Vampire Bites

I was completely addicted to TB and tried to find an 'academic' justification..

I am totally aware that the recent 'vampire mania' is not something sudden and unexpected. There are wise marketing moves behind it. Still, it is out there and one can try as hardly as he/she wants to ignore it but it is massive and evident.

I already wrote about True Blood for an university assignment and I might have the chance to post it in the future (need to be marked before). What I wrote in this paper is that True Blood is an umpteenth example of original programming from HBO (the same that realised Sex&the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire among many others) that had the chance (just a coincidence?!) to have a really good timing. Even if (and partly because of) it is dealing with the vampire-human love-story 'genre' that is having a boom in this period, it could make the difference for HBO. Also it is much more than another vampire-human love-story: vampires are indeed in the series but they are more a metaphor for deeper issues than the embodiment of the impossible lover or the enemies as in the Twilight saga and in other present or past vampires series such as Buffy or The Vampire Diaries.

The potential success of this series is particularly linked to the 'vampires mania' boomed in the last two years all around the world. The main cause is the series of four Twilight book by Stephenie Mayer and the adaptation of two of them for the big screen (other two are announced). The remarkable sales of the books were even overtaken by the films' great success. Moreover, the actors playing the protagonists in the movies are now incredibly famous and a large number of fans are asking for more vampire books, movies and series. True Blood could actually tempt them, appealing to an alternative wider audience for HBO. However, the mere fact of 'having vampires who love humans and vice-versa' is only a characteristic of the series which can potentially attract the 'niche' educated audience 'devoted' to HBO alternative programming as well. The creator of True Blood, Alan Ball, directed the critically acclaimed movie American Beauty and already created and produced Six Feet Under for HBO. This dark drama was one of the perfect examples of HBO original programming.

HBO television, after the vast success of Sex and the City and The Sopranos, has found it difficult to match that response. The competition of other channels which copied its original programming is certainly one of the main causes, together with the shifts in the television market. Surely, finding a new hit is not the main problem but True Blood has the potential to make a difference. Thanks to the recent popularity of the 'vampire-human love-story' theme, it can appeal to a wider number of viewers than the members of the HBO 'niche' audience. The latter, however, would be satisfied in finding in True Blood the usual aesthetic attention and the use of sex, violence and profanity neutralised by the smart writing, typical of the other HBO series. Finally, HBO has a challenge to capture viewers because of the rise of competition and having established itself as quality 'not television'. True Blood is 'good timing' thanks to its threat to reinvigorate HBO: it is not just another standard vampire tear-jerker, but an old-fashioned HBO-like treatment of a ragingly popular genre. In fact, the Manichaean world depicted in many vampires series and films (the Twilight saga on top of the others) is far from the complex world of True Blood were vampires and humans live together questioning issues as sex, racism, violence, religion and fanaticism in the deep South of the US.

Finally, I've now finished to watch the series 2 of True Blood and I was a bit disappointed. It is fair to admit that the expectations after the awesome series 1 were probably too high. The overdose of magic, mystery and, above all, all the parallel stories related to minor characters make the program heavy from time to time. At the same time, I watched the first episode of the first series of The Vampire Diaries. The similarities with the Twilight saga are evident..

One of most important comparisons is in the world portrayed by them: True Blood focussed on working adults and the settings are usually bars, houses or wild external locations. The Twilight saga or The Vampires Diaries are about high school students and everything is linked to youth. The sense of raw reality depicted in True Blood is far from the Twilight aesthetic, strongly linked to a dream-like unrealistic dimension, much closer to happy-ending fables about eternal love than the real world. The exceptional but sort of standardised beauty of the actors interpreting Twilight, The Twilight Saga : New Moon and The Vampire Diaries is another cause of this sense of unreality. In True Blood the casting has been particularly clever: the actors are more charming than beautiful and that makes them realistic. Moreover, the world of True Blood is static; there is no shift from a world to another as in the Twilight saga because vampires and humans exist together and interact. There is no secrecy about their existence. They have political representatives, right battles to fight and a synthetic blood beverage from Japan called True Blood that freed them for their necessity of real blood. They are no more acting as animals, there is no need to kill to survive. Finally, they are on the same level as humans.

The most canny and provoking feature of True Blood is the lack of a clear distinction between the monsters (evil and wrong) and us (good and right). Being all part of the same world of sinners and lost souls, nobody is saved and everybody is contributing to the misfortune of somebody else.