930 Words on Tara and Lafayette

"True Blood" has become old news in the TV world. The HBO series was popular with the younger generations and became a household name from 2008 to 2014, but may be fading into obscurity now. The show, as some people know, is based off the "Sookie Stackhouse" series. The first season follows the books rather well and only strays away to add in another character (because it was very odd that Sookie didn’t have any good friends other than Bill Compton). It only removes part of the plot because it draws too much attention away from Bill and Sookie’s romance (even though it would offer quite an interesting discussion or characterization). In my limited experience watching the series (I’m on Episode 8 right now), there have been quite a few characters that have irked me.

One of the characters they added is named Tara Thornton. Tara is the epitome of the “sassy black friend,” except her type of sass is just "bitchy" and she has quite a chip on her shoulder with the rest of the world. The chip comes from her mother, an alcoholic and a druggie who spends her time verbally abusing Tara and saying she’s doing all of this in the name of God. Tara’s purpose is to give Sookie someone to talk to about her "undead bae" and probably included to add a more diverse character pool to the series.

One of the original characters is named Lafayette, a black man; however, he has a stark difference from Tara. Lafayette is a good ol’ Southern queen. He wears eyeshadow and fake eyelashes, has more of a swish in his walk than most women, and tries to seduce “the straightest man at a party.” 
Lafayette is, again, the epitome of a gay man from the South. Not only that, but he sells all kinds of illegal substances and even dabbles in prostitution. Not only are they caricatures of themselves, but the two are related.

There are really few uses that I can think of for either in their original contexts. Tara seems to exist only as Sookie’s best friend who has fallen madly in love with her older brother. The only other possible reasoning behind creating her would be that she is a voice of reason -- Sookie’s smarter half. But we already have one of those: Sam is reasonable and we often see him trying to talk Sookie out of things that are just plain mad. And Lafayette is portrayed accurately in the television series when compared to the novel. Of course he would need a more detailed background story, as he isn’t mentioned much in the book -- but why does his background story have to include him dealing drugs? Yes, doing this brings us closer to Jason, shows us just how powerful V (vampire blood) really can be, and provides us with comic relief.

But why are they stereotypes and caricatures? I find it odd -- and rather offensive -- that the two African-American characters aren’t normal people, but rather overdramatized versions of what they could be. The show -- and books -- seem to have these characters to add diversity. Really, that is one of the only reasons I can imagine for this. The main cast remains predominately white for all seven seasons, and in all the main cast pictures, Lafayette and Tara are the only two shown that are not white. And later, Tara “comes out of the closet” as a lesbian, making her and Lafayette two of the homosexual characters as well. And in a series where quite a few plot lines involving sexuality seem to be cut out, why add this one?

The series has tried to correct wrongs in the book; it wants to expand the characters to be more diverse both sexually and racially, but it handled both of these the wrong way. Not only has it made the three African-American characters (including Tara’s alcoholic mother) stereotypes, two of those three characters were also homosexual. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with characters of various sexualities and races - in fact, there’s everything rightwith such a thing - but what isn’t right is that the writers thought it would be a good idea to clump everything together. It’s not accurate and doesn’t paint a great picture of the African-American community in any region -- especially small-town Louisiana.

The "Sookie Stackhouse" novels definitely have their faults -- as does "True Blood" the series. One of the biggest is how it has portrayed its more diverse characters. Rather than try to handle race, it has just thrust three characters into generally bad stereotypes and given two of them the majority of the diversity in the show. In trying to fix the problems that the book had, the show has instead magnified them and made them worse.