Friday, August 6, 2010

True Blood Exorcises Environmentalism's Dark Side

Fans of True Blood have come a long way with the characters of Bon Temps, Louisiana.

What started out as a simple love story of girl meets vampire, girl dates vampire, girl uses annoying psychic powers to foil serial killer, has veered toward melodramatic epic.

But this season is different. Writer/director Alan Ball is creating a show with actual thematic depth. Other writers on this site have touched on themes of domestic violence and animal abuse, and the episodes have also as well dipped into familial loyalty, drug abuse, mental illness, and the arch-theme of them all: the moral character of love itself.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when one of the pivotal characters this season started a monologue about environmental degradation, but I did in fact rewind my DVR three times to make sure. There it was: Russell Edgington, the suave and sophisticated 3,000-year-old gay vampire, getting all hot and bothered about pollution.

For a moment my loyalty shifted away from the psychic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse to this urbane tyrant. Then my heart sank. Oh. Yeah. He's a Nazi. I asked myself: What is Alan Ball trying to say about environmentalism, and what does that say about me?

read on

1 comments:

Rita said...

You know he knows what he is talking about
but dose not know the difference between
a telepath and a psychic.