and where are all the black vampires?
Jul. 3rd, 2010 07:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amredthelectorOkay, so, I'm going to admit it: I watch True Blood. I haven't really been interested in vampire/werewolf fiction in any form since about middle school, because a close friend at the time was down-right obsessed and made me watch/read it and after a while it just all started to look like the same thing. Slight variations, but still the same overused bad romance plots. I read Twilight, and that pretty much killed my interest in vampires.
I had no intention of watching True Blood when it started out, but I happened to catch the last half of an episode from season 2 while waiting for Penn & Teller's Bullshit to start. I found the homosexuality/race allegory to be rather interesting, so I watched a few more episodes. I liked that the story focused on season-long murder mysteries, instead of only on the vampire romance whatever. I finally felt like I'd found a new kind of vampire fiction, so I watched all of the first and second season.
Now, it's not a great show. It's kind of okay, with big plot holes and just general confusing things (like, why, after hundreds of years of living with humans, can none of these vampires use modern slang?). And like most HBO/Shotime shows, I'm annoyed by the gratuitous sex. Still, I watch it anyways. It's kind of a guilty pleasure.
With the start of the new season though, something has been catching my eye, and making me consider if I want to stick with the show. And that something is Tara. Tara is main character Sookie's (blonde, pale, ingenue Sookie) Best Black Friend (TM). And she seems to pretty much exist just to make Sookie look perfect. She's constantly fucking up her life, getting manipulated, making terrible judgments of character, etc. In season 1, she had to take care of her alcoholic and negligent mother, who eventually convinced the poor girl that she was possessed, and made her go through an exorcism. That season, she had my sympathy. I wanted to see her go through this, then realize what a terrible person her mother was, ditch the old bag, and get her life in order. That... never happened.
Season 2, Tara was picked up and mentored/counseled by Maryann, and found a guy that she liked and who seemed like a decent person, unlike the other men she'd been shown crushing on. Sounds like she's fixed herself up, right? Wrong. Maryann turns out to be some sort of ancient Greek witch or whatever, and uses her magic to make Tara and Eggs (the sort of boyfriend) beat each other up and fuck all over the place. Lots of bad shit happens to Tara, and by the end of the season, she's left broken.
Season 3 has started up, and in the very first episode she tries to kill herself. She then gets into what is shaping up to be an abusive relationship with a vampire who only wants to use her to get to Sookie, to get to Sookie's vampire lover Bill.
Why is this so bad I'm thinking of giving up on the show, you may ask. Because Tara is the most prominent character of color on the show, and she is getting nothing but shit. And once I realized that, I started to realize how the show has treated its other characters of color. Tara's mother is a drunk and abusive to her daughter. Tara's cousin, Lafayette, is a drug dealer and a male prostitute, who got kidnapped and tortured by the vampire Erik in season 2. The exorcist lady from season 1 was black, and admits to being a fraud and gets killed in the first episode of season 2. Eggs is also black, and it is revealed that he was a druggie or something before meeting Maryann, and he gets blamed for all the murders from season 2 and shot in the head. Lafayette's mother was introduced in the latest episode, living in a home for the mentally ill, and is evidentally a huge homophobe. These? Are the only black characters in the show.
The writers behind True Blood seem to be only capable of writing black characters that have substance abuse problems and that get murdered. But blonde, white Sookie seems to be able to do no wrong. This may be intentional, it may not. That isn't important. As the awesome Jay Smooth would say, this isn't what they are, but what they've said. I don't know if they're racist, but the show is making me uncomfortable with its treatment of black characters, much in the same way Heroes did with its CoCs and female characters. I'm going to stick around a little to see how things go, but I'm starting to give the show a serious side-eye.
Also, what the fuck was up with Bill twisting whats-her-name his maker's neck around backwards while screwing her?
I had no intention of watching True Blood when it started out, but I happened to catch the last half of an episode from season 2 while waiting for Penn & Teller's Bullshit to start. I found the homosexuality/race allegory to be rather interesting, so I watched a few more episodes. I liked that the story focused on season-long murder mysteries, instead of only on the vampire romance whatever. I finally felt like I'd found a new kind of vampire fiction, so I watched all of the first and second season.
Now, it's not a great show. It's kind of okay, with big plot holes and just general confusing things (like, why, after hundreds of years of living with humans, can none of these vampires use modern slang?). And like most HBO/Shotime shows, I'm annoyed by the gratuitous sex. Still, I watch it anyways. It's kind of a guilty pleasure.
With the start of the new season though, something has been catching my eye, and making me consider if I want to stick with the show. And that something is Tara. Tara is main character Sookie's (blonde, pale, ingenue Sookie) Best Black Friend (TM). And she seems to pretty much exist just to make Sookie look perfect. She's constantly fucking up her life, getting manipulated, making terrible judgments of character, etc. In season 1, she had to take care of her alcoholic and negligent mother, who eventually convinced the poor girl that she was possessed, and made her go through an exorcism. That season, she had my sympathy. I wanted to see her go through this, then realize what a terrible person her mother was, ditch the old bag, and get her life in order. That... never happened.
Season 2, Tara was picked up and mentored/counseled by Maryann, and found a guy that she liked and who seemed like a decent person, unlike the other men she'd been shown crushing on. Sounds like she's fixed herself up, right? Wrong. Maryann turns out to be some sort of ancient Greek witch or whatever, and uses her magic to make Tara and Eggs (the sort of boyfriend) beat each other up and fuck all over the place. Lots of bad shit happens to Tara, and by the end of the season, she's left broken.
Season 3 has started up, and in the very first episode she tries to kill herself. She then gets into what is shaping up to be an abusive relationship with a vampire who only wants to use her to get to Sookie, to get to Sookie's vampire lover Bill.
Why is this so bad I'm thinking of giving up on the show, you may ask. Because Tara is the most prominent character of color on the show, and she is getting nothing but shit. And once I realized that, I started to realize how the show has treated its other characters of color. Tara's mother is a drunk and abusive to her daughter. Tara's cousin, Lafayette, is a drug dealer and a male prostitute, who got kidnapped and tortured by the vampire Erik in season 2. The exorcist lady from season 1 was black, and admits to being a fraud and gets killed in the first episode of season 2. Eggs is also black, and it is revealed that he was a druggie or something before meeting Maryann, and he gets blamed for all the murders from season 2 and shot in the head. Lafayette's mother was introduced in the latest episode, living in a home for the mentally ill, and is evidentally a huge homophobe. These? Are the only black characters in the show.
The writers behind True Blood seem to be only capable of writing black characters that have substance abuse problems and that get murdered. But blonde, white Sookie seems to be able to do no wrong. This may be intentional, it may not. That isn't important. As the awesome Jay Smooth would say, this isn't what they are, but what they've said. I don't know if they're racist, but the show is making me uncomfortable with its treatment of black characters, much in the same way Heroes did with its CoCs and female characters. I'm going to stick around a little to see how things go, but I'm starting to give the show a serious side-eye.
Also, what the fuck was up with Bill twisting whats-her-name his maker's neck around backwards while screwing her?
