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.

OMG HARKULA OTP 5EVAAHHH CAN'T EVEN DIES

As has been stated in class multiple times, we are pretty much certain that Dracula has more than platonic feelings for one Jonathan Harker. I mean, he essentially threw a temper tantrum and said “I called dibs” when his vampiress bros tried to chow down. And throughout the novel, although I knew it never could happen, I was still a bit upset that Dracula never “got the girl” so to speak. Despite his precautions to keep Jonathan Harker (the object of his affection) safe from where he knew his plot would be unfurling and danger would be occurring. It is just like in the classic movies when the man says ”stay here,  It is too dangerous” and then goes off to defeat whatever danger is darkening the horizon. Dracula is simply trying to keep bae somewhere away from where all hell is going to break loose. Although Dracula is a brute, he obviously has some variety of feelings for Harker, otherwise he would have “tied up loose ends” like he did with Renfield (come on, do we really think renfield reached that level of insanity naturally?) before he departed for England. However, these actions are mostly left up to the interpretation of the reader, and buried under a fair amount of subtext. This is understandable considering the outrageous homophobia that was going down in England right around then and would still go down well into the twentieth century.

Now there are modern works about vampires other than twilight that can be dragged into this. One very good one being Carry On by Rainbow Rowell.

In Carry on, the two main protagonists are gay wizards Simon Snow and Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch (who shall henceforth be called Baz). These lil cuties right here!

Simon Snow, Mage's Heir is on the left and Baz is on the right.

 Baz is also a vampire. Now, although snow is an orphan and as of the book, relatively unacquainted with his sexual orientation, Baz has been aware of it for quite some time and has noticed the distinct homophobia within the old families and especially from his father (even being explicitly stated by Baz himself that “my father would be happier if I were disrobing the maid” and that “I’m disturbed. Ask anyone.” This is incidentally my phone background at the moment). Simon and Baz could have ended up like jo hark eye and Drac von brooding and circled each other but never been able to have the relationship that would benefit them both. Now the only reason Baz and Simon are able to have a romantic relationship published in a book now is due to massive leaps and bounds made in accepting the LGBTQ community, but we still have a ways to go! So people accept your neighbor, if they are a vampire, a seelie, a velociraptor, a Quetzalcoatl, a basilisk or god forbid a human just like you. Because that would be the end of the world. I will step off my soap box now.