The Color Black in True Blood

While reading Dead Until Dark or the Sookie Stackhouse Novels, the series is narrated by a telepathic waitress, named Sookie, from Louisiana. The novels follow a variety of themes like sex, religion, and race, but the characters within the novel are predominately Caucasian. Aside from the novels, the HBO series True Blood (2008 - 2014) bases itself on similar themes and plot in the first season. One notable and very influential difference from the novels to the show are the main characters Tara Thornton and Lafayette Reynolds. While the novel details a strong discrimination between humans and vampires, the show creates these major characters to not only highlight this racism and discrimination, but to give it a more realistic perspective. The characters also give a voice to the discriminated, adding to the perspective of the oppressed.

First, let’s look at Tara, who is Sookie’s best friend in the show and does not appear in the novels. Being a woman of color in Louisiana, which is not your typical progressive area, she does not follow the stereotypical black person. Shes uses her color to help define herself and also uses her intelligence to feel more superior toward her white characters. Putting Tara in the show really helps it dive into their metaphorical racism between humans and vampires. Without Tara True Blood would not have a foundation for its racism and discrimination to stand on. Ultimately, having Tara as a person of color shows how bigotry affects real people, instead of just using straight metaphors.

Since Bon Temps, where the show mainly takes place, is a very white, conservative area, Tara and Lafayette act as the “others” based on their skin color. While at some points in the show where Tara focuses her aggression on slavery and oppression in her hometown, her vibrant personality and past make her a more complex character. Aside from Tara’s complex character development in the show, she is complimented by her gay cousin, Lafayette. In the show, viewers might assume that Lafayette does not care too much for Sookie’s relationship with Bill. This is not because he himself makes a deal with a vampire to exchange sex for vampire blood, but because he understand what it’s like to be ridiculed for relationships outside the societal norm. While Lafayette and Tara provide various comical scenes throughout the series, both characters are given issues that metaphorically coincide with our culture. Tara serves for the purpose of confronting racism and the trauma of abuse and it’s victims. Whereas with Lafayette, how the show uses the vampires to talk about racism, it also uses vampire human relationships to talk about homophobia. Both characters are invisible or non-existent in the books, but in the show they alone put cultural issues in a more practical context.