Monster Mash

I was going to write about Better Off Ted today, but I can’t. I can’t write about what I haven’t watched, and I haven’t watched it because I can’t stop barreling through this season of True Blood. For the uninitiated, True Blood is another entry in the current cultural obsession with creepy supernatural monsters, particularly vampires. The show’s premise is that vampires have lived secretly for centuries, but the recent Japanese creation of a synthetic blood product (True Blood) has allowed them to “come out of the coffin” and exist openly. One especially genteel and tortured vampire, Bill Compton, falls in love with a mindreading waitress named Sookie Stackhouse, and things go from there.

On True Blood, everything is literally and metaphorically fluid – death and life, male and female, human and monster, youth and age, all of these rigid binaries break down and death slips into life as easily as the drag queen/short order chef Lafayette straddles the gender line. The slippery, liquid flexibility that defines True Blood’s thematic content permeates the landscape as well, and Sookie’s Louisiana hometown perpetually oozes moisture. True Blood is wet, from the lakes, creeks and swamps in the surrounding forest, to the sweat glistening on every un-air-conditioned body, to the blood streaming from puncture wounds, smeared on bed sheets, and dripping from vampire fangs.

The show’s full embrace of this sodden aesthetic allows it to also slip across seemingly impenetrable binary lines: True Blood is as high-concept and politically conscious as it is completely, utterly, and shamelessly trashy. The opening credits carefully cut together images of religious zealotry and toothy monstrosities to establish vampire-hatred as a form of bigotry, most concisely expressed in a road sign that reads, “God hates fangs.” Particularly in the second season, as Sookie’s brother Jason joins the anti-vampire Light of Day Institute, the dangerous, corrupt forms of Christian extremism come under intense scrutiny. It’s a reasonably sophisticated examination of the changing American debate on homosexuality.

God hates fangs, an anti-vampire board game, and Steve Newlin of the Light of Day Institute appearing on cable news

At the same time, it’s no wonder the most recent episodes have had record-breaking audiences, because True Blood is about as explicitly, gleefully sexual as you can get without actually requiring a

Um, this was the safest orgy screenshot I could find

government ID to buy it. Every character spends an implausible amount of time without clothes on, and the whole premise of vampire feeding has been essentially a mask for sexual activity going all the way back to Dracula. The second season manages to push the limits of reason even further by building an entire plotline around a character who entrances everyone into a nightly, county-wide orgy. To accuse True Blood of sexual obscenity is like accusing the earth of being a little roundish looking. And it’s not just sexy – it’s really, unremittingly trashy. Blood and gore spray the set like a classic drive in horror movie and Sookie, with her Barbie body and curly blonde hair, cheerfully bounces through the worst of it, naïve and smitten with Bill the Vampire.

The whole project is also pretty damn fun. The second season has done a great job of expanding the supernatural world beyond just vampirism, and now the whole American South seems to be teeming with shapeshifters, demigods and mindreaders. It is ridiculous, and campy, and sometimes as sharply pointed as a well-made wooden stake.

EDITED TO ADD:

Okay, so I wrote this before I had finished the most recent episode, and I’d like to throw out a few public service announcements, just in case they would be useful for anyone. If someone serves you something called “Hunter’s Souffle,” and it looks like this, a few notes:

First, clearly what you have here is some form of shepherd’s pie. Rather than a fluffy custard all the way through, the crust on this dish is lying on top of a stew-like substance – definitely not a souffle. So that’s your first red flag. Second, THAT IS BLOOD YOU IDIOTS, STOP EATING IT.