Sunday, August 29, 2010

'True Blood': This week in manufactured 'True Blood' controversy.... LA Times

Has "True Blood" gotten too gay?

It seems like kind of a ridiculous question, honestly. The show's developer, Alan Ball, is an openly gay man, and the show is based around vampires, monsters well known for what one of my friends calls their "ambi-sexuality." The idea of the vampire's bite has been used by any number of writers as a kind of fill-in for sexuality, and the fact that vampires will bite pretty much anyone -- including animals -- to get the blood they so need to survive has been used to stand in for all manner of sexual behaviors and kinks over the years. (I mean, the other big vampire series of the moment -- "Twilight" -- is all about a vampire who won't use his bite to make his girlfriend a vampire until they're married, which is a metaphor so bald-faced it shouldn't even count as symbolism.) So, honestly, when the vampires on "True Blood" start making out with other guys, it doesn't strike me as terribly surprising. It's just the show making subtext into text. I get that some people find this offensive, but I always wonder just why they feel compelled to watch "True Blood" -- a show that takes perverse joy in all manner of sexual and violent behavior, from lewd to comparably chaste -- in the first place.

read on

1 comments:

Rita said...

I for one love True Blood and the gay
parts don't bother me because i thought
Eric and Talbot sex scene was done tast-
fuly as you really didn't see any thing
maybe a kiss that was all,so if you have a problem with just seeing that then you,
maybe this is not for you.