved. Sexual awareness of the other. (Girard is discussed in Sedgwick)

Sookie: Highly charged erotic scenes serve to relationship forward between competing men. Ex. Sookie takes Eric’s blood in All Together Dead. Her were-panther boyfriend Quinn watches. The two men are much more interested in each other in that moment in each other. And the fact that Eric disappears means hyperhuman Eric is more suited to be Sookie’s mate. [My note: This would make the Sookie books NOT romance.]

Also note weres have not been able to mainstream, while vamps have. Hyper human trumps hyper natural.

Also in Twilight – eternality afforded to Bella and Edward. They will never age, perfectly suited to 21st century global world

3. “The Vampire Who Loved Me: The Modern Vampire Hero in Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight Series and Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse Series”, Heide Crawford

EDITED: Professor Crawford has emailed me to ask that the summary of her paper be taken down. As a professional courtesy to her, I did so. Anyone who is interested in following up with her should contact her directly.

4. “Casting A Reflection: Vampire as Metaphor for the Changing American society in Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse Series” Eden Leone, Bowling Greene University

She focuses on the first three books in the series. This is another paper that sounds like a series of observations, rather than a cohesive argument.

“Vampire Bill” – the “Bill” shows acceptance, the “Vampire” marks him as other.

Who is the “other”? Seem HIV/AIDs, but not. It’s post 9-11.

Nests are like sleeper cells.

[I am always puzzled by this sort of claim. The rise of the modern vamp novel with Rice predated 9-11. Buffy predated it. Etc.]

she contends the novels do two things:

1. Unique way to deal with repercussions of 9-11.

2. Provides an example of how to live with people “other” than ourselves.

[My note: Wow! Ethical criticism is alive and well!]

Q and A Session:

Q1. (Actually 3 separate questions. Cheater.) What makes B. and S. unique is their immunity to glamour, etc, of vampires. So they do have power. Also, you never discuss class. Isn’t that pivotal in vampire culture? And isn’t it significant that Edward doesn’t bite Bella but uses a syringe when she turns?

A1. (It’s moving too fast for me to identify which speaker addressed these questions)

Glen Thomas, TMT blogger and friend of Eric and Sarah, yells out: “That’s safe sex!!”

It also follows pattern of only turning her after she’s dying. So what was posed originally as a choice never really is.

Q2. (This woman is wearing a Fangtasia t-shirt, but says she wishes she had a Sookie T-shirt). She strongly objects to the idea that Sookie is a cipher. She says everyone refers to these books as “Sookie” books for a reason) “I am about to teach DUD for third time to gen lit students. I liked your comment that the jokes cover fear. Clive Barker has said horror is about everyday fears and Sookie has these: poverty, rape, aloneness. My students read her fear as very real.”

Q3. “I kept noticing that Harris’s books are in the top 20 bestsellers. Do we know who is reading them?”

A. Someone in the audience says the publisher markets them as 25-35 year olds.

Q4. Woman teaches vampires and literature. Confirms her students love Sookie and read all books in series even though she only assigned DUD.

Q5. My question: why are you referencing 9-11 when we had Anne Rice and Buffy pre-9-11?

A: Of course it’s all connected, but after 9-11 the vampires are OUT, the way terrorists are out, among us.

Panel: To me these fantasies objectify a woman. I cannot get on board with this. I have to ask, what is going on here? Form a Marxist perspective, this is all about who is taking on power. And it is not Bella or Sookie.

Audience: Recognizes prevalence of domestic violence, yet dream of perfect baby, perfect home, cult of domesticity. Perpetual limbo.

Panel: Bella and Sookie never had normal relationship, upbringing. So they launch into abusive relationships.

Audience: Ethnic other was the original issue for vampires. Now vamps are de-ethnicized. Eric is a Viking. The kinds of power dynamic all happens in a sphere if the white world, even when it’s in the South. I’m baffled by the Sookie books for this. This is how the TV show is better. Contrast to 30 Days of Night, the monstrous vampires are the ethnic vampires. [I add: this is really interesting. To become a romantic vampire, vamps had to be made white.]

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Why Exactly Are Vampires Alluring?

Oct 22 2008 Published by Jessica under Genre musings, Vampires

Having just finished the first Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Until Dark, and being partway through the second, it strikes me that there’s something very unusual, in my romance reading at least, about Sookie’s attitude towards her vampire boyfriend: she’s pretty realistic about the limitations of the relationship.

Sookie often reminds us that Bill is cold to the touch, he’s ghostly pale, and he has an out of date hairstyle that he can never alter. She can’t rest her head against him and hear his heart beating or feel the reassuring expansion of his chest as he breathes. He cannot have children. He doesn’t eat, and he doesn’t care for the smell of food. Sookie has to watch what she eats, because Bill can’t stand the smell of certain things, like garlic, on her person. Not surprisingly, she also finds his diet unappetizing. She’s tired all the time from the late nights with Bill. They’ll never walk hand in hand in the sunlight, take a beach vacation, attend a friend’s wedding, a loved one’s funeral, or indeed do anything together during the day. His nocturnal lifestyle has so far prevented him from having a career or productive work. And, while Sookie has yet to ponder this sobering reality (so far in my reading), he’ll watch her age and die as he remains the young man he was when she met him.

Not all vampire mythologies are as thoroughgoing as Ms. Harris’s. Indeed, some seem to cherry pick the most romantic or appealing aspects of vampire lore, leaving the rest out. The vamps of JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood eat food, have healthy skin, and can procreate, and she always manages (in ways that range from the convincing to the “you’ve got to be kidding me!”) to give her human partners eternal life. But even when the human partner becomes vamp, there are a host of unappealing trade-offs.

Viewing Bill through Sookie’s eyes made me wonder why vampires have become so popular in romance. I mean, it could have been anything: pirates, ducks, mollusks, clones, genetically modified humans, great apes, or canteloupe.

But no, it’s vampires.

Why? Probably there are lots of forces (the turn of the millennium, terrorism, Paris Hilton, who knows) that have led to a renewed interest in vampires in the broader culture, and the folks who put on the Melbourne conference in the above poster would be able to say more. But when it comes specifically to romance, I have some ideas:

1. Power. Vamps tend to be powerful, and are very much like the typical human alpha hero. In this sense, they are just like lairds in kilts, dukes with aquiline noses, or the muscle bound SEALS/cops/billionaires etc. that populate contemporaries. They’re the new alpha. (And this explanation works whether we are saying female readers imagine being loved by a powerful being, or image themselves as the powerful being.)

1b. Un-PC. In fact, you can argue that making a hero a vamp gives authors and readers “permission” to enjoy the un-PC fantasy of being dominated by a crude and boorish hero. (Not all vamps are like this, but you know what I mean). Readers often remark that they let a vampire get away with behavior they wouldn’t excuse in a human man. Think of Rhage cornering Mary against a wall in Lover Eternal, or Mikhail forcefully, um, detaining Raven in Christine Feehan’s Dark Prince, or the many examples, as in Lara Adrian’s Kiss of Midnight, of that trademark vampire technique of sleep-rape.

2. Sex. In real life, anemia can cause a loss of sex drive, and if that doesn’t do it, death certainly will. But vampires are sex machines. Authors exploit the metaphor of blood as the elixir of life, drawing parallels between blood lust and lust. In most of the vampire romances I’ve read, exchanging blood is (or can be) incredibly emotionally significant, and an ultra powerful aphrodisiac, incomparable to regular old human sex, regardless of how adventurous. Maybe 21st century readers are so inundated with sexual imagery in every day life that the rise of vamp romance represents a ratcheting up of sex necessary to achieve the same narrative power a kiss in the old regencies would have.

3. Darkness. Superman is powerful. And all kinds of good guys can be sexy. But vampires are powerful, sexy bad boys. We tend to think of dark characters as more interesting, more complex. We want to unravel them. Maybe the vampire bad boy is the new rake in an era when sexual promiscuity is not all that remarkable and can no longer serve as a marker of a tortured soul. They transgress many of the most central human taboos. One way to look at social mores or moral rules is as strictures, keeping us enslaved in a way. But vampires have a freedom that can be very appealing.

3b. Eternal life. This represents the ultimate transgression. It’s hard to define what make a human being a person, and one of the things I have always found fascinating about vampire lore is the way it poses this question to us. None of the vampire romances I have read have dealt with what seems to me to be a monumental transition between having a finite amount of time on earth and being immortal. This may be because we are limited to conceptualizing immortality as “a regular human life plus more years”. But that doesn’t begin to cut it. Think about the way your mortality provides a horizon for making meaning in your life. I tend to think eternal life would make a person’s life unrecognizable in ways I cannot even articulate.

But … we have a real fear of death and a very hard time at the end of life, especially here in the US. So I think the appeal of eternal life as a fantasy — the h/h will truly NEVER be apart — is a very real part of the draw.

Can you think of the others I’m missing??