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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