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I like to vary up the categories of my articles to create pallet of media choices - and I get hella bored doing repetitive topics - but I’ve got to discuss this other HBO show: True Blood. From the creators of Six Feet Under, which I’ve never seen but have heard nothing but props about, I decided to give it a look-see. Home Box Office rarely makes me regret checking out a new show - plus being a premium channel you can at least get some nudity and well-written profanity for your trouble.  

The promo caught my attention with the general premise being modern day vampires that seek civil rights like a social group despite expected prejudice. I immediately assumed it would be the irreligious bloodsucker type. The kind that blade featured where vampirism is like some kind of fucking venereal disease that does funny shit to your blood to make you seem supernatural. I HATE this kind of vampire mythology, cause there’s little myth to it. We live in a world of science and it can’t mix with the supernatural in my view, since examination of given phenomenon takes away it’s mystique. Bat shit and magic words that creates a ball of fire is no longer an evocational incantation, it’s a harmonically induced spontaneous-endothermic reaction with an exact formula - lame.

Enough of my purist musings. The show’s vampires, so far, are the undead kind: can’t go out in sunlight, drink only blood or the socially-approved mass marketed Tru Blood substitute, and affected by archetypal symbolism. The director further shows their preternatural character with small mental influence over others and other creepiness. So far the only vamp character is Bill - yes, Bill. There’s a scene with the heroine (Anna Paquin) remarking on his name not being Antoine, Basil or Langford. Two years ago the race of undead “came out of the coffin”, so people are having first encounters with them the way some folks experience Black people and homosexuals in many places. The setting is a rural Louisiana town - we approve of the Anne Rice stylistic homage - where I wouldn’t feel comfortable myself given the Jena 6. Another complication is that vampire blood is the new crank apparently - so they come off like minorities from being victimized. “Fang-Banger” is the new “Nigger-Lover”.

Sookie Stackhouse, Paquin’s psychic waitress, is the main girl-next-door idealistic and pure-hearted protagonist. Already there’s a sexual tension since he’s the only person she can’t mentally read at all, he’s a man of mystery in her country fried steak world and it’s HBO. This is giving me pause, as it seems a bit Buffy, without Whedontastic writing. The writing is nice but more plain spoken without the sarcastic wit. The heroine’s powers are more shameful affliction than real power. Sookie is no anciently heralded girl power modern Xena - but her powers let her kick ass to save Bill. The vamp is so far this huge serving of gravitas with little other development outside of a gentlemanly formal air - since he may be centuries old - but not overdone with the Angel levels of angst.

Other characters of note are the Rattrees, a white trash couple that hustles weed and other scams including BJ - the street name for vamp blood. Terra the Black best friend of Sookie whom is the typical Black bitch with a heart of gold: ever vigilant against racism and without patience for “steeyoopid peepull”. Her racist brother Jason Stackhouse that hates vampires but is a womanizer and monster himself. Sam owns the bar at the center of town and is Sookie’s overprotective boss that loves her - and is of course player-hating the new vamp in town. Other personalities surround the story and give it a very authentic feel, which I gauge by its strange feel to me. Being an elitist intellectual urbanite minority, I kind of related to the vampire most.

Ironically, and as a credit to the concept, I’d be a huge vamp bigot. Creepy folk with weird powers that look at me like a cheeseburger they could haz laps my tolerance several times. Other ethnicities regard me with more fear than I do them, including gays. I can tolerate another man viewing me as a sex object, or not - but since it’s me, likely -  the same way I could deal with an undesirable woman doing the same. Having my apex predator status stolen is a deeper matter. I applaud the show thus far for posing these questions to add an entirely new level of grittiness.

It makes me want to run D20 Modern again - which is a True compliment coming from me - but I’m ready to be let down later.        

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