True Blood: A Leading Lady Conundrum, Er, Tradition

I've been following the Skin & Scares coverage of True Blood on Slate and the article about this season's 2nd episode, "Why does everyone love Sookie?," makes a point that the main heroine of the show is a fairly annoying and dull character. And I agree. Lately, Sookie has just gotten to be an irritating and shrill interruption to the rest of the show's sultry action, running around worried about the direction of her relationship with Bill-Is he mad at me? Should I marry him? Where did he go?! Blah blah blah. Sookie may look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but her jokes don't kill nearly as well.

The truth of the matter is Sookie is an intrinsic part of the classic horror framework. She fulfills the part of the virtuous and innocent heroine, consistently in need of saving from (insert masculine hero here, e.g. Eric, Bill, Sam, Johnathan Harker, etc.). In effect, Sookie is today's version of Bram Stoker's Mina in "Dracula." Comparably, Tara is fulfilling the role of the more sensuous and rebellious Lucy Westenra fairly well. Hopefully she doesn't get her head chopped off at some point, though the new True Blood plot twist isn't looking that fantastic for her so far. Sookie satisfies the old Victorian trope of praise for the simple damsel-in-distress. She isn't threatening or intimidating, she's just a girl devoted to her man. This point may be the only place where Twilight and True Blood can draw parallels; Bella Swan is a relative stick-in-the-mud who has inexplicably enthralled all her male co-stars as well.

Perhaps the new twist, Bill's feigned rejection of Sookie, will place her character on a more nontraditional path. As of yet, she remains the bastion of purity for the show (you know, in True Blood standards, that is).

The Twilight Example

So, the third installment of The Twilight Saga, Eclipse, came out recently and it, as always, has everyone in a pop-culture gabfest. You either love it or hate it, or really really hate that you love it. I've long been a fan of vampire literature and media and its recent reemergence as a mainstream cashbox is really putting some new, and often horribly shameful, spins on the old Dracula paradigm. Last year I wrote a paper for a conference studying the long history of the abstinence trope within vampire mythology. The online version of the article can be found here.

It's interesting how vampires have become so closely linked to undertones of feminism. Today, I read a really probing discussion from The Good Men Magazine, titled "Driving in Cars With Vampires," investigating why teenage girls are so obsessed with the Edward-Bella relationship of Twilight. I think the true profundity of the conversation lies in the revelation that Edward and Bella have a really messed-up, creepy relationship, but at least it is a relationship. Meaning, teenage girls (and all women in general) are idealizing an emo and controlling undead monster because, unlike the men in reality, he's willing to commit. Hey, he doesn't even want to hook-up (though that may have more to do with the whole "I don't want to kill you with my vampiric, bloodsucking fangs" thing). Vampire media, be it Twilight or True Blood, is all about fulfilling women's modern fantasies. Both Sookie Stackhouse and Bella Swan have the undying (undead?) devotion of a slew of mythical man-creatures. And even if their lives are in constant threat of some otherworldy fatal onslaught, it's better than never getting called back. So, we can continue to escape to HBO or the movies...or we could start demanding a little more control and a little more respect from real, circulating men again.

Clearing Waters Premiere 4/11/2010

So, the premiere of the Duke student-produced (True Blue Productions) feature film Clearing Waters happened this Sunday in Griffith Theater. The event was a black tie affair and included a red carpet, media and photographers. The night was full of excitemnet. Not often do students come together and successfully pull off a feature-length film. Yes, there are still some editing tweaks to be made, mainly with sound effects and color correction, but the resounding consensus of the audience was , "This feels like a real movie." And it did. The acting was strong, the editing was effective and the soundtrack was specially designed to match the emotional narrative of the film. Now it will be exciting to see just how far Clearing Waters can go from here. It is already entered into a few festivals, and hopefully may begin to garner attention, if not for the film itself, then at least for the committed students working in cinematic prodction here at Duke.