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?

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.