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A few weeks back, I aired some of my hopes and fears for the coming season of True Blood. Most of them revolved around the fact that the show has –- for better or worse -– moved away from being about its lead female and into more of an ensemble focus. What I didn’t foresee was the non-stop onslaught of violence against women that dominated nearly all of the most recent episode, It Hurts Me Too. In the past month, we’ve already asked whether violence against women has become weirdly trendy; in response to a Top Model shoot that featured bruised, battered and murdered women, we asked if violence against women was becoming trendy, particularly with the way in which dead or murdered female bodies are sexualized on TV. What was perhaps the most disturbing part of this past week’s episode was the fact that a lot of the attacks on women were being played for laughs or shock value.
Apart from Pam, every single major female character on the show was in some way attacked, demeaned or demonized. Let’s start from the top:
1) Sookie, our “main” character, wants to go look for Bill in Mississippi. Eric can’t come, therefore he sends Alcide, a werewolf, to protect her. The scene where Alcide approaches her from the back makes it look like he’s about to attack her. He still grabs her and overpowers her quickly, but only to tell her he’s an okay guy. They go to a “Were” bar where Sookie nearly gets raped by another werewolf until Alcide steps in and saves her. Sookie’s clothing and degree of cleavage is also mentioned quite a bit in the show. Yes, she’s a telepath, and so in theory a bunch of drunk men are going to subconsciously ogle the petite blonde waitress (and she’ll know about it!) , but it seems as though Sookie’s clothing choices are often critiqued, mentally or verbally, which makes the subsequent rape attempts tread into uncomfortable “she’s dressed like she’s asking for it” territory.
2) Tara brings us yet another rape scenario. While in bed with shady new character Franklin -– the phenomenally entertaining James Frain of The Tudors -– Tara urges him to bite her, and he retracts his fangs, essentially telling her that it’s no fun if she wants him to do it. To her credit, Tara isn’t necessarily okay with this, and refuses to tell Franklin her name or anything about herself as she leaves. But then, of course, Tara’s independence is quickly stripped away as Franklin shows up at the Old Stackhouse Place and simply glamors Tara into letting him into the house after she initially refuses.
3) Jessica finds herself in a bind after a body in the attic goes missing, only to discover that Franklin has “taken care of the problem” in order to blackmail her into giving him information about Bill, Sookie and Tara. Jessica also blames Bill for leaving her in a lurch and not giving her enough information about the vampire world.
4) Arlene is pregnant, and it’s probably Rene’s (since this show has apparently only spanned about eight weeks so far and she’s only slept with Rene), however she leads Terry to believe it’s his when she knows it can’t be. This one does not deal with men overpowering women, but rather women being “tricky whores.” Terry, a deeply sympathetic character, has been tricked by “trashy” Arlene, and we, the audience, can’t help but feel sorry for a man who is so happy to be a father.
5) Which leads us to the biggest problem of all: Lorena. The episode opens after Bill has thrown an oil lamp at Lorena, engulfing her in flames. We are then treated to a flashback in which the evil Lorena tries to kill Bill’s wife. In order to protect Sookie like he tried to protect his wife, Bill agrees to leave Louisiana for Mississippi. Bill is noble and good and Lorena is evil and cruel. Lorena is also the one supposedly in power here – she was his Maker and she was the one who demanded that Bill be taken to Mississippi. What is confusing about the final scene – as a number of people have noted – is whether Lorena is “commanding” Bill when she says, “make love to me.” If that’s the case, then in theory he has no choice, and so his only form of rebellion is to twist her head around while they have hate sex. All the way around. Until blood spurts out of her mouth and she pathetically whimpers, “I still love you.” The scene is grotesque, disturbing and, worst of all, is a shaming punishment of a powerful woman.
True Blood relies on shock value, but this is not the tits ‘n gore escapism of the past two seasons. I feel like this show is running off of the rails in a lot of ways right now, but what bothers me most is the way that all of these scenes were played for laughs and, one after the other, imposed male strength and superiority over the women in the show. Every one of these women are normally portrayed as anywhere from sassy to powerful and yet each one was attacked, subordinated, humiliated or vilified in the episode.
And for what? Do we really need to see Sookie get nearly raped again? Do we need to see someone taking advantage of Tara again? Do we need Bill to be horrifically violent toward Lorena twice in one episode? I really hope that this was an unfortunate misstep in an otherwise solid season, but as my friend said shortly after the episode premiered, “It didn’t make me laugh. It didn’t shock me. It just made me … not want to watch anymore.”
So, what do you think? Is this just the run-of-the-mill True Blood shock and awe, or was something more sinisterly sexist at work?
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I don’t know why you would expect anything less of this show. I’ve been disgusted by its treatment of its characters since season 1 when Bill jumped out of the ground and “raped”(Bill Moyers’ words when describing the scene in an interview) Sookie. I finished season 1, but I haven’t seen season 2 and after seeing the first few episodes of season 3, I have no desire to continue. I just think it’s funny when people complain that a show does exactly what it’s supposed to. For example, I laughed at a friend of mine who hated the Lost finale because it didn’t make any of the irrational aspects of the show rational. I asked, “Did you expect a show whose first episode consisted of people surviving a horrible plane crash and encountering a monster made out of smoke to make sense in the end?” (By the way, I LOVE Lost). Same thing with True Blood. Did you expect a show about vampires, sex, and drugs to be kind to its characters?
There are just as many scenes with men.
Lafayette gets a car from Eric, if this were a female character, you’d be crying that she was being belittled like an object. Bill is being held prisoner by Loreanna and that King dude that should be played by Bowie, if this were Jessica and she were being held prisonner by Bill and Bill was commanding her to have sex with him, that be rape and we’d all be cheering as she broke his neck. That werewolf guy was clearly really hurt by the woman who’s getting married to the other werewolf. Jason gets stupider and more sexually exploited every episode.
Basically, the show’s not sexist, it’s just turning into a bunch of people being really horrible to each other.
I was going to comment on that, as well. The male characters aren’t treated very well, either. It’s interesting that she ignored that fact for the sake of this article…
[...] Television Show True Blood Punishes Strong Women – Zelda Lily … [...]
The horror genre is notorious for objectifying women, and they took things to a level of shock horror usually reserved for Troma films this time. I must admit, I chuckled a little at the scene, not because I’ve been desensitized to images of violence against my sex, but because I could feel the cheapness of it all. When the camera zooms out at one point, and her head is bobbing along, I wasn’t thinking ‘What a travesty;this strong woman is being punished.’ I was thinking, ‘Haha, that looks like a rubber chicken neck.’
I think too much importance is placed in the distractions of our modern era. It’s easily switched off and replaced by something more suited to your sensibilities (and your common sense).
LOL you should see the BOOKS–written by a WOMAN!
Also, Lorena is a “powerful” woman, but also a sadistic killer, and essentially is RAPING Bill. Did you forget that part? Where she’s a horrifying monster?
If you walk away from True Blood feeling like powerful women are being punished for being powerful, I think you should just stop watching tv.
There’s a pretty equal amount of crap taken by men in this show. And you conveniently ignored any of the basic plot points that would explain the behavior that bothered you so much. Like the possibility that Arlene didn’t tell Terry the truth because she didn’t want to break his heart.
I didn’t walk away from that scene thinking she was a bitch. You did. And so you decided that’s how she was being portrayed.
Then you gloss right over the possibility that Bill was being raped and how fucking evil Lorena is.
You made a decision about this show (and I’m guessing many others) and then tried to arrange the facts to fit your perceptions.
I think Terry is Arlene’s bady daddy, it happened when Marianne, or whatever her name is, possessed the entire town. Plus, don’t you remember when Arlene talked to Sookie about maybe raping Terry when it looked like they both had sex. So, Arlene does have some reason to believe that it is Terry’s baby. I think.
[...] Television Show True Blood Punishes Strong Women – Zelda Lily [...]
[...] Television Show True Blood Punishes Strong Women – Zelda Lily … [...]
I was also shocked with Bill & Lorena’s sex scene, even if I do hate Lorena’s character in the series. But this… scene doesn’t exist in the book, so I wish they had spared us.
But let me tell you that’s not over if they follow the book ! **** spoiler **** Sookie, after having saved Bill, will be raped by him in a car…
As for Arlene, she had sex with Terry while Maryann was in town, so it could be his kid.
Nothing more to say with Tara, and in the books she had done some bad choices, but again she hasn’t a big part in the books, so I’m just waiting to see where the show is going.
I think what I like most about this show is how real the situations usually are (vampires and werewolves aside) are you telling me you don’t see these exact interactions with these exact same characters around you in real life? People you know or have worked with?
I actually feel like there is a clear case of reverse-sexism when it comes to Sookie. When people complain about what happens to her character, they inadvertently agree with the idea that “she was asking for it” (ie her wardrobe choices) as if it should be wrong for her to not even acknowledge sexuality when it comes to how she lives her life.
I LOVE the books, I like the series a lot, but this last episode (although I did laugh at the twisted neck thing because it was so cheesy) was just too much. Like the writers were trying too hard. The victimization of Sookie in the bar was not in the book and I don’t think it was needed in the story.
[...] wanted so badly to go to Comic Con this year for the many, many geektastic panels (Avengers, True Blood, Scott Pilgrim, Green Lantern … sigh). But when I found out that my nerdy brothers and [...]
[...] had a feeling that this season was going to suck, and not because of my argument that the show attacks women — I’m willing to concede, at this point in the season, that pretty much everyone gets [...]
Just read a eye-opening article about a dozen guys on a football team that all ended up in the hospital with “”compartment syndrome,” which caused soreness and swelling in their triceps and high levels of creatine kinase, a protein that can harm the kidneys. Three players had surgery to relieve swelling.Authorities said the cause was not yet known, but the condition can be the result of exercise or the use of certain medications. All but one of the players who became ill worked out last Sunday at the high school’s wrestling room, where one player says the temperature reached 120 degrees.” What a bad decision that was by the 1st year coach.For all my members at abs home workout please be cautious and start slowly if you have not been working out in a while. If you take too much of a jump up in your exercise routine, your body will break down a lot of muscle at once. The result will be the release of too much broken down muscle particulates into the blood stream. This can clog the kidneys and cause Rhabdo.