True Blood Season 1 has concluded, with certain story threads tied up, but others set up for True Blood Season 2, to come the HBO next summer. True Blood proves, along with the hit movie Twilight, that blood suckers are popular.
It will be months before we even start to know the answer to some interesting questions. What is Maryann, played by Michelle Forbes, up to with Tara and what is her past with Sam? Where has Lafayette, Tara’s swishy gay, prostituting, drug dealing cousin gone off to? Is he dead? Undead? How is Sookie’s dumb as a pile of rocks brother Jason going to fit in with the anti Vampire hate church, Children of the Sun? And finally, just who is the new serial killer?
It was fitting that True Blood Season 1 concluded during the weekend that Twilight opened with a seventy million dollar box office that comprised mainly of teenage girls shelling out ticket money to see their new favorite, soulful, blood sucker heart throb Edward. Vampires are certainly back in vogue, whether they are the sweet, PG-13 animal drinking sort from Twilight, or the more hard R rated species from True Blood.
Of course have the fangers ever been out of vogue? I remember well rushing home from school to watch the latest installment of Dark Shadows, featuring the melancholy, doomed vampire gentleman Barnabas Collins. Dark Shadows was one of the good things about being of a certain age in the late 60s and early seventies. The series was remade briefly in the early 1990s starring Ben Cross and will be made again soon starring Johnny Depp.
The vampire has transformed from a villain as he was when Bela Lugosi first slurped the fresh, red ruby in the 1930s as Count Vlad Dracula. The vampire is now more often a hero, albeit sometimes feared and misunderstood. Whether he is Nicholas Knight, trying to make up for his sins on the night shift of the Toronto Metro Police Department, or Bill from True Blood, trying to “main stream” into human society, the vampire can be one’s friend or, even, one’s lover.
Not that some elements of society will approve, mind. Ann Rice’s vampires, for instance, are the quintessentialoutsiders, just as they are in the Southern Vampire series of books upon which True Blood is based. They cannot help their dark natures. But some struggle against it. Some embrace it. Some just come to terms with it. But they are always looked upon at best with suspicion, at worse with fear and loathing. But they are also always looked upon with fascination.
Sources: True Blood, Epguide.com
Dark Shadows to Come to the Big Screen, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, July 30th, 2007
A Vampire Rights Amendment, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, July 20th, 2008
True Blood With Anna Paquin Debuts on HBO, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, September 8th, 2008
Twilight Film Review, Mark R. Whittington, Associated Content, November 22nd, 2008
