I have been thinking about this sort of essay for a while now and I have been doing some thinking and reading about it and while I don't have any answers for my questions, I think the fact Vampire is actually a metaphor for us, the human condition, I thought I would put down my observations and meanderings. So much of what we write about Vampires have some level of spiritual thought and this may be by virtue of their being supernatural and the legend of the Vampire and how they came to be.
What I have attempted to do in writing this essay is try to keep religion as a neutral thing and not lean too heavily on any one religious group or creed. What I have done is separated religion into Western religion and that includes Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as well Pagan religions and Eastern religion, which would include Buddhism and Hinduism and the other contemplative religions of the far east. Technically, Christianity and Judaism and Islam are eastern religions by the fact they come from the Middle East, but for the purposes of this essay, I have called these religions Western. I have also tried to use neutral terms for God as not everyone sees the Creator the same way and I use terms like heaven and hell as simply common terms, not meant to be associated with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic notions of these places.
So, like I do with all my essays, I begin simply by asking myself questions. The "What if" questions are the basis of all thought and writing and even the formation of religions. Asking why or what or who or where and how leads us to ask the age old questions of Who are we? Where do we come from? How did we get here? What does it all mean? and Where do we go when our bodies die? Had we never asked these questions and sought the answers we would be devoid of religion and philosophical thought. As to my applying these questions to the mythology of Vampires and asking these questions about them, perhaps what I am really doing is asking the question about us, the human race in general, and myself. We all feel at one time or another very separate from our fellow man and this separateness is what is unique in the supernatural world.
Before we explore the souls of Vampires and their place in the world of imagination and what they really mean to us, I suppose I must begin this essay by defining religion and what is the ultimate goal of religion. Then I shall explore how these concepts can or cannot be applied to Vampires of lore and our story, True Blood, and then I will go into the notion of final "salvation" and the belief in the soul and that might work with Vampires and then I will discuss the notion of Vampire religion.
So what is religion? What is it meant to do? Is there one true religion above all religions and who gets to go to "heaven"? Who are the chosen people?
Asking these questions are the foundations of not only religion but of personal faith. We ask ourselves these questions and then explore what this means to us. Sometimes these questionings lead us to believe in something, sometimes it doesn't. Just as many people are turned off by the notion of religion as are turned on. If you are a believer then your own personal questions and the answers you come up with come together and give you a picture of not only the afterlife but the Creator. All cultures have some sort of religious or spiritual facet to their lives and they try to answer the questions the society has about life (Why is life difficult? How did we come to be? Who made me?) Death (Why do people die? Is death a punishment?) and the Afterlife (Where do we go? What happens to our soul when the body dies? If there is a place of reward, is there a place of punishment and who gets to go?).
The apparent goal of religion is twofold. The first goal is to forge a closer, more intimate relationship with the Creator and getting to know them. The second goal is to eventually be admitted into the afterlife. What lies between and makes up the different facets of religious faith is how do we get to the good place and how do we avoid the bad place. The basic rules are a system of checks and balances, codes of conduct and limits on behavior. Assurance of reward comes from "confessions of faith" or moments of enlightenment. This may come from the following and systematic fulfillment of rites and rituals and sacraments meant to help us incrementally more complex and closer relationships with the Creator. Others believe in study, contemplation and meditation to bring us into the embrace of the divine. Some believe a combination of the two is what is required to harmonize both faith and logic.
In the best case scenario, we invest our spiritual lives in ritual and study with a true heart and a desire to forge our intimate relationships with the Creator. In truth, there are many who go through the motions of rite and ritual because it is as much a part of cultural identity as a spiritual zeal. It may also be a way of simply satisfying the desire or dictate of family or culture or even government. For example, if we think Ireland, we think Catholic. Truth is, there are many Protestant churches in Ireland and the fastest growing religion in Ireland is Buddhism. Paying lip service to both "Church and State" for the sake of conformity and avoid persecution, either from the family unit or culture or government is a forgery for true faith but the sad truth of the matter is it does happen. To have complete control of a person or society, down to the state of one's soul and the rewards of the afterlife is considerable power and remarkably easy to abuse. To say "vote this way" or "support this political leader" or your soul is damned is the real politik is the first and most damaging and dangerous form of control one might exert.
Now, imagine you are Vampire.
Regardless of how you were made, either with or without your approval, you have thwarted the basic tenets of any religious faith. We are taught through our religious training the human body is mortal and will eventually die and disappear into nature but your immortal soul will move on in the next plane of existence. For the Vampire, the body is dead but it does not decay. It is held in stasis, still animated. Their souls do not do not cross over to the afterworld but resides in the dead body. This thwarts the grand design that our souls are meant to appear before the Creator and face final judgement to be deemed either worthy of heaven or damned to hell. But does this circumstance actually make you damned?
Let's look for a moment at Eastern religion. Most, though not all, Eastern religions believe in some form of reincarnation. If you managed to go through your life and you led an exemplary life you get to join the Creator and become one with them. If your life was less than exemplary, you get a celestial do over and you are reborn and you must relearn the lessons you didn't learn before.
As I noted in my essay in the Mythology thread about human Vampyres, they believe in reincarnation
( http://truebloodanonymous.forumotion.com/t9p200-mythology-of-true-blood-and-the-sookie-books#1631 ) and is through reincarnation the Vampyre gets their immortality. They believe that though they do die, their soul comes back has total recall of their past lives. In Eastern religions, you don't necessarily have total recall of the past life. If you are in a state of suffering then you are to pay attention and learn what the suffering is meant to teach you so you gain enlightenment. In short, if you are in pain, pay attention, God is tryin' to tell you somethin'.
So with this in mind, could being the Vampire of mythology a sort of physical expression of reincarnation. After all, in eastern thought we have reincarnation going from one rebirth to another, could this not be the same for the legendary Vampire, who must change to walk among us, to conform to certain extent to the changes wrought on the human world? Wouldn’t a Vampire like Eric look silly if he still dressed or spoke or behaved like the primitive person he was before he was Vampire? So the evolutionary process does exist for the Vampire, and therefore could he not be undergoing some level of reincarnation.
But what of God? Do they believe in God?
I suppose being immortal, or at the very least hard to kill, you might still believe in a Creator. After all Vampires had to come to come from somewhere and if they come from us, or were us originally, they would remember something about Creator, even if they are skeptical of their presence in their lives. In all the mythologies we read about Vampires, they are afraid of the True Death, or at least they do avoid it til they get to decide when they end. Being that they decide when they end, unless they themselves are killed, I suppose they would feel they would have no need of God. They may have decided in their own hearts they have nothing more to say to God, and because they have nothing more to say, they believe God has stopped having things to say to them. Perhaps the closest thing we can truly call them is agnostic. They acknowledge there may be God, but God is beyond them and they are beyond God.
When a Vampire dies, where does his soul go?
If we believe the Vampire is some sort of super concentrated ghost, as Madame Blavatsky states or as Edgar Cayce states, then they still have a soul, but its attachment to the physical self is different from our own, then we can state categorically the Vampire has a soul. Since the Vampire’s soul is no different than ours metaphysically, then we can have expectations the soul will undergo the same tests ours will when we die to enter the afterlife.
So who gets to go to the afterlife and are Vampires lost forever?
It is difficult to judge. We as humans are never supposed to judge, regardless of our creed. The Creator is the only one who may judge and how that is accomplished is different for every creed. But to simplify this discussion, I have taken the basic rules of any faith system, Christian or non and I have distilled them into a general code of conduct. As I said in the beginning of this essay, I am trying to avoid leaning one way or the other on any faith system, and these are general rules. Each creed has more detailed Spiritual Constitutions with amendments which discusses in detail the complex facets of life.
The Code of Conduct
Honor the creator
Honor the Earth
Do not kill
Do not steal
Do not lie
Respect your parents
Respect the sanctity of marriage
Respect your fellow man
If we look at the world created for us by True Blood and the Charlaine Harris novels, and we look at Vampire mythos, we could just about say, in snap judgement, all of our Vampires and the Vampires of mythology break these rules and they would therefore be lost to the afterlife. But if we look a little closer, we might have to wonder.
Honor the Creator- A Vampire has two creators: The Creator which made all mankind, and the creator of their Vampire life. Then they have their Maker and this ties into the respect your parents thing as well.
Honor the earth- I think Vampires do honor the earth. In some mythologies, a Vampire must lie in his home ground to rest during the day. This is where the Vampire gains his strength, this and blood.
Do not kill- This is tough for Vampires, but even humans say…Do not kill unless…We often read the paper and watch the news and say, “There is a person who could use being killing,” we do it all the time when we watch serial killers and child rapists and that sort of ilk. Vampires in True Blood and CH’s books do kill accidentally and on purpose, but usually for altruistic reasons: Eric killed the werewolf in Sookie’s house, he killed the red neck who burned the house with Liam, Malcolm and Diane in it, he kills to protect and to punish evil doers. So does Bill, he killed the Rattrays, he killed Uncle Bartlett, he killed witches. Godric in the book and the show killed Gabe when he was about to rape Sookie. So they seem to kill a certain type of human…a bad human or a human who has hurt them.
Do not steal- This too is hard for Vampires. We are told Vampires steal from the dead. For example, Bill made a gift to Lorena of a piece of jewelry he took off a victim. I have never seen him do it, but I am sure Eric steals or has stolen to survive. Some would say making Jessica stole her human life and forced her to be Vampire, which would go both in the stealing and do not kill categories. They do respect the Mine Law, which would keep one Vampire from claiming another Vampire’s human companion. To violate that law, you would be stealing. Pam stole from the Vampire under the spell of Marnie. Russell stole from Eric when he killed his parents and took his father’s crown. Eric stole when he seduced and killed Talbot and stole the crown back. But, if your family was starving or if you were in some dire straight, you might steal as well to survive. You might repent or even rationalize it for some altruistic reason, but you would do those things.
Do not lie- That one is tricky. Eric does not really lie to Sookie. He omits, which to some is tantamount to lying (I know, I sound like Amy Burley) but he never strings words together he knows is a lie. Bill on the other hand lies like a rug, but he has altruistic reasons for that. So is what he does somehow worse than what Eric does, or both equally reprehensible? (Both are reprehensible to me) Because they both do what they do for altruistic reasons, maybe they don’t feel so guilty if they reach their goal, which is they are trying to protect someone they love. I would actually call what they do for Sookie’s benefit high handed, and they are both high handed. But we are all given to lying a little, the little white lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, the lie to cover some misstep, we have all done it…So it is all normal, something we all do out of fear or protection or some other reason.
Respect your parents- Vampires may not have living human parents, or be beyond their influence once they become Vampire, but the Maker/Child relationship is one of those honored ties. In the book, Russell says Bill was Lorena’s and he could not really get involved with their troubles. Bill is Jessica’s maker and Sookie going against him and undermining his authority was not simply dangerous, it was rude and sneaking of her to do, even if her reasons were pure. Eric and Godric (show) and Eric and Ocella (books) are tied by the bond of Maker and Child and he must do as his maker tells him. So in that, you can say, Vampires do respect their parents.
Respect the sanctity of marriage- Well, I would say that if you are Vampire you have probably seduced whoever was handy and their marital status was of little importance to you. But even in the Vampire world, they do have limits. When Eric and Sookie forge the bond and Eric marries her under Vampire custom, the King of Nevada has to respect their union. Vampires also have to follow the Mine Law, which if not a marriage a domestic arrangement of some sort and therefore sacrosanct.
Respect your fellow man- Vampires may not be human and may have very little regard for humans, they do respect their fellow Vampires, even if they don’t really like them. Bill was mad and hurt even when Liam, Malcom and Diane were killed in the book. He took out his grief and anger on Sookie when she told him about it in the grave yard. Eric admired Sophie Anne in the book, and regretted her loss, and he regretted the death of his maker, who he both loved and feared. Bill and Eric will never be MyFace friends but Bill does respect Eric to a degree as his sheriff and his elder. And in the show, the same can be said in reverse, that Eric does respect Bill as his king (for the time being) even though he is older.
To end my essay, I have not come up with any answers, but I have tried to look at what life might be like if there were Vampires. How would they change our human perceptions of religion? Would we give up on religion and make arrangements to become Vampire at our peak of health and attractiveness? Would we become ultrareligious and cling to the notion Vampires are evil and join churches like the Fellowship of the Sun? Or would we marvel that there really are creatures who are fundamentally us and have such insight we could learn from and even expand not only our social lives but our spiritual lives? I would like to think we would be open to the experience. Imagine what we could learn and how it would change us.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Godric's Humanity
I thought we should have a thread for this to start a dialogue about Godric, whom we hope to see more of in the future. In the books, Godric was quite different, but he was struggling with his soul and the sins of his life, and though he was an unlikable character in the books, we did feel sorry for him, much as Sookie did.
In the show, however, Alan Ball casts him as a beautiful and enlightened ancient child with a cheribic face and a wonderfully soft voice and enigmatic eyes. He seemed to look to me like the old Greek and Russian Orthodox depictions of young saints, like St. Stephen, who was stoned to death right after the death of Christ.
He tells Sookie "I no longer think like a Vampire," He tells Eric: "We shouldn't be here, we are wrong," He seemed to be in protracted purgatory, neither saved nor damned, tortured because he could not be human, but neither could he truly be Vampire.
Sookie tells Bill, "What if that were you in 1800 years?" and Bill had the saddest look upon his face. Do you think they really want to live that long? It seems Godric was not only conflicted about his being Vampire but also his long existence...What do you think? Talk to me.
One of the things I think is interesting in this season past is the notion of Vampires in an afterlife...considering the mythology of the Vampire as a creature lost to the outer darkness to think of Godric as being in some sort of hereafter is quite different. But is this the same as the human soul or are we so arrogant as think the Vampire cannot have his own soul with its own worth without the attributes of humanity?
I think if Godric does anything, he makes us wonder if the soul can only be expressed by the level of its humanity or does it have its own place in the spiritual stratosphere? Does the Vampire soul have it's own validity?
I have no clue...we tend to look at the Vampire based on our own experiences but I think they have their notion of the afterworld or perhaps, since they are immortal, they have little concept of it and once they are there, they are simply accepted as all amoral beings are, neither good nor bad, something savage but a part of the order things. We like to say the imagery of the lion and lamb in heaven is metaphor, but what if our Vampires were the lions and they had a place in the afterworld...perhaps not in an after world you and I would understand or believe in ourselves, but one that made sense to the lion....
In the show, however, Alan Ball casts him as a beautiful and enlightened ancient child with a cheribic face and a wonderfully soft voice and enigmatic eyes. He seemed to look to me like the old Greek and Russian Orthodox depictions of young saints, like St. Stephen, who was stoned to death right after the death of Christ.
He tells Sookie "I no longer think like a Vampire," He tells Eric: "We shouldn't be here, we are wrong," He seemed to be in protracted purgatory, neither saved nor damned, tortured because he could not be human, but neither could he truly be Vampire.
Sookie tells Bill, "What if that were you in 1800 years?" and Bill had the saddest look upon his face. Do you think they really want to live that long? It seems Godric was not only conflicted about his being Vampire but also his long existence...What do you think? Talk to me.
One of the things I think is interesting in this season past is the notion of Vampires in an afterlife...considering the mythology of the Vampire as a creature lost to the outer darkness to think of Godric as being in some sort of hereafter is quite different. But is this the same as the human soul or are we so arrogant as think the Vampire cannot have his own soul with its own worth without the attributes of humanity?
I think if Godric does anything, he makes us wonder if the soul can only be expressed by the level of its humanity or does it have its own place in the spiritual stratosphere? Does the Vampire soul have it's own validity?
I have no clue...we tend to look at the Vampire based on our own experiences but I think they have their notion of the afterworld or perhaps, since they are immortal, they have little concept of it and once they are there, they are simply accepted as all amoral beings are, neither good nor bad, something savage but a part of the order things. We like to say the imagery of the lion and lamb in heaven is metaphor, but what if our Vampires were the lions and they had a place in the afterworld...perhaps not in an after world you and I would understand or believe in ourselves, but one that made sense to the lion....
Eric's Humanity
Eric’s Humanity
Granted, in the show, Eric has very little in the way of humanity. But we also see in season two that though he may not have feelings for humans (yet) he has feelings for his maker, the tragic Godric.
Eric was a man of his time. He was a Viking whose sole purpose in life was to kill and be killed. When he became Vampire, he took that philosophy with him into his Vampiric life, which seems to have served him well as he is a Vampire a thousand years old. When he reencounters Godric, he is faced with being in his maker’s presence for the first time in centuries. He cares for others, he explains to Bill, just not humans. His sole interest is his maker.
Sookie is the foil to Eric’s experiences with humans. I suspect that Eric’s experiences with humans have been limited to the blood whore he was feeding from, a contemptible creature good only for his personal satisfaction. He does business with humans and profits from them but he does not care for them. They are a means to an end.
When he sees his maker, he sees a changed Vampire. Godric has spent a great deal of time considering the light of his fellow Vampire and their relationship with humans. He has become far more philosophical. And Eric knows that his maker has changed. He has gone from being a powerful survivalist to philosopher. He declares to Eric: I was wrong, we are wrong, we don’t belong here! Eric roars “But we are here!!!” and then we see Eric’s façade crumble in front of his maker and Sookie. He falls on his knees and begs Godric to stay, to not give away his existence to the coming dawn.
How will Eric change? And what will Sookie’s influence do to the big Viking trying to find his way in this brave new world for both humans and supernaturals.
I think it is going be really interesting to see how he changes. For his growth to be so calculated, so measured, this is going to make his character really interesting and really difficult for Sookie to resist. Eric as he is, he would be easy to turn away, he being so limited and one dimensional. But as he evolves..it will be very intense.
Of course I don't want to be soft and lovely dovey, I want him to be a real contrast to Bill. He should be a conflicted character but the other way around. Bill is a human like Vampire...but I want Eric to be a Vampire with human qualities...Does that make sense?
WHat is so funny is that we say they are not human....that they have limited abilities to feel emotions and all that, but I think their range of emotions are just aimed differently. They have a great range of emotions toward their own kind and now that they are living among us in this world, they are leaning a whole new set of feelings.
Funny, the traditions and taboos of Vampires in this world are far more complex than the way humans feel for each other. If you compare us and our interaction with one another. We are far more violent and disrespectful to one another. They seem to have more respect for one another as fellow beings if not as individuals....it is almost like a hive...if you harm one, they all come after you
Everything that happens to Eric from now on is going to be tough emotionally for Eric. He may have made a blood bond with Sookie, but he shared something with her that bonds people. I can't think of anything more intimate, excluding sex, than to cry and show your weakness in front of someone. Once you share that with someone, you are never the same between the two of you.
Yes, I imagine that Eric was private with his emotions as a human as well. He was of a warrior culture and he would have been taught from a young age to keep his emotions in check. I think too, the blood bond works both ways. He hasn't had her blood, but he feels his blood inside her, which is how Bill feels Sookie and how Eric feels Sookie. He would not only feel her reactions to his influence on her via the blood but feel her emotions whether they had anything to do with him or not and Sookie, if nothing else, is very very emotional and as Bill said, tender hearted. Imagine Eric feeling her compassion as it is directed to others, like Tara or Sam or Lafayette and even her misery and anger about Bill.
So Eric may have gotten more than he bargained for when he bonded with her. Bill, being so much closer to his humanity, would be able to internalize it and relish it as a way of reconnecting further with the humanity he seeks, but Eric may be a bundle of emotions in the future. DO you think, as his feelings for her intensifies, he will regret from time to time opening that link between them, after all, he will be having feelings and he even tells Sookie, "I don't like having feelings,"
What is so interesting about Eric is that he may want to be in Sookie's orbit but he really doesn't feel the whole human thing. He is still very much a Vampire, he doesn't want to be anything but.
But now we have seen his emotional side on the show, I wonder if that will change Eric's dynamic with Sookie. And one of the things that I have been wondering about is the thing Godric said: We are wrong, we don't belong here, and Eric roars "But We Are Here!!!" I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life.
Do you think Eric is afraid of exploring the vestiges of his humanity, because it seems he does. Like Gertrude, Hamlet's mother said, "The Lady (Vampire) doth protest too much," when he is confronted about his growing interest in Sookie. He tells Sookie: "Don't use words I don't understand," and "I am not interested in Sookie Stackhouse," and in the books, he tells her, "I don't like having feelings,"
And now that he has suffered this loss of the conflicted Godric and he is now in contact more with humans more than he has in a long time beyond the aspect of a sag and sip, do you think he will have as painful a rebirth as we all suspect? Or will he simply be a Vampire who has a strange obsession with our telepathic barmaid?
One of the things I thought was interesting was the way Eric said," Stop it, don't do that, it makes me feel strangely human" See, even now, being around Sookie and her own difference and having his blood inside her is making the Viking change somewhat. I predict that we will conflicting views of Eric. The raw, sensual character to the strangely sensitive character. Sookie, I think interprets this as some level of falsehood on the part of Eric and really all Vampires. But I think this is a real complication for him.
The way other Vampires seem to laugh at and marginalized Bill for his love for Sookie sort of gives you insight into what Eric may be fighting in his own self. So, as the story develops and we see Eric's conflict in his own nature, we will see him change and it will wonderful to watch the tearing down and rebuilding of this character.
Season three really showed us many sides to Eric's personality. Eric is now experiencing things that are quite new for him in his one thousand year existence. And we have seen him as he was in life and he was not unlike any other man. As Barrister said, he is looking for the solace of the warmth between a woman's legs and he is a person content to be in the bosom of his family but he is not looking for any real responsibility. He cares nothing for his father's crown and position....
Funny, but all that changes for Eric. Not only in the moment he sees his family butchered by wolves but in the moment he becomes a Vampire. I wonder if Eric had been wounded in a battle against the weres the night Godric saw him fighting. I wonder how he confided in his maker. The little bit we saw Godric in season two as he was before he was enlightened, I imagine the Vampire would have been up for the adventure of hunting werewolves, a long drawn out frolic.
He would also be teaching Eric the way to be a Vampire and teach him how to survive. Eric is a very bright man and would have been an apt pupil but he did that have weakness, the desire for revenge. He even violates the law of the blood. Which if you think about it is a very human thing to do. Most humans if asked would say I would do anything for revenge. I think that would be doubly so for a Vampire with unlimited time and amazing strength.
Through the long corridors of time, Eric follows the wolves and their Vampire master til he finally simply loses them. He tells the Authority he thought Edgington met the true death. But can you imagine the shock of being in some rich man's house and seeing something that belonged to your father a thousand years ago, simply another knick knack in a vast collection of things.
Eric's reaction is more than human. His rage is so exquisite, so overwhelming it amounts to a sort of madness in Eric. He takes risks, blinds himself to things that have no purpose to him at the moment. He knows this is his final chance to get the thing he has wanted since he was a human. To hold on to a grudge so long tells me something about the Viking...if he says he loves you...if he makes you a promise, he will keep it and be faithful to it forever. But is that a true example of humanity?
I am not sure...we as humans make vows all of the time. We promise to love honor and cherish til death do us part and we routinely break those promises (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad). We make promises to our deities, but our God(s) know we are frail inconstant humans and we break our pledges to them on purpose or accidentally or we make promises rashly.
Not Eric. If he promises to kill you, he will, he will hound you to the end of his days. But what if he promises to love you? Would he love you to the day you die. I think he would. If you get the strong, stoic Viking to love you, he will. And if that is what you are looking for, then you have it made.
Eric has not fallen in love with Sookie yet but his mere interest in her at Fangtasia in season one, to his desire to trick her into a blood bond in season two and now his day dreams of her saying she smells his memories and she makes him feel uncomfortably human shows the slow build of his interest in her. And now he has tasted her blood. He is as much bonded to her as she is to him...
That is why I don't think the amnesia thing will be necessary. And I hope it is left out. I want to see them uncomfortable and a bit adversarial toward one another so he has to open up more to her so she will let him in to her confidences and she his. Intimacy is so much more than the intimacy of the body. She needs to see Eric as she has seen Bill. The only thing different will be the fact that she is already aware of Eric...there are no carefully built facades and deceptions. He is a brute, a part time villain, a head honcho full of politics....but she has also seen him loving and caring, she has seen his devotion, she has seen his love.
When Eric says his goodbye to Sookie when she goes to see him at Fangtasia, she may feel as though he tricked her with his...the only thing I will regret is not having kissed you...and then followed up by dumping her in his basement and chaining her up and seemingly selling her to Edgington for a chance to walk in the sun, she will realize that he...and Bill...were simply trying to get rid of Edgington once and for all.
So, now, to get in her good graces, he will have to tell her things about himself, a sort of true confessions. It is gamble, but now he is blood bound her as much as she is to him. This is where we will struggle with the faces of Eric's coin...and so will he.
Becoming human is not the easiest of births...there will be pain and I suspect....blood
One of the things I thought was interesting about Eric when he had amnesia was how old fashioned he could be on one hand and how he had these obvious memories of things he had mastered for his life in a modern world.
For example, he sort of gently chastises Sookie for being a woman out in the night and says she should be taken into her brother's home to be guarded and cared for. Sookie of course, a modern woman, thinks this a ridiculous burden for her brother when she can care for herself and a silly suggestion anyhow because Jason is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
His attitudes about sex do not surprise me in the least. The world he came from sex was earthy with few or no inhibitions and anything you might imagine we would do sexually has already been thought out and done and discussed in art religion and philosophy. So his sexual prowess and his openess to doing whatever with Sookie is just part of the man he was. It is ingrained in him like his being a Vampire is a fact he simply states. "Yes, I know I am Vampire, and you are not," he tells Sookie.
The only glitch in the story I see is the fact Eric has a hard time figuring out the lever to roll up the car windows on her shitty little car but later in the book when the witches and the weres are at Bill's house, he goes and gets Sookie's car. Of course you can argue that he has had a some time to think things over, perhaps he was trying to figure out what he did know how to do and driving was something he remembered.
But aside from the obvious, I think that one of the things we do see about Eric is not so much the modern man who is different by virtue of not remembering who he is and what he is the world, but a sort of reversion to the human he was and this is very interesting... and makes me wonder if he still feels after he is restored the man he once was and if he wants to go back to that more primal man who saw things in a very basic almost romantic way. In some ways, far more romantic than Bill with all his old fashioned ways. The simply earthy pleasure of sex and warmth, the companionship he confesses to Sookie much later which made him so happy and his struggle to maintain the Vampire self he has built over one thousand years is going to be an interesting re-imagining of Eric's character....
Granted, in the show, Eric has very little in the way of humanity. But we also see in season two that though he may not have feelings for humans (yet) he has feelings for his maker, the tragic Godric.
Eric was a man of his time. He was a Viking whose sole purpose in life was to kill and be killed. When he became Vampire, he took that philosophy with him into his Vampiric life, which seems to have served him well as he is a Vampire a thousand years old. When he reencounters Godric, he is faced with being in his maker’s presence for the first time in centuries. He cares for others, he explains to Bill, just not humans. His sole interest is his maker.
Sookie is the foil to Eric’s experiences with humans. I suspect that Eric’s experiences with humans have been limited to the blood whore he was feeding from, a contemptible creature good only for his personal satisfaction. He does business with humans and profits from them but he does not care for them. They are a means to an end.
When he sees his maker, he sees a changed Vampire. Godric has spent a great deal of time considering the light of his fellow Vampire and their relationship with humans. He has become far more philosophical. And Eric knows that his maker has changed. He has gone from being a powerful survivalist to philosopher. He declares to Eric: I was wrong, we are wrong, we don’t belong here! Eric roars “But we are here!!!” and then we see Eric’s façade crumble in front of his maker and Sookie. He falls on his knees and begs Godric to stay, to not give away his existence to the coming dawn.
How will Eric change? And what will Sookie’s influence do to the big Viking trying to find his way in this brave new world for both humans and supernaturals.
I think it is going be really interesting to see how he changes. For his growth to be so calculated, so measured, this is going to make his character really interesting and really difficult for Sookie to resist. Eric as he is, he would be easy to turn away, he being so limited and one dimensional. But as he evolves..it will be very intense.
Of course I don't want to be soft and lovely dovey, I want him to be a real contrast to Bill. He should be a conflicted character but the other way around. Bill is a human like Vampire...but I want Eric to be a Vampire with human qualities...Does that make sense?
WHat is so funny is that we say they are not human....that they have limited abilities to feel emotions and all that, but I think their range of emotions are just aimed differently. They have a great range of emotions toward their own kind and now that they are living among us in this world, they are leaning a whole new set of feelings.
Funny, the traditions and taboos of Vampires in this world are far more complex than the way humans feel for each other. If you compare us and our interaction with one another. We are far more violent and disrespectful to one another. They seem to have more respect for one another as fellow beings if not as individuals....it is almost like a hive...if you harm one, they all come after you
Everything that happens to Eric from now on is going to be tough emotionally for Eric. He may have made a blood bond with Sookie, but he shared something with her that bonds people. I can't think of anything more intimate, excluding sex, than to cry and show your weakness in front of someone. Once you share that with someone, you are never the same between the two of you.
Yes, I imagine that Eric was private with his emotions as a human as well. He was of a warrior culture and he would have been taught from a young age to keep his emotions in check. I think too, the blood bond works both ways. He hasn't had her blood, but he feels his blood inside her, which is how Bill feels Sookie and how Eric feels Sookie. He would not only feel her reactions to his influence on her via the blood but feel her emotions whether they had anything to do with him or not and Sookie, if nothing else, is very very emotional and as Bill said, tender hearted. Imagine Eric feeling her compassion as it is directed to others, like Tara or Sam or Lafayette and even her misery and anger about Bill.
So Eric may have gotten more than he bargained for when he bonded with her. Bill, being so much closer to his humanity, would be able to internalize it and relish it as a way of reconnecting further with the humanity he seeks, but Eric may be a bundle of emotions in the future. DO you think, as his feelings for her intensifies, he will regret from time to time opening that link between them, after all, he will be having feelings and he even tells Sookie, "I don't like having feelings,"
What is so interesting about Eric is that he may want to be in Sookie's orbit but he really doesn't feel the whole human thing. He is still very much a Vampire, he doesn't want to be anything but.
But now we have seen his emotional side on the show, I wonder if that will change Eric's dynamic with Sookie. And one of the things that I have been wondering about is the thing Godric said: We are wrong, we don't belong here, and Eric roars "But We Are Here!!!" I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life.
Do you think Eric is afraid of exploring the vestiges of his humanity, because it seems he does. Like Gertrude, Hamlet's mother said, "The Lady (Vampire) doth protest too much," when he is confronted about his growing interest in Sookie. He tells Sookie: "Don't use words I don't understand," and "I am not interested in Sookie Stackhouse," and in the books, he tells her, "I don't like having feelings,"
And now that he has suffered this loss of the conflicted Godric and he is now in contact more with humans more than he has in a long time beyond the aspect of a sag and sip, do you think he will have as painful a rebirth as we all suspect? Or will he simply be a Vampire who has a strange obsession with our telepathic barmaid?
One of the things I thought was interesting was the way Eric said," Stop it, don't do that, it makes me feel strangely human" See, even now, being around Sookie and her own difference and having his blood inside her is making the Viking change somewhat. I predict that we will conflicting views of Eric. The raw, sensual character to the strangely sensitive character. Sookie, I think interprets this as some level of falsehood on the part of Eric and really all Vampires. But I think this is a real complication for him.
The way other Vampires seem to laugh at and marginalized Bill for his love for Sookie sort of gives you insight into what Eric may be fighting in his own self. So, as the story develops and we see Eric's conflict in his own nature, we will see him change and it will wonderful to watch the tearing down and rebuilding of this character.
Season three really showed us many sides to Eric's personality. Eric is now experiencing things that are quite new for him in his one thousand year existence. And we have seen him as he was in life and he was not unlike any other man. As Barrister said, he is looking for the solace of the warmth between a woman's legs and he is a person content to be in the bosom of his family but he is not looking for any real responsibility. He cares nothing for his father's crown and position....
Funny, but all that changes for Eric. Not only in the moment he sees his family butchered by wolves but in the moment he becomes a Vampire. I wonder if Eric had been wounded in a battle against the weres the night Godric saw him fighting. I wonder how he confided in his maker. The little bit we saw Godric in season two as he was before he was enlightened, I imagine the Vampire would have been up for the adventure of hunting werewolves, a long drawn out frolic.
He would also be teaching Eric the way to be a Vampire and teach him how to survive. Eric is a very bright man and would have been an apt pupil but he did that have weakness, the desire for revenge. He even violates the law of the blood. Which if you think about it is a very human thing to do. Most humans if asked would say I would do anything for revenge. I think that would be doubly so for a Vampire with unlimited time and amazing strength.
Through the long corridors of time, Eric follows the wolves and their Vampire master til he finally simply loses them. He tells the Authority he thought Edgington met the true death. But can you imagine the shock of being in some rich man's house and seeing something that belonged to your father a thousand years ago, simply another knick knack in a vast collection of things.
Eric's reaction is more than human. His rage is so exquisite, so overwhelming it amounts to a sort of madness in Eric. He takes risks, blinds himself to things that have no purpose to him at the moment. He knows this is his final chance to get the thing he has wanted since he was a human. To hold on to a grudge so long tells me something about the Viking...if he says he loves you...if he makes you a promise, he will keep it and be faithful to it forever. But is that a true example of humanity?
I am not sure...we as humans make vows all of the time. We promise to love honor and cherish til death do us part and we routinely break those promises (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad). We make promises to our deities, but our God(s) know we are frail inconstant humans and we break our pledges to them on purpose or accidentally or we make promises rashly.
Not Eric. If he promises to kill you, he will, he will hound you to the end of his days. But what if he promises to love you? Would he love you to the day you die. I think he would. If you get the strong, stoic Viking to love you, he will. And if that is what you are looking for, then you have it made.
Eric has not fallen in love with Sookie yet but his mere interest in her at Fangtasia in season one, to his desire to trick her into a blood bond in season two and now his day dreams of her saying she smells his memories and she makes him feel uncomfortably human shows the slow build of his interest in her. And now he has tasted her blood. He is as much bonded to her as she is to him...
That is why I don't think the amnesia thing will be necessary. And I hope it is left out. I want to see them uncomfortable and a bit adversarial toward one another so he has to open up more to her so she will let him in to her confidences and she his. Intimacy is so much more than the intimacy of the body. She needs to see Eric as she has seen Bill. The only thing different will be the fact that she is already aware of Eric...there are no carefully built facades and deceptions. He is a brute, a part time villain, a head honcho full of politics....but she has also seen him loving and caring, she has seen his devotion, she has seen his love.
When Eric says his goodbye to Sookie when she goes to see him at Fangtasia, she may feel as though he tricked her with his...the only thing I will regret is not having kissed you...and then followed up by dumping her in his basement and chaining her up and seemingly selling her to Edgington for a chance to walk in the sun, she will realize that he...and Bill...were simply trying to get rid of Edgington once and for all.
So, now, to get in her good graces, he will have to tell her things about himself, a sort of true confessions. It is gamble, but now he is blood bound her as much as she is to him. This is where we will struggle with the faces of Eric's coin...and so will he.
Becoming human is not the easiest of births...there will be pain and I suspect....blood
One of the things I thought was interesting about Eric when he had amnesia was how old fashioned he could be on one hand and how he had these obvious memories of things he had mastered for his life in a modern world.
For example, he sort of gently chastises Sookie for being a woman out in the night and says she should be taken into her brother's home to be guarded and cared for. Sookie of course, a modern woman, thinks this a ridiculous burden for her brother when she can care for herself and a silly suggestion anyhow because Jason is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
His attitudes about sex do not surprise me in the least. The world he came from sex was earthy with few or no inhibitions and anything you might imagine we would do sexually has already been thought out and done and discussed in art religion and philosophy. So his sexual prowess and his openess to doing whatever with Sookie is just part of the man he was. It is ingrained in him like his being a Vampire is a fact he simply states. "Yes, I know I am Vampire, and you are not," he tells Sookie.
The only glitch in the story I see is the fact Eric has a hard time figuring out the lever to roll up the car windows on her shitty little car but later in the book when the witches and the weres are at Bill's house, he goes and gets Sookie's car. Of course you can argue that he has had a some time to think things over, perhaps he was trying to figure out what he did know how to do and driving was something he remembered.
But aside from the obvious, I think that one of the things we do see about Eric is not so much the modern man who is different by virtue of not remembering who he is and what he is the world, but a sort of reversion to the human he was and this is very interesting... and makes me wonder if he still feels after he is restored the man he once was and if he wants to go back to that more primal man who saw things in a very basic almost romantic way. In some ways, far more romantic than Bill with all his old fashioned ways. The simply earthy pleasure of sex and warmth, the companionship he confesses to Sookie much later which made him so happy and his struggle to maintain the Vampire self he has built over one thousand years is going to be an interesting re-imagining of Eric's character....
Bill's Humanity
So I have taken some time to hash over the last season and I am going to hit the other Vampires as well.
So we saw a lot of extremes this season in all of our Vampires. Some of it were extreme examples of humanity and others were extreme examples of Vampire.
In the case of Bill, as Barrister noted, we see things Bill does that we consider typical Bill behavior. His broodiness, his slavish love for Sookie, his willingness to do whatever he must to protect Sookie, either from other Vampires or from a truth so devastating it makes him treacherous to both kings and queens and other Vampires.
Bill is a pawn of the more powerful Vampires in his world. We find out Bill was a procurer, a Vampire who goes out to gather humans for food or pleasure or both as his queen desires. He carefully selects humans who will not be missed. Case in point, the stripper he procures as a blood meal for Lorena and Edgington and unwittingly for himself as they sort of force him to feed with them. They do this because they know Bill has been mainstreaming and except for love nips from Sookie and the occasional blood meal from a "baddie" trying to harm Sookie, Bill has turned over a new leaf. They cannot trust him so they have to make him "prove" his loyalty. He has to be a regular Vampire with them.
And this bothers Bill. After the stripper tells him "I know the truth about life....you won't get out alive" he says she's right about that. Except if you are a Vampire....maybe...because by the time Bill lunches down on the inner thigh of the doomed stripper, he thinks he is lost for all time. But let me back up a piece....because a lot happens between the time Bill is kidnapped to the time he is kicked out of Sookie's house in the finale.
Bill is immediately faced with dilemma. Does he fight and struggle to get away and get to Sookie and protect her or does he stay close and keep them away from her. He knows very well what he must do. He has to break his ties to her and he has to break off his budding humanity. He has to be Vampire.
His first act as Vampire? Renouncing his loyalty to Queen Sophie Anne. This effectively, in Bill's mind, makes it permissible to do whatever he must to ensure Sookie's freedom. He wants assurances from Edgington that he will be able to overthrow Sophie Anne.
Now, you can make a legitimate argument that if Edgington overthrows Sophie Anne would never know about the mission...and you would be right. But Bill is trying to keep Sookie alive. A dead Sookie is an ignorant Sookie...if he did not care for her, he would not care whether she lived or died. If she was just an object the queen sent him to procure then he decided to keep her for himself, he would have no compunction whatsoever to leave her in harm's way.
Bill then dreams of his other family, the family he had when he was human. It is heart breaking to watch Bill not only mourn his son but to see Caroline's dawning realization that Bill is no longer human. Her fear of him and his reaction to her is something that shows us the dividing line between Bill the human and Bill the Vampire. He is barely three years old as Vampire and very much in Lorena's sway. He must do as she says. She is teaching him something, that the human world and the their world are unviverses apart and I suspect that though Bill hates the lesson, he knows that on many levels this is true. He knows that he can no longer be in the home he lived in and be with the wife he cherished and the children he made with her. He is a slave, not only to his Vampire instincts but to his maker. Bill is still "clinging " to his humanity...pining for what was his life.
In response to this, the second thing he does to reclaim his Vampire self and ensure Sookie's safety is to ravish Lorena...and then tell Sookie about it...The attempt Bill makes to break up with Sookie is savage and his voice is as cool and careless as any other Vampire. But at the time, you can see Bill's torment. In the midst of his rage and anger you can also see the terror...as he told Lorena he was killing the last of his love for Sookie by being brutal and by being Vampire and by betraying her. But he is also taking a road he has always feared he could not come back from, he may not be able to. He told Sookie in Season Two he has fought very hard to reclaim his bit of humanity. If this is true, then his journey to return to a more human self is quite recent. As recent as his arrival in Bon Temps.
But then, Bill reverses gears. And it happens just as he is about to get back into the limo with the blood meal for Lorena and Edgington. He feels Sookie's fear and there is a part of him for a split second that is both happy and terrified for her. He knows she is near and he knows she is in danger. But there is nothing he can do about it without tipping his hand and the appearance of Tara and Franklin and the file Franklin found in Bill's house shows him his time is short and his rouse has been uncovered. He goes to Sookie to scare her away to send her out of the city. But he is too late.
When Lorena is ordered to kill Bill, we see him having the same old argument with his maker. The issue is his inability to be what she wanted him to be. He both pities and taunts her, comparing her to his makers maker, a vile cruel Vampire who made Lorena use her physical allure to trap men in her maker's clutches and use them in unspeakable ways...he says she will discard him once he meets the true death and find another good man to twist to her designs as she tried to twist him. As her maker twisted her.
For a brief moment, we see Bill ready to accept and embrace the true death. He tells Lorena that he is glad to die because finally he is rid of her...which is echoed by Tara when she is confronted by Franklin. She tells him to go ahead and kill her because that way she will escape from him forever. What is interesting is that it is both Stackhouses that save people they care about by killing Vampires: Lorena by Sookie and Franklin by Jason.
One of the heart breaking things that happen to Sookie and Bill, which hurts Bill deeply is the fact that he does nearly drain her to death. Bill would have had to have been truly out of his mind to do this. He does love Sookie. This also reminds Bill further that he is Vampire and there are things in being Vampire he would never be able to deny or promise it would never happen again. And this is the savage overpowering need for blood. He will always have to have blood, artificial or otherwise. No matter how human he tries to be, he will be Vampire til he meets the true death.
His observations: I want you to lie in the sun, grow old with someone, have children...all the things he could never do for her or with her...it is a sad moment, a moment of no turning back for him. In the books it is always Sookie that makes these observations. But in the show, so much of this uncertainty is transferred to Bill.
The there is the Wish sequence...Sookie and Bill make the most profound wish for the future: Bill would be a teacher, they would live between the Compton house and the Stackhouse house, they would grow a garden, Bill would go fishing, they would double date with Arlene and Terry, Sookie would sell real estate and everything would be perfect.
Until she finds out Bill was sent to Bon Temps to procure her for Queen Sophie Anne.
This is pretty bad news. I have to admit I would be so pissed off at Bill. Then we have the whammy delivered on us...He let the Rattrays beat her nearly to death to get his blood in her. Bill, all of your lies caught up with you.
But..in Bill's defense...this was a calculated plan on the part of a Vampire who had been sent on the orders of his queen to get Sookie Stackhouse for her own use, based on the babbling of her dimwitted cousin who told the queen all about her during a session of pillowtalk. Bill had no built in love for humans, separated though he was from his maker by this time for around 70 years, he was sufficiently Vampire enough to have shed most of his feelings for humans. He was there to do the job he was sent to do...he never counted on falling in love with Sookie.
It could be argued this is because in the course of feeding Sookie his blood, he got a taste of and for Sookie's blood. The blood bond works both ways. And again you would be right. Perhaps they glamoured one another with their blood...Sookie with Bill's and Bill with Sookie's. But I think too that as awful as his reasons for being there are, Bill did fall in love with her. I think her courage and her acceptance of him was something he had never felt...Bill tells her during their moonlight walk in season one: You aren't like other humans and Sookie simply says Who am I to judge something that is unusual. Her acceptance of him, her appreciation of him, her forcing him feel human, just a guy walking with a girl on a starry night, holding hands and kissing...of course he is reminded of his being Vampire, but I think too he is reminded how it was to be a human man.
And in retrospect, I think that is the reason Bill does not school her in the ins and outs of the Vampire world...yeah yeah, I know, he doesn't do that because he doesn't want her to find out about the mission...but I think he does it too so that she will not see him so much as Vampire and so he will see himself as more human. She even tells him in season three...As much as you want to be Human, I think I am meeting you half way to Vampire. His expression is so bizarre, because there is a part of him that finds it amusing, even a great idea, but I think there is a part of him that finds it a little sad. In season two, when Sookie sits down and asks Jessica to give her the evening with Bill he says "It's almost as though you glamoured her" Bill sees Sookie as something peculiar, human but not...
So what does this say about Bill's Humanity you ask, after slogging your way through my exploration. I think it says we all struggle with our notion of good and evil, humanity and inhumanity. Bill is a microcosm of these conflicts we see in the world around us. Is Bill far away from his humanity? No, I don't think so...he is very disturbed by his acts of inhumanity but he is not far off from his Vampire self either, that ruthlessness he had to have to survive. But I think this season especially, he has felt the burden of his humanity and I think that now he "has nothing to lose" Bill will be a very different person in the next season...and whether or not he recapture his bit of humanity is the I will be interested in the most...
I think Bill is hugely complex and I think he has much to atone for. Having said that, I will go on to say Sookie really needs to think things over about Bill and weigh the pros and cons about what his situation was and what his alternatives were and what he has done before and since. I know we are mostly speaking of Bill in the show here, but we are also speaking of Bill in the books.
Bill I think already atoned for his shenanigans with the Rattrays. Standing back and allowing them to beat her was a crime so indefensible in so many levels, and it is a perfect rationalisation he did what he did before he knew her. He warned Sookie the night he met her "Vampires don't have human values" and in the book he said "If you think I harbour one bit of sentimentality..." and he expalined her "vampires don't care automatically about humans"
And he cared nothing for her when he first met her. He knew she was the one his queen wanted, he knew she was different, but he cared nothing for her. So when does all this emotion happen towards her? I think in the show it happened when he told his story about the war and we see the way he was changed and made vampire and then walking home to see the ghosts of his wife and children sitting on his porch made him realized the connection between what he once was, and what he was becoming because of her innocent acts of acceptance and compassion. I wonder how long it had been since he felt that someone cared for him?
Bill has always had to walk a tight rope between vampire and being something else. And I think the moment he atoned to Sookie for his acts, by allowing the Rattrays to beat her, was when he walked into the sun. He would not have done that had he not cared for her. His crime to Sookie, now is the crime of omission.
So now he is in a situation, now he is a single parent ot Jessica, who is now going off into the world. Bill is having to imagine a world where Sookie may not be in it as his partner. That he may have sit back and watch her fall in love, either with Eric or someone else and he is going to have to deal with the most painful of human emotions...loss.
And it is his fault to an extent...But isn't that the way of all humanity? To Err? I would hate to think there would be no forgiveness for him... (Sean)
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So we saw a lot of extremes this season in all of our Vampires. Some of it were extreme examples of humanity and others were extreme examples of Vampire.
In the case of Bill, as Barrister noted, we see things Bill does that we consider typical Bill behavior. His broodiness, his slavish love for Sookie, his willingness to do whatever he must to protect Sookie, either from other Vampires or from a truth so devastating it makes him treacherous to both kings and queens and other Vampires.
Bill is a pawn of the more powerful Vampires in his world. We find out Bill was a procurer, a Vampire who goes out to gather humans for food or pleasure or both as his queen desires. He carefully selects humans who will not be missed. Case in point, the stripper he procures as a blood meal for Lorena and Edgington and unwittingly for himself as they sort of force him to feed with them. They do this because they know Bill has been mainstreaming and except for love nips from Sookie and the occasional blood meal from a "baddie" trying to harm Sookie, Bill has turned over a new leaf. They cannot trust him so they have to make him "prove" his loyalty. He has to be a regular Vampire with them.
And this bothers Bill. After the stripper tells him "I know the truth about life....you won't get out alive" he says she's right about that. Except if you are a Vampire....maybe...because by the time Bill lunches down on the inner thigh of the doomed stripper, he thinks he is lost for all time. But let me back up a piece....because a lot happens between the time Bill is kidnapped to the time he is kicked out of Sookie's house in the finale.
Bill is immediately faced with dilemma. Does he fight and struggle to get away and get to Sookie and protect her or does he stay close and keep them away from her. He knows very well what he must do. He has to break his ties to her and he has to break off his budding humanity. He has to be Vampire.
His first act as Vampire? Renouncing his loyalty to Queen Sophie Anne. This effectively, in Bill's mind, makes it permissible to do whatever he must to ensure Sookie's freedom. He wants assurances from Edgington that he will be able to overthrow Sophie Anne.
Now, you can make a legitimate argument that if Edgington overthrows Sophie Anne would never know about the mission...and you would be right. But Bill is trying to keep Sookie alive. A dead Sookie is an ignorant Sookie...if he did not care for her, he would not care whether she lived or died. If she was just an object the queen sent him to procure then he decided to keep her for himself, he would have no compunction whatsoever to leave her in harm's way.
Bill then dreams of his other family, the family he had when he was human. It is heart breaking to watch Bill not only mourn his son but to see Caroline's dawning realization that Bill is no longer human. Her fear of him and his reaction to her is something that shows us the dividing line between Bill the human and Bill the Vampire. He is barely three years old as Vampire and very much in Lorena's sway. He must do as she says. She is teaching him something, that the human world and the their world are unviverses apart and I suspect that though Bill hates the lesson, he knows that on many levels this is true. He knows that he can no longer be in the home he lived in and be with the wife he cherished and the children he made with her. He is a slave, not only to his Vampire instincts but to his maker. Bill is still "clinging " to his humanity...pining for what was his life.
In response to this, the second thing he does to reclaim his Vampire self and ensure Sookie's safety is to ravish Lorena...and then tell Sookie about it...The attempt Bill makes to break up with Sookie is savage and his voice is as cool and careless as any other Vampire. But at the time, you can see Bill's torment. In the midst of his rage and anger you can also see the terror...as he told Lorena he was killing the last of his love for Sookie by being brutal and by being Vampire and by betraying her. But he is also taking a road he has always feared he could not come back from, he may not be able to. He told Sookie in Season Two he has fought very hard to reclaim his bit of humanity. If this is true, then his journey to return to a more human self is quite recent. As recent as his arrival in Bon Temps.
But then, Bill reverses gears. And it happens just as he is about to get back into the limo with the blood meal for Lorena and Edgington. He feels Sookie's fear and there is a part of him for a split second that is both happy and terrified for her. He knows she is near and he knows she is in danger. But there is nothing he can do about it without tipping his hand and the appearance of Tara and Franklin and the file Franklin found in Bill's house shows him his time is short and his rouse has been uncovered. He goes to Sookie to scare her away to send her out of the city. But he is too late.
When Lorena is ordered to kill Bill, we see him having the same old argument with his maker. The issue is his inability to be what she wanted him to be. He both pities and taunts her, comparing her to his makers maker, a vile cruel Vampire who made Lorena use her physical allure to trap men in her maker's clutches and use them in unspeakable ways...he says she will discard him once he meets the true death and find another good man to twist to her designs as she tried to twist him. As her maker twisted her.
For a brief moment, we see Bill ready to accept and embrace the true death. He tells Lorena that he is glad to die because finally he is rid of her...which is echoed by Tara when she is confronted by Franklin. She tells him to go ahead and kill her because that way she will escape from him forever. What is interesting is that it is both Stackhouses that save people they care about by killing Vampires: Lorena by Sookie and Franklin by Jason.
One of the heart breaking things that happen to Sookie and Bill, which hurts Bill deeply is the fact that he does nearly drain her to death. Bill would have had to have been truly out of his mind to do this. He does love Sookie. This also reminds Bill further that he is Vampire and there are things in being Vampire he would never be able to deny or promise it would never happen again. And this is the savage overpowering need for blood. He will always have to have blood, artificial or otherwise. No matter how human he tries to be, he will be Vampire til he meets the true death.
His observations: I want you to lie in the sun, grow old with someone, have children...all the things he could never do for her or with her...it is a sad moment, a moment of no turning back for him. In the books it is always Sookie that makes these observations. But in the show, so much of this uncertainty is transferred to Bill.
The there is the Wish sequence...Sookie and Bill make the most profound wish for the future: Bill would be a teacher, they would live between the Compton house and the Stackhouse house, they would grow a garden, Bill would go fishing, they would double date with Arlene and Terry, Sookie would sell real estate and everything would be perfect.
Until she finds out Bill was sent to Bon Temps to procure her for Queen Sophie Anne.
This is pretty bad news. I have to admit I would be so pissed off at Bill. Then we have the whammy delivered on us...He let the Rattrays beat her nearly to death to get his blood in her. Bill, all of your lies caught up with you.
But..in Bill's defense...this was a calculated plan on the part of a Vampire who had been sent on the orders of his queen to get Sookie Stackhouse for her own use, based on the babbling of her dimwitted cousin who told the queen all about her during a session of pillowtalk. Bill had no built in love for humans, separated though he was from his maker by this time for around 70 years, he was sufficiently Vampire enough to have shed most of his feelings for humans. He was there to do the job he was sent to do...he never counted on falling in love with Sookie.
It could be argued this is because in the course of feeding Sookie his blood, he got a taste of and for Sookie's blood. The blood bond works both ways. And again you would be right. Perhaps they glamoured one another with their blood...Sookie with Bill's and Bill with Sookie's. But I think too that as awful as his reasons for being there are, Bill did fall in love with her. I think her courage and her acceptance of him was something he had never felt...Bill tells her during their moonlight walk in season one: You aren't like other humans and Sookie simply says Who am I to judge something that is unusual. Her acceptance of him, her appreciation of him, her forcing him feel human, just a guy walking with a girl on a starry night, holding hands and kissing...of course he is reminded of his being Vampire, but I think too he is reminded how it was to be a human man.
And in retrospect, I think that is the reason Bill does not school her in the ins and outs of the Vampire world...yeah yeah, I know, he doesn't do that because he doesn't want her to find out about the mission...but I think he does it too so that she will not see him so much as Vampire and so he will see himself as more human. She even tells him in season three...As much as you want to be Human, I think I am meeting you half way to Vampire. His expression is so bizarre, because there is a part of him that finds it amusing, even a great idea, but I think there is a part of him that finds it a little sad. In season two, when Sookie sits down and asks Jessica to give her the evening with Bill he says "It's almost as though you glamoured her" Bill sees Sookie as something peculiar, human but not...
So what does this say about Bill's Humanity you ask, after slogging your way through my exploration. I think it says we all struggle with our notion of good and evil, humanity and inhumanity. Bill is a microcosm of these conflicts we see in the world around us. Is Bill far away from his humanity? No, I don't think so...he is very disturbed by his acts of inhumanity but he is not far off from his Vampire self either, that ruthlessness he had to have to survive. But I think this season especially, he has felt the burden of his humanity and I think that now he "has nothing to lose" Bill will be a very different person in the next season...and whether or not he recapture his bit of humanity is the I will be interested in the most...
I think Bill is hugely complex and I think he has much to atone for. Having said that, I will go on to say Sookie really needs to think things over about Bill and weigh the pros and cons about what his situation was and what his alternatives were and what he has done before and since. I know we are mostly speaking of Bill in the show here, but we are also speaking of Bill in the books.
Bill I think already atoned for his shenanigans with the Rattrays. Standing back and allowing them to beat her was a crime so indefensible in so many levels, and it is a perfect rationalisation he did what he did before he knew her. He warned Sookie the night he met her "Vampires don't have human values" and in the book he said "If you think I harbour one bit of sentimentality..." and he expalined her "vampires don't care automatically about humans"
And he cared nothing for her when he first met her. He knew she was the one his queen wanted, he knew she was different, but he cared nothing for her. So when does all this emotion happen towards her? I think in the show it happened when he told his story about the war and we see the way he was changed and made vampire and then walking home to see the ghosts of his wife and children sitting on his porch made him realized the connection between what he once was, and what he was becoming because of her innocent acts of acceptance and compassion. I wonder how long it had been since he felt that someone cared for him?
Bill has always had to walk a tight rope between vampire and being something else. And I think the moment he atoned to Sookie for his acts, by allowing the Rattrays to beat her, was when he walked into the sun. He would not have done that had he not cared for her. His crime to Sookie, now is the crime of omission.
So now he is in a situation, now he is a single parent ot Jessica, who is now going off into the world. Bill is having to imagine a world where Sookie may not be in it as his partner. That he may have sit back and watch her fall in love, either with Eric or someone else and he is going to have to deal with the most painful of human emotions...loss.
And it is his fault to an extent...But isn't that the way of all humanity? To Err? I would hate to think there would be no forgiveness for him... (Sean)
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
So now we are so close to the new season, just some 73 days or so. And I have reread all the Sookie books and I have finished the second season and am champing at the bit for the encore of the last season, priming us for the new season. So now I take time to write on this topic again...don't worry I will speak of Eric as well as we prepare for his abrupt change.
One of the things that apparently happens according to the spoilers is that Bill takes on some mantle of responsibility in the Vampire community, something he has been reticent to do in both the books and the show. One of the things that Stephen has brought up about his character is Bill's willingness to become Vampire for Sookie to protect her. And on some levels to take some responsibility for Jessica, which apparently shores up the relationship between the two Vampires which before had been fractured, uneven and unfair to both characters. Jessica has been a fangy latch key kid and has had to learn to be a Vampire on her own and with the dubious help of Pam.
But I wonder if this indicates he is pretty much done with the whole trying to be human thing and being just a mainstreaming Vampire, because it seems to me that though he has accepted being a Vampire, he does not like it like that much and resents it like hell (With a maker like Lorena, who could blame it) and tried to be more human which leads to some unintentional funny moments with Bill, making him seem nerdy and powerless.
What we discovered however is Bill is capable of doing whatever is necessary to survive.He can kow tow and kiss ass with the best of them to protect his hide and protect those he is concerned about. But will that negate his desire to recapture what humanity he can salvage to survive in both the human world and the Vampire world? It sets up a real conundrum...
Vampire Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment: The Law as Religion and Vice Versa By Sean McIntyre
So, Aslinn has this very eccentric library and one of the books I am reading is the Malleus Maleficarum. I don’t intend on repeating it word for word but it is basically a book set up in three parts with a series of challenges and rebuttals on points of law concerning the supernatural.
Part one concerns itself with investigating the supernatural, the signs of the devil and the rational of a God who would allow such evil power to exist. The second part concerns itself with the works of witchcraft how they can be countered. The third part concerns itself with both the legal (civil) and Ecclesiastical (Church) dealings with the witches they bring to trial. This part is broken up into three areas: Area One was concerning the accusing of the witch and what constitutes evidence and who may be a reliable witness. Area two discusses the trial and testimony and Area Three discusses the use of “Being Put to the Question” and the final judgment and punishment of the witch.
As a barrister, I am fascinated with early thought on the law and crime and punishment. In some instances, it is not as different as our own, in our present world. In others, the laws are barbarous and simply insane. Much as we are insulted as human beings there are places in the world where laws are different regarding men and women, i.e., the laws in Iran that have one set of punishments far more cruel and terrible for women than for men, where the MM would not be seen as too terribly unjust, we see that we have not traveled so far in the 521 years since the Malleus was written.
And I write of this book because of the attitudes and history of the Magister. Aslinn tells me the Magister claimed he had a history with the Inquisition and, having been so, I imagine he carried over his knowledge of the law into his vampire life. He simply applies its essential truths as he sees it to his new world and he has taken his faith in God and replaced it with faith in his vampirism. The blood, since there is no human soul to save, is the life he wishes to keep pure and safe.
The MM states without question there is a dark world of the Devil and his agents. For the Magister, this evil is organized anti-vampire groups and vampires who do not guard the blood as sacred. He believes in absolute punishment, which is why our vampires find themselves in such precarious situations.
Anything is permissible to the Magister. He employs torture. To wit: the torture endured by our Pam and the threat of more to Eric if he does not produce Bill Compton. We have also seen Eric as a ruthless lawman (in human eyes) in his dealings with Lafayette. Bill apologizes to Sookie in a way: “I am sorry you had to see what passes as for justice in our world,” (S2E4) and he further says “I have had worse Sheriffs,” (S2E4)
But even Eric was compelled to tell the truth. Whatever his reasoning for charging Bill before the court and bringing him to the Magister for the death of Long Shadow, Eric had to testify about Sookie and why she was there and the implication was that though what Bill had done was bad, all Eric could have done once he found out the truth was bring Long Shadow to stand trial before the Magister and he would have been punished. Unfortunately, Bill became Judge, Jury and Executioner and thus had to stand trial for his crimes. His reasons were negligible.
In the Malleus Maleficarum, the judge and jury were the Inquisition. There was no trial before your peers. In the vampire world, the tribunal votes for the righteousness of the judgment, not the guilt or innocence of the accused. Which I suppose is how it is done with the Inquisition. In the book, The Name of the Rose, William is an Inquisitor who has a ben sinister on his name because he voted against the righteous claim of Bernardo Gui, the head Inquisitor. I imagine the same would have been said to any vampire who thought Bill’s punishment was too harsh.
One of the questions put to Sprenger and Kramer is concerning the reliability of the witnesses against the accused. They said in part one that the witness statement of “mortal enemies” were acceptable even though there could be a hidden agenda behind it. Eric certainly had an agenda for charging Bill. He wanted Sookie. In a human court, I would have cross examined Eric and said his testimony was tainted because he wanted Bill’s human, Sookie Stackhouse, and that would have caused a question of doubt in the minds of the jury (tribunal) as to the truthfulness of the testimony.
I would have further suggested that if Mr. Northman had truly thought of Miss Stackhouse as a valuable human, he would have killed Long Shadow himself to protect Sookie which he as Sheriff would have had the right to do. (This of course is what he did in the book, though not without repercussions, he did have to pay a fine) In so doing, I would then charge Eric before the tribunal for bringing false charges and even fomenting the death of Long Shadow because he knew or suspected in advance that Long Shadow might be the culprit and having Bill bring Sookie to him to investigate was a self motivated plan to get not only his thieving partner but the telepathic human who belonged to Bill Compton. I would further say that Eric may have even suspected Log Shadow might try to kill Sookie before she could indict him. I might even try to pin a charge of attempted theft on Eric, as his design was to gain possession of Sookie, who was by vampire law, the property of Bill and therefore untouchable.
Now, Russell Edgington makes a declaration about whether or not vampire royalty can be staked. He says that is not an option for punishing royalty. However, I would point out, as Aslinn has, there are forms of punishment for nobility who murder. Elizabeth Bathory was walled into her house, Gilles De Rais was killed, even monarchs have been executed by uprisings. If the monarch is guilty of profaning the blood, which is the most grievous accusation which can be brought upon a vampire outside of causing final death, I would say this would cause the situation of Regent Incontestus that is the Unlawful Ruler, a ruler who does not follow the law of the land, and therefore cannot enforce the law.
Also, one must consider that since in the times of the past the Church made a King, the Magister must act in the place of the Church. Magister acting as “In Locus Pontificus” or “In Place of the Pope” makes the vampire King/Queen. The Church often dealt with unruly monarchs, even to excommunicating them and killing them, either openly or by stealth. In the case of the Magister, it may be that he will be public in his execution of whatever punishment he might have for any monarch for blasphemy of the blood.
In the books, the Magister is replaced by the Ancient Pythoness, one of the original oracles. Further, Bill acts as a judge during a series of court hearings and a vampire is staked as punishment for the crime of anti-social behaviour. When Queen Sophie Anne is brought up for killing her husband, she faces presumably final death, which is why Sookie’s testimony is so important.
As we watch the evolving stories and the role of the Magister in the stories, I will be more and more interested in how their law comes to light. I wonder if the writers of the show have realized just how complex a world they have created?
So, Aslinn has this very eccentric library and one of the books I am reading is the Malleus Maleficarum. I don’t intend on repeating it word for word but it is basically a book set up in three parts with a series of challenges and rebuttals on points of law concerning the supernatural.
Part one concerns itself with investigating the supernatural, the signs of the devil and the rational of a God who would allow such evil power to exist. The second part concerns itself with the works of witchcraft how they can be countered. The third part concerns itself with both the legal (civil) and Ecclesiastical (Church) dealings with the witches they bring to trial. This part is broken up into three areas: Area One was concerning the accusing of the witch and what constitutes evidence and who may be a reliable witness. Area two discusses the trial and testimony and Area Three discusses the use of “Being Put to the Question” and the final judgment and punishment of the witch.
As a barrister, I am fascinated with early thought on the law and crime and punishment. In some instances, it is not as different as our own, in our present world. In others, the laws are barbarous and simply insane. Much as we are insulted as human beings there are places in the world where laws are different regarding men and women, i.e., the laws in Iran that have one set of punishments far more cruel and terrible for women than for men, where the MM would not be seen as too terribly unjust, we see that we have not traveled so far in the 521 years since the Malleus was written.
And I write of this book because of the attitudes and history of the Magister. Aslinn tells me the Magister claimed he had a history with the Inquisition and, having been so, I imagine he carried over his knowledge of the law into his vampire life. He simply applies its essential truths as he sees it to his new world and he has taken his faith in God and replaced it with faith in his vampirism. The blood, since there is no human soul to save, is the life he wishes to keep pure and safe.
The MM states without question there is a dark world of the Devil and his agents. For the Magister, this evil is organized anti-vampire groups and vampires who do not guard the blood as sacred. He believes in absolute punishment, which is why our vampires find themselves in such precarious situations.
Anything is permissible to the Magister. He employs torture. To wit: the torture endured by our Pam and the threat of more to Eric if he does not produce Bill Compton. We have also seen Eric as a ruthless lawman (in human eyes) in his dealings with Lafayette. Bill apologizes to Sookie in a way: “I am sorry you had to see what passes as for justice in our world,” (S2E4) and he further says “I have had worse Sheriffs,” (S2E4)
But even Eric was compelled to tell the truth. Whatever his reasoning for charging Bill before the court and bringing him to the Magister for the death of Long Shadow, Eric had to testify about Sookie and why she was there and the implication was that though what Bill had done was bad, all Eric could have done once he found out the truth was bring Long Shadow to stand trial before the Magister and he would have been punished. Unfortunately, Bill became Judge, Jury and Executioner and thus had to stand trial for his crimes. His reasons were negligible.
In the Malleus Maleficarum, the judge and jury were the Inquisition. There was no trial before your peers. In the vampire world, the tribunal votes for the righteousness of the judgment, not the guilt or innocence of the accused. Which I suppose is how it is done with the Inquisition. In the book, The Name of the Rose, William is an Inquisitor who has a ben sinister on his name because he voted against the righteous claim of Bernardo Gui, the head Inquisitor. I imagine the same would have been said to any vampire who thought Bill’s punishment was too harsh.
One of the questions put to Sprenger and Kramer is concerning the reliability of the witnesses against the accused. They said in part one that the witness statement of “mortal enemies” were acceptable even though there could be a hidden agenda behind it. Eric certainly had an agenda for charging Bill. He wanted Sookie. In a human court, I would have cross examined Eric and said his testimony was tainted because he wanted Bill’s human, Sookie Stackhouse, and that would have caused a question of doubt in the minds of the jury (tribunal) as to the truthfulness of the testimony.
I would have further suggested that if Mr. Northman had truly thought of Miss Stackhouse as a valuable human, he would have killed Long Shadow himself to protect Sookie which he as Sheriff would have had the right to do. (This of course is what he did in the book, though not without repercussions, he did have to pay a fine) In so doing, I would then charge Eric before the tribunal for bringing false charges and even fomenting the death of Long Shadow because he knew or suspected in advance that Long Shadow might be the culprit and having Bill bring Sookie to him to investigate was a self motivated plan to get not only his thieving partner but the telepathic human who belonged to Bill Compton. I would further say that Eric may have even suspected Log Shadow might try to kill Sookie before she could indict him. I might even try to pin a charge of attempted theft on Eric, as his design was to gain possession of Sookie, who was by vampire law, the property of Bill and therefore untouchable.
Now, Russell Edgington makes a declaration about whether or not vampire royalty can be staked. He says that is not an option for punishing royalty. However, I would point out, as Aslinn has, there are forms of punishment for nobility who murder. Elizabeth Bathory was walled into her house, Gilles De Rais was killed, even monarchs have been executed by uprisings. If the monarch is guilty of profaning the blood, which is the most grievous accusation which can be brought upon a vampire outside of causing final death, I would say this would cause the situation of Regent Incontestus that is the Unlawful Ruler, a ruler who does not follow the law of the land, and therefore cannot enforce the law.
Also, one must consider that since in the times of the past the Church made a King, the Magister must act in the place of the Church. Magister acting as “In Locus Pontificus” or “In Place of the Pope” makes the vampire King/Queen. The Church often dealt with unruly monarchs, even to excommunicating them and killing them, either openly or by stealth. In the case of the Magister, it may be that he will be public in his execution of whatever punishment he might have for any monarch for blasphemy of the blood.
In the books, the Magister is replaced by the Ancient Pythoness, one of the original oracles. Further, Bill acts as a judge during a series of court hearings and a vampire is staked as punishment for the crime of anti-social behaviour. When Queen Sophie Anne is brought up for killing her husband, she faces presumably final death, which is why Sookie’s testimony is so important.
As we watch the evolving stories and the role of the Magister in the stories, I will be more and more interested in how their law comes to light. I wonder if the writers of the show have realized just how complex a world they have created?
Vampire Laws
Here is another little thing reacquired in a forray to nameless for much loved stuff I didn't swick away with fast enough.
1. The Vampire is tied to his maker until he/she is released.
2. The Vampire, once released, holds no loyalty to his/her maker
3. Vampires must be invited into the home of a mortal.
4. If a mortal rescinds their invitation, they must leave immediately.
5. Vampires must not feed on a mortal belonging to another Vampire.
6. Strict penalties are involved if you violate the "____is mine" tradition
7. Vampires must pay stiff penalties if they kill one of their own kind.
8. Vampires first.
9. Selling V is a taboo practice
10. Authority is according to age and rank
11. Backward thinking Vampires are dangerous to the movement
12. You must present yourself at the nest or headquarters of the HVIC (Head Vampire In Charge- whomever that may be)
13. All legal disputes are brought before and heard by the Magister
14. Vampires must keep their fangs off teacup humans, no matter who cute and tasty they may be. They are not Vampire veal.
15. Should you not want to mainstream it is always wise to have a breathers consent before feeding
16. It is never wise to have a romance with another Vampire
17. If a Vampire's human shows interest in another Vampire without glamour, of their own free will, the original Vampire partner must acquiesce to the human's wishes.
18. Vampire Blood is to be restricted to procreation
19. Vampires cannot accuse their monarch of crimes...this is a treasonable offense
20. Refuting the highest levels of the Vampire government (the Authority) is blasphemy.
21. Vampire rulers must have marriages approved by the Authority.
22. A Vampire cannot charge his sovereign with a crime unless he/she has aligned himself with another ruler.
23. Royalty is not above the law.
1. The Vampire is tied to his maker until he/she is released.
2. The Vampire, once released, holds no loyalty to his/her maker
3. Vampires must be invited into the home of a mortal.
4. If a mortal rescinds their invitation, they must leave immediately.
5. Vampires must not feed on a mortal belonging to another Vampire.
6. Strict penalties are involved if you violate the "____is mine" tradition
7. Vampires must pay stiff penalties if they kill one of their own kind.
8. Vampires first.
9. Selling V is a taboo practice
10. Authority is according to age and rank
11. Backward thinking Vampires are dangerous to the movement
12. You must present yourself at the nest or headquarters of the HVIC (Head Vampire In Charge- whomever that may be)
13. All legal disputes are brought before and heard by the Magister
14. Vampires must keep their fangs off teacup humans, no matter who cute and tasty they may be. They are not Vampire veal.
15. Should you not want to mainstream it is always wise to have a breathers consent before feeding
16. It is never wise to have a romance with another Vampire
17. If a Vampire's human shows interest in another Vampire without glamour, of their own free will, the original Vampire partner must acquiesce to the human's wishes.
18. Vampire Blood is to be restricted to procreation
19. Vampires cannot accuse their monarch of crimes...this is a treasonable offense
20. Refuting the highest levels of the Vampire government (the Authority) is blasphemy.
21. Vampire rulers must have marriages approved by the Authority.
22. A Vampire cannot charge his sovereign with a crime unless he/she has aligned himself with another ruler.
23. Royalty is not above the law.
Social Subcontexts of True Blood and the Sookie Books
Social Sub Contexts of True Blood and the Sookie Books
This essay was at the other forum before we lost it and I did not keep a copy of it, so I am going to try to recreate my thoughts here.
True Blood and the Southern Vampire Mysteries from which it is derived are on the surface what we see: a great romp with fantastic characters and sexy Vampires and Werewolves, a soap opera with fangs. We have virtual cast of thousands of the living, the undead and the definitely dead. We have adventures and heart break and love found, lost and found again. All the good things that keep us tuned for the next episode. Pop corn for smart people.
But underneath the surface lies a complex texture of sub contexts that bring all the classes, sexualities, races, species and subspecies together. And I think that is what draws us to not just enjoy the story but relate to it in a very elemental level. Because we have all experienced isolation because of a sense of otherness. This otherness leads us to identify intimately with all the characters at one time or other.
In order for me to discuss this topic as thoroughly as possible, I will separate this essay into topics: Race, Sex and Sexual Orientation, Class, Religious or Cultural Identity and Health and Wellbeing Issues.
Race: It is very easy to see the story of Vampires and eventually Werewolves as racial minorities. It is the simplest way to actualize them in our thought processes. The show and the books to a limited degree use the issue of race as a familiar barometer for us to measure what the Vampires and other supernaturals will have to face as they try to mainstream. We are given this barometer on the show with the characters of Tara and Lafayette and Lettie Mae. They are all troubled people. Tara comes from a loveless home and is persecuted by her own feelings of low self worth. She is combative to the world around her and uses race as a simple shield. She feeds on stereotype to protect herself. In the beginning of season one, we meet her and she accuses the customer and her manager of being racists. Of course they aren’t, they are simply reacting to her belligerence. Later, when she is tending bar, a customer struggles to gain her attention and she snaps…”Oh no, don’t snap at me, I have a name, and its Tara, now ain’t that funny, my momma naming me after a plantation?” Then, When Bill visits Sookie, she asks Bill: “Did you own slaves?” and when he confirms he did (though in the book, the slaves were actually owned by the Stackhouses) Tara is affronted and later, in order to gain Sam’s confidence she adds indignantly that “He didn’t even bother to apologize to me”.
When Tara expresses concern for Sookie’s safety in the company of Bill Compton, Sookie says “Yeah and black people are lazy and Jews have horns,” Here Sookie counters Tara’s argument that Bill could hypnotize her and take advantage of her.
When Jason is suspected of killing Dawn, Tara goes to get Jason out and offer an alibi. She says “Race may not be a hot button topic anymore with Vampires out in the open, but it is still a button that can be pressed. Haven’t you ever seen the way people in this town look at mixed couples around here?” This is apparently true because Andy and Bud both acquiesce and let Jason go.
Tara’s mother expresses troubles with race when she goes to bank manager for a loan to have an exorcism. He explains to her he can’t loan her money for an exorcism. She accuses him racism, of sexual harassment and not being a good Christian.
Lafayette has double whammy of being both black and gay, but we will tackle his race first. Race seems to be the last thing on Lafayette’s mind. Til Eric gets a hold of him. One of the criticisms of the scenes with Lafayette chained in Eric’s Vampire jail was the echo of slavery, as he is manacled and collared much like African slaves in the old South. When Eric takes him up for his discussion he declares vehemently to the whiter than white Vampire Jailor: “If I have a Jew’s chance at an Al Quieda pep rally of getting my black ass up out of here, I will tell you what you want to know,” Here he aligns himself with another beleaguered minority group and aligns the Vampire holding him with terrorists.
The only time we hear human racial slurs is when we hear the thoughts of a Merlotte’s patron as Sookie listens to hear who might be the Bon Temps Strangler. He says: “Weirdoes, dead fucks, and n*****rs, all together, that ain’t right, this must be the end times,” This seems to echo the sentiments of the bar as everyone speculates on the identity of the killer.
Vampire slurs are more evident. The expressions fanger and fangbanger are derogatory terms for Vampires and their human companions and Bill and Sookie are harassed as they try to go home from Fangtasia by a police officer who suspects Bill of being Vampire. Sookie is treated as a Vampire lover, her romantic connection to Bill Compton makes her not only crazy but also a traitor to her own kind. She is even blamed for the death of her grandmother, even by people who she trusted, like Sheriff Dearborne and Andy. Royce says she is tainted from humans now that she has slept with Bill Compton.
Then there is the way she is treated by the Fellowship of the Sun on Season Two. She is seen as a race traitor of sorts. Gabe attempts to rape her to show her what she is missing out by having sex with a Vampire, and even creepy coroner Mike Spencer, under the spell of Maryann, observes: “Why do you let him put his dead pecker inside you?” when Mike has been engaged in all sorts of sexual hijinks at the various orgies including a cross species molestation of a pine tree.
So this leads into the next topic of discussion: Sex and Sexual Orientation. Nothing gets anyone riled up more, both negatively and positively than sex. Who you are having sex with, in what way, where and whether or not you do it for pay is a matter of everyone’s business, whether you want it to be a matter or not. The greatest taboos are sexual ones. There has been more written on the topic than any other topic. We buy and sell with sex, even if your product is American Apple pie.
One of the first taboos was about the intermixing of people of other races. Issues of racial purity are not new ones. Many cultures seek racial purity to maintain the cultural balance. To introduce children who may have the genetic makeup of two races leaves them out. Then there are the myths of sexual prowess or uncontrollable sexual appetite. Lafayette sort of plays on the taboo of black sexuality by saying: I have six gears on these hips baby! Give you a little cocoa!!”
Sookie of course is a virgin, not because she wants to be, but because she is telepathic and can’t ignore the meanderings of a potential sex partner’s mind to relax and get up a good head of steam. But then she meets a man whose mind she can’t read: Bill Compton. A Vampire.
Jason hates to discover that his lovers have been with Vampires. He is the town rooster, his libido is huge, he prides himself at being a real lover. He knows other men are jealous of him. In Season Two he gets mad at Andy and says “You are jealous because of the pussy I get…I work hard to have a good body and I watch a lot of porn to learn stuff…” The fact that he must now compete with Vampires who have legendary libidos and perhaps centuries of sexual experience to back them up are enough to cause a deep seated hatred. He hates the thought Sookie might have sex with Bill, and when she does, he is the first to call her a fangbanger.
Sookie turns to Bill for comfort and to give him her virginity but she reveals that something happened to her as a child. The exploitation of children by adults is the most damaging aspect of sexuality. Charlaine Harris often uses rape as a metaphor for control by others against those who are weaker. In the book, Godric the Vampire is a child molester and feeder upon children. Sookie is sexually attacked by Bill blinded by hunger and pain after a long incarceration in Book Three. Gabe of course tried to rape her. Mickey as well in a later book, and even Eric is nearly made a victim of rape by the servant of a vanquished Vampire ruler. Then Eric reveals in the last book his maker forced him to be his paramour which bonds Sookie closer to Eric on another level.
Homosexual Vampires are not segregated in the Vampire world. Sexuality simply is an integral part of their being. It does not matter the sexual orientation of the Vampire to another Vampire. In the human world however, we see a different attitude. Lafayette lives a very open life as a gay man. Flashy and flamboyant on the show, he is the entertainer. He is a quick wit with a wicked sense of humor. He is not one to mistake for being weak however, as Royce and his redneck friends find out when they give him a hassle for being gay. “F*ggots been breeding your cows, raising your chickens brewing your beer long before I walked my sexy ass up in this joint!” he declares. Lafayette works three jobs: Merlotte’s as a short order cook, the road crew, and his web site and escort service. Among his customers is a state senator who is on the down low.
Another of his customers is Eddie Fournier, a Vampire. He trades sex for Vampire blood. And though he does have sex with Vampires he does not allow them to bite him. He tells Sookie: “I don’t know Sook, when blood is drawn, a line has been crossed…” he then calls Sookie a skank when she walks away. While some interpret this as playful, the way Tara called Sookie a bitch with a wink, I think this was Lafayette’s way of creating a limit for himself. He might have sex with Vampire, use their blood as a drug, but he does not allow them to feed. In his mind, he is superior to Sookie. He is a hustler, but not a fangbanger.
Eddie is tragic and interesting case. A closeted homosexual in his human life, when he comes to grips with his sexuality, he is still a lonely person who thought becoming Vampire would help him find love. He asks Lafayette: “You do like me don’t you Lafayette? I mean, even if I wasn’t helping out with the blood?” Then he is kidnapped by Jason and his V loving girlfriend, the hippy dippy Amy. She is disgusted by Eddie, but she wants the high and the really psychedelic sex she has on the V trips. She berates Eddie for being what he is: dead, for all intents and purposes, inorganic, and while she worships the blood, she hates the chalice in which it is contained.
An unlikely friendship springs up between Jason and Eddie. He begins to overlook the Vampire Eddie and embraces the gay Eddie. He feels a sort of pity for the Vampire whose blood he is tripping on and feels remorse when he is murdered. At the Light of Day Leadership Conference, he tells the group: “I ain’t a Vampire victim….. I knew this Vampire, Eddie, and he was gay and I got him killed.”
Hoyt Fortenberry sets himself up for prejudice in season two when he tells his mother that Jessica is Vampire. Mrs. Fortenberry gets a conciliatory pat on the hand by her friend.
Having said all this, it is easy to see Vampires paralleled with real life happenings in the gay and straight world. Charlaine Harris is a little more obvious with the way human society deals with Vampires: They can’t be doctors or nurses, they many not own certain businesses and they cannot marry. In the not so distant past, it was believed that gays were predators, not to be trusted with people who were dependent, who were ill or the young. Gay owned businesses were victims of crime, run out of smaller towns. And of course, in most states and countries, gays may not marry. There are even laws on the books that make gay sex a crime (called blue laws or sodomy laws) under the guise of rape laws. (For example, if a rape involves oral sex, it is called an act of perversion and the rape is given separate charges based on the kind of rape.) The fact that Alan Ball explicitly plays with these images and has the second season end with Bill giving Sookie plane tickets on Anubis for Vermont, the only place where they can have a ceremony performed, highlights the plight many gay people in America face trying to legally establish their relationship and all the benefits that go with legal union and recognition.
Social Class is a big thing in the Charlaine Harris, but something not really mentioned in the show. To really discuss this topic, you have to separate it into human social rank and Vampire social rank. To begin, in the books, social rank is established by money. Every town has have and have nots. The Bellefleurs are examples of the haves. They are old family and old money. True their family fortunes are on the wane, but they still maintain that air of superiority. Then there are the business people. Tara may begin in the books as woman of doubtful means, but she becomes a rather successful business woman. Sookie, Jason and the rest are working class. Sookie even mentions this to Bill. “Dawn was a waitress, like me. Maudette came from a plain family like I do….” In the books, Sookie is always worried about her financial security and her pride. She is angry with Bill when he tells her he is to go to Tara’s new business and charge things to his account, and have her hair done or buy shampoo and the like at his expense. This piques Sookie’s anger, her feeling of being a kept woman.
Later, Eric depends on Sookie for his well being. He observes that her car is very bad, that her road is pitted and needs to be graveled. She rails at him saying that she is broke and she can’t afford a new car, that she used money she had made from in the past to pay her property taxes, that she has to miss work to take care of Vampire business. Later, when Sookie is working for the Queen, Eric tells her to go and buy clothes for the trip. To save her dignity in front of other Vampires, Eric hastily says that Sookie would not be needing these things if she were not going with him and the others. In another occasion, Eric says she should ask him for money, because he knows she would not ask for it unless she needed it for something important.
Lafayette in the show discusses the fact he is holding down three jobs and still is not insured (another hot button issue in today’s world). Tara defends Sookie’s home indignantly when she tells Maryann, “I’m sorry I don’t I don’t have a better crib for you to squat in,” Jason tells Sookie he was never good at anything but football, but not good enough for the scholarship which would have raised his social status. Sookie in the books tells us often that she is self educated and Tara on the show tells Bud Dearborn “Why I should I go to college where white people read to each other when I can save my money and read to myself?” Hoyt Fortenberry’s mother informs Hoyt that girls who call late at night are after one thing: money. She is then shocked and embarrassed when Hoyt blurts out they didn’t have any money. She demurs and says they are very comfortable.
In the world of Vampire, their social levels are a bit more complex. While sex and race and orientation and national origin are suborned by the Vampirism, there is a dual layered class system. This is the way I understand it.
In social situations, Vampires give one another deferential treatment based on age. The older the Vampire, the stronger physically they are. So, politeness dictates that younger Vampires show a certain level of respect, in descending order. For example, in the Monroe nest, Liam was the eldest, Diane second, and Liam presumably third. When Bill walks into the nest and issues his ultimatum Liam says: “I am your Elder, you have no authority here,” This does not preclude Bill’s ability to physically over throw Diane, who is his junior by about 100 years.
Being a Maker is also powerful. Eric is Pam’s maker, thus able to make her do his bidding. In the show, Godric is Eric’s maker and though Godric is physically stronger, he is diminutive in comparison to Eric. In the books, Eric’s maker was a man more on Eric’s physical level, and had of course the maker’s authority. Bill’s maker is Lorena. Though she is a small woman, she leaps on top of Bill in the show and says, “Your blood knows mine, you could never overpower me,” Bill is Jessica’s inept maker. He is inconsistently heavy handed with her, otherwise frustrated as to what do with her, dealing with the guilt of having to make her.
Then there is a matter of duty or given position. Starting at the bottom are the minions. These are the Vampires who live in given area. Each state in America is divided into kingdoms. Each kingdom is divided into areas. Each area has a Sheriff, each kingdom a king or queen. Your position as king or queen supersedes all other Vampire customs of class. For example, Sophie in the show is a young Vampire compared to Eric, but she commands Eric as her sheriff.
In the show we also have two positions of power. There is the Magister. He is the supreme judge to the Vampire world in America. And Nan Flanagan, the public face of Vampires in America. She lands somewhere under the royalty but perhaps a shade above the Magister. In the books, these characters do not exist. In the books they have someone they call the Ancient Pythoness. She is apparently the judge in the books and the Magister takes her place on the show.
Wealth is another biggie. As Alcide says in the books: “Coming out in the open would only cause us to be sterilized, ghettoized or put in zoos. Vampires coming out just made them rich,” Bill explains to Sookie that Vampires at first robbed the dead, then they began to learn to work with humans using their glamour to steal, for lack of a better word, then when they came out of the coffin, they could invest their money and they couldn’t be taxed because in America, you can’t tax the dead.
Vampires like Eddie led ordinary financial lives. He lived in a cute a little suburban house but he is not at all rich. He is comfortable. But, being a young Vampire, he had not social status except as a minion in the Vampire pecking order.
In general, humans in the Vampire world are as negligible as Vampires in the human world. They too are given derogatory names: Blood bag, breather, pets. Humans are low, they do not feel as the Vampires do. They are like cows, cute but food. McPeople. Gay, straight, rich, poor, black, white, male, female, it is all the same to Vampires. Weres and other supernaturals are considered below their notice. They too are inferior. Classism and racism even among the Supernaturals. The objects of bigotry are bigots themselves.
The only clause is the Mine rule. If a Vampire declares a human “mine” then all Vampires are expected through custom, to keep their fangs off. This rule is a little shaky and cannot be counted on in Human/Vampire relationships.
Religion and Culture is a way of dividing people into groups and creating bigotry. Maxine is a true democrat in her hate: She hates Catholics (only priests and nuns), she hates Methodists (she has her reasons), Blacks (that’s a secret. Sure Maxine, like mayonnaise is a secret sauce) People who don’t fix up their yards (obviously Whiskey Tangos) women who wear red shoes (tacky: read slutty) People with a lot of kids (again the W/T element), and of course Vampires, because they can kill you and eat you. She is the microcosm of Bon Temps, distilled in a beady eyed, snoopy little woman with a mean mouth. Even her husband didn’t like her. He committed suicide to get the hell away from her.
Vampires are thought to have no religion. They are damned by most every religious group anyway. Bill on the show even casually explains that holy water is just water and crosses are just geometry. When he walks into the church to give his talk, he uncovers the flag draped cross and even stands there in front of it a moment. He then explains: “Vampires are not minions of the Devil, we can stand before a cross, or a Bible. Vampires are like any creature of God,” In the books, Eric tells Sookie he was never a Christian, but he cannot imagine God would punish her for protecting herself. Sookie always talks about her conscience, that she is not a good Christian but a decent survivalist. Godric on show sees God in Sookie’s tears. The Vampire angel he has become delivers himself up to the hands of an angry God. He asks Sookie what God will do to him to punish him. “God doesn’t punish, he forgives,” Sookie assures him. In the books, Eric is a rather dubious priest and Bill asks Sookie to pray for him in a “real church”, presumably where Eric is not pastor.
God may forgive but the church is a different matter. The Fellowship of the Sun is eerily like the Klan, declaring they are about love of their own kind while down playing and twisting the truth of their hate. I feel the same way Inquisition. The Magister and Steve Newlin actually have a lot in common, in fact if they were not on the opposite sides of the hate fence, I would say they would be bowling buddies on the same league, the haters league.
Hate is really an equal opportunity employer. It hires you regardless of your race, color, creed, or national origin. Love is a harder club to join. Respect and tolerance is even tough. Alan Ball reflects all these human foibles. The intolerance of people of others of their own kind as well as supernaturals is the tantamount force driving the action of every individual on the show, whether they are the haters or the objects of hate. But as we all know, all peace, all love, all day makes for uninteresting drama. And as one of our members have on their temperament on their profile: We have far too much drama in our itty bitty lives.
Finally there is the question of health and well being. There have been plagues among man and beast for centuries, though some might see humanity a plague in and of itself. In our stories and dual worlds, the first disease we encounter is mention of a secret strain of hepatitis D, something harmless to humans but weakens Vampires terribly. Bill is nearly contaminated by Malcolm’s blood bag. Royce refuses Lafayette’s food because he doesn’t want an AIDS burger, and humans regularly get strung out on Vampire blood.
But how many of us have been through or seen loved ones change because of health issues, either physical or emotional? The feelings they have are feeling of otherness, of being outside the normal. Perhaps disease even distorts or disfigures us and we are shunned because people fear what they don’t understand. What if you discovered that drinking something might cure you? Even if it is the blood of something not human? Would that make it okay to exploit them? Perhaps in some people’s minds it would be okay. Especially if they are not considered human, not a live viable human. Today fetal stem cell is a hot topic. Imagine a creature that has all the healing potential of stem cells? And at what lengths would they go to protect that secret?
So you come to the end of this piece. What does it all boil down to? Is it a simple metaphor for only gay folk? Does it examine class? Are Vampires a mirror of other races and minorities? Is it possible that when you hate, you may find yourself a minority among beings who see themselves as superior to you? Is this the tale of how we view not only others or how we view ourselves? Can any one group or people or creed say with perfect truth: I have never hated or been prejudiced? Or is that the greatest lie ever told?
It is a big thing to be carried by a series of dime store romances and a late night soap opera, but it is all there. To borrow from the Breakfast Club: You see us exactly the way you want to see us. We are in the convenient definitions: A Telepath, A Sex Fiend, A Hustler, A Werewolf, and A Vampire.
But it is more complex than that….Isn’t it?
This essay was at the other forum before we lost it and I did not keep a copy of it, so I am going to try to recreate my thoughts here.
True Blood and the Southern Vampire Mysteries from which it is derived are on the surface what we see: a great romp with fantastic characters and sexy Vampires and Werewolves, a soap opera with fangs. We have virtual cast of thousands of the living, the undead and the definitely dead. We have adventures and heart break and love found, lost and found again. All the good things that keep us tuned for the next episode. Pop corn for smart people.
But underneath the surface lies a complex texture of sub contexts that bring all the classes, sexualities, races, species and subspecies together. And I think that is what draws us to not just enjoy the story but relate to it in a very elemental level. Because we have all experienced isolation because of a sense of otherness. This otherness leads us to identify intimately with all the characters at one time or other.
In order for me to discuss this topic as thoroughly as possible, I will separate this essay into topics: Race, Sex and Sexual Orientation, Class, Religious or Cultural Identity and Health and Wellbeing Issues.
Race: It is very easy to see the story of Vampires and eventually Werewolves as racial minorities. It is the simplest way to actualize them in our thought processes. The show and the books to a limited degree use the issue of race as a familiar barometer for us to measure what the Vampires and other supernaturals will have to face as they try to mainstream. We are given this barometer on the show with the characters of Tara and Lafayette and Lettie Mae. They are all troubled people. Tara comes from a loveless home and is persecuted by her own feelings of low self worth. She is combative to the world around her and uses race as a simple shield. She feeds on stereotype to protect herself. In the beginning of season one, we meet her and she accuses the customer and her manager of being racists. Of course they aren’t, they are simply reacting to her belligerence. Later, when she is tending bar, a customer struggles to gain her attention and she snaps…”Oh no, don’t snap at me, I have a name, and its Tara, now ain’t that funny, my momma naming me after a plantation?” Then, When Bill visits Sookie, she asks Bill: “Did you own slaves?” and when he confirms he did (though in the book, the slaves were actually owned by the Stackhouses) Tara is affronted and later, in order to gain Sam’s confidence she adds indignantly that “He didn’t even bother to apologize to me”.
When Tara expresses concern for Sookie’s safety in the company of Bill Compton, Sookie says “Yeah and black people are lazy and Jews have horns,” Here Sookie counters Tara’s argument that Bill could hypnotize her and take advantage of her.
When Jason is suspected of killing Dawn, Tara goes to get Jason out and offer an alibi. She says “Race may not be a hot button topic anymore with Vampires out in the open, but it is still a button that can be pressed. Haven’t you ever seen the way people in this town look at mixed couples around here?” This is apparently true because Andy and Bud both acquiesce and let Jason go.
Tara’s mother expresses troubles with race when she goes to bank manager for a loan to have an exorcism. He explains to her he can’t loan her money for an exorcism. She accuses him racism, of sexual harassment and not being a good Christian.
Lafayette has double whammy of being both black and gay, but we will tackle his race first. Race seems to be the last thing on Lafayette’s mind. Til Eric gets a hold of him. One of the criticisms of the scenes with Lafayette chained in Eric’s Vampire jail was the echo of slavery, as he is manacled and collared much like African slaves in the old South. When Eric takes him up for his discussion he declares vehemently to the whiter than white Vampire Jailor: “If I have a Jew’s chance at an Al Quieda pep rally of getting my black ass up out of here, I will tell you what you want to know,” Here he aligns himself with another beleaguered minority group and aligns the Vampire holding him with terrorists.
The only time we hear human racial slurs is when we hear the thoughts of a Merlotte’s patron as Sookie listens to hear who might be the Bon Temps Strangler. He says: “Weirdoes, dead fucks, and n*****rs, all together, that ain’t right, this must be the end times,” This seems to echo the sentiments of the bar as everyone speculates on the identity of the killer.
Vampire slurs are more evident. The expressions fanger and fangbanger are derogatory terms for Vampires and their human companions and Bill and Sookie are harassed as they try to go home from Fangtasia by a police officer who suspects Bill of being Vampire. Sookie is treated as a Vampire lover, her romantic connection to Bill Compton makes her not only crazy but also a traitor to her own kind. She is even blamed for the death of her grandmother, even by people who she trusted, like Sheriff Dearborne and Andy. Royce says she is tainted from humans now that she has slept with Bill Compton.
Then there is the way she is treated by the Fellowship of the Sun on Season Two. She is seen as a race traitor of sorts. Gabe attempts to rape her to show her what she is missing out by having sex with a Vampire, and even creepy coroner Mike Spencer, under the spell of Maryann, observes: “Why do you let him put his dead pecker inside you?” when Mike has been engaged in all sorts of sexual hijinks at the various orgies including a cross species molestation of a pine tree.
So this leads into the next topic of discussion: Sex and Sexual Orientation. Nothing gets anyone riled up more, both negatively and positively than sex. Who you are having sex with, in what way, where and whether or not you do it for pay is a matter of everyone’s business, whether you want it to be a matter or not. The greatest taboos are sexual ones. There has been more written on the topic than any other topic. We buy and sell with sex, even if your product is American Apple pie.
One of the first taboos was about the intermixing of people of other races. Issues of racial purity are not new ones. Many cultures seek racial purity to maintain the cultural balance. To introduce children who may have the genetic makeup of two races leaves them out. Then there are the myths of sexual prowess or uncontrollable sexual appetite. Lafayette sort of plays on the taboo of black sexuality by saying: I have six gears on these hips baby! Give you a little cocoa!!”
Sookie of course is a virgin, not because she wants to be, but because she is telepathic and can’t ignore the meanderings of a potential sex partner’s mind to relax and get up a good head of steam. But then she meets a man whose mind she can’t read: Bill Compton. A Vampire.
Jason hates to discover that his lovers have been with Vampires. He is the town rooster, his libido is huge, he prides himself at being a real lover. He knows other men are jealous of him. In Season Two he gets mad at Andy and says “You are jealous because of the pussy I get…I work hard to have a good body and I watch a lot of porn to learn stuff…” The fact that he must now compete with Vampires who have legendary libidos and perhaps centuries of sexual experience to back them up are enough to cause a deep seated hatred. He hates the thought Sookie might have sex with Bill, and when she does, he is the first to call her a fangbanger.
Sookie turns to Bill for comfort and to give him her virginity but she reveals that something happened to her as a child. The exploitation of children by adults is the most damaging aspect of sexuality. Charlaine Harris often uses rape as a metaphor for control by others against those who are weaker. In the book, Godric the Vampire is a child molester and feeder upon children. Sookie is sexually attacked by Bill blinded by hunger and pain after a long incarceration in Book Three. Gabe of course tried to rape her. Mickey as well in a later book, and even Eric is nearly made a victim of rape by the servant of a vanquished Vampire ruler. Then Eric reveals in the last book his maker forced him to be his paramour which bonds Sookie closer to Eric on another level.
Homosexual Vampires are not segregated in the Vampire world. Sexuality simply is an integral part of their being. It does not matter the sexual orientation of the Vampire to another Vampire. In the human world however, we see a different attitude. Lafayette lives a very open life as a gay man. Flashy and flamboyant on the show, he is the entertainer. He is a quick wit with a wicked sense of humor. He is not one to mistake for being weak however, as Royce and his redneck friends find out when they give him a hassle for being gay. “F*ggots been breeding your cows, raising your chickens brewing your beer long before I walked my sexy ass up in this joint!” he declares. Lafayette works three jobs: Merlotte’s as a short order cook, the road crew, and his web site and escort service. Among his customers is a state senator who is on the down low.
Another of his customers is Eddie Fournier, a Vampire. He trades sex for Vampire blood. And though he does have sex with Vampires he does not allow them to bite him. He tells Sookie: “I don’t know Sook, when blood is drawn, a line has been crossed…” he then calls Sookie a skank when she walks away. While some interpret this as playful, the way Tara called Sookie a bitch with a wink, I think this was Lafayette’s way of creating a limit for himself. He might have sex with Vampire, use their blood as a drug, but he does not allow them to feed. In his mind, he is superior to Sookie. He is a hustler, but not a fangbanger.
Eddie is tragic and interesting case. A closeted homosexual in his human life, when he comes to grips with his sexuality, he is still a lonely person who thought becoming Vampire would help him find love. He asks Lafayette: “You do like me don’t you Lafayette? I mean, even if I wasn’t helping out with the blood?” Then he is kidnapped by Jason and his V loving girlfriend, the hippy dippy Amy. She is disgusted by Eddie, but she wants the high and the really psychedelic sex she has on the V trips. She berates Eddie for being what he is: dead, for all intents and purposes, inorganic, and while she worships the blood, she hates the chalice in which it is contained.
An unlikely friendship springs up between Jason and Eddie. He begins to overlook the Vampire Eddie and embraces the gay Eddie. He feels a sort of pity for the Vampire whose blood he is tripping on and feels remorse when he is murdered. At the Light of Day Leadership Conference, he tells the group: “I ain’t a Vampire victim….. I knew this Vampire, Eddie, and he was gay and I got him killed.”
Hoyt Fortenberry sets himself up for prejudice in season two when he tells his mother that Jessica is Vampire. Mrs. Fortenberry gets a conciliatory pat on the hand by her friend.
Having said all this, it is easy to see Vampires paralleled with real life happenings in the gay and straight world. Charlaine Harris is a little more obvious with the way human society deals with Vampires: They can’t be doctors or nurses, they many not own certain businesses and they cannot marry. In the not so distant past, it was believed that gays were predators, not to be trusted with people who were dependent, who were ill or the young. Gay owned businesses were victims of crime, run out of smaller towns. And of course, in most states and countries, gays may not marry. There are even laws on the books that make gay sex a crime (called blue laws or sodomy laws) under the guise of rape laws. (For example, if a rape involves oral sex, it is called an act of perversion and the rape is given separate charges based on the kind of rape.) The fact that Alan Ball explicitly plays with these images and has the second season end with Bill giving Sookie plane tickets on Anubis for Vermont, the only place where they can have a ceremony performed, highlights the plight many gay people in America face trying to legally establish their relationship and all the benefits that go with legal union and recognition.
Social Class is a big thing in the Charlaine Harris, but something not really mentioned in the show. To really discuss this topic, you have to separate it into human social rank and Vampire social rank. To begin, in the books, social rank is established by money. Every town has have and have nots. The Bellefleurs are examples of the haves. They are old family and old money. True their family fortunes are on the wane, but they still maintain that air of superiority. Then there are the business people. Tara may begin in the books as woman of doubtful means, but she becomes a rather successful business woman. Sookie, Jason and the rest are working class. Sookie even mentions this to Bill. “Dawn was a waitress, like me. Maudette came from a plain family like I do….” In the books, Sookie is always worried about her financial security and her pride. She is angry with Bill when he tells her he is to go to Tara’s new business and charge things to his account, and have her hair done or buy shampoo and the like at his expense. This piques Sookie’s anger, her feeling of being a kept woman.
Later, Eric depends on Sookie for his well being. He observes that her car is very bad, that her road is pitted and needs to be graveled. She rails at him saying that she is broke and she can’t afford a new car, that she used money she had made from in the past to pay her property taxes, that she has to miss work to take care of Vampire business. Later, when Sookie is working for the Queen, Eric tells her to go and buy clothes for the trip. To save her dignity in front of other Vampires, Eric hastily says that Sookie would not be needing these things if she were not going with him and the others. In another occasion, Eric says she should ask him for money, because he knows she would not ask for it unless she needed it for something important.
Lafayette in the show discusses the fact he is holding down three jobs and still is not insured (another hot button issue in today’s world). Tara defends Sookie’s home indignantly when she tells Maryann, “I’m sorry I don’t I don’t have a better crib for you to squat in,” Jason tells Sookie he was never good at anything but football, but not good enough for the scholarship which would have raised his social status. Sookie in the books tells us often that she is self educated and Tara on the show tells Bud Dearborn “Why I should I go to college where white people read to each other when I can save my money and read to myself?” Hoyt Fortenberry’s mother informs Hoyt that girls who call late at night are after one thing: money. She is then shocked and embarrassed when Hoyt blurts out they didn’t have any money. She demurs and says they are very comfortable.
In the world of Vampire, their social levels are a bit more complex. While sex and race and orientation and national origin are suborned by the Vampirism, there is a dual layered class system. This is the way I understand it.
In social situations, Vampires give one another deferential treatment based on age. The older the Vampire, the stronger physically they are. So, politeness dictates that younger Vampires show a certain level of respect, in descending order. For example, in the Monroe nest, Liam was the eldest, Diane second, and Liam presumably third. When Bill walks into the nest and issues his ultimatum Liam says: “I am your Elder, you have no authority here,” This does not preclude Bill’s ability to physically over throw Diane, who is his junior by about 100 years.
Being a Maker is also powerful. Eric is Pam’s maker, thus able to make her do his bidding. In the show, Godric is Eric’s maker and though Godric is physically stronger, he is diminutive in comparison to Eric. In the books, Eric’s maker was a man more on Eric’s physical level, and had of course the maker’s authority. Bill’s maker is Lorena. Though she is a small woman, she leaps on top of Bill in the show and says, “Your blood knows mine, you could never overpower me,” Bill is Jessica’s inept maker. He is inconsistently heavy handed with her, otherwise frustrated as to what do with her, dealing with the guilt of having to make her.
Then there is a matter of duty or given position. Starting at the bottom are the minions. These are the Vampires who live in given area. Each state in America is divided into kingdoms. Each kingdom is divided into areas. Each area has a Sheriff, each kingdom a king or queen. Your position as king or queen supersedes all other Vampire customs of class. For example, Sophie in the show is a young Vampire compared to Eric, but she commands Eric as her sheriff.
In the show we also have two positions of power. There is the Magister. He is the supreme judge to the Vampire world in America. And Nan Flanagan, the public face of Vampires in America. She lands somewhere under the royalty but perhaps a shade above the Magister. In the books, these characters do not exist. In the books they have someone they call the Ancient Pythoness. She is apparently the judge in the books and the Magister takes her place on the show.
Wealth is another biggie. As Alcide says in the books: “Coming out in the open would only cause us to be sterilized, ghettoized or put in zoos. Vampires coming out just made them rich,” Bill explains to Sookie that Vampires at first robbed the dead, then they began to learn to work with humans using their glamour to steal, for lack of a better word, then when they came out of the coffin, they could invest their money and they couldn’t be taxed because in America, you can’t tax the dead.
Vampires like Eddie led ordinary financial lives. He lived in a cute a little suburban house but he is not at all rich. He is comfortable. But, being a young Vampire, he had not social status except as a minion in the Vampire pecking order.
In general, humans in the Vampire world are as negligible as Vampires in the human world. They too are given derogatory names: Blood bag, breather, pets. Humans are low, they do not feel as the Vampires do. They are like cows, cute but food. McPeople. Gay, straight, rich, poor, black, white, male, female, it is all the same to Vampires. Weres and other supernaturals are considered below their notice. They too are inferior. Classism and racism even among the Supernaturals. The objects of bigotry are bigots themselves.
The only clause is the Mine rule. If a Vampire declares a human “mine” then all Vampires are expected through custom, to keep their fangs off. This rule is a little shaky and cannot be counted on in Human/Vampire relationships.
Religion and Culture is a way of dividing people into groups and creating bigotry. Maxine is a true democrat in her hate: She hates Catholics (only priests and nuns), she hates Methodists (she has her reasons), Blacks (that’s a secret. Sure Maxine, like mayonnaise is a secret sauce) People who don’t fix up their yards (obviously Whiskey Tangos) women who wear red shoes (tacky: read slutty) People with a lot of kids (again the W/T element), and of course Vampires, because they can kill you and eat you. She is the microcosm of Bon Temps, distilled in a beady eyed, snoopy little woman with a mean mouth. Even her husband didn’t like her. He committed suicide to get the hell away from her.
Vampires are thought to have no religion. They are damned by most every religious group anyway. Bill on the show even casually explains that holy water is just water and crosses are just geometry. When he walks into the church to give his talk, he uncovers the flag draped cross and even stands there in front of it a moment. He then explains: “Vampires are not minions of the Devil, we can stand before a cross, or a Bible. Vampires are like any creature of God,” In the books, Eric tells Sookie he was never a Christian, but he cannot imagine God would punish her for protecting herself. Sookie always talks about her conscience, that she is not a good Christian but a decent survivalist. Godric on show sees God in Sookie’s tears. The Vampire angel he has become delivers himself up to the hands of an angry God. He asks Sookie what God will do to him to punish him. “God doesn’t punish, he forgives,” Sookie assures him. In the books, Eric is a rather dubious priest and Bill asks Sookie to pray for him in a “real church”, presumably where Eric is not pastor.
God may forgive but the church is a different matter. The Fellowship of the Sun is eerily like the Klan, declaring they are about love of their own kind while down playing and twisting the truth of their hate. I feel the same way Inquisition. The Magister and Steve Newlin actually have a lot in common, in fact if they were not on the opposite sides of the hate fence, I would say they would be bowling buddies on the same league, the haters league.
Hate is really an equal opportunity employer. It hires you regardless of your race, color, creed, or national origin. Love is a harder club to join. Respect and tolerance is even tough. Alan Ball reflects all these human foibles. The intolerance of people of others of their own kind as well as supernaturals is the tantamount force driving the action of every individual on the show, whether they are the haters or the objects of hate. But as we all know, all peace, all love, all day makes for uninteresting drama. And as one of our members have on their temperament on their profile: We have far too much drama in our itty bitty lives.
Finally there is the question of health and well being. There have been plagues among man and beast for centuries, though some might see humanity a plague in and of itself. In our stories and dual worlds, the first disease we encounter is mention of a secret strain of hepatitis D, something harmless to humans but weakens Vampires terribly. Bill is nearly contaminated by Malcolm’s blood bag. Royce refuses Lafayette’s food because he doesn’t want an AIDS burger, and humans regularly get strung out on Vampire blood.
But how many of us have been through or seen loved ones change because of health issues, either physical or emotional? The feelings they have are feeling of otherness, of being outside the normal. Perhaps disease even distorts or disfigures us and we are shunned because people fear what they don’t understand. What if you discovered that drinking something might cure you? Even if it is the blood of something not human? Would that make it okay to exploit them? Perhaps in some people’s minds it would be okay. Especially if they are not considered human, not a live viable human. Today fetal stem cell is a hot topic. Imagine a creature that has all the healing potential of stem cells? And at what lengths would they go to protect that secret?
So you come to the end of this piece. What does it all boil down to? Is it a simple metaphor for only gay folk? Does it examine class? Are Vampires a mirror of other races and minorities? Is it possible that when you hate, you may find yourself a minority among beings who see themselves as superior to you? Is this the tale of how we view not only others or how we view ourselves? Can any one group or people or creed say with perfect truth: I have never hated or been prejudiced? Or is that the greatest lie ever told?
It is a big thing to be carried by a series of dime store romances and a late night soap opera, but it is all there. To borrow from the Breakfast Club: You see us exactly the way you want to see us. We are in the convenient definitions: A Telepath, A Sex Fiend, A Hustler, A Werewolf, and A Vampire.
But it is more complex than that….Isn’t it?
Vampire Sexuality
Vampire Sexuality
One of the things that is definitely intriguing about Vampires is their sexuality. Unlike human sexuality, they have a catholic or universal approach to pleasure. They have no sense of prejudice in matters of sexual taste. Gay or straight or somewhere in between, there is something for every Vampire and something for every human who loves them.
From the beginning, Vampires were metaphors for sex. Their own Judeo-Christian beginnings have to do with sex as in the legend of Lilith/Lamia and her desire to be sexually equal with Adam. One of the interesting facets of the story is that Adam complained to God he had to “hold her down” suggesting Adam was forcing Lilith to have sex with him. This element of being forced, a sort of rape is also in the Vampire legends.
As the story has evolved from the obscure apocalyptic stories of the first Vampire til now, we have seen their complex sexuality and while cultural mores restricted certain aspects of male Vampire sexuality, the first literary stories of the female Vampire were blatant in their sexual ambiguity. The stories of Camilla and Christabel and The Bride of Corinth were obviously lesbian in undertone and in the earliest times of the movies, it was far more acceptable to show a female Vampire feeding from a female human than to show a male Vampire feeding from a male human.
This is because it is well understood that Vampire is a symbol for all sorts of sexual activity. Oral sex is the most obvious with the act of sucking blood, and then there is the penetration of the fangs that is a more direct suggestion of sex. For a male Vampire to bite another man is a suggestion of homosexuality and that was something simply not successfully portrayed in early literature. Homosexuality was the thing that would not be named in polite society and those who did were admonished.
Cinematically, there were many images of lesbian Vampires. Why this was permissible and not the images of male homosexual Vampires is of course because of the less than prurient interest of men in lesbian sexuality. Fetishizing female on female sex is well known and a glamorized fetish while male homosexuality is considered offensive. But there were images of male on male Vampirism in underground literary and cinematic movements and though rarely seen up to now, they are now considered classic gay male Vampire story telling.
Dracula of course was the most famous of the Vampires and he was blazingly straight, though I recall as a young girl wondering why Dracula did not just feed off any human that was around. Surely there was a separation between feeding and romance (as my mind called it) and I wondered why I never saw Dracula feeding from Renfield or from Jonathan Harker. When I got older, I understood of course that Harker had been fed from by the Vampire wives, but also felt he was likely fed from by Dracula as well, adding to Harker’s guilt. I felt Harker would be confused by the contact Dracula had with him as he fed from him which would work as a further reason for his hate.
The various sorts of incarnations of Dracula in the cinema was something that interested me. I have seen both the strange and the bizarre and the tasteful and the disgusting by the way of fangs. Christopher Lee was the first Vampire with fangs which I found intriguing, sort of the Vampire equivalent of the full Monty. Andy Warhol, the king of the bizarre and strange was the first to have openly sexually omnivorous Dracula characters. In his take on Dracula, he makes Dracula something of a mad scientist, building a Frankenstein type of creature to do his bidding (what that was I never completely understood, but I don’t think that was important to Andy). What Dracula did, however was perform a sort of necrophilia. Dracula believed that if he f*cked the gall bladder of the creature he was building he would add some of his immortality. Okay…a collective ewwww..is in order. So in one scene, we do see Dracula having sex with the thing on the slab through an opening in the side of the corpse.
In retrospect, though I hate to give Andy too much credit of foresight and knowing about mythology and lore, there are considerable stories in mythology about where the seats of certain human emotions would be located in the body, following the notion of the humors from the Greek and Roman ideas of disease and mental illness residing in various organs of the body. The gall bladder was the residence of the strong emotions like revenge and hatred and bloodlust, so as disgusting as it sounds, Dracula may have merely been “stirring” the pot of his creation.
Another part of the Andy Warhol take on Dracula was the fact before he could actually resurrect his creature, he must feed and feed well on the blood of a virgin girl. He had one picked out too. This girl was something of a Red Riding Hood/Snow White figure who was a captive in his castle and was being looked after by the “groundsman”. His orders were to keep her safe, but he actually intended to beat Dracula’s time. In the film he is both seductive and beastial, not much difference in how we see Vampires. He makes obscene suggestions to her, tries to have his way with her multiple times and eventually thwarts Dracula by telling the girl Dracula’s plans for her and putting her against the wall and deflowering her before Dracula could get to her…The groundsman stakes Dracula.
One of the interesting and ewww inducing facets of the Vampire story is the necrophilia implications. I would argue that a robust active Vampire having sex is far different from having sex with a corpse, which just sort of lies there. While Vampires are technically dead, they are actually alive. The duality of Undead is what separates them from the folks who go to funerals to “hook up”. The same argument might be made of having sex with a werewolf and bestiality. But back to the topic at hand.
Anne Rice opens the door to Vampiric androgyny. Androgyny or asexuality does not mean homosexuality and though the gay press would really like to latch on to Anne Rice Vampires as gay Vampires, they can’t. Louie and Lestat do not have sex and they do not have an interest in sex. I think for Anne Rice, the Vampire is a metaphor for her frustrations with the Catholic Church. She was frustrated with the antifeminist attitudes of the Church and the fact sexuality was being controlled by the Church. You could partake of Holy Communion and be saved or you could partake of the flesh and be damned. Rice then reverses Louie and Lestat by making their Communion damned and by rendering them impotent. Perhaps in this way, Anne Rice is saying the Church is a Vampire, feeding off the believer.
But the film Interview with a Vampire was embraced by the gay community and even fueled rumors which had been going around Hollywood that Tom Cruise was gay. The fact we actually see Lestat make Louie a Vampire and bite his neck and drain him and then feed him his own blood was just erotic enough, even if they missed the obvious point.
For straight audiences though, the first sexy Vampire who moved beyond the Vampire/Sex metaphor was Dracula staring Frank Langella. He was the first Dracula to have obvious sex with his victim. It capitalized on the metaphor and played with the reality: Dracula is a Vampire, a monster that drinks blood and kills people but he is also a man and he has needs…
Vampire films like the Hunger and The Lair of the White Worm with its science fiction elements and images of sadomasochism and religion suggest a struggle between human sexuality and the taboos placed upon it by church and state, but Vampires did not follow the strict limits of human society. They could behave as they please. They offered a sort of non-judgmental freedom where everything was available and there were no consequences, you are immortal and therefore need not fear spiritual retribution. And no other Vampire would judge you for your appetites.
The fact that Vampire was a community who would open to your various and sundry tastes and twists is what many people who feel confined by their sexual or philosophical identity appeals to subcultures and Vampirism is a true subculture. Vampire cannot be confined to human law and religion. Vampire says if you want to do it.
After Frank Langella, Vampires had a stiffy. We see Vampires as sexually full faceted. There are some things that will always be taboo, such as images of children and suggested images of pedophilia, but there are Vampire children such as in Let the Right One in. Let the Right One In is a Swedish film from a book about Eli, a gender ambiguous child who is a Vampire and under the control of a Renfield like keeper who wants to have sex with Eli and Eli’s interest in a young boy who is being bullied. In the book Eli is eventually raped by the keeper and Eli tells the friend they are neither boy or girl, simply Eli. The 80’s offering Fright Night has the transformation of the obnoxious Ed by the Vampire. This scene is shot in the tradition of the early Vampire movies where the Vampire actually pulls a large coat around him and shields the viewer from the actual blood exchange that transforms Ed into a Vampire.
Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot has Vampiric children, even a Vampiric toddler who feeds from its mother. Stephen King plays with the notion of sex as a lure. The promise of sex and immortality and revenge and retrieval of lost love is something that is impossible to ignore for most of the inhabitants of Salem’s Lot. Though Stephen King is often reticent about writing about sex, the lure of sex places it in the category of sex as a weapon.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a strange sort of story as we have a young girl, again cast as the Red Riding Hood / Snow White type character who kills Vampires. Trouble is, she falls for a couple of Vampires. This story also carries on to many copy cats, like the Laurel K. Hamilton Books. These adult Buffy Books are pretty saturated with sex. It was unique in that it shows a strong, sexually confident woman, completely bypassing the Red Riding Hood/Snow White archetype and going straight for the lusty, fully functioning adult female character who patiently works her way through the supernatural world, killing what she can, screwing what she can’t. In recent years, the relentless sex scenes disturbed only with short battle scenes have become a point of criticism against her books.
The Southern Vampire Mysteries try to balance that out. We have of course Sookie. Sookie is a sexual archetype similar to the Red Riding Hood/Snow White character. She is a struggling orphan who lives with her grandmother and feels put upon because of multiple things including her social status. She is also the legendary archetype of the virgin luring “mythic beasts” to her with her virginity like Andromeda and the Kraken and the Lady and the Unicorn and the innocent child and the fae. She is also the typical “Girl Next Door” the American Dream, the cute blond who likes to lay in the sun and be pretty and flirt. She is also the Southern Belle. For such a simple character, she certainly has her roots in most of the ancient and modern archetypes. What makes her unique to us is that she is a telepath, something that hampers her ability to enjoy sex. We also have the added modern “Turn of the Screw” feature that she was molested by her Uncle Bartlett.
Bill is her first lover. He takes her virginity and her blood, something that is as alluring as her sexual awakening because of her fae ancestry. He also gives her his blood which awakens an already wide awake libido. But, I would like to note that Sookie has her first fantasies about Bill before she has his blood. It is the fact that she discovers Bill’s brain is silent to her intrigues her as this was the one thing that kept her from exploring her sexuality. After she has his blood this interest is increased.
With the SVMs we also have the notion that Vampires are hated as a minority because of their Vampirism. Their race and sexuality is not very important to the haters. That they are life challenged is the troubling aspect to them. And Vampires come in all colors and genders and orientations in both the books and True Blood. Charlaine Harris simply writes them that way. There is no real agenda for this other than the fact there are gay people in all walks of life and unlife. Once they are Vampire, they cease to have any other identity than being Vampire.
Pam is an interesting counter point to the story and emerges as a reverse image of Lafayette. She is a woman, white and mostly gay but would not turn down an interesting male partner, but he better be really interesting. She is sort of like the female Praying Mantis who would mate and then bite their head off. She is flirtatious to Sookie and she enjoys Sookie’s friendship in an odd sort of way. She sees her Vampirism as liberation. She would be able to control a human male with no problems.
Eric too is a dichotomy sexually. Though he prefers his sex straight and with Sookie Stackhouse, he has a vast range of experience. He has no reaction to sex around him, as in the sex party Sookie invites him to and he is so indifferent to human opinion of him, he is undaunted by Sookie’s proposal he look “gay” or at least bi. Later we learn that Eric’s maker was male and forced Eric into a sexual relationship with him, which was something he eventually learned to enjoy though his preference lay elsewhere.
This goes back to the complaint Adam had about Lilith. He said he had to hold Lilith down to have sex with her, suggesting Adam forced Lilith to have sex, in effect raping her. In this way, you could argue the same thing had happened to Bill who was taken from the woman he loved and forced to make a new “marriage” with the woman who forced him into his Vampiric life as well as Eric who was forced to be the sexual partner of his maker. This sort of highlights Eric’s deference to the Vampires in his area who work for him. Felicia in the SVMs tells Sookie that Eric is a good Vampire to work for. He pays well, the hours are good and he does not press the Vampires in his employ to have sex. This also gives Sookie and Eric a sort of strange bond of victimhood. Both had been abused sexually by someone older and stronger than them and while Sookie’s victimization may have stopped with fondling, she is still scarred by the experience and Eric is certainly changed.
In the show we see that Bill is not immune to the possibility of homosexual situations. When he is confronted by the obviously gay Malcolm and offered a chance to feed from his male companion, both in the book and the show the man does approach Bill in a seductive manner. In the flash backs of Bill and Lorena hunting as a pair, the two corner a couple and while Lorena is with the woman, Bill is with the man. And Bill does use his sexuality to batter his maker Lorena, not to mention the twisting of her head around in a violent sexual attack on the woman who raped him spiritually and psychologically and emotionally if not physically. Then the act of torturing Bill is of course very exciting to Lorena. Sadomasochism is highly referenced in the Vampire literature. Then the mirroring of Coot and Debbie feeding on him just as she and Bill fed on countless victims of theirs is strange sort of sexual turn on with intense grief. Sex and grief is two fold. Men especially seek sex for comfort (like Jason and Bobby Sue) and since Lorena is the dominate character between Bill and her, she is the one who is having the shameful gratification of seeing Bill a victim.
Another interesting facet of the show with Eric was his love and devotion to Godric. Godric is an old child who finds Eric at his most vulnerable on his funeral pyre about to die. His attack on Eric and his turning Eric Vampire is almost paternal, with Eric being the child. When speculation about season three began and there were rumors of Eric having a sexual encounter with another man, there was some suggestion it may be an encounter with Eric and Godric. As free thinking as Alan Ball may be, there are taboos in the homosexual community about problematic images which could be perceived of young males being exploited by older males. While we would have understood the situation and the fact Godric is actually a thousand years older than Eric would have negated our view of the scene, but the passive viewer would have been upset and there would have been an insurmountable outcry.
The sexual scenario in question is buffered by our knowledge of several things. Eric is not above using sex as a weapon. He will use sex to meet his ends and in the show he has a definite reason to go to such extremes: the death of his human father. The fact that he may have to play the part of the seducer to reach his goal means little to him. It simply is what it is. And the same could be said of Bill who uses his seductive powers to procure Sookie for Sophie Anne.
But Eric is not gay. Not even close to it. He is an unrepentant lesbian of the highest order. He loves women and he loves Sookie Stackhouse. He also knows she is a good girl: In book two he asks: So, what does a nice girl like you wear to an orgy? Sookie has no idea…Of course Eric would like to give her some hints but she draws the line. He loves to kiss her. In fact some of his most intense moments have been in the act of kissing her. When she sucked the bullets out of his chest, he kissed her hard. When he took her to the orgy, he kissed her a lot. When they go into battle at various times, he takes a moment to kiss her. To say Eric is really into oral is an understatement. But the fact of her being fairy does not change Eric’s interest in her. He is interested in her for multiple reasons. He is intrigued I think by her sort of innocence. In a world of free love and even freer sex, Sookie is more virgin than virago with just enough experience to take on Eric without being too much of a slut. The first time he has sex with her, she had only one lover, Bill Compton.
Speaking of virginity, Jessica’s conundrum seems to be one of perpetual virginity. Perhaps one of the witchy storylines and the reason for Jessica kicking up her heels sometime in the future is that she solves her little virginity problem. Her interest in making Hoyt her first lover and having a human companion is cue that her relationship with Hoyt is problematic. They are serious limited her ability to have sexual relations with Hoyt for the time being because she will endure the pain of losing her virginity over and over. This is a sort of morality tale that plays out like the wages of sin. But Jessica is guilty of only one thing: Being made a Vampire. And even that had subtle overtones.
When Jessica is brought to Bill to be made, she is a terrified young girl in the hands of savages. Sort of like all the legendary stories of the pure maiden set before beasts. She is like sacrifices for a pagan god in all the old stories. Bill is the Kraken, Baal, King Kong, the dark brooding demon bent on her defilement. And while Bill does not have sex with Jessica, her being made Vampire is an erotically charged public event. She thrashes against Bill in a fruitless attempt to escape and Bill is caught between a rock and hard place. He wants her blood and gluts himself with it in order to steal her human life and then gives her his blood to make her Vampire. To feed and to be fed upon is usually sexually stimulating for the Vampire. Eric is turned on by Sookie feeding from him in the third book, so sexually stimulating he has an orgasm, and Bill is very turned on by Sookie feeding from him in the first book when he gives her blood before she goes to Fangtasia. And as we are told by the three Vampires in Bill’s house in season one, virgin blood is the best blood there is, besides baby’s blood. So whether Bill wants to or not, he is experiencing sexual and Vampiric pleasure when he makes Jessica.
One of the subtle things that I noticed about that scene was the reactions of the other Vampires witnessing it. It is almost as though Vampires have a hive like connection and as the act is being done by one, the pleasure is felt by all who witness it. It is a sort of bizarre sexual communion and all the Vampires are tuned into it. And you can see the same sort of dreamy look on Eric’s face as the doctor heals Sookie from the maenad’s scratch. He is completely stoned watching her being treated. In the books, the cure is far more intimate. Charlaine Harris tells us they “had to tear her shirt off” to make her ready for the process of healing her and she was held on their laps as the Vampires drained her of the poisonous blood.
Probably one of the most troubling events occur in book in book three and that is when Sookie is locked in the trunk of the car with the starving Bill who nearly drains her and has sex with her. He is in a state of unconsciousness and he is acting on automatic but it is still seen as forced sex. The thing that negates this and separates this event is the fact that Bill does stop when he realizes two things: That he has almost drained her and she did not give him permission to have sex with her and he immediately stops when he realizes what has happened. Had Bill been raping her for the simple pleasure of controlling her and raping her, he simply wouldn’t have stopped.
And this is where the line is drawn I think between the ancient stories of Vampire and the more modern ones. Ancient Vampire stories would have had Bill finishing the act, but because Bill does care about Sookie and even loves her, he does not wish to violate her. Her sexuality is important to him and he has no wish to destroy her physical sexual trust in him. What he did betray, even though it is at the order of his maker, was her emotional trust. Then of course down the line, Sookie realizes he did use sex as a weapon after all to procure her for the ruthless Sophie Anne.
One of the things that is definitely intriguing about Vampires is their sexuality. Unlike human sexuality, they have a catholic or universal approach to pleasure. They have no sense of prejudice in matters of sexual taste. Gay or straight or somewhere in between, there is something for every Vampire and something for every human who loves them.
From the beginning, Vampires were metaphors for sex. Their own Judeo-Christian beginnings have to do with sex as in the legend of Lilith/Lamia and her desire to be sexually equal with Adam. One of the interesting facets of the story is that Adam complained to God he had to “hold her down” suggesting Adam was forcing Lilith to have sex with him. This element of being forced, a sort of rape is also in the Vampire legends.
As the story has evolved from the obscure apocalyptic stories of the first Vampire til now, we have seen their complex sexuality and while cultural mores restricted certain aspects of male Vampire sexuality, the first literary stories of the female Vampire were blatant in their sexual ambiguity. The stories of Camilla and Christabel and The Bride of Corinth were obviously lesbian in undertone and in the earliest times of the movies, it was far more acceptable to show a female Vampire feeding from a female human than to show a male Vampire feeding from a male human.
This is because it is well understood that Vampire is a symbol for all sorts of sexual activity. Oral sex is the most obvious with the act of sucking blood, and then there is the penetration of the fangs that is a more direct suggestion of sex. For a male Vampire to bite another man is a suggestion of homosexuality and that was something simply not successfully portrayed in early literature. Homosexuality was the thing that would not be named in polite society and those who did were admonished.
Cinematically, there were many images of lesbian Vampires. Why this was permissible and not the images of male homosexual Vampires is of course because of the less than prurient interest of men in lesbian sexuality. Fetishizing female on female sex is well known and a glamorized fetish while male homosexuality is considered offensive. But there were images of male on male Vampirism in underground literary and cinematic movements and though rarely seen up to now, they are now considered classic gay male Vampire story telling.
Dracula of course was the most famous of the Vampires and he was blazingly straight, though I recall as a young girl wondering why Dracula did not just feed off any human that was around. Surely there was a separation between feeding and romance (as my mind called it) and I wondered why I never saw Dracula feeding from Renfield or from Jonathan Harker. When I got older, I understood of course that Harker had been fed from by the Vampire wives, but also felt he was likely fed from by Dracula as well, adding to Harker’s guilt. I felt Harker would be confused by the contact Dracula had with him as he fed from him which would work as a further reason for his hate.
The various sorts of incarnations of Dracula in the cinema was something that interested me. I have seen both the strange and the bizarre and the tasteful and the disgusting by the way of fangs. Christopher Lee was the first Vampire with fangs which I found intriguing, sort of the Vampire equivalent of the full Monty. Andy Warhol, the king of the bizarre and strange was the first to have openly sexually omnivorous Dracula characters. In his take on Dracula, he makes Dracula something of a mad scientist, building a Frankenstein type of creature to do his bidding (what that was I never completely understood, but I don’t think that was important to Andy). What Dracula did, however was perform a sort of necrophilia. Dracula believed that if he f*cked the gall bladder of the creature he was building he would add some of his immortality. Okay…a collective ewwww..is in order. So in one scene, we do see Dracula having sex with the thing on the slab through an opening in the side of the corpse.
In retrospect, though I hate to give Andy too much credit of foresight and knowing about mythology and lore, there are considerable stories in mythology about where the seats of certain human emotions would be located in the body, following the notion of the humors from the Greek and Roman ideas of disease and mental illness residing in various organs of the body. The gall bladder was the residence of the strong emotions like revenge and hatred and bloodlust, so as disgusting as it sounds, Dracula may have merely been “stirring” the pot of his creation.
Another part of the Andy Warhol take on Dracula was the fact before he could actually resurrect his creature, he must feed and feed well on the blood of a virgin girl. He had one picked out too. This girl was something of a Red Riding Hood/Snow White figure who was a captive in his castle and was being looked after by the “groundsman”. His orders were to keep her safe, but he actually intended to beat Dracula’s time. In the film he is both seductive and beastial, not much difference in how we see Vampires. He makes obscene suggestions to her, tries to have his way with her multiple times and eventually thwarts Dracula by telling the girl Dracula’s plans for her and putting her against the wall and deflowering her before Dracula could get to her…The groundsman stakes Dracula.
One of the interesting and ewww inducing facets of the Vampire story is the necrophilia implications. I would argue that a robust active Vampire having sex is far different from having sex with a corpse, which just sort of lies there. While Vampires are technically dead, they are actually alive. The duality of Undead is what separates them from the folks who go to funerals to “hook up”. The same argument might be made of having sex with a werewolf and bestiality. But back to the topic at hand.
Anne Rice opens the door to Vampiric androgyny. Androgyny or asexuality does not mean homosexuality and though the gay press would really like to latch on to Anne Rice Vampires as gay Vampires, they can’t. Louie and Lestat do not have sex and they do not have an interest in sex. I think for Anne Rice, the Vampire is a metaphor for her frustrations with the Catholic Church. She was frustrated with the antifeminist attitudes of the Church and the fact sexuality was being controlled by the Church. You could partake of Holy Communion and be saved or you could partake of the flesh and be damned. Rice then reverses Louie and Lestat by making their Communion damned and by rendering them impotent. Perhaps in this way, Anne Rice is saying the Church is a Vampire, feeding off the believer.
But the film Interview with a Vampire was embraced by the gay community and even fueled rumors which had been going around Hollywood that Tom Cruise was gay. The fact we actually see Lestat make Louie a Vampire and bite his neck and drain him and then feed him his own blood was just erotic enough, even if they missed the obvious point.
For straight audiences though, the first sexy Vampire who moved beyond the Vampire/Sex metaphor was Dracula staring Frank Langella. He was the first Dracula to have obvious sex with his victim. It capitalized on the metaphor and played with the reality: Dracula is a Vampire, a monster that drinks blood and kills people but he is also a man and he has needs…
Vampire films like the Hunger and The Lair of the White Worm with its science fiction elements and images of sadomasochism and religion suggest a struggle between human sexuality and the taboos placed upon it by church and state, but Vampires did not follow the strict limits of human society. They could behave as they please. They offered a sort of non-judgmental freedom where everything was available and there were no consequences, you are immortal and therefore need not fear spiritual retribution. And no other Vampire would judge you for your appetites.
The fact that Vampire was a community who would open to your various and sundry tastes and twists is what many people who feel confined by their sexual or philosophical identity appeals to subcultures and Vampirism is a true subculture. Vampire cannot be confined to human law and religion. Vampire says if you want to do it.
After Frank Langella, Vampires had a stiffy. We see Vampires as sexually full faceted. There are some things that will always be taboo, such as images of children and suggested images of pedophilia, but there are Vampire children such as in Let the Right One in. Let the Right One In is a Swedish film from a book about Eli, a gender ambiguous child who is a Vampire and under the control of a Renfield like keeper who wants to have sex with Eli and Eli’s interest in a young boy who is being bullied. In the book Eli is eventually raped by the keeper and Eli tells the friend they are neither boy or girl, simply Eli. The 80’s offering Fright Night has the transformation of the obnoxious Ed by the Vampire. This scene is shot in the tradition of the early Vampire movies where the Vampire actually pulls a large coat around him and shields the viewer from the actual blood exchange that transforms Ed into a Vampire.
Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot has Vampiric children, even a Vampiric toddler who feeds from its mother. Stephen King plays with the notion of sex as a lure. The promise of sex and immortality and revenge and retrieval of lost love is something that is impossible to ignore for most of the inhabitants of Salem’s Lot. Though Stephen King is often reticent about writing about sex, the lure of sex places it in the category of sex as a weapon.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a strange sort of story as we have a young girl, again cast as the Red Riding Hood / Snow White type character who kills Vampires. Trouble is, she falls for a couple of Vampires. This story also carries on to many copy cats, like the Laurel K. Hamilton Books. These adult Buffy Books are pretty saturated with sex. It was unique in that it shows a strong, sexually confident woman, completely bypassing the Red Riding Hood/Snow White archetype and going straight for the lusty, fully functioning adult female character who patiently works her way through the supernatural world, killing what she can, screwing what she can’t. In recent years, the relentless sex scenes disturbed only with short battle scenes have become a point of criticism against her books.
The Southern Vampire Mysteries try to balance that out. We have of course Sookie. Sookie is a sexual archetype similar to the Red Riding Hood/Snow White character. She is a struggling orphan who lives with her grandmother and feels put upon because of multiple things including her social status. She is also the legendary archetype of the virgin luring “mythic beasts” to her with her virginity like Andromeda and the Kraken and the Lady and the Unicorn and the innocent child and the fae. She is also the typical “Girl Next Door” the American Dream, the cute blond who likes to lay in the sun and be pretty and flirt. She is also the Southern Belle. For such a simple character, she certainly has her roots in most of the ancient and modern archetypes. What makes her unique to us is that she is a telepath, something that hampers her ability to enjoy sex. We also have the added modern “Turn of the Screw” feature that she was molested by her Uncle Bartlett.
Bill is her first lover. He takes her virginity and her blood, something that is as alluring as her sexual awakening because of her fae ancestry. He also gives her his blood which awakens an already wide awake libido. But, I would like to note that Sookie has her first fantasies about Bill before she has his blood. It is the fact that she discovers Bill’s brain is silent to her intrigues her as this was the one thing that kept her from exploring her sexuality. After she has his blood this interest is increased.
With the SVMs we also have the notion that Vampires are hated as a minority because of their Vampirism. Their race and sexuality is not very important to the haters. That they are life challenged is the troubling aspect to them. And Vampires come in all colors and genders and orientations in both the books and True Blood. Charlaine Harris simply writes them that way. There is no real agenda for this other than the fact there are gay people in all walks of life and unlife. Once they are Vampire, they cease to have any other identity than being Vampire.
Pam is an interesting counter point to the story and emerges as a reverse image of Lafayette. She is a woman, white and mostly gay but would not turn down an interesting male partner, but he better be really interesting. She is sort of like the female Praying Mantis who would mate and then bite their head off. She is flirtatious to Sookie and she enjoys Sookie’s friendship in an odd sort of way. She sees her Vampirism as liberation. She would be able to control a human male with no problems.
Eric too is a dichotomy sexually. Though he prefers his sex straight and with Sookie Stackhouse, he has a vast range of experience. He has no reaction to sex around him, as in the sex party Sookie invites him to and he is so indifferent to human opinion of him, he is undaunted by Sookie’s proposal he look “gay” or at least bi. Later we learn that Eric’s maker was male and forced Eric into a sexual relationship with him, which was something he eventually learned to enjoy though his preference lay elsewhere.
This goes back to the complaint Adam had about Lilith. He said he had to hold Lilith down to have sex with her, suggesting Adam forced Lilith to have sex, in effect raping her. In this way, you could argue the same thing had happened to Bill who was taken from the woman he loved and forced to make a new “marriage” with the woman who forced him into his Vampiric life as well as Eric who was forced to be the sexual partner of his maker. This sort of highlights Eric’s deference to the Vampires in his area who work for him. Felicia in the SVMs tells Sookie that Eric is a good Vampire to work for. He pays well, the hours are good and he does not press the Vampires in his employ to have sex. This also gives Sookie and Eric a sort of strange bond of victimhood. Both had been abused sexually by someone older and stronger than them and while Sookie’s victimization may have stopped with fondling, she is still scarred by the experience and Eric is certainly changed.
In the show we see that Bill is not immune to the possibility of homosexual situations. When he is confronted by the obviously gay Malcolm and offered a chance to feed from his male companion, both in the book and the show the man does approach Bill in a seductive manner. In the flash backs of Bill and Lorena hunting as a pair, the two corner a couple and while Lorena is with the woman, Bill is with the man. And Bill does use his sexuality to batter his maker Lorena, not to mention the twisting of her head around in a violent sexual attack on the woman who raped him spiritually and psychologically and emotionally if not physically. Then the act of torturing Bill is of course very exciting to Lorena. Sadomasochism is highly referenced in the Vampire literature. Then the mirroring of Coot and Debbie feeding on him just as she and Bill fed on countless victims of theirs is strange sort of sexual turn on with intense grief. Sex and grief is two fold. Men especially seek sex for comfort (like Jason and Bobby Sue) and since Lorena is the dominate character between Bill and her, she is the one who is having the shameful gratification of seeing Bill a victim.
Another interesting facet of the show with Eric was his love and devotion to Godric. Godric is an old child who finds Eric at his most vulnerable on his funeral pyre about to die. His attack on Eric and his turning Eric Vampire is almost paternal, with Eric being the child. When speculation about season three began and there were rumors of Eric having a sexual encounter with another man, there was some suggestion it may be an encounter with Eric and Godric. As free thinking as Alan Ball may be, there are taboos in the homosexual community about problematic images which could be perceived of young males being exploited by older males. While we would have understood the situation and the fact Godric is actually a thousand years older than Eric would have negated our view of the scene, but the passive viewer would have been upset and there would have been an insurmountable outcry.
The sexual scenario in question is buffered by our knowledge of several things. Eric is not above using sex as a weapon. He will use sex to meet his ends and in the show he has a definite reason to go to such extremes: the death of his human father. The fact that he may have to play the part of the seducer to reach his goal means little to him. It simply is what it is. And the same could be said of Bill who uses his seductive powers to procure Sookie for Sophie Anne.
But Eric is not gay. Not even close to it. He is an unrepentant lesbian of the highest order. He loves women and he loves Sookie Stackhouse. He also knows she is a good girl: In book two he asks: So, what does a nice girl like you wear to an orgy? Sookie has no idea…Of course Eric would like to give her some hints but she draws the line. He loves to kiss her. In fact some of his most intense moments have been in the act of kissing her. When she sucked the bullets out of his chest, he kissed her hard. When he took her to the orgy, he kissed her a lot. When they go into battle at various times, he takes a moment to kiss her. To say Eric is really into oral is an understatement. But the fact of her being fairy does not change Eric’s interest in her. He is interested in her for multiple reasons. He is intrigued I think by her sort of innocence. In a world of free love and even freer sex, Sookie is more virgin than virago with just enough experience to take on Eric without being too much of a slut. The first time he has sex with her, she had only one lover, Bill Compton.
Speaking of virginity, Jessica’s conundrum seems to be one of perpetual virginity. Perhaps one of the witchy storylines and the reason for Jessica kicking up her heels sometime in the future is that she solves her little virginity problem. Her interest in making Hoyt her first lover and having a human companion is cue that her relationship with Hoyt is problematic. They are serious limited her ability to have sexual relations with Hoyt for the time being because she will endure the pain of losing her virginity over and over. This is a sort of morality tale that plays out like the wages of sin. But Jessica is guilty of only one thing: Being made a Vampire. And even that had subtle overtones.
When Jessica is brought to Bill to be made, she is a terrified young girl in the hands of savages. Sort of like all the legendary stories of the pure maiden set before beasts. She is like sacrifices for a pagan god in all the old stories. Bill is the Kraken, Baal, King Kong, the dark brooding demon bent on her defilement. And while Bill does not have sex with Jessica, her being made Vampire is an erotically charged public event. She thrashes against Bill in a fruitless attempt to escape and Bill is caught between a rock and hard place. He wants her blood and gluts himself with it in order to steal her human life and then gives her his blood to make her Vampire. To feed and to be fed upon is usually sexually stimulating for the Vampire. Eric is turned on by Sookie feeding from him in the third book, so sexually stimulating he has an orgasm, and Bill is very turned on by Sookie feeding from him in the first book when he gives her blood before she goes to Fangtasia. And as we are told by the three Vampires in Bill’s house in season one, virgin blood is the best blood there is, besides baby’s blood. So whether Bill wants to or not, he is experiencing sexual and Vampiric pleasure when he makes Jessica.
One of the subtle things that I noticed about that scene was the reactions of the other Vampires witnessing it. It is almost as though Vampires have a hive like connection and as the act is being done by one, the pleasure is felt by all who witness it. It is a sort of bizarre sexual communion and all the Vampires are tuned into it. And you can see the same sort of dreamy look on Eric’s face as the doctor heals Sookie from the maenad’s scratch. He is completely stoned watching her being treated. In the books, the cure is far more intimate. Charlaine Harris tells us they “had to tear her shirt off” to make her ready for the process of healing her and she was held on their laps as the Vampires drained her of the poisonous blood.
Probably one of the most troubling events occur in book in book three and that is when Sookie is locked in the trunk of the car with the starving Bill who nearly drains her and has sex with her. He is in a state of unconsciousness and he is acting on automatic but it is still seen as forced sex. The thing that negates this and separates this event is the fact that Bill does stop when he realizes two things: That he has almost drained her and she did not give him permission to have sex with her and he immediately stops when he realizes what has happened. Had Bill been raping her for the simple pleasure of controlling her and raping her, he simply wouldn’t have stopped.
And this is where the line is drawn I think between the ancient stories of Vampire and the more modern ones. Ancient Vampire stories would have had Bill finishing the act, but because Bill does care about Sookie and even loves her, he does not wish to violate her. Her sexuality is important to him and he has no wish to destroy her physical sexual trust in him. What he did betray, even though it is at the order of his maker, was her emotional trust. Then of course down the line, Sookie realizes he did use sex as a weapon after all to procure her for the ruthless Sophie Anne.
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