THIS WEEK ON True Blood: Let’s Get Out Of Here.
It’s impressive how out of touch the writers of True Blood are with their own subtexts. Nothing could have solid their obliviousness better than the puke-inducing monologue that Slutty Sookie delivered to her two panting, devolved meat-sac lovers who wanted nothing more than to explode their cock-missiles all over her stratosphere.
A sultry Sookie drabbed in red lingerie stood center frame. She spoke to the two man, flanked on either side both emotionally and physically by the two other lines in their insufferable love triangle. Then somehow within the confines of a wet dream, Sookie clad in nothing but suggestions of cloth decided to launch into some absurd (in the context) feminist diatribe.
The stringy strands of vomit gurgled up the general motif that is often heard regarding the double-standards of sexuality when it comes to male and female roles in our contemporary culture. A dude stake as many innocent dames as he wants – it’s cool. A dude locks it up with two women at once – it’s double cool. The moment a woman wants to try such a thing she’s labeled a lecher, a whore, a harlot, a hussy, on and on.
It’s cool. We get it.
It’s hard to take the content of a character’s speech seriously when the form through which it is delivered undermines the entire thing. The writers have Sookie delivering what is supposed to be an empowering speech, but she’s got everything but two deep fried areolas hanging out. You can almost smell the desperate Southern musk wafting out of her ass cheeks. Scantily clad women in high-heels in the middle of a wet dream aren’t the best of delivery systems when you want to take on sexual inequalities. It’s impossible to take an empowering statement on the hypocrisy regarding gender roles and sexuality seriously when the character delivering the speech is being objectified as it happens.
It’s also hard to take it seriously when the character delivering it has been an empty shell of a human being throughout the entire series. Sookie was premised as this “Go get them! Hell Yeah, Fire Spitter!” character, but the truth is that she is anything but. She lacks almost any agency whatsoever. Her time on the series is spent running around (quite literally most of the time), shouting out the name of whatever character they’ve written her as hopelessly in love with at that moment. Sookie isn’t empowered, in fact she is the exact opposite. She lacks any power, any discerning sensibilities. She gives herself to disreputable people who perpetuate horrible acts consistently, and only deviates from this pattern when she’s asked to run around preventing those people getting hurt.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Run through the bayou screaming Bill! Proclamation of Love! (rinse, repeat.)
So the turning moment where Sookie seizes control of this love triangle is also the following: Within a dream. While she’s scantily clad. And her denouement culiminates not in telling these two degenerates who really have never given her much reason to love them is to allow them to both take her. This is the sort of slop that’s written by a) a horny thirteen year-old boy and/or b) someone know really doesn’t give a fuck about any sort of message that is being purported to be sent.
I’m not arguing against the message being carried by the Gap-Toothed Object, I think there’s a lot to be said about it. Instead I’m arguing against the contradictions that present themselves when motherfuckers try and have a Mindless Sex and Love Bot deliver that message while dressed in a way to engorge loins across the viewing audience.
Sookie’s the main character. Sadly. They try and pin her as some take-charge woman. However, the truth if this shit is that she’s just another empty damsel in distress. Putting up with douchebags. Annoyingly running headfirst into trouble over and over again. No Moment of Realization is going to change this about her, especially when this moment is delivered in a scene that’s going to have more people staring at her abs than giving a shit about what she’s saying.
See you next week.